#being realistic about their survival and joking they got bigger things to worry about than getting fired 💕

[lixbf]

tommy is already iconic and i love him

[pies-writes-and-more]

Hungover Love

word count: 2,688

pairing: UniversityStudent!Akaashi Keiji x Fem!Reader

warnings: characters getting drunk and hungover - all assumed to be of legal age

a/n: I don’t know where this came from but I started writing it so here it is haha. Got the idea from @moanlightlust‘s list (can find it here!) so thank you! I’ll bold the prompt down below (I kinda changed it for the sake of the story but still got the idea from their prompt list :)) Thank you to @satan-ruler-of-hells​ and @thisnoodlewritesao3​ for reading over this for me! Love you both :)

haikyuu masterlist

“Akaashi?” You repeated the name for the second time as you strained your ears to hear something besides bar music and Bokuto’s loud voice in the background.

“Hm?” The small grunt made you smile, knowing he was probably slumped over on a chair, holding his face in one hand and leaning on a table in front of him, with his other hand pressing his phone a little too hard on his ear.

You let out a small laugh, pausing the show you had on your TV so you could hear him better, “Akaashi, you called me. Did you need something?”

There was another grunt on the other end of the line, and you chuckled as you heard Konoha teasing Bokuto about something in the distance, “What is it, Akaashi?” You inquired some more, listening to him hum quietly to the song playing.

“Y/N Y/L/N,” he mumbled and you just shook your head with a smile. God he must’ve had far too many drinks to be this out of it. “I fucking love Y/N Y/L/N. It almost feels like she can hear me right now,” he was saying and you just laughed. “Like I can... I can hear her laughing.”

“Akaashi, you idiot,” your face felt hot but you tried to ignore it. He was drunk. Very clearly drunk. He didn’t mean anything by it - the last time he was drunk, he told you he was going to leave his college volleyball team and join some new sport because Bokuto was getting on his nerves. 

It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t. It didn’t matter that those were the words you had been waiting to hear from him. It didn’t matter that you’d spent the last two years pining after him. He was drunk.

“Didya know... the other day.... Y/N smiled at me cause I said something funny- what did I say... I can’t remember what I said but I said something funny and she smiled and I just.. God it’s that smile ya know?” Akaashi’s voice seemed so much lighter than it did usually. You could tell that he was smiling and just imagining that goofy drunk smile on his face made your heart skip a beat or two.

“That’s nice,” you tried to keep things casual, avoid getting your hopes up too much. You didn’t want to ruin what you had with him - the nice fun friendship that was definitely just a friendship.

“Y/N?” Akaashi suddenly seemed a lot more present, as if just realizing you were on the line. 

“Yea?”

“Y/N!” The smile on his face was probably a lot bigger from the sounds of it, a chuckle slipping from his lips, “I love you, Y/N! I’ve loved you ever since I met you when you picked up my runaway ball for me back in high school. You were so pretty then and you’re super pretty now. Like you get prettier every day I see you-” his speech was quick and slurred, you could almost feel him getting drunker by the second.

“Akaashi-”

“Bokuto keeps telling me that I need to tell you but I dunno if I can because I’m pretty sure you like that dude that lives across from you and-”

“Akaashi-”

“But I guess I wouldn’t know until I told you right? So I’m telling you because I like you. I really like you. I wanted to bring you to that new ice cream place down the road from your place but you always seemed so busy and I don’t want to bug you, plus volleyball takes up so much time, and then there’s school, and I don’t even know how to balance volleyball, school, and a girlfriend-”

“Akaashi!” Your voice was louder this time, biting down on your inner cheek as his name left your lips. You needed him to stop - it had to stop. Your heart was fluttering too much and you couldn’t even tell how much of this was true. You wanted to tell yourself that alcohol could bring out people’s true feelings, but it also made you do dumb shit. And wouldn’t confessing to someone you didn’t actually like be considered dumb shit?

“Ya that’s me,” Akaashi mumbled, clearly a lot more tired than he seemed five seconds ago.

You tried not to laugh, tried to swallow your fears and your feelings, your heart feeling like it was beating a thousand times a minute. “I need you to go sober up, get some rest and drink lots of water okay?”

“But-”

“No but’s! You obviously drank way too much and honestly, I’ve never heard you talk like this before and I can’t even tell if it’s you anymore,” you acted like you were scolding him, putting up that wall again like you had so many other times before. He couldn’t really like you, could he? There was no way.

“Y/N Y/L/N, I fucking love you!” Akaashi yelled into the phone, making you cringe a bit at the volume.

Your chest was tightening, you couldn’t tell if it was fear or hope but whatever it was, it was scaring the shit out of you, “Shut the hell up! If you love me so much tell me when you’re sober, dammit!” You yelled back, immediately hanging up the phone. Your eyes widened as you watched the call screen disappear, your mouth suddenly feeling very dry.

The next few hours were radio silent from both Bokuto and Akaashi. You refused to text either of them in fear that you might accidentally say more than you wanted to.

It’s fine, he was really drunk from the sounds of it so he probably won’t even remember it right? I mean, the last time he got super drunk, he didn’t remember challenging the bartender to a pushup fight so... so he won’t remember.... right?

You paced in your room for a bit, glancing at your phone every five seconds to see if there was any sort of notification from either of your friends. But nothing. 

You barely slept a wink that night, tossing and turning while facing dreams of Akaashi laughing in your face the next time you saw him.

You thought I meant that? It was just a joke, Y/N.

I only see you as a friend, sorry.

Don’t you think you’re reading into our friendship a little too much? That’s all there is. Friendship. 

The idea of Akaashi awkwardly laughing in your face, giving you that half smile while dismissing your feelings haunted you for hours. By the time the sun came up, you gave up on the idea of sleeping and threw your blanket off of you. It was time to figure out how to survive your day without thinking about Akaashi Keiji at all. 

It wasn’t easy. Everything reminded you of him. Half of your Netflix was shows you were watching with him, or movies you’d already seen with him next to you. Your homework wasn’t any help either (though you definitely needed to get it done). Akaashi would normally come over and study with you, his adorable glasses making him look like some young professor, twirling his pencil around in his fingers while nodding along to some song stuck in his head. You couldn’t get used to studying on your own.

Radio silence finally broke when you texted Bokuto, asking if they all made it home safe last night and he responded with a very badly spelled text message saying, “himw safe so tirwd need adcil heaf hurtinh” (aka. home safe so tired need advil head hurting) 

Your lips curled into a small smile - at least Bokuto was alive. And the fact that he wasn’t all up in your face about Akaashi meant that the setter probably hadn’t said anything last night, or at least, it meant that Bokuto was too busy tending to a hangover to think about it.

A knock on your door made you jump, watching it for a moment before slowly approaching.

“Oi, open up, I know you’re in there.”

You calculated the odds and realistically there were only 3 reasons why Akaashi would be at your door right now, while he was still probably very hungover.

A. He was tired of listening to Bokuto complain about being hungover while also hungover and wanted you to help take care of him.

B. He wasn’t actually hungover and wanted to hang out.

C. He remembered your phone call from last night and wanted to confront you about it.

...

There was no way it was B or C so... it had to be A right?

You opened the door with a smile on your face, trying to pretend like this was the first time you spoke to him since you saw him earlier yesterday.

“Hey, what’re you doing here?” You asked, welcoming him in and watching his movements as he shuffled inside. He was wearing his sunglasses and wincing a little so... it definitely wasn’t B. He was definitely still hungover.

“Good morning to you too,” Akaashi chuckled slightly, groaning as he made his way over to your couch and flopped onto it. “God, my head is killing me,” he grumbled.

You felt almost a bit of relief - he wasn’t bringing it up so... it must mean that C wasn’t an option right? “I’ll make you some tea. Want something to eat?”

He made a noise that you assumed was a yes, grabbing some ramen packages that you liked to have whenever you were hungover.

“How’re the boys?” You asked as soon as the tea was finished, handing it to him as he sat up with a huff.

“Fine... I told them I didn’t want to get drunk,” he rolled his eyes. “But Bokuto kept pouring shots and being a little bitch when I didn’t want to have them... something about how he didn’t want to lose his best friend or something.”

You laughed, shaking your head slowly as you moved back to your little kitchen, “You’re always so busy studying. Bokuto probably just misses having you around.”

“We live together.”

“Ya well you’re always either on campus or here with me so I can see why he’d miss you,” you smirked, humming softly to yourself as you let the noodles cook. Things were okay. Things were normal. Things were going to be fine - all your worries were slipping away-

“So are we not going to talk about it?” 

Akaashi’s voice made you jump, turning around to find him standing right behind you and slowly sipping on the tea.

“Fuck, Akaashi, don’t do that,” you glared at him, hitting his arm, “Could’ve made me burn myself.” 

“Sorry,” he gave you a small smile, leaning against the nearby counter. “But we are going to talk about it, aren’t we?”

The ramen so clearly needed stirring and stirring was a full focus kind of job and this was obviously why you were looking into the pot and not looking at Akaashi, even though you could feel his eyes watching you, “Talk about what? Bokuto missing you?”

Akaashi chuckled and lifted his finger to under your chin, tilting your face to look at him, “I drank a lot. But I don’t think any amount of alcohol could make me forget how embarrassing I was.”

“Embarrassing?”

He watched your eyes for a moment before pulling his hand away from you and looking down at his tea, his smile slowly stiffening, “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I don’t want to make you more uncomfortable. I just thought I should apologize and let you know that you don’t have to reject me or anything. I like being friends with you and that’s enough for me, even if there’s a part of me that wants more.”

You almost dropped your spoon on the floor, staring at him with wide eyes, “S-Sorry what? Apologize? For... for what?”

“For confessing to you while drunk,” Akaashi’s smile was turning more sad now, taking a slow sip from his tea. “I’d been considering telling you how I feel for a while now and I guess I should’ve stopped myself from drinking sooner to save you the embarrassment.”

“Embarrassment? Akaashi, don’t be an idiot,” you ignored the soup still dripping from the spoon and whacked his arm with it.

“Hey!”

“You’re telling me you were drunk enough to confess to me and to remember what you said but not remember what I said at the end?” You huffed, hands on your hips now. 

Akaashi’s eyes lifted to the ceiling in thought, his lips pursing slowly like he did when he was concentrating on getting an answer right on his homework, “I know you seemed mad,” he finally responded, shrugging a bit. “I figured it was cause I put you on the spot like that.”

“No you absolute meathead, it’s because after months and months of pining after you, weeks of Bokuto almost spilling my secret on multiple different occasions to you, him almost screaming to you once about how much I love you, you end up telling me you love me over a drunk phone call and I can’t tell if you’re being serious or just a drunk dummy!” You scold him, hitting his arm again with your hand and shaking your head. God, for a boy with as high of an average as he had, how is it possible that there were no brain cells running around in that head of his?

Akaashi smirked a little, watching your eyes as you ranted, a playful smile on his lips, “So... you love me huh?”

“You better get out of my sight before I dump this ramen on your head,” you glare at him, trying your best not to smile because his smile was just so contagious but ugh that evil little smirk of his-

His lips were suddenly on your cheek, pressing a soft kiss to your skin and letting you feel the smirk still toying on his expression, “Drunk or not. I do love you, Y/N Y/L/N.”

“Y-Yeah yeah whatever,” you avoid his eyes some more, your whole face feeling hot and your cheek tingling where he had kissed you. “Go sit, it’s almost done.”

“Not until you say it back,” he teased, hugging you from behind and peppering your cheeks with some more kisses. “You said you love me, you can’t take it back now. Say it again.”

“Why?” you laughed, trying to pull away from his tight hug.

“Because it’s the best news I’ve ever gotten and I want to hear you say it again and again and again,” he insisted, turning you around to face him and smiling down at you. “Pretty please?”

You sighed with a smile on your face because as annoying as he could be, you really did mean it when you tell him, “I love you too, Akaashi.”

Alone time with Akaashi lasted long enough for him to properly ask you to go on a date with him to that ice cream shop, and was then interrupted by Bokuto showing up at your door and inviting himself in with a grin.

Apparently, the cure to Bokuto’s hangover was just knowing his two best friends had finally confessed to each other.

“God, I thought he’d never get drunk enough,” Bokuto grinned proudly to himself after you had happily explained the details to him. “I thought I’d have to just keep ordering him drinks.”

“What?” Akaashi glared at him, putting the pieces together.

Bokuto just smirked mischievously, “You can’t get mad cause it worked. I figured it would take a miracle to get you two to confess. And getting you drunk is basically a miracle.”

The fact that you were laughing made Akaashi want to kill Bokuto a little less, and even though he glared some more at his best friend, he would secretly thank him later for helping him get the courage to get the girl of his dreams. As much as Bokuto could get on his nerves sometimes, it really would be thanks to him that Akaashi got to take you out on that cute date and tell you just how much he loves you every day.

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@al0ehas @aurumk @neko-chii1 @thisnoodlewritesao3 @satan-ruler-of-hells @trashy-simp @jeppiet​ @tobi-momo​ @darkvadeeer​ @haikyuutothetop​ @livy384​ @babyshoyo​ @jesssobs​ @b-bakana​

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Hot take: Bakugou's character wouldn't survive if not for the one he kept abusing all his life. 90% of his character revolves around his victim and yet the fandom paints him as this super developed, fleshed out character when in reality he'd never be anything bigger than a side character if not for Deku.

Also the concequences he supposedly received are just him being teased or not getting the win he wanted, no being kidnapped doesn't count, he literally got away with his shit while even been treated like a victim and the privilege to know something about Deku that isn't any of his business. And now because he sacrificed himself that one time the fandom acts like Izuku owes his ass anything. It's disgusting.

I have given up on him actually being half the decent character ppl make him out to be and the fandom reaction to him makes me hate him even more.

He's not complex, he's just a pretty boy, asshole archetype who gets nicer and has some more cooperative and ppl love to eat that shit up while making up stuff for him. He changes but he's doesn't change for what matters and definitely pales in comparison to other characters who are better written than him.

(holy shit, did they remove the character limit on asks?? omg a GODSEND)

Well yeah, if it weren’t for Izuku and how he treats Izuku he wouldn’t have anything to improve from; people only think he’s developed because he no longer outright bullies him and “””worries””” (I say in heavy quotes) about him, and “reflects” on how he treated him even though he.......... comes to the absolute wrongest, most idiotic conclusions imaginable, that put the brunt of the excuses on Izuku instead of himself, but Toshinori validates him because Horikoshi has made Toshi into Bakugou’s uwu stan and stan of the two boys’ “friendship” (completely ignoring the fact that THIS KID FOR TEN YEARS BULLIED HIS SON). He’s basically already been devolved to acting like a side character for a long time now, with his funny anger quirk pun partly intended that’s just treated like a joke at this point, just like everyone else’s character quirks, even though it would be far more interesting for him to, you know. actually get some therapy and learn to calm himself and become an actual pleasant person to be around. But that’s not what makes him “funny”, that’s not him, according to most people, so he’s always going to stay like this, a boring angry pomeranian who flies off the handle at everything for no reason, who has done the absolute bare minimum of “changing”, which makes him a perfect character in everyone’s eyes.

“He changes but doesn’t change for what matters” pretty much sums up the problem with him in a nutshell, and is the exact reason he frustrates me so much, that I’ve ranted about plenty before. Bakugou has never been viewed through the lens of a bully, an abuser, he was never set up to be that, at least not realistically, and so his development hasn’t happened in accordance with that setup either, and people don’t have a problem with it and actively praise it because the manga actively downplay(ed)s the severity of that origin story. People can ignore the reality of how seriously traumatic being bullied for ten years of your childhood, verbally and physically would be, and how seriously and with such sensitivity such a relationship and character arc must be handled, because aside from the very first chapter when Izuku and Bakugou are still in middle school, really, with the “take a swan dive off the roof” comment and others, it’s never focused on in that way ever again; ever since, it’s just been treated as a typical anime “rivalry”, that both of them need to better themselves to overcome. The story and teachers say “the two of them are so alike but they just keep missing each other; if they just made up for each others’ weaknesses and understood that they both want the same thing, they’d be stronger together!”, and Izuku HIMSELF tries so hard to reach through to Bakugou, always still considering him his friend, always feeling like he’s the one equally at fault for their relationship being as rocky as it is, when BAKUGOU!!! FUCKING!!! BULLIED HIM!!! FOR TEN YEARS. bullied a DISABLED CHILD, which again, as a disabled person who relates to Izuku and how he felt about his quirklessness, feelings that continue to affect him even long after he gets a quirk because of how he was treated when he was younger, is DEEPLY unsettling to me. You CANNOT read/watch MHA without the metaphor of quirklessness = disabled being very apparent, and so that makes Bakugou’s bullying and how it is so utterly glossed over and purposefully forgotten a hundred times more disturbing and aggravating than it already is! If this were any other shounen rivalry then yes, it could be resolved with effort from both parties, because both parties have their own personal reasons for why they have trouble getting along with the other, and the fun is watching to see how they will overcome those, but Izuku and Bakugou were never on an equal playing field to begin with; this is a bullying story, with its victim trying desperately to win over and befriend his abuser, when he owes him absolutely NOTHING and has a BOATLOAD of unresolved issues thanks to said bullying, with no outside help from adults for either of them because none of them are acknowledging it as fucking bullying. I guarantee you that if the manga went into much more painful, bleak detail and showed many more flashbacks of how Izuku was treated by Bakugou in the past, and then still continued with the “development” he’s had since, people would be unable to ignore it like they can now, and it would make all of them extremely uncomfortable like it does those of us now who already dislike him. Hori himself has said he doesn’t understand why Bakugou is so popular, but he’s able to just continue as he does with him because no one is complaining, and because he said he regrets making him so awful in the beginning, as if that magically makes it disappear as much as it already has in 90% of the fandom’s collective mind. You wanna know an actual good manga that also deals with a bully of a disabled child growing and improving himself and forming a close relationship with his former victim? A Silent Voice. Such a journey is long, and hard, and it is painful, with many ups and downs and many nasty, hateful, guilt-filled, depression-filled feelings from both sides, along with from other characters who either also partook in the bullying, were bystanders to it who did nothing, or were indirect victims as well. The bully is bullied himself after what he does, and then grows up nearly suicidal, closing himself off and struggling to be social and make new friends because he doesn’t know how and doesn’t entirely feel like he deserves it (and the story notably doesn’t go the route of “he was abused too at home and so that’s why he bullied”), and tries and fails many times to make amends with the person he hurt before he finally is at peace with himself and everyone; the victim, meanwhile, drowns in continued guilt and suicidal feelings over feeling like she’s a burden to others, both from her disability and from watching all the infighting and victim blaming and finger pointing that ensues between her old classmates when all of the nasty emotions are brought back to the surface, along with dealing with budding romantic feelings for her past bully when he genuinely starts being kind towards her and making an effort to connect with her. ASV is entirely about this complex narrative, it’s able to dedicate everything it has to telling this story tactfully and with all the time and attention it needs. MHA, meanwhile, is a shounen battle manga, and so it was never going to do this narrative and Bakugou’s arc justice, even though I honestly think it could have if Hori really wanted to, because Izuku and Toshinori’s relationship has such masterfully subtle and touching emotions and care, at least early on; Horikoshi knows how to write good, subtle character arcs. I’m not asking for something ASV level, of course not, when the series has so many other things it has to juggle. I just wanted Bakugou to be treated as exactly what he is: a former bully, who can be taught, and learn, and reflect, and change, and become a better, more humble, more interesting person, and actually become someone worthy of all the praise and love he gets, not only for Izuku’s sake, but for his own, as well. They don’t excuse his actions in the slightest, but it’s still undeniable that Bakugou himself is a victim of how the adults in his life have treated him and raised his own expectations of himself, giving him the crippling insecurity issues he has, and that they continue to harm him (and Izuku) by simply letting him continue to go on angrily the way he does, instead of getting him help and some therapy in order for him to change and heal from things like being kidnapped by villains (which is no small thing to go through!! on top of his guilt over Toshinori’s final battle!) and becoming a better person to the one he hurt in the past, and it all just makes me so sad, not because I’m all “uwu poor Bakugou”, but just cause his character deserves better, as a person he deserves better, just like Izuku deserves better than everything he’s gone through because of him. This is all just a very long-winded way of agreeing with you OP that yes, none of Bakugou’s “punishments” for his behavior mean anything because he’s punished as a rival student who needs to humble himself in order to get along with his friend he doesn’t like, not as a former(??) bully who needs to be separated from his victim. The bar is set so low, was never set where it should be, and so absolutely no progress to “better himself” Bakugou makes either will mean anything, as long as it’s never acknowledged that he needs to make amends as a bully and abuser.

