#especially before and right after pc gives birth

[propertyofwhitney67]

If you were Whitney's baby mama do you think he'd cut off his former group of friends cause he doesn't want people who have slept with you getting near you now?

Hmm this is a good question.

I think he’d blow them off more while you’re pregnant so he can take care of you and look out for you. When he can’t he has some of his friends keep an eye out for you from a distance but they can’t touch you.

Now I would probably show my jealousy when pregnant bc I don’t want his ex near him, he might kick them out of the group if you nag him enough or he sees how much it affects you.

After you have the baby he cuts off everyone. Now it’s just the three of you. You both are his responsibility now and he has to man up, which means no more long nights out with friend and drinking.

[forensicated]

04x15 - Trespasses

Man: Where's Sun Hill? Mike: 'Tower Bridge and turn right'

Pete is sitting outside a newsagent when he receives a call from new PC Claire Brind who is on CAD asking him to go check out a report of noises heard coming from a bin. It's thought to be a cat that's gone missing nearby.

Tom cheers up the mood in CAD by telling them of a former custody Sgt from a nearby police station who retired months ago after 30 years of service and has just died from a thrombosis. Malcolm smirks to Claire that when he's the first black commissioner of the MET he's going to turf all the grumpy buggers out of their nice warm CAD rooms and stick them back out on the streets again. Tom states he's not complaining, he's only pointing out that every other long-serving officer who retires dies before they've managed to get the first payment of their pension. He claims Malcolm will be out of a job before he's 30 because they'll have run out of caps big enough for his big head. Christine asks if everything is alright. "No, Ma'am, he's harassing me." "Well somebody has to do it, Haines!" she replies.

Pete meets the lady who heard the noise. She now thinks it's more human-sounding. Pete climbs into the bin and finds a newborn baby has been dumped down the rubbish chute. He rushes the baby to the hospital. "That's it you little beggar, you keep crying. Don't want you dying on me!" As he drives off, a young brunette is watching him.

Taffy and Ken are on the way to a church that has been broken into and a large brass lecturn was stolen.. It's the fourth church in recent weeks. Taffy thinks it's especially wrong to steal from a church. He's not religious but he likes to know that religion is there. Ken says he is but he goes to house groups rather than churches and that he's a born-again Christian when the shifts allow.

Pete talks to the baby as he drives them to the hospital whilst Claire and Malcolm toss possible theories about who could have dumped the baby and why they'd do it. "Quiet! Oh now you've upset my wound...." Tom moans, trying to hear what Taffy is requesting. He's asking for SOCO and Dashers to attend the church.

Pete screeches to a halt outside the hospital and hands the baby over to two nurses, telling them that it stopped crying approx a minute ago. A doctor is waiting with an incubator and they lift the baby straight into it with Pete looking upset. "Is it gonna be alright?" he asks as they close the door in his face.

Pete waits in the hospital. "Still waiting for her to make a statement are you?" a nurse smiles at him. He's surprised to hear it's a girl. "Can't you tell the difference?" "I don't look unless I'm asked." The nurse says she's poorly but stable and is a good weight.

"My name's Pete... ever go out with coppers?" "Not until Christmas. I'm on double shifts."

Ted doesn't see what he can do for the baby as it's not murder or manslaughter and CID are short-staffed. Mike details what has been stolen from the various churches. "Perhaps they're setting up a church of their own..." Jim muses.

Claire tells Viv that the baby is just a day old, complete with after birth and a poorly cut cord so the mother could be in a state too. Claire hopes that she bleeds to death but Viv points out she could be a runaway or a prostitute who had no other option. Christine sets Viv and Pete on house to house at the estate to see if they can find the mother. She gives Claire a rather disapproving look, having heard what she'd said. It's still 50/50 if the baby will survive.

Reg and Alec talk about the Sgt who passed away and Reg asks him if he knew what killed him. "Scotch and bitter...?" Alec suggests. "It's shift work, it's cocking up our circadian rhythms!"

Mike visits an antique shop to ask about the church items as the first church's stolen items turned up there. The owner claims he only bought them because he knew they were worth 10 times what the man wanted for them. Dashers warns him that he might be done for receiving stolen property next time as he clearly knew the man was up to no good from his "Shifty and nervous" description.

Jim is annoyed that a group of children are entering the church as he arrives to look it over. Yorkie tells him it's Saints Day's service for a local school and he's got to wait until it's over. It's not due to finish until 11. "Being CID I don't have an hour to waste!" Jim growls, leaving. Yorkie is rather amused and 'waves' Jim off when he says not to let 'the bleeders touch anything!'

Taffy asks Ken what they do 'at his groups.' He tells him that they sing, worship, chat, and read the bible. They're interrupted by the radio as Malcolm gives them a burglary in progress. "We know there's a God, Taff. And we know there's suffering, but we know there's joy too." "Oh... Great." Taffy responds.

Taffy attends and stops a rather well-to-do woman who is climbing down a set of ladders from a bedroom window. She won't let Taffy look in her bag but explains that her solicitor told her she has the right to force an entry to regain her things because her ex won't allow her to. She claims she used to live there 'until I couldn't stand it anymore'. She tries to make a run for it but Taffy and Ken won't let her and escort her down the station. "I shall sue you for this!"

Reg continues telling Tom, Malcolm and Claire about the shifts playing havoc with their bodies "because you can't tell your body that it's night when it knows it's day." Malcolm points out that, as collator, Reg now works permanent days. "It's too late now, I'm irreparable damage." He says to smirks from the others. "Over 100 shift changes a year? No wonder coppers drop dead as soon as they stop."

Mike leaves some church items in Reg's office incase he's out so the vicar can identify them when he arrives. He then asks Jim if he found anything out from St Mark's. Jim tells him he couldn't get in because of a service. "Didn't uniform tell you?" "Yeah... sorry." Mike beams.

A 5th Church rings Sun Hill. 2 men have arrived and one fits the description of the man who was reported to have sold the church items to the antique shop man. Alec Peters is on his way to deal - much to the amusement of Mike. By the time he gets there, they have gone but the woman doesn't think anything is missing. She hasn't checked the vestry yet however so takes Alec to do so. Inside he finds the men have gathered items to take and one is hiding inside a wardrobe. He arrests him - he's a known burglar. The old lady spots the second making a run for it with her hoover. Jim arrives at the right time and chases him up the bell tower which doesn't strike me as the best idea. The thief realises this and gives himself up.

Bob's desk is full of items from the lady's bag; including pieces of underwear. Her solicitor isn't in his office and she won't give anyone else's name or her new address to prove her identity. Bob won't let her go until she's proved who she is. She threatens him that she's going to sue him too.

The church burglars thought the churches had to give to the poor(!) "No one said burglars had to be clever." Alec shrugs. The lectern proved to be more trouble than it was worth given the weight and it's in one of their back yards.

Nothing has been found from the house to house about the baby's mother. Viv tells Malcolm that Pete 'has been wetting himself the entire time we've been out' about the baby. Pete protests that it was Viv who was worried. It's obvious from his reaction when he hears that the baby's getting stronger that that isn't true! Pete's made up! The smile leaves his face however when he hears that Malcolm is taking the nurse he spoke to early out on a date on Saturday! "They're calling the little girl Petula after the sweet man who brought her in." "Could be worse..." Christine muses. "You could be called Wilfred."

Reg protests about the lectern being placed in his office. Alec calls Tom over to look at it and he exclaims. "Ah, the eagle has landed!" Alec bet Tony Stamp that that would be the first thing Tom said and he's now a fiver better off!

[twstarchives]

Hello! There used to be a list about which characters have mentioned to have siblings/be only childs but I can't find it anymore ;; do you still have it or was I imagining it? If so, do you know what is there so far about each student's family life?

Riddle

Parents

Riddle lives with his mom, the status of his father is unknown. He has implied that his parents don’t get along.¹ Both parents are magic doctors, but his mother seems to be more well-known. To Riddle, she is extremely overbearing and planned out nearly every second of his life: controlled his education, his schedule, his diet, his clothing, the supplies he used, and which friends he could have. She put a heavy emphasis on studying and always being the best.²

1. Riddle Ghost Marriage voice lines 2. Main Story 1-19

Ace

Parents

Older brother

Grandmother

His brother is 7 years older than him and a Heartslabyul alumni.¹ He seems to have often messed around with Ace & make him angry on purpose, but it was all in good nature; they are very close. Apparently his brother was even more excited than their parents when they found out Ace got into NRC.² Ace has also mentioned his grandma a few times; she taught him about the Ghost Camera³ and warned him about magic blotting.⁴

1. Ace School Uniform PS 2. Ace Ceremony Robes voice lines 3. Main Story 0-19 4. Main Story 2-4

Deuce

Mother

Grandmother

He is an only child¹ and loves his mom very much. The entire reason he’s trying so hard to be an honors student is so that he can become a son she can be proud of. He once cried when she called him to tell him just that.²

The only time his grandma was mentioned was when he told a story of his mom crying to her on the phone, thinking she’d failed as a parent (during Deuce’s delinquent days).³

1. Jack Dorm Uniform PS 2. Wish Upon A Star 12 3. Main Story 1-13

Trey

Parents

Younger brother

Younger sister

His family runs a bakery. As the oldest child, he often had to take care of his little siblings (ie. ensuring they all brushed their teeth at night)¹. They all would pester him to bake them desserts,² but he cared for them a lot—one time his little brother really wanted to go to a live magift game so Trey spent his whole allowance to get him a ticket.³

1. Trey School Uniform PS 2. Ace School Uniform PS 3. Trey Wish Upon A Star voice lines

Cater

Parents

Two older sisters

Because of his dad’s work as a banker, their family had to move about once every two years, all over the world.¹ Cater hadn’t had any long-lasting friends because of this.

He has described his sisters as “unreasonable,” his dislikes in his profile are listed as “having to suck up to his sisters,” and when everyone was going home for winter holiday, he said he’d rather stay with Trey’s family.² In his voice lines, he mentioned that he can’t relate to Yuu feeling homesick because his sisters would just be waiting for him at home. His sisters rated everything by how cute it was, and if something “wasn’t cute” to them then Cater would have to redo it.³

They would get more excited about his birthday than he would, and buy him all kinds of presents he didn’t particularly like (such as stuffed animals, dolls, perfumes, soaps, etc). But they weren’t trying to be intentionally mean, and recently have started paying attention to what he really wants.⁴

When he was about 10 years old, his mom and sisters were always baking sweets. Cater was excited about this at first because it meant he could get lots of treats, but his sisters would make him eat everything. If he refused, they’d look so disheartened, and Cater couldn’t say no to that, so he kept forcing himself to eat. Because of this, he now hates sweets.⁴

1. Cater Scary Dress PS 2. Main Story 4-3 3. Cater Lab Coat PS 4. Cater Birthday PS

Leona

Falena (older brother)

Cheka (nephew)

Sister-in-law

Leona is a member of Afterglow Savannah’s royal family. His brother and his sister-in-law are the current rulers, and Cheka is next in line to the throne. Leona has constantly felt inferior and bitter that he and Falena are treated so differently based off nothing but birth order.¹ But he greatly respects his sister-in-law; she’s one of the only people he would never talk back to.² Cheka is very affectionate and clingy towards him.

1. Main Story 2-27 2. Ruggie’s Chat w/ Jack

Jack

Parents

Younger brother

Younger sister

Grandparents

Jack is the oldest in his family with an 11yo brother and a 7yo sister. He and his siblings are all very athletic; they used to play tag with each other for 6 hours on end.¹ Jack has said that wolf beastmen pick one soulmate to spend their whole life with, and his parents + grandparents are always at each others’ side, when they wake up, go on walks, eat, and go to sleep.²

1. Jack Happy Beans Day PS 2. Ace Ghost Marriage PS

Ruggie

Mother (deceased)

Father (unknown)

Grandmother

Ruggie's mother "became a star up in the sky" shortly after giving birth to him. His father went away for work and never came back, and to this day Ruggie doesn't know what happened to him.¹

He lives with his grandma in the slums of Afterglow Savannah. They were poor and struggled to find food to eat, but his grandma could make delicious food out of any ingredients they could find. Ruggie learned to cook from her.² He described her as very kind but also tough.

Ruggie seemed to have taken care of the other kids in the neighborhood too-- when everyone went home over winter break, he brought home leftovers from the cafeteria to feed his grandma and the kids.³

1. Ruggie Birthday PS 2. Ruggie School Uniform PS 3. Main Story 4-3

Azul

Mother

Stepfather

Grandmother

His mom fell in love with her divorce lawyer while separating from Azul’s biological father. She’s also the owner of the Ashengrottoes’ famous ristorante in the Coral Sea.¹ Because of their business, Azul grew up a foodie and was exposed to a lot of different foods from a young age.²

His stepfather is kind and honest, and very clever when it comes to his work. Azul respects him and they seem to have a good relationship. He taught him about law and contracts.¹

Everyone in the Ashengrotto family is a mage, but Azul’s grandmother is said to be especially powerful. She was known for helping those in need, and very “merciful,” just like Azul.¹

1. Azul Birthday PS 2. Azul Dorm Uniform PS

Jade & Floyd

Parents

Their parents started teaching them self-defense since they were little.¹ We don’t know many details of their childhood, but there was an interesting exchange between them—Jade once said “he made the right choice choosing Floyd as his partner,” and Floyd replied that “he’s glad Jade is the one that survived with him, too.”²

In Floyd’s Wish story, he brought up how their father told him to buy a nice pair of shoes when he went on land because “men who don’t pay attention to the small details get patronized” so your appearance is very important. Hearing this gave Idia and Ortho an uneasy feeling about Mr. Leech.

1. Jade PE Uniform voice lines 2. Floyd Dorm Uniform PS

Kalim

Parents

30-40 younger siblings

Kalim’s father comes from a long line of merchants and is supposedly the greatest one in the family. But despite how busy he is, he’s always wearing a smile. Kalim’s mother is the only one in the family who can use magic. She’s described as very kind, is always praising Kalim, and almost never gets angry.¹

Kalim doesn’t know the exact number of siblings he has, but he can put names to faces for all of them, and he often plays hide and seek with them in their house. He doesn’t come from a royal family (they’re just extremely rich), but some of his distant relatives are actual royalty.² One of his distant cousins apparently owns a tiger.³ His family has about 100 servants along with specialists like a personal doctor⁴ and a beast tamer.

1. Kalim Birthday PS 2. Main Story 4-8 3. Silver Lab Coat PS 4. Main Story 4-17

Jamil

Parents

Najma (younger sister)

His family has served the Asims for generations. His parents knew Jamil was a very bright child, but they insisted that he must always let Kalim be better than him, and would reprimand him for talking too casually to his young master.¹ Jamil seems to share a typical sibling relationship with his sister Najma. They often bicker with each other, but they’re on good terms. Najma used to bake him cookies for his birthday² and they would also get into fights because she’d tell him his cooking looked too plain.³ Jamil gave his VDC plus-one ticket to her during Episode 5.

Najma made her first in-game appearance during the Aleab Naria event. Their father had sent her to deliver a message in-person to Jamil, since he isn’t versed in technology likes PCs and phones and didn’t trust that a text would suffice.⁴

Najma claims that she and Jamil look nothing alike, but they tend to make near-identical expressions. She was relieved to see that he has a few friends at NRC because he never talks about them whenever he comes home.⁴ In one scene, Jamil reminds her to wipe her hands before eating and gives her a wet wipe, and she huffs at him to not treat her like a child. Trey notes how well Jamil looks after her, but Cater thinks he is a little bit overprotective.

1. Main Story 4-36 2. Jamil Birthday PS 3. Jamil Dorm Uniform PS 4. Aleab Naria 3-4, 3-5, 3-7

Vil

Eric (father)

Vil’s father is an extremely famous actor and goes by the stage name Eric Venue. Even the Leeches’ father is a fan of some of his movies.¹ Vil has mentioned that his dad would come home dressed in special effects makeup & costumes every Halloween,² and also used to read him stories about the Beautiful Queen.³

1. Vil Scary Dress PS 2. Vil Scary Dress voice lines 3. Scary Monsters 3-2

Epel

Parents

Grandparents

Aunt & Uncle (uncle is biological)

Male Cousin

Epel’s family lives on an apple farm that’s been around for generations. They all live in the same house. His village is also made up of farmers, and they often help each other out during the busy season and have big barbecues together. It feels like they’re one big family.¹

His relatives often send him apples from home since they have such an abundance of them. They seem to have some business struggles; Epel taught himself how to beautifully carve apples when he was young because many were blemished and wouldn’t otherwise sell.² He has also mentioned wanting to make a potion that strengthens weak apple trees to make his grandpa happy.³

Besides Epel, his grandma and great-grandma are the only ones in the family who can use magic.⁴ They ride brooms to pick apples that are too high to reach on foot. Epel wanted to help them when he was little so everyday he would get on a broom and try hopping up and down, and then one day it worked! Ever since then he’s helped with that task as well.

