#actually scratch that - in ways that are eerily similar to real life

[yourqueenb]

I often talk about how much I’ve forgotten since I first played this series. But one thing that has always stuck with me is “the chocolate incident”. I remember being so sickened and infuriated by that scene and the limited ways in which MC could respond as Hana’s friend that I almost exited the chapter right then and there. And the responses I saw from many of the fans at that time made it worse. There were, of course, people who felt similarly to me. But seeing just as many people downplay, defend, and even praise Madeleine for what she did was upsetting (and that’s an understatement).

As you so astutely pointed out, Madeleine’s statement about wanting to break Hana was not only sick on a human level. It, and her overall treatment of the latter, were also proof of abuse as an employer and her sadistic glee in psychologically and emotionally tormenting Hana for literally no reason, going to the point of making her think she was beholden to her and could send her back home in disgrace at any moment. However (and perhaps this is predictable of me), I’d like to take it a step further and say that the optics of all that with regard to Madeleine being a white woman and Hana being a woc… do not look good to say the least. White women have abused their social power to the detriment of women of color for their own benefit and entertainment for centuries and continue to do it to this day. And whether the people harmed by that reach their breaking point or not, those same women often turn around and weaponize their tears to steal sympathy and feign innocence. And it’s very clear that PB didn’t consider or care about any of this when they were going out of their way to reflect all of it in the writing for Madeleine (giving her a sob story, painting her as the ultimate patriot, downplaying then retconning the narrative AND pinning things on Kiara, another woc, forcing everyone to coddle her, etc.) and even worse, using the woman she abused to make her appear less villainous.

I mean “Madeleine would be most likely to take a bullet for Liam”? Were they serious???

Hana and Madeleine: When You Reward Your Favourite Bully with One of Her Victims

Series - TRR's Alternative LIs: The "Romances" That Didn't Happen

Previous - Maxwell and Penelope: When You Like the Side Character So Much, You Gift Her A Shiny New LI

A/N1: Apologies, again, for the length of this. There was so much damn retconning to wade through that it felt like a rollercoaster to write. There is also not going to be a lot of Hana in this, as I needed to unravel so many inconsistencies in Madeleine's writing. I also didn't want this to become a repeat of my essay series on Hana (which you can read here).

CW: Descriptions of bullying and intimidation, as well as dismissiveness of the same both in canon and from fandom. A mention of the 'infertility' plotline written for Hana in TRH1. Mentions of parental abuse and neglect.

In every other essay in this series, it's been important for me to analyse the potential of the pairings TRR went for. No matter how badly PB handled them later on, one could find promise in the possibilities of these pairings, and if written well they could result in a sweet, happy ending for the LIs we didn't marry. With a better sense of balance from the writers and less vitriol and double standards (in some cases) from the fandom, they could have worked.

Not so for this pairing.

In the case of Hana and Madeleine,it would have been far far better if this pairing had never happened at all. The problem wasn't just in the development; the roots of such a pairing itself were rotten.

(White) Female Antagonists

Before I delve into the characters involved in this pairing, it's important we take another deep dive into a narrative practice we often see with PB. Their blatant favouring of specifically white female antagonists.

Now, it's not as if white men in antagonistic roles don't get favourable writing from their teams and adulation from sections of the fandom (one has to only look at some of the posts Gaius Augustine of BB, Caleb of Hero, and Kane of TE got - just to name a few). But we also often see fans of such white women decry the (very little compared to their black counterparts) condemnation that their faves get for their actions in comparison to both antagonistic and romanceable white men. Such readers often neglect to acknowledge exactly how much the narrative bends over backwards to accomodate them, in a way that they never have done for even mildly hostile/wary black and brown women. And often this is with ample support and encouragement within the fandom itself.

One cannot even pretend this is a recent development. The early books had their fair share of white-woman-adulation and you can see some of the patterns that would solidify in PB discourse already take shape in their early books.

One excellent example of this is TCaTF. Compare the treatment that white women like Helene Leventis, Hex and Zenobia Nevrakis are given, to what Rowan Thorn - a black woman - gets. Helene is allowed to escape never to return, or join Kenna, despite being the woman who killed her mentor and close friend Gabriel. Hex is well known in the series for her sadistic torture devices and for destroying an extremely prosperous kingdom. Yet, she is captured - alive - and there are two options that allow her a bit more mercy, and only one that recommends the harshest of punishments. Rowan in the meantime only betrays Kenna if the latter is an absolute tyrant to her, and letting her go if she betrays her is touted as a failure. Her loyalty doesn't ensure she will live like Diavolos' does - you can in fact leave her to die if you don't have enough diamonds/prestige points.

The Freshman was an improvement on this: even if Becca Davenport started out as a classic college mean girl, her redemption arc involved her needing to work to regain trust with the group and her best friend Madison, regardless of the MC's fondness of her. Her housemates immediately set her straight when she lashes out at them at the beginning of TS, and Becca has to plan for almost a-book-and-a-half to get her friendship with Madison back to normal again.

Sadly, this is something that rarely ever happened again. Discrepancies in character treatment became more and more obvious as the years passed. Books where black and brown women behaved even mildly unimpressed or catty with the MC, showed them either suffering grievous fates or written out of the narrative (eg. Scarlett not even getting a proper future in the VoS bonus scene) or being mistrusted and misunderstood constantly by the MC and their friends (Aurora). Books where white women could cause grievous harm depicted them being let off without so much as a slap on the wrist (eg. Aunt Mallory of RoE being rewarded with a happy life, a man and reconciliation with the niece she tried to kill and the daughter she emotionally abused).

(Screenshots from SavageLordBarlow's YouTube channel)

Perhaps the worst and most obvious case to date was that of Vanessa Blackwood of MoTY, who called a young child "guttersnipe" within minutes of encountering her, outed a lesbian teacher, encouraged her son's bullying, provided legal counsel to the MC's ex husband just to see the woman suffer, and engineered a plot to frame the MC for theft so she could lose her job. Once Vanessa had crossed her limits, PB ensured they laid on the sympathy narrative thick, having her show sad faces when the MC scolded her in a paywall scene, punishing only her brown lackey (both the white people involved - Vanessa and Guy - are never named when Tallulah is exposed, even though she literally stole jewellery and framed the MC for them). In the series finale, Vanessa was rewarded with a cushy diamond scene where the MC can choose (in what is the understatement of the century) to call her "classist and a little bit racist" - all she is given at the end of the book is an extremely softball form of criticism.

Compare this to Xanthe of ACOR, who had far less power, who was repeatedly slut shamed by the MC and others for doing her job, and whose end was met in a "comical" scene that implied she'd been sold into sexual slavery while two black members of her scholae gloated over her plight (in a manner so uncharacteristic of them that even players who didn't necessarily like Xanthe were shocked. I would highly recommend you read @cassiopeiacorvus' excellent essay on her, "Xanthe: Courtesan, Rival, Pawn").

In an essay I'd written years ago, I'd noted the following:

"Check out who the narrative rewards you for treating well, as opposed to who will be made to support you either way.

You're allowed to show basic decency to a black or brown woman. But you're expected to show kindness, understanding and empathy to a white woman, and richly rewarded if you do. In some cases you will also face consequences if you don't. (Fandom - take note of the difference, and be sure not to forget it)."

Madeleine Amaranath is probably one of the best examples of this - with blatant retcons, unfounded adulation and obvious pandering lasting over five books.

Rules of Engagement

When we look at the full cast of TRR, we find at least six characters who are callbacks to its sister series, Rules of Engagement. Leo, Constantine, Regina, Bastien, Madeleine and Rashad (the last one was an addition from TRR2 onwards). Part of TRR's appeal as a series was its ability to reference the earlier one through these characters, but this time from the PoV of Leo's younger brother instead.

Madeleine appeared in only 2 chapters in RoE. She was Leo's fiancée, in an arranged match that not only their parents but their citizens expected, unfazed by the "commoners" Leo brought to his bed and secure in the knowledge that no matter who he slept with she would eventually become his Queen. Leo dashes these expectations, however, by abdicating his claim to the throne - whether the RoE MC chooses him or not.

At this point - when TRR was barely even a concept - Leo was a clear fan favourite. Players liked the idea of romancing a rogue prince from a fictional European country; it meant they could revel in the luxury of touching royalty, while being away from all the hard, unsavoury parts. The Madeleine angle provided them with a rival to fight off, and at the time that was all that mattered.

Was Leo's behaviour in RoE, towards both the RoE MC and Madeleine, dishonest? Definitely, but not many seemed to care much at the time and it hardly created a dent in his fanbase (most of the criticisms against him and his cheating ways and irresponsibility would emerge later - when the Leo stans became Drake stans, and it was more convenient to badmouth Liam's family).

Jeffrey Herdman, a Junior Game Writer with Pixelberry for over 7 years, was a part of both the RoE and TRR teams, and proudly admitted in the TRR2 pre-release interview, to being the one in charge of writing Madeleine:

Q: Very funny. (Just so we're clear, Jeffrey is joking. Sort of.) Out of curiosity, who's your favorite character to write in The Royal Romance?

Jeffrey: Madeleine. It's fun to write someone who's constantly trying to spin a situation to their benefit, and making power plays along the way. I've actually been writing for Madeleine since her appearance in Rules of Engagement: Book 2, so we're practically besties.

Excerpt from The Royal Romance: Book 2 Interview

(If we were to compare this adulation of the character from Jeffrey, to the person who wrote Hana - head writer Jennifer Young, you'd find a surprising difference. In this very interview Jennifer talks about enjoying the process of writing Hana, but pointed to Drake as her favourite LI - "In my personal game, my love interest is definitely Drake, and I totally make Kara write him just so I can read his scenes and enjoy the romance. =)".

Perhaps if Jennifer had spent less time fawning over Drake, and more time doing Hana's story justice, that LI wouldn't be stuck in a situation where the team constantly erased her experiences and history to benefit their favourites)

When you look at Jeffrey's open admiration of Madeleine, and trace her fairly choppy and largely incoherent narrative journey through the books...a lot of things begin to make sense.

TRR1 - Would a TRR1 Madeleine Have Been A Better Fit for Hana?

When you look at the first book, you can tell that the possibility of any of the other alternative pairings besides Liam and Olivia wasn't really entertained. There is no buildup at all for Maxwell x Penelope, Drake x Kiara - and not even a single direct interaction between fellow competitors Hana and Madeleine. In fact, TRR2 often had to cover up for the lack of interaction in certain cases by making the alternative LI come up with justifications for why they weren't approaching the LI before.

There is maybe one implied interaction between Hana and Madeleine, that I don't think even the writers paid much attention to at the time. In the pie baking scene in Applewood, Hana is assigned to Madeleine's team if the MC doesn't take her along. Whichever group Hana is in, she is in charge of the pie design.

In the diamond scene, she takes the MC's suggestions and gives her advice on the amount of apples required for the filling. Given that she gives credit to the MC (in front of Queen Regina) in this option, and doesn't not do the same for Madeleine, it is likely that she was allowed to decorate for the other team, but not with much input from the captain.

This pie has a rose design, which is beautiful but lacks the intricacy and the challenge of the Cordonian Royal Seal, which the MC can suggest in the diamond scene. It's possible that by default, Madeleine handled the baking herself (since Penelope couldn't even boil water and in fact is so distracted she unwittingly helps sabotage the pie), and Hana was assigned strictly decoration duties. But even these possibilities rely on conjecture and guesswork, with no real dialogue or interaction shown.

There are no other scenes where the two women talk or do anything together. Hana may be present in one or two scenes where Madeleine is speaking (such as the dining scene in Ch 17 where Madeleine tells the court ladies about the upcoming Engagement Tour), but the two never directly engage with each other. It's more likely that (like Maxwell and Penelope, or Drake and Kiara), the writers may have thought of Hana and Madeleine only in the second or third book - more likely the third, but there are possible hints in TRR2 if you squint.

Hana is an interesting anomaly among the cast of TRR. She is both Cordonian and foreigner; the ways of the Cordonian court are, in equal parts, both familiar and confusing to her. This serves as an double-edged advantage to the MC - Hana is both skilled and knowledgeable enough to ease her into the culture, and isolated and vulnerable enough for the MC to step up as a hero on occasion. We also find out in Lythikos (TRR1 Ch 7) that she was so deep in the closet that she couldn't fully articulate her struggle to love the romantic English noble who wanted to marry her, in the presence of the woman she was slowly beginning to love. Within the competition itself, Hana is shown having a hard time finding people who will associate with her, often shown left out of events and her yacht party abandoned during the Regatta. The broken engagement could have a hand in making her appear to be struggling in the competition, but tbh Olivia is the only one who brings it up. Overall, she does well in the competition, but gets little credit for the same.

Madeleine is the polar opposite of this. Even though the ladies of the court initially view her with a mixture of pity and respect (due to her broken engagement with Leo, and her position as a Countess and winner of the previous season), their views on Madeleine once she enters the competition range from anger (Olivia), to speculation (Kiara and Penelope), to indifference and later suspicion (the MC).

Madeleine comes into the social season with several advantages: her pedigree and her years of experience at court. Both Bertrand and the MC note that Madeleine hails from a "powerful family" and "is immersed in the intrigues and maneuverings of courtly life", and therefore the MC is cautioned by Applewood to pay more attention to her than to Olivia. If the MC fails to win court favour, both Penelope and Kiara show allegiance to Madeleine. Where Hana is shown to be vulnerable despite her skills, charm and intelligence, Madeleine is meant to be viewed with respect even by her peers - and expected not to return that respect to others unless they're the king and queen.

I often view the Madeleine of Book 1 (and early TRR2), and the Madeleine of the latter half of Book 2, as two separate people (more on that in the next section). Early Madeleine was depicted as a clear threat. While she does nothing too out-of-pocket during the competition, her threats to the MC once she is (optionally) the favourite frontrunner, her singular focus on only the king and queen (and largely ignoring the Prince), and inability to respectfully lose, ensure that the reader registers her as a figure of danger early on. The first time she (optionally) faces an obvious loss and sees the MC crowned as Apple Queen, Madeleine tells her to "savour these moments. You may never hear the phrase again".

Her very extreme attempts to belatedly win Liam's favour after ignoring him the entire season (we later find out that she barged into his sleeping quarters the previous night and suggested the arrangement that Liam speaks about in TRR2), earns her speculative looks from the MC and wariness from Liam himself. Given that the outcome was so different in TRR2 but the buildup to said outcome was so rushed and chaotic, there is a 70/30 chance that Madeleine's buildup in Book 1 was meant to highlight her as someone with the capability to harm the MC, rather than just as a red herring. At the very most, Book 1 would highlight her as powerful, with the intention that Book 2 would follow through with showing her as a cog in a very vicious machine.

But because Madeleine's actions in TRR1 don't result in any direct harm, it's honestly hard to envision her as dangerous beyond the subtle threats (that people could brush off as basic rivalry) and rank classism.

Would Hana's pairing with the Madeleine of TRR1 have worked? It's equally hard to say. If we take only Book 1 into account, and ignore the very real possibility of a threat that Madeleine represents, there's a sliver of a chance that such a pairing could work...if Madeleine works on herself. At this point she hasn't manifested as a direct threat to Hana in a way that, say, Olivia has - and all the MC has at this point are theories and speculation. You'd have to probably change half of Madeleine's characterization, but it could be workable if the foundation for such a pairing was mutual respect from the start.

Still, when you take into consideration that Madeleine being involved in the plot against the MC was a very legitimate possibility, it's hard to see any opening for this pairing. Even Penelope - whose coddling from the narrative knew no limits - was no longer entertained as a potential alternative romance for an LI the moment her role in the plot was uncovered. If any harm was done to the MC, and Madeleine was found to be behind it, there is no way Hana would even be allowed to entertain the thought of her as an alternative LI at all.

You see - hurting Hana is no big deal. But hurting the MC and still getting an LI to show interest in you? Now that would be beyond the pale!

Madeleine: A Red Herring...Or A Villain Retconned?

As I have mentioned earlier, there is one writer - who has seniority in the company because of his many years there, who has always been in charge of Madeleine's writing, and who has always loved writing her. On close inspection one can say for certain that Jeffrey Herdman had a fair bit of sway in the team itself, especially from the fact that one of his weirdest writing suggestions - the MC's supposed obsession with hats - was retained in the books as a gag for a very, very long time (TRF finale livestream interview). When you take both Jeffrey's sway in the team, and the writing of Madeleine in TRR2 and 3 (and beyond), one can make several educated guesses about what Madeleine was built up to be, and how that changed midway.

Plenty of fan posts written in the gap between TRR1's finale and TRR2's release, took for granted that Madeleine would have some role to play in the plot against the MC. While one may assume this was due to "jealousy" from players or "hate for a bitchy character", there were enough signs in TRR1 and 2 that this was the route the narrative was initially planning to take with her.

The MC does voice suspicions of Madeleine in the first book - mostly after Madeleine herself voices threats to the MC during the Apple Queen ceremony. Madeleine also looks apprehensive at the (optional) public support Liam shows towards the MC at the Beaumont estate, and even shows him a suspiciously huge amount of attention at the Coronation. The MC even confronts Madeleine during the Coronation festivities when she gets a note threatening her to withdraw from the competition, believing it was sent by the latter. But beyond this, Madeleine's own words in TRR1 often sound ominous and laced with subtle threats. Still - going by just TRR1's evidence, Madeleine could still work as a good red herring, since she's not exactly crossed a clear line with anyone yet.

TRR2 seems to go in one direction when it comes to Madeleine's arc, then makes a sharp pivot in the opposite direction post Chs 7 and 8. The first half of the book has both the MC and Liam regard her with doubt and suspicion, especially when the MC learns that Madeleine had come to Liam's rooms the night before the Coronation, and insisted he continue the relationship with the MC on the sly while making her the queen. The book presents several contrasts between Madeleine and the MC, presenting their possible ruling styles and envisioning how each woman would fare as a future queen.

In a diamond scene in TRR2 Ch 4, Liam asks the MC how she would handle a plate of curry chicken falling on someone - an incident that has already occurred in some playthroughs to Madeleine (who got recognizably frustrated and called the whole episode "a disaster"). In contrast, the MC can claim she would either defuse the situation with humour or help clear the mess - both of which establish that unlike Madeleine the MC knows how to adapt to different situations, and prefers to find a solution rather than take her frustrations out on everyone else. Liam points out the differences between the two women as the MC "having perspective... every gaffe isn't a disaster".

Multiple scenes in the story focus on Madeleine's rigidity, her inability to adapt, her hunger for power, her belief that becoming queen gives her a free pass to be a tyrant, her hubris that allows her to outright harm some of her ladies in waiting and believe she will never face consequences, and her overall lack of real impact during her own engagement tour (only if the MC fails miserably does the Italian statesman Francesco even mention Madeleine). A lot of this buildup indicates that she won't be as effective a queen as other characters claim she will be.

Her overall behaviour in the first half of TRR2 seems to highlight overconfidence, and a willingness to overstep every possible boundary in the belief that nothing will now prevent her from getting what she wants ("the best part about being Queen is that I don't have to care about what you think"). Even though she isn't queen yet, both Madeleine and everyone around her behave as if she has already been crowned! That kind of overconfidence - especially from someone who should know better than anyone that winning the competition doesn't necessarily mean she'll be crowned - makes more sense when she is aware that there are powerful people (like the former king and her aunt, the former queen) to back her.

There is also the fact that Penelope's involvement in the plot never got any proper buildup. There is just one scene, in TRR2 Ch 6, where she speaks about feeling uncomfortable at parties and balls, and how much she hates crowds. The reveal of her being the culprit is in Ch 7; the reveal of her social anxiety is in Ch 8. Before this, you have zero indicators of her being involved in this level of deception - even though her history of "social anxiety" should have ideally made that kind of subterfuge difficult, and she should have been able to leave a few tells, signalling her guilt. It is very clear on rereads that Penelope's involvement in the plot was a last-minute narrative decision.

But perhaps the strongest evidence that TRR2 was originally meant to establish Madeleine as part of the plot against the MC, is a line from the very first scene of the book. When a confused MC asks Bertrand how it's possible for Liam to break his engagement, Bertrand mentions a constitutional provision:

"The king is able to change his selection in specific cases for the good of the nation". The MC being proven as framed and unfairly disgraced achieves very little in this context, because the focus is clearly on the king's final choice. This means that the engagement cannot be voided on the basis of the MC being innocent, but on the basis of Madeleine being unfit for the role.

What happens to this "constitutional clause" once Penelope is declared the culprit among the court ladies rather than Madeleine? It disappears completely. If she was really meant to be a red herring from the start, the team would never have added this line in the first place. Nor would they have left the "buildup" for Penelope's anxiety till Ch 6, just one chapter before her reveal. If Madeleine was really meant to be a mere red herring from the start, there would have been more than just one crumb presented for that trail.

It is highly possible that the team had plans for Madeleine to be involved in the plot, or in something shady enough to justify breaking the engagement. It is just as highly possible that Jeffrey, the writer in charge of her character, allowed his favouritism for that character to dictate his writing of her, and convinced the team to change the trajectory of the story to benefit her.

Hana and Madeleine - The First Half of TRR2

Most of the interactions between Hana and Madeleine in TRR2 are overshadowed by one incident in Ch 7 - the one most popularly known as "the chocolate incident". Madeleine was already not too popular as a character when this scene came out, but her admission that she wanted to break Hana crossed enough of a line that a number of players would bring it up as a reason for why they couldn't ever like her, no matter how often she was retconned in canon.

A common misconception made about the "chocolate incident" from Madeleine lovers and haters alike, is that it's viewed as a singular episode rather than as an escalation in an ongoing pattern of threats that Madeleine was already making to Hana.

Viewing it as an isolated incident is precisely what allowed both Madeleine stans, and the canon narrative itself, to severely downplay what Madeleine did, and what she openly declared she would continue doing to Hana. Therefore, it is essential to look into Hana and Madeleine's interactions before Ch 7, as well as the context behind Hana's return to court and the very real and grave threat that Madeleine represents to Hana specifically.

To do this, we must first look into how Hana's return to court (after her parents forced her to leave post Coronation) is depicted. There are two versions of this story - Madeleine's version...and the truth.

Madeleine's Version: "If it wasn't for me, she'd still be on the other side of the world. I've heard dogs remember those who feed them. I hope you'll keep this in mind and remember that dear Hana is here by my personal invitation". This is a half-truth at best and ironically, this is the version Hana sticks to. She is never allowed to tell us differently.

The truth, as said by Liam to Hana post Coronation: "I am the King of Cordonia. I'm sure Lady Madeleine knows that if she wants to keep our engagement, she'll have to give me something. Perhaps I can convince her to make you part of her court". Hana never gets to tell us this. That honour is given to Drake!

Even after the MC (optionally) gets to know this truth, she never talks to Hana about it, and Hana is never allowed to veer from Madeleine's narrative even in private. In the process, Madeleine gets to use her half-truth as a form of blackmail - threatening Hana at least twice to send her back to China if she paces even one toe out of Madeleine's arbitrary line.

In TRR2 Ch 4, Madeleine is shown antagonizing her entire court (ordering Penelope to get lemonade and comparing her to dogs, telling Kiara to exoticize herself by not speaking in English [which itself has colonial/Orientalist connotations]). But none is more ominous and disturbing than her subtle threat to Hana before introducing her to the two suitors:

Being sent back to her parents is a terrifying prospect for Hana...for two reasons. For one, Hana is committed to being there for the MC, to contributing to her investigation (and she does! Massively. Perhaps more than anyone else in the group). For another, she is just beginning to realize what a damaging environment her parents' house is, and she also knows they are already growing suspicious that she hasn't found another suitor yet. By the end of this conversation, Hana is visibly distraught... to the point of needing moral support (something she rarely asks for herself).

Remember - this is an arbitrary rule Madeleine comes up with, that applies only to Hana. In the same conversation, neither Kiara nor Penelope are placed under this kind of pressure. Though Penelope claims in Ch 6 that her parents won't allow her to come home if she doesn't get a suitor, Madeleine doesn't levy any other threats of this nature on her (she harms Penelope in other ways).

Madeleine is aware that Liam was the one responsible for Hana's return. It is implied that she is also aware that neither Liam nor Hana can say this in public. By this coin, she'd know that she shouldn't be the one who can take a call on sending Hana back - Liam is. Yet she issues this sort of a threat, and worse still...is allowed to get away with it through Hana and the MC's silence, both in private and in public.

Unlike the MC and Olivia, the other three ladies of the court are present in official positions to the future Queen, and are expected to publicly pledge loyalty to her. The narrative of TRR2 alone seems to give the King's fiancèe powers and influences similar to an actual Queen Consort's. And Hana, Kiara and Penelope aren't just random "court members" - they are Madeleine's ladies-in-waiting. They cannot even speak to certain people unless she approves of it (Ch 1), she orders them around with the disrespect that many in that nobility reserve for their servants (Penelope in Ch 4), she publicly humiliates and insults them if they make a single mistake (eg. Penelope not getting a metallic dress in time for the bachelorette), and she can get away with causing them grievous harm (Hana). There is no actual point to any of this behaviour - it achieves nothing and (by the narrative parameters of the third book) is actually foolish, because Madeleine's actions could cost the royal family their relationship with the Great Houses. Neither the MC nor Liam (the actual monarch), would be allowed by the narrative later to abuse their power the way Madeleine can, in a position that isn't even hers yet!

It is easy to view Madeleine's interactions with Hana and Penelope especially, as just some regular mean-girls shit, with all the excuses, justifications and crocodile tears that the fandom can shower on said white/white-passing mean girls. Canon itself encourages this reading when they use the word "hazing" to describe what Madeleine put Hana through. But when we speak of Madeleine's behaviour in her engagement tour that way, we miss a very important aspect of her dynamic with these two women. They are no longer competitors or mere allies. They are not just people she knows in court.

They are not Madeleine's equals. They are her employees. She is directly in a position of immense, unquestioned and unchecked power over them. Publicly, she has the authority to invite them into her court, and to throw them out of their jobs. It is from that lens, that we must view her behaviour, especially in Ch 7.

The "Chocolate Incident" and Its Aftermath

Another reason to believe Jeffrey's favouritism for Madeleine allowed for an actual change in the story, is the way this above scene - and the ones preceding it - were handled immediately in both the immediate and long-term aftermath.

Often dubbed "the chocolate incident", this scene takes place in Italy (the first stop of the engagement tour) during Madeleine's bachelorette. For anyone who has forgotten the incident, Madeleine's ladies-in-waiting are supposed to organize different fun activities for her bachelorette, and the MC uses each event as both a PR exercise and an opportunity to check the credit cards of the ladies.

The final activity is Hana's, an intricately-planned chocolate fondue party complete with chocolate-themed games and treats. If one reads too much between the lines, one could maybe notice the tiniest sliver of a romantic hint in Hana's conversation with the MC over her confusing an actual bachelorette party with the show The Bachelorette (It is just as possible tho - if not more - that this is a comic aside pointing to Hana's lack of exposure to modern media).

However, things take a turn for the worst at this juncture. Madeleine heavily berates Hana for not knowing that she is "allergic to chocolate", accusing her of an attempt to murder and even threatening to remove her from her position in court. This leaves Hana so distraught that she ruins her own dress in the process, and is damn near inconsolable. The MC can - if she chooses - comfort Hana along with their friends. At the end of the night, a heavily drunk Madeleine gleefully admits she lied about the allergy and gloats about wanting to keep hurting Hana till she breaks, because she "wants to have a little fun".

She claims, when asked why, that it's because "everyone wants something, but the nice ones like Hana don't even have the decency to act like it". Which sounds like the sort of sick logic that fandom often happily accepts from their favourite white antagonists, where they can project whatever sob story they want to make such a reasoning palatable. Such attempts ignore the fact that Madeleine is torturing someone for supposed "duplicity" when she is herself well-known for being insincere.

Later, when it was convenient for the fandom to hate on Hana, she would be either blamed for the torture Madeleine put her through (because she was "weak" or "too nice", or that she was "spineless and deserved this treatment". I even saw posts that claimed it "wasn't that bad" (in the case of one particularly memorable instance, a Madeleine stan went so far as to say, agreeing with a post expressing a fondness for Madeleine: "...before anyone mentions the chocolate prank: Did Hana die, tho?"). Some also tried to reason that it was fair for Madeleine to target Hana, either to showcase her "wiles" or because of her sad sad childhood.

As I pointed out earlier, every single one of these takes tend to downplay Madeleine's bullying/abuse so that it sounds more like a schoolyard squabble that happened only once, rather than a person in power consistently placing their employee's job under threat, with the stated intention of harming them mentally and emotionally on a regular basis, until they experienced a breakdown. The center of this conflict isn't about different people with different approaches. Nor is it about court maneuvering or wiles because honestly, nothing worthwhile was achieved through Madeleine's abuse, and she had no purpose for doing those things beyond deriving a sick pleasure from other people's suffering.

It isn't about nice vs tough, nor ambitious vs generous, nor "naive" vs "jaded". It is about a gross power imbalance. An imbalance that results in the exploitation of the more vulnerable party...which is later brushed aside by the one who claims to be the latter's "friend" like it means nothing.

Structure wise, one can see striking similarities between this chapter, and TRR1's Ch 7, where the MC can view Olivia in a new light in the first half of the chapter, but be disturbed by her vindictive nature by the end of it. Here too, the MC comes into the investigation of the credit cards fully expecting to see Madeleine as the culprit. Over the course of the evening she finds Madeleine treating her ladies-in-waiting badly, but also calling out the press for targeting only the MC but staying silent on Tariq's involvement (ironically, Madeleine herself didn't exactly believe the MC if she tells her she was set up). She is also shocked when she realises Madeleine isn't the culprit at the club. Still, the court is given a rude shock when Hana is accused of putting Madeleine's life in danger.

Clearly the aim of such a chapter was to make the MC soften a little towards Madeleine, while still keeping some of the antagonistic tension. However, the more direct impact of Madeleine's huge ego trip on Hana made the harm far more visible than Olivia's jibes towards a woman who was far away...plus the scenes that followed in the former sequence centered Drake, far more than the ones in the latter that involved comforting Hana.

Madeleine's bullying also clashes - quite conveniently - with the reveal of Penelope's betrayal, so that the latter overshadows what Hana went through altogether.

It is important to note at this point that the MC is the only person not directly tied in an alliance to Madeleine (besides Olivia and Maxwell, who are then missing at the fashion show backstage scene in Paris) who knows Madeleine's intentions towards Hana. She is the only person present at the event in Paris, who knows that Madeleine intended to continue harassing her until she broke. Hana herself is never made fully aware of this, and if she is left in a vulnerable, dangerous position while on her mission to support the MC's investigation - then the fault lies to a large extent with the MC for keeping silent, rather than protecting her friend from someone who fully intended to hurt her.

I say this because in France (Ch 8), the MC's exposing of Madeleine is by choice, rather than default (this essay has a full breakdown of said scene). Moreover, the option where the MC can "expose" her will result in Madeleine lying about the act being an "official hazing" she does for all her ladies-in-waiting. Not only does the MC neglect to contest Madeleine's claims (or even tell Hana the full truth in secret), she also parrots Madeleine's lie in a conversation with Adeleide in NY, as if it were the truth (Ch 14).

Remember how I mentioned Jeffrey - the writer who was in charge of Madeleine's scenes and sang her praises in TRR2's pre-release interview? His influence here is obvious in the way the narrative sharply pivots away from Madeleine's characterization so far, to engage in a full-blown pity party.

The abuses of her power (towards Hana and Penelope in particular) stop. The parallels that canon makes between Madeleine and the MC as future Queens, stop. No reference, ever, is made of her actions before Ch 8.

For over seven chapters, Madeleine largely fades into the background - sometimes there will be scenes where she is present, but without any dialogue or actions. Sometimes she may make a catty move like getting the MC to pick up her wedding ring, but from a safe distance. Because she doesn't openly antagonize anyone or show up much in Chs 9-15, the sense of distance could allow some to soften in their memories of her. Especially when the only strong reminders of Madeleine in these chapters come from Adeleide, her mother.

Adeleide is an important cog in the machinery that resulted in the retconning of Madeleine's character in TRR2. Without her, Patriotic!Madeleine wouldn't have become canon. Adeleide sets the stage for this extremely inaccurate reading of her, with complaints on two occasions about how Madeleine is "putting too much pressure on herself" and working too hard. Which contradicts her very real actions in Applewood and Italy, where she regularly antagonized her entire court and where she doesn't get much notable approval from foreign dignitaries (Signor Francesco) unless the MC is that bad.

The narrative, at this point, expects us to view her with sympathy, as someone who could have been "an excellent queen" (Adeleide's words, not mine). The stage is clearly set so that we pity her when Liam calls off the engagement and she loses this position, that we can see her loss as "unfair". It ensures that there is an overflow of sympathy for Madeleine's plight, especially since she had already lost her chance to become Queen once before with Leo. By this point, many readers had actually forgotten the "chocolate incident" altogether, and were more than willing to view Madeleine as a patriot who wasn't given her due. A description that, ironically, more accurately fits Hana.