[border-spam]

Typhon

Typhon has only ever meant well.

The white lies, the sprinklings of exaggeration in his stories? Well, that just made people laugh, made ‘em happy. The bravado and bad jokes? Leda liked those, made her smile, and if Leda was happy then what else mattered?

Nothing.

Till she was killed.

Everything that built up to that night had been soul crushing, days of tears and rage as they screamed at each other and the undeniable end that approached.

Troy was dying.

8 years they’d managed to play pretend - a makeshift little family unit on a forgotten star -  that everything would be ok, when they all knew there was no way the boy would reach adulthood. Even Tyreen, too young to even really comprehend death, knew deep in her core some way.

They’d gotten 8 years, but they wouldn’t get another. Typhon sat on that rickety little bed he’d carved from Nekro-wood when the twins were born, sat for what felt like days now next to his exhausted wife, and waited. Waiting was all there was left to do, but they shouldn’t have expected an 8 year old to understand that.

They shouldn’t have ignored Tyreen’s outbursts, clearly confused and lashing out for attention while the back of her mind screamed how wrong her twin looked in his frail little body, eyes closed and chest barely moving. He knows now they shouldn’t have done that, how much it hurt her and why it lead to what it did.

But Typhon has only ever meant well.

When he passed out to Troy’s screaming and the crack of Leda’s stone skin as Ty wrenched her crushed fist from it’s grip, there was no expectation of anything bar dread. His last slipping thought as he blacked out, unable to process the horror he’d just witnessed, was the grim humour that tomorrow he’d be burying his son and his wife.

Waking up to a flushed, confused Troy asking where Leda was as he carefully sat up in bed while his twin curled around him, was like a blow to the skull.

He was alive. He was awake. It was a miracle. It had to be a miracle, what else could it have been? Whatever had.. had happened to Leda.. she must have done something, must be watching down on them from the heavens and healed their boy, that was it. That had to be it, and Typhon had sobbed with his twins, hugging their little bodies to his chest and promising he’d make sure they stayed safe, he promised Leda that day.

Typhon has only ever meant well, but Tyreen would choke him to death with her bare hands if she didn’t know Troy would turn on her like a switchblade.

He’d tried so hard to do what he’d promised, to keep them safe, but he’d never actually listened to Tyreen despite coddling her to a suffocating level. She’d tried to explain so many times, tried to tell him about the “bad feeling” in her stomach as The Leech wracked hunger pains through her tiny system that were too inhuman for her to be able to describe in terms he could comprehend.

She’d told him she wanted to leave, that there were people out there who needed her and Troy’s help, that there were so many lost souls she could reach out to and give belonging, but he’d just laugh and shake his head. Tell her that would be a terrible idea, that “the people out dere” would skin them both alive and sell their bodies to “da corporations” before they’d manage to say hello, and she’d hated him. The Leech squirmed in rage within her ribcage as it’s lure to Pandora was denied over and over while years passed, and Tyreen was forced to remain on Nekrotafeyo for far longer than she could bear.

Typhon has only ever meant well, but the looks he gave his daughter, the fear in his eyes and nervousness in his words only added to the dread she’d begun to understand as she got older. The realisation that her father thought she was a monster, and it might be true. He’d kept her trapped on a planet with nothing she hungered for, and the great maw swallowed pieces of Tyreen instead.

Troy was just forgotten.

Typhon hadn’t meant it, he’d not purposefully relegated his son to a provider that kept their larder stocked and bots functional, but it had happened anyway.

Tyreen was the one who needed attention, Tyreen was the one he needed to watch and keep close, she was the troublemaker. Troy was just.. Troy was just there, a lanky shape in the side of vision that was hyperfocused on his flighty twin, and it happened so slowly neither of them really noticed.

Troy was quiet, Troy was easy to manage, Troy didn’t complain or pout or have tantrums, he’d just do as you asked. Troy would scurry up rock-faces till twilight set and he couldn’t see clearly anymore, then limp back to camp with scraped knees and bloody knuckles and beam at being thanked for bringing back some Manta eggs

Troy would disappear for 10 hours and arrive home with a sack of glow pods, even though there were none for miles around, all just to see the smile light across his sister’s face as she leeched the plants and hummed their deliciousness.

Typhon has only ever meant well, but Troy was so easy to raise that his father stopped even seeing him.

It took about a year on Pandora for the rose tinted lenses to begin to clear for Troy about how things had been at home.

He was at Tyreens neck about it at any opportunity till then, jumped at any chance to remind her she made him come here and lied, to rub it in and make sure she was perfectly aware how much he wanted to leave, but it died down as he began to really see the truth of things.

Tyreen didn’t change, shed always wanted off Nekro from the moment The Leech sowed its seeds of influence through whispers in the back of her mind after what happened to Leda. She hated Typhon, but Troy didn’t, and still doesn’t years later despite having a far more realistic view of how poor a father he’d been to them. Can’t bring himself to want to cut him off completely when he knows how easy it is to make mistakes that hurt other people…

Typhon has only ever meant well, but the twins had been starving on that planet.

Tyreen in spirit, no life source more complex than animals to feed from meant The Leech constantly gnawed at the back of her mind demanding she leave, but Troy physically.

It hadn’t been so bad before, when he was younger. He and Typhon could easily hunt more than enough food together even if Troy mostly ended up carrying small loads and helping his dad as a kid, but by the time Typhon’s loss and fear had left him too concerned about Tyreen to let her accompany Troy and too paranoid to leave camp with him, things were bad.

They were very bad.

The twins are two sides of the same ravenous hunger. Tyreen’s ate her soul, but Troy’s decimated his body.

He’d take Grouse on long trips, the bots ability to carry a life saver even if he was too loud to actually help with the hunt itself, but there was just never enough food.

The animals on Nekrotafeyo were more energy than flesh, there wasn’t much on them in the first place, and coupling that with vegetation humans absolutely hadn’t evolved to eat, survival became a harder struggle every year that passed and bigger he grew.

Typhon was half his size and seemed to never pick up how much Troy was flagging, but that’s just how things were.

That was life, that’s how it is. Right?

Troy had believed that was the case till Pandora, and him actually getting to see how other people lived.

He’d been so proud of the few kilos he put on in those 6 months on Seifa’s ship.

She’d been insistent on eating way more often than he was used to and oddly grateful in a way he didn’t understand when he’d finish a meal, but when the first medic he’d let near him at Sol’s insistence when they’d entered their business partnership told him he was dangerously underweight, it had been a slap to the face.

He wasn’t, he’d put on weight. He was bigger than he’d ever been, you could pinch his skin now, so what were they fucking talking about?

Ranting at Ty afterwards had left a shitty taste in his mouth. She’d looked almost sad as she’d listened, told him he needed to actually trust her for once, that she wasn’t wrong about dad. That dad had been a fucking monster.

He couldn’t agree, wouldn’t. Stormed back to his room in their tiny studio space and brooded for hours - gnawing at his nails as Pandora’s night air turned frigid.

No one looked like he had when he came here. Dad had never said anything about him being thin. He was normal. He was normal, wasn’t he? He’d had no one to compare to, but…

No one here looked like he had.

He’d not seen anyone that thin, skeletal structure that visible. Hadn’t seen anyone yet who was normal and had cheekbone ridges you could see a jaw hinge through as it moved.

That hadn’t been normal, had it. He didn’t know and dad hadn’t said anything, acted like nothing was wrong for years.

He’d been starving, hadn’t he, and Typhon had slapped him on the back and thanked him for dinner every night instead of even hinting at worry. He’d been starving and the only person who could have helped him understand how sick he was had cared more about keeping his children by his side, than if one dropped dead.

So he stops bringing up wanting to go home. He stops defending Typhon if Tyreen needs to rage against her past in a monologue at night to help her shrug off the anger and get some rest.

He’s weird about food.

He won’t stand for waste when the Slums are hungry.

Neither can forgive their father for the childhood he caused.

Typhon has only ever meant well, but his children won’t speak of him at all.

[smartguyreviewed]

2x6 - Trial and Error

Original air date: Oct 15, 1997

Okay, so we begin this infuriating episode with Floyd coming home and calling out for his biological children. None of them are home. Except for Mo. Mo broke into the house. No, seriously. He broke into the house and started eating somebody’s leftovers. Now in any other case, this would warrant a passionate ass whooping and a call to the parents of this child because what the fuck are you doing so wrong to have your son breaking into houses and not stealing anything except for food? However, this is sitcom world and Floyd just seems more annoyed than anything since Mo is always there anyway.

Mo tells Floyd he needs to be more careful about locking the windows. So linebacker ass Mo really needed to eat and somehow oozed through a window just to get food? Ok, I take back what I said about him needing his ass kicked. Mo is clearly malnourished even though he’s huge. His parents must be poor and therefore can’t afford to feed him. Holy shit was that dark. Moving on. 

Food and TJ’s brain are the reasons for his crime. His parents are going to kill him if he brings home another D. This is really helping me build a theory that Mo’s parents are abusive, so let’s assume his parents are literal this time about the kill thing. Floyd then realizes that Mo’s punishment would equal him not being over again to eat up their food and casually break in so he tells Mo that TJ joined the Marines. Nice, Floyd.

Just then, the rest of Floyd’s flock comes in babbling about who got what part in a play. TJ is naturally upset because he wanted a bigger role, still not getting used to the idea that he’s a 10 year old and unless he’s playing the role of a character with dwarfism, it wouldn’t make sense for him to have a huge part. TJ storms off in a huff. Typical TJ things.

The next day, everyone is atwitter over a test from their more over it than Lisa Simpson teacher. This man wants all of his students to fail. He hates his students. He’s a teacher and yet he hates teaching. Maybe this is the wrong profession for you, bruh? And it’s evident his ‘over it’ level is on a million from the way he comes in and tells his class to “get ready to hate me.” The deadpan, dry delivery was funny though. 

His first task is to give his students an assignment so hard that even he doesn’t know all the answers. Um, why? If you don’t know the answers, how are you gonna grade the tests? Isn’t this just creating more work for you, someone who already hates his job? Why the fuck does Piedmont hire such bad teachers and faculty, dammit?

Even TJ is intimidated by this test! Mo asks Mr. Bringleman why stuff from another chapter he previously said wouldn’t be on the test is on the test. He simply says he lied. This man is evil. I hated teachers who did that bitch ass shit. Yes, I only studied for what you said was going to be on the test because I have other classes too, ya know. I’m a teenager, not a machine!

I’m just gonna call him Mr. B for the rest of this review because fuck this most likely racist white man. His ass was listening to the boys talking about how hard the test was and then Mo says he wishes he could do to Mr. B what he does to all of them. Mr. B asks if he’s threatening him and Mo stammers. Then Mr. B insults his intelligence by asking if he ever has a complete thought. Before he can even fix his mouth to call him the N word, not Linda Ellerbee shows up to see what’s going on. Oh yeah, and she’s the new principal. She’s the third one so far and this is only the first half of the second season.

Anyways, she needs someone to cover a class and outright forces him to do it. Ha-ha. When the boys laugh at him, Mr. B says he’s going to grade Mo’s test. Nice, I just love seeing teachers bully students.

At the play rehearsal, TJ is still campaigning for a lead role. Mackey has to be the one to humble him, asking for duct tape. Marcus’s play related arc in this episode is pursuing acting seriously in case music doesn’t work out. His part has no lines so he’s trying to act with his face. He can just feel the SAG membership card in his hands.

Just then, Yvette bursts in wearing a Prince-inspired outfit and lets everyone know there was a fire in the chem lab. Dun du--pause. Why the fuck is she telling everyone? Wouldn’t they have had a fire drill? Are there no fire alarms in this blasted school? How the fuck did nobody know about it or smell smoke and why is Yvette bursting in like the town crier in this Purple Rain ass outfit???

All the students are happy until Linda Ellerbee hands Mo his charred playbook and asks him to come into her office. Dun dun dun. Later we find out that Mo was expelled. Because he is an abused child who only feels safe at the Hendersons, Mo has once again broke into their house and begun working out in their garage. Floyd is over it.

TJ comes home and talks to Mo. He is sad to learn that nobody thinks he’s innocent but says that TJ has to believe him because he has the “wide-eyed innocence of a child.” He follows this up with shitty examples of kids trusting adults who end up being assholes. Once they finally get on a good example, TJ is able to see that Mo is innocent and decides to help Mo get back into school.

The next day, TJ is in the principal’s office waiting for Linda Ellerbee. She has mice in her office because Piedmont is the worst public school ever and is resorting to playing the Spice Girls to get them out. Is that supposed to be a diss to the Spice Girls? Fuck anyone who disses the Spice Girls.

Sis is not budging when it comes to letting Mo back in the school. Sounds like a job for TJ’s cuteness and persistence! He gets her to agree to a mock trial where Mo would have to come back to the school. I...whatever. Order in the courtroom!

TJ is Mo’s defense. The opposinjg side calls Marcus to the stand so we already know this will end in disaster. It takes less than a minute for Marcus to admit that Mo threatened Mr. B. Ugh! Stupid Marcus. But he doesn’t even do the worst on the stand. Mo actually manages to fuck it all up! Marcus and TJ are trying to paint Mo out to be, what the kids today would call it, a “punk ass bitch.” Rather than play along and accept it, dumb ass Mo puts his stupid, fragile masculinity ahead of his chance to get back into school and says that he follows through on all threats. Once he realizes his gaffe, he immediately sits his ass down. Yvette is annoyed.

Vice principal Millitch, who will later replace Linda Ellerbee in one of the only sensical things I’ve seen regarding Piedmont, qualifies that Mo’s playbook was found at the scene next to Mr. B’s burnt gradebook. It was nice knowing ya, Mo. We know how the legal system works.

So then the loser teacher gets on the stand and tries to make it seem like he doesn’t intentionally make his students suffer by giving them ridiculously hard tests and lying about what’s even going to be on the test. To him, Mo is just a stupid, violent nigger so of course he’d want to commit a crime instead of studying harder. And then he lays it on thicker by insulting his intelligence again, explaining what the word combust means in the most smug ass, irritating way. It’s fucked up upon re-watch but at least it’s super realistic how predominately black public schools get racist white teachers often. They’re usually there for the tuition reimbursement.

TJ is now realizing that he may not be able to help Mo out of this jam. While eating dinner, Yvette comes in and apologizes for her lateness, saying the trial is over and now the school can continue with the play rehearsals. She tells an adamant TJ that Mr. B, also assuming the trial’s conclusion, was chain smoking cigarettes and humming “Don’t Worry Be Happy.” Floyd is appalled at the latter. TJ’s gears begin shifting. Side note but doesn’t Mr. B just look like a miserable ass teacher who smokes in the classroom?

TJ and Mo break into the school. Geez, so much trespassing in this episode! Mo isn’t even worried about being caught because what are they gonna do, “expel him from college?” Slapstick ensues while TJ collects samples from the gradebook. Mo, on the other hand, is battling a mouse trap. I was super high when I watched this last night but this scene had me in stitches. Omar Gooding is really good with physical comedy. Look, even TJ gets stuck to him when they’re leaving! Priceless!

At court the next morning, TJ calls Mr. B to the stand. He brilliantly examines him and exposes him for smoking in the classroom, which was the actual cause for the fire. This man is fucking evil! He was actually about to get away with very possibly ruining a teenager’s life until a fucking 10 year old stepped in and dug deeper. He could have seriously gotten him disowned by his parents, making him homeless, forcing him to turn to the streets for survival. All because he’s an asshole and didn’t have the heart to own up to what he did. Hell, it’s fucking Piedmont! I’m sure they would have kept him!