1. Epel Birthday PS 2. Epel School Uniform PS 3. Epel Lab Coat voice lines 4. Epel Ceremony Robes voice lines / Birthday PS

Idia & Ortho

???

The Shrouds are a noble family and famous for some reason, but Idia has said that being from a noble family isn’t all that great.¹ When he was worrying about being seen at the entrance ceremony, he expected people might gossip about how he’s from “the cursed Shroud family,” and that he’ll “spread misfortune to them.”² At another time, he mentioned that the audience would be apprehensive about what kind of “weird research” he did if he had to present his research on stage.³

1. Idia PE Uniform PS 2. Idia Ceremony Robes PS 3. Main Story 5-3

Lilia, Malleus, Silver

Malleus’ grandmother

Lilia was one of the Queen of the Valley of Thorns’ most trusted soldiers when he used to fight for the royal family.¹ In Cater’s Lab Coat story, they created mandrakes that reflected parts of themselves, and Lilia’s was said to “carry the cry of a tragic hero.”

He has watched over Malleus “ever since he had an eggshell over his head.” An infant Malleus once singed Lilia’s bangs by breathing fire and Lilia was so proud that he raised a glass of tomato juice to him.²

Malleus is the heir to the Valley of Thorns, a descendant of the king “who rules over all creatures of the night,” and his only living relative is his grandmother, the current Queen of the Valley. He spent much of his childhood alone in the castle. He used this time to learn how to play all kinds of stringed instruments. His grandmother is so busy that she shouldn’t even have spare time to write him letters, but every year on his birthday, she sends him one without fail, along with rose seeds from the garden by their castle.³

Long after Malleus had grown up, both he and Lilia took in baby Silver for an unknown reason. Silver thought he was his biological dad when he was little, and continues to refer to him as “Father.” They lived deep in the forest in the Valley of Thorns before coming to NRC. Apparently Silver was very easy to take care of; he would fall right to sleep after eating Lilia’s homemade food.⁴

At one point, Sebek also became one of Lilia’s pupils. He and Silver are the only two from their generation living in the Valley.⁵ When they were little, Lilia would have them undergo training like soldiers, but then he realized he should raise them more like kids, and started making their training more fun. He had them play tag in forests crawling with beasts, hide and seek in vast deserts, and “the floor is lava” in the mountains of needles.⁶

1. Silver Ceremony Robes 2. Lilia PE Uniform PS 3. Malleus Birthday PS 4. Lilia Lab Coat voice lines 5. Sebek School Uniform voice lines 6. Lilia Birthday PS

Sebek

Parents

Older brother

Older sister

Grandfather

Sebek’s mother is a nocturnal faerie and his father is a human who works as a dentist. They met when his mother had an appointment at his clinic. She was immediately charmed and courted him despite her surroundings being against her marrying a human. Now, she works at the clinic as his assistant.¹

Sebek greatly respects his mother and raves about how she’s extremely gifted with magic and has a strong sense of justice. His opinion of his dad, on the other hand, is much different—his dad seems very loving and often showers his children in praises, sweets, and gifts, but it drives Sebek crazy. He doesn’t understand how his mother saw any appeal in him.¹

Since his parents were often busy with their clinic, Sebek spent his childhood running off to visit his grandpa, or fishing and playing in the water with his siblings. Based on the fact that Sebek and Silver were said to be the only ones in their generation living in the Valley,² his siblings are most likely considerably older than him.

All we know about his grandpa is that Malleus also knew him, and mentioned that Sebek shares his hot-blooded temper.³

1. Sebek Birthday PS 2. Sebek School Uniform voice lines 3. Scary Monsters event story

No current info: Rook

Last updated: July 27, 2021

[min-haven-pokemon-sanctuary]

Alex: I guess I’ll put it under a readmore so it’s less clutter for y’alls blogs

So mini ratatta and raticate are far and away the most common pokemon donated to the sanctuary. Like it’s not even a contest. probably 1 out of 5 of pokemon donated is a rattata or raticate.

I’m not sure what it is about the species that makes them more likely to have the occasional smaller one regardless of region, but I think it has something to do with them hitting a sort of sweet spot of there being a lot of them, and them being just threatening enough, that being smaller doesn't basically guarantee them getting taken out by a predatory pokemon in a fight, like I often see happen to common mini bug pokemon like weedle and caterpie.

So since they aren’t getting snatched up as soon as a fledgling pidgey spots them, it gives the rattatas more time to be caught and sent to the sanctuary. At least that’s my assumption.

So, kicking off the whole, “me dealing with a lot of rat’s locally” thing, was actually before I started the sanctuary. I got a mini rattata as my 4th ever pokemon. Though once they evolved into a raticate, they wanted to go off and start their own family or whatever, so my parent’s helped me look over the local laws and such, and that marked my introduction into how you go about releasing pokemon into the wild locally.

I do this a few more times with more rattata and other local pokemon I’d been given as essentially novelty gifts by friends and family, but before long even with releasing and turning down and giving away pokemon, I’ve still got too many mini pokemon to easily take care of on my own. So I cook up the sanctuary scheme so I can get paid to sit at home and hang out with my pokemon.

Course, setting up a sanctuary increased the number of pokemon being given to me even further, especially as I got more connected to the PC system. And it also forced me to get a bit more academic about things since I’m interacting with people who have like, actual pokemon science jobs now.

So there I am getting even more mini rat’s sent to me, and I think,

“Okay, hang on, so my job is to help re-home these pokemon right? Now I could just send them to Johtos central hub for that stuff, but with all the smaller rat’s I’ve released into the woods behind my house so far, they’d actually probably be safer there right? Since those raticate I trained would be more accepting and less likely to pick on them for being small than most other wild rat’s would be?”

So whenever I got a rattata or raticate, I’d train them up for a bit so they’re tougher and more likely to be able to survive on their own, then release them into the woods behind the house.

(It was also around that time I started giving the rat’s nicknames based on fruits and veggies to help keep track of them all. Not the most creative naming scheme, I know.)

But that whole thing kicked into high gear when my parent’s moved to Alola, and this young lady was sent over.

So that’s Bella Beatrix. She was a tiny little rattata who was caught and named by a little Alolan girl, who then sent them over here to the sanctuary.

But like a good number of mini-pokemon, their size evened out as they evolved, meaning they couldn’t stay at the sanctuary anymore. Although unusually, she actually kept growing after evolving, and ended up being way bigger than a normal raticate. Though that’s not particularly relevant to the story yet.

So being an Alolan Rattata, Bella was not on the list of pokemon that could be released locally, so like most of the non-native pokemon housed here, she was on birth control. But regardless, she ended up getting into a romance with a wild Kantonian rattata.

Which posed a problem. Since Alolan Rat’s are actually way more of a threat to local agriculture than the kantonian variety, so they absolutely cannot be allowed to spread across farmland especially. Even hybridizing with local rattata could potentially cause serious problems to the local ecosystems.

But... that wouldn’t be an issue if she were spayed. If she were permanently unable to have any eggs, than exceptions could be made.

So she had two options. Either be sent back to Alola, or be sterilized and stay with Mr. Bitey.

Needless to say, she chose to stay with her boyfriend. And they’ve been incredibly cute together ever since. Like I’m almost 100% sure Mr. Bitey never had any kids with the other local raticate either despite that not being as big a deal with raticate as it is with humans, and that he’s just doing it out of pure solidarity for his partner. Like they’re a real ride or die sort of pair with each other.

But before long, Bella became pretty much the unquestioned matriarch queen rat of the local colony, and I swear she got even larger when she basically became Queen. I mean she’s almost the size of a totem Raticate by now.

But with her in charge, she got the local rattata more invested in keeping in touch with the sanctuary and respectfully participating in it’s goings-on so she can still have access to stuff like pokebeans and berry tree types that are harder to find in the wild. Which also makes it easier to communicate with the entire local colony and keep track of the various mini-raticate/rattata that get released.

And since all these Rat's basically train themselves to be more accommodating of people, and children especially, I often give those rattata as beginner pokemon to kids who visit the sanctuary. Who are often pretty local, and bring their new rattata back home with them. Who then kinda spread the influence further along the farming community.

And before long the rattata and raticate for miles around seem to be getting smaller, more friendly, smarter about interacting with humans, and kinder to other rat’s who are small or have some kind of disability.

Like I don’t think I’d be able to have Yam be able to live as a mostly wild Raticate if their little pokemon culture hadn’t shifted to be more accommodating of that sort of thing. Even if they still managed to make a Yam and their BFF dynamic duo, I’d probably more be getting hyper-fanged for going after their friend with a needle than having them patiently and attentively listen as I tediously go over what foods Yam should and shouldn’t eat.

[osakaso5]

My Friend Rabbit TV Part 3: Have A Nice Day, See You Again Tomorrow

Part 1 | Part 2

Nagi on TV: ...I am glad to have met you. Thank you.

Yamato, Mitsuki, & Nagi: .........

Yamato Nikaido: It finally aired...

Mitsuki Izumi: R-right..! I dunno why, but I'm feeling this weird tingle in my stomach..!

Nagi Rokuya: How wonderful! I do hope our anniversary photo book sells well.

Yamato Nikaido: ...Aren't you embarrassed by that commercial, even a little bit?

Nagi Rokuya: Why should I be? I consider it a great joy to see our faces on TV!

Mitsuki Izumi: ...I guess that's true! I'm happy that the three of us got the spotlight on this one too, but it still feels kinda weird.

Nagi Rokuya: There is nothing to feel shy about. Only we could have accomplished such a commercial, no?

Nagi Rokuya: Encounters that end in separation. Fights that lead to even deeper bonds...

Nagi Rokuya: We have experienced both the bitter and the sweet!

Yamato Nikaido: Haha, good point!

Mitsuki Izumi: We went through some rough stuff, but maybe that's exactly what we needed..!

Nagi Rokuya: ...Yes. In hindsight, I can agree.

Nagi Rokuya: ...That aside...

Mitsuki Izumi: That aside..?

Nagi Rokuya: This is something we did not discuss during our meeting prior to the shoot...

Nagi Rokuya: Our monologues here are based on the song lyrics we thought of, yes!?

Yamato Nikaido: ......... ...Damn, he noticed...

Mitsuki Izumi: Ahaha! I was wondering when you'd realize that!

Nagi Rokuya: Let us rewind back to Yamato's scene once more..!

Yamato Nikaido: We can't, and we won't!

Nagi Rokuya: Jesus..! I should have recorded it..!

Mitsuki Izumi: Shouldn't our manager have the raw footage? All we have to do is go borrow one of the PCs at the office...

Nagi Rokuya: NO! I want to hear it once more! Yamato, repeat your line from the CM at once!

Yamato Nikaido: H-hey, quit shaking me..!

Nagi Rokuya: You refused to tell me what sort of phrase you chose, no matter how many times I asked. Even during the shoot..!

Nagi Rokuya: But now, I will finally have the answer!

Mitsuki Izumi: You should've noticed it WHILE we were filming!

Nagi Rokuya: Yamato... Mitsuki...

Yamato Nikaido: ...F-fine! I'll tell you...

Yamato Nikaido: ...Ahem. Uh...

Yamato Nikaido: ...Revenge was my main motivation for becoming an idol, remember?

Yamato Nikaido: I ended up regretting that, so I tried to quit many times. But... I just couldn't leave you guys be...

Yamato Nikaido: ...No, that's not right... I... wanted us all to keep painting a new future for ourselves, as IDOLiSH7.

Yamato Nikaido: You guys paved the way for me after I'd long given up, and I couldn't be more grateful for that.

Yamato Nikaido: ...So I told that to the songwriter... and it ended up... like that, I guess.

Nagi Rokuya: ...Heh... If my old self were to hear that, he would surely give you a bear hug out of sheer surprise.

Mitsuki Izumi: You're literally doing that right now.

Nagi Rokuya: Mitsuki, tell us what sort of emotions gave birth to your line, as well...

Mitsuki Izumi: ...Unlike Yamato-san's, mine wasn't anything huge and impressive.

Mitsuki Izumi: I kept getting depressed because I couldn't believe in myself... And because of that, I ended up causing trouble for the rest of you.

Yamato Nikaido: Mitsu...

Mitsuki Izumi: But everyone... especially you two, gave me the courage to crawl out of that depression pit.

Mitsuki Izumi: When I was off practicing by myself, you told me that everyone felt happier with me around, Yamato-san.

Mitsuki Izumi: And when I'd forgoten about my own worth, you told me that I was fine just the way I was, Nagi.

Mitsuki Izumi: I wanted that to be in the lyrics. ...Thought obviously, I had them shorten it for me!

Nagi Rokuya: ...Mitsuki... You are making me cry...

Mitsuki Izumi: No, calm down..! After all the crying we've been doing, I want us to be happy for once! Especially since we made this great commercial!

Yamato Nikaido: Go on and tell us the story behind your line too, Nagi.

Nagi Rokuya: Very well...

Nagi Rokuya: When I mentioned "the first words we exchanged", I did not mean it literally...

Nagi Rokuya: Instead, I was referencing what you said to me when I first met you as the prince of Northmare.

Nagi Rokuya: .........

Nagi Rokuya: I thought you hated me for leaving without a word. But then you said you had come to save me, Mitsuki... You told me you would resolve things, and everything would be alright...

Nagi Rokuya: ...You even... Left Riku in my care, though I refused to speak to you... You trusted me unconditionally.

Nagi Rokuya: I am certain... that I will never forget that day. And that was the emotion I put into my phrase.

Yamato & Mitsuki: .........

Yamato Nikaido: ...I wasn't supposed to cry in front of you guys ever again...

Mitsuki Izumi: That's not something you can just decide, you geezer...

Yamato, Mitsuki, & Nagi: ...Pfft. ...Ahaha..!

Mitsuki Izumi: You two are a mess right now!  

Yamato Nikaido: Right back at you! You're red as a beet!

Mitsuki Izumi: You're ruining your pretty face, Nagi!

Nagi Rokuya: I am always beautiful, even when I cry!

Yamato Nikaido: ...Phew...

Yamato Nikaido: ...I'm glad we finally got to have a good laugh together.

Mitsuki Izumi: Same here. ...Thanks for accepting this job, Nagi.

Nagi Rokuya: I told you, did I not? There had to have been some kind of special meaning to us doing that commercial when we did.

Yamato Nikaido: You think so?

Nagi Rokuya: Yes. I thought it sent a good message to Haruki.

Mitsuki Izumi: Great!

Mitsuki Izumi: ...Anyway, we gotta liven things up in here before the others come home and see us bawling our eyes out..!

Yamato Nikaido: Right. Wouldn't want them asking any awkward questions!

Nagi Rokuya: OH..! I think we should let them witness our passionate camaraderie..!

Yamato Nikaido: Absolutely not! I'd die of embarrassment...

Nagi Rokuya: Yamato, have you still not gotten over yourself!?

Mitsuki Izumi: Haha. Nothing we can do about that, Nagi. Let's just be thankful for what little progress he has made by opening up to us!

Nagi Rokuya: ...Hm, I suppose...

Riku Nanase: We're home!

Tamaki Yotsuba: It's super cold outside!

Mitsuki Izumi: .......! Crap, they're back for real!

Yamato Nikaido: Gimme some tissues quick, Mitsu!

Mitsuki Izumi: Yeah, yeah! Here you go!

Nagi Rokuya: ...Heh. Tonight is shaping up to be quite lovely indeed! 

End of Part 3.

Translator’s notes..? 

next up, the Fragments of Love CD Rabbit Chats! 

[moviesrotbrains]

FREAKY slashes up a piece of that horror-comedy pie

Hey, let’s remake FREAKY FRIDAY, but this time it’s about a middle-aged serial killer who swaps places with a 17-year-old girl. That simple yet ridiculous premise is the main plot behind a surprisingly perfect, and fantastically gory, horror-comedy.

FREAKY is one of those movies that could have failed hard. It’s a brilliant idea that could have fallen apart in the wrong hands. Many films have tried to balance genres and get lost along the way. FREAKY is NOT one of those fails. It’s one of those films that had me rooting for it from the first 5 minutes and still had me pleasantly surprised throughout. In addition to being a great body-swap flick, it’s also an engaging horror flick. It’s like someone shoved your favourite FRIDAY THE 13TH scenes in a blender with MEAN GIRLS. It shouldn’t work… but it does. It’s an ode to 80s slashers, but it’s also an ode to high school-centred comedies? And it does all this while keeping hardcore horror fans pleased by giving it a hard R rating?!? And it’s actually really funny?!?