Is Hana Really Just A Nice Girl who Never Fights Back?

As I mentioned before, Hana's "niceness" and "weakness" were sometimes presented in fandom as justifications/reasons for Madeleine's bullying of her, often in an attempt to shift blame or make it sound like Madeleine's stated "reasons" (in TRR2 Ch 7) to hurt her were legitimate. Almost as if to say that Hana was targeted because she presents herself as an easy target.

To be clear, I don't subscribe to such a train of thought myself. Different people react to bullies and abusers in different ways - and not being able to push back aggressively in tense situations doesn't make anyone a lesser person. In fact, canon itself doesn't mind providing a "weaker" person protection against someone like Madeleine...as long as that person is Penelope. So we cannot even claim that Hana's "weakness" is why Madeleine targets her, or why the MC shouldn't have to protect Hana better.

Canon also doesn't help much in this respect, especially with their preferences for the meaner white women. In fact the narrative doesn't even allow Hana the chance to speak up in private against Madeleine's half-truths about her return, and she is made to easily accept Madeleine's "hazing" excuse. Let's not even get into how she speaks about Madeleine in TRR3. Additionally, no one in Hana's own friend group provides adequate protection or support - they stay silent where it counts.

But is Hana really that incapable of fighting for herself? According to the finale of TRR1, no.

Even though the scene is hidden behind a paywall, Hana's pushback against Olivia's treatment of her during the social season is strong, decisive and done entirely on her own initiative, with no prompting or involvement from the MC. She is honest about the ways in which Olivia has hurt her, but also makes it clear that Olivia's opinions and vitriol no longer matter - effectively reclaiming her own power in the process.

Such a scene is a clear indicator that Hana is capable of pushing back, and isn't afraid to speak truth to power - as early as TRR1. While one could say that as a diamond scene, it is possible that it can't be fully shown as canon - there are ways the writers know how to incorporate such things. Often, they have managed to write in similar scenes or the same information into free scenes later on (eg. the selling of Liam's bachelor party photos, which wasn't even that important to the story of TRR2). Hana could have had a free pushback scene with Olivia if the writers really wanted to give her one.

That aside, it's safe to say that there is a precedent for Hana being able to fight back before TRR2, and canon could have found ways to ensure that she could safely do so with Madeleine too. Or at least have more protection and care from her friend group, if her position as lady-in-waiting prevented her from speaking out. Penelope got to demand protection later on, after all - and she wasn't even our friend.

We must also take into account the positions of power that Madeleine, Olivia and later even the MC hold. Madeleine is a countess in line to become queen in TRR2. Olivia is a duchess, and the MC herself is given this honour in Book 2. Hana - despite her skills, knowledge and charm - never gets lands, nor a title unless she marries the MC. Hana's experience in Cordonia isn't just about "other women" being mean to her with the MC being "not like other girls" - all three of the above women are in positions of power over her, and even the nicest of them uses her more often than she helps.

TRR2 doesn't exactly build Hana and Madeleine as a pair. In hindsight one can read romantic hints into Madeleine's mocking usage of the word "darling" around Hana, Hana's attempt to replicate The Bachelorette for Madeleine's bachelorette party, and read parallels into both their toxic family histories (particularly Hana with her mother and Madeleine with her father). But there is no actual romantic content there that one could find with the other three pairs, which leads me to believe that Hana and Madeleine was only taken seriously as a romantic prospect in TRR3.

How did Madeleine become the final romantic choice for Hana, and no one else? Because the relationship was never made Hana's benefit - it was for Madeleine's. Given all the evidence laid out about TRR1!Madeleine, TRR2!Madeleine and including hints that she may have actually been written as the villain at some point, it's more likely that Madeleine's main writer ensured some changes in the writing of his favourite character midway into the story, resulting in her staying longer in court and several retcons that painted her as a tragic heroine and completely erased any actions that contradicted such a narrative.

This specific narrative also seems to draw upon a narrative trope that is seen sometimes in certain stories featuring queer couples - the Armoured Closted Gay. It is employed often enough, mostly to show the pervasiveness and immense pressure heteronormativity can have on some queer people - that sometimes, they hate themselves for not adhering to the norm and therefore project that self-hatred onto people like them. PB had done a similar kind of story in TF and ILITW - with Zig and an aggressive teammate Manny (but with discussions on sexual harassment and about being closeted) and with Lily Oritz and her crush Britney. Unlike Zig's and Lily's cases though, this sort of narrative hardly centers on Hana.

Hana is hardly treated as a person in her own right in this narrative. She is treated as a "consolation prize" for Madeleine's "good behaviour" and "hard work". Which is still a really, really hard story to sell when one of the characters states outright that they'd abuse their power over the other till she breaks.

So how does PB get back from that kind of cruelty, and convert it into an actual romance?

Madeleine in TRR3 - The Royal Retcon

(In order: MC complimenting Madeleine to Godfrey (Ch 3), response to Madeleine's "send my regards to Hana (Ch 9), Madeleine asking for a dance (Ch 16), Optional response about memories of Madeleine's bachelorette in Hana's Vegas diamond scene (Ch 16))

By gaslighting an entire fandom, of course.

TRR3 requires us at the very start to do two things - to recruit Madeleine into replacing Justin as our press secretary, and to convince her family to join the Unity Tour so that Cordonia knows its nobility stands with the Crown. Until this point, we've only had hints of Madeleine's so-called "patriotism", mostly from Adeleide. TRR3 Ch 3 goes full force on this reading: having Madeleine claim (in the most positive option) that all her efforts to become queen was "for my people...it was always for Cordonia", having Hana claim that Madeleine "would mostly likely take a bullet for Liam... because you'd never leave Cordonia without a King". Coupled with Godfrey and Adeleide's toxic family dynamics, the story is set to push forward a narrative where we are meant to sympathize with her and preferably downplay her behaviour from the previous book.

Throughout Madeleine's tenure as press sec, we are expected to laud her "work" - even though the truth is that she makes our work harder by giving us heavy folders and 100 note cards of materials just minutes before our meetings, and leaving out important information (like Zeke) for us to scramble about and find. Where during her time as future queen, her ladies-in-waiting were expected to have every detail perfect as per her desires otherwise face her wrath - as our employee, we are expected to appreciate efforts alone, and be lenient when she doesn't follow our rules (eg. wearing gold for our bachelorette when she was supposed to wear muted colours, trying to sneak in a white dress to our wedding). Most of our responses to her "work" involve fulsome praise, or at most a very light criticism that still claims she's good at her job (she isn't). And it isn't just the MC - even Justin (who recommended her) and Hana are made to sing her praises.

Having canon claim Madeleine does a good job when she actually doesn't is... frustrating, but not as awful as the retconning they do for her past behaviour. But it is part of a pattern that whitewashes Madeleine altogether so the readers can consider her deserving of the rewards that the narrative so badly wants to give her, whether her actual conduct matches up to these fulsome praises or not.

One clear tactic that is used to achieve this, was to have the person she harmed the most, speak of her in glowing terms. In TRR3 Ch 3, you have at least two instances during the "Cordonia's Most" game where Hana uses the game to compliment Madeleine. Here, she compliments Madeleine on knowing how to "charm a crowd...her confidence and poise", and claims her to be very patriotic. If the MC refuses to coddle Madeleine during their private conversation, the onus to be kind to her rests solely on Hana's shoulders, where she is required to say, "maybe it's time to see if you can catch more flies with honey". Hana is also shown wanting to include Madeleine in group activities (TRR3 Ch 6, before going to the spa), in the same way she tried to include Olivia in TRR2. When we're shown a Hana who is not only willing but enthusiastic to speak to Madeleine, it further encourages the reader to befriend her - almost as if to say, "if Hana doesn't mind being friendly with her, why should you?".

And this wouldn't be possible at all if canon was honest about Madeleine's conduct in TRR2. So much about Madeleine's advice to us in TRR3 directly contradicts her own behaviour as future queen in TRR2 ("having an entourage isn't about vanity...it's about support"). Had canon actually been honest about her conduct, this statement would be viewed as extremely ironic, a huge portion of the blame for Penelope's reluctance to return to court would be (rightly) placed on Madeleine's shoulders and we would be able to call her out specifically on her tyrannical behaviour as future queen, as well as her inability to adjust her work to suit her client now. We would not be placing Madeleine on a pedestal ad nauseum, or paying much attention to her childish complaints that her "efforts" are going unappreciated.

Whenever the early part of the engagement tour is referenced, it is spoken of in the vaguest, most milquetoast terms. The narrative will speak vaguely of "meanness", but never actually specify what Madeleine did. The closest we get to any sort of confirmation of this is in the Costume Gala (Ch 9) if the MC warns Madeleine to stay away from Hana...and even there, the MC just says she did "mean things". Which is the mildest possible way I have seen of someone describing a person who gloated about breaking Hana. Like the word "hazing" from the previous book, all these vague references leave it to the readers' faint memories, or imagination, to figure out what Madeleine did.

But all of these are just hints at best, and most of what we could assume of the writers' intentions came largely from guesswork. There was constantly a sense of something not being right, but many of us at the time couldn't completely articulate it. That is, until Ch 16, and only if we pressed a specific option in the Vegas diamond scene, in just Hana's playthrough:

Unlike the previous scenes - which were mostly attempts to obfuscate the events of the previous book - this scene replaces what actually happened with blatant lies. Not only does it wipe out entirely what Madeleine did, replacing it with a casual comment from Hana about her "fun side", it also smears Kiara for something she didn't do at all during the bachelorette (for clarity, Kiara found out she was a great dancer, and looked quite annoyed if the MC chose a wrong dialogue option as an excuse to see her card. The MC never saw her lashing out at Penelope during this event). Even if the MC and Hana were so drunk that night that they wouldn't remember events clearly (which isn't how they're depicted at all when the "chocolate incident" took place), it wouldn't be replaced with things that never actually happened. The writers were more than ready to throw Kiara under the bus to make Madeleine look better, and have those lies come out of Hana's mouth (and mind you, Hana liked Kiara so much she chose her to be her MoH in Ch 18 of her playthrough, so it can't even have been spite towards Kiara on her part).

In contrast, Penelope is allowed to be open about Madeleine's mistreatment of her. In fact she cites it as the main reason for her reluctance to return to court, and even complains at the MC if the latter asks her if she didn't get the memo on the bachelorette dress code in TRR3 Ch 16 ("oh no, no, it's like Madeleine all over again!"). The group is required to protect her from Madeleine; in Ch 4, when Penelope is upset at the very sight of Madeleine, Drake comes to her rescue and reassures her ("She's with us, Penelope. We won't let her bite."). While Madeleine herself is protected from any consequences for what she did to Penelope (besides an optional tiny jibe in Ch 4), the MC and her group are required to reassure her that they will never allow it to happen again. In a very disgusting contrast, the narrative pushes Hana at the forefront of the diamond scene with Madeleine, without ever considering her comfort or safety around the person who wanted to break her. Not only does the group involve her without ever asking her if she wants to be part of it - Drake and Maxwell safely distance themselves when the time comes for Madeleine to speak personally about her troubles, and the MC can choose not to be sympathetic in certain dialogue options. Which means that the onus to comfort and persuade her is largely on Hana's shoulders. We must also remember that, unlike Penelope, Hana is deprived of the full truth of Madeleine's intentions in the last book too.

Where the writers were ready to at least admit that Madeleine's behaviour affected Penelope deeply, they went to the extent of completely rewriting the narrative of her TRR2 bachelorette to erase what she put Hana through.

The "Romance" in TRR3

(First four screenshots from my playthroughs, next four from the Adventure...Romance...Thrills YouTube Channel, and the final row's screenshots from the Annabelle Lee YouTube channel and the Skylia YouTube channel)

The Hana and Madeleine "romance" is hinted at in 5 scenes (4 in other playthroughs, and just one in Hana's own). As with most of the other romances, Madeleine's feelings are the most prominent. To the more romance-coded overtures, Hana's reaction is usually shock and disbelief, with a small suspicion over whether Madeleine is doing this to trick her into humiliation later. But the narrative gives her very little opportunity to even talk about anything related to Madeleine, especially anything negative. You do have a scene at the finale that is meant to provide closure, but not in a romantic way. This scene is very different from the others, and in some ways puts an end to the possibility of this relationship happening anytime soon.

How did we get from those scenes to this final one in Ch 22? It would be useful to look at the scenes, within the timeline of TRR3's release and with the context of fandom reactions.

1. The "Cordonia's Most" Scene (Ch 3)

This diamond scene is written to give the MC/reader a bit of background on Madeleine's past and family, which will prove useful later when she has to convince the Amaranths to fix their relationship with each other. It is set against the background of a drinking game where an asker can quiz everyone else about who would be the most likely to do a particular action. Hana references Madeleine twice in the game (in a very complimentary manner), and Madeleine references Hana once. It was her comment about Hana being "stupidly sweet and perfect" that caught the attention of some readers and made them wonder if that was the route PB was planning to take with Hana. This dialogue shows up in Hana's route as well.

In later chapters, we see instances of Hana trying to include Madeleine in group activities...such as in Ch 6 where she invites the latter to come with them to the spa after the football match with Jiro and Camellia.

2 and 3. Cross-Referencing Each Other at Costume Gala (Ch 9)

This is a very interesting development, at an equally interesting time. Around the time Ch 9 released (end-April 2018), PB announced that TRR's team would be taking a hiatus, mostly to work on "some exciting stuff" during that break. It also gave them the time to work on certain things the fandom was demanding, and do away with others due to stan vitriol (Kiara's attraction towards Drake being one of them). The next chapter would only appear a month and a half later (mid-June).

Ch 9 sneaked in a scene that hinted at Hana and Madeleine as a romance option, but in a way that made it very hard for players to notice on a casual read. The scene is split in two parts: the MC can choose to speak to either Hana and Olivia, or Maxwell, Justin and Madeleine. Hana and Olivia's scene shows the two commenting on Gala outfits, which kickstarts a conversation about diplomacy vs bluntness. The latter option explores a variety of topics, mostly revolving around an appreciation for Madeleine's "great work".

Both Hana and Madeleine reference each other in their scenes. Hana's dialogue depends on whether the MC is her fiancèe or not; in other playthroughs, she admires Madeleine's costume, the compliment on her good looks very personal. In her own playthrough, she compliments Kiara's outfit but in a more distant fashion ("subtle and clever, just like her...very well-chosen"). In Madeleine's scene (which is the same across playthroughs), the ending involves her telling the MC to "send my regards to Hana", in response to which she can choose a line of questioning (which ranges from "protective towards Hana" to largely indifferent. In all three options, thankfully, the MC can close with "don't let me catch you antagonizing her", but that really is one small mercy in a pile of blatant retconning.

What marks Hana's dialogue about Madeleine as an LI-specific option, is that she says something entirely different if the MC is getting married to her. This is an indication that the dialogue was intended to be read as romantic, and that it couldn't be said by an LI who was already in love and ready to marry the MC. Pretty much in the same way that Olivia in Liam's playthrough cannot hold his hand in Applewood or dance with him in Vegas.

I wrote an essay on this at the time - both on the possibility of the pairing and why it was a bad idea - and the overall response I received at the time was mixed. Those who remembered exactly what went down at Madeleine's bachelorette and weren't her fans hated the prospect, but some weren't as convinced and some refused to believe it would happen. So there was some pushback for it, citing Madeleine's "chocolate incident" (thankfully, since there were players who had forgotten about it), but it was very low-key and didn't gain much traction.

4. An Offer to Dance in Vegas (Ch 16)

The most obvious indication of Hana and Madeleine being a romantic possibility was in the Vegas chapter. It was impossible to miss for people who didn't romance Hana. This scene, again, featured only in playthroughs where Hana wasn't getting married - which meant that many Hana-romancers didn't get to know of this pairing unless they were told by a friend or saw any such posts on their dash (some even found out years later, to their shock and dismay).

The mild pushback from Ch 9 resulted in a scene where the writers could be emboldened to continue writing this pairing, but confirm (in the vaguest possible way) that Madeleine treated Hana badly. Madeleine's non-apology "apology" really reads more like an attempt to get into Hana's pants than actual regret, and is followed by a reaction from Hana that is confusing in its mildness. Hana is surprised at the offer to dance, asking Madeleine whether she's trying to trick her. While the mild suspicion is a slight improvement from Hana's fulsome praise and enthusiastic attempts to involve Madeleine in group stuff in previous chapters, it still downplays what Hana suffered at Madeleine's hands by making her present the weakest, most milquetoast examples of "fooling someone", examples that pale miserably in comparison to what Madeleine actually put Hana through.

With both the "stupidly sweet and perfect" dialogue and this scene, you'll notice that Madeleine is not only the one who initiates the conversation, but is also the only one with an actual voice in these exchanges. Forget having an opinion on whether she wants to have anything to do with Madeleine or not - the narrative doesn't even give poor Hana the opportunity to properly react beyond mere shock.

There was a stronger reaction to this scene than to the Ch 9 one, because it was way more visible (though you could avoid it just by letting Madeleine stay in her hotel) with Madeleine's romantic intentions on full display. Her asking Hana for a dance immediately after the no apology made it pretty obvious. Players who didn't see the Ch 9 scenes or who didn't believe the divergences meant anything, now couldn't deny that this was positioned as an alternative romance. Additionally by this time, those who forgot about the "chocolate incident" did get reminded of the exact scene, so the vagueness with which Madeleine "addressed" her actions in TRR2 felt criminally inadequate for a number of readers.

Most of us, however, didn't know about the retcon in Hana's Vegas scene, until years later. Those who didn't do Hana's playthrough would have had no idea, and those who did more likely chose the more romantic options.

5. "Jealous?" (Ch 20)

This scene is unique in that the option shows up across all playthroughs, but the specific reaction only shows up in two of them. It's understandable that Hana stans would have missed this - the dialogue is an option, the response is very fleeting and you would have to look through the same option in other playthroughs to recognise the variations.

In the cases of both Drake and Maxwell, Madeleine's response to this jibe from the MC is "ugh, please". Dismissive, almost mocking the idea that she would have any interest in them. In Liam's and Hana's cases, she appears shocked for a minute, then composes herself and gives a more neutral response ("I...I refuse to dignify such a ridiculous question with a response"). In Liam's case, one can safely assume that even though she had no romantic interest in him, she was still on the verge of marrying Liam and that alone would make the situation awkward. In Hana's case there is really no other reason for her to feel that awkward besides having lingering feelings that she cannot suppress.

While this version of the scene doesn't feature in playthroughs where she is single at all, it's still a very strong indicator of authorial intent. Even in the face of backlash against the pairing, the writers clearly wanted to continue hinting at the possibility, if they were slipping in hints of Madeleine's feelings for Hana as late as Ch 20 (just two chapters before the finale). The most plausible theory for this inclusion would be that the backlash was a lot more than it was after Ch 9, but not entirely enough to do away without the pairing completely...yet.

6. "I Wanted To Break You" (Ch 22)

No one knows what happened between Chs 20 and 22, and there's little I can think of that would account for such a quick change in such a short span of time. The finale has a scene featuring Hana and Madeleine, that begins by drawing more obvious parallels between the two women and their families (until now, the parallels were not as pronounced. It's not exactly a great parallel to begin with, since Madeleine has at least one supportive parent and doesn't get punished to the extent that Hana has been, if she openly protests against her parents' methods. But in TRR3 the narrative sometimes does use Hana's toxic parental situation as a parallel to garner sympathy for Madeleine's).

However, once the parents are out of the picture, the attention then turns to Hana and Madeleine, setting the stage for either a romantic confession or a full apology. This time, canon opts to go for the latter.

Unlike all the others, this scene is bluntly specific not just about what Madeleine did but what exactly her intentions were. It has her use the word "break"; it has her actually say the word "sorry". It allowed Hana, for the first time, to fully hear the truth about the harm Madeleine planned to wreck on her. And most importantly, it also allowed Hana her own voice in response to Madeleine's revelations, making it very clear to her that her forgiveness needed to be earned, over a period of time.

The dialogues used to talk about Madeleine's bachelorette in the finale are poles apart from the language they'd used earlier ("hazing", "put my ladies through their paces", "mean things", "refuse to coddle", "wronged"). The finale scene was a more accurate return to the original language and purpose of that bachelorette scene. In fact it sounds less like what canon had been attempting to gaslight their readers into believing thus far, and even seemed to borrow verbatim from the language of the readers who closely followed this issue.

One could call it a good closure scene on the surface level...but there are many, many problems with it.

One was the reaction of the MC. Her angry "excuse me?" in response to Madeleine's confession is still a very obvious retcon. It may have been done to preserve the myth that the MC is a good friend/wife to Hana, but reads as extremely dishonest when you remember that canonically, the MC knew the truth about Madeleine's intentions the whole time and just chose to leave Hana in the dark. It's an attempt to make the MC seem protective that ultimately rings false.

Another is the excuse Madeleine gives for why she targeted Hana. "I wanted to push Hana too far, and for her to drop the nice-girl act once and for all! Only, it isn't an act, is it?" My response when I first read this was "if Hana was faking it...so what. So fucking what. Who was she harming". Coming from the reigning queen of duplicity herself, Madeleine is really not in a position to be judging anyone for putting up a front. This also ties into the hollowness of the motives PB tried to belatedly cook up for TRR2 Madeleine's bullying - no matter what canon says to whitewash her actions, her attempts achieved nothing, did no good for Cordonia, and would likely have led to a very fractured court if the Unity Tour was held while she was queen.

Ultimately, the possibility of this pairing becoming canon was laid to rest in the final chapter. One could interpret Madeleine's promise of a starting gesture ("know that if anyone at court gives you trouble, I can make them regret it") as a possible opening to something more, but considering the earlier backlash, that was unlikely.

TRH - Madeleine Gets The Penelope Treatment, Hana Gets Her Entire Childhood History Retconned.

An interesting development that came up when TRH dropped was the departure of Jeffrey Herdman from the team, most likely because he was heavily involved in the writing of its Renaissance-era spin-off The Royal Masquerade. He would return, by TRF (he is part of their finale livestream), but by then his pet favourite character was likely gone.

TRH has a different set of circumstances, and different power dynamics. The MC is settled into marriage and trying for a child, the LIs are working in the council, Olivia is upgraded to cosplaying spymaster and the side characters go on with their lives. The first book of TRH seemed to do a surface-level recognition of some of the complaints certain readers had in previous books, but their favourites and the people who wouldn't get much attention or appreciation, remained the same.

TRH1 was a time when the writers praised Hana and claimed in a livestream that she was the kind of LI they would love to marry, but also where they gave her a condition that (inaccurately) made her unable to safely carry children (just for the MC to be the mother of the heir) and forced her to be immediately okay with that fate. As the sequel series progressed over the course of 4 books, the erasure of all that Hana was in the past was subtle and insidious - the narrative often compared her to Olivia and found her lesser, she was never allowed to even mention her home place China and worst of all - the writing completely retconned the emotional abuse she suffered at home by claiming it emerged from loving protection, from wanting to keep their daughter away from a cult. And even though Hana's discovery of her sexuality was described by Kara as a "journey that she's still on", no attempts were ever made to show her exploring what she likes romantically, or to show her dating. We don't know if she's involved with anyone, we don't know where she lives, we learn very little of her interests beyond what benefits the MC at any given moment, and the narrative never fails to remind us that they like Olivia more than they like her. Hell, they still encourage Olivia to keep insulting and degrading Hana! Hardly the behaviour of writers who love a character so much they would marry them irl, honestly.

On the other hand, Madeleine wasn't very prominent in TRH1, but gained notoriety in the next two books. The first book has her occasionally engage in inappropriate, invasive badgering of the MC to get pregnant quickly, and she continues to pretend that her doing whatever she likes without ever consulting the person in charge is professional behaviour (eg. Setting up the presscon about the MC's pregnancy announcement. She never even considers whether the MC would be comfortable announcing this pregnancy or not at this time). She gets to deliver a small bit of foreshadowing in the second half of the book (an early hint about Queen Eleanor's pregnancy, though Madeleine's awareness of it hardly makes sense when you look at the entire TRH series, and it never comes up as a point again). Her father being exposed as the traitor who poisoned the former queen builds up to a storyline that benefits her the most in the long run.

Hana is given one chapter where she can call Madeleine out on her entitlement (Savannah's bachelorette). She doesn't insult or berate Madeleine in TRH1 Ch 7, but is refreshingly no-nonsense and will not put up with Madeleine's constant whining about an event she had invited herself to. It's a small, cold comfort, since Hana's actions here are tied to making Savannah's bachelorette a success rather than for herself - but it's still gratifying to see Hana in a position where she can call people out without having to worry about the repercussions. Especially when the narrative disrespects Hana in so, so many other ways for the rest of the series.

In the same chapter, the ladies of the court are given an opportunity to talk about their love lives. Of the four, two women can speak about the people they like (Penelope about Ezekiel by default, and Olivia about Liam if you choose), and one only mentions him by name if the MC is married to someone else (Kiara, about Drake, if you choose to ask her over Madeleine). Madeleine doesn't mention anyone at all, insisting that marriage is something she will only consider for the benefit of her country or estate. This was a relief to players who feared that PB might attempt to push the possibility of romance between Madeleine and Hana again.

Though Madeleine doesn't get the romance that PB so desperately wanted to gift her in the last series, and she isn't given any further romances...the narrative clearly wasn't done pandering to her, even though Jeffrey was not officially a part of the team.

Remember how in the previous essay, we explored the levels to which PB encouraged players to coddle Penelope? Entire chapters would be spent just making her feel comfortable and safe, in encouraging her to help us. No actual initiative or enthusiasm from her end, even if her actions caused the problem or there were lives and reputations at stake. No, Penelope's comfort and happiness should be front and center.

Now think of that treatment, but on steroids and lasting for two whole books. That's what Madeleine's story - starting from TRH2 - looks like.

TRH1 ends with the reveal that Madeleine's father, Godfrey, was involved in the assassination of Liam's mother Eleanor. So a certain amount of narrative focus on Madeleine was expected, perhaps. But the second book doesn't stop at just that.

We are not merely asked to be kind to Madeleine. No, kindness towards Madeleine is expected of us. The warning issued in TRH2 Ch 4 promises "consequences", which means we know straight off the bat that we will be punished if we're not nice enough. It insists we take note of her "fragile state", and give her the mercy and compassion she had never given to anyone in her court.

To give Madeleine the smallest of credits, she acknowledges this just two chapters prior to the oath ("in the past, our positions were once reversed and I was...unkind to you. I had no reason to expect any kindness from you..."). However, this admission does sound disingenuous in the face of the narrative's implicit demand that we treat her nicely. Because if she did recognise her own past behaviour in TRR2 esp as hurtful, and herself as not exactly deserving of kindness, then it makes no sense for her to judge people for behaving exactly as she expected. A genuine redemption arc would have been one where she understood no one owed her kindness after what she'd done, and still determinedly forged ahead to do good for her country. After all, the narrative wanted us so badly to believe this woman was patriotic, right? If her "patriotic spirit" was so tied to her ego that you needed to pamper and praise her every five minutes, just for her to not support such an obviously-foolish tyrant as Bartie Sr, then it can't have been as strong as canon so vehemently claimed.

TRH tracks our "treatment" of Madeleine over 2 books and 10 distinct scenes. Of these, 6 scenes allow us to choose between kind responses and unkind ones, 2 others require the player to choose one among multiple options of people, and 2 scenes are check-in dialogues rather than actual choices (which means that the player doesn't choose an option, they just find out through such scenes whether they are winning Madeleine's favour or not). I imagine that the first category is the most important, with the second being options that you don't necessarily need to choose Madeleine for if you want to go for one of the others, as long as you pressed enough "kind" options.

To elaborate, here's the breakdown:

Kind/Unkind Responses

- House Amaranth's pledge (TRH2 Ch 4). Notably, the "most hurtful" one doesn't even accuse her of anything - it just tells her that the family needs to earn back the Crown's trust. Compare that to Madeleine's accusations to Hana that she was trying to kill her and deserved to lose her position in court. You know, the cruel treatment that some Madeleine stans claimed "wasn't that bad".

- Carrying the Heir's train at Anointing Ball or not (Ch 5)

- Deciphering Madeleine's conversation with Godfrey on his boat (ie whether she is betraying or helping the MC) (Ch 6)

- Acknowledging Madeleine's help in capturing Godfrey, at the Gratitude Ball (Ch 7)

- Gently encouraging Madeleine into being Penelope's bridal attendant, rather than mocking her (TRH3 Ch 2). There is no longer any need to acknowledge Penelope's earlier fear of Madeleine - we are expected to forget entirely that she was the main reason why Penelope didn't want to return to court in TRR3.

- Trusting Madeleine to help with investigations at Fydelia (Ch 6)

Choosing Among Multiple People:

- Speaking about loyalty before making a pledge to the Heir. Other ladies of the house are also presented as choices (TRH 2 Ch 14)

- Babysitting the Heir during Fox Hunt. Other choices are Regina and Savannah (TRH3 Ch 10)

Relationship Check-in:

- The way Madeleine greets you at Fydelia (Warm Welcome/Cold Front) (TRH3 Ch 6)

- Whether Madeleine helps you escape with the Heir in Ch 13, or allows the child to get kidnapped by Godfrey in Ch 15 (Desparate Times/What Goes Around)

The ending of TRH3 has Madeleine either thriving and inheriting her mother's estate, or being merely fired from her job in Royal Communications (a better punishment would have been to strip the entire Amaranth family of their lands, but I digress). She is notably absent in TRF, possibly because she wasn't entirely very popular to start with and two whole books of coddling her didn't exactly help matters either. As one of the junior writers in the TRF team said, "some people exiled her so..."

The first few opportunities to win her over, notably emerge from attempts Madeleine makes to assure the Crown/MC of House Amaranth's loyalty, and you will find that even at an early stage she expects to be included in sensitive discussions that call for discretion, and to be constantly praised for her efforts. Let me give a reminder, again, that she hardly ever gave any praise to the women working for her, and in fact punished them just to keep them constantly in fear of her.

I know it sounds like I'm labouring too much on this point, but it's important to understand just how much effort the narrative had put into coddling this one woman. Chapters and chapters of branch coding, writing two routes, title cards, dialogues, rewards and consequences.

This is similar to the way the narrative encouraged kindness and sympathy towards Penelope, but it's now over a lengthier period of time and with more drastic consequences. We were required to coddle Penelope over a chapter each in three specific books, or be deprived of her support/help. We are required to constantly shower Madeleine with praise and sweet words over the course of 31 chapters, or she will help an unscrupulous Regent-Elect kidnap our child. She will even openly accept that the only reason she put a mere child through that, was because we weren't nice to her ("Wouldn't you have done the same to me? You've made it abundantly clear you see me as the enemy").

But if the MC deserved a punishment this cruel for just mocking Madeleine at every turn, then what punishments should Madeleine get for what she put her own ladies-in-waiting through? What should she get for planning to "break" one of her courtiers? A second broken engagement doesn't seem entirely enough by such parameters.

Then again - as I said before, the narrative deliberately shifted the goal posts for what a potential royal could and couldn't get away with, in the time between Madeleine's engagement tour and the MC's marriage, for this very reason. So that Madeleine would never have to face the kind of constant censure the MC and Liam would face regularly. Among characters in canon, or among largely biased stans in the fandom. Speaking of which...

Fandom

Madeleine's popularity has always been a mixed bag, ever since TRR2. By TRR2, there were people who loved her for what they thought were her craftiness and wiles, some who suspected her to be involved in the plot against the MC, and a number of Liam stans had reactions that ranged from stanning, to indifferent (after all, both Liam and Madeleine showed a mutual disinterest towards each other), to slightly jealous (after all, she was still his fiancée).

But it was Madeleine's treatment of Hana in Ch 7 that definitely crossed a line for quite a few. It was so unwarranted, and her justification for this act so inarguably cruel, that it turned several people off her immediately. The way canon dealt with this was to make her feature less in the story until the memory of the "chocolate incident" was faded and almost forgotten, and then encourage fans to sympathize with her.

The gamble definitely worked, with plenty of help from hardcore Madeleine stans who often downplayed what happened to Hana ("a prank", "making Hana cry just once" were some of the terms used to describe it). By TRR3, I recall having to remind some of my mutuals what actually happened in this scene - their own recollections of it were that vague. The Hana and Madeleine ship would have died a far quicker death if more people remembered this incident as it was shown, and not as narrative wanted us to remember it (and also, if more people cared that it was Hana being hurt, rather than their fave white girl/boy).

Madeleine gained some popularity among the wlw crowd - a couple of them did have a soft spot for stoic, aggressive or women often labelled as "bitchy" (I know a few who also showed a similar amount of love for ACOR's Xanthe or BB's Priya, to be fair...but the adulation for the white female antagonists was a lot more), and Madeleine clearly fit that bill.

A point that often came up from Madeleine stans who were wlw (and reiterated with other mean-girl characters) was that grey-shaded and villanous male characters weren't subject to as much censure as their favourites were. While there is truth to such an argument, it fails to take into account the role race often plays in the way some "mean" women are loved and certain others are scorned. Madeleine clearly did not have the scale of hate that a Xanthe or even a Kiara (who isn't even on the same level) got. In fact when it suited them, many in the fandom were more than ready to view Madeleine as a victim when Liam broke his engagement with her.