Seeing as he just gets sent to Linda’s office, he’s most likely getting a slap on the wrist and paid vacation leave. Oh well. Also frustratingly realistic. At least Mo isn’t expelled anymore. Too bad Mo’s unwashed hands are still sticky when he shakes the principal’s hand and the joke continues.

At the end, Marcus gets bumped up to the illustrious Juror #2. Gotta love a true thespian! Case dismissed. Bring out the dancing lobsters.

Things I noticed:

- Stinky Steve is Mr. B’s defense.

- Piedmont has no respect for their students’ time. The mock trial began at 8am. Assuming that their school day begins at 9am, I bet the play participants probably hate TJ for forcing them to get up an hour earlier than normal, on top of having to do the play after school.

[kitzatara]

My favorite DC girls vs Xenomorphs

Zatanna:

Chances of Survival- 8/10

If a face hugger managed to get down her throat before she could complete a spell then she’s down. And i suppose one big one could surprise her. But i consider those outcomes unlikely given her experience fighting other aliens/monsters/demons. if she survives initial contact, and knows to be on her guard then she’d survive no problem especially since she can control fire, mystically locate beings, and has nigh impenetrable force fields.

Raven:

Chances of survival- 9/10

I think raven would be able to sense the aliens and their ill intent. She has powerful telekinetic magic and strong shields as well. Again i could see a facehugger or a big one getting the drop on her if she can’t sense it or if she’s curious. But i consider that to be a very improbable outcome for her.

Black Canary:

Chance of survival- 7/10

I rate her lower because realistically she has less defense against the big ones but i consider a facehugger outcome almost impossible for obvious reasons. Plus she has sharper reflexes to avoid one even if she doesn’t canary cry one into next Tuesday. But she can’t exactly hide from or detect the bigger ones and her cry might draw them to her making her an easy to find target. Personally i believe in her but i have to allow room for error.

Harley Quinn:

Chances of survival- 5/5

I could honestly see it going either way. Either she’s too wild and accidentally gets facehugged or caught by a xenomorph. Or she’s just wild enough to avoid them and kill them out of sheer dumb luck and some skill. I could also see people rallying to protect her. So it depends who she’s with, and what she does which is clearly a 50/50 guess. If you want to think she’ll win I’d believe it. If she dies I’d also believe it.

Catwoman:

Chances of survival- 6/10

I think aside from Canary she has the highest chance of not getting something on her face. Like i just do not believe it would happen, she’s too cool for that. It’s more likely than Canary and i can see a twisted “curiosity killed the cat” joke being made and also she’s got less chance against the big ones unless we give her some ranged weapons. She would absolutely not get stabbed by the tail and i want to see her catch one with her whip and beclike “meow you alien bitch.” I guess it depends on what she has to fight with and whether or not she’s acting curious/selfish.

Poison Ivy:

Chances of Survival- 6/10

It depend entirely on where she is and if she thinks the facehugger eggs are plants or need protection. I could easily believe her going to an egg being like “awww you poor thing” and then bam! Death. However, if she approaches an egg in nature i could see her plants protecting her on instinct, and if she’s in a park or forest then I sincerely doubt a xenomorph could sneak up on her. The plants would tell her and trap it. I am also largely curious if her spores and pheromones would effect the aliens. Because I’d be quaking if she could control them and battled a queen for dominance, that would raise her chances to like 8/10. I do also worry about her ripping one a part and dying of acid blood or getting attacked by the second mouth because she gets so god damn close to her victims all the time. So yeah usually it’s in her favor but she’s fallable and could make mistakes. (Tries to kiss alien. Bam! Death).

Vixen:

Chances of survival- 9/10

I honestly believe she would survive almost any scenario simply because lots of animals instincts would detect the aliens, she has fast reflexes, she can camo, and she’s not about to investigate the eggs. The one point is because of the small chance something surprises her. I doubt she’d be in a position to be surprised in the first place by having her senses heightened. But it could happen. And there’s at least microanimal that can survive acid and several others she could use to heal from an acid attack. So her odds are like astronomical. Also i wonder if she’d be able to access xenomorph abilities with her totem. Because is she can? 10/10 survival.

Hawkgirl:

Chances of survival- 5/10

Once again i could see it going either way, but hawkgirl can be a little cocky which mught be her downfall. Either getting too close, bashing ones head in and getting sprayed with acid and she doesn’t have much of an advantage when it comes to the facehuggers. I’d like to believe she’d stay in the air like nope I’m not going fown there to look at the eggs. You do that. If she stays flying she’d probably have a better chance especially if given a ranged weapon. But her wings are big targets and the xenomorphs can jump. So yeah, lots of factors and scenarios that could sway the outcome. Who’s to say.

Mera:

Chances of survival- 4/10

Mera is more dependant on an environment than Ivy and the water is not known as a safe haven from these aliens. I think she’d most likely survive underwater but not really anywhere else. I could see her being very destructive and not taken down easy but there’s many ways one could get the drop on her. Maybe her atlantean density would help? But it’s difficult to say and I’d wager it is just as susceptible as human density. If she stays in the water than maybe but if they’re all swimming at her then i could see her getting overwhelmed even in her element.

Katana:

Chances of Survival- 6/10

Listen she’s a badass even if she just uses a sword and that’s it. She’d never get facehugged ever but a big one could probably kill her or acid would while she cut it up. I’d like to think that if batman can win then so can Katana but I have no idea. It really depends on what happens and how many she has to fight off.

Jessica Cruz/Star Saphire

Chances of Survival- 9/10

This rating goes for pretty much any lantern corp member except Guy Gardner wgo has like a 3/10 for being such a douche. Their power rings alone would most likely prevent death by big ones and facehuggers. The only disadvantage I’d see is if acid melts through the constructs. Plus the lanterns can survive in space where the aliens can’t. If a facehugger got lucky I’m almost positive the ring would be like “foreign embryo detected” giving them a chance to get it out.

[the-overgrowth]

Retrospective: “Faybane” #1

This is where it all started, on July 8th, 2016. Although probably a bit earlier than that, but this is the earliest thing I can find that’s actually written down, so that’s what counts. And back in the day I didn’t let ideas marinate the way I do now, I just started writing pretty much as soon as I got the idea.

Anyway, the document was created at this point in time according to Google Docs, and was last modified in October 3rd, 2016. It’s only 3 chapters long, plus one incomplete fourth chapter, and the whole thing is about 17k words.

Which is a lot for 3 chapters. I would say something about how I’m less wordy now, but the latest draft is like 107k words long, so, like, I will always struggle with shutting the fuck up, methinks.

Also, the reason this is called “Faybane” is because that was the working title I used, and the name of this document. I thought it’d be the proper title but like. It’s bad lmao.

Anywhomst, let’s get into it!

Some background info for those who are new or need a refresher: this WIP became a thing after I read and was disappointed by A Court of Thorns and Roses by SJM, as well as The Iron King by Julie Kagawa and some book by Holly Black, was it Tithe?

ACOTAR was the biggest culprit. I feel that this is important to keep in mind as we go through this mess.

We open on Sidra in the forest with a bunch of men she calls a hunting party. It’s clear she doesn’t want to be there, but since she’s the only decent hunter among them and it’s her sister’s wedding today, she has to make the kill to feed the people attending said wedding.

This is, as the kids say, big stupid, and seems like a very ill-prepared celebration? I guess it makes some sense for them to want fresh meat, but this fresh? What if they didn’t find anything? What if they didn’t manage to kill anything? Is the whole thing cancelled? Stupid.

We find out they’ve been hunting a boar and that this dude named Liam, our Gaston replacement, previously wounded the animal but didn’t kill it, causing it to flee and force the hunting party to follow. It’s up to Sidra to make the killing blow, which she does with an arrow straight into its head. This was back when Sidra was still YA Heroine Extraordinaire and the time period was Vaguely Medieval, I guess.

They begin taking their quarry back home and Sidra thinks about how she normally doesn’t hunt this close to the “Faewilds” because animals closer to the border are said to be bigger and more violent. There isn’t an actual border, people just had to rely on intuition and not wander too far into the forest.

She also mentions a girl named Wilda, who disappeared fairly recently and everyone suspects it was the fae. This isn’t relevant now, but Wilda will return in later drafts, I think.

Everybody, especially my family, knew that I was one of the best archers in town, whether I used a bow or a crossbow.

Shut up, Not!Feyre. Nobody likes you.

I should mention that at this point I didn’t bother googling how big wild boars get and just assumed they were the size of like, a thick medium dog. Which is, if you know how big boars are, very incorrect. Four men pulling the animal seems realistic enough, but then Liam just lifts it up on his own? Not buying it.

Sidra laments how much she hates Liam and we find out that he apparently tried to assault her and she stabbed him? And apparently she’s not happy about his marriage to Sinéad but can’t do anything about it because “Father’s word is law” and Sinéad herself laughed it off when Sidra tried to warn her?

Yeah, gonna call bullshit on that one. No idea why this was here or what purpose it serves, the reason Liam doesn’t exist in the latest draft is because I never figured out what his purpose was so I axed him entirely. 

Current!Sidra would just kill him the moment he showed an interest in Sinéad, and Current!Sinéad would 100% believe her sister about something like that.

Some bloke named Connor strikes up a conversation with Sidra, seemingly worried about being this far away from human civilization. Liam teases him about it and calls the fae “knife-ears”, because I still had brainrot back then and liked Dragon Age and had zero original ideas in my head.

The men make jokes about having sex with fae women and Sidra seems so disturbed by this that she nocks an arrow. This isn’t the first time she makes references to feeling unsafe around these men, I have no idea why I wrote it this way aside from being edgy, I guess.

My village was mostly populated by men, and even though I wasn’t one of the pretty girls there, I knew these men weren’t picky, even with all their talk about beautiful fae women. I’d heard that fae women would kill their men after sleeping with them. I had no way of know it was true, but a part of me hoped it was and that Liam would some day soon get “lucky” and encounter a female fae, so she could end his misery.

Edgy, dude.

They eventually arrive and Sidra goes inside her house, which is a simple cottage with three rooms. I think her family are all farmers? It’s kind of confusing. She goes into her and Sinéad’s bedroom, where Sinéad is preparing for her wedding. Also, she’s blonde.

“Sid! There you are!” she said cheerily. “Killed a boar, huh? Good on Liam for taking all the credit.”

If you know your man is trash, why are you marrying him?

Apparently Liam seduced Sinéad with sweets and baked goods. I mean ... fair enough. Considering how Sidra complains about being hungry and skinny and going without food if she doesn’t kill the boar because this year’s harvest was minimal, I’m assuming y’all are starving.

We find out Sinéad’s mother doesn’t let her do anything around the house or farm, to preserve her “soft and white” hands and pale complexion so she could be married off easily. This makes zero sense, you’d think these medieval men wouldn’t have the same beauty standards as Victorian England, plus having a mouth to feed that doesn’t even help feeding itself is just nuts. 

But remember, this isn’t Sidra, this is Not!Feyre. She needs to be sad and put-upon and a victim. She explains how she was never pretty to begin with and thus nobody considered her to be worthy of marrying off, which then meant she was put to work and became even less attractive because now she was so cool and badass that all the men were intimidated by her.

Yeah, in a village that already doesn’t have a lot of young women? I’m not buying this, lmao. But go off, Not!Feyre.

I’d been the one helping around, instead. Hunting, mostly. Sometimes I’d chop wood or work the farm. Marrying out of the house seemed impossible. Marrying up was practically a dream you forgot upon waking. Had I been pretty from the start there would’ve been a foundation to work from, but I was a lost cause even before my skin became tan and my hands grew veined and calloused. I had freckles which people mistook for mud and dull brown eyes, a long nose that had been broken one time too many and a mouth that made it look like I constantly felt a bad smell no matter what facial expression I made. I’d always been of rather short stature and had brown hair and thick eyebrows, which in combination with everything else made my parents call me their “little goblin”. The scar on my face didn’t help me either: men didn’t like it when their women were more battle-hardened than they were.

Oh god please, don’t go off! We don’t care! Stop going off!

Also what fucking parents call their poor kid a goblin? Yikes.

Sinéad convinces Sidra to get prettied up and Sidra is all “oh I bet all the men will just fall over themselves for my favor now huh” which is just the most annoying fucking thing, prompting Sinéad to respond:

“Well, winter is coming and game is scarce. If they want to survive, marrying the best hunter in the village might be a good bet.”

Yeah! This is correct! I refuse to believe people wouldn’t be into Sidra! Not only does everyone apparently know she’s the best hunter in town, but Sidra herself confirmed the men here outnumber the women and aren’t very picky.

This is fucking stupid. I’m glad I axed it. In my defense, I was very much trying to emulate the YA shit I’d read so far.

Sidra’s grandmother enters the stage. She’s very old in this draft, but otherwise unchanged.

She was a short and wrinkled old lady with extremely bad vision and an even worse grasp on reality. Or maybe an extremely acute grasp on reality, depending on whether you believed her stories or not.

Sidra changes out of the dress again to go out and help her father prepare the boar, all while sulking.

I didn’t envy Sinead, nor any other bride. Despite what most people thought of me, I wasn’t some poor ugly girl longing for the love of a man and the security of marriage. Did I enjoy the idea of having somebody care for me? Sure. But it wasn’t on my list of priorities. I was still trying to figure out what actually was on that list. Not that it mattered. The prospects for a poor village girl were very finite.

Womp womp.

We get some confusing and barely related stuff about Sidra possibly becoming a royal hunter for the king and also about where the village is located in relation to the Faewilds. She speculates that maybe the fae aren’t real, but the way she and everyone else talks about them makes it pretty obvious that they are? This was supposed to build mystery, I guess.

We skip forward to the wedding and Sidra is moping again.

“How are you feeling?” Father asked and squeezed my shoulder. 

I wasn’t sure why he was doing that. I assumed it had something to do with the wedding and the fact that despite there being fewer women than men here, I was still not asked to dance. Though this didn’t really bother me, so I just shrugged.

“It doesn’t bother me. Anyway I will continue to mope and feel bitter about this thing that doesn’t bother me.” Hunny ...

At least Current!Sidra has the self-awareness to admit she’s sad and lonely.

 [Father’s] marriage to Sinead’s mother was never out of love, more out of necessity. It was easier when you had a big family.

Except for when this “big family” is 3 people who work and 2 people who are just being fed, right? See, I knew back then that having a big family helps when you have a farm, but I also needed to make Sidra Special so Sinéad had to sit on her ass to highlight how pretty and feminine she was or whatnot.

Bleh.

They talk a bit about Sidra’s mother, who passed away five years ago, and Sidra reminisces about how she used to tell amazing stories. It’s all very ... whatever, and serves only to make this point for the hundredth time:

I wasn’t like Mother. I wasn’t full of life and spirit like her. I wasn’t loved and respected by the entire village like her. I was just her disappointing child whose existence they’d rather forget except when they wanted something killed.

Right after this there’s a really abrupt scene transition. Nothing about the wedding coming to an end, nothing about her going to bed, it’s just ... some while later?

Sidra’s father comes back home from ??? and tells Sidra he saw a stag somewhere, but it was hours ago so she better get a move on.

I’m not sure what either of them thinks this will accomplish? Like ... what is she gonna do with it when she kills it ... Carry it home? On her little boney ass? Hmm? I guess I didn’t think of that because I had meta knowledge that she wouldn’t get it home either way, so who cares about logic, right?

Sidra kills two rabbits while stalking the deer, and despite telling us earlier that she doesn’t venture far away from human civilization and the boar hunting being the farthest she’d been and that she wouldn’t go this far alone, she has no issue dwelling very deep into the forest this time.

Like. Henlo? Can we have one logic please and thanks you? Granted, she keeps stopping every now and then to Feel Things Out, but this really goes against how careful she was before and at no point do we get an explanation to her sudden boldness. Plot reasons, I guess.

She nearly stumbles into fae territories and finally decides to head back, except when she starts returning, she sees the stag she’s been tracking. It’s abnormally huge and has a “dark brown” coat that she finds odd, but of course she’s too stupid to connect the dots.

She sneaks up on it and honestly? This chapter ending still slaps.

A scream of pain left the creature and I saw it topple. But though my arrow hit a deer, a man fell to the ground.

DUN DUN DUN.

And yeah, the ACOTAR roots rear their ugly heads again. I liked the idea of the protagonist shooting a fae disguised as an animal, but I decided to cut out the middleman and just have her obliterate Val right in chapter one. Don’t worry, he doesn’t die.

[invisibleanonymousmonsters]

Vigilante

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Request: Steve reacts to his girlfriend getting violently mugged. 

Word Count: 3,200 - One Shot

Once again, special thanks to @kquel12 and @alexabarnes for letting me pick their brain.

Bucky and Steve walked side-by-side off the quinjet.

The team had just gotten back from a grueling mission and they had a few important meetings in the city this week. So they decided to stay at the old tower instead of returning to the compound upstate.

They mostly used it as their own hotel. There wasn’t much left there since Tony had Happy clean everything out. But there were enough guest rooms for all the Avengers to sleep there comfortably.

“Y/N gonna come by?” Bucky asked his best friend.

He tried not to laugh at how Steve lit up from someone simply saying her name.

“Yeah, she just texted me saying she’d be over here in a bit.”

Bucky nodded, hiding his smirk. “When you two gonna stop playing around and just move in together? This long distance stuff has to be getting annoying.”

Y/N lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Steve was luckily able to visit more frequently than someone who had a normal 9-to-5 job. But Manhattan was still a couple hour drive from the compound. Even less when Steve was able to “borrow” a helicopter or quinjet.

“Kind of a big step,” Steve answered evenly.

Bucky chuckled, “Please, you’re hopelessly in love, punk. You’d go to the courthouse with Y/N tonight and get married if that’s what Y/N wanted.”