When they first announced this film, I was expecting a fun PG-13 flick in the vein of HAPPY DEATH DAY, and I was okay with that. I really liked HAPPY DEATH DAY (as with FREAKY, also directed by Christopher Landon). HAPPY DEATH DAY, was a smart spin on GROUNDHOG’S DAY that it did a lot of cool things while also being able to do so with a PG-13. It wasn’t trying to be MANIAC, nor did I ever expect it to. I’m an annoying purist, but I’m ok with light pop-corn horror if done right, and that film did it right. 

So with that in mind, I was utterly blown away by the very, very R-RATED kills in the opening 10 minutes. It was a brutal onslaught of gore. It was Landon’s way of saying, “Relax, horror bros, I got you.” It was like a Greatest Hits from decades ago but with a fresh spin on it. Slashers got a little lazy in the last few years, and this film just let it all hang out in that opening scene. It was ballsy as all hell, and I was totally on board. And luckily it didn’t just stop there.

This one has all the tropes of classic stabby fright flicks. Huge emotionless killer? Check. Ominous mask? Check. St upid teenagers getting in trouble? Check. Inventive kills that make you cackle “Holy Shit”? Check. Twists and turns? Check. A growing body count? Check. Final girl? Check. And let’s throw in an occult artifact in the mix that swaps that final girl with that emotionless killer and that’s where you get something new and different!

And if you’re coming into this one from a comedy perspective, this one has all the tropes of classic high school movie. Insecure lead going through an awkward time? Check. Supportive comic relief friends? Check. Parents that just don’t understand? Check. Villainous teachers? Check. Mean girls? Check. Huge awkward misunderstandings? Check. And let’s throw in an occult artifact in the mix that causes said misunderstandings and that’s where you get something new and different!  

That new and different wouldn’t be what it is without the standout performance from the two leads, Vince Vaughn & Kaythryn Newton. Vaughn is the aforementioned creepy masked killer. He’s wonderfully cast here as a towering, silent brute. Vaughn of course might be known for his comedic work, but he’s actually got an impressive range that’s very rarely utilized (see BRAWL AT CELLBLOCK 99 for more details). Here he excels as the Butcher. Effective, brutal, and cold. He’s been on a killing spree lately, which we see a bit of at the beginning, and he’s definitely looking to kill some more. And it looks like he found a spooky looking occult dagger

Newton, known to genre fans from her recurring role in SUPERNATURAL, is very likeable as the main lead, Millie. Having recently suffered from the loss of her father, Millie is currently dealing with the ongoing depression that the loss put on her mother, as well as her own struggles to return to normality. Can she survive a day at school from the usual trials, tribulations, bullies, and high school crushes, let alone a serial killer lurking nearby?

And thus their two paths meet in the most unexpected (or very expected) of ways. We soon witness a thrilling chase, very reminiscent of the best Michael Myers and Jason hunts-- in fact this whole chase actually takes place on the eve before Friday the 13th, a very knowing wink to the genre that birthed this film. And soon the Butcher, with Millie in his grips, claims his latest victim… only he doesn’t… darn those occult daggers!

And that’s when the two leads really showcase their acting chops. Vaughn is now a frazzled high school student, and Newton is the silent and sinister stalker. Both take on their new roles excellently and they both embody (heh) them flawlessly. Vaughn is awkward and fragile and Newton is menacingly fierce as fuck. Newton utterly transforms into someone else and her performance is a total triumph. Vaughn is adorable. 

Seeing them both re-interact/meet with their friends (and foes) in their new forms is endless fun. You see Vaughn run like a girl and Newton go on a homicidal spree. You see Vaughn give off his best flirty eye and Newton’s best glare of doom. They both seamlessly fill their new roles.

But it’s not quite the seamless exchange for Millie and the Butcher. Millie clumsily gets used to their bigger and stronger frame… and the Butcher realizes they are not as strong as they once were. A lot of what works about this ride is seeing how they both adapt to their new struggles and use it to their advantage. The Butcher has a new mask, and Millie soon finds confidence in herself in her new self. 

The supporting cast is used with great effect, too. They all get us to where we need to be. Everyone serves a purpose. From the mom, to older sister/cop, to the comic relief, to the love interest, and classmates of varying degrees of douchebagginess. Everyone is either likeable or unlikeable as they should be. There’s even a nice nod to previous academic farces with a cameo from FERRIS BUELLER’S Alan Ruck as an asshole shop teacher. 

Director Christopher Landon is really slicing out a nice niche of off-kilter spins in the horror genre, and it’s reassuring that he knows what he’s doing. It truly is a well-crafted film. Not just as a horror film, but also from a technical standpoint. The pacing is dead perfect, every joke hits, the story beats and setups are well orchestrated, and not a moment is wasted. It’s tense when it needs to be tense, gory when it needs to be gory, and legit laugh out loud moments when it needs to have those LOL moments.

It’s such a great spin to the body-swap comedy genre, a genre that feels like there’s an endless amount where they all sort of felt very “samey”; especially in the 80s, where at one point three different body-swaps came out within 2 years of each other! This one takes the better elements of those, relishes in them, carves new ground, and adds a bit of Tom Hanks’ BIG in for good measure.

 But homage to a decade old cinematic fad aside, at no point does it ever stop delivering on the humour and slasher content. It’s tight, daring, and keeps you enthralled throughout. Whether you’re a horror junkie, or into well-written oddball comedies, or even into clever thrillers, the end result has you covered.

There’s a great message in there too, as the film tackles school killings, social media, pc culture, and the general malaise many of us experience after the loss of a loved one. It’s about grief and acceptance and moving on… yet it’s very light-hearted. And you still get ample buckets of blood and splatter.

Yes, fans, there’s so many gruesome and cool looking on screen deaths your morbid heart’s desire. Amazing uses of wine bottles, tennis rackets, chainsaws, and industrial equipment. A creepy serial killer flophouse complete with creepy mannequins and various implements of torture. Possibly a severed head in a bloody toilet? Yeah, this film has that too.

You can currently rent this one on various VOD services. Hopefully this one hits the majority of streaming services soon, since it had the misfortune of opening late last year during the pandemic. It definitely needs a wider audience because it’s another one of those instant classics. It’s easily my favourite current horror-comedy, and I’m looking forward to more from Christopher Landon. A film that’s both goofy and gory with just enough twists to keep your attention and please jaded genre fans? That’s freaky.

[songsofloretto]

Kieran gave me this earlier. I like writing for Kieran. He's a nasty bastard trying to turn his life around which makes him multi-faceted but as a character giving direction he's easy to 'feel'. Kieran never does third person perspective. His stories are always first person and written like a commentary.

Kieran, Nicky, Rory and Matthew

Sainsbury's, May 2021

"Uncle Kieran can I have these water pistols?"

It's been 30 years since I last took a child grocery shopping. It was bad enough in the 1980s with the kids wanting the sweets at the end of the checkout and all that. Fast forward to the 21st century and the problem has absolutely mushroomed, along with the size of supermarkets in general. Before I went to prison supermarkets only sold food. These days they sell everything from sun-dried tomatoes to fecking funeral plans. Nothing is sacred from these corporate giants. There are whole sections devoted to toys so there's no avoiding the inevitable pleas from children presented with their every wildest dream every time you call in for a pint of milk. Our Matthew's grandson is no different. The little lad is only four years old and to him this toy section is like every Christmas morning he's ever dreamed of all rolled in to one.

"Eh?" I say.

Rory lifts a box of four water pistols from the shelf and almost topples over under the weight of them. I grab it quick and steady him before he smacks his head off the corner of a shelf.

"Woah," I say to him, "steady on, our kid."

"I want these water pistols," Rory says emphatically, "there's four altogether. You, me, Uncle Nicky and Grandad can all play with them in the garden."

I look at the box. The pistols are nothing special. I've seen more power in a carrot. But the kid is right. It's a boiling hot day and perhaps an hour in the garden shooting each other up is exactly what this fecked up family needs to bond.

And who can say no to little Rory, who hasn't seen his daddy in over a year. Deaglan has been stuck in New York over this bloody pandemic, unable to get home to his son, missing out on all the drama we have going on here. The kid, innocently caught in the middle of it all, deserves a little joy in his life. I take a pistol out of the box and work my finger over the trigger, pretending to shoot, while Rory laughs and crouches down low.

"Aye you can have them," I tell him, and ruffle his hair with my fingers.

Right on cue the ever uptight Nicky slides up to us, almost falling over himself in his desperation to spoil any fun. He's swaggering about in his police uniform with a stick up his arse as usual. No tie or epaulettes but you can still tell he's an off-duty police officer. The cunt.

"I don't think so," he says rather efficiently as he plucks the box and the pistols out of my hands.

"What the f...Nicky!" I say, and pull the box back from him, "what's wrong with you?"

"I don't think it's appropriate for children to play with guns," Nicky says matter-of-factly.

"Aww!" Rory whines, "please, Uncle Nicky!"

His face creases and I can't bear to see him look sad. I know from experience that arguing with Nicky isn't easy. He's a jumped-up, self-important and arrogant little prick. In fact he's just like me when I was his age. It amuses me somewhat. I know that he'll get wound up like a clock if I challenge his decision - and I'm really trying to make friends with him, honest - but I've got to try and change his mind, for the little lad's sake.

"Well they're only water pistols," I say with a little shrug, "not gonna do much damage with them, eh, Nick auld fella?"

Nicky pulls a straight-laced expression and looks down his nose at me like a seasoned bloodhound would look at a yapping pup. He thinks I'm scum, I realise as we face each other off. He'll always look down on me like this, because in his bright, British eyes I'll always represent the dirty side of Ireland. I feel the vein on my temple flicker. I have to take a deep breath to keep my cool.

"It's not about any potential risk of damage," Nicky breaks the tension between us with a belittling little sniff, "it's about the psychology. Teaching children that guns are good fun and can't hurt anyone is a slippery slip. Before we know it he'll be twelve years old and shooting up his gym class."

"Fuck off Nicky, this is England, not America," I try to laugh off his point but he just keeps staring.

"And I don't think you, of all people, Kieran O'Driscoll, are in any position at all to be encouraging my nephew to take an interest in firearms," Nicky looks down his nose at me again.

I've been trying hard to handle his snooty arrogance for weeks. I really have. But something inside me snaps.

"Why?" I ask, squaring up to him, "because I was in the IRA? Is that it?"

I don't know what I'm doing. I'm 79 years old. Nicky is 45. I haven't got a chance against him in a fight, especially not with all his police training, but it's my pride that pushes me on. I have to stand up for myself, be a man about it. Teach this little arsehole a lesson.

"Yes," Nicky nods his head, "because you dealt firearms for terrorist organisation. And I don't want you playing with any sort of gun, imitation or otherwise, in front of my brother's son."

Deaglan is Nicky's own twin brother. They've never met. They were seperated at birth. Deaglan stayed in Ireland with Matthew, Nicky went to England with Kate. And now he fancies himself as the big Englishman, the creme de la creme of Britishness, superior above each and all other nationalities. And he spent his whole life loathing the Irish for putting his mother in a wheelchair. She was was a British soldier, victim of an IRA bomb, Newry police station, 1975. Sad story.

It was a terrible shock to poor Nicholas Jamie Hawley when he discovered that his father was not, as his mother always told him, a dead British soldier who died for his country in a halo of bullets. His father Matthew is in fact a proud Ulsterman who is very much alive and even did time for murder. Nicky's brain must have exploded inside his skull when it tried to digest this information. When he realised that half of him bled for Ireland it nearly knocked him sick.

But he had to get used to the idea because this pandemic threw us all together under the same roof, forcing us to learn to love and live with each other. And so here we are, factions of a long-estranged family trying to find common ground, and about to start fighting over water pistols in Sainsbury's.

"You'll never forgive me for being ex-IRA, will you?" I ask him.

"Never," Nicky lifts his chin, "once a terrorist, always a terrorist in my book."

"I did my time, Nicholas," I tell him, "27 years in a hell-hole of a prison. Oh Lord I suffered. And I'm deeply sorry for my transgressions as a younger man."

"Sorry will never be enough," Nicky whispers, "what your sort did to my mother..."

I close my eyes. I don't like think of it. And all over some water pistols to make the little lad happy!

The Voice of Reason enters stage left. Here is Matthew O'Driscoll, everyone's favourite peace-keeping fence-sitter. He spent an age parking the car and has only just joined us. He's as Irish as I am but everyone loves him, even Nicky, because...well because he's Matthew. Need I say more?

Matthew is astute. He studies the body language between me and his long-lost son and folds his arms, awaiting explanation.

"What's going on?" he asks.

"The wee bairn wanted a few water pistols to play with," I said, "and PC Gobshite over here has got an issue with it."

Matthew looks at Nicky who blushes a little as if he suddenly feels rather foolish.

"I didn't think it was ok," he says. His mouth is suddenly dry and he swallows, "to promote guns to a child. I'm in Loco Parentis for Rory. Deaglan has trusted me to look after him. I don't want to fuck it up and send the kid back to his dad thinking guns are ok. Because they're not. What would Deaglan think of me?"

He gives Matthew a slow look. Matthew nods his head. He is trying to understand Nicky's perspective. The man is nervous about all this family stuff. He's still reeling from the shock of discovering he has a family he never knew, that the family is Irish, that there is a man out there in the world who shares his face. Appearance and reputation is key right now. Nicky has never been a parent and suddenly, thanks to the pandemic, he's stepping in to care for his twin brother's son. He wants to do a good job. Of course he does.

It's interesting that Nicky never gives Matthew any stick about being Irish. Let's not forget that Matthew did prison time too. In 1994 he shot his own best mate in the head to stop the IRA from kidnapping and torturing him. We've never spoken about the fact it was me who ordered Brophy's kidnapping in the first place. If I'd have got my hands on Donnachadh Brophy all those years I'd have cut his balls off, fried them in Crisp N Dry oil, added little salt and pepper to taste and made the cunt eat them. But not now. I've mellowed out now. I'm not like that any more. I wouldn't hurt a hair on Brophy's head if he were alive today. And I don't deal in guns. Except water pistols because...well they're water pistols for feck's sake.

"You mean you've taken offence to Kieran handling a gun because he's Irish, is it that it?" Matthew asks.

"Not because he's Irish, per se," Nicky says, "but because of...it's because he has previous."

Matthew nods. The simple action brings calm to the situation. Nicky is feeling heard. He relaxes a little.

"I know you still suffer the fear of the IRA," Matthew says to him softly, "I know as a kid they haunted your dreams. You grew up thinking you had to protect your Mammy from them. But it's all in the past, Nicky. Wether we like it or not we're all together now and there are things we have to forgive each other for if we're going to survive this virus. And survive as a family. Because that's all any of us ever longed for, isn't it? It's time to let go, son."

Matthew takes the pistol from Nicky's grip. The police officer tightens but then releases his hold, surrendering control to the father he never knew he had, and letting go of the toy gun. It's very poignant, metaphorical moment. Makes the man in me uncomfortable so I try to inject some humour to make it bearable.

"Fecking hell," I scoff, "who do you think you are Matty eh? A walking example of the Good Friday Agreement?"

Matthew doesn't take his eyes from Nicky's face. A silent agreement is passing between them.

"Shut up, Ki," Matthew says without looking at me, "it's all right, Nicky. We're going to take these pistols home, fill them up with water and have a big old laugh together. Three generations shooting cold water at each other. And it will be safe, it will be ok. Because it's what families do together all the time."

"Ok," Nicky starts scratching at his arms in that way he has when needs to self-soothe with a wash, "we'll have a water fight. Together. But I'll need to get a shower first."

"If it makes you feel better," Matthew nodded.

He understands Nicky's need to be clean better than I do. I've never known a man so obsessed with washing his skin, changing his clothes, marinating in aftershave because unfamiliar smells upset him. As soon as you walk into the house we all share his first question is 'have you washed your hands?' He won't let you touch anything until you wash your own hands at the kitchen sink. Which by the way is a Belfast model. That little detail is lost on Nicky. It brings me a private sort of amusement.

Nicky's scratching intensifies. We'll have to hurry up with the shopping now because he has it in his head that he needs a wash and a preen. If he doesn't get to a shower soon he'll start getting all upset with himself. There's no time to argue now.

Matthew hands the pistol to the four-year-old whose innocence is responsible for bringing us all together. And then we all walk on, four abreast, to find the pint of milk we all came in looking for in the first place.

[ziracona]

I know you mentioned that Bill wasn't included in ILM because you didn't know much about his personality. Out of curiosity though, if you had included him in the fic, how would you have integrated his history of being in the middle of a zombie apocalypse that couldn't have happened for the other characters? Or like, what approach would you have gone with?