Madeleine's "patriotism" - as I've now clearly established - was a retcon made to erase the worst aspects of her characterization. Sometimes it was used to make people feel sorry for her losses, other times it was made to cover up her actual behaviour in TRR2. But there were very few readers who didn't consider it an undeniable fact. Even among those who were indifferent towards her. For instance, in an anon ask that compared Madeleine and QB's Poppy, a poster responded that "the difference between the two was that Madeleine had a sense of duty, and Poppy was just petty". In TRH3, players who claimed that "we can all agree Madeleine is fully redeemed" when she worked with the MC to protect the child from Bartie Sr, stayed mysteriously silent when the other consequence (her helping in the child's kidnapping because she didn't like the MC's pettiness) showed up.

And while these responses could be attributed to the way canon gassed Madeleine up in TRR2 and 3, some of these players had no problem nitpicking the political savvy or work of certain other (CoC) characters, esp Liam (often bashing them for "throwing parties every day", even though the general populace was depicted as being happy with their rule and influence. Mind you, no prompting from PB was necessary to bash these characters). So why were these parameters never applied to Madeleine? Why was practically no one asking what the political relevance of her bullying (as future Queen) was, or why we were expected to sing her praises for poor time management or terrible work ethics towards her boss, or ask what work she actually did in canon as Royal Comms Director? (There is a reference or two to the position, but you aren't shown that many instances of her doing much work). For quite a few, the fact that she walked around with a job title in TRH was more than enough (somehow Kiara never got this kind of fandom treatment despite being part of the Diplomatic Liaisons department).

How does this adulation for such a heavily retconned character, affect the way the Hana and Madeleine ship was viewed? For one, it meant that readers bought into the retcons easily enough that Hana's pairing with her was seen as an extension of her "redemption arc" by some.

Take the example of the various posts that argue in favour of this pairing, or fic that features them as a couple - a lot of them center Madeleine: her pain, her history, her reasons, the correctness of giving her a reward. Hana is barely mentioned or given much attention in these arguments - and often when she has any sort of voice, it is only there to humanize Madeleine. Supporters of this pair often took stances that were either ready to throw Hana under the bus, act like she hardly mattered, or treat her like some sort of blank slate to scribble their adulation for Madeleine over.

Hana is often viewed as less worthy of a focus - she is often the benevolent saint who forgives Madeleine because she "worked so hard to be better". Often it never matters to get into detail why Hana thought Madeleine earned her forgiveness, what Hana's perspective was, what journey she went through to get such a point. Because if Hana's journey really mattered in such a ship, the most pressing questions would revolve around why Hana should ever trust a person who wanted to break her in the first place. Why she should feel safe around such a person. Why her own friend group wouldn't want to protect her from such a person.

Some readers would bring up their parallels as daughters brought up in families that didn't value them, but neglect to take into account the nuances of those dynamics (Madeleine's mother at least wanted to be supportive, and no matter how bad things got, Madeleine was never in danger of being disowned. Hana was, repeatedly). Nor is it fully honest about how Madeleine was comfortable being a perpetrator of abuse, in contrast to Hana's own deep discomfort with the idea of controlling her partner.

In certain cases, I can maybe see this attitude in fandom emerging from an acceptance of the narrative's retcons as truth. But I also think there were as many readers who were just inclined to liking the mean white girl, and finding justifications and excuses for her behaviour.

Fandom's attitudes towards Hana herself often played a small role in how Hana's end of this story was ignored too. When TRR3 fucked up her arc phenomenally (by rushing her parents' turnaround from disowning her to supporting her in Ch 15), it became popular to view Hana as a lesser character, and the "meaner" white women as better. People who wanted other options for female LI often took their frustrations out on her, calling her "weak", servile and submissive, dismissing her honest accounts of the treatment she faced even from her own parents as "whining". If that was the way people preferred to view her emotionally abusive childhood...then what can one expect from such a fandom when she was being outright bullied?

Fandom was already comfortable with the idea of erasing Hana in their content, or replacing her with either their fave white girl (or an equally white OC esp in their fanfic - but more on that in a future Hana essay). So neglecting to center her in what would have been her only canonical alternative romance wouldn't be too difficult for some people.

Which merits the question...is there a way to write about (or write fic for) such a pairing, in a way that centers Hana, respects her story, makes it clear that she has the right to never forgive Madeleine no matter what she does to "earn" it - if that was what she wanted? I highly doubt it. You'd have to completely change Madeleine for that to happen, and that would more likely result in a situation where you were too busy working on her as a character, to give Hana the attention and focus she deserved.

And that's a real pity, because there's plenty to explore about Hana if you actually take the effort to look.

Conclusion

In a lot of ways, once the team had decided upon making Madeleine into a more positive character, they tried to draw a little from Olivia's arc to replicate its success. You can see some of these parallels in the way TRR2 structured the bachelorette as a semi-callback to the childhood- reveal-mocking-Savannah sequences in TRR1 Ch 7. Both chapters gave you reasons to start seeing these women in a different light, while still feeling free to dislike them. In both chapters they also targeted LIs - the only difference was that Drake's diamond scene post that confrontation centered him, and Hana's parallel diamond scene a book later...centered everyone else.

That attempt in TRR2 didn't work for several reasons - the timing wasn't right, Madeleine's cruelty had gone too far for some, the retconning hoodwinked quite a few people but not enough.

So when they tried to pair her up with the victim of her bullying, and twisted canon to make it happen - enough readers emerged to call it out, enough people pushed back by Ch 16, and the possibility of this alternative pairing garnered enough dislike that not only did the writers have to backtrack, but they also had to wipe away their past retcons and write in a scene where Madeleine gave Hana the full, unvarnished truth about the "chocolate incident". Hana was, thankfully, given a chance to give Madeleine her most polite "no".

And although that ship would never be brought up again, the team (even without Madeleine's top writer Jeffrey) still attempted to make pampering and uncritically praising her a narrative priority. She gained a bit more popularity during this time period - quite a few were inclined to feel sorry for her (especially considering the way her father's crimes affected her social standing) and saw only what happened if you were consistently nice to her.

But there was also a significant section of people who were tired of the constant coddling, and who didn't like that it was demanded of the player (when there were far more deserving WOC in the same book, who didn't get this level of kindness). It was significant enough that Madeleine wasn't given any scenes in the final book, and the writers cited her lack of popularity as a reason why.

As a Hana fan myself, it was a relief to see Hana not be paired up with her bully. But it was also immensely disheartening for me to see that "ship" get as far as it did, and to see the narrative do so much more work for Madeleine, than they did for Hana even in the follow up series. It was even more disheartening to see so many in fandom follow suit.

--

By now, we have explored 3 out of the 4 alternative pairings that TRR put forward for the LIs. They all vary in terms of buildup, attention, and payoff. But there are several things that are common about them. They all have either significant histories with the LI, or the narrative thinks they share something in common. The moment an "alternative" option ends up harming the MC, they are no longer suitable as an option because of the LI's loyalty towards her.

But perhaps the most common factor among the three women we have explored so far is how the LI is expected to treat the alternate, no matter how jealous the MC is allowed to get, no matter what the alternate themselves may have done in the past. The alternate is supposed to be treated well. With respect, with kindness, with compassion.

Betrayal doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Bad behaviour doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Disregarding consent doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Classism doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Not loving them back doesn't allow it either. Not even extreme levels of bullying...allows an LI to disrespect them.

In the next essay, we will see if any of these rules apply to our last alternative LI - Kiara.

Next: Drake and Kiara.

[psychics4unet]

20 Simpsons Psychic Predictions That Came True 🚀

Hey there, fellow Simpsons fans! 🎉 If you’ve been following The Simpsons, you know that this iconic show isn’t just about laughs and donuts (though we love those too). It’s also about some eerily accurate predictions that have left us all scratching our heads. 🤔 How did this cartoon get so many things right about the future? Grab a seat, grab a donut 🍩, and let’s dive into some of the wildest psychic predictions from The Simpsons that actually came true! 🚀

🌟🔮✨ Curious about what the future holds for you? Just like The Simpsons predicted some mind-blowing events, you too can uncover what’s in store for your life. Click the link below for your own personal psychic reading and get insights that might just amaze you:

1. Donald Trump’s Presidency 🇺🇸

Season 11, Episode 17 (“Bart to the Future”)

In this episode from the year 2000, Lisa becomes the president and mentions that they inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump. Fast forward to 2016, and Donald Trump becomes the 45th president of the United States. What the what?! 😲

2. Smartwatches ⌚

Season 6, Episode 19 (“Lisa’s Wedding”)

During a future vision of Lisa’s wedding, her fiancé uses a watch to make a phone call. This was in 1995, way before smartwatches became a thing in the 2010s. Talk about being ahead of the curve! 📱

3. Disney Buys 20th Century Fox 🏰🦊

Season 10, Episode 5 (“When You Dish Upon a Star”)

In 1998, there’s a scene showing the 20th Century Fox sign with a subtitle “A Division of Walt Disney Co.” In 2019, Disney actually bought 21st Century Fox. Coincidence? I think not! 🎬

4. Video Chatting 💻

Season 6, Episode 19 (“Lisa’s Wedding”)

Again in Lisa’s Wedding, we see video calls being made. This was years before Skype, FaceTime, or Zoom became part of our daily lives. The Simpsons were definitely on to something here! 🖥️

5. The Shard in London 🏙️

Season 6, Episode 19 (“Lisa’s Wedding”)

In the same episode (wow, it’s like a crystal ball!), we see a skyline that includes a skyscraper eerily similar to The Shard, which wasn’t built until 2012. 👀

6. Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl Performance 🎤

Season 23, Episode 22 (“Lisa Goes Gaga”)

In 2012, The Simpsons showed Lady Gaga performing at a concert, suspended in the air. Fast forward to 2017, and Gaga did exactly that at the Super Bowl halftime show. Fly, Gaga, fly! 🎇

7. Nobel Prize Winner 🏅

Season 22, Episode 1 (“Elementary School Musical”)

Milhouse predicted that Bengt Holmström would win the Nobel Prize in Economics. And guess what? Holmström did win it in 2016. Way to go, Milhouse! 📊

8. Ebola Outbreak 🌍

Season 9, Episode 3 (“Lisa’s Sax”)

In this 1997 episode, Marge suggests that Bart read a book titled “Curious George and the Ebola Virus.” Years later, in 2014, there was a significant Ebola outbreak. Chills! 😬

9. Siegfried and Roy Tiger Attack 🐅

Season 5, Episode 10 (“$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)”)

The show depicted a white tiger attacking entertainers similar to Siegfried and Roy. Tragically, in 2003, Roy was indeed attacked by one of their white tigers during a performance. 😥

10. U.S. Wins Olympic Gold in Curling 🥌

Season 21, Episode 12 (“Boy Meets Curl”)

Homer and Marge compete in curling and win a gold medal. In real life, the U.S. men’s team won the gold medal in curling at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Sweep that, skeptics! 🥇

But wait, there’s more! Let’s keep this prediction train rolling with some honorable mentions that didn’t make the top 10 but are still pretty mind-blowing. 🚂💨

11. Horse Meat Scandal 🐴

Season 5, Episode 19 (“Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song”)

Lunchlady Doris used “assorted horse parts” in the cafeteria food. In 2013, a scandal erupted in Europe when horse meat was found in various beef products.

12. FIFA Corruption Scandal ⚽

Season 25, Episode 16 (“You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee”)

The episode features a storyline involving corruption in the World Football Federation. In 2015, several FIFA officials were arrested amid a corruption investigation.

13. Farmville 🚜

Season 9, Episode 12 (“Bart Carny”)

In this 1998 episode, kids are seen excitedly playing a yard work simulator game. Fast forward to the 2000s, and Farmville became a massive hit on Facebook.

14. Faulty Voting Machines 🗳️

Season 20, Episode 4 (“Treehouse of Horror XIX”)

Homer tries to vote for Obama in the 2008 election, but the machine keeps changing his vote to McCain. In 2012, there were real reports of voting machines changing votes.

15. Beats by Dre 🎧

Season 8, Episode 14 (“The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show”)

In a scene from 1997, we see a character wearing what looks like modern-day Beats by Dre headphones, years before they existed.

16. Mutant Tomatoes 🍅

Season 11, Episode 5 (“E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)”)

Homer grows mutant tomatoes after using nuclear power on his crops. In real life, scientists created genetically modified tomatoes that glow in the dark.

17. NSA Surveillance 🕵️

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

The movie depicted the NSA spying on citizens. In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was indeed conducting mass surveillance on American citizens.

18. Shard Building in London 🏙️

Season 6, Episode 19 (“Lisa’s Wedding”)

We see a tall building in the London skyline that resembles The Shard, which was completed in 2012.

19. Michelangelo’s David Censorship 🗿

Season 2, Episode 9 (“Itchy & Scratchy & Marge”)

The episode shows Springfieldians protesting against Michelangelo’s David being exhibited. In 2016, Russian campaigners did try to cover the statue.

20. Autocorrect Fail 📱

Season 6, Episode 8 (“Lisa on Ice”)

Dolph writes a memo that says “Beat up Martin” which gets autocorrected to “Eat up Martha.” Apple’s iPhone autocorrect has had many such hilarious fails.

It’s wild, right? How does a cartoon get so many things right? Well, it’s probably a mix of clever writing, sharp observation, and maybe a bit of that Springfield magic. ✨

And it's not just us hardcore fans who are intrigued. Thanks to the internet, more and more people are discovering the spooky accuracy of The Simpsons' predictions. Social media platforms are buzzing with theories and speculations. Reddit threads are filled with fans dissecting episodes, and YouTube is packed with videos analyzing every prediction. It's like a virtual treasure hunt where every frame might hold a secret clue to our future! 🔮

Some folks even believe that the writers have a time machine or some sort of psychic ability. While that’s probably a stretch, it’s fun to think about! One thing’s for sure – The Simpsons will keep surprising us with their uncanny knack for predicting the future.

Whether you’re a longtime fan or just curious about the show’s “psychic” tendencies, it’s clear that The Simpsons is more than just a TV show. It’s a pop culture phenomenon that continues to influence and amuse us, while also making us think twice about what might come next. So, next time you’re watching, pay close attention – you might just be getting a sneak peek into the future! 🕵️‍♂️✨

Stay curious, my friends! And remember, the truth is out there… or maybe just in the next episode of The Simpsons. 🌟🚀

[monodipita]

Acts of Love (Yandere!Josuke Higashikata x Reader)

Word count: 4,078

Warnings: YANDERE CONTENT. GORE WARNING.

"Please, no! Don't leave me, [Y/N], I'll make everything right! Just give me a chance!" Josuke's voice was scratched raw from the crying and pleading he did. His knees hurt. His heart hurt. "I'm sorry, Josuke," you spoke softly to him while you helped him off his knees, "but I can't keep going on."

You were moving away from Morioh. As good of a town as it was, there were bigger opportunities for you if you moved to Tokyo. It was heartbreaking. You didn't have the heart to tell him- all you said was that you were leaving him. A long-distance relationship couldn't work between you two. You didn't want him to break away from school to focus on being with you, either, so this was the only way you could actively get him to stay away from you once you broke up. It was horrible, yes, and it hurt you to do it, but you had no other choice.

As you pulled him in for one last hug, you felt his arms tighten around you to the point that he acted more like a snake rather than a human being. "Josuke!" You cried out his name while you squirmed within his grip, "let me go!"

"No... I don't want to!" Josuke yelled back. When he lifted his head from your chest, you could see the tears in his eyes that threatened to spill over again, the warm streaks of tears on his cheeks. The raw pleading that left his lips echoed the desperation in his purple orbs. It was tearing you apart... but you couldn't admit the truth to him. "If you leave me, I'll--"

He never got to finish his sentence.

Your hand collided with his cheek. "That's enough!" You yelled at him. For some reason, you were angrier more than you were upset. Maybe it was the fact that he was behaving so irrationally.

His grip loosened on you, and you took this opportunity to remove yourself from him. He collapsed onto his knees again - the cycle began anew - but you couldn't bear witness to what he was doing again. You hated to see someone you knew as the confident one to begin breaking down. For good reason, but you didn't want to think that you alone were enough to make everything shatter.

You felt your hand be pulled into his. His other hand collapsed on top of it as he weakly tried to pull you down into his arms, but to no avail. You tugged away from him just enough to make sure that you wouldn't fall into him. "Please... will you let me write to you at least? Please??"

"..." if you were only breaking up with him, then why did he want to write to you? Did he not understand that you didn't want to see him anymore? But you couldn't bring yourself to say no to him. "Yes... you can send me letters... Josuke. Please, I have to go now." You began to pull yourself away from him completely. You couldn't bring yourself to say that you wouldn't be receiving any of his letters past tomorrow... the way that he looked already described how he felt about being able to stay in contact with you. There was a smile on his face that stretched from ear to ear, which created an eerie sight when you saw the tears still streaming down his face.

"Thank you, [Y/N]... thank you."

Over the next couple of days, there was a surge of letters sent to your home while you packed to leave. Each letter was stacked neatly on your desk until your desk was packed up, then moved to your seat in the moving truck. You followed your parents into the truck and sat down in your seat, then pulled the slow-developing stacks of letters to your attention. You carefully opened up the first one and took the time to read what it said. Your eyes scanned over the beautiful handwriting carefully...

'Hi! This is the first time I've ever actually written a letter that was going to be sent to anyone. You know about when they make you write to Santa or the Prime Minister about dumb stuff. Well... I'm thinking about what I should put in these kinds of letters, but for now, I'm saying hi! And Okuyasu says hi too. Maybe I'll talk about stuff like my day and how everything went... maybe you'd be interested in reading that?'

The second letter.

'I haven't seen you around school lately, and I've been wanting to go to your house to see if everything's alright.' You furrowed your brows. This one didn't quite make sense. If this was on the second day after you gave him your address, then this meant you were only out of school for a day. 'But I respect your privacy... we aren't together anymore, after all. I'm still worried about you. Just let me know that you're alright when you read this letter, okay?'

The third letter.

'I waited for a really long time this time in hopes that I would see you. I waited until the night. It's 2 AM, I'm growing nervous. Are you sick? I want to check on you but I know I can't. If you get this letter, please write me back and let me know you're ok.'

A deep sigh left your lips as you read the words before gently folding the letter and putting it back in its envelope. You stared at your name printed in beautiful letters on the front while you tried to think about how much time had passed since this letter was given in to you. Guilt began to set in. You were so busy with packing that you never bothered to pick up a pen and write back to him. How did he feel about this?

You glanced back down to your lap. There were two more letters to go. One dated from yesterday, and one dated for today.

'I decided to stop by your house when no one was home. I looked through the window and saw that there were boxes everywhere.

You're moving.

Is it because of me? Is this why you're not writing back to me? Why are you leaving me? Is there someone else??'

You could sense the desperation in his words. His emotions must've gotten the better of him, as his writing appeared to be jumbled. Ink smudged at the end of the sentence and made the last question hard to read. He found out. You promptly lifted your head up to see if you would see Josuke anywhere, in the event that he was casually waiting around to greet you before you went to move. However, you didn't see anything. So ... you turned your attention to the last letter in the stack. Like in the last letter, your name and address were written as if he was in a hurry to get elsewhere. You reached into the envelope and swallowed thickly, hanging your head and gathering your bearings before reading this last letter. You were afraid of what was going to be written.

"Do you have everything, [Y/N]?"

You looked up from the envelopes on your lap and nodded your head. "Yeah, and if I don't, the moving company should be able to give me what I've forgotten." You affirmed them with a smile on your face. "I'm good to go."

Saying those words made you feel uneasy. Everything about reading these letters now happened to make you feel incredibly uneasy. But you needed to read the last letter... so you pulled it up to your eye line.

'I'll find you'

The words were so simple. So frightening. So sobering. You regretted to notice that you were witnessing the detailing of someone spiraling into an obsession, and that signs of it dated as early as when the two of you broke up. How could you imagine that someone who seemed like a regular, devoted boyfriend, turned out to be ripped apart by obsession?

You closed the letter and folded it back up, then placed it back into the envelope. Even with it out of sight though, the words haunted you. I'll find you. He meant it, didn't he? He was going to look for you. He was going to go out of his way to find your whereabouts and where you lived...

...but the more you thought about it, the more you realized that it seemed impossible. There wasn't a way he could reach you - you were going far away from Morioh. As much as it pained you to admit that, you just knew there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to reach you anymore. At least he might've found some solace in writing these letters out to you... as troubled as they sounded, you would cherish these final letters. You could rest, even if it was only a small bit.

Months passed since the incident. Morioh was a town that was far behind you now. You were attending a new school, surrounded by new people and new friends. Though new life was great and easier to get accustomed to in a bigger town as there were people that were more like you, nothing about them spoke volumes to you like Josuke did.

Josuke...

You wondered how he was doing.

"I'll see you later, [Y/N]!" Your best friend's hand went high in the air with excitement as she waved goodbye to you. You waved in turn and headed off the bus. You headed inside and let out a hefty sigh. "[Y/N], love, were you expecting any mail?" Your mom asked as she held up an envelope. You stared up at it in half-shock before you walked over and nearly snatched it from your mother's clutches. You stared at the name and address on the front of the envelope... this handwriting was eerily similar to Josuke's.

But how?

"Is everything alright?" Your mother asked worriedly. You swallowed some of your anxiety to be able to speak to her and put a smile on your face. "Yep!" You grinned, before you hurried away from her to reach your upstairs bedroom. You locked yourself into your room and ripped the envelope apart to see what the letter inside would entail.

'I FOUND YOU'

Your eyes immediately trailed to the window as if you would see him out there, standing and staring at you once you read those words. But to your half-expectant surprise, no one was there. Still, you were anxious. This ominous letter was real. You remembered the letters because you read them on his birthday in remembrance of the memories you shared with him - and if his past words were anything to go by, then these words were real.

You tried not to let the words get the best of you, though. So what if he found you? Was he truly bold enough to act upon his findings, or was he going to stay behind and continue to send you letters, now that he knew where you were at? The latter sounded more plausible in your opinion. Josuke was a level-headed individual who had a grip on reality, at least, that was what you thought. You couldn't let your paranoia impede the date you were going on with your best friend. It was the first one! You couldn't have been more excited. It was going to be a nice day on the town to go to the mall, things that you couldn't do in Morioh, like walk through a park or shop at multiple outlets - basically, you were going to do what you could in the weekend before you had to go back to school.

Your phone rang.

"[Y/N], it's for you!" Your mother yelled from downstairs. Who could it be, you wondered to yourself as you walked over to the phone on the wall. You picked up the phone and held it to your ear. "Hello?"

"This is [Y/N], right?" Their voice was unfamiliar and distorted. It sounded like they were speaking in a room full of people. "Umm, yes?" You responded, "who is this?"

There was no response.

"Hello?" No response.

Your stomach began to flip. Over, and over. The longer they took to respond, the more your stomach began to hurt. "J-Josuke?" You tried his name, and the person on the other end hung up immediately. Dread filled your entire being. "What..." you were baffled. He even knew your phone number, but how? Who did he get this from? You were so far away from Morioh now, how was he able to do anything that he was doing?

"Who was it?" Your mom asked. You couldn't tell her. "No one," you responded, "must have been a secret admirer or something."

You couldn't sleep that night. What happened weighed heavily on your conscience. Paranoia made you close all of your windows, shut the blinds and close the curtains, so your room was disgustingly hot. Compiled on top of losing sleep to fear, you were left feeling clammy and restless when your alarm went off. Maybe a shower will do. You were going to meet your new best friend in two hours, so you had plenty of enough time to take a shower and maybe get in a quick nap.

The phone rang, startling your otherwise eerily quiet bedroom. You turned your attention to the phone on your wall. Who could be calling at seven in the morning??

"Hello?" You asked into the phone. "[L/N] residence."

"You're going out today, aren't you?"

"How??" You asked, "how did you know where I was at??"

"I searched for someone, or anyone who could overhear you talking about your plans to move. I asked everyone at school, even the people who didn't know you, the teachers, the janitors. I must've looked like an idiot, but I don't care, because I finally got into contact with you."

"Who told you??" You couldn't remember talking to anyone about it... someone must've overheard you, but then again, who would you be speaking about it with in earshot of students in the school? No one should've known but the principal... did Josuke really have the gall to ask the principal? "You don't need to worry~. Can you answer my question, please?"

"...I'm going to hang up." You furrowed your brows. "Please leave me alone."

"You wouldn't make me force my hand just to come and see you, would you?" Josuke asked. "I know you're going out ... I just needed a confirmation. And it's with that girl, isn't it?"

"H-how do you know all these things?" Why haven't you hung up yet? The power of his threat couldn't be verified. But... you just found yourself being glued to the phone. You wanted to know what was going to come next. "Does she make you feel safe? I see how close you are with her. You're mimicking the same feelings you felt when you were with me. She can't replace me, [Y/N]. No one can replace me,"

You immediately pulled the phone from your ear and slammed it on the ringer. You began to pace, as you were far too antsy to stay in one place. There were so many things wrong with what he said... what he knew. You needed to cancel the date... you worried for her, but it was far too early to call her, and you didn't want to show up just to cancel the date, because then you'd be wasting everyone's time. What did you do? You walked over to your bed and sat down on it, putting your face in your hands. This wasn't happening, was it? You hoped it wasn't. You wanted everything to be a dream.

"-?!"

You threw your body up in a moment of panic, forcing yourself awake. For a moment you felt dizzy, but you didn't care enough to stop yourself from rushing to get out the door. You threw on whatever could be appropriate for a hot day and headed out to go meet your best friend. You were late - no shit, you were horribly late. The time read 13:21 by the time you looked at the clock on the way out. There wasn't exactly a way to reach her, so the only way you could find her was by meandering the streets in hopes that you'd find her.

You ran down the street as quickly as your tired body could permit. Panic filled your being. What if he caught wind of what time you were supposed to meet her?! What if he did something to her?!

"No!" You shouted aloud. People that were walking nearby were already drawn to you because you were running down the street, but the fact that you were talking to yourself seemed to add extra icing on the cake. You tried to ignore their stares and focused on trying to get to the nearest telephone booth. Maybe you could call her house and see if there was any way of finding out where she could be right now.

You spotted a telephone booth, thankfully, and headed into it. You reached into your bag to retrieve some yen to be inserted into the payphone, then crudely shoved whatever excess you had back into it. You dialed the number to her house and waited with bated breath as you heard it ring multiple times. Her mother picked up the phone. "Hello??"

"Hey!" You blurted, "is [best friend] around? I know I kind of bailed on her, but I wasn't having a good night." You explain and rub the back of your neck.

"Oh! No, she's still out on the town! I hope you're feeling better, [Y/N]. If she comes home, I'll call your home and let you know, alright?"

"Alright. Thank you, ma'am." You hung up. Your heart felt like it was going to implode. This wasn't a good thing - Josuke was still out there, and so was your best friend. He probably already reached her and now he was doing all sorts of despicable things to her ... no. No, you couldn't think that way, not yet. There was still hope... you just needed to find her, and the first place you should check is most definitely the mall. So, you removed yourself from the telephone booth. You exited the claustrophobic space and began your anxious trek to the mall as quickly as traffic could permit it.

Coming face to face with the mall was enough to make you collapse onto your knees and vomit up what you (didn't) eat. Your palms were clammy from the night before, and you must've reeked of sweat and anxiety. You paled before the mall's imposing stature, and swallowed thickly, before you pushed your way inside. She had to be in here, right? But the question would be where, and then who was she with, and if he was there with her...

You began your search. The mall was filled with people, young and old, weak and strong, men, women, and nonbinary people alike. The walkways were cluttered on both sides, which made you increasingly nervous. Even though people recognized you for the mess you currently were as the new student [L/N] [Y/N], you couldn't recognize them. They were nothing more but passing faces that would occasionally stop you and say that they would see you at school. You didn't care about them, you cared about your best friend. She was around here somewhere.

But so was he.

Seeing him in the corner of your eye made you feel increasingly paranoid, but every time you took a double, then triple, then quadruple take, he was there. Your eyes didn't fail you... no, he was right there. You'd recognize that pompadour-donning young man anywhere Leaning on the corner, head bowed, but you could tell those fiery purple eyes were staring at you, following your every move. He wanted you to go to him. No... you wouldn't.

However, he caught up with you before you could walk away from him. Your heart reached into your throat and threatened to choke you as your gaze went over to him.

His hand grabbed your arm and wrenched it tight, making your body flinch in place. "You're looking for her, aren't you?" He asked, "come with me. I'll take you to her."

"..." You narrowed your eyes, "how can I trust you?"

"You want to find her, don't you?" His purple eyes looked... different. They no longer held the spark of life in them, even though his voice sounded no different from what you remembered of him. You tried not to look into them for too long. "...yes."

He began to pull you along. This part of the mall wasn't isolated by any means... so you wondered... how they couldn't hear this girl gargling on her own blood. In the janitor's closet, you stumbled upon the horrendous sight. Your stomach caved in and you lost it, doubling over on her poor shoes and letting loose while Josuke's hand rested "lovingly" on your shoulder, holding it with a grip that would make abusive lovers envious. She was unrecognizable. The only way you could even tell that it was her was because of her hair, and even then, had there not been a familiar pattern you'd noticed from being around her so much in the earlier weeks of your friendship, you wouldn't have recognized her.

"Yes... I know, this looks incredibly bad on me. But I can fix things... and I will, if you just come back. All of this can disappear. She can going back to being a normal girl, you can go back to Morioh, and I can go back to being your loving boyfriend." He squeezed your shoulder. "Do we have a deal?"

"Y-you... you're a monster! Y-you can't fix this!!" You yelled at him. His eyes widened for a moment, and his brows furrowed. He lost his cool for a split second before he calmed down and sought to reason with you again. "But I can, my love. Just watch."

You didn't bother to look... merely turning your head away from this gruesome scene. Your heart was heavy, your throat was scratched, and your knees felt like they would give in at any moment now, but his grip on your shoulder kept you grounded, if that did anything to help at all. "Look at her, she's all brand new. Why don't you look at her, [Y/N]?"

You reluctantly turned your head to see what he did - and he was right. Her face looked... normal. She was no longer this amalgamation of destroyed flesh. She was your best friend, just as you'd last seen her. "And she can stay this way," his hand reached up to cup your chin, using his hand to gently pull your head to his. You were forced to stare into his eyes as he spoke again. "As long as you come back. If not, she will just have the same thing happen to her - and she'll lay in this closet until someone finds her, and then you will be painted as the killer for vomiting all over this poor girl's shoes. You don't want that, do you?"

You didn't respond. You tried to - but you just didn't know what to say in response to the atrocities he'd committed in the act of obsession.

"You don't want to watch her be subjected to relentless torture for trying to be my replacement, do you?? You don't want to hear her crying out for help while you can't do anything but watch, do you? Answer me, [Y/N]!!"

His other hand cupped your face and squeezed it tight, pulling you closer to his body. Your noses were mere inches away from each other. You could smell his cologne... and in that moment of pure lunacy, you had to wonder if you even smelled good.

"N-no..." you squeezed your eyes shut. "Please just leave her alone..."

"Hey, hey, don't cry," he pulled your face into his chest and stroked down your back lovingly, "I'm not a bad person, baby, you know that. You just have to come back to me... all you have to do is let me be your boyfriend again, and all of this will disappear. We'll go back to being together like we rightfully should be, okay?"

"...okay." You squeezed him, "okay."

[shoichee]

Hello! Can I perhaps ask for no. 28. “Make me” from your prompt list for my beloved Imayoshi? It's so nice seeing him here on your theme and avatar and that pERFECT url, it feels like I finally found my people.

HELLO HELLO, and YES I WAS SO SURPRISED THAT NO ONE TOOK THIS URL... considering that it was just an alternative spelling of shoichi and its a rlly short handle too mwehe // im sort of a particular person when it comes to how something looks, whether itd be outfits, drawings, coloring, and the UI of a blog, u name it.... i may have spent hours trying to have the perfect colors for this theme PLEASEEEE, but without further ado here is our man, our little shit, Imayoshi

@knb-kreations howdy! another new work posted here!

Imayoshi x Reader

28. “Make me”

Word Count: 2331

prompt list here

»»—————　☼　—————««

Imayoshi doesn’t exactly know how he feels about you.

Scratch that, he does know. He’s quite amused at the shenanigans you pull on others around you, and a lot of times, you actually elicit a few dry laughs out of the guy. Other times though, he’d wish that you would just shut the fuck up, especially when all he hears amidst his studying was your loud “whispering” and “hushed” jokes. How you were always nearby no matter where he is was still a mystery that he casually ponders about from time to time. Perhaps your natural tendency to project your voice creates the illusion that you were near when you really weren’t?

No matter, such trivial thoughts can’t occupy his mind when college entrance exams loom closer. Then again, they weren’t particularly difficult; they were simply a hassle to secure near-perfect scores, especially when his chances of admittance rely critically on how well he does.