Steve finally looked at his friend and his face dropped. “I don’t want to push her too hard, too quickly.”

Bucky shook his head at the ridiculousness. “If you don’t realize that girl loves you just as much, than you’re a bigger idiot than I ever realized.”

Steve had the audacity to blush and look at the ground as he shifted his weight.

“I’m gonna jump in the shower before Y/N gets here,” he finally managed to say before walking away without giving Bucky a chance to say any more.

———

Steve walked into the kitchen, hair still damp from his shower, and found a few members of the team eating whatever food they could in the fridge. They were talking amongst themselves loudly. It was their way of decompressing after missions. 

“I ordered a pizza. Fridge hasn’t been filled in awhile,” Tony announced to the group as he too walked in.

“Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY interrupted the fun and familial atmosphere. 

Despite being an AI, there was evident worry in her voice. “You’re needed at the lobby elevators immediately. Y/N is on her way up right now.”

Steve tensed and his heart instantly started racing. He quickly went to the elevators that the system spoke of, “FRIDAY, what’s happened?”

He ignored the sound of the team following closely behind him.

“I’m-I’m not sure, Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY admitted, sounding more human than usual.

When the elevators opened, Steve was met with Y/N leaning her weight on the security guard that Steve recognized from the first floor entrance.

Y/N held a tissue to her nose, but Steve could still see that half of it was already stained bright red with blood. There were tried tears soaking her cheek, black smudge was left behind from the mascara and eyeliner they took with them.

Steve rushed forward after barely a second passed of him taking in the sight and gasped, “Jesus Christ! Y/N!”

He took her weakened body out of the grasp of the security guard, but somehow still managed to give him a thankful look.

“I just wanted to make sure she got up here okay,” the security guard said carefully before backing up into the elevator again.

Steve grasped her face, pushing hair out of her face so he could look into her eyes without any obstruction. “Y/N, what happened?”

“Ummm…I got mugged,” Y/N mumbled. She tried to act like it was no big deal. Like it was something that happened all the time.

Hell, she was at the Avengers Tower. This was nothing than what they’d all survived.

Y/N’s entire body was shaking. And Steve had never heard her voice so quiet and meek. It broke his heart.

“FRIDAY, alert the police,” Tony called out behind them. Then he and Natasha slowly walked toward Y/N.

For some reason, Steve felt the need to hold her closer to his body as they approached. He pulled her frame securely to his muscular chest.  

“They have your phone?” Nat asked Y/N softly.

She nodded.

“Your debit and credit cards?” She nodded again.

“FRIDAY track the spending of Y/N’s cards. And connect to Y/N’s cellphone.” Tony added to his system.

“They probably already t-turned o-off my phone,” Y/N stuttered quietly.

“As if that’ll save ‘em. Don’t insult my abilities, Y/N,” the AI tried to joke.

Tony smirked.

The group started talking amongst themselves hurriedly, making a plan on how to handle the situation. Everyone was very calm and collected. It gave Steve a moment somewhat alone with his girlfriend.

“You okay?” He whispered.

Steve knew not to baby her. Because when he was the little guy, that’s what he hated the most. She’s just been assaulted, violated. The last thing she wanted was to continue to be treated less than a full-fledged and independent adult.

Her eyes flickered around at their audience.

Steve realized she was trying to keep it together for their sakes. She didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of his teammates.

“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up,” he told her softly, starting to guide her to his guest bedroom.

But when they took a step, Y/N limped and hissed, stumbling slightly. “Sorry,” she muttered with shame.

She’d twisted her ankle as she’d tried to run after her assailants.

Steve gave her a look of anguish. But, without hesitating, he scooped her up in his arms and hurried out of the room before anyone else could watch her any longer.

Once he got to his bedroom, he carefully placed Y/N onto the toilet seat. There was an extensive first aid kit under every bathroom sink at the tower. He shuffled around until he found it and pulled it onto the counter.

He grabbed a new tissue and placed it under her nose. “Lean forward and hold that for me. Don’t lean your head back,” he instructed softly.

Y/N did as she was told.

“Can you tell me what happened? Bit by bit?” He asked her gently.

She was quiet for a moment. Whether it was to remember every detail or to give herself the strength to tell it, he didn’t know.

“I-I was taking the subway here. The car was empty. Then these two guys got on. Th-They tried to mug me, grabbed for my purse. B-But I shoved them away. So they hit me. They made a break for it once the doors opened – with my purse. I tried to run after them, but I had rolled my ankle when they’d shoved me.”

Steve was getting worked up as she spoke. But he couldn’t freak out right now. She needed him. This wasn’t about his anger. It was about her being safe and – now – cared for.

He took in a deep breath as he cleaned her split lip, “Y/N, you shouldn’t have picked a fight with them. You should’ve just let them have your purse.”

“That purse basically had my life in it, Steve.”

“Well, your actual life is what I’m worried about,” he snapped back accidentally.

Y/N narrowed her eyes almost playfully. “That’s real rich coming from you, Steven Grant Rogers. As if you’ve ever run away from a fight in your god damn life.”

Steve shook his head, refusing to give in to her teasing. This was serious.

“We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you, Y/N.” His voice was stern. “They couldn’t had knives – or worse, guns.”

Y/N was quiet.

“I can buy you a new cellphone. We can replace all your cards,” he added.

Her head hung low now and she refused to meet his gaze. “I couldn’t let them get away with it.”

“They won’t,” Steve said firmly.

Then he noticed that she was still shaking. He went to his closet and grabbed one of his heavy sweatshirts and baggy pair of sweatpants. When he returned to the bathroom, he carefully helped her into both.

Steve pulled the hood up over her face, smirking at how adorable she looked. She had a habit of always doing that when they were lounging around. He was trying to make her feel more like herself.

“You’re okay, doll.” He whispered to her before kissing her forehead.

She nodded, knowing that she’d always be safe when she was with Steve.

There was a knock on his door suddenly.

They both turned to see Bucky standing in the doorway. He had a huge bag of ice and held it up, “Figured you’d need this. The police are here. They gotta get a statement from you, Y/N.”

“She can’t walk around on her ankle. Can you have ‘em come in here?” Steve answered for her.

Bucky nodded and handed Steve the bag of ice before leaving again.

The police came in to question Y/N. It was kind of pointless. Tony, Nat, and FRIDAY had already tracked down the two guys. But they definitely weren’t planning on telling the police that bit of information.

But Steve stayed close to Y/N and made sure the cops kept their distance from her, giving them a hard glare if they got too close.

An hour later, all the chaos had subdued a bit. Y/N was now laying in Steve’s bed, wearing his sweatpants, hood pulled up, and the television playing one of her favorite movies.

Steve had put it on in hopes that it would calm her down. He had felt her high heart rate and her body still was shaking slightly. He’d made her calming tea and tried to get her to drink a few glasses of water. Eventually her shaking and heart rate went down.

“Y/N, I don’t want you taking the subway at night anymore,” Steve spoke into her hair.

“Not very realistic,” she mumbled back numbly.

“If it’s about the money, I’ll put your Uber and Lyft accounts under my credit card. I don’t care.”

Y/N sat up to look into his eyes. “You can’t put me in a glass case, Steve.”

“I’m not. I just want to keep you safe, Y/N.”

She leaned in a pressed a kiss to his lips. “I know, Stevie. I know you can’t help but protect the people you love... But I’m not going to walk through life scared of everything. I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yeah, because you were coming to see me.”

She sighed, “Don’t do that. Don’t manage to manipulate this whole thing to be something that’s your fault.”

He caressed her jawline. “I won’t. I promise. I’m… I’m just sorry this happened to you.”

She nodded slowly, “Me too.”

“Why don’t you get some rest? You’ve got to be exhausted.”

As if his words reminded her body suddenly how tired it was, she let out a long yawn. She nodded and placed her head back on his chest before closing her eyes.

Steve stroked circles on her back as he caged her body against his. He couldn’t see him letting her get very far from him for quite some time. It would probably end up annoying her. But there was worse ways for Y/N to be irritated with him.

—————

It was early in the morning when Steve woke up, Y/N’s body still pressed tightly against his. Even if she had wanted to wiggle out of his grasp, she wouldn’t have been able to fight his hold.

Steve knew waking up to a cup of coffee would cheer her up a bit. He ever so carefully shifted Y/N off of him so he could move out from underneath her.

He looked back down at her and saw a bruise had formed on her right cheek from the hit. Her lip was still cut and swollen too. 

It both broke his heart and made him infuriated to see his girlfriend hurt like this.

When Steve reached the kitchen, Sam, Bucky, and Nat were the only ones up. They ceased their talking as soon as they saw him.

“How she doing?” Bucky was the first to break the silence.

Steve took in a deep breath. “She’s doing okay. Still shaken.”

“The girl’s tough. She’ll be alright,” Sam assured him.  

Steve nodded in agreement. 

They had always considered Y/N family, almost as soon as he introduced them to her. They were just as concerned for her as Steve. They were probably just handling it better than him.

“Hey, we were thinking that we could show Y/N some self-defense – when she’s up for it, of course,” Bucky suggested.

Steve was pouring two mugs of coffee. He turned around to see the three of them watching him carefully. As if the idea would make him lash out or something. But all he did was shrug, “Yeah…that’s probably a good idea.”

“We have a tracker on them,” Nat informed him carefully.

Steve’s brow furrowed. “How’d you manage that?”

“Tony called in a favor with Peter. Kid knows the city than any of us. He went on recon – promised he wouldn’t engage. He managed to put trackers on both of them.”

Then Nat slowly pushed a tablet towards Steve on the counter. It was a map of New York City with two dots blinking on it.

Steve quickly glanced up at her when he realized what he was looking at.

His hands tightened into fists. “Nat, can you and Wanda watch over Y/N for me?” His voice had never sounded both so serious and deadly.

Nat nodded, “Of course.”

Steve left the kitchen with the tablet tightly in his grasp and went to his room to change.

When he came militantly walking to the elevators, he already found Sam and Bucky waiting for him. They’d changed too.

“I don’t need your help,” Steve told them coldly.

“I know you don’t,” Bucky replied. “We’re just coming to make sure you don’t kill both of ‘em.”

Steve paused and glared at his best friend. “That’s not funny.”

The doors to the elevator opened. Sam and Bucky followed him inside.

“It wasn’t meant to be a joke,” Bucky clarified as the doors closed.

“No uniform?” Sam asked.

“It’s not Captain America getting revenge.”

No, it was Steve Rogers. —————

Y/N had been fidgeting her entire way to the police station. She’d never been to one before. It felt weird. She didn’t belong there and that was obvious. Phones were ringing, there was a constant murmur of quiet conversations, the printer never seemed to stop inking paper.

Steve held her hand tighter than usual as they’d made their way there. He hadn’t let go of it since they’d arrived.

“Okay. Ms. Y/L/N, this is a one-way mirror. These men can’t see you. There’s nothing for you to worry about. We just need to know if you see one or both of the men that attacked you that night.”

Steve squeezed her hand reassuringly.

Y/N nodded in understanding and the men walked in.

It wasn’t hard for her to immediately recognize the two men. However, it would’ve been easier if they both weren’t black and blue with bruises.

Y/N instantly pointed them out to the detective.

“You sure?” He asked her carefully.

“Without a doubt,” she quickly responded and narrowed her gaze that gave him a look, daring him to question her again.

“Where’d you find them?” She asked casually.

“We didn’t. Someone threw them on the steps of the station, hands and feet zip tied behind their backs.”

The detective gave a playful side eye to Steve. Any fool knew who brought the two criminals in. But acknowledging that would make things messier. So the NYPD played dumb for the benefit of both Y/N and the Avengers.

Y/N nodded, but stopped herself from glancing at Steve.

“That’s all we need from you, Ms. Y/L/N. We appreciate you coming in. We know this process isn’t easy, especially after what you went through.”

Y/N signed all the paperwork she needed and said her thanks to the police officers and detectives working on the case. They all politely shook Steve’s hand and they were on their way.

Steve decided to take Y/N out for breakfast to try and bring some silver-lining to the early trip.

“You’re being awfully quiet,” he finally said after Y/N had stared out the window of the diner for ten minutes without saying a word.

She finally tore her gaze away from it and gave Steve a vigilant look. “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

Steve tensed slightly. “Do what?”

Y/N glared at his attempt to play dumb. She knew he realized perfectly well what she was talking about, further proving his guilt.

“Defend my honor, seek justice…whatever it was that you thought you were doing.”

Steve sighed and sat back. “They got what they had coming.”

“Did you do for me or did you do it for yourself?” She challenged.

“If I’m being honest? Both. I won’t lie about that.”

“Well, I’m glad you found something to make you feel better about all this bullshit,” Y/N sarcastically spat.

Steve gave her a mournful look. She was hurting. He knew that.

He watched her for a moment, not rushing to say words sloppily. “Look, I know nothing I say or do will take away what happened that night. You were attacked and I know that makes you feel violated and weak and unsafe. I know because I’ve been there…far too many times.”

Steve shook himself out of past memories.

He reached across the table to hold her hand. “But you’re my girl. And we both know how messed up our justice system is. There’s a chance they don’t get locked up. I had to make sure they got their judgment…had to make sure they paid for what they did to you.”

Y/N couldn’t stay mad him when he looked at her with those love-filled eyes and said things like that to her. She just couldn’t.

“So are you some vigilante now?”

Steve smirked at her joke and leaned across the booth until his face was only a centimeter away from her’s.

“Only for you,” he said before kissing her sweetly.

--------

Thanks for sending in this request. It instantly inspired me!

LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THOUGHT 😉

[kacheecha]

—Sincerely || jjk

⇢ pairing: jungkook x reader 

⇢ genre: fluff 

⇢ word count: 1,580 

⇢ theme: gamer! Jeongguk 

⇢ warnings: I know how soft and weak Jeongguk stans can be but just hang in there and try not to tear up your heart with tremendous cries okay? 

⇢ summary: gamer boyfriends can be simply annoying, there can be many types of them, those who doesn't pay attention to you at all because they are busy gaming or those who can rapidly turn off the whole system after hearing that one scary sigh from their girlfriend, will it be easy for y/n and Jeongguk, how their relationship works out with the main interrupter that are video games?

You and Jeongguk met not so long than just a few months ago and the relationship between you and him was blooming unexpectably fast without you two even knowing but you went with the flow having faith and enough trust where the time wanted to lead you.

He seemed to be just right for you, just like your ideal boyfriend was meant to be, exactly the perfect person that you were always dreaming of your entire life, it was almost hard to believe at first that Jeongguk was even real, you always pinched yourself whenever your mind came across the mantra that all of this fairytale was only just a foolish dream, but the pinch was painful it felt totally realistic so you came on your senses making you realize that you are actually embraced with luck and you got no choice but to appreciate it as long you had it on your purse, having a sharp eye to make sure it won't go missing you held it gingerly with so much care and unconditional love.

Your relationship was exquisite, it almost felt like a hopeless romantic movie. You two would go on a cute dates together, ride to the park with your bicycles, sitting on the picnic table, having a snack and a deep converstation about life itself while you were watching the scenery painting colors on its canvas, the evening sun was about to get tired and it slowly subsided down hiding itself behind the trees tucking a blanket over its head and fall asleep, painting breahtaking vibrant pastel colors of red, pink and purple blending it all in for a short period of time until it got replaced with darkness.

But this relationship also held so many boundaries; it was a long-distance, you were too far away from each other, you rarely even met each other, sometimes once a month or sometimes once a year when the college year comes to take almost all the time you've wanted to spend together. It was hard for you two but you decided to live with it, your relationship was strong and you two tried to make it work.

The second boundary was video games, Jeongguk had a sick obsession with video games, everytime when he could jump at the chance to turn on his powerful computer then the first thing he dived into was an intriguing virtual world, where everything was a fantasy and feverishly addicting, he could spend there for hours and hours, forgetting completely that time even existed, the time was limitless.

It used to upset you, it felt like he got more time for the video games than he had for you. Of course you had some useless short fight over it until you realized that it was a stupid topic to argue about and you always forgave to each other and moved on with your life like nothing happened, you still were the same cute couple like you freshly met and everything's beautiful and lovely between you and Jeongguk.

One day you came back from a very draining day in college, before the end of your class you sent a text message for Jeongguk to have a video call with him at 9 pm before your bedtime because you had to get home, prepare a dinner for yourself, study for your upcoming exams and get a quick shower then you have successfully survived this exhausting day so you could finally get into your bed, excitedly take out your laptop and get into a video call with Jeongguk you've been waiting for this almost entire day.

Jeongguk was always on the back of your mind, thinking about him gave you strength, you truly loved him wholeheartedly, he always made your heart run a marathon like it was almost threatening to jump out of your chest.

You missed his curly silky poodle hair, you missed his hilarious jokes, you missed to hear his honeysweet voice; the stories he was completely passionate about, even if it was about video games and you didn't care about them that much, but what made him happy made you happy! You just couldn't wait to see his handsome ethereal face, his face was always so soft that you loved to hold his face between your arm and gently trace your fingertips across his soft skin, but now when the long-distance was bothering you, you had no choice than your touch his face on the laptop screen just like you were touching his face for real and you imagined you could be able to feel the softness under your fingertips again.

You called to him, the excitement washing over you, impatiently waiting for him to answer your call, it took a while, it made you almost anxious, you were wondering if he forgot himself into the virtual world again.

You heard the sudden beep go off and it made you realized that he had finally answered your call. The corners of your mouth slid upwards when you finally saw his face, his coconut brown eyes sparkled and his smile captured your heart that you felt it glowing inside you.

„Hey babe!“ Jeongguk said contently looking straight into the camera staying in eye contact with you for a little while.

„Hey love, how was your day?“ you asked him happily, eager to get to know everything about his day.

Jeongguk chuckled a bit, this chuckle felt like a soothing music to your ears, it was such a pleasant sound to hear.

„It was almost nothing, my whole day was a waste if you could say that, I've been gaming the entire day and the time just flew from the blink of an eye“ Jeongguk's gaze was now focused on a video game he was currently gaming in the computer.