Oh this is kind of a tough one! I don’t know Bill well, because I haven’t played Left 4 Dead, but that actually wasn’t why he isn’t in the fic. I stopped including survivors after Jane Romero, because DbD updates so much that I hit a point it was either add more characters but know you won’t have time to develop them and give them the character arcs they deserve because you’re nearing the end, or stop adding people, and it’s always better to whole-ass less then half-ass more—especially with characters that are awesome and really deserve some due diligence. While Bill is actually one of the earliest survivors released for DbD (he was...siiixth or something? Like right after Ace? Or Nea?), that’s only for PC. On PS4 and Xbox, he wasn’t added until much later, and I play DbD on PS4. So, for me as a player, Bill wasn’t actually released until after Ash was. When I started writing, I was kind of vaguely aware he existed on PC? But I had 0 personal experience with him, and so I went with my own/console experience when it came to writing.

As for what I’d have done, that’s a dang good question, and I’m not entirely sure— I’d definitely have thought about it longer if I had included him, but I’ll give you what I think I would have done? Obviously, Bill’s not from the world the rest of the survivors are. While almost any of the stories can coexist with minimal changes (NOES 2010, Halloween, Stranger Things, even Ash are more or less fairly easily compatible), zombie apocalypse—couple things I know they’re bound to notice, ya know? Still, I stand by multiverse being both unnecessary and not the best decision for the story I want to tell, so what I think I’d have done is this: (under the cut bc it’s gonna be long af--get ready for some quantum theory lol)

Okay, so the Entity canonically can operate outside of natural time. Meaning it can take survivors from earlier or later, and isn’t on the same space-time fixed relationship the world is. Now, time travel is tricky. Or anything with a complex portrayal of time. But there are three basic setups for time travel potential that actually make sense. They are as follows:

Anything that will happen, has happened (or the Artemis Fowl timetheory). This one is pretty straightforward. Sure, you can travel through time, but the universe you live in right now where you are choosing to go back is the result of the past you caused. The change you’re causing is past-tense already, and the only real agency you have is in causing the circumstances leading up to where you already are. This still allows for some fancy manuvering (for example: want to save a friend’s life? No problem. You can’t remove the motivation to go back, so you in the past still have to believe they die, but so long as you didn’t like, hold their severed head—if it’s a situation like say, you saw them blow up, you can save that person—you just have to make sure your past self still sees them “die” in the explosion and thus chooses, as you did/are, to go back.) This is my personal least favorite theory of space-time, but it’s a solid one.

The second is the The Future is not Set (or the Back to the Future timetheory). This one says time is flexible. You can go back and kill your father before you’re born, and the future will change. How ripple effects happen are varried—for example in strict timeline variations of this theory such as those in Frequency or Back to the Future, if you cause yourself not to be born, time will catch up with you, and while the impact you left on the world remains, you, as you no longer are born, will vanish from existence as the time stream corrects itself. However, more lenient time streams such as the versions in Continuum or Futurama exist as well, where even if your effects on the world prevent you from being born, the version of you currently alive continues to exist as an anomaly. This is by far, in my opinion, the most enjoyable solid timetheory.

And last (unless you count Time Travel is Impossible as a solid theory which I guess technically you can??), theory three (or the Doctor Who timetheory). This theory portrays time as possible to change and allowing for alternatives to be taken, but not in all places and ways. It presents very hard limits on what can change, and offers a much more inflexible time continuum than theory 2, as well as much higher consequences for causing alterations. Rather than direct cause-effect consequences, like vanishing because you caused yourself not to be born, usually the result of tampering and causing a change of large size is that you will create time paradoxes, which the time stream itself desperately will try to destroy/fix, usually horribly and with massive and brutal force. Things like Life is Strange fall into this theory as well, with Dr. Who being on the lenient end of this spectrum and LIS the strict. It offers the technicality of a changeable future, but none of the true and almost wild freedom offered by variations of theory 2. Basically, any large scale or personal change you cause will rip holes in the universe, and either you will give in to fate and re-allow the loved one you saved to die, or you push on through and accept massive time-space damage and casualties for the choice. I’ve got mixed feelings on this one myself, as I’ve seen it handled super well and made a thing that can be fun, but it also is the theory that pisses me off the most when written poorly haha.

Anyway, massive time theory talk over, in Dead by Daylight, the Entity can traverse time canonically. In ILM, the survivors only talk briefly, after meeting Jane, about theories for how that works, but here is what I would say if ILM had included Bill. To preface, there are two timelines that each follow the same set of basic rules, but have a little freedom in how they effect each other (not so much in how they effect themselves): the Survivor’s world/reality timeline, and the Entity’s pocket dimension timeline. Neither timeline can contradict itself and create paradoxes within its own space. So. Bill is from the same universe as anyone else. At one point, the early 2000s followed the narrative of Left 4 Dead, and the Entity grabbed Bill where & when he “dies” in canon. Only, some time after grabbing Bill, the Entity took another person which (completely unintentionally on the Entity’s part) triggered a massive Buttery Effect on the world, and greatly altered reality, causing not only the Left 4 Dead apocalypse to no longer occur, but causing Bill himself to never be born. Bill however was already outside of the world and in the Entity’s pocket dimension at the time, and thus was not there to be “erased” and exists as an anomaly. While he is paradoxical in his own world, he does not at all contradict the Entity’s established timeline—he adheres to it. While the memory of survivors is effected and updated by changes made in reality by the Entity, because there is no version of “Bill” in the world anymore, he did not have his memories altered (there was no “Bill” for the timestream to update at all, as he is entirely an anomaly now, so it would have no reason to try). The world they exist in has a time continuum that operates off a variation somewhere between theory 3 and theory 2 (the future is not set, but also there are fix points—however, these almost exclusively exist in regard to one’s own past. The big rule is that personally making the act of altering your own past intentionally by nature also alters your motivations for acting in the first place, and thus negates the possibility of you doing so. While you can change other people’s pasts, or accidentally effect your own, you physically cannot change your own intentionally, because you’d create either a paradox or a time loop, and it would rip you apart).

Dwight is more or less correct when he hypothesizes that they might have all remembered a world with Jane Romero still in it until an hour ago. However, all of ILM itself is that version of time/reality (ie the “last” or “final” version, as it were/the version that came into being when Jane was taken). Her loss butterfly affect updated people, and so they remember her being missing. While the Entity could hypothetically someday accidentally do things that make it so survivors aren’t born in the external reality, it cannot do so intentionally or accidentally-on-purpose, because it is bound by the rules of its own personal history/timeline, and it can neither intentionally nor accidentally do a damn thing to prevent what has transpired inside itself from happening. Similarly, since the survivors are established as existing inside it, even if they were erased at birth, they would still exit it intact in November of 2019 with all their memories. The Entity thus has no real way to hurt them even in revenge, unless it is willing to risk taking them again from a later point in time. Most small decisions do not have buttery effects that are very large at all, and in general time attempts to smooth out with the least possible changes. What happened to Bill was a one in a billion fortunate/unfortunate chance thing, and was such an unlikely thing to happen in the first place, the chances of a thing like it happening again are astronomically small, and almost completely certainly would not to occur. In some ways it would be nice for him though, because he could escape back to a peaceful reality where many people he lost are still happy & living. While they don’t remember him, people would still have the echos of their past inside them (feelings of deja vu, memories in dreams, attachment and familiarity with people you never “met”) and he could reconnect with them if he wanted and live happily with old Left 4 Dead crew and his new survivor family. : )

[nuray-ffxiv]

LFRP- Crystal - Ayşe Nuray

BASICS.

full name: Ayşe Nuray

pronunciation: [ ai-sha nur-ay ]

nicknames: Ays [ ice ]

race: Miqote - Mixed: Keeper & Seeker

gender: Female

sexuality: Pansexual, panromantic.

height: 4′9

age: Mid-twenties

birthday: 13th Sun of the 2nd Umbral Moon

zodiac: Nymeia [ Aries ]

languages: Common, Eorzean sign language, and Ayla’sebnem, the name and language of her clan (Derived from Turkish & Arabic).

[ Ayse can understand all language spoken or written due to possessing a variation of the Echo, but she cannot inherently speak or write them all. ]

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.

hair colour: Light grey.

eye colour: Silver, with slitted pupils.

skin tone: Warm Ivory

body type: Slender hourglass

accent: The occasional rolled/purred ‘r’, though only when she’s distracted.

dominant hand: Left

posture: Good posture, often relaxed but rarely slouched, unless at her desk. She can often be found hunched over her desk for worrying amounts of time.

scars: Little ones here and there from her travels. Two symmetrically on each side of her face. Once, whip scars could be found on the back of her legs and shoulders, but they’ve long been removed.

tattoos/markings: White markings on her face, hands, ribs, chest, and thighs. Some are curving lines, and others are circular. A black underline on her lower lashline.

most noticeable features:  The white markings on her face, alongside the symmetrical scars.

CHILDHOOD.

place of birth:  Abalathia's spine

hometown: Abalathia's spine, with the Ayla’Sebnem clan. [ Ayla’sebnem means Moonlight Dew. ]

birth weight/height: Smaller than average

manner of birth: Delivered by clan healers, born right after her twin sister. Both born healthy, if small.

first words: “Ma!”

siblings: Azmi Nuray, twin sister, missing. Cemre’a Nuray, older brother, alive.

parents: Cemre Nuray & an unknown seeker male. an unplanned pregnancy from a tryst, but one her mother was more than happy with as she returned to her clan grounds, alongside her mate and Cemre’a’s father. Her mother is currently missing.

parental involvement: high involvement from her mother’s side, as a single mother within a very loving clan, at least until the scourge that found nearly all of them enslaved. It has only been recently that Ayse discovered her father’s tribe, since it’s burgeoning connections to her clan.

ADULT LIFE.

occupation: Clan archivist and healer.

current residence: The Ayla’Sebnem clan grounds.

close friends: Simi and Basim’a Jinkjahl.

relationship status: Single, polyamorous.

financial status: Moderately wealthy.

vices: The occasional recreational drug. Does not drink.

SEX & ROMANCE.

sexual orientation:  Pansexual.

romantic orientation:  Panromantic.

preferred emotional role: submissive | dominant | switch |  unsure

preferred sexual role:  submissive | dominant | switch |  sex repulsed [ Ayse is very open to love - and loving - in all of its many forms, and will often defer to whatever position her partner is most comfortable with. ]

turn on’s: Wittiness, compassion, like-minded interests, boldness, physical intimacy, and certain voices.

turn off’s: Ignorance, cruelty, superiority, laziness, unprovoked rudeness, unsanitary/unclean appearances.

love language: Ayse is complimentary to most everyone she meets, but when true feelings begin to develop, this becomes more physical. The desire to be close, touching even if it’s simply innocent grazes or hand-holding, becomes far more prevalent.

relationship tendencies: While an unrepentant flirt, Ayse enters into relationships slowly. The archivist likes to take her time, and fully court potential romantic interests before entering into anything serious. Plentiful dates and time spent getting to know one another, and for the Miqo’te to truly gauge the person’s intent. She is remarkably cautious, for one so coquettish.

MISCELLANEOUS.

hobbies to pass the time: Research, research, research. Ayse loves her job, and there is always something to do - Be it a relic to study or a ruin to excavate or clan history to peruse, Ayse affords herself little down time because she enjoys what she does so deeply. Often, it can take the combined force of others to make her take a break and really relax, in which case she will find people to socialize with.

mental illnesses: Has some remnants of post-traumatic stress disorder due to her past, and very rarely will be triggered into a panic attack. She is very good at avoiding her triggers, but they can occasionally blindside her.

physical illnesses: None to speak of, though she has a sensitivity to bright light, and hates being surprised by touch.

left or right brained: Left.

fears:  Ayse deeply fears she will never find her mother and sister again, no matter that she hasn’t given up. Following that, she fears losing the family she has since regained since escaping slavery herself, as well as being enslaved once more.

self-confidence level: Overall quite healthy, with the exception being during and after a panic attack, where it dips quite severely.

vulnerabilities: Moodiness, tendency to run herself ragged, occasional melancholy, and the penchant to use flirtation as a shield.

HOOKS

She’s the shimmer on the water, in a river of moonlight.

Ayse is very attuned with the elements of water and ice, and uses both in healing practices for those inside of her clan and out. She would take no issue with aiding a passerby if they seemed wounded, though is also not above using the talent for trade when it comes to information. 

Injured PCs looking for help without judgement, or else those looking to barter information for occasional medical services would find a good companion in her. 

Your eyes are hollow, your heart is shallow, and your words mean nothing to me.

There are very, very few things on Hydaelyn that Ayse hates more than slavers, and the practice of human(oid) trafficking. There are no lengths the woman will not go to stifle the abhorrent practice, and as an ex-slave she is honour-bound to try and free any and all slaves she comes in contact with. 

Any runaway or current slave PCs looking for help to free themselves would find a wonderful ally in her, and all slaver PCs a chilling enemy. There is no shade of grey in this to her. 

She had a mischevious smile, a curious heart, and an affinity for running wild.

An archivist for the Ayla’sebnem, Ayse has an interest in nearly all historic sights and artifacts. She records any that may be related to her clan, or even general Keeper heritage, but she is fascinated by ruins and tales of all lands and cultures. This is in part due to having the Echo, which manifests in visions of the past when she comes into contact with highly spiritual artifacts, or places. 

It is not uncommon to stumble upon the Miqo’te wandering ruins, or meditating within them. Adventurous types could very well happen upon her by chance, or she them.  

Her revenge was silent, as growth cannot be heard.

A pacifist by choice, the historian will do whatever it takes to avoid harming another soul ( exception: slavers ) and will use her talents with magic to stop an attack, render her opponent unconscious, or try to bind them so she can escape. This was not always the case, however. 

In her youth, the Keeper-Seeker mix was quite fond of duelling with a crystalline rapier. On occasion, Ayse can be found staring a bit wistfully at such weapons, and would not decline the chance for some friendly duelling partners. 

LOOKING FOR

On a character level, I am looking for all sorts of different interactions for Ayse, be they friendly or antagonistic. People that may have met her during her time as a slave, or else people who are just meeting her now. Friendships and rivalries are both welcome, though I am very hesitant on romantic relations, and will require much IC and OOC communication before committing to a romantic ship. I’m open to scenes with violence, matures themes, gore, etc...

On an OOC level, I am looking for people who know the difference between IC and OOC. I do not tolerate blending, metagaming, or godmodding. Open communication is very important for me, especially if our characters are going to obtain a relationship of any kind of depth. 

If you’re interested, you can contact me here, or in-game on Ayse Nuray or Rhysa Verkoh (main). I can give out my discord on request as well! ♥

@crystalxivrp 

[prorevenge]

Sergeant DGAF 'Bout Your Emergency

So this started more than a decade ago, but I remember (most of) it like yesterday. It is my own story, and I tell this from my perspective. This is a long story, but I promise you will be staring at the screen, thinking “dafuq?” by midway through.

Background

Early 2000s. I was in the military, mid 20s, stationed somewhere in Europe. Rank E-4. It’s a bit different when you’re stationed overseas, and your squadron basically becomes your extended family. The Mission is always priority #1, but everyone tries to go the extra mile to make sure their people are taken care of. This was my second assignment, and my second overseas assignment.

I had just gotten married when I was on an extended leave back in the States, during my PCS (Permanent Change of Station; officially changing your assigned base) to this new location. I became an instant father overnight, now having a wife and a 3-year-old (step) daughter when I had none before. My wife became pregnant with our son about 5 months later.

My new supervisor was a Master Sergeant, who I will call Bastar(d) Sergeant [sic], or BS, for the rest of this. Bastar-Sergeant the Master Sergeant.

BS was a family man, married for a while (about ~15 years or so) and had two kids with his wife, as well as two kids of his own from a previous marriage, with his wife ALSO having two kids from a previous marriage. This is relevant because BS, being a family man with six kids ages 4 to 17, often would have stuff going on with his family and need to cut out early, miss morning briefings, and so on.

It was no big deal if we weren’t working on mission critical stuff. It’s rough when the nearest military hospital is 30-45 mins away at another military facility and you can only depend on your own immediate family and fellow military members. Just about everyone, BS especially with his larger family, had to cut in and out of work fairly frequently when we didn’t have big things going on. But hey, take care of your people, they’ll take care of the mission.

Now, BS and I got along really well at first. He and his wife were both quite the “socialites” and would constantly – damn near every weekend – have parties at their house and invite people over. It was fun at first, but it really grew tiresome. Being a new family man myself, and really just starting to figuring it all out (translated: how to keep your wife happy and not both be miserable, while still trying to be a functional adult in the military), and I just could NOT keep up with the party-every-weekend lifestyle.