“That’s an awful drawing of a samurai,” Susa comments, snapping Imayoshi out of idle thought.

“Ho? Is it really terrible if you were able to tell what it is?” Imayoshi chuckles. “The point of a drawing is to convey the right idea or emotion. It seems that my drawing skills hit a bulls-eye with this sketch, no?” He playfully spins his pencil around, patiently waiting for his reply to goad him.

All Susa does in response is to roll his eyes before he turns his full attention back to his notes. He knows better than to try a comeback against Imayoshi, who can easily make it backfire against the person with a pleasant close-eyed smile. Imayoshi, seeing Susa’s nonverbal resign from engaging further banter, also looks down back to his book of scribbled notes and chicken-scratch drawings before he exhales an inaudible sigh.

School just doesn’t cut out to be mentally stimulating for him. It’s a little too repetitive and mundane for his taste.

“Argh!! Oh no!” your voice rang out, despite your poor attempt to be reasonably quiet. “I forgot applications for the Coca-Cola scholarship are due today!”

Coca-Cola… what?

Everyone looks up to warily eye you, and your few friends, who are currently rushing to pull you down and slap their hands over your mouth to mute you, were panicking at the new attention you managed to garner. Even still, your mind seems more fixated on whatever was on the laptop’s screen, rather than what they were doing to you.

Imayoshi can’t help but stifle his audible mirth from how you manage to change the mood of the entire library within seconds.

“How do you even forget something as important as a huge scholarship like that?” Susa says in dismay. “Makes me kind of wonder how (l/n) would handle life after graduation, to be honest.”

“Well,” Imayoshi begins. “I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s best not to underestimate (l/n)-san. Surely we’ve learned our lesson with Seirin?” He toys with the pencil grip before he sporadically draws some lines loosely resembling another sketch.

“Drawing again?” Susa raises a brow. “Have you even been studying?”

“Well,” he replies. “There’s still plenty of time before exams—months to be exact. Could you even study with the current distractions in here?” At his own words, he nudges his chin in your direction.

“It’s not just any exams though, it’s—”

“Whether they have more importance or not doesn’t really concern me. After all, standardized testing isn’t worth stressing out for when we’ve taken essentially the same thing all our lives.”

“What most are worried about is the content inside the exams, Imayoshi,” he said, carefully treading into dangerous waters with Imayoshi’s tendency to take all replies as mind-game challenges for his own amusement.

“‘If you have been paying attention consistently throughout the year, you wouldn’t be having much trouble…’ that’s what you once oh-so-wisely said to Wakamatsu yesterday, hmm?” His mimicking tone drips a hint of arrogance. “Unless you mean to tell me my ears do not work? But by all means, please feel free to correct me.”

“That’s different,” he sighed, his face clearly evident that he was done with Imayoshi’s shit. “That exam only tested content for the past year, not your entire academic repertoire over the courses of middle and high school.”

“I’d like to think that the logic still applies the same way.”

“Well,” Susa heaves with a languid stretch. “You generally score better on the exams than me, so you’re probably right. Still, don’t neglect your studying.”

“Right, right, Susa-senpai~”

“... Please don’t call me that again.”

“... If you say so,” he said, but his smile blatantly showed his real intentions of never stopping his irritable quips. Susa gets ready to pack up his book bag before he heads out the door with a friendly wave. Imayoshi half-heartedly returns the gesture with a casual wave of his own. He immediately notices you also packed up and about to leave with a worried frown, and of course, while audibly mumbling your concerns and makeshift schedules to accommodate time for last-minute essay writing. By now, all of your friends have left for home.

“Ah, biology lab due next week, kanji worksheets due tomorrow, hmm, um, how would I finish this on time… ah, calculus test is tomorrow too, ah shit… should I ask someone to tutor?—ah, but it’s super last minute, and there’s still that scholarship… argh, fuck!” Your voice peaked in volume at the end, and the librarian immediately shot daggers at you.

“Shhhhh!”

“A-Ah! S-Sorry, sorry!”

Imayoshi was watching you with his chin on his arm propped up on the desk, unable to control the smile that escaped his lips. You really were entertaining to watch, and you never cease to bore him.

He turns away to crack his neck and roll it around before methodically packing up his writing utensils and notebooks. Soft shuffling filled the air as he rearranged the items inside his bag. As he turns to pack the last thing on the table, which happened to be the notebook filled with his idle doodling, his face slightly softens at the drawing he did after the samurai. Yes, the one Susa chastised him for when he could’ve been studying. Yes, perhaps he was right when he was terrible at drawing after all; your panicked face and wild hand gestures didn’t really translate well into paper, and it looked a little too much like a horror comic and less than a sketch of you. Still, he’s oddly proud of it.

Imayoshi promptly pushes the chair in and leaves the library, but when he rounds the corner of the adjacent hallway, he bumps into you.

“Er—hi! I mean, please, uhhh… if it isn’t too much to ask—canyoupleasetutormeforthecalculustesttomorrowbecausemyfinalgradedependsonthat?”

Imayoshi winces at the sheer volume of your voice and plugs his ears in out of habit to block out some of the decibels. Wakamatsu was eerily similar to you in that regard. Only difference between the two of you was that you were deceptively intelligent. Extremely so.

“My, my, if it isn’t (l/n)-senpai!” He fakes a surprised look, earning him an eye roll on your end. “You need someone like me to teach you the works?”

“I—what? We’re literally in the same calc class, Imayoshi,” you retort. “Besides, drop the ‘senpai’ honorific. It feels so slimy when you say it so disingenuously… Aren’t we both 3rd years too?”

“I’m so hurt,” he mocks. “What if I was really genuine with you?”

“Look, right now, no remarks from you, Evil Glasses,” you say. “It’s really, really urgent and I don’t know how to grasp the material for the class lately, plus my essay, ugh…” You rub your fingers against your temples in an attempt to make the stressful headaches disappear while Imayoshi simply watches with his eyes slightly open.

“... You usually do well on all your exams, no? Unless my eyes and memory fail me.” It was true; even though you were as loud-mouthed as Wakamatsu, you would often shock a lot of people when your name always appeared in the higher percentiles of exam results. Apparently most students and teachers associate your rowdy personality with an expected subpar academic performance. He has you to thank for when your score reports always cause reactions of utter disbelief from the teachers. You really do liven up the school and make it a lot more unorthodox.

“I guess…” you mumble. “But I really wanna do especially well for this one because math is my weakest subject, and you always score the highest for these types of exams, so…”

“It may be my best subject,” he says, leaning slightly closer to your face. “But I’m not the one with the highest scores in any math subjects throughout these years, and we both know that quite well, don’t we, (l/n)? Why don’t you come clean about the real reason why you’re here?”

“Oh my literal fuck—Imayoshi, you’re one of the best students in calc right now regardless of exam results,” you petulantly huffed, not backing down from his intimidation. Imayoshi notes your cheeks reddening, and he figured it was either because of the close proximity between your faces or the fact you were frustrated… perhaps both. “And you’re the only one around here on campus who I could ask!”

“Really now,” he chimes, moving closer to whisper in your ear. “Are you sure?” With incoherent stammers, you backed away from him, slapping your hands against both of your ears to protect them.

“W-W-What the fuck are you doing?!”

“Looks like I won this one, (l/n)-san,” he purrs, relishing the fact that only he could render you this quiet. “Ho? What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?”

“I—Shut up!” you lamely shoot back. “You can just say no if you really don’t wanna do this—urgh, I’m leaving, I’m not gonna waste any more time—”

“How hurtful,” he dryly remarks, standing up straight again after leaning for a quite a while. “It’s almost as if you’re rejecting me~” He knew you would always take his bait and quip back (unlike Susa), regardless of whether or not you tell him that you weren’t going to engage further.

“As if,” you snorted, making another exaggerated eye roll. “You’re the last person who would ever be hurt from this.”

“Dear me!” he exclaims. “Have you ever considered that perhaps I don’t help out people for free? Did you think I would be a gracious, selfless person who would help you like a saint?”

“Okay, fine! Perhaps I didn’t think that far ahead, okay? You just were the first person that came to mind, and I thought asking you wouldn’t hurt.” His smirk widens almost maliciously at your words, lips already opening to deliver another irritating quip before you immediately spoke again to stop him. “Okay, Imayoshi, you little shit, just shut up—I don’t wanna hear anything from your mouth right now.”

“I don’t see any reason why I should listen to you at all,” he muses. “Why don’t you make me?” He has a shit-eating grin plastered across his face, eagerly eyeing your next move, and as he expected, you let out a frustrated noise that prompted passerby students to shoot pointed looks towards the both of you.

What he didn’t expect was for you to take a huge step towards him, unceremoniously pull him down to your level, and press a reverberating smack on his lips. His eyes are immediately blown wide open to look at your embarrassed, but determined face. His fingers unconsciously move to touch his warmed lips.

“... That was quite romantic, wasn’t it, (l/n)?” he dryly says, recovering almost immediately from the shock. All the other students fled from the blatantly bold scene to save face. Not that Imayoshi really cared.

“Okay, you know what? Bye, I’m not gonna play anymore mind games with you,” you grumble. “Essays and studying aren’t gonna be done by themselves—wah!”

Imayoshi gently tugs you back to reciprocate back a kiss, meticulously slipping his hands behind your head and on your waist to accommodate you. Your eyes are completely open from the shock that the Imayoshi Shoichi was actually kissing you. You don’t close your eyes from the sensation, completely entranced when you make eye contact with his half-lidded eyes watching your every reaction closely. The kiss ended all too soon, and Imayoshi separates himself from you, secretly admiring your dazed look.

“That was quite a strong reaction to just a simple kiss.”

“I—that was not just a ‘simple kiss!’”

“Now would you like to tell me the true reason why you approached me?”

“You’re… insinuating that you know something.”

“Well we wouldn’t know unless you come clean,” Imayoshi purrs. “I can sometimes be wrong too.”

“Ugh, what the hell—fine, I am quite enamored by you, and uh, I… find it infuriating to be with you, but it also gives me butterflies… so I thought I could be with you more… if I asked you—don’t get it twisted, though! I still need your help to study!...” He covers his mouth to suppress a laugh at your honesty.

“Was it really so hard to say that in the beginning, (l/n)-san?”

“Okay, that’s it! I’m really, really leaving! Fuck off, Imayoshi, I swear to—”

“Ho? Just a minute, darling~” he tuts, reaching to hold your hand. “Perhaps if you offer more kisses as an incentive, I’d be more inclined to offer my expertise.”

“How quaint,” you dryly reply. “It’s almost as if we’re in a relationship.”

Imayoshi can’t help but bark out a genuine laugh. You even managed to pick up some of his mannerisms so quickly.

“That’s an interesting proposal, (l/n),” he murmurs. “Should we try that?” You tut at him irritatedly as you tug your interlocked hands while speed-walking ahead.

“Hurry up, or I’ll consider breaking up with you right now.”

“Ah ha!~” he chuckles at your attitude. “How mean, (l/n)-san! Too bad that we both know that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

[savagenutella46]

And Thus With A Kiss I Die

Jasonette 1/1 - A fic I wrote for @moonlitceleste because she’s amazing

All quotes/title in bold italics derived from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

"Banishèd' is banished from the world, and world's exile is death."

There's no finite end to where white and black meet. Everything is shades of grey; infinite on a foreboding scale of fate and destiny: entities that push you to make the choices you do.

It had ended with a flash of light—real or her imagination, she had witnessed it between her own eyes. The kind of flashing light that tells you, "you've died."

Ladybug could still hear the shrieks and screams of civilians echoing ringingly around her, confused, scared, as to why an akumatized villain was hurting them the way that it was; this wasn't how akumatizations usually went, maybe a few scratches, worn out knees, but never this.

(—And to think, it had started out as a normal day.

Marinette rose out of bed with the same grogginess lingering at the corner of her eyes, brushed her teeth, kissed her Maman on the cheek as she ran to school, late.

You'd never suspect you were going to die on a day so normal, so domestic.)

What had this person been through before submitting to Hawkmoth with such a vicinity? How had Hawkmoth prayed to a cacophony of emotions like this—to kill, order, destroy everything in its path? Marinette would never catch an inkling, dying and all that jazz.

It's easy to see the world through a rose-colored lens. To believe that people do the things they do because they're bad. (but no one ever talks about why they do the things they do because they're good.)

And Marinette, masked in all her red-and-black glory, had pushed a frozen-with-fear civilian out of harm's way, an absurd amount of unleashed dark magic from the akuma hurtling its way toward them, and she'd taken the hit. Rolled on the ground for yards from the sheer force that the akuma's magic had flew and stricken her and pierced the skin, blood splattering and trailing as she slapped and hit the street from every possible angle.

Ladybug can't move, can't call for help when she desperately needs to, because her partner is miles away trying to fight what has her plastered to the ground, laying limp underneath her dead weight, breathing muffled and heavy underneath her physical detriment.

Ladybug's eyes droop under the weight of exhaustion, barely running on fumes before she had run out in an attempt to defeat what was supposed to be an everyday activity.—Crazy, how something can seem so domestic until its so, so much more.—A hemothorax forming in her chest where Marinette had been hit, a very open thoracic cavity filling up with blood, and she's spluttering for breath, because her throat is closed up, filled with blood from where the akuma hit her to where it burned.

It burns real bad, almost like an explosion stemming from her chest to the nerve endings on her toes. Marinette feels like she's being tortured with every meek twitch of her wrist as she lays on the ground, unable to see over the car shouldering her path, the pain burning behind her eyes, the white-hot disappointment in her heart.

—And she knows it's time. Because this is the work of fate. Her life in its hands. It had seemed miles away from Marinette just this morning, and how she wished she could go back and cherish the moments since she'd arisen from unpremeditated slumber.

She cannot. This is her destiny, as it seems. No one can be saved if Ladybug cannot save herself, can't will herself to detransform and heal herself because she can't, and she feels a gripping amount of remorse before emotions hit her all around—she should've told Adrien something, she can't recall what it is—should've told her Maman she loved her before running out the door in such a rush—should've squealed about the hot superheroes in America with Alya one last time, before she feels nothing.

Nothing except for the white light. And then dark again. Absolutely nothing.

                                               _________________

It's dark when she opens her eyes, and she blinks to make sure her eyes are actually open, and sees a big, fat, load of nothing.

Marinette's—the ladybug suit had disappeared, her normal clothes taking its place—body feels light, floaty, and utterly weightless against the dark mass she's standing atop of. Her head feels eerily light, calm without the weight of the world on her shoulders, and a calm feeling washes over her.

Her voice echoes against endless sound barriers as she utters her first words since death.

"This is what death feels like, huh?" Utterly amazing. Marinette can't believe she didn't do this earlier.

—But, for a moment, she feels empathy. Empathy for the people stuck in Paris, wondering if this was the day they were going to die, the people all around the world living in fear of something so inevitable.

She closes her eyes for just a second, a moment of vengeful peace. Opens them again, and this time, she's somewhere different.

She's in a library. Unfamiliar, but welcoming all the same. The smell of crisp, unopened books float idly in her senses, a synthetic warm feeling creeping up behind her back. Distantly, she realizes that she recognizes the place, tables placed and shelves abundantly filled with books, ranging from science fiction to classic literature, and it feels exactly how it did all those years ago.

Years ago, when she'd first visited the United States of America, the first place her Maman and Papa took her was a public library in Gotham City, New Jersey. It had welcomed her so openly that she couldn't help but smile a little, slip under from her parent's grasp, and wander toward a vast section of William Shakespeare, someone she'd heard so much about in her eight—nine years, she couldn't help but be pulled toward the ordain shelf.

She'd even met someone, too. Her mother would forever deny—if Marinette had still been alive, but Marinette was convinced the little boy sitting against the mass of wooden shelves had been very, very real. Marinette had smiled at him, sat down next to him, even if he gave her a wary, and borderline aggressive look, she'd introduced herself.

"Hi, I'm Marinette." She'd said with a horrible stutter and an almost unintelligible accent. The boy closed his book—a black and white cover with words she couldn't quite understand the meaning of as well as a simple name like Shakespeare's, and she smiled a little harder.

"Jason," He'd said in a heedful voice, staring at her curiously. "Whadda' you want?"

Marinette shrugged as best she could with weak shoulders, and turned her head from the person next to her to drink in every corner of the library that she could see without moving from her increasingly-uncomfortable crouch on the ground.

"Nothing. Just wanted to see what you're reading." She leaned over his shoulder, monosyllabic and complex English text alike filling her view, so many words that blurred together, and she felt a heat at the top of her head in frustration.

She couldn't read English.

The boy next to her—Jason, had seemed to recognize her distress and pull the book closer to him, floundering for a moment before he exhaled loudly, and started to read.

Words flowed out of the him, smooth and languid, and she found herself trapped in the moment, mesmerized by such an eloquent reading from a boy who looked just her age.

"What cursèd foot wanders this way tonight to cross my obsequies and true love's rite?" He reads off, breaking unevenly for gulps of air, and dove back right where he stopped without much distraction, and moments, minutes passed under his voice.

And the memory fell away from view. She opened eyes she didn't realize had closed when a voice seemed to float from the corner of her vision, a body stepping into view and a realized this wasn't imagination.

Another boy, dressed in tattered—but comfortable looking jeans finds his way over to her, a curious glint in his magnificent blue eye and a raised eyebrow, though he looks troubled, aged where he ought to look youthful.

"Who're you?" He mumbles, lips barely moving around syllables as he stares at Marinette, defensive, yet hopeful.

His voice. Despite the clearly street-wise accent, his voice is beautiful. A voice that could recite hundreds of words and never get old in the canals of her ears. Marinette found herself wanting to hear more.

"Marinette." She blinks, seems to realize the way he seems nervous, and, "You like jazz?" Blurts out the first thing that comes to mind, which, just so happens to be the only sentence capable of such utterance in damning—literally—times like this one.

Jason finally cracks a smile after a few more moments of cricket-inducing silence, and the newfound tension in her shoulders seems to melt away again, just as it did with her entrance to a magnificent limbo such as this. "Not in particular, but I do like to read." His smile is utterly contagious, and Marinette feels it spread its way along her own face, eyes crinkling under the weight of emotion.

They spend their days in an endless limbo like that, reading, laughing, sometimes in the comfortable chair in the library, and sometimes they're gazing upon clouds, feeling the prickly sensation of grass under their backs as they lie next to one another under a cool breeze and warm sun—which is the scene they're settling in, when Marinette turns her head toward the boy next to her.

"It's been," She pauses for a moment, adding up the days since they've both died—it had to be around the same time—and Jason turns his head toward her in a similar fashion, an eyebrow raised. "A few months? And..." She trails off, suddenly feeling less confident in a horrid question.

She knows the way she had died hadn't been peaceful, and if the boy she'd grown so close to in months of passing had died as painfully, he might doubt their budding friendship, as new as it is.

But then Jason reaches over and covers her hand with his, a blooming warmth enveloping her hand all the way to her heart, her vision snaps back to where it had wandered down to the rest of her body, reliving a turret of emotions. "Marinette," Jason stares at her in earnest, "You can ask."

Another thing she'd never understand was Jason's ability to read people so well. He'd always know her intentions, as bad or good as they may be, like something mundane, a book she'd eyed for a few minutes before he'd sighed heavily and got up to get it for her, or when Marinette wanted to be left alone. Just for a minute, to pull herself back together.

"How did you die?" She watches as Jason closes his eyes, curling in on himself despite the foretold question, and waits.

She's good at waiting. (A familiar feeling of heat creeping up to her cheeks, the same way it did with someone else, not so long ago, but in a different lifetime.)

"It started out when I tried to steal Batman's tires—" Marinette widens her eyes in surprise.

Oh, so they're going way back then, huh?

But by the time Jason finishes speaking, pats his sweaty hands down on the slacks he wore that day that came from God knows where, Marinette finds the humor and her mood had dimmed significantly.

And Jason, he looks terrible. Like it was the first time he'd said something about it since, well, death. Almost hyperventilating, Jason is breathing heavily, gripping onto his pants with malice and intent, almost as if stopping himself from something. He'd told his beginning to end with an increasingly shaky voice, cracking at the edges where he'd relived the fear and abandonment he felt when trapped in an unfamiliar country, in a dirty warehouse, trapped in his own feelings in a suit that he thought would always protect him.

Without a dad that he'd thought would always protect him.  

Marinette feels a little sick. The boy next to her had died so brutally, alone, scared and slowly.

"I don't regret it. Being Robin." He adds quietly after a moment of hesitation. It's small, but it's there and plain. He doesn't regret something that changed his life, but— "Just the death part."

He would want to change his death, and she couldn't agree more.

If only it meant they could've still met despite living, that is.

She doesn't say that. Instead, she laughs a little. "You and me both." Marinette reaches over to hold his hand once more, and pretends not to see the tears climbing out of his eyes.

"So early waking, what with loathsome smells, and shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, that living mortals, hearing them, run mad—?"

How it felt to tear his way out of the ground, shivering, shaking, flinching at the way his fingernails tore away with every claw and scratch at the unyielding wood before him. Jason was vaguely aware of a horrible groaning noise that might've been his own, but when his hand stuck through to crisp Gotham air, dirt flinging and spilling down on his face as he gasped and choked for breath, he could only think of a single quote from such a cliche play.

He thought of it while tearing out the bloody uvula of his victim, spurred on by the Pit and Talia's ruthless training, starving for the sound of screaming that rung in his ear, continued to clang loudly even in sleep, when it bestowed itself upon him.

Because he couldn't think about anything else. Wouldn't allow himself to, because then he would start thinking about her.

About how she left him.

Jason had turned to retrieve a book from their peaceful library limbo one day, muttering to himself about something so mundane that he didn't even remember, but he'd grabbed the book—a simple fiction, because they were both bored of astronomy—and turned around to silence, instead of the shiny mop of dark hair he was expecting.

"Marinette?" Jason calls, swiveling his head around when the chair previously occupied by her stood empty.

Jason waits.

He doesn't know how long he waits, searches, but she isn't there.

And the feeling of disappointment and fear runs up his spine again, before he knows it, he's kneeling on the ground, trying to catch his breath as tears run down because he's been abandoned again, and it's just as damning as the first time.

His father, his brother, his mother, his birth mother, and now his friend.

Jason breaks down again, gripping harshly onto his hair while he cries, where he'd usually hold onto Marinette's hand.

So he doesn't think of much at all, really. Not when he turns on murder mode, not when he forces himself to stare into the eyes of the person he's killing while they die, because he wants to remember how it felt. How it felt before he met another superhero torn away from her life almost as harshly as he was ripped away from his own.

He wants to go back. Before he flew to Ethiopia unsupervised and unprepared, before he took the Robin mantle, before he decided to make quick cash off of the Batmobile, before his mother died by her own hands, loosely holding a syringe and shaking, shuddering from her overdose.

Jason wants to go back to Before. He can't stand living in the After, where he makes the choices he does.

He’s supposed to be good.

permanent taglist: @nathleigh @stainedglassm @officiallydarkgeek @certainmuffinbagelcalzone @buterflies-and-ladybugs @maskedpainter

[stonylovessteve]

SLS 2021 Creator Reveals

We’ve reached the end of the exchange and that means it’s time to reveal the creators of all our works!

Thank you for putting so much love and effort into Stony Loves Steve 2021, you really made it a great experience. We hope everyone loved it as much as we did!

Giftees, be sure to leave a comment and kudos on your gift if you haven’t already. All our creators worked hard to make this event a success, so show them some love.

You can now post your work publicly outside of the exchange. Tag it as #stonylovessteve2021 on tumblr and we’ll reblog you. @ us @stonylovessteve on twitter and we’ll retweet you.

Below the cut is the final list of all the works produced for the exchange and the creators.

Cold as Ice, Warm my Heart by lil_aussie_girl for parkrstark (MCU, 1.5k)

The cold took away one love already, and his greatest fear is that it will do it again - before he has the chance to say those three important words.

Strength Like The Sea/A Familiar Yet Foreign Face by Lacrimula_Falsa for funkyspacegirlfriend (AU, 3k)

There had to be another explanation for the ugly burning feeling in his chest because this wasn’t a rom-com and he’d known Steve for less than a day.

After years of his father fruitlessly searching for one, Tony finally gets to meet a real-life vampire.

· · ·*‒*‒ ‒ ‒*‒ ·*‒ · ‒ ‒

Anthony.

No, not Anthony, because Anthony had crumbled to dust right before his eyes. But this man looked so eerily similar to him, he could have been Anthony’s twin brother. Only the eyes were different, warm brown instead of cold blue. After being woken nearly a century after he went into stasis because the pain of losing his lover Anthony was too much, Steven meets a man who looks just like him.

I Know There is Comfort Where We Overlap by jellybeanforest for ghosthan (Ults, 10k)

As a relic of a bygone era, Steve struggles with feelings of isolation and severe depression made worse by his recent breakup with Jan Pym. He secretly hooks up with random strangers chasing a sense of connection with someone, anyone. Things are going (not) well when he and fellow Ultimate, Iron Man, are tasked with infiltrating a Thai resort serving as a front for illegal arms dealing. Only catch: They must go undercover as a married couple on their honeymoon.

finding steve rogers by jacobby for geekymoviemom (MCU, 6k)

Steve sighs. “Sorry. I wasn’t a very good tour guide. Ma always told me about the town, but she never got into specifics.”

Tony takes Steve’s hand in his and places it close to his lips. “It’s your first time here too. We understand.”

AKA

After a botched mission with SHIELD, Steve takes a vacation with his family to a town in Ireland.

Things are knot as they seem by BladeoftheNebula for DepressingGreenie (AU, 3k)

Everyone assumes Captain America is an alpha and Steve doesn’t see the harm in not correcting them. After all, Alphas command respect while omegas are still considered far too delicate for leadership.

And sure, it sucks hiding his designation when he’s in love with Tony Stark, the hottest alpha he’s ever seen, but what alpha would want an omega who could lift them with one hand?

So it’s fine. It’s not as if anyone was ever going to find out his secret anyway…

A drop of love by CapAL for Perlmutt (AU, Comic)

After sleeping for 70 years Steve wakes up to a world that he doesn’t understand. As an age-old vampire he’s seen a lot of things in his life, but nothing has ever confused him as much as the bubbly Starbucks barista Tony. They meet by chance and Steve stays. He falls for him, even though he knows he shouldn’t, and together they explore modern New York, while Steve tries to hide his true nature from Tony, afraid that he would send him away if he knew the truth.

The Fake Prince and the Cat  by Neverever for Fluffypanda (AU, 5.5k)

Steve is sent in place of Prince Brock to marry the libertine Tony Stark. It's better than he thought it would be, plus he makes friends with a cat.

father to son by parkrstark for HogwartsToAlexandria (MCU, 2.5k)

Steve had been planning on asking Peter to be his son, officially, for weeks now, but he always chickened out because he didn't thik he was good enough for the boy. Funnily enough, Peter had the same idea, but when he showed the adoption papers to Steve, he didn't have the best of reactions.

The Best Half Of Me by Huntress79 for RoseRose (AU, 1.5k)

An encounter with one of his exes at a charity gala opens Tony’s eyes about how much he really loves Steve - and how much he’s looking forward to their future together.

neither here nor there by ghosthan for  Welcoming_Disaster (616, 18k)

Captain America comes back from Dimension Z changed. He has had over a decade of his life taken from him, as well as the woman he loved. Stoic, secretive, and traumatized, much of what he experienced remains a mystery to SHIELD and the world; Tony is there to help him heal, and uncover the truth about how much Steve has lost.

The Eventide Aspect by geekymoviemom for ishipallthings (MCU, T, 12k)

“Yeah, Cap, about that,” Tony says, looking rather sheepish as he scratches at the back of his neck.

“Yeah?” asks Steve.

“Well… remember those half-baked ideas that I mentioned?  I’m afraid this might be one of ‘em,” says Tony.

“Okay.  Care to explain it to someone who doesn't speak technical?”

“Ahh…” Tony trails off, mumbling under his breath again.  “Yeah.  Um… if my theory is correct, I’m thinking that when we stepped through that window, we might’ve entered another dimension.”

Looking by Robin_tCJ for Vento_Lunar (MCU, E, 4k)

After a raid on a HYDRA base, Steve's body reverts back to the way it was before the serum. Tony still wants him.

You Had Me in the First Half by Corsets_and_Cardigans for Robin_tCj (MCU, E, 2k)

Steve is on his way to meet Bucky for a movie before their football team goes away for a game. Too bad Tony has plans for him! He'll apologize to Bucky for it later.

the rest is history by starksnack for muchmoremajestic (Avengers Academy, G, 2k)

It's Steve's birthday and he usually likes to spend it alone. Of course, Tony has other ideas.

Basically just some soft AvAc fluff.

(Let Me) Love and Be Loved by HeLovedYou for wikketkrikket (MCU, T, 6k)

Steve forgets how to self-sabotage his own happiness.

He also forgets his team, his soulmate and the last three years of his life.

avengers featuring steve’s doppleganger vol 1 (FANCOMIC) by wingheads for jellybeanforrest (616, Art)

tony dates a man who looks a lot like steve. everyone can see it, everyone knows what that means, except tony, who doesn't seem to realize he's dating steve's doppelganger. steve doesn't see the resemblance either and actually comes to like tony's new boyfriend, but then one of the other avengers spills the beans that they look exactly alike to tony, who can't unsee it now and breaks up with the new guy, only for steve to be sad that his baseball-buddy won't be around anymore.

Hart Island by Amber_Skye for lil_aussie_girl (MCU, G, 12k)

Steve is acting out of character, and Tony and the other Avengers can’t work out why.

the soul of dragons by funkyspacegirlfriend for Amber_Skye (MCU, T, 2k)

Steve’s dragon companion is the largest Tony’s ever seen up close. And she captivates Tony from the very first moment.

Just in the Knit of Time by DepressingGreenie for picturecat (Avengers Assemble, T, 2.5k)

Steve only has a week to tell Tony he loves him before his secret is leaked to the world.

Learning Curve by picturecat for Huntress79 (Avengers Academy AU, G, 2k)

Freshly defrosted, Steve Rogers is the newest teacher at the Avengers Academy—an attempt to guide and teach the newest generation of heroes before they have to take on the burdens of their teachers. Steve himself has a lot of learning to do.

First Impression by veryvincible for wingheads (616, M, 7k)

The Avengers find the schematics of a deadly weapon in the hands of an up-and-coming villain. To safely retrieve the data that led to its creation and keep the city safe in the process, they have to take a very subtle approach. The man-- Jack Marshall-- has an eye for hunks and a tendency to get vulnerable with them. The team could use this to their advantage, if they have the right assets.

Enter Steve.

Dandelions and Lilies by Wikketkrikket for CapAL (AU, G, 4k)

Written for CapAL for the StonylovesSteve event 2021.

A summer job in the florists is pretty good, as summer jobs go; and when a handsome guy comes in with some very particular requirements it gets even better.

Or it would, if Steve wasn't lying about the meaning of every bouquet he sold.

Potshot by jellybeanforest for jacobby (AU, T, 2.5k)

In an expansive wasteland infested with hordes of the undead, Steve, leader of a group of ex-military operatives known as the Avengers, searches for survivors and supplies in the ruins of the old world.

That’s all well and good, but Tony would do just about anything for an American cheeseburger.

For Stony Loves Steve 2021. Based on a prompt by jacobby.

Remorse and Rapture by oliverparker for optimusprime13 (AU, E, 6k)

When Steve's mother falls ill, he's forced to move in with the family she works for. He's not thrilled about it.

Shards of Eternities by Perlmutt for starksnack (AU, T, 5k)

Rumor had it that the war would soon be over. It could not end soon enough. Until then, Anthony would wait for Steven. He would wait and protect their child. He would wait and write another thousand letters for his alpha, his mate, his husband, if only he would come home, come for him, come for them.

Two Can Play That Game by JehBeEhh for Becci Barnes (BeccEEE) (MCU, T, 4k)

Tony Stark is many things. Patient isn't always one of them. Especially not when there's a happily ever after at the end of that bout of patience.

Uncovered by mariana_oconnor for Corsets_and_Cardigans (MCU, G, 6k)

Steve didn't think the tip-off was anything more than the usual nonsensical conspiracy theory. He only went to check it out because he was curious. He definitely wasn't expecting it to be a trap.

Build Me Up Buttercup by ishipallthings for BladeoftheNebula (4k, M, MCU)

Tony sees the gold letters spelling “Stark” on the edge of Steve’s hood and his mind grinds to a halt. Steve looks good wearing his name. Too good.

(In which Steve starts experimenting with a new style. Tony does not find this infuriatingly attractive, thank you very much.)

Discovery [Art] by Fluffypanda for captainstars (Art, G, Noir)

Renowned adventurer Tony Stark discovers a carving of a lost civilization's protector.

I left my heart (at home with you) by captainstars for UisceOneLove (2k, G, AU)

It shouldn’t have surprised him as much as it did.

The man grinned at him, wide and beautiful. Steve couldn’t help sneaking another glance towards the heavens. They really lost their citizens fairly easily. Steve would like to say this was the first white robed beauty he had come across until now, but he wasn’t.