You bit your lip, it worried you that he haven't seen the sunlight of the day, the curtains were pulled down against the window blocking the daylight completely, he have been attached into the computer, being entirely clued into that gamer chair he was sitting and never meant to leave his space, you also noticed dirty plates laying on the table that were supposedly used in the last few hours to delete his hunger, knowing yourself as a such cleaning freak you couldn't stand to stare at this chaos in the background.

„Have you eaten? Are you well?“ you tried to distract him from the video games, you tried to do what it took to draw his attention towards to you again.

Jeongguk only muttered and nodded as a response, his gaze could never break off the screen because the video game seemed to be a number priority to him right now.

You let out a loud annoying sigh, it always made you upset when he barely could even pay attention for you, you were waiting for this call for an entire day and when you hopped on the chance then all your boyfriend could do was to play a video game without paying you a worthy attention and gives you short answers which drove you insane.

It didn't even take a second until Jeongguk caught your annoying sigh, you could see the guilt, worry and regret in his eyes, he quickly paused his game and turned it off. Then he turned towards the webcam, your eyes meeting each other once again, you could feel yourself always drowning into his warm brown sparkling eyes.

Jeongguk leaned in to the camera, so his face was really near to your screen, he managed to make big eyes and he pouted his cherry red plump lips and he looked at you with his puppy eyes. The smile that once vanished from your face grew into a very big ray of sunshine.

„I'm sorry babe, what can I do for you, I'm sorry for upsetting you like that, I won't do that ever again I promise!“ Jeongguk softened his voice tone, he almost sounded like a pouty baby and it made you laugh, Jeongguk smiled and felt extremely relieved as he saw the joy on your face again.

„That's okay my love, I just want to talk with you, I want to hear how your day went, how you've been doing, I really care about you, I miss you so much!“ you poured out your heart to him and it made his smile grow bigger.

You both were sweet talking to each other for hours and hours until it was almost midnight. You kept talking about your life, how's everything going for you in your college, you spoke about the upcoming exams you had to take and Jeongguk was always listening to you, resting his chin on his palm, he looked at you like he was your whole world, the softness in his look made you realize how much adoration and love he actually had for you. You both laughed and threw jokes at each other you had such a wonderful time together.

The time was almost ticking to the early morning, you and Jeongguk kept on talking, it was like a never-ending circle and the converstation was still on. Jeongguk was speaking about his passions which surely included video games that always left him amused, you started to feel your eyelids heavy and you unwillingly fell asleep the soothing music that was his voice.

Before the peaceful sleep could cloud your senses you heard his reassuring last words echoing in your ears: „Sleep tight babe, I love you!“

[razieltwelve]

The Drift (RWBY x Final Fantasy x Pacific Rim)

“The Drift is not about competition. It is about communication. It is a union created by the sharing of every thought and emotion. The most common mistakes rookies make is to worry about who is in charge. You need to understand that the Drift not about winning or losing against your copilot. You win or you lose together. You live or you die together.”

Pyrrha soaked in every word. Grand Marshal Lightning Farron was a living legend. During the First War, she had served with incredible distinction as first a pilot and then, after being crippled in battle, as a marshal of one of the most important Arks in the world. Her tactical and strategic acumen had allowed her Jaegers to turn back the Grimm again and again.

She had even climbed back into the conn-pod one last time near the end of the First War. She had saved her Ark but at the cost of a series of severe strokes that had almost killed her. Even bedridden, she had still managed to develop the plan that had ultimately won the First War and closed the dimensional breach. 

Lightning had retired shortly after, but the advent of the Second War had called her back into service. There wasn’t a pilot alive who didn’t know who she was, and she was almost universally idolised for her skills not only as a pilot but also as a commanding officer. Pyrrha could not believe her good fortune in being assigned to Lightning’s Ark to complete her training.

“You’ve all done exceedingly well to get to the final phase of the training program. However, this will also be the hardest phase.” The grand marshal’s gaze swept over the cadets. “I will be blunt. The world is not fair. You need a co-pilot to operate a Jaeger. If you can’t find one, then you’re not going to be able to pilot.” Her lips curled. “Believe me, you don’t want to try piloting one on your own. I’ve done it twice, and I’ve flatlined more than a dozen times on the operating table as a result. I do not recommend trying it.”

Nobody laughed because it wasn’t a joke. The tremendous neural load imposed by a Jaeger was all but impossible to manage alone. It had been tried twenty-three times in the past, largely due to injuries suffered in the field. Only seven people had managed to operate their Jaeger alone, and of those seven only two had survived the effort. Lightning was one of them, and her mentor, Amodar, had been the other.

“The purpose of this phase of your training is two-fold. We aim to provide you with far more realistic and intensive simulator training, and we aim to test whether the potential co-pilot pairings we’ve identified have any chance of working in the field. Of the forty people in this room, I would be surprised if more than ten managed to make it through. The best class we’ve ever had managed fourteen graduates.” She turned, the augments supporting her crippled leg whirring softly, and nodded at their head instructor. “Colonel Yun. I’ll the rest to you.”

As the grand marshal left the room, the colonel took over. Oerba Yun Fang was another legend from the First War, and she had been in charge of training cadets for the better part of a decade. If the grand marshal radiated a sort of icy majesty, then the colonel radiated a sort of warm amusement at their trepidation.

“Relax,” Fang said. “The grand marshal’s job is to prepare for the worst-case scenario, which is why she comes across as a bit doom and gloom. My job is to make the best possible cadets out of you.” She grinned. “Now, the fact that you’ve made it here means that you’re all pretty good already. However, the real challenge is going from good to great, and you’ll need to be great to deal with what we’re up against.” She gestured, and a hologram sprang to life beside her. “The Grimm are back, and they’re bigger, stronger, and more numerous than the last time. They’ve learned from their mistakes too, which means we can’t afford to get cocky.”

The cadets all gulped. Pyrrha did her best to remain calm as well. She’d seen what the Grimm could do. A single one of the titanic creatures could easily level a city in a matter hours if left unchallenged. When the Second War had begun, the world had been caught off guard. If not for the ceremonial Jaegers that had been maintained from the First War, they would have been overwhelmed. Now, however, production of new Jaegers using the most advanced technology possible was in full swing.

The last Jaegers to be used in the First War had been the Mark Vs. The Remnant Defence Program now had access to not only Mark VIs and VIIs but also smaller numbers of Mark VIII Jaegers. One of those Mark VIIIs had saved Pyrrha’s homeland only two months ago, downing a pair of Category VI Grimm on the shores of Mistral.

“Rather than waste any time, the very first class you lot will be going to is the Drift compatibility test.” Fang’s lips curled into a toothy smile. “Now, there are several ways to test for Drift compatibility, but I’ve always been a fan of doing things the old-fashioned way.” Pyrrha’s eyes widened. Could the colonel be talking about… “That’s right. Combat. We’re going to hit the gym. You’ll have ten minutes to change once we get there. Do not dawdle. Anyone who’s late can be my sparring partner.”

X     X     X

As Pyrrha got changed, she chanced a quick look at some of the other cadets. Given their importance, many of the cadets were already well known, with some even being sponsored by national governments or companies. Pyrrha herself was sponsored by the Mistral government, and she couldn’t help but feel nervous at the thought of so many people relying on her and placing their faith in her.

Two of the other cadets were second generation. Ruby Rose and Yang Xiao Long were sisters whose parents had served as pilots in the First War. Summer Rose had been badly injured toward the end of the First War, but she’d managed to survive and was now a commander of her own Ark, albeit not one as large as the one Lightning presided over. Was it weird that they were here instead of there? 

Ruby was young too, right on the limit of what the program allowed for cadets. Had this been peacetime, there was no way the program would ever even think of letting a fifteen year old into a conn-pod, but they couldn’t afford to be choosy right now. There were far more Grimm arriving at far shorter intervals. The program - and the world - needed every pilot it could get.

Yang was two years older, and Pyrrha had been lucky enough to face off against her in some of the simulator contests different Arks had run during earlier phases of the training program. Yang might have a somewhat blunt approach to combat, but she had excellent instincts and a brutally effective fighting style that was perfectly suited to the melee combat that was so often involved in battle agains the Grimm.

“Nervous?” Yang asked.

Pyrrha blinked and then realised that Yang was talking to her. She smiled and continued to tug on her clothes as she walked toward the two sisters. “A little, yes. It’s just… a bit surreal to be here. We’re so close to becoming pilots and at this Ark, no less. Being able to serve under the grand marshal would be an incredible honour.”

“It’d be tough too,” Yang said. “This is the busiest Ark in the world. The grand marshal commands more missions each month than some of the smaller Arks do in a year.”

“That’s kind of scary to think about,” Ruby murmured quietly. “I mean… if we screw up...”

“Relax, sis.” Yang smirked. “Mom wouldn’t send us here if she didn’t think we could cut it. Besides, we’ve got one big advantage.” She threw her arm around Ruby. “We’re almost guaranteed to be Drift compatible.”

Pyrrha’s brows furrowed. Yang had a good point. Siblings were almost always Drift compatible to some degree, and research had shown that siblings who were the children of pilots tended to be compatible almost ninety per cent of the time. It was why the children of almost all of the pilots of the First War had found their way into the program. “That is a good point.”

“But what if we’re the ten percent?” Ruby whispered. “What do we do then?”

“Then we’ll manage.” Yang chuckled. “Relax. The reason there are forty of us is because a whole bunch of us are potentially compatible with each other. They’ve got backup plans in case our first choices don’t work out.”

“That’s right,” Pyrrha said. “But we should hurry. I don’t think it would be a good idea to be late.”

X     X     X

Fang watched the cadets go through some basic stretches and exercises. Having them fight right off the bat would just be begging for injuries. It was better to let them ease into it. Still, she could tell a lot just by watching them. Yang was a chip off the old block. Fang had run a few missions with her parents, and if Yang was as good as they were, she’d be a welcome addition to the Ark. Ruby was a bit harder to read. The girl was clearly talented, but she was so nervous about being younger than everyone that she was making mistakes in even the basic exercises.

The big surprise was the blond teenager. Jaune Arc had made it through each phase of the training program by the skin of his teeth. He wasn’t outstanding in any area, but he had the sort of grit and determination that could translate to success in the field. Just as importantly, he was one of the only people in the world who had a half-decent Drift compatibility estimate with Pyrrha Nikos.

Fang’s lips twitched. Pyrrha was a celebrity in Mistral. As a cadet, she’d set records for the earlier parts of the training program, and she’d topped every class she’d been in. Her simulator performance was outstanding, and she’d been one of the only people in history to approach the marks Lightning had set years ago. Her only problem was a lack of Drift compatible partners.

Oh, the Mistral Arks had done their damnedest to find people, but they’d failed. The preliminary Drift compatibility checks that they’d run in the earlier phases of the training program had turned up failure after failure. Of course, they’d been smart enough to conceal the results from Pyrrha. There was no point in making her nervous.

When the system had flagged Jaune as a potential match only a few weeks ago, the blond had been plucked out of the small Ark he’d been training at and shipped over to this one. Fang had no idea if he’d cut it, but they had to at least try. Pyrrha was too good a candidate to throw away, and if they could get Jaune up to speed, they could have a real success on their hands.

“All right,” Fang said. “I want everybody gathered around the sparring area. We’ll be doing a few bouts. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and spot some compatibility.” She waited until they’d moved into position and then glanced at her scroll. The candidates had all been ranked in terms of their potential compatibility with each other, so it wasn’t hard to pick out a pair of them to start things off. “Xiao Long and Belladonna. You two are up first.”

Blake Belladonna was a cat Faunus who’d come out of a Menagerie Ark with some excellent scores. Like Pyrrha, however, she hadn’t had a suitable candidate for her co-pilot. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Adam Taurus had been a possible candidate, but the young man had suffered a severe stroke after sneaking into his Ark’s Jaeger bay and attempting to pilot a Jaeger alone. The doctors were confident he could make a full recovery, but it could take as long as two years, and they needed pilots now.

Yang and Blake squared off in the sparring area, each with a staff in their hands. The blonde would undoubtedly have preferred to fight barehanded, but it was tradition to fight with staffs, at least for the first time. WIth a quick bow, the two began to circle each other.

Yang struck the first blow, but Blake parried it easily before replying with a strike of her own. With a small smile, Yang blocked the attack and went back to circling Blake. Another quick exchange followed, and Yang found herself on the back foot as Blake used her superior speed to press her advantage. However, that advantage was short-lived as Yang seemingly read Blake’s next move and locked their staffs together before hoisting Blake over her hip in a throw.

“Point.” Fang said as Blake got back to her feet with a faint frown. Yang smirked back. “We’ll make it first to three. We don’t want any of you killing each other this early.”

Blake’s eyes narrowed, and the Faunus darted forward. Her staff streaked toward Yang’s side only to divert toward her shoulder at the last moment. Yang twisted away from the strike, and she brought her own staff around at Blake’s ribs. Blake jammed her staff down and then upped the pace, the room filling with the loud clack of staff against staff.

Fang’s brows furrowed. This wasn’t quite what she’d expected. The compatibility index for Blake and Yang was only 0.5, which suggested a reasonable chance for a successful Drift, but it hadn’t even been three minutes and the pair had already fallen into a swift, easy rhythm. Neither they nor the other cadets realised it, but Fang knew what to look for.

They weren’t really fighting anymore. This was closer to a dance, and the frown had faded from Blake’s face to be replaced by a small smile. Yang returned it with a smirk, and Fang called an end to the bout because she’d seen more than enough.

“Okay,” Fang said. “That’s enough.” She chuckled. “See that, kids? That is what compatibility looks like. We’ll have to schedule you two for more intensive testing.” The smile on Yang’s face faded ever so slightly as she took note of the crushed expression that Ruby wore. Fang winced. Even if they were sisters, if Blake was more compatible with Yang than Ruby, then that was probably what Lightning would decide to do. Even small percentages in compatibility could make a big difference in live combat. “Nikos and Arc, you two are up.”

Fang watched as Jaune warily took up a guard position opposite Pyrrha. The boy wasn’t an idiot, for all that his training wasn’t quite up to par with the others. He’d seen Pyrrha going through her exercises, and her skill was obvious. For her part, Pyrrha smiled in a friendly way and readied her staff.

“Same deal, you two. First to three or until I’ve seen enough. Begin.”

Pyrrha breezed forward and launched a strike at Jaune’s head. The boy was a fraction too slow to block it, but Pyrrha pulled the strike before it could connect.

“That’s one,” Fang said. A few of the other cadets laughed, and she shot them a scowl. “Quiet. This isn’t about winning. This is about seeing who is compatible.” She nodded at Jaune. “Arc?”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Loosen up. You’re not fighting for your life here. Just do what comes naturally.”

Jaune nodded and took the initiative. His staff swung into motion, but Pyrrha easily batted the blow aside. However, he used the momentum of her parry to accelerate his next strike. Pyrrha’s eyes widened ever so briefly, but she was still able to block the attack. The two staffs met, and Jaune lunged forward, trying to lock the weapons together, so he could either disarm the redhead or throw her. Pyrrha was even quicker to react. She let go of her weapon, realising that it would be almost impossible to keep hold of it with the leverage Jaune had managed to get, and instead grabbed hold of Jaune’s.

There was a brief scuffle before the pair broke apart, Pyrrha holding’s Jaune’s weapon and the blond holding hers. Fang raised one eyebrow. That had almost seemed choreographed. However, neither Pyrrha nor Jaune seemed to have noticed how unusual it was. Instead, their eyes were locked onto each other.

Pyrrha attacked, but this time, she held her speed to a level that Jaune could manage. Despite the hail of blows headed his way, Jaune managed to keep afloat, somehow reading just enough of her movements to stay out of harm’s way. Fang’s eyes gleamed. Clever girl. Pyrrha had realised early on that Jaune just wasn’t fast enough to keep up with her, so she’d slowed down just enough to see what would happen.

And Jaune wasn’t disappointing. What he lacked in speed, he made up for in anticipation. As bizarre as it sounded, he was actually able to read a lot of Pyrrha’s moves. It shouldn’t be possible. Even Fang would have taken a little longer to get accustomed to the redhead’s style, but Jaune had already caught on.

From the flush on her cheeks, it was clear that Pyrrha had realised it too. Slowly, she upped the tempo of her attacks, working her way up toward her normal speed. Jaune struggled to keep up, but he was gradually adjusting, reading further and further ahead. A sudden change of direction caught Jaune off guard, and Pyrrha tossed him over her shoulder. However, he managed to grab her leg as he hit the ground, and he ended up dragging her down on top of him.

The pair ended up pressed together with Pyrrha practically sitting on top of him.

“Okay…” Fang laughed. “I should probably stop you two there before you go any further.” The two practically leapt apart as the other cadets laughed. A few even yelled out suggestions. “That is what Drift compatibility looks like. Of course, we’ll have to do more testing, but it’s a great start.” Fang glanced back at her scroll. “Let’s see if we can make it three for three. Rose, you’re up. You too, Valkyrie.”

As Ruby and Nora took their positions in the sparring area, Fang glanced at Jaune and Pyrrha. Before their match, they had not been standing anywhere near each other. Now, however, they were standing side by side.

X     X     X

Lightning scowled as Fang put her feet up on her desk. “Don’t make me shoot you for insubordination, colonel. I’ve already told you to get your feet off my desk.”

Fang chuckled. “Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?” she drawled. “Besides, we’re married. You’d feel bad if you shot me.”

“Which is why I would have someone else do it.” Lightning’s lips twitched up into a small smile. “So… how did it go? I would have liked to watch, but I had to meet with representatives from the Schnee Dust Company.” She shook her head in disgust. “We’re facing the apocalypse, and I still have to go looking for extra funding. Do people still not understand that if we lose this, we’re all dead? I might not like Jacques Schnee, but he is a practical man. In exchange for moving Weiss to this Ark, he has agreed to some very generous funding arrangements.”

“Weiss? I didn’t realise she was in the program.”