BS and Mrs. BS drank a lot at those parties, too. You could tell it took a toll on their health. I guess that might be tempting with that many kids, and a 17-turning-18 daughter that had just gotten pregnant with her foreign boyfriend, but I digress…

Like I said, I just couldn’t keep up, not every weekend. I slowly fell out of favor with BS and his “Good ol’ Boys Club.” He wasn’t hostile per-se, but there were times he would just get mean, and with increasing frequency. He would call me into his office for tiny things, like thinking I had shown up to work late, when I could prove that I had been logged in on my terminal 10 minutes before start time – meaning I was at least 15-20 mins early due to walking times, putting my coat and stuff in lockers, etc. But my terminal’s clock, synched with the atomic clock, didn’t matter compared to his clock on the wall.

I was also called out for attending big medical appointments for my wife’s pregnancy, like being there when they determined my son was a boy – I was called out specifically when everyone else was doing the same thing.

The assignment was slowly turning into hell. Meanwhile, the members of the Good ol’ Boys Club would often be very late (without phoning), constantly going to appointments, and so on. There was definitely some favoritism going on. But in such a small unit, overseas, what can you do? The guy was even buddy-buddy with the First Sergeant, and they had been friends since bootcamp.

Anyway, enough background. Onward!

​

The Main Event

This is where things got crazy. My son had just been born, healthy and at a good weight, not even two weeks earlier. I came home from work after a very long day, about 13 hours on a normal 8 hour shift, due to some stuff breaking.

My wife was exhausted because she was still healing from the birth, and our son had gotten really, really cranky and irritable through the day. He was non-stop fussing and feeling slightly warmer, but not quite running a fever.

I let her go to sleep, and to give her peace, I tried to sleep in the chair downstairs with the kiddo bundled up on me. He got worse and worse through the night, and at about 0300 hrs, I noticed that his diaper smelt really strange (sorry to gross you out), with just pee. It was a sickly smell, not at all what anything from a human body should ever smell like. He seemed hot, so I went to take his temperature. He had risen to 103.5 F – VERY dangerous for an infant.

Fuck.

I immediately wake up my wife and rush him to the hospital. She stays behind at home with our daughter, since the ER is no place to keep a young kid and we didn’t know anyone that could watch her at that late of an hour.

Since it would have taken longer to wait on an ambulance out in the countryside, I sped to get him to the military hospital’s ER in about 20 mins. They immediately put him on fluids and call in the on-call pediatrician. They move him to the ICU, and after a few long hours, I get told that they believe he has a urinary tract and kidney infection, and while they had gotten his temperature down to a safer spot, we weren’t out of the woods yet.

While waiting, knowing that my regular work day was coming up, I tried calling everyone’s phone number I had, but nobody answered. At the gym probably. After leaving some voicemails, I gave up and decided to wait until people roll in at 0700 hrs. I kept trying to call the unit phone number, but no one answered until 0720. I get asked by one of the guys where I was, I let him know I’m at the hospital due to an emergency with my newborn, and he gets BS over to the phone.

​

BS: OP, where you at?

Me: I’m at the hospital. My son is in the ICU, had a fever of 104 and a serious infection. I’ve been up all night and haven’t slept.

BS: Well you should be at work. You missed PT, and you’re late.

Me: *pausing, because, WTF?* … I need to come into work? My son had to go to the ER, he’s in the ICU…

BS: I don’t want to hear it. You’ve already been late multiple times. [but not really, as I mention above] *angrily* Get your ass down here!

Me: … Uh, well I’m not in uniform. I will have to stop by my house. One parent is required to be here, so I need to see if one of my neighbors can give my wife a ride to the hospital, and our daughter has to be dropped off at school because children can’t be in the ICU.

BS: Just get here. *hangs up*

​

I was completely floored. What. The. Actual. Fuck.

At no point in my entire military career, before and since then, have I EVER heard of anyone being forced to come in to work when an immediate family member was in the hospital for an emergency. I was half confused, half outraged, and wholly beside myself.

My wife shows up, I take the car home after updating her and making plans to take care of our daughter while we rotate shifts at the hospital. I did a very quick SSS – shit, shower, shave – and drive over to the shop.

BS ignored me when I arrive, other than a sidelong disapproving look. I start my usual routine, but I am exhausted, worried sick, and pretty fucking angry all at once. Some of my coworkers heard what happen and are concerned, but BS the tyrant seems to be angry himself and no one wants to approach him.

​

Revenge, Part 1

A few hours went by, with me keeping in touch with my wife on the status of our son. I tried approaching BS a few times, but he was having none of it.

One of the other Master Sergeants in the squadron, part of a different unit, but whom I had worked with before, came by and noticed me probably looking distraught. We’ll call her Hero Sergeant, or HS. She pulls me aside to one of the quiet corners of the shop.

​

HS: OP, are you okay? You look terrible?! Is something wrong?

Me: [I tell her about my son being sick and in the ICU – I was barely able to hold my composure in at this point, I was so angry yet so worried and downtrodden about my son, and I’m fighting to keep it together through the exhaustion and lack of sleep.]

HS: WHAT?! Why the hell are you here?!

Me: I’m not sure. BS ordered me to come in when I tried to explain. He won’t talk to me.

HS: Fuck that. Hang tight.

HS then quickly walks off. Now, our unit is on the other side of the base from the main squadron: about 15 minutes later, just enough time to drive to the squadron and back, HS appears – along with our unit Captain, and the squadron’s Major (XO to our Lt. Colonel CO).

The Major storms toward the unit office section, pauses and looks right at me, and says in an obviously angry but soft voice…

Major: OP, get out of here. Your place of duty is the hospital until your son is discharged. Don’t step foot in one of these buildings until then, I don’t care how long it takes. Take care of your family. Are we clear?

Me: *as I start to scramble* Yes, sir.

Major: *yelling* BS, GET YOUR ASS IN THIS OFFICE RIGHT NOW!

​

I proceed to quickly gather my shit together, all while seeing BS head toward that same office door and he gives me a glowering look on his way in.

As I leave, there is no possible way to doubt that everyone in the area, probably the whole building, could hear BS get absolutely reamed and raked over the coals by the Major as I departed. The Major was always a quiet and fair man, I had never seen him anywhere even approaching angry, so it was absolutely terrifying to behold.

I have to admit, it felt good to know that he was getting some of what he deserved.

My son did clear up eventually and was discharged from the hospital 5 days later, healthy and no harm done, thank God!

I know this first part’s “revenge” isn’t quite revenge, but it was sweet, sweet karma to see that asshole put in his place. Still, as good as it was, it made things worse between BS and I much, much worse.

​

Fallout

Well after all that, BS hated my guts. Obviously, it would be career suicide to openly retaliate against me, so he found little ways to do so at every opportunity. That wasn’t to say I didn’t have my faults, I certainly did, and I made mistakes no doubt, but what he did was particularly underhanded.

You see, it wasn’t until he PCS’ed to his new assignment that I learned what he had done. My new Sergeant (NS) was awesome, highly relatable, and knew BS from previous deployments together - he indicated on more than a few occasions that he wasn’t exactly fond of BS.

In the meantime, I had gone to training to become a Sergeant myself and graduated at the top of my class with honors. I then went on to another deployment to the “sandbox” and came back with some major kudos from leadership there, working my butt off every day wanting to prove I was more than what BS tried to paint me as. It was after my return to home station that I learned what BS had been up to - completely behind the scenes.

Remember how even the First Sergeant was buddy-buddy with BS? Well the FS had also PCS’ed while I was deployed. Our new FS went through everyone’s Personnel Information Files (PIFs) and discovered that I had a massive - and I mean massive - stack of Letters of Counseling (basically, you got a “talking to,” and the LOC is documentation proving it) and even a Letter of Admonishment (LOA), a more serious version just under a Reprimand.

I found out from NS that when he and his boss were talking with FS, he was wondering how the hell I hadn’t been kicked out of the service with such a track record. But then he also noted how suspicious it was that every single one of the LOCs and the LOA lacked my signature - something that is required by regulations, acknowledging your reception of it (though not admitting guilt).

I had never been shown these, nor had any idea they existed. The majority of them were very minor infractions, almost none of which I had committed in any fashion. Even more strange, NS caught onto details that there were four of them dated for the same time I was in training (at a different base / different country), and one during a short deployment I had gone on earlier. It didn’t add up, and all three sergeants found it rather confusing and shady.

Thankfully, my performance once I was out of the shadow of BS was more than enough to convince all three sergeants that I was not the dirtbag that BS was trying to paint me as. I don’t know the details, but I do know that his pseudo-forgeries (he could just claim they were “incomplete” and not meant to be filed) caught up to him and he caught some flak for it. He retired not long later, and I hope that it was a black mark on his record.

​

Revenge, Part Two

So this is where it gets interesting again. Fast forward about four more years. I had gotten out of the service by then, finishing my second enlistment, and I moved back to the States to take advantage of the GI Bill.

It’s also worth mentioning that I’m an IT guy, and I’ve always got at least a dozen boxes of parts, tools, and hard drives. It’s also what I was in college for at the time.

I’m going through a stack of old ATA hard drives to see what I could salvage for a lab projects (we basically needed a bunch of “victim” machines to test against, and a few of us had old ATA motherboards hanging around). I’m checking them before I scramble/wipe the drives to make sure they’re working fine, and to make sure I’m not deleting wanted files/archives.

I’m flipping through this drive’s old files, nothing much beyond typical Windows folders, until I hit a buried directory with a bunch of images in it. I can tell they’re of the X-rated kind from thumbnails - not surprising, I’m a guy, and who didn’t have a sizeable porn stash in their single days, right?

But then I realized… these weren’t porn shots. These were homemade. It definitely wasn’t anything I had ever done. But I recognized something almost immediately - a unique lower back “tramp stamp” on the woman in the photos (faces were never shown). A tattoo I remember clearly: one of the wives of a guy in my old unit was showing it off after she had gotten it.

And the guy she’s on top of? Far, far too pasty of a skin tone to be her husband. It was then that I realized that this was one of the drives I had salvaged from a broken old PC that BS had given me for parts, back when we were still on good terms.

BS had been cheating on his wife with one of his subordinate's wife. Looking at the background of the photos, it was obvious that this was in the home of BS, too - if you remember, we had all been there many times.

Time to extract some revenge. I would like to tell you that I did some cool scene out of Mr. Computer or some crap like that, but really, simple efficiency won out here.

I knew BS, Mrs. BS, and the other couple were all on Facebook (they’d often come up as recommended friends-of-friends). I created an account that vaguely sounded like someone we could all know, and had military work history to match the assignment, in order to protect my own privacy/identity. I sent a few messages each to Mrs. BS and the husband of the tattooed wife. Once I got responses asking, basically, “Who is this?” I just pasted a number of select photos from the private photo shoot.

Mrs. BS, obviously recognizing her husband’s body and their old home in Europe, kept saying “WHAT THE FUCK?” - I said I was just the messenger, and to do with the photos what she pleased.

The husband of the tattooed wife first thought my new identity was the man in the photos and started to threaten me, until I told him to pay special attention to the background. He realized who the man in the photos was, having also been in that house countless times, and thanked me for telling him the truth. While we weren’t close, I do feel really bad for him. :(

(I didn’t feel too bad for Mrs. BS because she turned into a snob when BS got mean.)

I heard through my buddies from the unit that both couples were divorced, roughly a year later. All the old crew knew exactly who had cheated with who. I also heard that the divorce of BS and Mrs. BS was particularly bad. Nobody knows who leaked the photos, though.

​

Closing

This is the first time I have admitted to what I did, just for the sake of revenge and getting back at the bastard who did so much to personally attack me, even in a time of need, and who very nearly ruined my military career. Part of the reason I decided to get out of the service was because of him - I never wanted one person to have that much control over my life again.

I hope you enjoyed my story, sorry it was so long, but there was just so much that happened. I could add even more crap that he did, too.

​

And to Bastar-Sergeant, if you ever read this someday, I’m sure you will have realized who I am. I only have one thing to say to you: Fuck you - you deserved it.

(source) story by (/u/Celesae)

[greensconnor]

i’m asking about your dragon age characters

molly i would KILL for u im ur personal hitman now

anyway i said my city now because the entire bioware writing team sucks shit xoxo and i’m so much smarter than all of them but also fully incapable of having a normal amount of ocs for anything (see: the time i made 20 rwby ocs in less than two weeks) so i have. five worldstates here r some assorted thoughts

uhhh so the worldstates r as follows

eira mahariel (two-handed berserk/champ spec), rhett hawke (two-handed berserk spec), alas lavellan (mage knight enchanter spec), romanced alistair/fenris/dorian respectively

shiv tabris (dual wield duelist/assassin spec), radella “rads” hawke (mage spirit healer spec), kat adaar (two-handed reaver spec), romanced morrigan/isabela/cassandra respectively because im a pc gamer and i think i should be able to date whatever video game woman i like because im infinitely better than cishet men

this world state said yeah i respect mens rights. mens rights to shut the fuck up

twins bronson (sword/shield reaver spec) & bryant cousland (archer ranger spec), carmine hawke (archer assassin spec), syracuse trevelyan (dual wield tempest spec), romanced zevran/anora/josephine/bull. if ur wondering how that works my city now and the warden, hawke and the inquisitor should all meet and so they do because i Said So

riva amell (mage arcane warrior/battlemage spec), graham “gray” hawke (mage force spec), hellathen “hela” lavellan (archer assassin spec); romanced cullen/anders and later blackwall because hawke only likes men who will break his heart. hela doesn’t have a romance because she’s literally 20. who let her lead the inquisition (me it was me). also it should be noted the version of cullen i have in my head only vaguely resembles actual cullen because i write better than dragon age writers ever could and i gave him an Actual Cohesive Narrative and he gets bullied relentlessly for being scrawnier than his mage boyfriend

malien “mal” surana (mage spirit healer/keeper spec), jules hawke (sword/shield reaver spec), ash adaar (mage rift spec), romanced leliana/merrill/krem because i should have been able to kiss krem and its a Crime that i am not allowed to

knight enchanter is a Very op specialization and by Very op i mean it makes a mage with their built-in low constitution stats able to solo the biggest baddest dragon in the game on nightmare mode in under five minutes so like. alas lavellan fist fights dragons for fun send tweet

i think lavellans should be able to hit ppl with bricks for all the shit they endure. thus solas gets pranked by mahariel and alas by which i mean they just tip buckets of water onto him from the rookery

kat might be my only competent inquisitor but she did also try to knock out the right hand of the divine and attempt to gap even tho there’s fucky magic burning up her hand so does she have a brain cell? you decide

also its fantasy land and i do what i want so kat has blue/gold sectoral heterochromia

gray “mage rights” hawke is best friends with fenris which surprises literally everyone. their friendship started because they got into a fist fight and then they were like okay i respect u now. hawke is like hey fenris give me ur sword i have a fun trick to show u [uses his sword as a foci to zap carver in the ass with lightning]

i am Always thinking abt like how cullen could have been one man anti-chantry propaganda machine if he hadn’t so blatantly been shoehorned into every game past origins so anyway bioware forgot about a wholeass moon i can write what i like. [holds up cullen by the scruff of his stupid armor] not only are you bisexual you are also a bottom

i also Hate the whole uwu mage haters get fixed by romancing a mage

unlocked secret dialogue option where my inquisitors verbally cuss out dorian’s dad instead of whatever sympathetic narrative the writers were going for cuz its bullshit.

riva is a showoff and a Menace about being as good as he is because he unabashedly loves being a mage and hes like oooh look at me im sexy i dont need to use my hands to cast magic because i’m just that good ;)) and you know what. hes right.

gray, on the other hand, does Not want to be mage. he wants to be a druffalo farmer and retire in the hinterlands and be left the fuck alone. unfortunately he is gay and has one brain cell and terrible, terrible taste in men. ribbed relentlessly for this by riva (altho does he have room to talk hes been hung up on cullen since he was like 13)

shiv is trans n kieran is the result of doing the dark ritual with her wife and he looks a Lot like shiv (dark skin pointed ears, shock-white hair) and morrigan always just Assumed she dyed it or did something magic with it so seeing their kid come out like that was a WEIRD time for her

leliana almost Murdered by cassandra in worldstate 5 because the warden is Actually There The Whole Time, but its been 10 years, mal’s cut off all her hair and gotten full facial tattoos and she’s like “no one will know its me its fine” and she’s right. she gets away with it. only cullen like, Knows, because he knew her before the blight but he doesnt have a death wish n he like. will Not piss her off

shes dalish by birth n she was stolen from her clan by templars and thus is vehemently anti-circle and anti-chantry in general

uhhh the vallaslin (elf face tattoos) of my 4 dalish characters are:

eira = ghilan’nain (chose em cuz shes rlly interested in the navigation aspect of the goddess)

alas = falon’din (god of the dead n he picked them because he’s Also the god of fortune and alas is like tee hee fun but also he can and will kill u if u fuck with him so yk its fitting)

hela = june (god of the craft bc she likes to Make things but june is also the god who taught the elves 2 hunt and hela is. a hunter.)

mal = elgar’nan (allfather/god of vengeance bc. she is Vengeful. she is Angry. but yk fucking with shem politics and fucking their divine is like. mal may have little a retribution. as a treat.) yes she has the full half-face solid colour tattoo she does NOT fuck around.

bronson and bryant r not genetically identical but they Look similar enough 2 anyone who doesn’t know them well enough 2 play spot the distance. anora and bronson think this is a super fun game to play, especially when nobles realize they’ve swapped out the king but they’re too nervous to say anything

eira mahariel has two hands. one is for holding hands with alistair and the other is for throttling elven gods, apparently. she’s killed one before so solas she’s coming for your bitch ass next. watch urself.

speaking of eira and alistair are married thru dalish tradition and humans don’t recognize it n alistair loves 2 re-propose to her with random things. he’ll just pick up like. a bit of cheese and be like “marry me ;)” and she’s like GASP but whatever will the chantry say!!!! all of their friends r sick of them

“vhenan if you love me bring me a sword” “you think i could do better than a sword made out of space rock?” “:)”

eira is my youngest hero at 18 at the start of her game and kat is my oldest at 32 at the start of her game.

none of my hawkes are under six foot. rhett is the tallest (6′8″) and rads is the shortest (6′2″).

syracuse trevelyan would have been the Perfect inquisitor if he were not a pretty boy himbo and a gay bastard who does Most Things just to spite his parents.