(OR)

Steve moved to a cabin in the woods hoping to live the life of a hermit werewolf. When Tony Stark decided to become his new neighbor, it threw a bit of a wrench into Steve’s plans.

(OR)

A werewolf and an incubus cuddling in a tree.

Raspberry Beret (I Think I Love Her) by ralsbecket for oliverparker (4k, M, 3490)

When Steve looked at Natasha, he knew in his heart that she was what put his derailed train back on its tracks. For the first time since they met, Steve felt like he had some semblance of a plan for his future. And he wanted Natasha to be a part of it.

Savior Complex by optimusprime13 for HeLovedYou (18.5k, G, AU)

Wealthy businessman Steve Rogers stumbles into barely-getting-by Tony Stark in a cemetery, and they hit it off immediately. Steve is enamored by Tony’s razor-sharp wit, his startling intelligence, and his penchant for building stuff. He has a problem though - he can’t stop wanting to save everybody around him, especially Tony - who is struggling to make ends meet. However, Tony is too proud and stubborn to accept any help from Steve. But when Tony gets kidnapped to act as bait for Steve, how far will Steve go to save Tony when it means sacrificing himself?

Through His Stomach by RoseRose for JehBeeEh (2k, G, MCU)

Steve decides he wants to try to cook with all the new ingredients he has found in this new time, but he needs someone else to taste-test his creations. Tony is holed up in his workshop, so he makes the perfect guinea pig. The two of them grow closer over several meals.

Iron & Sapphire by Becci Barnes (BeccEEE) for Lacrimula_Falsa (AU, 5k)

Steve can always sense him, long before Tony enters his cave. It makes his blue scales tremble and his big wings flutter in excitement. Tony brings light and warmth into this musty hideout he calls home. And food. And while they may be as odd a couple as you can imagine, that won't stop them from bantering and cuddling just like anyone else.

Man On The Moon by Welcoming_Disaster for veryvincible (616, 7k)

Things haven't been the same since Steve has found out about Tony's secret identity. A mission that goes wrong forces both of them to confront why.

I Love You to the Moon and Back by muchmoremajestic for mariana_oconnor (MCU, 3k)

After Steve gets attacked in the woods, certain changes start happening.

Happy Birthday to America's ass by njava97 for ralsbecket (MCU, 2.5k)

It's the night before Steve's birthday and something is very wrong.

Magic's in the Moving Portrait by UisceOneLove for neverever (AU, 9.5k)

Without his ma, Steve's lost his ability to make art. In walks new wizarding student Tony Stark, who also happens to be his new roommate. All hope might not be lost just yet for him and his brush.

Reach The Sky by Vento_Lunar for njava97 (MCU, art)

Non-serum Steve Rogers saves the world. (And Tony saves him)

[wordsfromthesol]

Character Model

Author: @wordsfromthesol Pairing: Jason Todd x Reader Summary: You may or may not have been following Jason Todd around a bookstore so you could model one of your story characters after him. He may or may not have noticed. Warnings: Language? Word Count: 2k A/N: Just a story from my drafts folder. Sorry I haven’t been able to write any of the wonderful requests I have sitting in my inbox...work has been running me ragged. But they are coming! Love you all 💛

You had no idea where this man came from, but he was perfect. Exactly what you envisioned the assassin prince in your newest story to look like, and he just waltzed into the bookstore. First, you tried to ignore him…after all it would be kind of creepy to stare at this man while sketching him and jotting down little details about the way he walks, talks, runs his fingers through his hair. The more you thought about it, the more you couldn’t get him out of your mind. As you watched his mannerisms, he just became more perfect. Fuck it. You got up from your seat and moved closer to him, pretending to look at the books on the shelf. It wasn’t a very good cover story, as it was quite obvious you were drawing him. I will never see this man again, who cares.

You were never the best artist, but the image got the message across. Once it was complete, you continued following him awkwardly around the store jotting down notes. His interest in certain books, the way he seemed to survey the bookstore…Maybe he is an assassin prince? Those didn’t actually exist right? You ignored those thoughts as you commented on his gait. Wrapped up in your descriptions, you didn’t realize he was now watching you. That is until you looked up again and saw his steel blue eyes staring into yours.

“What are you profiling me for, doll?”

You spun around, hoping he wasn’t talking to you. No such luck. “Oh, uhm, I wasn’t?”

“Hmm, sure does look like it. Can I see that sketch?”

“Heh, you saw that?” He raised his eyebrows. Of course he saw it, Y/N, you are being creepy. “Okay, I swear I’m not stalking you! I just…gosh this is going to sound so stupid…you look exactly like how I envisioned this character in my head…for a story.”

“You’re a writer?”

“Some people would beg to differ, but I guess technically.”

“So what’s the character then?”

Okay now he’s going to be offended. “Uhm…an assassin? But he’s also like prince to the guild thing. It’s kind of complicated.”

“So I look like an assassin?”

“Kind of…?” To your surprise the man chuckled.

“Not gunna lie, I’ve been called so much worse.”

Why are you so awkward? “Well sorry for being creepy…” You turned to leave and didn’t notice the man following you until you nearly slammed the front door in his face.

“I think I deserve to see that sketch after you followed me around for an hour AND tried to knock me out with a door.”

“Oh my go – I’m so sorry, I figured I’d thoroughly…embarrassed myself, so I left…why are you following me?”

“Thought I’d return the favor?” You gave him a nervous smile, the thought of this very large strange man walking you home, at night, in Gotham, did not provide you with much peace. “Relax, you look just like a character I imagined…” He quipped, trying to ease your obvious discomfort.

“Not funny.”

“Really though, it’s dark and getting late and this is Gotham.” You eyed him suspiciously, this still probably wasn’t the smartest move on your part, but you relented and motioned for him to follow.

“Don’t make fun of it, I’m a writer not an artist. This is purely for research.” You commented as you passed him the sheet of notebook paper.

“It looks good, I especially like all the little notes about me. Ruggedly handsome? Piercing steel blue eyes?”

Shit. I forgot about those. “Uhm, yeah.” You tried to snatch the paper back, but he could easily keep it from you. “It was research!” Huffing, you remember some of the descriptions were not very complimentary. Watching his eyes scan the page, you tried to explain. “Some of them are just for the character, don’t take it…”

“No, they are all…pretty spot on I’d say.” His voice turned solemn, almost sad, as he passed the paper back to you.

“I’m sorry.”

“Nah,” he waved it off, picking back up his nonchalant timbre.

The two of you mindless chatted about your favorite books until you arrived at your apartment building.

“Well, this is me. Thanks again…” You had just realized the two of you never exchanged names. “My name’s Y/N, by the way.”

“Jason. I’ll see you around. Try not to stalk anyone else.”

“No promises!” You called out as you entered the apartment.

**

It had been nearly a week, and honestly you didn’t expect to see the stranger again. After all, how would you? No numbers or last names were exchanged. Yet there he was, sitting across from you at the coffee shop, face buried in a book. This man is actually reading in a coffee shop. He looked so out of place compared to all the usual suspects. It would be creepy if I remembered him, right? I’m just going to ignore him. Your plan didn’t last long, as Jason soon came up and sat beside you.

“Stalking anyone new today?”

“Oh, I uhm…no. Writing about you actually…the character! The character not you.” God, you’re so smooth. You thought as you brought your hand up to cover your face.

“So how is assassin me doing today?”

“Honestly? You’re kind of being a bitch. Like how am I supposed to know how you will react if you are refusing to tell me?”

“Uhm…isn’t that the part you’re supposed to make up?”

“No, I made up you…the assassin…now you’re…they’re supposed to tell me what they want to do.”

“Uh huh. Right. You know they aren’t real right? Like I’m not actually a killer prince.”

“Heh, yeah I know. Wouldn’t that be cool though?”

“I just think you’d be assassinated.”

“Ohh, harsh. Though, sadly, I would just be murdered.”

“No, I had it right.” Jason gave you a smirk as he got up from the table and walked out the door.

Did that actually just happen? You quickly gathered your things and threw them into your computer bag, racing after him. “WAIT!” You noticed he had stopped just outside the door and well before you called after him.

“Walking home?”

“Uhm, yeah. Can I ask you some questions first?”

“How about you can ask me questions until we get to your apartment building?”

“Deal.”

It was a short ten-minute walk, but you picked his brain. Giving him situations to see how he would react. This was way easier than you rewriting the scene, or going back and forth for hours before giving up and not writing anything at all. In fact, his reactions were eerily similar to that of your murderous character. You weren’t accidentally copying his life, right?

**

The next time you saw him, you were out with friends at some random bar. He sat there stoically on the bar stool, staring into space. This was so…like if your character had just murdered someone. No, he couldn’t have. Probably just a bad day. You excused yourself from the group of friends and slide in to the stool besides Jason.

“So, Jason, bad day?”

“Oh, Y/N. I didn’t…you’re here.”

“Yeah, I try to have a life sometimes. Albeit very rarely.”

“Hm, well, don’t let me keep you.”

“That’s alright, they are content without me.” You pointed towards a group of people. “And plus, you look like you need some company.”

“…”

“Man, riveting stuff. So, what are you drinking?”

“Whiskey.”

“Just…straight? Alright, spill. Remember I know you.”

“I…just had a bad day at work. I’ll get over it.”

“I’m sure whatever happened wasn’t your fault. Some situations are inevitable.”

“I guess.”

“So what do you do, exactly?”

A sad, solemn smile laced his lips as he got up from the bar. “Another time. Get home safe, Y/N.”

“That wasn’t an answer…” you mumbled as you made your way back to your friends.

**

Just the next day, you were mindless going aisle by aisle in the grocery store, when you feel someone slightly bump into you. You whipped your head around to see the culprit, when what you saw was Jason with a big grin on his face.

“I’m starting to think you never stopped stalking me.”

“If anything, you’re stalking me. This is the closest grocery to my apartment…which you know the address of. I have no clue where you live.”

“Fair enough.” He looked down at the assorted items in your cart, “got a plan for those?”

“Honestly, my version of cooking is throwing some things in a pan and hoping for the best.”

“Hm, well, I could come over and show you some things?”

“Jason, I don’t know your middle or last name, are you offering to cook for me?”

“Peter Todd, and yes, Y/N  Y/M/N  Y/L/N, I am.”

You looked at him with surprise, “See, now who’s stalking who.”

He started to trail off with a smirk, “I’ll be at yours at 6!”

Did that seriously just happen? How did he know my name? Once you were done you raced home to clean. You were so not prepared for guests, with your scratch paper and sticky notes strewn about the apartment. As soon as the clock struck 6, you heard a knock at the door.

**

Jason tried to show you what he’s doing in the kitchen, but you couldn’t care less. You sat on the counter, pretending to listen to the instructions, while sipping on the wine in your hand.

“You’re not retaining any of this, are you?”

“Hmm, not really. But I’m quite enjoying watching you do it.” You motioned for him to continue preparing the meal.

“Are you just trying to get a free meal?”

“Well, technically I paid for the food, I’m just after the free chef…that was…I meant like after the preparation of the food…not after you…” Shut up Y/N, you are making it worse.

“That’s alright, I’m just after the free writer.” He looked over his shoulder and winked at you before returning to the stove.

“Does cooking always take this long? It’s nearly 7!” You were trying to quickly change the subject and forget the embarrassment you had just endured.

“Calm down, doll, it’s nearly ready. Grab some plates.” You hopped off the counter and took two plates down from the cabinet, placing them next to the stove before sitting at your kitchen island patiently waiting to be served food.

**

“Okay, this is amazing. MAYBE worth the hour wait.”

“Oh well MAYBE I’ll take it back then.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Though both of your plates had been empty for hours, and the mess in the kitchen was staring you in the face, neither of you could seem to move. You found anything and everything to talk about, well almost everything. For some reason he still wouldn’t tell you what he did for a living. Which annoyed you because whatever it was clearly took its toll.

“Okay, fine! Don’t tell me, some big ole secret. I’m beginning to think you actually are an assassin prince and your consciousness just went into mine…so now you’re a character in my book.”

“I guess I’ll just have to read it and let you know.”

You side-eyed him, “You can read it when I find out what you do?” You knew at this point there was no hope in getting an answer.

“Tempting. Perhaps you can tempt me further Wednesday night.” Jason rose from the stool and traipsed over to the door. You quickly followed him, mainly out of sheer confusion.

“What’s Wednesday night?”

“Well, I figure those leftovers will last about two days. Can’t leave you without your free chef.” At this point his face was inches from yours. “I’ll be here at 6.” He whispered as he quickly spun on his heel and left.

[spyder-m]

Love Games

ao3 / ff.net 

Summary:  On a particularly grueling trip through Mementos, the Phantom Thieves play a few rounds of "Never Have I Ever" to fend off boredom. In doing so, they learn more about their leader and advisor than they had anticipated. Shumako.

.

Ann's eyes carefully scanned the bleak expanse that was Mementos, low-level shadows scurrying away from the blare of headlights.

Blue irises strained as they adjusted to the darkness of the subway, not wanting the target to disappear from her sight.

"I spy with my little eye… something that's brown and grey-"

"Railroad tracks," Futaba answered, not even bothering to look up from her laptop.

"Wow, Oracle. You got it on the first try! How did you know?"

"Are you for real?!" Ryuji exclaimed; the outburst startling a quietly sketching Yusuke beside him. "There's only like three things down here you coulda possibly been lookin' at. Urgh! This game sucks!

Delving this far into the depths made for a long and arduous trip.

Though Morgana's bus form was fairly spacious, with the seven of them packed in together; and a lack of proper air-conditioning; it was becoming a little stifling.

Some of the more fiery members of the group were beginning to get on each other's nerves.

Beyond the occasional pit-stop to stretch their legs, fighting off shadows and scouring out the different nooks of Mementos for treasures or potential targets, served as their only reprieve.

Even Makoto couldn't find too much of a distraction in the drive. Each level was beginning to look eerily similar, and Futaba's persona could usually map out a clear path through to the next exit. Save for swerving to avoid the odd shadow, it didn't require much concentration. Her muscles were already settling unconsciously into a rhythm.

Still, she had been able to find comfort in the silent form of Joker beside her. It was remarkable how well he could read her and ease the tension she felt with a gentle smile or supporting touch of his hand. The calm washing over her like a healing spell.

He was measured in the affectionate gestures, not wanting to attract the attention of their passengers; currently seeking out other ways to pass the time.

"Alright, fine. Let's hear you suggest something then, Skull." Ann huffed, her eyes narrowing as she folded her arms.

Blinking, the blond scratched his head in thought; not having expected her to turn to him for a suggestion.

"Well, uh... there's that game Westerners always play in movies." He offered. "Y'know, the one where they hold up their fingers and say something they've never done before."

"Isn't that a drinking game?" Makoto's glare lifted, catching the others in the rear-view mirror. "I'll remind you we're all underage and in a car."

"It don't have to be." Ryuji waved his arms, not wanting to incur the wrath of the team's advisor. "Come on! It'll be fun!"

Despite some initial skepticism, the crew supposed that Ryuji's suggestion might not actually be such a bad idea.

The founding members of the Phantom Thieves had been together for several months now and felt pretty tightly knit. The exposure to one another's pasts, their most guarded secrets and inner selves only helped to shift their relationship towards something much more intimate.

Still, between time in the Metaverse, strategy meetings, studying for exams, and part-time jobs, they didn't get many opportunities to spend time together as friends.

They were still a lot of things they didn't know about each other as people.

Haru was their newest member and didn't seem to have many friends outside of their immediate circle. Futaba was still coming out of her shell and sharing secrets among friends could help to continue building her social skills. Yusuke… Well, Yusuke was an enigma. For as long as they'd known him, there was still a lot they hadn't quite figured out.

Even Makoto; though having acclimated well with the team and into her advisory role; was still striving to more learn about her peers.

These were the kind of games kids their age would normally play at parties; a luxury their unique extra-curricular activities as the Phantom Thieves often deprived them of.

It could be a great opportunity for them to get to know each other better.

"Ooo, I'll start!" Futaba called, her hand shooting up. "Never have I ever… gone on a trip to Hawaii!"

"Wha- Oracle! That's not fair!"

"Mwehehehe…" The youngest member cackled. "Well, I had to get one up on you guys. Never underestimate the original Medjed."

"Well, alright. That's one finger down for... Everyone except Oracle. Alright, Noir. It's your turn."

"Oh. Well, let me see." Haru pondered. "Never have I ever... Tried the 6,000 yen Dark Ivory coffee at the Wilton Hotel."

The engine rumbled amidst the dip in conversation, the teens looking between one another with blank expressions.

"Uh, Noir?" Ann eventually broke the silence. "Clearly none of us have done that before. Now you have to lower a finger. You're supposed try to try and get us out."

"Oh, I could never do that. You're all my friends."

"But that's the point of the game!" Ryuji's voice rose again. "You're gonna lose at this rate!"

"Moving on." Ren interrupted, his lips sliding into a smirk. "Never have I ever eaten so much fatty tuna that I made myself sick."

"What?!" The Mona-bus vibrated as an indignant mewl reverberated throughout. "Why are you singling me out, Joker? I'm not playing. I don't even have fingers!"

"We can keep track. That's one down for Mona."

"Hmph. Fine, but I'm going next."

"Whatever. Do your worst."

"Never have I ever… called a Maid Service before."

"You damn cat!" Ryuji exclaimed, thumping the side of the car. "I thought we agreed to keep quiet about that."

"You called a Maid Service?" Ann side-eyed Ryuji, a shudder crawling up the base of his spine.

"Well, uh…" Anxious, Ryuji glance darted around the inside of the car, desperate for a lifeline. "Hey! I- I'm not the only one who's guilty here. Right, leader?"

Swallowing, Ren begrudgingly lowered a finger.

"What?!"

"A maid's services? Hmm, how fascinating. I wonder if they would be willing to serve as the model for my next piece?"

"Dude, it's 5,000 yen a visit. Like you'd be able to afford that."

"Also, I thought you agreed; no more nude paintings!"

"Anyway! Uh… Panther; you're up next."

"Oh, me? Hm, well... Never have I ever… dated before."

To the surprise of no one in the group, Ryuji, Yusuke, and Futaba each kept the fingers up, while Haru lowered a finger. However, given the circumstances surrounding her and her fiancé, the Thieves were happy not to ask for any more details. What piqued their curiosity more so, was when Makoto and Ren both each lowered a finger.

"Wait… What?!"

"Dude! You mean you were out scorin' hotties and didn't think to tell me?!"

"Well, Joker has had an entire life outside of Tokyo that we are not privy to…"

"Plus, his charm stats are like… maxed out."

"Right. Still, I really wasn't expecting that from you, Queen."

"W- well, there is someone… That I'm seeing."

The car jolted, almost swerving off of the tracks and into the station's wall, as Ann pulled herself over the front seat.

"What?!"

"Panther, please! Stay in your seat."

"Oops. Sorry!" Ann flushed, returning to her spot in the middle row. "I just can't believe you'd keep something like that from me."

"W- well, we both agreed to keep things... discreet."

"Perhaps we should move on from this topic for the time being," Yusuke suggested. "It seems to be getting Panther rather excited."

"Right." Joker nodded. "Well, Queen; it's your turn."

Makoto paused, one hand slipping from the steering wheel to touch her chin.

There was much she had not experienced before finding the Phantom Thieves, things that many would see as a normal part of life for a typical, Japanese teenager. If she were being tactical, there were likely several answers she could give that would get most of the others out.

Still, recently she had been fortunate to gain friends who brought more of simple pleasures into her life. In particular, it was thanks to the young man seated across from her that she had been able to broaden her horizons.

Though, thinking on it; as she caught Joker in her peripheral vision; Makoto realised, with a flush, there were still things she wished to learn.

"Never have I ever... kissed someone before."

"Woah, woah, wait a minute." Ryuji interjected. "You're with a guy but you haven't even swapped spit yet?"

"Skull." Ann sighed, her nose wrinkling at the boy's crude description.

"N- no, it's fine, really." Makoto countered, lifting her hands from the wheel briefly. "It's all still very new to me. I think he's just been holding back on my account. I just wish there was a way I could let him know that I want it as much as I think he does."

"Aw, don't worry, Queen!" Futaba encouraged. "I'm sure he'll come to his senses."

"Yeah! Any guy would be lucky to be with you."

"Anyway, looks like Joker and Noir are the only ones who lowered their fingers. No surprises there."

"Actually," Joker cleared his throat, and raised his hand, showing that his total was still at seven.

"Okay, now I'm confused."

"What else is new?"

A pained meow rang from the car as Ryuji's bat struck the inside wall.

Makoto flushed as she felt Joker's gaze cover her; the stark white of his mask accentuating his eyes, drawing her to them. She bit her lip, readjusting her grip on the steering wheel.

"I suppose you could say I was... holding back."

"I- is that, so?" Makoto answered, trying to keep her eyes focused ahead, away from Ren's longing stare.

She had hoped that in keeping her answers curt and concentrating on the road ahead the conversation would shift, the rest of the Thieves carrying on with their game. Yet, their interest had seemingly turned towards their leader, as he watched her with a fond smile.

"Queen, pull over here." Joker instructed abruptly; his tone sharp.

Makoto slowed the vehicle to stop, suspecting that Joker had spotted a target.

She immediately ripped off her seatbelt and moved to open the door, more than willing to steer the focus away from their conversation.

However, at the flash of red covering her own gloved hand and ceasing her movement, she turned, catching Joker's mask with a puzzled expression.

Having readied herself for battle, Makoto's normally sharp reflexes had been prepared to react the moment something grasped at her. Though, her guard slipped as Joker's fingers caught her the jaw.

Their masks clinked together as he pulled her face towards his own; the breath that ripped involuntarily from her throat was caught by the soft pressure of his lips.

Her first kiss.

The scent of coffee still lingered on his breath, likely remnants from his breakfast at Leblanc. The bitter taste warmed her chest, striking and familiar.

Now unimpeded by her seatbelt, Makoto fell deeper into Ren's embrace, her hands lifting to catch in the thick clumps of his hair.

It was surprisingly soft.

Spurred on by the sensation of Makoto kissing back, Ren trailed his hands down to the swell of her hips, appreciating how her suit clung to them. Makoto's eyes bulged in surprise as she was pulled into Joker's lap, though she didn't break from his lips, her arms surrounding him.

With that daring gesture, it struck her that she was sharing her first kiss not with Ren, but Joker; an experience distinct from what she had anticipated. It hadn't been a shy, chaste caress that had caught her; a moment their relationship had steadily being building towards; but something bolder, more extravagant.

The gesture, in a sense, reflected how they had entered each other's lives, how they had awoken to their true selves in the Metaverse; abruptly and explosively. How everything strange and otherworldly suddenly began to make sense, as if it had been there, waiting, all along.

There was something captivating about the suave, cocky persona Ren assumed in the Metaverse. Seeing those soft, shy smiles of his break into confident grins; his dark, mysterious eyes, shining and proud. The way he remained strong and collected for the rest of his team, even during their most tense battles.

That he was forward enough to make the first move; where in the real world he may have hesitated; closing the distance between them like this, his lips flickering into a familiar smirk as they caressed against her own.

It was... sexy.

The magic dissipated as Makoto became conscious of the eyes boring into her, sliding up her spine like cold digits as she recalled, abruptly, that they weren't alone. Gasping, Makoto slipped from Joker's arms, glancing mortified, towards their friends.

Ann's hands had lifted to cover her mouth, barely containing the bright smile lighting her features. There was a sheen in her wide, starry eyes. Haru had moved up beside her, hands similarly cradled together.

"Oh, how romantic."

With a smirk, Futaba had, reflexively, pulled out her smartphone; a pout settling across her features when she remembered the camera function was useless in the Metaverse.

Beside her, Yusuke was rifling through the back of the car, eventually producing a canvas and a selection of brushes, frantically setting them up.

"You two, hold your positions! I must capture this!"

"Inari!? When did you bring that with you? And also, why?"

Ryuji watched on in curious silence, his brow furrowed as he scratched the back of his head.

"Huh? Skull? What's up?"

"So, like... Do they have to drop a finger now, or what?"

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Emily's Awakening, Part Two

The memory of Julian tore Emily out of the here and now. Time stood still as their shared past flashed back to her.

Julian was the once in a lifetime kind of blend of genius, compassion, and peak physical perfection, all rolled into one incredible package.

Emily had known him from high school, though they were only loosely acquainted in those more innocent years. It wasn’t until much later, right when she had graduated from Berkeley, that she bumped into him again. Similar to how she remembered him from high school years—when he was basically the football jock who also happened to have his head screwed on right and was writing good grades as well—he was now a successful plastic surgeon in L.A. and had stayed in shape.

She was in the middle of getting her feet wet in the journalistic field, and drinking in a hotel bar to get over the rejection letter she had received from the Los Angeles Times. He exited from a doctor’s convention that he was attending there and instantly recognized her, even after all those years. They chatted, hit it off big time, and kicked off a turbulent phase of dating each other, filled with a lot of laughter and fiery passion.

Now he was dead. A ghost in her mind.

Julian was a generous guy, affluent due to both his work and his wealthy parents, well-connected—he had it all. His family didn’t like Emily, but it didn’t matter to either of them. He was a gentleman, vowed to have her back, and always lived up to his word.

Four months in, she decided that she wanted to surprise him by asking him to get engaged. But he didn’t show up for dinner. Or come home that night. Or arrive at work the next day. He had just vanished from the face of the earth. Nobody knew why, though worries grew amongst everybody close to Julian.

Even while she was worried sick, Emily was one of the prime suspects once enough time had passed and cops had gotten in on the case. She did her own part to find him, flexing her reporter muscles, but to no avail. Nothing added up and not a single clue pointed to his whereabouts.

Eventually, Julian’s body showed up. His parents and Emily identified his remains. Cops found the right culprit, too. A real whackjob D-list celebrity whom Julian had refused to operate any more on—she freaked out, murdered him, and kept him in her trunk for the whole week.

Even though the circumstances of his death were a major cogwheel in the chaos machine of what jaded Emily over the course of her life, she refused to let Julian’s horrible death ever overshadow the time they had shared together. She really loved Julian, because he was the only person who ever appreciated her—all edges and flaws and everything. He really got her—her strange sense of humor, how she only acted mean to keep people at an arm’s length—and they would laugh about inside jokes that nobody else in the world could ever even hope to understand.

She quit smoking for him. He always said that he didn’t like seeing her smoke because he thought the vice would make her leave this world sooner, and he couldn’t bear that thought. She started smoking again soon after he died, but she always refused to think about the why.

Julian was one of several people who shaped who she became—a driven woman, an unstoppable force of nature. One of the many undeserving, innocent victims mangled in the meat-grinder of a shitty, merciless world. But he was the one she cherished the most.

No partner before Julian was ever comparable, and she hadn’t been on the lookout ever since. Emily was convinced that it was the once in a lifetime thing. That she would never find such love ever again.

That bubble of time burst. Just popped back out of existence.

Here she was, still in front of that security guard whose frame reminded her of Julian.

Tall, broad-shouldered, probably worked out every day. Jawline that could cut glass. Definitely some eerily reminiscent facial features, too.

Part of it made her feel soft. It helped fuel that smile she flashed at the guard to the back entrance of the Estoria Pacific; helped conceal the things lurking underneath her facade—the darkness she harbored in her soul. Then she remembered what she was here to do.

The gears went off, grinding furiously behind her head, and she was grounded in reality once more. She pushed the memories back—both the pleasant and the unpleasant ones.

No more Julian. No more Vicky, Hal, Gloria. No more Tran—the hazy, drunken memory from the previous night returned to her in a flash. How many more times did she have to visit a morgue and ID a corpse? No more.

No more.

The guard gave no response to Emily’s query. He simply opened the door, stepped aside, and let her in. Another guard awaited her inside. Latino fellow; dressed similarly but shorter and much less handsome, equally silently—he nodded to her and motioned to follow him.

She caught a glimpse of a beautiful hall through kitchen corridors, being prepared for a party to come some time later. Exquisite meals were being prepared, crates loaded, waffles and cream made from scratch for cakes. Nobody here spat in the food, everyone wore a hair net and gloves. People paid well for the grub, and the patrons received quality service.

Who owned this place? That was one thing that eluded Emily’s investigation. Estoria Pacific never published any articles that would interview the club owners. It was common knowledge that there was a board of directors, a sort of a group of elite founders—likely wealthy investors. But they stayed out of newspapers and issued statements through the Club’s spokesman; some PR monkey who wasn’t in the savvy of anything.

Emily tensed up, and remembered one of her most valuable lessons: breathe. She let her eyes do the sweeping, not the head. The reporter found her steady rhythm in breathing, in a swaying stride filled with swagger.

She followed the second guard down corridor after corridor. She knew she was out of place. But she belonged here, now; more than anybody else.

She held her chin up high, burning inside—a cocktail of a hangover countered with pain medications and cheap booze, blending with excitement over the case finally going somewhere, anywhere—and the sweet, sweet cherry of impending victory sitting on top.

But something else, too. Something familiar, something she had to fight back. Something she hadn’t felt since the trafficking story. Something that made her think of Tran again. The pale corpse of Tran on the cold slab in the morgue.

That something she felt was fear.

The guard led Emily all the way down to storage warehouses, where she was handed off to yet another guard. This one took her under the mezzanine down into the freezers. Things looked less and less like a club and more and more like a cold and unforgiving facility. The doors started looking less polished, more metal, rustic, bulletproof—until eventually things became seedy enough to send a chill down her spine.

The guard was joined by another guard, deeper in the underbelly of the facility—a big bald giant of a man, this one without a club uniform suit, looking more like an actual gangster. His gun’s grip stood out from a chest holster in plain view. Just like the previous guys, he didn’t spare a single word for Emily, nor did he react to her in any way, merely doing his job of showing her to where she belonged.

They led her down another flight of stairs, and the gangster-looking fellow opened a double-lock and then removed a chain off of a steel cage door. This portal separated whatever this was where she was, from whatever lay hidden within. Likely an increased security facility.

A sinking suspicion filled Emily’s mind, giving her the impression that she had wound up somewhere completely different in the city—somewhere not even under the club anymore.

At one point, she registered a little sting of pain and found that she had dug her own fingernails deep enough into her palms to leave visible pink impressions.

She flashed a smile at the next guard as well. It was only honest—timid, clipped, and fading quickly from her lips—because she needed it more for herself. She needed it more to support her own confidence than she did to keep up any veneer of belonging.

Cages, cages, and cages of various sizes. Some were large enough to stand in, while others were obviously dog cages in which an adult human being could only be inside of them on all fours. Leashes with collars hung inside the cages. Dog bowls for food and water were set into every one of them. However, all cages were empty.

The whole place smelled of sweat and waste. A black man in a white wife beater was washing the floor, pushing murky mucky fluid down the many floor drains. There were hints of yellow and pink slop on the mop.

This was it.

The razor’s edge.

Just like when Emily walked into the trafficker dungeons. An icy cold gauntlet gripped her heart.

Like then, just like with the hit man in the Mancini mansion, she realized how she straddled the razor’s edge, balancing along that dangerously thin line between life and death.

Was the camera working? Would the government spooks be here in time to help her if and when anything went south? There was no telling and Emily felt more alone than ever before.

The lifeless body of Tran returned, creeping up on her in the back in her mind, haunting her through her inner eye. This time, however, it ignited something unfamiliar.

This was for her. This was for them. This was for all the victims, both the ones she knew and the ones she’d never know. This was bigger than herself. This was what she was meant to do; where she was meant to be.

Emily inhaled sharply but quietly and her nostrils flared.

A door on the other end of the room of cages was so thick that it could be rightfully called a vault door. It bore the makings of something made up to submarine standards. At least six inches thick, and looking heavy by the body language of another guard opening it with a grunt. He struggled to release the locks, and a familiar hiss of military grade machinery released the hydraulics.

The door was insulated, possibly pressurized. Small round window set into it, nautical in appearance. Through it, Emily perceived the silhouettes of people standing in near darkness. The door opened fully, and the big bald guard admitted her inside with a sweeping hand gesture.

She discovered a well decorated room, more in line with the poker rooms up in the club; centered around a wooden stage. Carpet floors, curtains, candles, tables. No foul smell here, which helped explain the unusual door.

This was an auction stage, clear as day. Around it, men in tuxedos and women in evening dresses were assembled in the dark. Everybody wore masks befitting a crowd at a Venetian carnival party or a certain movie by Stanley Kubrick.

A live classical band performed in the auction hall, humming away with their cello, bass, and two violins; orchestrating this odd event with quiet and non-intrusive live music. A few of the masked figures nearby looked back at Emily and the guards with her—more reactively, because the sound of the door’s hiss had distracted them from their subdued conversations.

The auctioneer, dressed in a red tux with a grinning devil’s mask on his face, addressed the crowd in a ceremonial festive voice.

Emily knew the type: this one sure mowed his lawn and had three kids, a dog, and a trophy wife. Probably donated often to charity.