“She’s not. Her father has been having her privately tutored in Atlas for years. He didn’t want her in the program because then we’d be in charge of her progress. Now, however, he’s got no choice. If he wants her to pilot, he has to go through us.”

“But does she want to pilot?” Fang asked. “Her sister, Winter, was part of the program too, but she dropped out of the pilot side and switched to command.”

“Winter Schnee has proven to be an excellent field commander,” Lightning replied. “I’d poach her as a potential successor and assistant, but James has been most adamant in keeping his hands on her.”

“Damn. She must be good then.” James Ironwood commanded the largest Ark in Atlas. Anyone he considered good enough to serve as his second-in-command had to be brilliant. “But that leaves Weiss in a bit of a pickle, doesn’t it? She and Winter probably would have been compatible.”

“Yes. However, there is at least one candidate in the current group whose psychological profile and other markers suggest possible compatibility.”

“Oh?”

“Ruby,” Lightning said. “Although there is still Yang to consider.”

“Actually, that might not be as a big a problem as you’d think,” Fang said. “How about I fill you in on the details? It was a pretty good session, actually, we had several possible pairings make a good showing including our resident prodigy.”

“Ah, yes, I was hoping Pyrrha would find someone. Was it Jaune?”

“They look damn compatible,” Fang said. “I guess we owe Vanille another vending machine.”

Lightning scowled. Professor Oerba Dia Vanille was one of the most brilliant minds in the program. She was also totally addicted to energy drinks and had made it her personal mission to have a vending machine at every intersection in the facility. “Another vending machine is a small price to pay if we can get Pyrrha and a suitable partner into a Jaeger.”

X     X     X

Author’s Notes

So… this is a thing. Those of you who’ve read my other fan fiction might recognise elements of The Vestige (a Final FFXIII x Pacific Rim crossover I wrote). This is kind of like that… except it’s set in the future and on Remnant. This was also only supposed to be a really short snippet, but it kind of snowballed.

Oh well.

I do think there’s a lot of potential in this basic premise, so I might come back to this now and then.

You can find me on fanfiction.net, AO3, and Amazon. Please check out my newest story on Amazon. It’s called Monster Whisperer.

[recentanimenews]

Crunchyroll Features' Favorite Anime of Fall 2018!

The Fall season, and 2018 anime with it, are finished. We’re looking at a lot of big anime titles wrapping around into 2019, so now is the perfect time for our editors to honor our favorites from this season before the Winter premieres begin. This was a huge season with a ton of big returning titles, so it was particularly hard selecting our Top 3 from the season. You can check out our top anime from summer season, see how our picks compare to our most anticipated titles, or scroll down and check out our favorites!

Peter Fobian

Fall 2018 was absolutely ridiculous. The season looked huge going into it with the shonen fighter RADIANT, returning giants JoJo AND SAO, and 2 mega hyped isekai in Goblin Slayer and Slime. Oh yeah, also a new TRIGGER anime. Then it got EVEN BIGGER with some unknown quantities turning into awesome favorites. We’re still riding the crest of this wave into Winter as so many of the top series are continuing, but the ones that are coming to an end this year really left an impression on me.

ZOMBIE LAND SAGA

This might be the single biggest anime dark horse that has emerged since I started following seasonal anime and that was kind of part of its design. Everything from the show to the promotion was masterfully orchestrated, with the studio giving away little more than the title and Mamoru Miyano’s gorgeous face leading into the season. The way this anime took both tourism and idol anime to the extreme with one of the best concepts and pretty meta. The writing was on point, the comedic timing was perfect, and it even had great emotional beats. I’m really hoping a few of those loose plot threads mean a season 2 because this anime could easily deliver more.

SSSS.GRIDMAN

I watched the first episode of this series back at Anime Expo 2018 and was extremely surprised at how serious it felt. Although it loosened up during the fight scenes, Gridman has to be TRIGGER’s most reserved project to date with some really great storyboards, character drama, and a slowburn mystery that are typically absent from their high-octane visual circuses. It even stuck the landing. This series wasn’t just good in its own right, but really proved TRIGGER is about to deliver in multiple styles of storytelling.

Golden Kamuy

There's never enough space to talk about all the good things in Golden Kamuy. The story is an amazing treasure hunt/survival game in a wonderfully articulated historical set piece of Hokkaido, Japan following the Russo-Japanese War. The characters are as adorable as they are psychotic. The mysteries just keep building up. The violence is magnificent. The food looks delicious. This manga has a the best bit of everything and continually shows new faces as the story develops. Hopefully the wait for more of the manga wont be too long.

Ricky Soberano

Woo! This fall season has been a chock full of great anime that varied from each other in many aspects so I ended up staying consistently caught up with almost everything that came out this season and shows that haven’t stopped going. Trying to pick three took many rounds of questioning from myself to the people that I care about and the conclusion was ‘Ricky loved everything.’ However I came up with my top three by only choosing the ones that made me 110% happy every single time I clicked to watch the latest episode.

Fairy Tail Final Season

  I’ve been a diehard Fairy Tail fan since the beginning (tattoo on my hip for proof) and frankly I’ve cried during every episode this season simply knowing that there will be no more of this amazing shonen that has saved my life more than once after this is done. This season exceeds expectations by not only doing a victory lap and bringing on almost every character that has ever shown up in the show but also by tying up every loose end, answering every burning question, and naturally showing every individual guild member’s badass power has gotten to a level so high up that one could barely fathom. Each episode has me screaming at the screen from the new insane revelation that they just revealed.

As Miss Beelzebub Likes It.

  I don’t usually watch cute anime. However watching Beelzebub be super encapsulated by the presence of fluffy things, show her an affinity for tasty snaccs, and captivation for adorable animals pulled me into a hug as warm as an alpaca sweater and I never want it to stop. The color palette of pastel glory has kept me in a happy mood all season and the stories told are ridiculous but make for a never ending sweet dream.

Run with the Wind

  This was a wild card for me since I may’ve ran track on high competitive levels but I don’t have a preference to sports anime. However the cast of 10’s journeys not only as runners but also as individuals take place with such high stakes on the line made it hard to not want to continue watching especially since the show did well to realistically show competitive running and the realistic sacrifices and training that goes behind it. With such high tension and drama circulating, I was truly on the edge of my seat the entirety of every single episode.

Nate Ming

Y'know, I thought I was gonna watch more JoJo… but I got my mom into JoJo over Christmas break, so that's gotta count for something. From retail hell to the frozen wilderness of Hokkaido to the sacred ring, my Fall 2018 season was full of emotional ups and downs… and I'm still screaming about that season finale for Golden Kamuy.

Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san

All the built-up trauma from working retail and customer service for almost half my life came back in one huge wave with Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san. No anime this season has made me laugh so hard I pulled a muscle (I'm not joking), and no anime this season has made me curl up in the fetal position remembering the insanity of working a Harry Potter book launch at Borders. But aside from all that, Honda-san himself is refreshingly positive and upbeat--work is work, it's tiring and frustrating, but if you love what you do and like sending customers home happy, it's all worth it in the end.

Golden Kamuy

The treacherous journey to find the stolen Ainu gold continued with a second season, bringing back our favorite characters while introducing plenty of new faces. Unexpected team-ups, shuffling of group rosters, and then pitting everybody against each other kept me watching every week, needing to know what was coming next--and that infuriating season finale means I'm absolutely tuning in for whenever season 3 starts airing.

Hinomaru Sumo

I keep joking that "no cowards allowed" is the tagline for this intense adaptation of the Weekly Jump manga, and it's a pretty fair assessment: characters may feel doubt and fear, they may question the decisions that led them to get into the ring, but there's nowhere to run in sumo, so finish the fight and worry about the details later. This show has so much heart, and I'm here to continue cheering for Hinomaru and team into 2019 as we head into its second cour.

Nicole Mejias

I gotta say, this fall season was STACKED with a whole bunch of great shows from start to finish! It was a season where my queue was at its fullest and trying to find time every week was actually a bit challenging to make sure I watched everything. There were so many shows that I ended up liking way more than I thought I would, so it was difficult to pick a top 3, and in some cases I feel my top 3 are mostly continuing from things I really enjoyed before, or last season; but that said, this was a tough season, and if I had more than 3 slots, I’d be in even more trouble picking!

Golden Kamuy

Golden Kamuy is a must-have on my list, and frankly should be on almost everyone's! I really had no idea what to expect from the series when I first heard about it, but whatever I thought it was, Golden Kamuy surprised me with it's amazing characters, fast and severe action, and its balance of comedy and suspense. As the second season draws to a close and some of the serious questions are about to be answered, I'll be waiting to see what's next for Sugimoto and Asirpa in the future. I probably would never get tired of this series, so I'm hoping we hear about a new season soon. Golden Kamuy is a series of feel almost anyone can enjoy, and I hope more people get sucked into it like I did!

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind

JoJo's is one of my favorite series of all, and when Golden Wind got announced I was extremely excited to see what was in store for me, since it was the JoJo part I knew the least about. Part 5 really does have a unique feel to it, from the mafia trappings to the unique and interesting Stand abilities, and now that things are really getting underway, I'm excited to see what's next! Giorno and the rest of the gang are quickly becoming one of my favorite collections of JoJo heroes, with their mix of fun chemistry and personalities, and I can just see Part 5 being in my favorite anime lists throughout 2019 too!

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

I'll be honest: I'm not a big isekai fan. I've never really found the power fantasy aspect of them interesting, and so I've usually found myself giving them a few episodes before getting bored or finding myself watching something else. Slime really grabbed me, though, because from the first parts of episode 1, I thought I was in for a similar experience, but it soon turned things on their heads! While Rimuru is super powerful, the world built in Slime is fascinating, and all of the interactions between characters is great. Also, seeing Rimuru put the smack down on baddies is incredibly satisfying! I'm excited to see where this series goes and how Rimuru's little collection of followers and hangers on grow!

And that's our editor's favorites for the Fall 2018 season! I'm surprised no anime got repeated twice except for Golden Kamuy with 3 votes, which is a fitting send off to an awesome series that reached its conclusion this year after an insane climax. But there's more to come. Prepare yourself for tomorrow when we'll be putting up our most anticipated titles for Winter 2019!

---

Peter Fobian is an Associate Features Editor for Crunchyroll, author of Monthly Mangaka Spotlight, writer for Anime Academy, and contributor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[katie-lyn]

Infected - Chapter 1

Summary: Dan and Phil have been best friends for their entire lives, but now as teens, how will they survive when the dead begin to rise and the world falls into madness? How will they live in this brave new world? Will they be able to do what is absolutely necessary to survive and face the consequences of this harsh reality? 

Warnings: mild violence

PG-13

Word count: 1,632

Note: The Walking Dead takes place in a world where zombie media never existed, hence why they call them walkers among other things instead. I am going to take that page from their book because I think it is a good choice story-telling wise. Title also based on an episode title from TWD.

Note 2: This is my first fic on this blog. My first fic in a long time. I’m excited and nervous and I hope people enjoy this! Please, please give me feedback and let me know what you think!

Also, I had this whole thing typed on my phone then tried to post it and my tumblr app crashed so yay I rewrote the whole thing on my laptop and hopefully this posts. It was probably a little better the first time, but whatever. I’m still happy with this. First chapter below the cut!

Phil is a seventeen year old boy. He has a fairly normal life. He goes to school. He has friends. He’s pretty deep in the closet. He’s in love with his best friend Daniel, whom he’s grown up with since they were tots. Okay, perhaps his life has had a few small hiccups or inconveniences, but all of his problems were peanuts compared to what he woke up to today. He walks downstairs and hears the news channel on in the living room. There seems to be mass panic happening. He walks into the room and finds his parents full attention on the horrific scene on the television. The dead were rising. It was beginning not all that far away from where they were. Currently, they were being told the CDC was working on something and to just remain safely in their homes until further notice. Phil’ s mind went straight to ‘this has to be some kind of joke. April fools? No, it’s September. Well, there has to be some logical explanation’. But he saw it with his own eyes. The shot of the dead in the street. The footage of one of them attacking a woman and several of them ganging up on her, biting at her, her falling to the ground afterwards, and them continuing to tear her apart, pulling her apart, inside out, quite literally. He’s never seen anything so graphic and disturbing. Phil is a horror movie fan. This was not faked. There was nothing like this and he knew what special effects looked like, this was not it. This was real. It was on every channel, probably across the world. It was estimated to be a worldwide epidemic in only a few short weeks if a solution wasn’t found very swiftly. The military was going to take action very soon if need be. This was real. He was not dreaming. He checked by pinching himself very hard.

Naturally, the first thing Philip does is exactly what the professionals are telling everyone not to do. He goes outside. They aren’t sure how this has started, if it’s airborne, some sort of disease, contagious, etc.. Plus, the dead could be anywhere. They were confirmed in certain places, but of course they could be anywhere and maybe just not reported there yet. However, Phil makes a direct beeline to Dan’s house. Dan lives just right next door. Phil just goes straight in since he knows he is always welcome there. “Oh, dear, have you heard the news?” Dan’s mother asks him as she looks over when she hears him enter. “Yeah, I have. Is Dan still in bed?” Phil asks the woman who is truly like a second mother to him. “Yes, he is,” she replies before turning her attention back to the news, wanting all the available details. Phil rushes up to Dan’s room. He doesn’t know why he’s relieved to see that Dan is okay. As if he already would’ve been outside long enough to have been bit. Yeah, right. He’s still asleep, of course. Dan always sleeps in. Phil lays down beside him in bed. After only a few minutes, Dan begins to open his eyes, already unconsciously shifting closer to Phil for warmth and cuddles. “Morning… When did you get here?” Dan mumbles sleepily. “Only a few minutes ago,” Phil whispers. “The world has truly gone insane. You’ll never believe what’s actually happening right now,” Phil murmurs. “I dunno, Phil. Trump is president in America. Lemme guess; nuclear war that we are now a part of?” He glances up at Phil, truly half expecting to be correct. “That’s a valid guess,” Phil admits. “But no. Literally, you will never guess.” Phil takes out his phone and just shows Dan the captured footage of the woman being attacked that has been all over the news from the YouTube app on his phone. Dan’s jaw drops. There is no denying the reality of that clip. The bloodcurdling scream of the woman, the way they scratch and bite her, the way they tear her open and apart alive, until she isn’t. There’s no faking that. Phil slips his phone back into his pocket once the clip ends. “They’re telling us all to stay indoors until, like, they figure out a way to deal with them. But it’s spreading quickly and the military could possibly be getting involved if it comes to it.” He doesn’t even really realize it, but he holds Dan closer as he explains. He’s just always had this compulsion to take care of the younger boy. Dan was two years younger than him and they’ve been inseparable since Dan’ s birth, basically. Their parents are very good friends, and they are next door neighbors. They’re closer than could be. “Holy shit,” Dan mumbles, instinctively nuzzling closer to Phil. “Wait- Does this mean that school is canceled?” Dan asks, glancing up at Phil, small smirk playing at his lips. “It actually does!“ Phil tells him. “Yes!” Dan laughs. It wasn’t real yet. It hasn’t truly hit. It hasn’t affected them directly yet. It was just a few small occurrences happening elsewhere. They could still laugh and have fun for now. But the threat was growing and spreading and getting closer to everyone, everywhere. It had only just begun.

-

Fast forward two weeks and things have truly gotten bad. Shit has officially hit the fan. There is no cure. There are more walking dead people than the military know how to deal with. People are dropping by the dozens. It is no longer safe anywhere. People are locking themselves indoors, boarding up their windows, barricading their doors. People who haven’t stocked up on months worth of food in the last weeks are surely about to regret it because good luck getting to the store now. No one will probably even still be working at the store now, you’d just have to loot it. Phil hasn’t been outside in a while now, but he knows the outside world is insane these days from the news that still runs on television and the radio. Phil and his parents have all moved themselves into the Howell’s home. It’s bigger, so they have more space to spread themselves out. The Lester’s have brought all their food and resources over as well. Everyone is now very, very afraid. Dan and Phil still feel quite secure, though. They have a good thing going here. They had stocked up on food, so they have plenty still. They feel they’ve protected the house quite well, did a good job boarding it up. The only concern was: how long would this go on? What if it went past when they do run out of food? What if one somehow breaks in through a boarded up window? No one is really sure how to kill these things, or how to protect themselves against them yet, so would they all just die if one got in? What would they do? All Phil knows is that he will die before he lets anything hurt Dan. Soft, sweet Dan. He would 100% protect him with his life. If something wants to get to Dan, it will have to go through him first. 

-

Dan did not take any of this seriously at first. But now that his house has essentially become a bunker, well- there’s only so much denial you can have. He’s now been with his own parents and the Lester’s all cooped up in his home that is all Fort Knox-ed out for a full eight days now. On the bright side, he would never complain about spending so much time with Phil. They have always been closer than platonic teenage boys typically are. They cuddle, sleep in the same bed when they spend the night together, even the odd kiss to the cheek or forehead sometimes. It probably has a lot to do with how they’ve been close since they were in diapers, but also they were just madly in love and the only ones who couldn’t see it were each other. This is a very scary situation, but Dan feels safe and secure where he is. Their home feels safe right now, Phil is always beside him which always brings a feeling of security, and all four parents are here. They both truly feel as if they have two mothers and two fathers. They both grew up with each others parents so much that they even call the others parents mom and dad. The parents all feel the same about both boys, caring about the other as much as if he were their own. They’re all one, big, loving family. Dan is very worried, though. He’s always had some severe anxiety. What are they going to do when the food is gone? What will they realistically do if one of those things gets in through a window or something? It is actually quite likely that it will happen. Whenever they make a loud sound, they can hear the dead banging on the glass of the windows, It already sounded like the glass was beginning to crack the other day. Sometimes it sounds like there’s only one out there, sometimes it sounds like more, sometimes it seems like all is fine outside their home. But how long will it take for a large enough group of them to gather around and cave in a part of their sanctuary? How long do they have here? Phil seems to sense Dan’s nerves because he holds the boy closer to his chest. “It’s going to be okay, Danny, okay?” He whispers and presses a small kiss to the top of his best friends head. Dan nods very faintly and nuzzles close, taking solace in his friends calming words and aura. They were safe for now.