[corypheus pointing at syracuse’s visage in his crystal orb thingo] i want that twink obliterated

i love the companions from older games return thing i truly do so i make it a point for Every companion to return in inquisition so the gang rlly is all here because i am a Slutte for found family

i lie in my keep worldstates because i dont want to choose between hawke and alistair during here lies the abyss but i never make him king and every time i play inquisition and cole has the wicked grace line it makes me Scream. alistair baby im so sorry i did this to you but i didnt actually do this to you

yes this is my everyone lives au but like. all the time. i have never left hawke in the fade and i do not intend to.

fuck whatever nonsense about wardens not being able 2 have kids. by sheer divine power (me) anora and bryant have three daughters; eleanor, sabina & cecelia n both bronson and zevran make Excellent uncles because i think anora deserves good things because i’m tired of bioware being like women bad, actually,

so like most of the time i have the warden & hawke turning up after the move to skyhold n then staying on, with the exception of bryant, carmine & mal. mal is as mentioned previously just There the whole time with her girlfriend. bryant steps in as king of ferelden w/ interests in closing the big hole in the sky spewing demons in2 his kingdom yk. carmine shows up because she wants to help & she wants protection for bethany but she outright says she’d rather die than be inquisitor so cassandra is shit out of luck.

“CHANGE HER MIND VARRIC” “she once doubled down on insisting amaranth was a shade of blue because she didn’t want to admit to being wrong. no one’s changing her mind seeker”

alas is the middle child of eight and is thus very good with children and also bossing around people older than him. 2 of his older siblings come to the inquisition when stuff in wycome has been settled

i left ash with the basic canon background with Some variation (he grew up under the qun and left of his own free will when his magic was discovered n he realized he couldn’t take living as a saarebas

kat on the other hand was raised tal-vashoth and has bounced around basically all over thedas and leads her own merc company when the conclave blows up. she also speaks multiple languages. is there a language she doesn’t speak? probably not

just realized how long this got so im gonna like. stop my general rambling now but lmao yeah theres some basics. waves hands.

[amrita-gsk]

So I have dozens of unfinished fanfics sitting on my PC because I have so many ideas but once I start to write I always hit that ugly writer's block and then my real life issues catch up to me and I get anxious and then never get to finish anything BUT my brain just can't stop giving birth to these ideas for a minute so I start a new story and the cycle just repeats itself over and over again, so I'm just gonna put them here and hopefully one day I'll get to write them and if not maybe someone else will adopt them, who knows, but I need to get them off my chest so here goes nothing:

A canon divergent story where after the end of the war Ichigo is told he must stay in SS because of how much his power had grown but he's conflicted because even though being a shinigami is his life and soul's calling he just can't bring himself to leave his family behind. He tries to talk it out with Kyouraku and even asks to be given a limiter like the captains and lieutenants but the latter just explains to him that even then it's too risky to allow him to remain in the human world and advises him to make peace with it and just prepare to say goodbye to his family and friends.

Rukia hears it from Ichigo after his meeting with Kyouraku is done and gets worried because she knows how important his sisters and dad are to him and is unable to accept the fact that after all Ichigo has done for THE WORLD he's still going to be forced to give up on the people he loves so she pleads to Kyouraku to allow Ichigo to stay in the human world but is given the same explanation.

So she decides to go to Urahara and ask him to create something to suppress Ichigo's powers enough so he wouldn't affect the world around him but he tells her that as long as he retains the tiniest piece of power they'll just continue to grow and then end up at the same problem sooner or later, so the only solution he can offer is to completely remove them. Rukia is taken aback by it, knowing that being powerless could only do more harm than good to Ichigo but having exhausted all the options, she resolves to give him the opportunity to choose. However, she decides to consult Isshin first as he could probably offer some kind of guidance as what could be best for his son but nevertheless he concludes the same as her: Ichigo would be miserable without his powers. So they go visit Urahara again and he offers them another solution: along with taking away his powers he could remove his memories of everything and anything spiritual related, so he would never know he had powers or even the ability to see ghosts, therefore becoming unable to be saddened by it.

Both Rukia and Isshin are shocked and Isshin is just starting to refuse when Rukia interrupts him and says that it's not ideal but that if that would allow Ichigo to stay with them then it's okay.

So she goes to Ichigo and talks to him about these solutions they came up with and at first he's outraged at the idea than she even considered he'd be willing to forget about SS and all his friends and internally and most importantly about her, but she argues that if they just take his powers away he'd be right where he started when Ginjou found him: restless and frustrated at himself and the world, unable to let go of the past or go forward and that everyone would hate to see him that way again. He tries to argue back but she just tells him to think it through and sends him home to his sisters. She arranged for a special permission so he could go back for a few days since he'd been staying in SS following the days after Ywach's defeat, so she sends him away hoping that being at home with his family will help him see which is the best option for him.

So he goes back home and after spending time with his sisters whom are basically glued to him 24/7 because where was he? Was he okay? Was he going away? (Isshin might have lightly touched on the subject of him having to live "far away" to prepare them), he comes to the conclusion that he loves them so much and cannot bring himself to leave them big brothers are born first to protect those that come after them, even if that meant he had to sacrifice his powers again. So he goes back to SS on the date he was required to and asks to have his powers removed but refuses to have his memories erased. Rukia is worried about it, but she respects his decision and tells him she'll try to visit him in a gigai now and then, unlike last time.

They spend time together in SS until the day to give up his powers come, but as they reach the place they prepared to do it, they are informed by Kyouraku that the 46 have deemed it necessary to erase his and his friends memories and those around them that came into contact with Aizen or were witness to anything Quincy or Arrancar related as it exposed the existence of the Soul King and now that it was dead, even though having being replaced by Aizen himself (fused with the hogyouku), them knowing that "god" could be killed was a risk they weren't willing to take as they could spread those ideas amongst the living and that could politically affect SS in the long run. They're both shocked and when Rukia tells them they have no right to take their memories away, Kyouraku tells her that as a high ranking officer on the Gotei as well as a member of a noble family she is exempt from the procedure, as well as the other lieutenants and captains but that Ichigo and his friends have no such privilege as outsiders and tells them they only have two options: to forget or be killed, such is the law in SS. She tells him it isn't fair and that they'll fight it, no matter how hard or how far they have to go, but Ichigo worries that this will just put another sword over her head just for his sake so he makes up his mind: if forgetting meant she could hopefully live peacefully now that Ywach was gone and her worst problem would be some hollows here and there that she'd be able to easily handle, then he'd go with it. It was painful, because he'd be losing his best friend and he'd forget everything they went through and maybe for better or for worse, end up being a different person, but he already felt guilty enough by giving up his powers after she worked so hard to give them back to him, so potentially turning her into a criminal and putting her at risk was completely out of the question especially if there was the chance for a peaceful solution.

So he tells her it's okay, that it's not exactly what he wanted but that it's what's best. She's completely shocked at his compliance, also sad and almost feels betrayed, but once again she decides that he's earned the right to choose land tries to convince herself that maybe if he forgets about everything he could have a normal and happy life, despite her own feelings about being forgotten.

So he gets his powers taken away and his memories erased and gets returned to the human world and lives a normal and somewhat happy life... Until three years later, by the time he's twenty-one when he gets caught in an accident and dies.

Isshin, whom got to keep his memories seeing as he was a captain once and was still a Shiba, disgraced or not they were still a family to be reckoned with, calls her to give her the news and tell her that by the time he arrived since Ichigo had moved out to Tokyo to go to university there he was nowhere to be found (his soul) so he asks her to help him, since he doesn't know if he had already been konso'ed or if he was just wandering around as a lost soul and he couldn't really go look for him himself as he has to handle his broken hearted daughters they got their memories erased too so to them he's dead-dead and can't leave them alone. Rukia listens to him completely frozen but once she gathers her mind she immediately goes searching for him. She does ask the shinigami in charge of the area and so she learns that a young man with orange bright hair was indeed sent to SS following the time of the accident and she informs Isshin of this, but they're both worried since that leaves them almost as clueless to his whereabouts since the souls sent to SS randomly appear in any of the Rukongai districts and as unique looking he is, the Rukongai was waaaaay too big to find him in just a day. However, Rukia promises to find him and let Isshin know as soon as she does.

Rukia calls in a few favors here and there to some people to help her find him (Rangiku, Ikakku, Yumichika and Renji offer to help out in her search when they're out on inspection) and even signs up to give some field classes to the Shinigami Academy students as to be able to go around and maybe be lucky enough to find him, and also spends all of her free time scouting the different districts of the Rukongai starting from the furthest out because she knows how rough it is the farthest the Sereitei is and without his memories she worries that he might not be completely fit to survive, but months pass by before she even hears a rumor of someone that could be him in one of the towns.

Once she gets word of it she doesn't wait and goes searching for him and gets there just in time as the town is being attacked by a hollow and it's horrified to find him trying to protect a group of children with nothing more than rocks as his weapons, throwing them at the hollow trying to divert its attention from the children. She quickly intervenes and gets between him and the hollow before it can claw at him, skillfully parrying it with her sword and making a clean cut in the middle of its mask, successfully purifying it.

She turns to him fully intending to yell at him for being so reckless, but he's already making his way back to the children to see if they're okay while she feels a sting of grief because he didn't recognize her. He doesn't even stop to look at her. She approaches him silently and after he makes sure everyone is okay, he finally turns to her and awkwardly thanks her. She asks if she can talk to him for a while and he acquiesces albeit in a guarded way. His lack of trust in her stings her heart again, but she swallows it and tells him she's been looking for him. He asks why and because she's under oath to not talk about anything related to the memories he lost, she just tells him that she was the officer in charge during the accident in which he died and that she had somewhat came in contact with his father, who pleaded her to find him and make sure he was safe.

When he hears about Isshin he visibly perks up and asks her if it's possible to see him, but she tells him it's not but that she had traced his ancestry and that he had family living in SS and that she'd be taking him there so he could be safe. At first he's reluctant to accept both because she was a stranger and because he wasn't very willing to leave the children he had come to care for. He tells her that after dying he had ended up there, confused and alone, and that he had found those children all alone, basically being abused by the adults, so he decided to protect them because he couldn't bear to watch them suffer and that they've taken a liking to him and treated him as a kind of adopted big brother and that now he just couldn't bring himself to simply abandon them.

Rukia is incredibly touched by this, remembering her days as a child in the Rukongai and how no one ever cared about her or her makeshift family but she had promised Isshin to deliver Ichigo to the Shiba as soon as she found him, so she promises to come up with something so Ichigo can be assured the kids will be safe and then she'll be able to fulfill her promise to Isshin since Ichigo says he won't leave until the kids are taken care of.

She talks to Kuukaku and Ukitake YES, HE'S ALIVE HERE and they come up with a plan to make an orphanage of sorts but they tell her that for it to be approved it needed to be backed up by someone of influence and even though the Shiba were still regarded as nobility, due to their fallen status the project would just be a failure if their name were used as its foundation. So she goes to the most influential person she knows: her brother. She brings the idea to Byakuya whom just listens in silence making her nervous because she knows he has a lot of responsibilities as the clan head and that he already did so much for her so she actually feels ashamed by asking him to do this, but as soon as she is finished he tells her to put together all the paperwork including location, costs and other administrative stuff and that he'll review it so it could be done as soon as possible.

She's so excited that she profusely thanks him and even throws in a hug and then goes to tell Ichigo the good news. It's another two months until the orphanage is up and running and Rukia has visited him every single day because "I need to give your dad a detailed report of your status" and when they finally admit the children in she takes him to the Shiba where they welcome him with a party. She records some of it and sends the videos to Isshin, who later gives her a call and thanks her in a teary voice. She obviously says there's nothing to thank her for and asks if he wants to talk to Ichigo but Isshin says that it's not the right time, since they'd have to explain too many things and they needed Ichigo to adjust first.

And so, the story goes on with an Ichigo which doesn't know why he's being given so much care an attention and why some things feel so familiar and a Rukia that has made her life mission to make sure Ichigo is safe and sound, wondering if they'll ever get back what they lost.

Some extras:

It has to start with a decent final fight against Ywach with the whole #IchigoTeam present.

Isshin and Ryuuken wouldn't just be standing around like pretty furniture and they'd finally have the chance to avenge their wives and have some god damn closure.

We get to know what happened to #TeamUrahara and maybe throw in a few stories about how Grimmjow and Neliel kicked some asses.

EVERYONE GOES TO COLLEGE, YES, ORIHIME TOO.

Since they erased all their SS and spiritual related memories, their friendships are also somewhat affected but Ichigo does end up befriending? Uryuu becase Isshin and Ryuuken bring them together as cousins.

Ryuuken kept his memories because LAST QUINCY STANDING BITCH. Also, plot reasons, I ain't gonna explain.

Uryuu becomes a fashion designer, Chad goes into child care HE'S A KIND GIANT and Orihime becomes a doctor being a healer is her calling, OH YEAH.

Ichigo? I'm still undecided about it but I'd say he went into psychology or something because by losing his memories of what really happened to Masaki he needed to find some answers within himself and decided he wanted to help other people with unresolved trauma like him. He could also have gone into modeling I don't know, I was going to kill him anyway, didn't really think his career too much, lmao.

UKITAKE. IS. ALIVE. He does delegate a lot of work to Rukia, Sentarou and Kiyone because he has to take it easy but HE'S. ALIVE.

Renji actually apologizes about the time he beat Rukia and then emotionally tortured her when she was jailed. He admits he was jealous of her relationship with Ichigo and it shames him now that he doesn't remember her.

He also supports her when Ichigo has his memories erased because even though she pretends to be okay both him and Byakuya know how much it affects her and he has a deep talk with her and even touches on the subject of when she was adopted and he let her go. STRENGTHEN THAT FRIENDSHIP ONCE AND FOR ALL, YO.

Byakuya is silent about it but he worries about seeing Rukia sad so he tries to be there for her as much as possible. At first Rukia is weirded out about it, but soon they're comfortable enough to talk about a lot of topics and no matter how busy they are he makes it a point to have at least one meal together a day or at least a cup of tea.

Isshin has a very close relationship with Rukia and after some time she comes to rely on him like a sort of fatherly figure, Isshin is obviously delighted.

At first Ichigo works at the orphanage as a care taker but because he does have spiritual power, once he learns about the Academy he decides that he wants to be a shinigami.

His powers come back because he's now a full spirit in a spiritual environment so... PLOT REASONS ANYWAY.

He learns about the war with the Quincy in the Academy and about a certain hero whose name isn't disclosed he's only referred as a "ryoka" and amongst other topics like the destruction of the Soukyoku, and he bashes said hero saying he was so stupid for not having a real plan during his invasion and also asks Rukia if the guy married the girl he was trying to save Rukia asked for her name to be changed as to keep her privacy because if he went that far for her he was probably whipped. She just chokes on air and tells him she doesn't know.

Ichigo does get bullied at the Academy due to being adopted by the Shiba if only they knew, his hair and his Rukongai origin but unsurprisingly he turns out to be some kind of genius, even considered to possibly be able to beat Hitsugaya’s record for graduating. Still, when he has a difficult day he talks about it with Rukia whom encourages him in her own way and also shares with him some of her experiences from when she was just adopted into the clan, since they were similar circumstances, which makes him feel assured.