“That certainly was an entertaining bid,” he almost sung. “Now, for our next prize. A beautiful exotic—I would say, extravagant item. Ladies and gentlemen, I guarantee it, whatever your taste, whatever your preference—this is not one to pass up. It will force you to fall in love. Coming to us from far away across the seas is—oh, welcome, we have newcomers. Welcome, welcome. Step right in, you’re right on time for the show.”

Regardless, Emily walked deeper inside. Her digits tingled; her nerves turned into iron strings so taut that you could play tense music on them, rising to a crescendo. Her mouth ran dry with a cottony feeling and she heard the blood rushing in her ears.

She hoped the camera was working. This was one of those things that nobody would believe if they only heard about it. You had to see it with your own eyes, and even then people would dispute the grainy recordings that accompany such scandalous discoveries.

She observed some of the masked guests, looking out for clues that might let her recognize familiar features and famous faces.

This was also the kind of crowd who had ways to silence you if you wanted to testify in court.

Accordingly, Emily knew she needed something concrete.

A waiter served her a mask on a platter with a glass of sparkling white wine. The mask depicted the stylized face of a gray rat, complete with long whiskers—Emily felt a pang of guilt when she got the sense that its mean expression and a crooked smile matched her common demeanor towards the world.

Slipping the mask on to shrug off that sinking feeling, she looked through the crowd some more and finally recognized a woman standing among the high society bidders, near the higher elevated seats, VIP row. This lady wore a black mask in the shape of a happy theatrical face, dressed the same way as Agent Laura Davidson, from the meeting on the bench in the plaza before.

Out of earshot of anybody, all the while glaring at “Agent Davidson,” Emily hissed under her breath, “Motherfucker.”

Every fiber in her body screamed at once—she knew things were about to end badly. But she had to see this through. She always had to.

She fought the urge to curse more and pretended to mingle, blending her way through the small crowd and raising her glass to her lips. But she didn’t take a sip, only tipping it lightly, feigning to drink from her glass.

The scent hit her nostrils with tantalizing sweetness, but she knew better. She was not drinking any of this shit.

The crowd parted around her and a spotlight transfixed itself on Emily.

“As I said gentlemen, a rat,” said the black-masked woman.

The crowd started chanting, “Rat, rat, rat, rat.”

“No matter your taste, no matter your preference, it is hard to pass up a good rat. Bring her up!”

The rat-masked Emily struggled against the plethora of strong hands and arms that suddenly seized her. She quickly found herself more easily shoved and carried onto the auction stage than she could kick and buck against them to stop this from happening.

The mountains of meat that were the guards holding her then bent her arms behind her back and forced her down onto her knees. With the flash of light bouncing off a knife, followed by the cutting sound of fabric, one of the goons harshly cut the front of her clothing open to expose her breasts.

Despite the chaos engulfing her, Emily spotted him in the crowd. He hadn’t been there all this time, but now he was. In the shadow, escaping the flood light. Invisible to the world around him.

The mysterious old homeless man from the night before.

His lips did not move but his words entered her mind, “When the world is a prison, there are those who are the prisoners, cursed with unknowing; and the jailers who hold the keys to their unseen cells. But what the jailers don’t know is that they themselves are also inmates. A prison built by inmates for inmates, happy to stay within the prison as they build it around themselves and cherish it. And they will do anything they can to maintain and stay on their thrones of shit within it.”

The old Wise Man watched Emily from the crowd. His presence and the voluminous words in her mind drowned out the auctioneer’s festive descriptions of her hair, face, body, and temper.

Bid flags flew up—almost everyone bid on Emily like she was some piece of meat.

From behind the two muscle-packed men forcing Emily into her kneeling position, a third one approached. He brought a glass of champagne to her lips and roughly forced it under the mask. He breathed into her left ear, “Drink.”

“The inmates and the wardens are the same—they know each other only by the rules they accept, out of fear of losing the prison and the illusion of power they hold within its confines,” the Wise Man’s words cut like knives through the void, reaching only Emily’s mind.

The blood rushing in her ears turned into the pounding of drums. It was the first time she had ever sensed what embers lay beneath, blistering with malicious heat. What slept there, crackling like a dying fire, hidden underneath the canvas of fear, was what lay deep at the heart of her deepest self.

A burning rage.

The fire roared into flames within, and it was not fear that paralyzed her, but the power of those forcing her down. Those who forced everybody down, making them small, treating them like objects.

Emily took a sip, then spat it right out; right into the face of the nearest goon who had forced her to drink. She thrashed and flailed and tried to wrestle free in the ensuing split seconds of confusion, but to no avail.

If she was to die here, what would become of her cats?

Is she was to die here, then everything here would burn with her. It was the oath she swore unspoken. Instead, through a string of profanities she spewed out, she sneered at her captors through gritted teeth, clenching her jaws until her gums bled, “You shit-heads are going to pay.”

A hard slap on the face made her ears and head ring—an indicator that her spitting the drink into someone’s face was successful and had gotten to that sack of shit. It was hard to see because the damned mask had slid up into a crooked position with the eye holes somewhere over her forehead. Who did she get?

Didn’t matter. Fuck him. Fuck ‘em all.

The rage inside of her drowned out whatever the announcer was saying and the crowd of this sick perverts murmured in response.

Then the crowd whistled and applauded, in what almost sounded like a polite and timid manner. Not like a football crowd—not a roar—but a calm, timid, amused applause. Bearing the gentlest “ooohs” and “aaahs,” as if her painful outburst was a nice touch of surprise to this whole deranged show.

“Ten thousand! Eleven! Eleven and a half! Twelve—thirteen thousand—fourteen anyone? Fourteen! I see fifteen, sixteen—really? Alright alright, let’s go straight to twenty? Twenty anyone? Twenty! Twenty one—twenty two,” the bids kept rising.

“Quell the rage. Its fire will consume you. Stay calm and you will not die,” Wise Man recited in her head, mirroring ancient mantras, blending them with her current situation.

With her nostrils flaring and her whole body trembling—with liquid fury pulsing through her veins—she listened to Wise Man. Emily focused. Wild thrashing wouldn’t cut it. It was all about the timing now. Finding the right opportunity and seizing it.

She refused to end up as the next pale lifeless body on the metal slab in some dark morgue. She owed it to everybody she had lost, and everybody who might be saved, no matter how little she may accomplish in this life.

Emily whispered to herself, finding an uncanny and almost foreign clarity deep within. It became a mantra as she repeated it, “Rat finds the way off the sinking ship.”

The men continued to strip her and then strap her hands together behind her back with cable ties. People came up on stage to enjoy her various aspects—in the way only psychopaths torturing animals would regard the creatures with a fascination detached from any semblance of empathy.

Focusing on Wise Man and her mantra, she tuned it all out. She detached from this reality. Her meditative mind—a mind steeled in cigarette smoke, drowned in bottomless whiskey glasses, subdued by numerous nightly joints—that jaded mind, that lack of innocence. This mental state protected her and kept her sane now.

She was okay with this. She was surviving.

Mirroring the immovable object that she had become, the Wise Man stood motionless, like a mirage in the crowd, the singular only figure standing still in the midst of a hurricane of animated beasts, in the middle of a pile of demented animals passing as humans.

He heard her whispers, her mantra. Only he.

Someone ripped her mask off. It tore her from the bubble, peeled away a layer of protection, but instead of the grim reality outside, Emily glimpsed something else.

She found herself entirely elsewhere: on a burning pentagram, in the depths of an ancient, evil cave. The audience and her captors—her tormentors—not human, but all devils of various shapes and sizes. Their tongues twisted and split as they drowned out each other’s cacophony of blasphemies in hideous laughter. They lashed each other and themselves with barbed whips, rent their own flesh with horrifically jagged blades. They ate human body parts from trays made of bleached bone.

In a bright flash of orange flame, Emily landed naked. And free from her captors, unbound.

In the middle of her own apartment? Had she done this somehow? Winked her way out of that impossible situation, just by willing it so?

The scope of things threw her off and made her stomach knot. Everything around her was far too big. The couch and coffee table were huge, like dark towers supporting a glass sky. Behind her loomed something the size of a building, of black shiny substance with a soothing green window up on top, ocean blue numbers projecting inside of it. They displayed time, but that clock was frozen solid. Time stood still.

The craziest part of it—Emily wasn’t freaking out.

This was not real in the common sense, but also not unreal. A more apt description would be to explain it as a different reality intersecting with the one she had grown accustomed to.

Everything made perfect sense, which also meant that the current situation caught back up to her in a bright white flash, of cold and unforgiving colors like that of fluorescent lamps in a hospital flickering on. Or the lights in a morgue.

The savagery of nearly being turned into a sex slave by some crazy rich assholes, and the gruesome images of the devils in the dark cave washed over Emily, and she wept. Tears of release, tears of despair, acting out their passion play to go with a whole chorus of emotions bubbling up. Every other little thing she had pushed deep down in her life to function, every last ounce of dust from the edges that had been sanded down by the darkness of this world—it all boiled over and spilled out, streaming forth through rivers of tears.

Through the blurry haze of it all, she took in her surroundings, hugging herself while remaining on her knees, just seconds of despair away from giving up and curling up into a fetal position. She wondered if this was just some elaborate fantasy to detach herself from the horrible reality of people doing things to her while she was helpless.

Maybe none of this freaked her out because nothing ever made any sense to begin with.

As she rose to her feet—wobbly, trembling, and wiping away the tears—the clarity returned.

No guilt. No regret.

No worries came from a world made of glass and shadows.

“Oh no, you don’t. Get back in here. You’ve always been a rat on the inside and now you’re one on the outside,” Jones spoke in his raspy voice. His words did not arrive through the tinny speakers of a phone. They droned like the deep bass of a colossus.

His titanic form towered above the monolith that was the suitcase, a man in a black business suit, garbed in a fancy white overcoat. A cruel grin marked his stubbled face while he attempted to step on Emily. Before he could bring that giant shoe crashing down, three gargantuan tigers leapt in front of her to shield her. With growls and snarls, they clawed at him and got in his way, causing him to recoil and topple backwards.

Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte—unmistakably, Emily knew it was them—now saber-toothed tigers, hailing from another era. From another world.

He kicked them away as they rent and ripped at the ends of his trousers. Giants fighting giants.

“Oh no—no! Don’t try to fight this with your compassion. With your little friends. You were warned. You’re all in now. Shoulda taken the deal, silly girl,” Jones droned on as he swung at the tigers to keep them at bay.

The black building—the doomed suitcase—exploded. Jones, the world, Emily herself—flames engulfed everything.

“What?” Jones cried out, his tone rising into the fever pitch of surprise. “No!”

The three tigers, with manes of fire, jumped to Emily. Miranda snatched her in her mouth and they took off. The beasts ran through a hellish landscape where fire consumed all; where everything solid flaked into the ashes of oblivion.

No—Emily knew better—the realities crossed again—these were the industrial underworld hidden underneath the Estoria Pacific. The tigers had crossed over as well and carried her off the auction stage.

The devilish audience stared in shock, stunned and incapable of reacting. Their masks had become their faces: pigs, lizards, devils, hounds. Those masks had turned flesh, gaining a full facial reality. Masks no more, the onlookers were these abominations now.

Emily looked around, struggling to regain her bearings. Just like none of it freaked her out before, finding that calm center in the eye of the storm, her eyes now darted back and forth, weighing every option within the window of a split-second.

What could she grab hold of? Where could she go?

How could she make these fuck-pigs pay?

As soon as she asked herself these things without uttering them loud, a deafening cacophony flooded into her head, drowning out all her own thoughts.

“I need to pay my mortgage today.”

“Should mow the lawn this Tuesday.”

“I hope Theresa is okay with this when she finds out. Maybe I can get her into it. Maybe get her a nice Vietnamese boy.”

“What if Mark knows? Jesus, what if Mark knows?”

“Okay, two hours tops, gonna cum real quick, fly over to Boston, change tickets, check the stock market, meet with the execs tomorrow morning, be ready for dinner with Ehnske, and still make my way back for the merger talks. Get a nice hooker in between.”

“Tonight—I’ll do it tonight. Everything’s written off. Gonna do it with my .38, the .22 might not do it and leave me crippled. Put tarp in the garage, put my head in the bucket, so the blood pools, I don’t want Ellie to have to clean up, to call the police.”

“Damn, she has nice tits. I love a redhead with nice tits. I wanna eat that ass.”

“They let us kill the last rat at the end of the session, I’m seriously going to outbid Lanston this time. That motherfucker got to drug the Chinese chick to death. My god, it was so hot—he kept fucking her as he kept the injection going until she passed out.”

“Man, what am I doing here? I’ll quit, next week, I promise. God, forgive me. I’ll turn in my VIP card this Sunday. Please, God forgive me.”

“God, if this is wrong, why don’t you strike me down? Strike us all down?”

“God, is this wrong?”

“I’m scared.”

“This is kind of scary.”

“What if someone finds out?”

“What if the kids find out?”

“What if this was my kid?”

Voices. The voices of the audience flowed into Emily’s consciousness, like searing red-hot lava.

The rage swelled again; a candlelight flickering and then flaring into a flame with a sinister roar. But this time, it was not all-consuming, devouring, or controlling. It was a ghostly blue fire. Burning with dark purpose, and cold as the iciest circles of hell that Emily could imagine.

Oblivious and uncaring about her torn attire, she looked down and cupped her hand in front of her breasts, as if to cradle something invisible. Something like that blue flame, encroaching from the edges of her thoughts, eating away at the fringe of the alien minds that hers was touching, keeping those foreign thoughts distinct.

She stared into her empty palm. That fury was something she could grasp.

Something she wanted to grasp.

She felt an aspect of her will manifest in her head. That icy gauntlet that gripped her earlier. The will itself became a gauntlet. But the ice cracked and melted in the flames. As it sloughed off, the gauntlet revealed itself to be forged of iron.

Her will was not made of ice, fickle and prone to hysteria when the flame of anger torches it. Her will was of iron—it could take the heat.

As soon as that aspect took shape in her mind, she comprehended it. And as soon as she comprehended it, her rat paws become human hands again.

Miranda threw her over herself somehow, allowing Emily to land on the mighty tiger’s back. Emily rode, a nude Valkyrie wreathed in furious fire, holding onto the giant beast’s fur, in control of her deadly mount.

She wanted to make the fuck-pigs pay. So much so that their heads burst into flames and exploded. Samantha and Charlotte ripped people’s bodies apart with claw and fang, but there wasn’t enough time. Miranda led the charge and wordlessly urged them to escape. Time was short and Emily felt it, too. All-engulfing flames raged behind them, consuming the stage.

The ancient cave retained the vault door. The tigers approached it.

Emily only blinked and they had teleported beyond it by merit of mere thought, then the tigers raced on. No question as to why, or how that made sense. It happened, therefore it became reality.

Cages, cages, cages—now filled with tormented victims, packed like sardines. Grasping hands that reached out from between the bars, desperate for rescue. The captives cried out. But it was not their cries that Emily heard.

“I want to go home.”

“My baby!”

“I want to die.”

“Save me.”

“My babies.”

“I want to go home.”

“What will happen to me?”

“This is the end.”

“I want to go home.”

“My poor boy.”

“I want to die.”

“Save me.”

“My baby.”

“I want to go back.”

“What will happen to us now?”

“This is the end.”

“I want to go home.”

“Where are my children?”

“I want to die.”

“Save me!”

“What did they do to my sisters?”

“I want to go back home.”

“What will happen to me?”

“This is the end.”

How oddly similar all these internal pleas were, though they coalesced and clashed through different minds, different voices. All different. All the same. All at the same time.

It was time to open those cages. To rip them open. The liberation would hurt. Ripping the band-aid off always did.

Emily blinked again to clear her vision, sensing how different realities intersected and clashed. The voices in her head echoed and screamed, to the point of becoming unbearable. The rage turned righteous. The gauntlet gripped those bars and wrenched them apart with that furious wrath.

The gauntlet transcended the existence of mere imagination and fantasy—it covered her hand. Bleeding into one reality from the next, she wore it like a second skin. Its iron thrummed with unspeakable might.

All the cages flew open at once and a firestorm swept through the world, swallowing everything in a cleansing heat. The whole damned place turned into an inferno.

The three monstrous tigers charged forth and Emily clung to Miranda’s back. All around them, the dimensions changed and twisted and distorted. They escaped through clusters of winding corridors tangled into a labyrinthine, hellish knot.

Furious shouts followed them from the inferno behind them—Jones’ voice overshadowing the bedlam, “No! Kill her! Kill her now! Don’t let it happen! Don’t let her go! Mine, she’s mine! This worthless sack of shit belongs to us!”

Emily raised her hand and splayed her fingers. The gauntlet forced the maze to unfold. She rode Miranda onto cages, jumped from one set of bars to another, inside and through two ends of cages, dashing down a tunnel of narrow cells, up a spiral of bars—these catacombs ever-changing around them whenever she blinked away the tears that the sheer velocity drove into her eyes.

She rode upward against gravity. Right became left, up turned into down. Then they fell, going backwards upon these iron bars, until the world consisted of nothing but iron and fire.

A tremendous invisible force knocked Miranda over, sending her and her dauntless rider into a spiraling fall.

“I can’t take you further. Only you can go there, mom,” said a voice in Emily’s head. Was it her cat? Or Tran’s daughter? Why did they sound the same now?

—Submitted by Wratts

[thethreemages]

After a long time coming, here’s the next (and for now probably final) batch of characters to introduce to the Three Mages... the King’s Elite squadron~ 

More info about them can be found below:

-Alastair Corvus is a Dark Mage who is the husband of Professor Devonna Corvus, as well as the father of baby Luna. An eerily calm and collected man who's strongly loyal to the King of Graystone, putting his own dark powers to good use in his stealth-based combat style. Often nicknamed "The Count" due to his vampire-like aesthetic, he tends to leave an intimidating impression on most newcomers but deep down he's actually a real softie when it comes to his loved ones. As he himself was almost stillborn at birth (some say being a cause of his family having a long history of dark magic), Alastair long worried that any future progeny of his would suffer a similar fate... but with Luna being such a healthy and happy baby it's given him hope to show the world that dark magic isn't something to be highly feared of anymore. In fact, Alastair is one of the few people who was outraged upon hearing of the persecution against Sir Luka (Prym's father) all those years ago... so whenever he hears someone speaking ill against dark magic, Alastair won't hesitate to give a steel-cold glare in their direction. -Taiyin Zhou is a Fire Mage who is the granddaughter of Professor Jie Zhou. A dedicated and fierce young woman who seems to have no time for fun as she's spent many years traveling the world and training to join up with the highest forces. Especially driven by the untimely deaths of her parents when she was only a child, Taiyin vows to bring them justice as she's grown to realize that their deaths could've in fact not been the "accident" as some claimed it was. The only one who seems to be able to calm Taiyin's tough exterior is her grandfather Jie, of whom Taiyin likes to visit every now and then at St. Ravilda's to not only see how the growing generation of Mages are faring up, but also so that Jie could instill some patient wisdom to her that life should be enjoyed more to the fullest. And with the more colorful members that had recently joined the Elite, this hopes to come more true for Taiyin. Though she's pretty good at wielding fire magic, she's taken up more of a liking to sword-fighting (powered up by her fire) after visiting some warrior temples (as suggested by her grandfather) who taught it to her a long time ago, as a further way of achieving "inner peace". -Kiyana Ires is an Electric Mage, and currently the youngest member of the King's Elite. A chipper lil' optimist who wants to prove to the world how capable she is, she's currently taking up her (now retired) mother's legacy by working hard through reaching the Elite's rankings. One of her biggest skills of getting her there were her special technological prosthetics; originally created to simply give her the ability to walk properly (as she was born without the lower half of her legs), Kiyana has modified her prosthetisc by turning them into bladed weapons of doom during combat by spinning/kicking them around in a fury. With her being so young, her fellow comrades tend to think of her as a baby sister in a way which (while at first flattered by) made Kiyana feel kind of insecure about for awhile until Beu (who's around her age range) later enlisted too. Now they're pretty much besties~. -Maerea Rivetez is a Water Mage, and is said to be the most muscular/physically strong member of the King's Elite. While she is indeed a strong warrior in many aspects, when off the field Maerea is actually more of a doting "team mom" for most of her other comrades. She grew up as the eldest of several siblings (and is currently raising triplets), so she's always ready to step in to take care of whoever may need her help. She'll just have to back up a bit on the hugs sometimes since it's sometimes lead to a few backs being near-broken (not that her hubby at home complains though). With her water abilities, she tends to specialize in summoning tidal-like waves and whirlpools to engulf foes when they aren't swayed by her fists first. -Beu Blanchard is a Metal Mage, and the older son of Professor Blanchard. A sweet and earnest guy who just wants to make right in the world after being inspired by many war heroes his mom would read to him as a child. He's kind of naive to getting certain queues of how to fit in to proper military procedures, so right now he can come off as rather naive around his older peers. But to Kiyana she can help show him the ropes a bit more, so not all hope is lost (even if his more snarky/realist little brother says otherwise). His metal magic grants him some special defense-like abilities to not only summon some metallic shields, but to sometimes even cloak himself in metal like a living statue. -Bastian Veranes is a Wind Mage, and is actually Sgt. Kodiak's old army friend. Having grown up on the high seas for most of his life, Bastian wanted to expand more of his horizons to the main land when he grew old enough... so he bid his fellow sailing companions goodbye as he enlisted into the Graystone army. There he and Donovan became a close pair of friends as they trained up to the higher ranks of luxury... but that dream couldn't last forever as eventually Donovan decided to leave the army (mostly out of the guilt he went through in being unable to stop what happened to Luka). The two still stay in contact via-letters though, with Bastian even planning to perhaps take a big sea-faring trip with the Kodiak's for old time's sake. His wind magic gives him the ability to not only fly around but to also summon some minor twisters to catch his foes off-guard (which he put to great use as a kid for steering his family's ship around). -Everna Lockwood is an Earth Mage, and one with an interesting history of being into herbalist/potion-brewing. Being adopted into a noble-court family as a child, while the quiet, soft-spoken Everna grew to appreciate the life of luxury and comforts for awhile... she just couldn't shake off her connection to the great outdoors outside her home. Sensing their daughter's connection, her parents opted to form a nice garden area for her to explore her earthy interests when not playing the part of a regular noble. The pretty flowers and shrubs became something Everna wanted to use to better purposes than just sitting there looking pretty, however... so after some testing tries of mixing them with water, she discovered the ingenius ways they could be used as natural, mind-blowing potions. Even if this left her fellow nobles scratching their heads of why she'd want to get her pretty hands dirty instead of partying with them, there wasn't anything stopping Everna from reaching newer heights this way. Her interests quickly became talked around enough to where some army informants became intrigued in her potential... so now after awhile spent training, Everna's ready to harness her potions and earth magic for the King's use on the field.

[letters-from-the-three-houses]

Heya! I recently read up on Bernadetta’s character profile, and she’s quickly shaping up to be one of my faves!! Could I request some headcanons you might have about her?

eyyy, she’s one of my favourites too! i’m always a big fan of shy characters

i know people have been arguing about what they think bernadetta’s hobby is: something food-related, writing, people watching… but why can’t it be all of them? :D

enjoy!

p.s. trigger warning for death scenes because bernadetta likes having her characters suffer

bernadetta coops herself up in her room so no one bugs her when she’s writing

she’s really self-conscious about it

if someone finds any of her stories, she’d probably explode

it’s not because her writing’s bad, per se, but because she thinks it’s bad

she’d be embarrassed that someone can put a face to the words on the paper, the flimsy premises, two-dimensional characters, lousy plot twists…

(her writing’s actually not that bad; she just doesn’t have a lot of confidence in herself)

she people watches to help develop her characters

sneaks around the monastery to jot down notes about their quirks and mannerisms

she thinks sylvain’s handsome and charismatic, so she uses him as a base for her hero characters

‘edelgard - the cool and strict knight that can do everything perfectly, protecting her master with her final breath’

'annette - the young orphaned girl looking for her older brother that she had been separated from when she was a child; the hero meets her along the way and they travel together’

'hanneman - the all-knowing scholar that helps the hero in his journey by imparting important information on his quest’

'ignace - apprentice to said scholar’

'ingrid - the beautiful princess kept captive in a tower by an evil magician’

'hubert - the evil magician’

(that’s another reason why she doesn’t want to show them; she’d spontaneously combust if people knew what she typed them as)

she likes making up backstories for all the students

'ashe duran - sir lonato’s son; adopted. was a commoner before. maybe had to steal bread to keep his family alive? bandits killed his parents? he was found when sir lonato was travelling across gaspard, coming across the bodies of his murdered parents and finding a boy amongst the wreckage…’

(another reason why she doesn’t want to show anyone: they’d probably be offended bc she’s making up their whole life stories—which are probably wrong—and therefore they’ll think she’s insensitive)

she likes writing about fairy tales and classic romances

'good defeats evil’ plots

all of her stories have happy endings

she doesn’t like killing off any of the characters she bases off of real people

but when they do die

bernadetta tries to make it as emotional and gut-wrenching as possible

“i…am glad you’re safe, my lord. it has been…an honour…to serve you”

“no, don’t talk like that. save your strength, dear friend”

“i’ve watched you grow up…and become a great hero… i am…proud…”

“no… no! stay with me!”

if it’s a true original character (usually villains), she’s fine with making their death gruesome, graphic, and full of insanity

blood gurgled down his throat as he scraped his nails across the floor, an eerie scratch echoing throughout the throne room as he dragged himself towards the spectre. his knee, bent in an unusual angle, felt like it would fall off with each bump and crevice

but he pressed on. more! more! he was right there! his god, the demon king! he could hear the impending cacophony of chaos, as terrors flooded into the world, overturning humans and wiping mankind…

she eats food as she writes

usually sweets

it keeps up her imagination and brain power

so sometimes she’ll sneak into the pantry and steal food to snack on as she stays up all night to write

the first time she did it, the guards caught her and she squeaked her way out of there

now she has a set plan bc she memorized their schedule—when and where they were stationed, plus their patrol route—so she can avoid them

(her current story is about a robin hood-esque thief who steals from rich castles to give money to the poor)

(and sure enough, the main character’s thought process and execution is eerily similar to hers)

a smol ball of anxiety

would rather hang out with animals than people

if she can get out of a social situation, she will

but if she trusts someone, she’ll cling to them like a baby panda

she’ll use them as a buffer to do stuff that she normally wouldn’t do

if she’s talking to someone she doesn’t know though, she’ll be fidgeting the whole time and wishing she was somewhere else

[asks are open!]

[acidicwriting]

Billie Eilish -Lovely feat.Khalid

Isn't it lovely all alone

Heart made of glass my mind of stone

Tear me to pieces skin to bone

Hello,welcome home

She lay on her back,the bed sheet caressing her skin with a smooth touch.The sheet covering her didn't seem to offer her any warmth. Alyssa's fingers were cold, body involuntarily shivering whenever a cool gust of wind blew in through the half-open window.Her previously harsh sobs had subsided into silent tears that now only remained as dried-up tracks on her face.Her heartbeat was even,no longer hammering against her chest .Her whole being was now eerily calm, similar to a formerly angry bee, buzzing with menace before being smoked into serenity.A brilliant flash of light danced across the sky,turning it green for a moment,followed by the loud clap of Thor beating his hammer high up in the heavens yet she lay impervious to it.

As if on cue, Patches darted into her room and jumped up on her bed with a shaky meow.The cat's eyes were wide, bottle brush tail flicking in the air as he made his way to Alyssa , sniffing her face before climbing onto her chest and taking a seat. He looked regal really, posture like that of a noble general marching his brave soldiers into the battleground.She was going to miss him.The comfort he brought simply with his presence was unparallelled.His meows, his purrs, that look of smug satisfaction on his face he when he caught a cockroach and brought it back to proudly show off to her.Those two lone patches of brown on the base of his ears that contrasted softly with his white fur.Even his weight on her chest was reassuring .Like everything was going to be alright in the world. Only it wasn't. Not for her.

But that was fine, really. She'd come to terms with it.It all had to end now. No more anxiety, no more constant self-loathing, no more loneliness. She felt numb. And oh,so tired. Her hands were stable as they softly scratched the top of Patches' little head. The kitten responded by resting his chin on his feet and closing his eyes.It seemed like a nice enough way to go ; lying on her bed, cozy, with the only creature in the world that never made her feel silly or worthless,who looked at her with unconditional love brimming in those icy blue eyes.She felt a sharp pang of guilt in her heart as she thought about how Patches would feel when he finally realised his master was dead.In the goodbye message she'd sent Alicia,she'd told her to take care of the cat in her permanent absence. She had turned off her phone so there was no chance of her getting a reply text. Not that she'd get one too soon anyway. Alicia hardly had time to check what her attention-seeking little sister texted her,what with her jam-packed schedule. Who'd actually notice her absence first? Her father? Her sister? Certainly not her "friends". At least she'd filled several bowls of food and water for Patches so he could survive on his own for a while.And if those ran out then,well,he could just eat her right?

Her lunch was leftover linguine with a simple sauce.Last night it had tasted like spring and sunshine on a plate.Today it tasted like ash.She managed to chew and swallow the whole thing, walked to the bathroom,gulped down the contents of the little orange bottle of Ambien and washed that down with a bottle of wine.Then she lay down, waiting for the inevitable to happen.

Her wait wasn't a long one. In less than a half hour her inhalations began to consecutively become shallower with her heart rate picking up.Her lips felt dry and when she tried to lick them even her tongue turned out to be parched .Calm down,she told herself, it's okay. She attempted to swallow but that small action stung as if her throat were scraped raw on the inside. She needed water. Right then.

Alyssa sat up ,dislocating Patches ,and promptly fell back onto her sheets, hit by a sudden wave of light-headedness. Inhaling deeply she sat back up, her arms quivering as she pushed herself off the bed, only to take two steps forward before plummeting to the floor. Her legs felt like jelly.Everything looked hazy.She blinked hard, trying to clear her unfocused eyes but to no avail.Heart pounding, she crawled to the dresser on top of which her phone was. She reached out with her hands but only ended up pushing it farther away brushing her fingers against it.Alyssa was slightly breathless now,mouth hung open, insides twisting as she tried to push herself up holding the dresser drawers but found that her body didn't really do what she wanted it to anymore and fell back limply on the ground with a loud thud.Her body felt like it had been hit by a truck.Her hands were shaking and she couldn't do anything to stop them,the muscles of her legs,back and shoulders were contracting wildly yet she was utterly helpless.Her throat seemed to be closing up.Her mouth still hung open but except for the loud gasps of breath she inhaled and exhaled she could make no other sound.She was crying now, screaming in her head for someone to come save her. This was not how her life was supposed to end.Her body was not supposed to betray her like this.Alyssa felt a wild stab of fear clawing at her insides that came with the blunt realisation that she was not ready to die."Help me please please anybody please just someone help me " the voice inside her head kept screaming and screaming and screaming while all that came out of her mouth were small choked whimpers and gasps.She could hear Patches wailing loudly, scared of whatever was happening to her before running off into another part of the house,seemingly eager to put a distance between them and leaving her to fend for herself. It was hot,so unbearably hot.Her body felt like it was blistering. Her eyes burned as they fluttered shut.

She could hear a voice and the sound of footsteps .Someone was in her apartment. "I'M IN HERE! " the voice in her head screamed. It was a familiar voice that said "Uh, Alyssa it's me Johnny from next door, I brought your cat back.He came into my apartment meowing his ass off and it was actually kinda freaky 'cause I thought he was feral but then I saw the collar and HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT HAPPENED" he had walked right into the doorway to her room.Johnny dropped Patches and rushed to her side, turning her on her back to feel her neck for a pulse and simultaneously calling and shrieking the address to a 911 operator. Patches anxiously paced half circles around the both of them,sniffing Alyssa's trembling hands and wailing loudly at her .

The last thing Alyssa saw before losing her consciousness was the face of a medic as she pulled her left eye open,aimed a flashlight at it and yelled something to someone behind behind her.

Everything happened in a rush after the medics came.Alyssa was heaved onto a stretcher,her still-convulsing body strapped down and pulled inside an ambulance that sped away instantly with Johnny in it with her.She was wheeled to the operating room, tubes attached to her arms,a particularly big tube in her mouth pumping in the necessary fluids. The doors closed behind Alyssa and the emergency medical team, separating them from Johnny who had been running right beside them. He stood there, shaking with fright before sinking into one of the couches with his face in his hands. What the hell just happened? Why was Alyssa having a grand mal seizure in the middle of the day? How long had she been like that before he found her? What would have happened if her cat hadn't run to his apartment?Was she even going to make it?

Alyssa was trapped in a nightmare.She kept running but they always found her. The malicious enigmas that her subconscious had created.There were many.People she used to know,people she didn't remember ever seeing.She didn't know exactly what it was about them that terrified her.Maybe it was simply their malicious aura,or maybe it was the way they smiled at her.Cold smiles with sinister eyes .They smiled like they knew a secret of hers.As they'd try to grab her they'd laugh.And when she got away they's scream and moan as if they were in pain.There was a small boy too.He wore a yellow shirt,black pants and black shoes.He never approached her.He stayed in the shadows, just quietly watching her.There was something about him that absolutely terrified her. On seeing him her breaths stuttered, she'd shake and just collapse. Was this all in her head?Or was it real life? Was she simply trapped in another dimension?Was this limbo? Or was this where the dead stayed? If that was the case where were the others?