[todokori-kun]

:)

HEEEEYYYY I FINISHED FMA YESTERDAY

I’M NOT QUITE OVER GREED AND I DOUBT I EVER WILL BE

BUT EVERYBODY’S HAPPY

I’M SO GLAD

(and tiny Pride. It’s fun how he was like, almost the least sympathetic homunculus (I mean, most people can relate to just wanting to go back to sleep ok dad/mom, so even Sloth…lol), and yet he’s the only one who finds a ‘new life’.)

(only HOHENHEIM’S DEAD, my FMA twin is gone ;-; at least that moment with Trisha was beautiful)

I thought I’d cry with FMA’s ending because I did almost cry during the Ishvalan Civil War flashbacks, but…once again, my eyes were dry XD maybe because TG and AoT made me appreciate FMA’s happy ending more?

TYSM for recommending such a great series, Queen Luna <33333 I’m getting kinda emotional XD

UGH. Idek what book that is but I already hate it because of that line.

Hisoka, Hisoka. He’s like the unholy offspring of Furuta and Sebastian. I love it.

(nah, it’s fine,I don’t mind cursing ^^ thanks for asking though, that was sweet)

Yeah, Junior High is pretty cute :) well, it hasn’t been that long since she started learning cello so she’s still playing simple songs like 'mary had a little lamb’ ^^ she really wants to play more complex songs, though.

GAH SORRY I still haven’t started playing OTL I’ve just been a bit busy and had a lot to think about (because COLLEGE) so I kept forgetting…I’ll let you know when I finally start, sorry ;-;

If Urie/Saiko doesn’t become canon…ok, ok, I can deal with Touken, I can deal with that. HOWEVER. If Urie/Saiko doesn’t become canon and Urie/Mutsuki does, I don’t even know what I’ll do. ESPECIALLY IF ISHIDA MAKES URIE ABANDON SAIKO TO 'SAVE’ MUTSUKI OR SOMETHING OMG

I would never! I’m a nice, sweet cinnamon roll who doesn’t know the meaning of the word 'savage’!

If Kimblee actually took a liking to me I’d try to get him to stop blowing things up. Maybe find him a different hobby. But the sad truth is that there’s probably nothing and no one he likes enough to give up his explosions for XD

But you know how I have a cinnamon roll side and then a troll side? Troll!Evans and Kimblee might actually get along really well. Imagine the suffering…

0//////0 Queen Luna is also an amazing friend! Tysm for everything <333 (I say 'tysm’ a lot but then again, there’s no such thing as too many 'thank you’s? lol. Also, I love how 'Queen Luna’ was just a joke at first but now it’s like an actual nickname I use for you. I hardly ever call you just 'Luna’ anymore XD if we ever met irl I’d probably have a hard time calling you anything other than 'queen’)

Oh wow. Sebastian will fight you for the honor of his kitties

X-men is a seperate universe from MCU, though. (I don’t watch X-men so I’m not sure but I think they and MCU agreed to share the Pietro/Wanda twins?) X-men Pietro is a different character from MCU Pietro so our Pietro is still dead ;-;

Moblit and Evans would go on friendly coffee dates and rant about their crazy queens.

Luna/Armin would be so cute, seriously why do I ship you with so many characters…and idk what puberty will do to Armin(will he even survive to go through all of it? sorry) but the fanart of adult!Armin does look good :)

And wait, 15 cm taller than Levi? I’m maybe 3~5 cm taller than him (and I’m only 13 omg) so that makes you at least 10cm taller than me.

It’s really messed up, which means I’ve gotta draw it now XD

Congratulations with Kimblee might go something like this (warning: this is crack and I’m sorta abusing Kimblee's canon abilities, realistically it probably couldn’t go like this):

Shuu: “Mr. Kimblee?!”

Kimblee: “Tsukiyama…

Congratulations.”

*blows up the clock on Shuu’s desk*

“You have invented a new kind of stupid-”

*blows up a framed picture of Shuu and Naomi*

“A 'Damage You Can Never Undo’ kind of stupid-”

*sets fire to the carpet*

“An 'Open All the Cages in the Zoo’ kind of stupid-”

*destroys the entire hecking desk*

“A 'Clearly, You Didn’t Think This Through’ kind of stupid.”

*breaks the window nearest to Shuu*

And then, at the end-

Kimblee: “Every sacrifice you make is for my sister, give her the best life-

Congratulations. :)”

*entire house collapses around them*

So you’d contract Sebastian for chocolate?

(tbh I have a sweet tooth too. I’m sorta sensitive to taste so too many sweets at once makes me get sick of them quickly, but I really like them a little at a time (and I still almost never get sick of chocolate))

ty again for the beautiful edit <3

*hugs* thank you, that really means a lot to me.

But did you see the small Kaneki painting I sent you along with the other pics? Because I actually made that as a way to vent..splattering red blood paint all over the paper did help XD (drawing doesn’t always help, though. When I’m really angry I get the urge to raise my voice and say exactly what I’m thinking, only that’d be horrible so I try to keep it down..but that just makes me angrier LOL)

the left side feels more Kanae and the right side feels more Shuu, but either way, it looks really beautiful :D <3 (also that 'I miss you’ omg I’m getting Shuu/Kaneki feels NO)

(Also I hope the Uta edit I sent you was ok? It was like almost the first aesthetic thing I’ve ever done lol

About it, though: I don’t have a pinterest so I searched stuff like 'black and white aesthetic tumblr’ on google and used the pics that popped up…is that ok? Since I’m just downloading pictures I like and playing around with them on PhotoScape with no intention to post it on the internet or show it to anyone other than you? Idek how this works, I’m way too ignorant about the internet ;-;)

Oh, that sounds cool! I don’t listen to much Ed Sheeran but liked his song for the Hobbit ('I see Fire’? I think that’s what it’s called?) and because Shape of You just keeps playing in the manhwa cafe I go to to read manga, that song kinda got stuck in my head and I can’t stop listening to it XD I don’t listen to remixes a lot for no particular reason but some of them are really cool :)

I’m currently obsessed with Hurricane, Castle, Ghost and 100 Letters by Halsey, along with a bunch of Lana Del Rey songs (going to listen to her new album as soon as I can!), Melodrama (Lorde’s new album), and Young and Menace and Champions by Fall Out Boy…also songs from Steven Universe and Adventure Time, like Love Like You and Everything Stays. And all of FMA’s openings because WOW.

(And yeah, movie/anime soundtracks are always so cool <3)

Is... Is your heart okay? I know it’s a big emotional thing!  Yeee, Greed’s death was a huge shock for me as well T^T WhY Did yOu HaVE tO saY GOodByE

The only thing that really shocked me was Ed giving up his alchemy. It honestly made for a bit of an unsatisfying end, like it’s trying to make way for a sequel (that never came)

Yep, I was expecting you to be not so happy with Hoenheim... Well, at least it’s a happy death? Not in battle, but with his beloved?

TG and AoT scar people for life. Kill of their emotions, so they’re unable to cry at sad things, bc nothing is sad in comparison to those two.  Except for a few rare exceptions. Oh, did I ever tell you that I always, without a fail, cry when watching a specific Love Live episode? It’s about a character that I relate to a bit too much, and since it’s a sorta bittersweet character arc, I always end up crying. The music also gets to me. I could write in detail exactly what and why XD

No problem! If you ever want more recommendations, just say so! Even though I’ll probably recommend series without you asking :P

It’s called ‘Court of Thorns and Roses’. I mean, the writing style is more or less ok, and the premise is interesting at first glance, but then everything gets ruined by the author for not being able to create a flawed MC, cause they have to be perfect!  I’ve read another one of the author’s books before, but dropped it halfway, again because on an annoying MC. The only reason why I finished this one is bc it was the only reading material available XD It’s also supposed to be a spin on Beauty and the Beast, but with fairies, but it was so badly done that I genuinely didn’t realize that until I read it somewhere on the internet. It’s also one of the rare series where I intentionally don’t read the sequels. The original book was that bad I’m getting way too emotional over the book XD

Hisoka is breaking my trash-o meter! It’s over 9000!

Ah, that’s a relief... I’ve definitely started cussing a lot lately, and I know it makes some people uncomfortable, so I wanted to ask ^^

Aw, that’s actually adorable! I hope she gets better at it soon ^^ I’ve always loved listening to string instruments...

Naaah, no worries! Take your time with it! It’s no rush, honestly! Do it at a time that’s convenient to you ^^ Seriously, please don’t feel pressured to play it >_<

Let’s be honest. The possibility of Urie sacrificing himself for Mutsuki is way bigger than Urie/Saiko becoming canon. I cry when I think about it, because we all know Urie would be so much happier with Saiko (*`д´*) Ishida, whyyyyy

Right, I totally believe that. Evans, a sweet, innocent cinnamon roll who doesn't get savage at moments. Sure. Because you totally didn’t set the Flame Alchemist on fire with a burn.

I’m afraid explosions are his one true love. Maybe you could get him to paint explosions instead of making them, though. Like, ‘Ok, Kimblee, here’s paper, some paint, go wild. Just don’t set the room on fire, please.’ He’d show his soft side around you only. If there was anyone else in the room, he’d be his usual self, but with you, in private, he’d probably be a tiny bit sweet. Sometimes.  Troll!Evans and Kimblee would be the actual definition of ‘Prepare for trouble, make it double’. I’d probably run away screaming when you’d announce your relationship XD I’d congratulate you later, but still a bit weary when the two of you are together.

Fun fact: I almost blush every time I read the word Queen XD If I was someone who blushed easily, I’d be an actual tomato while reading your messages ^\\\^ I’d probably actually blush if we were walking around and you called me queen... And then bury myself into a hole forever XD

I’d be the person who’d just shrug her shoulders and be like ‘we all have our opinions’. Now that I think about it, I’d probably get on just fine with Ciel XD

Ah, I see. I just remember that there was a quicksilver in one of those movies, but I didn’t remember the details. 

Hanji and I would simultaneously have the glimmering glasses moment XD  The parallels between the duos are really similar :P

He! Will! Survive! He has too... We already had an almost death for him, and I don’t want an actual death to happen. The cinnamon roll doesn’t deserve it. The first time I saw the fan art, my reaction was. *stares at the screen* ‘well then’ I’d liked Armin from the beginning but this was the moment in which he was cemented as favorite character XD

Aw, Evans is smol for now! When I was 13, I was shortest in class, but now I’m among the tallest. Everyone is taller than Levi... That’s just sad XD But, hey, everyone in Cinderella Phenomenon (I will not shut up) is taller than you! In fact, you’re approx. the height of the MC! Cuuute

Well, my stomach totally doesn’t hurt from laughing too much XD That’s a very destructive version of Congratulations, that would probably end up with someone getting sued XD Shuu for emotional damage, Kimblee for blowing up a fucking house.

Unfortunately, not even chocolate can make me sign a contract with that trash can. Sorry Bassy, but you’re not getting my soul.

Aw, that’s a shame... There’s never enough sweets! 

I’m glad you like it ^^

You could always yell into a pillow? Or punch the pillow if you’re feeling especially angry... 

So, basically, I unintentionally made a Shuu/Kanae edit. I’m not even mad XD 

Yeah, it was pretty good! If you want, I can pass you some advices my friend gave to me when I stared making the edits?  The quote is very Uta, tho. I mean, he does revel in other’s tragedy... 

Yes, of course it is! Find pics any way you want! I’m just using pinterest because it’s easier ^^;; A lot of really artsy pics are posted there, so I quickly find what I’m looking for ^^

Yep, I think it’s called that... Most of his songs on my playlist are from his new album, but some are older as well ^^ There’s this remix of Shape Of You. I listen to it waaay too much XD I found it in an AMV and was immediately like ‘I want this song’, so I downloaded it :P

FMA has some of the best openings and closings I’ve ever heard. My favorite is probably the first one, because it’s just so so amazing *^*

I live for the fantasy fight soundtracks.  A few examples are from the anime Fate/Zero or Fate/Unlimited Blade Works, like This Day and Never Again, Unlimited Blade Works and You Are My King. Those would make a snail race look epic.

AAAALSO THE RAGNAROK TRAILER IS OOUT!  I adored Loki’s moment XD ‘Surprise~ This is going to be so much fun’

[perspectivewords]

Survival (Part 1/2)

What is the worst thing you have ever been through in your life?  

There are multiple ways someone will answer this question. Some will avoid it completely, digging a bigger hole to bury their deepest wounds deep underneath the Earth’s surface. Some openly talk about it because they know it can help another going through the same things. Some openly talk about it for attention. Some will answer that question, but not with the truth. We all have been through something. Something that, when it hits us like a flash of light, the hairs on our arms stand up and our skin creates goosebumps. You can feel something has taken over you, a sensation you hoped you wouldn’t have to identify with. Ever. Yeah all of us have felt that. Even myself.

Unfortunately, pain is inevitable. Most people say, “Why does this have to happen to me? What did I do wrong?” But it doesn’t matter what you did right or what you did wrong because life doesn’t work like that. The truth is we are human beings, and whatever happens to us will happen. Good AND bad. The good doesn’t happen only to the good and the bad doesn’t happen only to the bad. The truth is, we’ve been influenced by this preconceived notion that this, in fact, is what happens. Life. It’s not something that is meant to be depressing, no. Don’t let that be your assumption in your mind. It’s meant to be realistic. It’s meant to be REAL. I believe our purpose in life is to get as much knowledge out of it as you can. From books. From people. From experiences. From everything, good and bad.

So tell me…  What have you learned?

I may not know what you have learned, but I know what I have. I can tell you what I have learned over the years of my pain. What do I know about that? You’re asking a great question. Some people know me as something you may call superficial. I’m the girl people think of when they think of the kinds of people the Kardashians are. Self-centered with quite a lot of money. Why self-centered? I guess that’s what happens when you pursue the kind of career I am. Money, modeling, acting, Instagram, Snapchat. My life is based on these things and those in that industry who see this often believe I have nothing better to do with my life than just that. None of it matters because I don’t know them nor do I know of their existence. The others? Well, they’re my favorite kind. Those who see me as happy. Too happy. Too hyper. Too friendly. Too pink. And by pink I don’t mean the color, I mean the personality of pink. Loud, vivacious, not a single ounce of unhappiness. Those who have met me before the age of eighteen don’t really see much of who I have transformed into. No, not even the ones who have come into my life after that and have become my heart and soul. There are quite a few, but no. Unfortunately, they can only imagine.

So that concludes that. The post? Oh no, not yet. There’s more… a lot more. Just wait. But it concludes the impression people have of me. The girl who never has anything to worry about. The girl who has it figured out. The girl who lives the lavish life. With photographers calling my name for shoots, a man who has the body and the looks any girl would drool over, cars that only those with money could buy, and opportunities people think are given to those who have amazing connections, not work ethic. I have it all, apparently. Does it bother me that people think that? No. That is exactly what I choose to make them think. Not once do I negate it.

So why this? Why write? If you’re asking that, then you don’t belong here. The button to close is on the top right and you can have a great time, but for those who want more, let me give that to you.

Depression. Suicide. Bulimia. Anorexia. Binge Eating. Anxiety. PTSD. Insomnia. Panic Attacks. Sexual Harassment. Rape. Violence. Abuse. Bullying. Death.

These are just some things I have been through in life. Yes, every single one of them. There is not one that hasn’t completely changed my life in some way. Almost twenty-four year and so far, I’ve been through almost all of it. Are you wondering yet?

What was it? What was the cause all of it? I used to ask myself this as I got older, sometimes I still do. People usually know but I had no idea when it started or when it ended. I just knew the days I felt it and the days I didn’t. I do know one thing, it seemed never ending. People always talk about the days when they were younger and how things were “simpler” for them. I didn’t feel the same and I still don’t. You know what I remember as a kid? Bullying. Waking up for elementary school being bullied everyday for everything. My dark brown hair that would be in pony tails people used to pull, my skin that was too white that apparently I bathed in bleach, my name that sounded way too funny to people that the worst nicknames were spread around that small school until the last day of 5th grade, how I looked like a man, everything. I was the last to be picked in gym, always. Nobody ever wanted me, I was just something people felt sorry for. Thing. Yes. Because I wasn’t a person. I was the girl who lashed out and would scream at people, and then land in detention because of it. Nobody else got in trouble, just me. Just the one who got bullied, and guess what? I was bullied for that too. Kids… they’re cruel. They really are. I knew that because I was the victim of it all. Even the fact that people were dared to be my friend just to see if I’d fall for it. I was used and I knew it. I wasn’t liked and I knew it. I had nobody and I knew it.

The thing about this is when all else fails and school makes you miserable, you’re supposed to look forward to coming home to a family you love. I didn’t have that luxury. I remember being beaten, kicked out of the house, called every pathetic name in the book, scared of my parents, hateful and envious of my brother. I was always compared to him, always. I wasn’t smart enough because I kept failing. I wasn’t good enough because I kept lashing out. I would get beaten if I couldn’t get one simple math problem from my homework right. The roots of my hair hurt with the amount of times they were pulled, my pale cheeks were bright red on both sides because of the amount I got slapped. I remember a Wednesday night at the age of 8 years old, I wasn’t allowed to sleep until I was finished with my math homework. It was 11 p.m. and everyone had gone to sleep. The lights were off and I wasn’t allowed to turn any of them on. I was crying with the amount I couldn’t understand and I was just scared. Utterly frightened. I sat there on the steps trying to get as much from the hallway light as I could and spent 20 minutes with a math problem. In the dark. Nobody around. Cheeks red. Hair half out of my ponytail. I remember it clearly. And it still scars me. My brother never had that problem. I know that because I never heard the end of his perfection. That ended a sibling relationship for a long time… a long time.