Byakuya is actually happy when he sees the change in Rukia once she finds Ichigo and is extremely proud and touched when she presents him with the orphanage project which she named after Hisana because even though he couldn't protect Rukia as an infant, doing this now by Rukia's side feels like a good way to honor his wife's memory. DEM FRATERNAL FEELS.

Somewhere along the story Rukia realizes she has romantic feelings for Ichigo and starts to visit him less because she is conflicted about the fact that even though this is Ichigo and there are a lot of core characteristics that didn't change due to his memory loss, in a way HE IS different from the Ichigo she knew before so she just wonders if she's forcing her feelings on this version of Ichigo trying to fit him into the Ichigo in her heart and DRAMA ENSUES. YES, I DID GO THERE WITH THE MAN IN HER HEART, BYE.

Ichigo gets bothered by Rukia's avoidance but then realizes there's no real reason as to why she paid him so much attention after she fulfilled his father's request, so he starts wondering if there's something else at play while trying to understand why he feels so uncharacteristically lonely without her.

Ichigo also gets confused by things like other people's familiarity with him or how is it that he and Rukia can so easily communicate without words sometimes.

Plus: The troll trio a.k.a. Renji, Rangiku and Yumichika teasing Rukia about her feelings for Ichigo, telling her that he takes care of him almost like a mom but on the other side seem to want to get in his pants. “Just go get a bite from that strawberry!”, “I see you prefer them young, well you do have good taste...”, 

I might write a few chapters here and there with some scenes I already thought up just to take them out of my head before I go mad, but I swear to god I need to just stick to one idea and see it through OTZ

[a-dreamer-named-mars]

Imagine Being Jamie's Long Lost Twin Sister

To Jamie Reagan it was just another Monday like any other where he'd be working a double shift. Both him and Eddie have been going the extra mile at work lately, they wanted to be able to afford a nice place of their own with their own money and maybe start to think about a family, or maybe just a gold fish to start with, they hadn't talked a lot about that part yet.

"Hey Reagan?" Jamie turned his attention to his superior officer of the twenty-ninth that stuck around after the sergeant finished roll call.

"Yeah?"

"Come to my office, please." The older man said as he started to walk away.

"Can't we talk here? I'm gonna be busy today."

"Trust me, it's for the best that we talk in private." Jamie was a little taken back by the sudden urgency in talking to him and the need for privacy but he took his word for it and in less than ten minutes they were reunited inside his superior's office, alone.

"What seems to be the problem?" Jamie asked while he sat down in the chair in front of the desk and straightened his tie.

"You know we're having a bunch of cops from the 99 transferred here today?"

"Yes, I was aware." Jamie's brows furrowed as he tried to think about what was the issue with that. They actually had new cops coming to the 29th all the time, considering not a lot of them stayed.

"Well, I was taking them in, read their files, had to run a DNA test for identity check."

"Yes?"

"Reagan..." The man hesitated before he continued. "One of the police officers, Officer (Y/N) Malone, seems to share the same exact DNA as you."

"What?" Jamie asked with a smirk, the laughter almost betraying his seriousness. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Jamie, it appears that she is your twin sister, if you were to have one."

"But I don't!" Jamie stood up from his chair, all the fun and amusement he found in this subject disappearing and being taken over for concern and the feeling of betrayal.

"Look, I know you. And I know your old man, I'm gonna have to give him a call. But before this whole issue is settled I'm gonna have to ask you to stay here in my office, stick to paper work for the time being."

Jamie was walking back and forth around the small cubicle with his hands on his hips, his breath hitching. "Does she even look like me at least?"

"You know looks don't mean a thing, Re-"

"Does she?"

"Yes."

Silence hung in the air before the older man got up from his seat and walked out of his office, closing the door behind him.

* * *

Jamie Reagan is typically the type of cop that does everything by the book and lives by the rules installed, but certainly not today. He didn't stay in the office for more than one hour and after inspecting every room in the precinct, he finally found who he was looking for.

"So?" He asked his superior when he walked inside a room that looked more like a closet room than an office, although it was perfectly put together to look as such with computers, printers, phones and files spread on top of the desk lazily.

"Reagan, I told you to stay in my office!" The older man dropped the phone on the desk and got up. Jamie noticed there were other people in the room too, other officers that came to help.

"Have you talked to the PC?" The youngest Reagan cut to the chase. He, more than anyone, wanted answers.

"Yes."

"And?"

"There's a chance she could be your identical twin sister, yes." The man spoke loud and clear, not giving the cop any chance to dodge this bullet. "I just got off the phone with him, he said he'd come here as soon as he can."

Jamie was loss for words, he did try to find some but nothing would come out of his mouth. He had a twin sister. What the actual hell?!

"What else did he say?"

"He said these were family issues and that he wanted them to say out of the NYPD. He mentioned something about never imagining that he'd find her?" The older man thought back to the conversation and thought about the best way to break the news to the sergeant of his precinct.

"So he knew?" Jamie asked in confirmation.

"From what I could gather, yes. But Reagan, you're gonna have to keep it together."

"Can I see her?"

"I don't think that's the best idea-"

"I'm gonna see her."

Jamie turned around in his heels and waltzed his way back to where the new cops were getting registered, not knowing what to think. The precinct wasn't that crowded and when he arrived at the room, there was only one female police officer sitting on the chair, her fingers fidgeting impatiently with the hem of the NYPD cap.

"Ma'am. Good morning, I'm Sergeant Reagan." Jamie said as he walked up to you and reached out his hand, waiting for you to shake it. You did so as soon as he made his presence noticeable and flashed him a smile.

To be fair, he did look a lot more shook and distracted than you - who, by the way, was about to lose your mind if no one came to tell you what the hell was going on.

"Hi. Officer Malone. Officer (Y/N) Malone." Jamie stood still in his tracks, staring at you and taking in every inch of your face, noticing some similarities. You both shared the same eye color and your hair was just a little lighter than his, but other than that... You were pretty much the same, including your nose.

"Happy to move in with us at the 29th?"

"Oh, yes! I really needed a change of scenery. Plus, this house is way closer to my kid's kindergarten so, makes it easier on me."

The wheels in Jamie's head started turning.

"You have kids?"

"Yes." You replied with a warm smile. "Twins. A boy and girl, they just turned three."

Jamie felt his heart beat faster - this was too much for him.

"Why are you waiting outside?" Jamie asked you, trying to see if you knew anything about what was going on.

"Oh, I don't know, really. I think there must be some problem with my transfer application or something. I'm supposed to wait until someone comes back with more information."

Jamie knew what he was about to do was wrong and he knew he was probably gonna hear it from his father until he took his last breath, but his sister was standing in front of him and he was not about to let this opportunity pass.

"You're my twin sister. How's this information?"

You let go of his hand and studied his face from a distance, not wanting to take a step closer to a complete stranger who blurted out he was not only related to you, he was your twin brother.

"I'm sorry, what?"

Jamie started talking, trying to explain all he knew so far, which, let's face it, wasn't that much but you interrupted him.

"I was adopted."

"What?" Jamie too was speechless after hearing you out.

Not too long after, and with a glare that you swore could kill, Frank Reagan - the Police Commissioner - walked in the room, alone, his hands stuffed inside his beige rain coat's long pockets and faked a smile.

And it didn't take long before he opened his mouth and the truth rolled out of his tongue, explaining everything that needed explaining.

You were in fact the PC's daughter and Jamie's twin sister. Apparently back in the day when your birth mother, who you came to find out was already dead, was in labor it was a tricky time. Your father was still working as a beat cop and he had some people coming after him for revenge. Turns out all they did was take you and dump you at a fire station, where  a nice firefighter held you and took you to the nearest hospital. Frank tried everything he could to find you and used all his resources but he never found anything about your whereabouts, nor told anyone in the family about this.

It was a lot to take in, you and your sibling were shook to the core, speechless and not quite believing that you both went to work today as if it was a normal day, only to realize you had a twin and to meet each other in these circumstances.

* * *

Author's Note: Hello my dearest Jamie Reagan fans - here's another imagine! I hope y'all liked it, but especially the person who made a request.

FYI - I am still taking in requests via DM but only with the condition that you'd be fine with waiting longer than usual for them to be ready. I have been extremely busy and I haven't had enough time to get the imagines written and ready for you all to read.

I love you all so much and I love all your support and right now I'm really gonna need it! I'm participating on The Fiction Awards 2019 hosted by thefictionawards  ! All you need to do is to go on chapter two (nominations chapter) and scroll down to the category I'm participating on ( Best Fanfiction Story ) and inline comment the name of the story I'm participating with and my username like this: "Far From The Shallow" by missmarswrites . Nominations will close on June 3rd so please help a girl out! 🙏

If you already nominated me, - thank you! - you don't need to do it again since it's only allowed one nomination!

Have a great weekend, sweethearts! 💖

Xoxo, Mars

[enigmaticjblake]

Best Video Games of the last decade

The last decade was sensational, a lot of stuff happened, there were dramatic changes all across, especially in videogames. Technological advancements in computer hardware pushed graphical limits and the visual fidelity in gaming kept evolving. Games got more immersive and believable.

The videogame industry saw major changes like the rise of digital gaming platforms such as Steam, Origin, Epic Games Store and so on.

Even the Consoles saw dramatic changes. The PS4 was a major player in the market but Steam on the other hand dominated the PC landscape. Epic Games Store also got a lot of attention.

Even VR stepped out of the shadows and major companies like Microsoft, Google, HTC, Samsung, Facebook and many others discovered the potential of the medium and embarked on the ultimate quest of making the best VR headset in the market. Even Sony made a VR headset for the PS4.

Technological advancements are fine but it is important for us to understand that Videogames cannot just solely depend on technology to be an immersive and unforgettable experience.

They have to have an engaging story, solid and balanced game play mechanics, immersive sound design, perfect balance between narrative and pacing and a few other major factors are what determine a good game and a great game. Ultimately they have to deliver an unforgettable experience.

So after all the trials and tribulations, a few games have emerged to show the world how powerful the medium can be.

So without any further ado, lets jump into the list of best games of the last decade.

  Read Dead Redemption 2

The critically acclaimed open world wild west adventure game comes straight from Rockstar Games, the same team that has made the GTA Series. RDR2 is considered as one of the most successful titles of the last decade as it gives you a vast sprawling open world with staggering amount of detail. This is one of the most detailed games of the decade, coming somewhere close the end of the current generation of consoles; it utilizes the fullest potential of modern day hardware and delivers a stunning dynamic open world experience like never before.

 CS:GO

Yes, you might be wondering why is CS:GO on this list, well it is there for a good reason. Not only this online classic tactical shooter still among the largest and most played games of all time, it is fun to play even in this age and day. CS:GO manages to bring back an old formula and still keeps it relevant at this age. Countless events and tournaments are centered around CS:GO. Back in the day CS was mod out of another legendary game which we will definitely discuss some day. CS single handedly showed the world what mods are capable of achieving and gave birth to the mod culture. There are quite many games which were mods of the past and apart from that, the game is still fun as hell and me and my friends still play it.

 Fortnite

Fortine has a very strange history, it was originally a defense game like minecraft where you build during the day and protect during the night but it wasn’t that successful. People had already seen the idea before, so when Battle Royale was gaining popularity, Fortnite decided to mix its defense formula with BR. The ratings for Fortnite just went off the charts and many people played it as it was released as a free to play title. It had a cosmetic market though which got Epic tons of revenue and that’s how Epic Games Store came into picture. So if a game can do so much for a company, you can definitely process the impact it had on the industry overall.

DOTA 2

Talk about mods again, DOTA was originally a genre defining mod of War Craft 3 but someone else saw its potential. DOTA was more of an underground thing, it was never so popular in the mainstream and very few knew a genre like MOBA even existed. It was around 2009 when I first saw DOTA in a cyber café where some young kids were playing it on LAN. At first, it looked like War Craft 3 but the mechanics were totally different. Soon I learnt it had a cult underground following and Valve made the smart move of acquiring the talent behind this mod and decided to make this thing into a fully blown sequel. DOTA 2 which pushed MOBA into the mainstream. Obviously there were others who joined the bandwagon of MOBA and tried to distinguish themselves. League of Legends is also another MOBA game which is popular but DOTA 2 is still considered as the king and despite of its age is still among the top played games on steam world wide. There are people who have played the game for a staggering 10000 hours and still find new and interesting things. It’s a game which is easy to learn but difficult to master.

Batman Arkham City

Batman needs no introduction, for those who do not know, Batman is a fully ripped grown man who wears Egyptian cotton underwear over a grey suit and is passionate about jumping from building to building during the night and saves the city from bad peeps. He is THE Superhero.

If you haven’t played any of the Batman games of the Arkham trilogy, stop reading this list right away and immediately go and play it! Its really good.

It is debatable which one of the trilogy is the best and its very difficult to make that choice. I personally like all the games but Arkham City is amazing for several reasons as it is an ultimate battle between Batman and Joker, the game goes open world and Gotham City is such well crafted. The Unreal Engine does a marvelous job of putting it all together and the game runs so well AND this is why I could not chose Arkham Knight over Arkham City. Arkham Knight is miles ahead of Arkham City but I made the ultimate mistake of playing it on the PC which was a bad experience. Infact the game was such a mess, Steam had to pull it off and give out refunds to the buyers. It was a great experience on consoles but this misstep was the sole reason why I did not chose it for this list.

BUT now the game has been patched extensively and is in good shape. So if you are a PC gamer and want to be like Batman, this has to be the Ultimate Batman Experience.

Bloodborne

Ever heard of souls like titles? These are considered to be difficult as combat in them is of a different nature. These are not your ordinary action games where you go in front of your enemy and start spamming attacks on them. Souls like titles have be played tactically, timing and accuracy are the name of the game. When to strike, when to dodge and parry are crucial for every encounter and even the most basic enemy can strike you down if you are not paying attention.

Bloodborne is an Action RPG title developed by From Software exclusively for the PS4, set in a dark Victorian world we are tasked to hunt down to take down perils of an odd strange world. Blood Bourne stands out for its unique art style, game play mechanics and an engaging narrative, atmospheric and immersive world design and ruthless difficulty. This game has a deep and interesting lore so a lot of content awaits.

Be warned, this game can crush your soul.

Neir Automata

Set in a dystopian cyberpunk future where sprawling urban scapes are retaken my mother nature, humanity is wiped out by what was considered as their best creation.

Take role of an enhanced cybernetic warrior who is deadly and beautiful at the same time and hack N slash your way through hoards of deadly AI constructs as you make your way to the answers of all the questions that surround the collapse of civilization.

The stunning art style, the graphics, the immersive world and level design blended with fast paced combat makes Neir Automata an unforgettable experience.

INSIDE

Inside is developed by Playdead, the same studio who made Limbo. Inside is a staggering achievement in the 2D side scroller category of games. You take role of an unknown kid who just appears in this strange dystopian world where society has changed. The world is hostile and humanity is engulfed into some kind of a strange social experiment where a few selected individuals of the upper echelon are on the verge of creating something far beyond anything we can possibly imagine.

Inside is ruthless, deadly and hostile but the art style, presentation, pacing and its subtle yet effective gameplay pulls out the unimaginable out of a genre that is so old. It redefines the side scroller genre.

Inside manages to pull you in right from the get go and as you play further, you are just lost in it.

Its depressing, dark, bold and ambitious.

Don’t miss this one out.

Horizon Zero Dawn

A PS4 exclusive developed by Guerrilla games, HZD is an open world action RPG where civilization has moved beyond its post apocalyptic phase and mankind has once again emerged out of the darkness of this cataclysmic event and is facing a whole new world.

Civilization is rebooted but is engraved on the remnants of a past civilization. It is still unknown what cause the wiping of the earlier race.

What is known are the strange metallic beasts which roam around the waste lands of earth.

Imagine fighting a giant robotic T-Rex with a bow and arrow.

That’s HZD in one line.

Metal Gear Solid 5

You wake up in a hospital one day and the doc informs you that you were in comma for 9 years, how will you feel?

Well, Snake doesn’t feel bad at all. Only few hours after waking up you are hunted down by an unknown mercenary group who simply wants you dead for reasons unknown and weird things happen that night. You still manage to make an escape, thanks to your buddy who was undercover as a patient and was protecting you all these years. Soon you embark into a Journey into the heart of Afghanistan to find the answers.

MGS5 is developed my Konami, this is when the legendary Hideo Kojima was part of the team.

MGS5 had a rough development cycle but it turned out to be a great game.

It’s a sandbox stealth action title where you can approach your target or objective anyhow you like or find it convenient. There is a lot of freedom in this game.

You can even hide in a cardboard box and turn it into a makeshift stealth device.

There is base building, you recruit captured soldiers and make them a part of your team.

It’s a damn fine game and the story sometimes just catches you by surprise.