There was a light now. A brilliant light that had an otherworldly quality to it.It seemed to emanate a soft music. And she inexplicably found herself being drawn to it. She took a step towards it, entranced, reached out a hand only to be pulled back into darkness with a shriek.The monsters were back.

After what seemed like an eternity of suffering,Alyssa's eyes flickered open.And to her massive surprise she found herself in a hospital room, with needles in her arm, what looked like a catheter hooked on her torso and the sound of beeping from the device measuring her heart rate.'What the hell?'she thought and turned her head to the left to see Johnny sitting there tapping away on his phone. He looked so out of place in the drab,pale cream room, dressed in a pink t-shirt, black jeans and white shoes. And yet he looked so good. She suddenly felt inferior and oddly exposed to him in the hospital gown with its thin,white material,hair that was most probably matted to her head and her pale skin.Awkwardly fumbling with the sheets,she tried to pull them all over herself when he looked up and went "Oh thank god you're awake I was beginning to get worried" with a smile so bright she could only stare for a moment before she snapped out of it. "Why were you worried?" it came out harsh due to her not having spoken in a while but Johnny either didn't notice or just chose to ignore it because the next second he was going off about how he was so scared when he found her, and the doctors gave him a mini heart attack when they declared that she had died on the table and then almost fainting in relief when that one particularly determined doctor who seemed to just not know how to give up had miraculously brought Alyssa back from the dead. "YOU WERE DEAD FOR 2 MINUTES AND 42 SECONDS ALYSSA THAT'S ALMOST LIKE 3 FUCKING MINUTES" .He then proceeded to explain how her sister had showed up that night in tears."I swear she would've wiped the floor with the face of that nurse who told her she couldn't see you in the icu right then if I wasn't holding her back" and how Alicia practically lived in her hospital room for the entirety of four days and only went home to shower when Johnny visited each day. " I told her you're up.She's on the way now, it's gonna take her,like,10 minutes and she says to tell you that she's gonna kill you". "Oh" is all the reply Alyssa can muster before a doctor walks in with with a nurse and a woman who introduces herself saying "Hi, Alyssa my name is Charlotte" "She's one of our doctors who are going to see you during your stay here", added the doctor. After a moment she again replied with a quiet "Oh",which seemed to be the only word in Alyssa's muddled, slow brain yet her heart rate had picked up and she began to fidget uncomfortably at the idea of having to talk to someone. She spaced out, didn't even notice them leaving or Johnny resuming his seat on the couch and refocusing his attention to his phone. "Thanks Johnny" she said when she finally came to her senses. He smiled softly at her, "Don't sweat it" he said before he went back to his phone.His smile seemed to calm her down a little.She looked to her right and there was a tray laden with soup and a glass of orange juice.She carefully picked up the glass, pleasantly surprised to see she had the strength to do so, and took a small sip. It tasted bitter. She put it back down and settled back against the pillow,at ease. Her calmness didn't last long ; the next moment her door was flung open and there she was. Alicia, her older sister who didn't really seem to care before but now had eyes brimming with tears.She half-ran to her bed and flung herself at Alyssa and held her so tightly Alyssa wasn't sure if her sudden lack of breath was due to the fact that she herself was overcome with emotions or her sister's stronghold on her. And she seemed to not even care about that because they were both sobbing now,shoulders shaking,saying words the other couldn't comprehend.Johnny excused himself with an awkward "I'll get going then",leaving the door open behind him.

When Alicia finally detached herself, Alyssa found herself become nervous again about having to explain her actions. She opened her mouth, about to say something when Alicia gasps and reaches for her handbag, through which the head of a certain cat with white fur and a lone brown patch at the base of each ear could be seen "I couldn't not bring him he's missed you so much. Johnny says he's been crying for you all the time",she said,letting him out .He runs to Alyssa, meowing, without missing a beat. Patches stands on her half sitting body, hind paws on her stomach, soft front paws on her chest, sniffing her face and then rubbing his head on her face while meowing.Alyssa realised she loved this cat to death.While Johnny may have called an ambulance it was Patches who had run off to Johnny's to bring him to her.She hugged the cat to herself, kissing his small head."Johnny took care of him?" she asked Alicia."Yeah he loves the cat he says it basically saved you", she replied, in an amused voice. "He did,he's my furry little hero" Alyssa said, kissing his head again and smiling softly. "I'll be there for you from now on Aly". Alyssa froze, her mind immediately blanking but as hard as she struggled she couldn't find any words to form a sort of reply.In lieu she said "The door's open".Alicia's face portrayed hurt as she stammered " OH I um yeah I'll leave I'm sorry I know I-" "I didn't mean that you have to leave I just don't want the staff or a doctor to see Patches in here with me". "Oh thank god" Alicia said, visibly relieved as she quickly went to the door and shut it. When she came and sat back down at Alyssa's side she took a deep breath and said "Johnny's hot" Alyssa snorted before replying "Tell me about it". In response her sister smirked "I think he likes you" ."Alicia he calls me a crazy cat lady ", Alyssa replied half exasperated half amused. Alicia grinned, "He told them you two were engaged". "He what ?". Alicia's grin grew bigger "Well they wouldn't let him ride with you in the ambulance but apparently he had to come with you so he just lied". "He was just being the nice guy that he is?", Alyssa offered." Her sister snorted, "He so likes you."

Hi guys.So this is the first story of mine that I feel confident enough to post.It's kind of special to me.And if you've made it this far,through all that cringe shit,thank you.I hope you had a somewhat good read.Merry Christmas!🎄🎄✨

Song used:

[iownmywiiulegit]

Metroid Prime 4: #1- The Lay of the Land

This is the beginning of documentation representing my journey through the Metroid franchise by Nintendo.  First, a warning: This next little bit is a flashback that leads up to now.  

When Nintendo first mentioned that Metroid Prime 4 was in development I thought man, I really should beat the first Metroid Prime.  Back in the days before the Wii I worked my Metroid Prime all the way up to the Ridley battle and then set it down for a few years.  I got into different games like Soul Calibur II and Tales of Symphonia.  Soul Calibur was a great bro bonding game and I still think it is.  The next few years were spent focusing on college and then I bought a Wii.  I thought the Gamecube was obsolete at this point since my Wii could play Gamecube games, but man was I wrong.  Buying the Wii U proved this to me.  I wanted to play all discs on one system but I couldn’t do that.  I wanted (and still want) purity with my consoles.  This resulted in my going hard into my Gamecube again and getting the hardware peripherals that made it stand on par with the Wii, if not debatably better.  I bought the digital component cable for a wildly discounted price on eBay, and the Gameboy player and disc.  I got super lucky in finding the component cables at the price I found them at and I think the seller was in a pinch because it WAS around the holidays and I was just randomly checking the listings and was like “holy crap.”  No bidding, just buy it now.  Can’t say, won’t say.  It was also around this time that Nintendo announced that they were starting development for Metroid Prime all over from scratch.  Hearing this news felt like hearing a referee pistol.  If Nintendo was going to give me a fair warning that shit was getting real about Metroid Prime 4, then it’s up to me to get on the ball and meet Nintendo and Retro Studios in stride.  My instincts told me to go beat my original Metroid Prime file, finally.  My hardware was excellent and Nintendo sent the official signal; let’s go.

Turning on Metroid Prime for the first time in years with my original save file still intact, I expected to me extremely rusty at the controls and traversing the landscape.  Surprisingly it came back fairly quickly and before I knew it I was blasting different colored Metroids away no problem.  What I didn’t realize was exactly how close I was to actually beating the game.  The final boss was all I had to defeat.  Really?  17 years just for that?  If my memory serves me correctly, I simply just didn’t want the game to end.  I do that.  Leave books unfinished, leave movies before the end, compose music and leave the ending open, and I don’t know why.  I want time to soak into the experience and really savor it.  Perhaps I’m not so much a voracious consumer of entertainment but rather an appreciative connoisseur.  Back in 2004, I remember being at a drummer’s house that I was in drum corps with, and he was a stupid competitive type that turned everything into a pissing contest.  Once he found out that I had gotten all the way up to Ridley or something he set out to beat that game asap.  It was when he was at the final boss that I got my first glimpse of the future 15 years later.  Damn.  

Anyway, I beat Prime but I still have this amazing fully loaded Gamecube that has the OEM digital component cable, and Gameboy Advance player.  My next move was obvious.  I wasn’t done with the original Metroid Prime yet, not by a long shot!  If you’re a fan of Metroid, you love finding secrets and collecting all de tings.  To get the full original Metroid Prime experience, I had to play and beat Metroid Fusion for the Gameboy Advance.  I eBay-ed it up asap.  It’s kinda funny- Fusion showed up in the mail right on the day or day after I beat Prime.  Pretty cool.

Getting into Metroid Fusion was something I wasn’t ready for but always wanted.  It was Super Metroid that turned me into a fan.  The music, the beautiful colors, the crunchy explosions, and the search really got me looking in every nook and cranny in each level.  I wanted more and Fusion was it but I didn’t have a Gameboy Advance and wasn’t going to shell out even more money if I wasn’t going hard into games back then.  At that time I was so into music and rocking harder than life could offer that I just could not afford to allocate money toward a handheld that still was not backlit.  Fuck that.  When I saw pictures of Fusion all I could think was that it was Super Metroid 2.  After playing it, man, was I right about that.

Metroid Fusion is so amazing.  I love 2D Metroid-style games.  Hell, I spent a large part of 2018 playing through the indie game A Robot Named Fight on Steam and currently have a thoroughly played but not beaten Axiom Verge save file on my Wii U.  Again, Nintendo gave the signal and I had to run with it so here we are.  What I love about Fusion is quite a few things.  I love the graphics.  The colors are so vibrant and all the sprites look lively.  Even though the Gameboy Advance’s resolution is apparent on a 480p screen, it still plays amazingly.  The controls are tight and intuitive.  I did get lost a lot and backtracked often to find that random wall that needed to be blown through to progress to the next area.  I love how the security levels kept me from progressing just enough to experience the game unfold before me.  Oh man, I loved hiding from SA-X.  What a cool addition.  I swore a lot at the spider boss because it took me the most tries to defeat.  It was somewhere around that point where I thought that this game wasn’t for amateur platform players.  You really had to have a handle on things to get any further.  The moment Fusion Stole my heart was in chapter 11, at Plant Core X.

In Metroid Other M, there were oftentimes feelings of isolation and maybe even mild claustrophobia.  The same could even go for the final boss in Metroid Prime.  There’s something really gross-but-in-a-cool-way about destroying a slimy bug hive in a dark triple sub basement, especially if you have to spelunking your way to perform the extermination.  In Fusion, it’s sooo different, but the feeling is eerily similar in a way that I absolutely love.  When I first experience Plant Core X, I didn’t think I would be emotionally attached to my character.  I didn’t think I was Samus.  But then I kept getting dragged into the poisonous flower swamp that released deadly spores into the air in a wide horizontal sine wave pattern.  The music was minimal and just a little quieter than the rest of the game.  I kept trying to jump out of the swamp but I couldn’t get out.  It frustrated me because it interrupted my flow.  I felt helpless and that my situation was serious, even over my head.  I was suffocating.  I felt connected to Samus and like I had entered an extremely deadly area.  If Samus is an exterminator, this place was ground zero for the cause of everything in Fusion.  Don’t get me wrong- all the other bosses are vital to making up the game but at Plant Core X, Samus gets into deep shit.  Imagine that you’re stuck in a poisonous swamp or quicksand and you keep trying to jump out but the sludge keeps pulling you back in.  Now imagine all that while the air around you is raining poisonous dandelion seeds.  There’s no way you can’t get hit or sucked into the swamp.  What an amazing experience.  I couldn’t believe what I was feeling.  Here’s a YouTube link to this experience but it’s not me playing.  Whoever played in this video did way better than me but I think you can get an idea of what I’m talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=347poZRrbrQ

Just last week I beat Fusion but didn’t do so well in collecting all the little things in the game. The final boss was cool and well drawn for the time period and hardware imho.  My main goal was to unlock the original NES Metroid in my copy of Metroid Prime on the Gamecube.  Since I have a Gameboy Advance that my dad found on a school bus and no kids claimed, I used it to link up to my cube with the Fusion cart and unlocked Metroid.  

That brings us to the current moment.  Today I figured out how to save my original Metroid game on the Gamecube.  This was a little confusing because the Gamecube controller doesn’t have a select button like the original NES.  Instead it’s the Z button.  To save while you’re playing the game, you need a second controller, just like in the original Legend of Zelda, and while paused push UP and A to initiate the save screen without dying.  

I can’t wait to get into it.  When the original Metroid screen comes up on my HDTV in a somewhat aliased 480p widescreen picture, I am immediately in a time warp.  Since I never played the original Metroid as a kid, my only memories of that game are from looking at strategy guides that didn’t show you everything.  I didn’t think much of it then because Mario was it.  I used to watch the title screen to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link over and over again as a kid and look into the stars on the screen and just wonder endlessly about anything. It cast a spell over me or something; I was captivated.  With Metroid, the original, it is now happening again. The game is brand new to me and I couldn’t give a care to anything modern as far as gaming and technology if I tried.  The stars in the background, the blinking letters of METROID, the fairly quick opening sequence loop-  all of this shows me that I’ve never grown up from being a kid after all.  I’m still the same after all these years.  The world can only help me build character and deep down I’m just the same kid that gets filled with endless wonder when 8 bit Nintendo does it’s thing.  Amazing.

For a current side note, I’d like to add that in Fusion, you can hear sound effects that are similar to those in the Virtual Boy’s Galactic Pinball.  Although the composer for Fusion was not the same as Galactic Pinball, Galactic Pinball’s composer was the same for Super Metroid and Mike Tyson’s Punch Out: Kenji Yamamoto.  You can hear similarities everywhere like Yamamoto was consulted often.  And if you’re not aware, Galactic Pinball does have a miniature Metroid space shooter game as a bonus easter egg on one of the tables. I like to think that only the hardcore Nintendo fans know this.  

Anyway.  I’ll report back as soon as more progress is made with the original Metroid.  In the meantime, here is my most recent Twitter post with a pic documenting where things are at.  

https://twitter.com/VeryBadTim/status/1100219464585490434

[toomanysinks]

Play Iconary, a simple drawing game that hides a deceptively deep AI

It may not seem like it takes a lot of smarts to play a game like Pictionary, but in fact it involves a lot of subtle and abstract visual and linguistic skills. This AI built to play a game like it is similarly complex, and its interpretations and creations when you play it (as you can now) may seem eerily human — but it’s also refreshing to have such an agent working collaboratively with you rather than beating you with superhuman skills.

Iconary, as the game’s creators at the Allen Institute for AI decided to call it to avoid lawsuits from Mattel, has you drawing and arranging icons to form phrases, or guessing at the arrangements of the computer player.

For instance, if you were to get the phrase “woman drinking milk from a glass,” you’d probably draw a woman — a stick figure, probably, and then select the “woman” icon from the computer’s interpretations of your sketch. Then you’d draw a glass, and place that near the woman. Then… milk? How do you draw milk? There is actually a milk bottle icon if you look for it, but you could also draw a cow and put that in or next to the glass.

The computer then guesses at what you’ve put together, and after a few tries it would probably get it. You can also play it the other way, where the computer arranges icons and you have to guess.

Now, let’s get this right out of the way: this is very different from Google’s superficially similar “Quick, Draw” game. In that one the system has been can only guess whether your drawing is one of a few hundred pre-selected objects it’s been specifically trained to recognize.

Not only are there some 75,000 phrases supported in Iconary, with more being added regularly, but there’s no way to train the AI on them — the way that any one of them can be represented is uncountable.

“When you start bringing in phrases, the problem space explodes,” explained Ali Farhadi, one of the creators of the project; I talked with him and researcher Aniruddah Kembhavi about Iconary ahead of its release. “Sure, you can easily recognize a cat or a dog. But can you recognize a cat purring, or a dog scratching its back? There’s a huge diversity in elements people choose and how they position them.”

Although Pictionary may seem at first like a game that depends on your drawing skill, it’s really much more about arranging ideas and understanding the relationship with them — seeing the intent behind the drawing. How else can some people manage to recognize a word or phrase from a handful of crude shapes and some arrows?

The AI behind Iconary, then, isn’t a drawing recognition engine at all but one that has been trained to recognize relationships between objects, informed by their type, position, number, and everything else. This is, the researchers say, the most significant example of AI collaborating meaningfully with humans yet created.

And this logic is kept fuzzy enough that several “person” icons gathered together could mean women, men, people, group, crowd, team, or anything else. How would you know if it was a “team?” Well, if you put a soccer ball near it or put them on a play field, it becomes obvious. If there’s a blackboard there, it’s probably a class. And so on.

Of course, I say “and so on,” but that small phrase in a way encompasses the entirety of human intuition and years of training on how to view and interpret the visual world. Naturally Iconary isn’t nearly as good at it as we are, but its logic is frequently surprisingly human.

If you can only get part of the answer, you can ask the AI to draw again, and just like we do in Pictionary it will adapt its representation to address your needs.

It was of course trained on human drawings collected via Mechanical Turk, but it isn’t just replicating what people drew. If the only thing it ever saw to represent a scientist was a man next to a microscope, how would it know to recognize the same idea in a woman, or standing next to an atom or rocket? In fact, the model has never been exposed to the phrases you can play with now. As the researchers write:

AllenAI has never before encountered the unique phrases in Iconary, yet our preliminary games have shown that our AI system is able to both successfully depict and understand phrases with a human partner with an often surprising deftness and nuance. This feat requires combining natural language understanding, computer vision, and the use of common sense to reason about phrases and their depictions within the constraints of a small vocabulary of possible icons. Being successful at Iconary requires skills beyond basic pattern recognition, including multi-hop reasoning, abstraction, collaboration, and adaptation

Instead of simply pairing “ball” with “sport,” it learned about why those objects are related, and how to exert some basic common sense — a sort of holy grail in AI, though this is only a small step in that direction. If one person draws “father” as a man bigger than a smaller person, it isn’t obvious to the computer that the father is the big one, not the small. And it’s another logical jump that a “mother” would be a similarly-sized woman, or that the small one is a child.

But by observing how people used the objects and how they relate to one another, the AI built up a network of ideas about how different things are represented or related. “Child” is closer to “student” than “horse,” for instance. And “student” is close to “desk” and “laptop.” So if you draw a child by a desk, maybe it’s a student? This kind of robust logic is so simple to us that we don’t even recognize we’re doing it, but incredibly hard to build into a machine learning agent.

StarCraft II-playing AI AlphaStar takes out pros undefeated

This type of AI is deceptively broad and intelligent, but it isn’t flashy the way that the human-destorying AlphaStar or AlphaGo are. It isn’t superhuman — in fact, it’s not even close to human. But board and PC games are tightly bounded problem spaces with set rules and limits. Visual expression of a complex phrase like “crowd celebrating a victory on a street” isn’t a question of how fast the computer can process, but the depth of its understanding of the concepts involved, and how others think about them.

This kind of learning is also more broadly applicable in the real world. Robots and self-driving cars do need to know how to exceed human capacity in some cases, but it’s also massively important to be able to understand the world around them in the same way people do. When it sees a person by a hospital bed holding a book, what does that mean? When a person leaves a knife out next to a whole tomato? And so on.

“Real life problems involve semantics, abstraction, and collaboration,” said Farhadi. “They involve theory of mind.”

Interestingly, the agent is biased a bit (as these things tend to be) owing to the natural bias of our language. Images “read” from left to right, as people tend to draw them, since we also read in that direction, so keep that in mind.

Try playing a couple games both drawing and guessing, and you may be surprised at the cleverness and weirdness of the AI’s suggestions. Don’t feel bad about skipping one — the agent is still learning, and sometimes its attempts to represent ideas are a bit too abstract. But I certainly found myself impressed more than baffled.

If you’d like to learn more, stay tuned: the team behind the system will be publishing a paper on it later this year. I’ll update this post when that happens.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/05/play-iconary-a-simple-drawing-game-that-hides-a-deceptively-deep-ai/

[fmservers]

Play Iconary, a simple drawing game that hides a deceptively deep AI

It may not seem like it takes a lot of smarts to play a game like Pictionary, but in fact it involves a lot of subtle and abstract visual and linguistic skills. This AI built to play a game like it is similarly complex, and its interpretations and creations when you play it (as you can now) may seem eerily human — but it’s also refreshing to have such an agent working collaboratively with you rather than beating you with superhuman skills.

Iconary, as the game’s creators at the Allen Institute for AI decided to call it to avoid lawsuits from Mattel, has you drawing and arranging icons to form phrases, or guessing at the arrangements of the computer player.

For instance, if you were to get the phrase “woman drinking milk from a glass,” you’d probably draw a woman — a stick figure, probably, and then select the “woman” icon from the computer’s interpretations of your sketch. Then you’d draw a glass, and place that near the woman. Then… milk? How do you draw milk? There is actually a milk bottle icon if you look for it, but you could also draw a cow and put that in or next to the glass.

The computer then guesses at what you’ve put together, and after a few tries it would probably get it. You can also play it the other way, where the computer arranges icons and you have to guess.

Now, let’s get this right out of the way: this is very different from Google’s superficially similar “Quick, Draw” game. In that one the system has been can only guess whether your drawing is one of a few hundred pre-selected objects it’s been specifically trained to recognize.

Not only are there some 75,000 phrases supported in Iconary, with more being added regularly, but there’s no way to train the AI on them — the way that any one of them can be represented is uncountable.

“When you start bringing in phrases, the problem space explodes,” explained Ali Farhadi, one of the creators of the project; I talked with him and researcher Aniruddah Kembhavi about Iconary ahead of its release. “Sure, you can easily recognize a cat or a dog. But can you recognize a cat purring, or a dog scratching its back? There’s a huge diversity in elements people choose and how they position them.”

Although Pictionary may seem at first like a game that depends on your drawing skill, it’s really much more about arranging ideas and understanding the relationship with them — seeing the intent behind the drawing. How else can some people manage to recognize a word or phrase from a handful of crude shapes and some arrows?

The AI behind Iconary, then, isn’t a drawing recognition engine at all but one that has been trained to recognize relationships between objects, informed by their type, position, number, and everything else. This is, the researchers say, the most significant example of AI collaborating meaningfully with humans yet created.

And this logic is kept fuzzy enough that several “person” icons gathered together could mean women, men, people, group, crowd, team, or anything else. How would you know if it was a “team?” Well, if you put a soccer ball near it or put them on a play field, it becomes obvious. If there’s a blackboard there, it’s probably a class. And so on.

Of course, I say “and so on,” but that small phrase in a way encompasses the entirety of human intuition and years of training on how to view and interpret the visual world. Naturally Iconary isn’t nearly as good at it as we are, but its logic is frequently surprisingly human.

If you can only get part of the answer, you can ask the AI to draw again, and just like we do in Pictionary it will adapt its representation to address your needs.

It was of course trained on human drawings collected via Mechanical Turk, but it isn’t just replicating what people drew. If the only thing it ever saw to represent a scientist was a man next to a microscope, how would it know to recognize the same idea in a woman, or standing next to an atom or rocket? In fact, the model has never been exposed to the phrases you can play with now. As the researchers write:

AllenAI has never before encountered the unique phrases in Iconary, yet our preliminary games have shown that our AI system is able to both successfully depict and understand phrases with a human partner with an often surprising deftness and nuance. This feat requires combining natural language understanding, computer vision, and the use of common sense to reason about phrases and their depictions within the constraints of a small vocabulary of possible icons. Being successful at Iconary requires skills beyond basic pattern recognition, including multi-hop reasoning, abstraction, collaboration, and adaptation

Instead of simply pairing “ball” with “sport,” it learned about why those objects are related, and how to exert some basic common sense — a sort of holy grail in AI, though this is only a small step in that direction. If one person draws “father” as a man bigger than a smaller person, it isn’t obvious to the computer that the father is the big one, not the small. And it’s another logical jump that a “mother” would be a similarly-sized woman, or that the small one is a child.

But by observing how people used the objects and how they relate to one another, the AI built up a network of ideas about how different things are represented or related. “Child” is closer to “student” than “horse,” for instance. And “student” is close to “desk” and “laptop.” So if you draw a child by a desk, maybe it’s a student? This kind of robust logic is so simple to us that we don’t even recognize we’re doing it, but incredibly hard to build into a machine learning agent.

StarCraft II-playing AI AlphaStar takes out pros undefeated

This type of AI is deceptively broad and intelligent, but it isn’t flashy the way that the human-destorying AlphaStar or AlphaGo are. It isn’t superhuman — in fact, it’s not even close to human. But board and PC games are tightly bounded problem spaces with set rules and limits. Visual expression of a complex phrase like “crowd celebrating a victory on a street” isn’t a question of how fast the computer can process, but the depth of its understanding of the concepts involved, and how others think about them.

This kind of learning is also more broadly applicable in the real world. Robots and self-driving cars do need to know how to exceed human capacity in some cases, but it’s also massively important to be able to understand the world around them in the same way people do. When it sees a person by a hospital bed holding a book, what does that mean? When a person leaves a knife out next to a whole tomato? And so on.

“Real life problems involve semantics, abstraction, and collaboration,” said Farhadi. “They involve theory of mind.”

Interestingly, the agent is biased a bit (as these things tend to be) owing to the natural bias of our language. Images “read” from left to right, as people tend to draw them, since we also read in that direction, so keep that in mind.

Try playing a couple games both drawing and guessing, and you may be surprised at the cleverness and weirdness of the AI’s suggestions. Don’t feel bad about skipping one — the agent is still learning, and sometimes its attempts to represent ideas are a bit too abstract. But I certainly found myself impressed more than baffled.

If you’d like to learn more, stay tuned: the team behind the system will be publishing a paper on it later this year. I’ll update this post when that happens.

Via Devin Coldewey https://techcrunch.com

[megakami]

Cringy Land

by Tavian Floyd

Based on, F is for Family

CHARACTERS

FRANK MURPHY – A WORKING-CLASS AMERICAN WITH AN EXPLOSIVE TEMPER. HE IS TRYING TO KEEP HIS FAMILY AFLOAT BUT HIS PRIDE SOMETIMES GETS IN HIS WAY.

SUE MURPHY – FRANK’S WIFE WHO ISN’T CONTENT WITH HER LIFE. SHE TRIES TO KEEP HER FAMILY TOGETHER AND IS CURRENTLY WORKING AN UNFULFILLING JOB.

KEVIN MURPHY – FRANK AND SUE’S OLDEST SON. HE IS A SLACKER WHO OFTEN CHALLENGES HIS FATHER’S AUTHORITY. HE BULLIES HIS SIBLINGS BUT HE ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT THEM A LOT.

MAUREEN MURPHY – FRANK AND SUE’S ONLY DAUGHTER AND YOUNGEST CHILD. SHE IS FRANK AND SUE’S FAVORITE AND SHE IS A PERFECT ANGEL AROUND THEM. SHE HATES DOING “GIRLY” THINGS AND LIKES TO BE IN CONTROL.

BILL MURPHY – FRANK AND SUE’S YOUNGEST SON. HE’S SHY, TIMID, AND UNLUCKY. HE DOESN’T GET ALONG WELL WITH HIS SISTER AND HER RECKLESS TENDENCIES.

VIC – HE IS FRANK’S NEIGHBOR WHO USED TO WORK AS THE MARKETING MANAGER FOR THE LOCAL RADIO STATION. HE HAS A LOT OF MONEY, A DRUG PROBLEM, AND THE ADMIRATION OF THE OTHERS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD AND AROUND THE CITY. FRANK DOESN’T LIKE HIM BUT VIC IS UNAWARE OF THIS.

BEN AND KENNY - THE RED NECK, NEIGHBORHOOD BOYS. BEN IS THE OLDER BROTHER AND KENNY IS THE YOUNGER, DIAPER WEARING, BROTHER. KENNY IS CLEARLY TOO OLD FOR A DIAPER. BOTH BEN AND KENNY ENCOURAGE EACH OTHER AND OTHERS TO DO DANGEROUS, STUPID THINGS.

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED:

FADE IN:

EXT. TV STORE – DAY

TEASER

The Murphy family is seen walking on the sidewalk in front of the TV store. Frank is carrying a few GROCERY BAGS in each hand. Frank stops because he sees COLT LUGER with a WOMAN on the TV display. The camera focuses in on the show.

WOMAN What are you going to do to get

Gigantomundo?

FRANK (O.S.) Whoa. Gigantomundo? This episodes

gonna be great.

COLT LUGER Well broad, sometimes a man’s got

to do...

Colt Luger raises his gun and looks into the camera. The screen pans out to reveal Colt Luger is standing in front of a carnival game where you have to knock down the cups to win. The operator of the game is staring off into the distance.

COLT LUGER What a man does!

Colt Luger unloads his gun into three stacks of cups and the operator looks terrified and curls into a ball to avoid being hit by what appears to be real bullets.

The screen zooms out to reveal an angry Frank as Colt Luger receives his giant bear prize.

FRANK Damnit, its just a commercial for

the amusement park.

Frank starts to walk away as Bill and Maureen press their faces to the glass to watch the commercial.

MAUREEN Daddy, Daddy! Can we go to the

park?

(CONTINUED)

2.

CONTINUED:

KEVIN You dweebs. Only little kids want

to go to that place.

Kevin’s eyes are glued to the screen as he talks. He is staring at Colt on a roller coaster as he fires his gun in the air. The riders behind him duck in fear.

SUE (Whispering to Frank) The kids

have been doing better in school, I covered the groceries this week, and we could use something good right now.

Frank drops his bags, which reveals they are filled with BOXED TV DINNERS, and pulls out his wallet. His wallet is empty except for a folded paper that reads electric bill.

FRANK Shit. You know, kids die on those

rides all the time. I’m not sure you want to go there.

As Frank starts talking, Bill and Maureen turn to face him and the TV changes to a breaking news story.

On the TV, we see helicopter footage of a TEACUP, with two passengers roll out of the park and into the freeway. A car tries to stop and manages to only tap the cup, but gets hit by the car behind it causing a chain reaction of car crashes. The cup and passengers are slowly rolling away unscathed.

MAUREEN Actually Daddy, the odds of dying

on an amusement park ride is only point zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, eight percent.

The second maureen finishes, an eighteen-wheeler rams into the cup, shattering it and leaving a bloody tire trail in its wake. The Murphy family doesn’t see this and is staring at Maureen.

FRANK Geez, what are they teaching kids

in school these days.

(CONTINUED)

3.

CONTINUED: (2)

The TV screen changes to an image of a man between two banners that read “CULPRIT,” and “STILL AT LARGE.” The man on screen is a dirty blond, with hair in his eyes, missing a tooth and holding a wrench. He looks eerily similar to BEN.

A MAN walks by with his wife and son and BUMPS INTO Frank, knocking his empty wallet out of his hand. Frank bends down to pick it up.

MAN (Directed towards the TV) Thats a

shame.

Frank, whose bent over, raises his eyebrows in surprise before they furrow with anger. Frank shoots back up.

FRANK Hey! What the fuck did you just

say to me! You think I can’t provide for my family or something? I fought in Korea--

SUE --Frank please calm down.

FRANK No! My Family is going to that

park!

The man and his family are scared and run off as soon as Frank finishes speaking.

MAUREEN Really Daddy!

Maureen runs in to hug Frank, who returns the hug. His wallet is still in his hand with the white paper sticking out of it. Frank sees the paper and his face has a look of worry on it.

FRANK Oh o-of course sweet pea.

END OF TEASER

ACT ONE

4.

INT. BEDROOM – DAY

The camera is zoomed in on Sue sleeping in her bed. She begins to roll over. She does an unexpected two full rolls and hits her head on her dresser. Sue wakes up, rubbing her head, dazed.

SUE Ow. What the hell?

Sue turns to see Frank lifting up one side of the mattress.

FRANK Oh sorry hun. I had to get some

cash I tucked away if things got... bad.

Sue perks up a bit and smiles.

SUE I had no idea you were thinking

that far ahead.

FRANK Of course. You think I’m going to

let my family starve.

Frank pulls out a box and throws it onto the bed. Sue looks at it and sees a FEW loose bills.

SUE Frank. Theres less than fifty

dollars here. I’m not sure thats even going to get us through the door. If you’re reaching into your savings then maybe we should reconsider this trip.

There is a knock on the door and we hear Bills voice.

BILL (O.S.) Hey are you guys ready yet?

FRANK Mommy and Daddy are talking. Go

watch TV or something!

Ugh. Fine. Bill walks away

BILL

(CONTINUED)

5.

CONTINUED:

FRANK Sue, we can’t let these kids down again. I know its not much but we

need this. You said it yourself.

Sue looks back at the box and lets out a sigh. She picks up the cash, straightens it, and starts counting it.

SUE If we’re going to do this then we

have to set a budget.

A budget?