My first poem was written in fifth grade. It was called “My Miserable Life” and nobody thought or realized it was about me. Instead, it was entered in a poetry contest. I won. I denied it being published. I denied $600 as a ten year old. I denied all of it because had I said yes, the whole world would know. My parents would know. Everyone would know and it wouldn’t be hidden anymore. Isn’t it sad? It’s sad that a ten year old girl resorts to a poem that is titled that. No ten year old should have to go through that, no young girl should. Yet that wasn’t it. Winter was always so convenient. Long shirts. Sweaters. Gloves. I had convinced my mom to let me dress myself when I entered fifth grade. I also convinced myself to self-inflict for the first time. I remember piercing myself with the sharpest thing I could find and ripping the first layer of my skin right off. I was ten and I was scared. I was scared of what I was capable of so I never did it again. I never looked back at it, and, instead, I let myself scribble in a little diary.

A diary could only do so much. By the time the teenage years came around I was half-passed scared and more towards the darkest time in my life. Bullying, it never ended. Whispers went behind my back, “let’s buy her a razor for her birthday”  “ask her out as a joke” “does your house smell like curry” “jealousy is a bad disease, get well soon” … stolen things, heartbreak, rumors, isolation, fights. Yeah. It was all still there. I was teased for everything and anything I did. One small embarrassing thing turn into a lifetime regret. It was like paparazzi. They were just waiting for me to screw up, and all I wanted to do was to be normal. And although I had friends, it was as if I was more alone than ever. How could someone be so surrounded, yet so alone? Suicide, that seemed like my best friend. I’ve done it all. Sat on train tracks right next to my house, filled a tub and submerged myself underneath, cut myself with any and every sharp object, rubbed an eraser on my skin until it burned, overdosed on pills, held something sharp so tight in my hands I started bleeding. All of it. Sharpness became an addiction, almost like cocaine is for people. Anything sharp I just wanted to put it against my skin. I needed it. I needed that escape. Just one thing that could let me feel free. It was as if I could breathe once it happened. There are only three times something happened to me, and all of those three times I really tried to kill myself. I still remember the last time. Standing there with a blade in my hands that I picked up while my dad was fixing something in one of the rooms. I could see my veins popping out, they were screaming “Cut me! Cut me!” and before I knew it, I sliced them and blood ran down my wrists. I didn’t intend to go that deep, but I did. So when I went to wrap myself, I suddenly couldn’t see. Every sensation was gone except my ability to hear. I was in the living room telling my mom I felt light headed and that I couldn’t see. It was black, pitch black. I was still conscious, and then I wasn’t. I woke up in my mom’s bed. She has no idea what happened.

Self-infliction wasn’t about me trying to die. That is not what I wanted. I was too scared to do that most of the time, but the times that I felt like it was almost happening, I was suddenly embraced with the gift of light. So then what was it about? I can’t exactly explain it. The best was to compare it is like when you drink a glass of your favorite alcohol, and you can finally breathe. Some days I looked at it as therapy. I could always count on a nice sharp knife or a pair of scissors to give me that. Coming home from school was a nightmare, but so was the abuse. It only got worse. Bruises, bashing, punching, slapping, from both my parents. In an indian household, a smack here and there may have been necessary, but I never thought so. Even then… it was nothing close to what I had gotten. I was given way more than a smack here and there. It was almost every day. I was never given a day to forget that I was a disappointment and a mistake. Sometimes cutting myself was all about the fact that I deserved the pain. Sometimes it was the only pain I could control. Everything changed about me. I cried, every single day of my life. Bullying and abuse kept getting worse and I hated my brother. I wanted nothing to do with him. Gothic songs, a hundred poems a day, cuts that would sting every day in the shower, blood that ran down my arms, my thighs, my stomach. Everywhere. I remember sitting in my room and zoning out at it. I remember purposely making it burn. It was madness, but it was the only thing that worked for me. And when I thought I had to torture myself more, then came the eating disorders. I remember one day it got out that I had one, and I don’t know how. Suddenly all teachers had their eyes on me, and it made everything worse. I always hated being the center of attention, I didn’t like it. I just wanted normality. Why couldn’t I have that much? Every single day from the time I was put into second grade until I left middle school I wished for normality. I just wanted to feel normal, to be normal. I was tired of it all.

Middle school was led by a heartbreak, bruises, blood, and just me… broken. Followed by a summer of madness and drama, and the first time I had been sexually harassed. All I wanted was a day of freedom to go out with my friends and have fun, but even that backfired when I left a guy trying to get a little too comfortable with me. Harassment may not be full blown rape, but that doesn’t make it any better. I thought my life would never be normal. Until high school.

High school was easy for me. Abuse had ended, bullying ended, everything and everyone had changed. The first year consisted of the normal drama everything went through. Heartbreaks, friendships ending, etc. I knew they were all bound to happen. I was even harassed again, by a man who was two years older and had me as a prey since day one. I knew that was bound to happen to me too. But then I was fifteen and someone was snatched from me. Someone I didn’t know would ever be taken away in the way that he was. He was my light and soul, and even today he still is. I knew I was the love of his life, and had he never left maybe he would’ve been mine. Losing him I lost a part of myself, a part that I still haven’t gotten back yet. Maybe one day I can go into detail about him, but this post is not one of those times. After that day I stopped hurting myself. I stopped writing poems. I stopped everything, and I walked away. I’d be lying if I said I never did it again, but he died in 2008 and in nine years I’ve only self-harmed three times.

High school. That is when reality kicked in. Or more like shoved itself in me against my will. It was dark. It was cold. It was unexpected. He was heavy and he was powerful. He had no remorse for what he was doing, and I know that because I can still feel his breath in my ear. I remember a big ring hitting my jaw from his backhand slap just to shut me up. I remember all of it. Most people talk about their first time as an interesting memory. I always have to lie about mine because my first time is when I was raped. Raped by a man in a hoodie from my high school. The hallways were tainted, yet again, because I knew that I was walking by my attacker every single day. This, is rape. I knew it. I knew he was watching me. I knew he was giddy inside. He knew he had control over me because he knew exactly who I was, and I had no idea. I still don’t know. The only memory I have from that is… well… everything. Coming back from it and crying to a boy I was dating at that time. He blamed me for all of it. Yelled at me for all of it. That damaged me forever. Never again did I tell another soul until years later because of it. I spent years feeling like it was my fault. But what do experiences like this actually do to you? For me, I lost control of everything. I mean everything. And somehow… I became the center of attention for the wrong reasons.

“Once a whore you’re nothing more, I’m sorry, that will never change”

That was chanted to me every day down the halls. Secrets came out like a can or worms slithering out into the wild. It spread like wildfire. I remember lunches were hard to get by because everyone was looking at me, everyone was talking about me, everyone was whispering to me. I was, once again, a pawn. I was used because I was “easy” and I was tricked into friendships, guys actually having feelings for me when all they wanted were my lips just for satisfaction saying that they got it too. The truth was that it never actually happened. And my name was spread across everyone’s lips. Apparently my mouth being all over their genitals was a lie they conjured out of their mouths, and it was never ending. I had apparently hooked up with guys I never knew existed. Had sex with guys I never did. The only difference between the person I was back then and the person I was in my senior year of high school was that I didn’t go home and cry. I didn’t go home and cut myself. I didn’t do anything, but it still was bothersome. Guys pinging, poking, wanting me left and right just because I was some type of prostitute. I wasn’t. Out of the thirty stories that were fabricated, only three were true. Three guys. Yet it tripled in numbers. I left high school as the whore. The whore that every single Indian, Patel and Shah, hated. Everyone knew my name. Everyone knew what to associate it with, “whore”. Never again did I take that word as a joke anymore.

But it doesn’t end there… this was just half of it. Half of what my life brought to me until I was seventeen years old. I left high school hoping it all would change, but what really happened after?

[fernando-j-scherf-blog]

Planet Lander - This is a Postmortem

The game is available to download on itch.io and you can also download it as a snap, an Universal Linux Package. In this post I give you the necessary instructions.

This is my first postmortem. I know this is only a small game that I made in one month. Nevertheless, I think it’s a good idea to make a retrospective of the development to see what was learned. But let’s start with some context:

THE CONTEXT:

Last year (2016) was a completely different year for me. In 2015 I was studying Electronic Engineering. I was already an Electronic Technician and I had the opportunity to continue my studies, so I took that opportunity.

After a year and some months of having, well, pretty good grades, I started to get stuck. I was beginning to lose interest and feeling I wasn’t studying engineering because I really loved it, but because it was the safest option. And it’s not that I didn’t like what I was doing; I was experiencing life in a new town, being more independent, and getting new, interesting friends. But the classes seemed to me every day more and more tedious, and I was losing focus. That idea of “You are only here because it is the easier choice.” was every day more and more present in my mind. I knew I was postponing what I really wanted to do. And you know what that is. Don’t you?

I suppose this is kind of cliché. One day I decided, after failing some tests because my head was completely saturated with those ideas, that I needed a break.

After a bus back home and a couple of days of thinking I decided to take some months to make a small game.

My family was very supportive. They helped me, but were worried about my future. Luckily, I already had a peace of paper that said I was a Technician and If anything went wrong, I could get a job in that area, so they weren’t too worried.

After five or six months, I finished Rita, a small adventure game. I am proud of this game, regardless of the fact that I know it’s not perfect. I wrote the dialogs, designed the puzzles, made the graphics, and tested it with some friends. My friends liked it and laughed at the jokes! While testing this game I discovered that playing adventure games with good company can be very fun.

The big problem with Rita is that it’s only in Spanish, so I could only get it to be known in circles that spoke that language. Also, I was quite naive and unexperienced in game promotion. I still am, but to a lesser extent, I hope.

Maybe some day I will translate it.

I charged $1.50 for the game, and…

The analytics for that game on itch.io, to this day, are:

Yes, I wanted to make a little bit of money with Rita, just to prove to myself that I could in fact live by doing this. I thought that If my first game made just, maybe $50, $100, my second game would be even more commercially successful, because people would already know me and follow my work. I wanted to put my family at ease, showing them “Hey, I made some money with this, and this is only the beginning!”.

It was the result of my own inexperience. Not enough people knew about Rita, and even just asking $1.50 put a barrier to anyone who wanted to play the game and didn’t have a credit card, so nobody downloaded until I made it free.

So, first advise: Make sure your game is long and good enough, and is known by different communities before putting a price to it, or nobody will download it. And I’m not saying that it’s impossible to make money with your first game, but you will need to make it really impressive and advertise it well. Maybe the best idea for your first game is to keep it small and simple, to learn.

After some weeks, I made the game free, with optional payment, and some people downloaded it.

And I started my search for a job. 2016 was the first time I had a “real” job, in which someone payed me with real money. I also kept studying, doing some on-line courses about entrepreneurship, programming and etc.

To tell you the truth, my experience in the world of (more traditional) work was… let’s say… messy. But that’s another story.

Now, I’m mostly searching for a part-time job. I want to have at least half of the day free to work on my games.

THE GAME:

One day I was browsing the future jams on itch.io and found the “Finally Finish Something” Game Jam. I thought to myself “This sounds perfect”. I wanted to take this opportunity to get more familiarized with the LOVE framework, and to get more in touch with the itch.io community of developers.

I started to organize myself. I knew I had little more than a month to start and finish a game, and I was going to be working alone, so I chose realistic and doable objectives for the time that I had:

Simple graphics.

Simple game design (Simple player objectives, story, gameplay, levels)

Reduce text to a minimum.

Based on those constraints, I designed Planet Lander to be reminiscent of old arcade games that had simple vector graphics, simple objectives, and didn’t need a lot of text, because their stories were very straight-forward.

I also eliminated the problem that I had with Rita’s Game, where I had lots and lots of text, but only in one language, and this limited the game to be available only for people that understood that language; In contrast, with a game that has very little words, if they are in English, you know that most players will be able to play it and understand it, even if they really aren’t English speakers. Anyone who plays knows what “Start”, “Game Over”, and “High-Score” means, without the need of a translation.

This is one of the things that I got right: Design the game from the beginning considering the limited time that you have. If you don’t have much time and resources, apply the KISS principle:

Keep It Simple,

Stupid.

In Asteroids, for example, it’s graphics are simple vectors, the player’s objective is to survive long enough while destroying asteroids to get a high score, and the story is practically just made by the player. Planet Lander was built on those ideas.

I began programming in the last days of December. My first task consisted in taking the Newton's law of universal gravitation and apply it to every basic object in the game. I made a super class that was accelerated towards the center of the screen (Where the planet is) and the ship, particles and asteroids inherited this property. The acceleration depends on the distance to the center and the mass of the planet. The result is what you see in my first post about the game:

“After much effort, (And thanks, in part, to this video: https://youtu.be/EhDtJxX0sCA) I finally finished implementing gravity. Also, as the idea is to not use sprites, but only the functions provided by the LÖVE framework to draw lines, points, circles, etc, those little ships (3 of them should be asteroids, really, but I still haven’t implemented them) are polygons, and I had to write a function to rotate every point that defines them around their centers, too.”

I managed to understand how to work with classes and inheritance well enough to make every small object that exists in the game to be realistically attracted to the planet in the center. Later in development, I would even calculate the mass of the planet based on its radius, to make it even more realistic (Instead of having always the same mass independently of the planet size).

It worked, and it was super exciting!

Then I had to add the asteroids, or as I called them in the code “Space Rocks”. As they are polygons, you have to pass a table containing the vertices to the function love.graphics.polygon( mode, vertices ) to draw one, and my first idea was to create a table containing different sets of vertices, and give those vertices to that function at random. This would result in some variation in the shapes of the rocks.

I took a couple of days to work on a “Polygon Editor”, a tool to create the shapes of the polygons more easily, saving me from the process of drawing an asteroid on a piece of paper, taking the coordinates of the points and writing them on a table by hand (This is how I made the ship). I could as well use this editor to create other graphics, like big letters for the logo of the game, or maybe even alternative designs for the ship.

With this tool I could place the vertices anywhere I needed with the mouse and export them to a txt file containing a lua table, that then I would copy and paste to the game’s code.

But this idea presented a couple of problems:

The number of shapes for the rocks I could create was still finite, and eventually they would repeat, like in the original Asteroids.

The editor wasn’t very practical, and at the end, I really didn’t have much graphics to make aside from the asteroids to justify its creation.

Why not just randomize the position of the vertices? This would give me infinite possible shapes.

I worked on it and made my second post about the game:

“Now, we have asteroids. All of them are polygons, defined with points that are placed semi-randomly around a circle, so every space rock looks different from the others. The asteroids can be made bigger or smaller through a “radius” variable, that also affects the number of vertices that the polygon’s asteroid will have. Bigger radius => Asteroids with more vertices.”

This is one of the things that maybe wasn’t a good idea: Don’t create unnecessary tools that you are not even going to use at the end. Don’t waste your time and think of other alternatives first.

Another thing that I changed around this time, and you can see in the video, is the default “graphics mode” of the game. Every shape is filled instead of being just lines. You can switch the styles with “Ctrl – L” in the final game.

The development continued without too much trouble and the weeks passed: The player now could control the ship, the collision detection worked, and landing was implemented. Collisions and specially landing were kind of difficult to get done, but they seemed to work well. Difficulty progression was done; In every new planet the player has to destroy more asteroids, and the number of asteroids doesn’t grow in a linear way, to make the game less monotonous:

And I was getting close to the deadline.

I was the only one to test the game and you should always have your games tested by everyone you can: friends, family, etc. Study what they do. Learn from how they play. They probably will find bugs and things to adjust that you won’t. Don’t be the only one to test your own game.

I decided to release at least 24 hours before the jam ended, just to have some extra time in case anything unexpected happened.

This was a good idea: Always give yourself more time that the one you think you will need. We never know what problem that we did not expect might appear.

The problem that presented itself was related to the sound.

I had the self imposed objective of making the game’s size the smallest possible, and that’s why I generated the sound effects in sfxr, a really cool program that gives you randomized sounds inside of certain parameters, always similar to the sound effects usually heard in old video game systems, instead of using pre-recorded audio.

I played around with the parameters and made the program generate new sounds until I got the ones that I liked, and then I saved them in that program’s special format (That was only the information to re-generate the sounds later, exactly as they sounded when I saved them. Only 105 bytes), loaded them to the game and and re-generated them when the game was started with the library sfxr.lua.

I still don’t know why, but it appears like that library worked only on my Linux System (I was developing the game on a netbook with Lubuntu). When I packaged the game and tested it on Windows, the game stopped execution to give me an error when the first sound effect should have been re-generated.

Probably I should write to the author about this, now that I have the time. Maybe I will make him aware of a bug, or he will just explain me how this is really all my fault and what I did wrong.

When I encountered this problem, the only solution that I found in that very limited space of time was to re-load the files of the sounds in the sfxr program, export them as wavs, and load them to the game directly, instead of generating them with the sfxr.lua library before the game started. This made the game size bigger (Instead of having files of 105 bytes, I had .wavs that ranged from 1.9 kB to 74.2 kB), but still, 126 kB for the .love file and 2mB for the windows package is ridiculously small.

The next steps were to record some footage of the game, make gifs, make the itch.io page, and submit the game to the jam.

THE RESULTS:

One of the moderators of the subreddit “playmygame” was nice enough to record himself playing to give me his feedback.

The common opinion given is that it’s difficult to grasp the controls of the ship the first time you play.

This is why I said that It’s very important to test with other people. They will give you important feedback of elements of your design that you didn’t consider would be problematic for players to understand.

In my case, I considered that some mechanics were difficult to understand the first time you played, and evaluated the possibility of including some optional tutorial levels, that served as sandboxes where the player could practice landing, shooting, rotating and etc. in a safe environment. But this would have taken time that I didn’t have.

Regardless, now part of the fun is to learn how to control the ship. And I super enjoy watching all my fiends crash the ship again and again the first minutes they try the game.

I’m very happy with the final game. The players even gave it a really nice score!

It ranked #12 Overall, of 57 entries. For my first jam, I will consider this as a total success.

This was an awesome experience.

Thanks to everyone that in some way or another helped me with their libraries, opinion, motivation or tutorials.

Fer.