FRANK

SUE Yes Frank. We have to make sure we

can afford to pay our bills for next month.

FRANK Right. Next months bills.

Frank scratches the back of the head.

SUE Here’s thirty dollars. If we don’t

spend more than this we should be fine for next month.

Sue stands up and starts getting dressed. Frank looks at Sue for a beat before he starts to return the box back under the mattress. Frank realizes Sue can’t see him. He takes the rest of the money and folds it into his wallet.

FRANK I’ll see you in the car.

Sue nods in acknowledgment and Frank walks out the door.

INT. FRANKS CAR - DAY

Frank backs his car out of the Garage. From Frank’s seat we can see the fridge in the kitchen window and VIC’s house in his rearview mirror.

FRANK What are y’all waiting for? Get in

the car! Y’all were supposed to be waiting for us, ungrateful little...

(CONTINUED)

6.

CONTINUED:

Bill and Maureen come running out and hop into the car. Kevin is walking slowly towards the car with his hands in his pockets and a pout on his face.

FRANK Damnit, where’s Sue?

Sue is shown in the kitchen window grabbing the CAT COOKIE JAR off of the fridge. Inside the jar is a Plat-A- Ware container with rolls of dollar bills. Sue grabs a roll and walks towards the garage.

While Frank waits, he sees VIC pull out of his garage in his pink convertible, painted with a nude picture of Cutie Pie, Vic’s girlfriend, on every visible side of the car. Along with Cutie Pie in the front, three girls in bikini’s are playfully pushing each other in the backseat. Vic stops in the center of Frank’s driveway, blocking his way out.

FRANK Jesus. What does he want. Bill

close your eyes.

Why?

BILL

Frank reaches back and flicks Bill between the eyes. His eyes close as tears start to run down his face.

VIC Frank, my man. Where you headed?

Frank grips his steering wheel tighter and looks straight ahead, ignoring the question.

MAUREEN Aren’t you going to answer Mr.

Vic?

FRANK Well sweet pea, I’m hoping Mr. Vic

gets the message and leaves. Remember, sometimes ignoring your problems is the only way they’ll go away.

Kevin walks past Frank’s window but instead of getting in the car he walks up to Vic’s car.

7.

EXT. STREET - CONTINUOUS Kevin stands next Vic and gives him a fist bump.

KEVIN We’re going to Four Flags. You

know the amusement park.

VIC For real Kevino? What a co-winky-

dink. I’m hosting the memorial concert there for the accident.

KEVIN Really? That’s awesome! Wait what

accident?

VIC Ha. Exactly my man. Your already

thinking like the big wigs. No time to close. Another day, more cash, as they say.

Franks head is now poking out of his open car window.

FRANK What is that man on this time.

(Yelling) Kevin get your ass in this car and Vic, stop blocking my damn driveway!

KEVIN Dad, Vic’s going to the park too.

Can I ride with him?

VIC Yeah its no problem ma man. I’ll

even get the kid in free and save you a couple of bucks.

Vic playfully ruffles Kevin’s hair, in a loving father kind of way. Frank clenches the wheel again as Sue finally slides into the passenger seat.

FRANK I don’t need your charity Vic, or

my kid riding in a literal cum- vertible.

Frank!

SUE

(CONTINUED)

8.

CONTINUED:

VIC Cum-vertible? Oh. The lady

Ha! You crack me up Frank.

SUE Frank maybe you should let

go with him. It’ll save us bucks.

dance.

Kevin three

FRANK Shit. Tickets are three bucks a

piece? You should have said that sooner (Yelling) Kevin get your ass in Vic’s car right now!

Sweet.

KEVIN

Kevin does a pelvic thrust of victory and jumps into the back seat. The middle girl grabs him and lets him rest his head on her breasts. The other two girls press up against his sides and, squishing Kevin’s face. His face turns red with excitement.

VICS GIRLS

He’s so cute! Vic takes a look at his watch.

VIC Look at the time. I’ve got to get

going. Catch you later Frankerino!

FRANK Something is wrong with that man.

EXT. NEIGHBOR’S BUSHES - DAY

Ben and Kenny watch as Vic drive away from inside BUSHES next to the Murphy’s driveway. Kenny has a SUCKER sticking out of his mouth.

BEN What do you think? Wanna go see

Uncle Ronnie at the park?

Kenny takes the sucker out of his mouth and attached to it is one of Kenny’s teeth stuck on it.

KENNY Yeah. I wanna try that cup ride on

the TV box.

(CONTINUED)

9.

CONTINUED:

Ben returns with a toothy smile. Kenny puts the lollipop, tooth and all, back into his mouth.

BEN Me too. Hand me the screw driver

would ya?

Kenny reaches into his diaper and pulls out a screwdriver with a red handle and BROWN spots all over it. Ben frowns a bit but takes the screwdriver anyway.

BEN Whens the last time you changed

your diaper?

KENNY I just changed it three days ago.

Ben tilts his head back and starts unfolding his fingers one by one as if he’s counting.

BEN Then you should be good for

another two days. Lets go.

The boys scramble out of the bush. Kenny’s diaper has an extra mass that is hanging from his diaper that is dangling as he walks.

Ben puts the dirty screwdriver in the truck lock and jiggles it a bit before it pops open. Ben climbs in and Kenny follows.

CUT TO:

INT. FRANKS CAR - CONTINUOUS Frank sees the trunk popped up in his rearview mirror.

FRANK The stupid trunk’s on the fritz

again.

SUE Should I send Bill out to close

it?

FRANK Nah I got it honey.

Frank shifts gears and jams his foot on the gas.

10.

EXT. FRANKS TRUNK - CONTINUOUS

Kenny is almost inside the trunk when the car jolts backward. The car turns quickly and speeds off with enough force to send the trunk crashing back down. Ben pulls Kenny’s leg out of the way but part of the diaper is caught. This produces a loud squishing noise and causes a green scent trail to appear.

Ben and Kenny plug their noses and try to muffle each other’s giggling.

EXT. ROAD - DAY

We see the Franks car driving on the road leaving a green trail as it drives. Everyone that drives into the streak switches lanes.

FRANK Christ, what’s that smell?

SUE My god, I smell it too.

FRANK Jesus Bill, say something if

you’re going to rip one like that.

BILL But it’s not me.

FRANK Well it sure as hell ain’t me a

because I’d own up to it. You’ve got to own up to that stuff Bill. Show’s you’re a man.

Umm okay.

BILL

FRANK Just don’t embrace it in my

fucking car. END ACT ONE

ACT TWO

11.

EXT. TICKET BOOTH – DAY

Frank, Sue, Bill, and Maureen walk up to the front of the line and are surprised to see ROSIE behind the counter. Franks hunched demeanor and scowling face changes to an upright smile when he sees Rosie behind the counter.

Rosie is wearing a uniform and tie similar to his mohican uniform except its colored red and gold.

FRANK Rosie? What are you

ROSIE Well I’ll be. If it

Murphy family.

doing here? isn’t the

SUE How’s Georgia doing?

ROSIE Not great. She just got laid off

from the hair salon. They found out her afro was just a bad weave.

Sue is surprised and is avoiding eye contact with Rosie.

SUE I’m sorry to hear that...

ROSIE Yeah, so I picked up this job on

the weekends until things smooth out. It actually almost pays as much as the airline if you can believe it, and they’ve got kids working this thing.

FRANK I could have sworn I was getting

paid at least twice as much as what they make hear.

Rosie looks at Frank and shakes his head.

ROSIE You poor naiive white people.

That’ll be twelve bucks.

(CONTINUED)

12.

CONTINUED:

FRANK I was actually hoping we could get

the friends and family discount?

ROSIE Sure. Twelve bucks.

Seriously?

FRANK

ROSIE Sorry, Frank. I’m actually trying

to keep my job. Maybe if you followed the rules you wouldn’t be hastling me for discounts.

FRANK Geez Rosie I get it.

Frank slips the twelve dollars under the divider while rubbing his shoulder as if it were hurt. Rosie hands them the tickets and the family walks off.

EXT. PARKING LOT – DAY

The trunk of Frank’s car pops open. Ben jumps out as Kenny tries to climb out. Kenny’s diaper is stretched out even more than before. The diaper hits the ground before Kenny does.

BEN Lets go, while they’re busy.

Ben runs off. Kenny follows but can’t keep up.

KENNY Wait up, my diapy is draggin.

EXT. PARK ENTRANCE

The teenage TICKET TAKER in a red and gold uniform is letting customers in the long line through.

Ben weaves through the line expertly and no one pays attention to him.

TICKET TAKER Your ticket kid?

(CONTINUED)

13.

CONTINUED:

Ben smiles and proceeds to pants the Ticket Taker whose wearing ripped blue jean booty shoots underneath his red pants.

TICKET TAKER No! No one is supposed to know.

Ben puts his finger on his lip in confusion the Ticket Taker starts to panic and reach for his pants like Ben expected.

As Kenny comes up in the rear, the line splits for him as everyone reels over from the stench. Someone even vomits. Kenny has no clue this is happening because of him.

Ben grabs Kenny’s arm and they run into the park. They see their UNCLE waving at them while running from overweight park security.

The Ticket Taker has pulled his pants back up as Frank and the family walk up.

FRANK You gonna take our tickets or

what? I didn’t pay three dollars to walk through here for free.

TICKET TAKER I’m sorry sir, its just these kids

came by--

FRANK --I didn’t ask for your life story

kid.

SUE Frank, be nice.

Sue takes the tickets and hands them to the boy as the family goes through the turnstile.

Vic and the girls, still clinging to Kevin, walk up to the Ticket Taker.

TICKET TAKER Wow, you’re Vic! Right this way.

The ticket taker stretches out his arm to motion them inside the park. Vic snaps his fingers and makes two finger gun motions towards the ticket taker as they walk through the turnstile.

14.

EXT. AMUSEMENT PARK - DAY

The Murphy family stands in front of a carousel and Kevin walks with Vic. Kevin spots a chili dog stand and stops to stare at it. Kevin reaches into his pockets but they come back out empty.

KEVIN Damnit. Hey Vic can I borrow--

When Kevin turns back he realizes Vic and his girls have already walked away. Kevin’s stomach starts to growl as he walks toward his parents.

Damnit.

KEVIN (CONT'D)

FRANK What the hell you say to me?

KEVIN Nothing. Whats a kid got to do to

get some food around here? And I need money for rides and junk. You don’t expect me hang around kiddie land.

Oh no to be going

FRANK you don’t. This is supposed

a family trip. You’re not anywhere.

SUE Give him the money Frank.

But Sue?

FRANK

SUE This is a trip for the family, not

a family trip, and Kevin’s old enough to have fun on his own.

FRANK Fine. I want my change back.

Frank pulls out TWO DOLLARS, crumples them up, and droops in Kevin’s outstretched hand. Kevin unfolds the bills.

KEVIN What am I supposed to do with two

dollars?

(CONTINUED)

15.

CONTINUED: Frank!

SUE

FRANK What, we’re on a budget.

Sue scowls and Frank rolls his eyes as he drops two more crumpled bills in Kevin’s hands.

KEVIN Seriously? Just four dollars? Mom?

SUE We are on a budget sweetie.

KEVIN I hate this family!

Kevin stomps away towards the chili dog stand.

FRANK He’ll be fine.

(turns to kids) Alright what do you little monsters want to do?

MAUREEN I want to ride the bumper cups.

BILL Ooh ooh, me too.

FRANK Bumper cups? I swear whoever comes

up with these names is just lazy. The Murphy family walks towards the ride.

INT. BEHIND BUMPER CUP RIDE - DAY

Ronnie lies under a cup in the open tent. Ben and Kenny watch from the back entrance.

BEN You fix that cup yet uncle Ronnie?

Ronnie gives a wide toothy grin, showing his missing teeth.

RONNIE Almost. Oh you kids are going to

have so much fun.

(CONTINUED)

16.

CONTINUED:

KENNY Hey Ronnie, how come thems coppers

was chasin yous earlier? Ronnie slides out from under the cup.

RONNIE Those guys were just buzz kills

because one person had an accident. It ain’t my fault the walls broke down. I just make the rides fun. I aint no fence repairman.

(Turns to the boys) Make sure you use that yeller cup there.

Ronnie walks towards the controls at the rides entrance.

Ben and Kenny jump into the yellow cup. Kenny makes a loud squishy noise when he sits down.

EXT. BUMPER CUP RIDE - DAY The Murphy family walks up to the front of the line.

FRANK Must be our luck day Sue. Almost

no wait.

RONNIE That’ll be one dollar per rider.

FRANK You know you remind me of

someone...Wait did you say a dollar?

RONNIE Well two since yous got two kids.

FRANK What the hell? Rides aren’t

included?

SUE (Pulls Frank away)

Whats the problem Frank?

(CONTINUED)

17.

CONTINUED:

FRANK Robbery. After the cotton candy

and funnel cakes I’ve only got four bucks left.

Progressively louder) Why the hell do we even have to pay to get in if everything inside is going to cost me money?

Ronnie has started picking his nose and is slouching over the controls, ignoring Franks outburst.

SUE (Yelling)

Stop making a scene!

Sue pushes Frank out of the way and pays Ronnie, who pockets the money instead of opening the register.

FRANK Jesus Sue. Remind me not to cross

you.

Thanks Mom.

MAUREEN

BILL Yeah that was awesome

The kids run into the ride. Sue drags Frank away so the next people in line can pay. Sue turns to Frank with a scowl on her face.

INT. BUMPER CUP RIDE - DAY

A loud beep rings and a red light shifts to green signaling the start of the ride. Bill and Maureen are sitting in a red cup and across from them is Ben and Kenny in their yellow cup. Other kids occupy other assorted cups.

Bill and Maureen spin the cup together and get bumped once or twice before they spot Ben and Kenny.

BILL What are they doing here?

MAUREEN (Waving)

Hey Ben, Hey Kenny. The brothers waves back with a smile.

(CONTINUED)

18.

CONTINUED:

BEN Hey Maureen. Wes going to hit you.

Ben and Kenny grab their wheel on a stick and tilt it hard towards Maureen and Bill’s cup. The cup shoots off with unexpected speed and rams into Bill and Maureen’s red cup.

Bill and Maureen’s cup spins rapidly as they approach a flimsy fence.

BILL Shit, shit, shit!

Bill raises his arms in defense as the red cup gets closer to the wall, there is a zoom in on the wheels as a brake system falls into place causing spikes to pop up under the cup. The ride miraculously stops short of the fence.

MAUREEN Don’t be such a pussy Bill.

BILL I am not! Wait, I don’t like the

look on your face right now.

Maureen stares at Ben and Kenny across the ride’s floor. She has a furrowed brow with a devilish smile on her face.

Please don’t

BILL (CONT'D)

Bill braces himself by clutching the rides restraints as Maureen grabs the ride’s wheel. She yanks it back and points it towards Ben and Kenny.

The red cups shoots off quickly, spinning rapidly while moving forward.

BEN Shit, shit, shit!

The red cup makes contact and the yellow cup is sent flying. As the yellow cup approaches the fence, the brakes fail to activate.

The yellow cup gains momentum instead of slowing down and the cup bursts through the fence and into the park.

19.

EXT. PARK - DAY This is a birds-eye view of the park.

The yellow cup crashes into an ice cream cart, causing it to land on the man working there and sending ice cream flying everywhere.

The cup then hits a funnel cake stand, knocks over a roller coaster for toddlers, and riccochets into the memorial concert where the ride destroys the instruments and sound equipment by bouncing off of each item.

In a close up of the ride we can see Ben and Kenny with outstretched arms, happy as can be.

BEN This is awesome

I knows!

KENNY

The ride finally richochets into the gaming center and knocks down the water balloon filling game. The kids playing cleared out but the attendant working was stuck behind the counter.

When the ride crashes into the the tent caves in, causing the and the unconscious attendant.

The camera focuses on the back two bulges form under the blue tent material and Ben and Kenny pop out, surprisingly unscathed. Kenny has grabbed himself a light blue bear from the wreckage.

KENNY Yous was right, Uncle Ronnie does

know hows to make a good time.

BEN Never doubt your family.

EXT. BUMPER CUP RIDE - DAY

Frank and Sue stand at the ride’s exit. They can see the hole into the park directly across from their position at the exit. They can see where the cup crashed into the game at this position.

game, the balloon pops and prizes to land on the ride

of the collapsed tent as

(CONTINUED)

20.

CONTINUED:

FRANK Holy shit. I told them kids die on

these things.

SUE Yeah maybe its time to do

something else.

Bill and Maureen come out of the ride’s exit. Maureen runs in to hug her parents. Bill trails behind with wide eyes and a slight frown.

BILL That was kind of fucked up.

FRANK You’re alive kid. Suck it up.

MAUREEN Daddy, can we go play some games

now? I want to win a teddy.

SUE I think that’s a good idea.

FRANK Not sure how many games two

dollars is going to get us. Sue pulls out her purse and gives Frank five dollars.

SUE I’ll take Bill to play some games.

Lets make this a good day for the kids. Remember, don’t play a game more than twice. You have a tendency to get sucked into these things.

Frank quickly grabs the money.

FRANK I don’t get sucked into anything.

(Turns to Maureen) Lets go sweet pea.

The Murphys walk towards the game area.

21.

EXT. PARK CROSSROADS - DAY

Kevin sees the family walk into the game area as he finishes his chili dog. He walks in that direction before stopping and seeing LEX and BOLO near the carousel.

Lex and Bolo are smoking joints and their eyes are a dark pink. Kevin walks up to them.

KEVIN Yo guys, what are you doing here?

LEX (Remaining calm

throughout) Just smoking a doobie man. Get off our backs.

Yeah.

BOLO

KEVIN I mean at the parks you idiots,

and give me a hit of that. Kevin grabs the joint from Bolo as Lex talks

LEX We aren’t here for those baby

rides. We came for Fuck Gun’s the memorial concert but G-d struck down the bands instruments with an enchanted cup from the sky.

Kevin’s eyes get pinker from a single, long inhale of the joint.

KEVIN Shit this is good.

Yeah.

BOLO

LEX Then Bolo scored this killer weed

from some dude in a trench coat. They call it Coin Flip because the high is either really good or really bad. And we’ve just been...smoking it.

Yeah.

BOLO

(CONTINUED)

22.

CONTINUED:

KEVIN Yeah well, I didn’t come for that

baby stuff either.

There is a long silence as the group passes around the joint. Kevin stares at the roller coaster with his mouth open and a blank look in his eyes.

KEVIN But wouldn’t be cool, if like, we just rode the big roller coaster.

Just to see how babyish it is. There’s another pause.

LEX That’d be funny. I’m down.

BOLO The group walks towards the roller coaster.

EXT. ROLLER COASTER LINE - DAY

Lex and Bolo eyes are now BLOOD RED. They are looking around frantically. Kevin’s arms are to his side, his eyes are pink, and he has a small smile on his face.

In front of Kevin in line a blonde haired girl, JEN, who Kevin starts staring at. Kevin reaches out to tap her shoulder.

KEVIN You look soooo hot.

Yeah.

Umm okay.

JEN

The line moves forward and Jen turns around to get in her coaster car. As she turns, she turns into Sweetie Pie, Kevin’s crush and Vics girlfriend.

Kevin stands there without getting onto the ride.

JEN (Seductively, as

Sweetie Pie) What are you waiting for? You scared or somethin?

(CONTINUED)

23.

CONTINUED:

KEVIN I ain’t scared of nothing. I’m all

man.

Kevin gets on the ride and Lex and Bolo get in the car behind him, still rapidly shifting their heads as if looking out for something.

EXT. ROLLER COASTER - DAY The coaster cars start to climb slowly up to the peak.

Kevin stares at the peak which starts to extend into the clouds as he looks at. Butterflies and rainbows appear to cover the peak of the coaster.

KEVIN This is going to be awesome.

(turning back) Don’t you think guys.

Lex and Bolo’s blood red eyes look towards the top too. From their perspective they see an endless ride in a red sky with no peak in sight. In place of butterflies, imp demons fly around, spitting small fire balls.

LEX Please daddy I promise I’ll be

good. Don’t make me go up there.

BOLO (Looking at the

ground) No mommy, come back. Don’t leave me alone here.

When they get to the peak we see Kevin looking at Jen, as Cutie pie. The light shines on Cutie Pie and she smiles at Kevin who smiles back. Kevin thinks he had a moment with the girl when the ride drops.

Kevin raises his arms and laughs happily as the ride drops. Lex and Bolo are freaking out.

They look at the bottom and see the face of the devil. The coaster tracks morph into the devil’s tongue and the imps circle Lex and Bolo while laughing hysterically.

Lex reaches back and claws at the kid sitting behind him, managing to get his finger in the kid’s eye.

(CONTINUED)

24.

CONTINUED:

LEX No, please, I don’t want to go to

hell. I promise Mommy, I won’t touch myself again.

BOLO I promise, next time I won’t

watch!

The ride gets to the bottom and enters the first. At the peak of the loop, Bolo vomits. The vomit falls straight down. At the bottom of the loop, the vomit lands squarely on Jen’s hair.

JEN Ah! What the hell?

Kevin turns and looks at Jen, who morphs into a Cutie Pie in a bikini with wet hair.

KEVIN (loudly)

Wow you look even more amazing than before.

JEN You freak!

Jens hair is whipping back with the gust of the ride, causing chunks of Vomit to hit Bolo back in the face.

BOLO I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to like

it.

LEX I want to go home.

EXT. ROLLER COASTER EXIT - DAY

Kevin walks out of the exit with Jen close behind. Kevin turns to the vomit soaked Jen.

KEVIN So do you think I can have your

number?

JEN Stay away from me you creep.

Jen walks away but Kevin is still smiling. Nothing can bring his day down. Lex and Bolo walk out after.

(CONTINUED)

25.

CONTINUED:

KEVIN You know, that was pretty fun.

Maybe those kids know what they’re talking about.

LEX Fuck that. I’m out of here.

Yeah.

BOLO

Lex and Bolo start walking away. As they walk, the park security runs after Ronnie.

KEVIN Alright see you guys later.

(To himself) Wonder who those security guys were after?

Kevin walks in the direction of the security guards, into the games area.

EXT. PIN GAME - DAY

Maureen and Bill walk up to the game. A sign with bold letters says 25 cents a game on it and another lists Levels for prizes. The game is set up with three sets of three pins stacked in a pyramid formation. A GAME CONDUCTOR is sitting in a chair reading a magazine featuring girls in bikinis.

How much?

FRANK

GAME CONDUCTOR Read the sign.

FRANK Seriously? This is how you’re

going to treat a paying customer?

The Game Conductor looks up from his chair. He has an annoyed look on his face.

GAME CONDUCTOR That’ll be twenty-five cents.

FRANK That sir to you kid. I fought for

this country and I will be respected.

(CONTINUED)

26.

CONTINUED:

MAUREEN Daddy can you just pay the man. I

want to play the game.

FRANK Of course sweet heart.

(To Game Conductor) Here.

Frank pays the conductor and gets 75 cents back.

The Game Conductor hands Maureen a ball before sitting back down and picking up his magazine.

GAME CONDUCTOR You get three throws. Have at it.

Maureen throws the ball. It MISSES. She looks up at Frank.

FRANK You got this. Try again sweet pea.

Maureen throws the second ball. It misses.

FRANK I believe in you honey.

Maureen throws the last ball and knocks down a SINGLE PIN.

MAUREEN Yay. I actually hit it.

FRANK That you did. Good job.

(To Game Conductor) Wheres her prize?

GAME CONDUCTOR No prize for one pin.

FRANK What the hell do you mean no prize

for one pin?

GAME CONDUCTOR Read the sign.

FRANK (Yelling)

I’m not reading a damn sign!

(CONTINUED)

27.

CONTINUED: (2)

GAME CONDUCTOR (Looks up)

You need at least three pins for a prize.

FRANK (with gritted teeth)

Fine. Would you like me to try honey?

MAUREEN

Yes please. Frank hands the man another quarter and takes his balls.

FRANK I’ll show you how I survived in

Nam.

Frank throws the first ball and overshoots by a wide margin. The Game Conductor laughs.

MAUREEN Um Daddy are you sure about this?

FRANK Just warming up Sweety.

Frank throws the second ball. It HITS THE EDGE OF THE TABLE and bounces off, hitting Maureen in the head.

Ow!

MAUREEN

FRANK Just a little friendly fire. It

happens sometimes. Walk it off. I know Goomer did. Bless his heart. I got this.

Frank throws the last ball and hits the pyramid of pins in the center, knock down all three.

FRANK Boom! Thats how you become an ace

sniper for the US of A.

MAUREEN By missing a lot?

Before Frank can respond:

(CONTINUED)

28.

CONTINUED: (3)

GAME CONDUCTOR Here’s your prize

The conductor pulls out a bear keychain and slides it across to Frank.

FRANK What the hell is this? My daughter

wants the bear.

GAME CONDUCTOR No can do. The only level one

prizes are key chains.

FRANK Key chains? That’s bullshit we

came for the damn bear.

Frank slams his hand on the counter and points DIAGONALLY UPWARD towards the bears. There are to sizes of bears in that direction and its ambiguous which bear Fank is pointing too. The Conductor assumes its the larger one.

GAME CONDUCTOR Oh you want ‘the’ bear. You’ve got

to knock down all three sets of pins to get that one.

FRANK Are you serious? Who comes up with

this shit?

GAME CONDUCTOR I don’t make the rules man. I just

work here.

MAUREEN Its ok Daddy, I don’t need the

bear and mommy said not to play more than twice.

FRANK No, if my little girl wants the

bear, she’s getting a bear. Besides Mommy was talking to you, not me.

MAUREEN I don’t think she was.

Frank ignores her and hands the Game Conductor another dollar.

(CONTINUED)

29.

CONTINUED: (4)

He plays again, this time managing to knock down the first set and the second set, but misses his third shot greatly. The game conductor gets up to hand Frank a prize but Frank calls out to him.

FRANK Don’t bother unless its the damn

bear. I’m not filling my house with this shit.

The conductor sits back down and Frank slides him another quarter. This time Frank knocks down the first two sets but only gets the top pin in the third set.

FRANK Jiog-ei geim jeoju.! (damn this

game to hell in Korean)

GAME CONDUCTOR You sure you don’t want you prize?

Frank ignores him and slides another dollar to the conductor.

A short montage of Frank failing takes place: One where he misses all three shots, one where he focuses all shots on the last pins to prove it can be knocked down, one where he almost wins but the final pin jumps back into place after leaning as if it were going to fall.

Maureen arms are folded throughout.

MAUREEN Daddy I don’t even want the bear

now. Can we play something else? Frank kneels down on one knee to speak to Maureen.

FRANK Darling, this isn’t about you

anymore. Sometimes a man commits to something, and as a man, he has to see that commitment through to the end. Thats what man does and thats what I’m going to do. You understand?

MAUREEN So are you committed to sitting

around the house? You get fired a lot.

(CONTINUED)

30.

CONTINUED: (5)

Frank grabs the top his noses and pinches himself between the eyes in frustration and stands back up. Frank opens his wallet and see’s the electric bill blocking his last quarter.

FRANK Shit. I spent it all. Well there’s

no point in holding onto this quarter.

Frank slides his last quarter to the conductor and grabs his last three balls.

He knocks down the first two towers with ease, but on the third, he knocks out the LOWER LEFTT PIN. The top pin stays perfectly still even though it should be unbalanced.

FRANK Holy shit... This game is fucking

rigged! (Turns to Game

Conductor) Did you know about this?

What?

GAME CONDUCTOR

Frank pics up a quarter and throws it at the pins. It sticks to the top one instead of bouncing off.

FRANK Fucking magnets! Whats your

fucking game? You pocket hard working people’s money?

GAME CONDUCTOR Naw man thats just how it works. I

thought everyone knew these games were rigged.

FRANK I’m going to kill you.

Frank pulls the from behind the counter and starts punching him.

Daddy stop!

MAUREEN

The security guards run past the game at this point. They stop and grab Frank.

(CONTINUED)

31.

CONTINUED: (6)

FRANK What the hell! Get off me. That

man stole my money. I’m the victim here.

Sue and Bill walk in from the right. Kevin walks in from the left.

SUE Oh my G-d! Frank? What happened?

FRANK This asshole stole my money. The

game is rigged Sue, its rigged.

SUE Damnit Frank. I told you not to play more than twice. Why can’t

you just listen for once?

KEVIN Holy shit. My dad’s going to jail?

SUE Don’t worry. They’re not real cops

we just won’t be back at this park for a while.

The security officers cuff Frank and start walking him away.

SUE (CONT'D) We’ll see you outside honey.

FRANK

As Frank approaches the exit another group of security brings up RONNIE next to Frank.

FRANK What they get you for?

RONNIE I was just trying to make the

rides fun again and they go and cuff me.

Yeah. Yeah.

EXT. PARK EXIT - SUNSET

(CONTINUED)

32.

CONTINUED:

FRANK Right? I got my money stolen and

they cuffed me. The legal system is backwards. I feel for you.

They make it to the park exit and a police car pulls up.

FRANK Holy shit, I’m actually going to

jail?

PARK OFFICER Naw, they’re here for the other

guy. He’s responsible for two murders, 5 injuries, and seven thousand in property damage.

RONNIE (Laughing)

It was a good ride though. Ronnie gets into the cop car.

FRANK Damn. Thats fucked up.

PARK OFFICER Yep. As for you, I don’t want to

see your face around here again or we will get the cops involved.

The officer unshackles Frank and pushes him through the exit before closing the gate.

END ACT TWO

ACT THREE

Frank sits in his car and sees the rest of his family approach through his side mirror. Kevin is chowing on chili dogs and Maureen is holding a teddy bear. Bill has cotton candy. They get into the car.

FRANK (Quietly to Sue)

I’m sorry Sue. I messed up.

INT. FRANKS CAR - SUNSET

I know.

SUE

(CONTINUED)

33.

CONTINUED:

FRANK No I mean. I spent all the money I

had.

SUE Don’t worry Frank I didn’t give

you more than we could afford.

FRANK I spent a little more than that.

What?

SUE

EXT. PARKING LOT – SUNSET

Ben and Kenny stroll up to the car with dirty mouths. Kenny’s diaper is still dragging on the ground leaving a brown streak in his path.

KENNY That poop dog sure was good. Maybe

I should make mines owns.

BEN That wasn’t poop you dimwit. It

was chili. They just look the same. Get in the trunk.

Ben jiggles the lock again and both boys hop in the trunk.

INT. FRANKS CAR - SUNSET

SUE (loudly)

You spent the rest of your savings?

FRANK I just said that. You can lower

your voice.

SUE Lower my--You’re lucky I have been

saving. It seems like I’m the only one capable of providing for this family.

Frank is silent while he starts the car.

(CONTINUED)

34.

CONTINUED:

BILL Umm are we going to be okay.

FRANK Don’t worry. Everything’s going to

be fine. Its just that I’m not sure what we’re going to eat tonight.

BILL Thats ok. I’m not hungry.

MAUREEN Yeah me neither.

Kevin’s eyes are still pink.

KEVIN Seriously? I’m starving. But I’d

rather starve than eat another of those TV dinners, so I guess I’m good.

FRANK Wow, really? Maybe this won’t be

so bad.

Daddy, thanks bear. I had a

MAUREEN for winning me the great time.

BILL Yeah me too.

Me a three.

KEVIN

FRANK Really guys?

(to Sue) When did she?

SUE The man gave it to her after you

were taken away. There is a pause and a tear rolls down Frank’s eye.

SUE (CONT'D) I’m sorry I yelled at you. It’s ok. We’ll find a way. We always

do.

(CONTINUED)

35.

CONTINUED: (2)

FRANK I know honey.

Frank leans for a kiss but is stopped.

SUE Good lord, what is that smell?

FRANK Damnit Bill, again?

BILL It’s not me. I swear.

FRANK Ugh, then Kevin? Seriously?

KEVIN What the hell? I didn’t do it.

FRANK Don’t give me that shit. I saw you

with those chili dogs.

Frank rolls down the windows and kevin sits back with his arms folded and lips poked out in anger.

INT. MURPHY’S GARAGE - NIGHT

The family exits the car. Frank opens the door and lets everyone through except Kevin.

FRANK You’re not bringing that shit into

the house.

KEVIN But I didn’t do anything!

FRANK I’ve heard that before.

Frank slams the door in Kevin’s face. Kevin hears his parents behind the door

SUE (O.S.) Frank. How come the lights aren’t

working?

FRANK (O.S.) Ha, ha. Who needs lightS in the

middle of the night anyway?

(CONTINUED)

36.

CONTINUED: Frank Murphy!

SUE (O.S.)

EXT. MURPHY'S GARAGE - NIGHT

Kevin angrily mumbles something incomprehensible to himself as he makes his way to the basement.

Ben and Kenny let themselves out of the car trunk and Kevin spots them scurrying away.

KEVIN What the fuck?

Ben turns and laughs before running down the street. Kenny follows but his diaper gets caught on a bush, ripping it off and exposing his brown stained butt.

KEVIN I really need to stop smoking.

END ACT THREE