Portal 2

Portal 2 is a first person puzzle platformer developed by Valve. These guys are magical, whatever they touch becomes gold. Portal 2 puts you in the shoes of a test subject who is a part of a scientific experiment where they are testing teleportation technology, you get hands on a portable teleportation device or simply put, a portal gun. It shoots portals of walls.

You solve puzzles by shooting portals and make use of physics. Stuff such as gravity, momentum, reflection and so on come into the picture. Thanks to the Source engine. The story is also engaging and characters are really deep and well written.

You teleport your way out of these test chambers only to discover all is not what it seems.

Portal 2 is definitely one of the finest games of this decade.

GTA 5

Seriously? Wondering why this is on the list. Go play it!

Elders Scroll 5 Skyrim

Its not everyday that you bump into a fellow adventurer who has stopped adventuring cause one fine day he took an arrow in his knee.

Skyrim is open world action RPG that is bold, ambitious and probably the best game made by Bethesda Game Studios.

Skyrim takes place in an enigmatic fantasy world which is engulfed in a political conflict and suddenly an old prophesied threat emerges and is bent on destroying the world.

You take role of an unknown traveler who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but as events unfold. Turns out you are not an ordinary person, you are THE dragon born. The only thing that stands between the dragons and the destruction of Skyrim is you.

Skyrim has a lot of content, side quests and the story is deep. You can keep playing Skrym for hours and hours and get lost in a different dimension.

The last of Us

Naughty Dogs knows what it does. They are the masters of their craft when it comes to developing breathtaking narrative driven experiences. The sheer amount of attention to detail which was earlier observed in the Uncharted games successfully transcends into The Last Of Us.

Exclusive to the PS4, The Last Of Us puts you into the shoes of a man who has lost many things. The world has collapsed and strange mutants ravage the world. As the man of a family it is upto you to protect your loved ones from the perils of the new dangerous world.

The production quality of the game is what sets it apart. A dark and mature story backed by well choreographed cinematics, well acted characters and a blend of stealth horror action gameplay totally set this game apart from anything on this list.

You should get a PS4 only to play this game. Its that good!

Battlefield 1

This in my opinion is the best battlefield game in recent years, obviously there are other battlefield games and I was thinking of voting for BFBC2, this one won for many reasons.

BF1 is a fast paced action multiplayer experience with a solid punch of World War 1.

The originality and the attention to detail BF1 offers is insane, right from the vast deserts in the middle east to conquests in various parts of Europe, Dice has made the perfect formula for World War 1. Its frantic combat is better than ever, tweaking a few mechanics the game is now more enjoyable and fast paced. Its like the perfect spot between fast paced combat and quick general perception of reaction to things.

The game looks beautiful and environments, animations weapon and character models are so well detailed, they all scream authenticity.

64 vs 64 players never gets dull. Also EA was less greedy about this one, I still feel bad for the Star Wars Battlefront games.

Black Mesa

This one is not a game, it’s a mod but it has to be on the list because it’s a Half-Life fan remake on the source engine, if you are unaware of Half-Life, you are dead to me.

Black Mesa is a masterpiece and it totally reimagines the original Half-Life in a way just like Valve would have. Seeing new areas in Source Engine is a visual delight, its hard to believe Wwhat limits can be Source pushed to, considering its such an old engine. Valve was truly thinking long term when they made the source engine.

Basically Half-Life puts you into the shoes of the theoretical physicist who works at a the Black Mesa Research Facility. One day an experiment goes horribly wrong and you rip open a dimension into an alien world and now its upto you to fix things.

Half-Life 1 was revolutionary and helped defined the FPS genre. SO YOU HAVE TO PLAY THIS.

The Xen levels are out now and the game has left early access, so now is the perfect time to play this timeless masterpiece.

Crowbar Collective has done a neat job.

Overwatch

This one is my eyes is the true spiritual successor to Team Fortress 2. Made ground up by Blizzard, this one was a very different thing from them.

Overwatch borrows heavy inspiration from TF2 and manages to fuse it with MOBA perfectly.

On the surface I’ve seen many people complaining this is a TF2 ripoff and its rich dudes Paladin, tbh it is like Paladin but both games have different dynamics.TF2 is more of an old school class based shooter at this point and OW is more fast and streamlined.

The wide variety of characters in OW may seem unnecessary but believe me, each one of them is well made and balanced. Its like Blizzard has a secret recipe of game balance and it becomes very clear how important it is to nail that balance in this hybrid genre when you get your hands on similar titles who achieve this perfection.

The art style is spot on and meant to age well. The graphics will never go old, such is the art style.

Jump into a few games and you wont even realize how the hours pass.

Resident Evil 2

Later this decade a legendary face re-emerged from the mythical shadows of mystery. Resident Evil is Capcoms that comes into everyones mind when we speak of survival horror games, this was the title that created the genre back in the day.

The remake is very faithful to the original, it successfully captures the tense atmosphere and the struggle of managing resources while scavenging the same old corridors of Racoon City Police Station.

While graphics and other things are aligned with 2019 standards, what is more surprising is the fact that the game is so perfectly transferred from those pre rendered 3D environmental backgrounds with fixed cameras into true 3D yet it manages to retain the whole essence of the thing. Its is big achievement and the game does its own thing in a great way.

Animations, Models, Textures, Sounds, Gunplay and the Zombie AI are perfect and the all new Mr. X is totally rad!

Resident Evil 2 being a new comer in this decade has made a solid spot on this list.

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order

The game that saved Star Wars, honestly there were not that many good Star Wars titles in the recent years, both Battlefront games had their issues, while the 2nd one had a good production value, it stirred up the hive with its surprise mechanics. It was basically a Star Wars themed Casino and was brutally P2W. They have patched it now and is pretty playable but whats gone is gone.

Jedi The Fallen Order takes places after order 66 is executed. The Jedi order has fallen and the remnants are forced into exile. The empire has gripped the galaxy with its iron fist and the game puts you into the shoes of a young jedi who is accidently discovered by a high ranking Sith Inquisitor, the event propels the young Jedi into an epic journey of self discovery.

You travel across various planets in the galaxy and learn stuff about the lore which gives the series a fresh angle. It is clear that Respawn entertainment has put a lot of heart and soul into this game, it shows deep respect to the source material.  Star Wars needed that. Also, the combat is fresh. It borrows the best of all the successful mechanics introduced in various games of the generation like platforming, souls like combat give a realistic sense to saber battles. It feels like a true Star Wars game.

Overall, this one just came out at the end of the decade and took all of us by surprise.

The Legend of Zelda Breath Of The Wild

Zelda always hands over the torch to the next generation of Nintendo Consoles. BOTW is a fresh take on the long running Zelda series. The series departs from its previous gameplay styles and throws Link into an open world filled with perils. But unlike most games, Zelda is a very relaxing game, the art style is soothing and the game is fun.

You can play this one at your own pace and follow your objectives the way you like. The game looks simple on the surface but whatever goes down the hood is very complex as the game takes interactivity to a whole new level. Climb huge rock faces, cut trees, cook food, find rare loot, craft rare stuff and do all this at your own pace.

DOOM

Rip and Tear baby! Doom 2016 is simply awesome, its fast, brutal, frantic and fluid. Story is classic as ever, where the UAC accidentally opens a portal to hell and now all the demons are pouring in from everywhere. The key difference between the previous Doom games and this one is, earlier you were stuck in a room with demons, now the demons are stuck in a room with you.

Doom gives you a huge arsenal of weapons at your disposal and heaps of demons to kill, kill them the way you see fit.

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt

OOF…..Witcher 3….what can I say…..

CDPR has dethroned Valve in terms of game design, this is what has happened this decade. There was a time when Valve used to make the best games, now its these guys.

You step into the shoes of Geralt, a professional monster slayer who has embarked on a journey to find his missing daughters in a land that is engulfed in conflict.

Witcher 3 takes place on a vast open world which is stunningly detailed, every 45 seconds you bump into something fresh and exciting. The world of Witcher 3 is well crafted, every section of this world feels vivid. The main story line is engaging but even the side quests are meaningful which is not commonly seen in most games.

The game lets you make choices and the story branches out as per the choices you make which drastically alter the outcome of the game which also gives it a high replay value.

If you call yourself a gamer, you have to play this.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S3 Ep20-21: Everyone's Gonna Die For Like the 3rd Time

So a few days ago I kinda tossed my phone at my bro and I was like “listen, it’s dead, don’t ask why this has happened, but I can’t get it to boot. I don’t even want to deal with it right now. I’m so over it. You fix it.” And so he fixes it by doing a factory reset and was like “so...what happened?” and I was like “I can’t say right now, it is too embarrassing.”

So, keep that story in the back of your mind as we go into this episode.

It’s a Final Threat like a Final Fantasy sort of meaning of the word Final, I see.

Anyways, a review:

Anyways, Noah has a superpower now that uses these pink balls of power. There’s only 6 of them, so it’s not quite Dragonball, unfortunately. They have some writing on them but I don’t know enough Duolingo to tell you what it is right now.

Especially since I kind of stopped using Duolingo a few months back, so now all of my limited Hiragana and few scattered kanji are gone forever. Thanks brain, glad I spent like a year trying to learn that. Domo. What I tried to go and do in order to read half my twitter feed.

YEP. THAT’S RIGHT.

Yugioh broke my freakin phone.

So anyways, I tried doing a reverse image search on my PC, which is how I got Calligraphy up there. Which I realllllly don’t think is uh...the word. Then, by using a handwriting reading website I got “to fight”, but because I have pretty BAD handwriting in English even, and because I don’t know the order of strokes for really any kanji at all, that was the only one I could find.

If y’all know Japanese, I’d be very curious as to what these are. It’s probably related to something vaguely religious as that’s been Noah’s MO this whole game.

And yes, now that my phone works again, I could just try and re download Google Translate, and give it another go, but this image might actually be cursed, as is Yugioh tradition.

(read more under the cut)

But before we do anything in this upcoming duel, Pharaoh wants to make sure to immediately tell Noah he’s a freakin weirdo as quickly as possible.

Noah is not that surprised. I mean Noah is a computer brain that’s been isolated for 6 years before going cray, he does not care if Yugi thought he were the king of England. Which Yugi was once in a spinoff game, the King of England.

We get a little explanation as to why Noah has such a God Complex (without playing a single God card, ironically) in that he likes to play this rare deck that Pegasus made that I guess Kaiba and Yugi sort of forgot about? I don’t blame them, I would also try to forget about this deck.

I like that no matter where Pegasus travels, he puts on that same Banana Republic khaki white-person uniform and just marches out there. The same outfit he wears digging in Egypt is the same outfit he wears visiting Indonesia or India or Canada wherever this is.

This is probably somewhere famous, but I don’t recall it off the top of my head, forgive me. There are a lot of massive relief sculptures in Asia.

Anyways, after that one travel through the vaguely East/South East, Pegasus had a *phase.*

Now listen, I don’t really think it’s my job as a reviewer to say if shoving vaguely religious/mythical/cultural iconography into playing cards is a good idea or a bad idea, because that’s been talked to death in a million other articles you can just go and read. Every art piece has it’s own reason to exist, and every artist is their own person with their own unique life experience. I have had to sit through so much weird ass installation art and avante garde performance art, that I have learned solely one thing about art critique. I am not art Jesus. I cannot save a piece, I cannot condemn a piece. So, I will not throw down, and I will not prop up--unless of course it is weird little shorts on your main villain matched with long black golfing socks--but I am allowed to say--

...huh?...

Remember how about ten or so episodes ago I was like, low key a little confused that it appeared like Yugioh was waltzing casually into religion territory? Remember how I was like “dude do they realize this is a reference to Lazarus? Like, they’re saying Kaiba could have been THE Lazarus?” Remember when I thought that was a big deal?

Well, Yugioh turned to itself and was like “hold my beer” and then just straight up outdid itself in so many weird ways. And don’t get me wrong, most of these cards are overall fine, nothing really all that shocking, but still like...

...OK, kid’s show. I’m sure all the children in the audience understood the references in this 100%.

Also, the fact that Noah is like “I turned to somewhat religious deities from antiquity to fight your ass” is kind of funny when you recognize he’s fighting a literal Pharaoh who has like 2000 of them of them under his belt already (counting himself). Like, nice job, Noah, you got like...12 in that deck? Congrats.

Anyway, Noah and his slightly problematic deck gets thrown by a bunch of Yugi’s cards and then Noah just plops right out of this giant dude. Or dudette. I didn’t really catch the gender on the Seraphim that is actually a fairy card. But, it was like Noah was being birthed for a second time. Well, third time, if you count when he was reborn as a robot.

So long story short, now he’s a boy again.

Noah had the foresight to put his clothes back on before he fell out of this gigantic robot god thing who’s name I’ve forgotten. A shame, it would’ve been a good gag to just see how long it takes Noah to realize he’s ass naked when he’s a robot who has no sense of touch. Or...body.

Anyways, Yugi’s friends immediately start doing what they do best, which is to trashtalk the other team so badly that it would get you tossed out of most sporting events. It backfires on them not just once but...several times, and I’m telling you, it is surprising that they never actually learned in this entire episode that all they ever had to do was shut their mouth and stop backseating.

But apparently, it’s courageous to catcall your opponent. Its a sign of undying friendship as per Yugioh law.

Anyways, we’re gonna get death 169 this episode, so stop scrolling right now and then think to yourself--who’s it gonna be. Who’s gonna be death 169?

Some of you (all of you) might know this show by heart but for those who haven’t (none of you), this’ll be our little interactive portion.

OK, here we go.

YESSSSS HE FINALLY DIED.

I knew that if I kept saying “Duke will die next” that eventually the dice fall in my favor. It took like 5 or 6 deaths before this actually happened, but can I say “called it?” Is that allowed? I’m gonna say “called it” and pretend that I called this.

Although, unfortunately, I did not call everything.

Wow, Tristan won the shipping wars! All of them! He’s death 169! So NICE!

I did not predict that at all, I honestly thought that 169 would be Duke, and Bro thought it would be Kaiba. We were both so wrong.

It makes sense though. Like he is the littlest horny monkey here. He deserves 169.

Anyway, then the sad stuff starts piling up. Just like so much sadness at once. Yugioh does not pace sadness like, at all, so you never get a chance to grieve since so many deaths are back to back in this show. And by back to back I mean, they play only one round of cards in between each death.

The writing team was so excited to kill everyone off, that it was the fastest rounds of cards I’ve ever seen this show play. We should tempt them with killing off their core cast more often.

So, seeing that half of his friends have been cursed with an eternity of being brain dead and living out their existence half alive in this weird digital universe, Pharaoh starts to doubt everything about his own abilities.

How weird is it to solve your ghost’s existential crisis when you’re trapped in some VR world he shouldn’t be able to exist in anyway?

But youknow, Pharaoh does this sometimes. Sometimes Pharaoh just gets really anxious if not enough people are telling him “It’s OK, Pharaoh, you’re basically a God. You already died once even so how could it possibly be worse? You’ll probably be OK!”

It’s the typical Yugi meltdown that accompanies every Yugi duel, except Pharaoh style, so it’s lower pitched and his hair is a little bit taller.

Noah tries to take advantage of this lapse of confidence, but Pharaoh’s melt down isn’t quite enough to make him quit a game.

Again, Noah seems constantly shocked that all of Kaiba’s friends and Kaiba himself are just incapable of putting cards down and walking away. This is like the 4th time he’s begged these kids to just stop and they just kept going.

And then, it’s time for the romance of the ages that we completely forgot existed. That’s right, shippers rejoice, YugixTea is back on the table, and it’s entirely because everyone else is dead.

Show, can you even be bothered? Like I feel so bad for y’all who shipped the canon ship because they just...forgot about y’all like...a lot.

But don’t worry, it’s still very vague, and instead of giving any sort of sentimental dialogue, Tea is just going to tear into Noah like a yummy sandwich.

Also, Tea thinks that Pharaoh has control over turning people to stone, that’s a weird thing she thinks now. 

I mean for all I know, he can totally do this. Why the hell not? Go ahead, Yugioh. Surprise me.

And then...Noah just kept her alive a little longer?

I know that he was turning people into stone every turn but did I hear that wrong or did he seriously take a turn longer to freeze Tea, just to spite her?

What is it with the Kaiba’s and Tea? I make jokes that she’s the Mom of this mess of a family, but even Noah let her live way longer than anyone else here.

He got over it, though.

And then Pharaoh decided to die.

Like he wasn’t actually dead, he was just low on lifepoints, and was like....that’s it. I’m done. Goodbye world. It was a good couple of years that I haunted the Hell out of everybody through this weird, very strange child. See you next Millennium.

And then he just kind of took a nap.

Like canonically, Pharaoh just took a nap in the middle of this duel. He is out for like...kind of a while.

Pharaoh melt-downs are kind of the worst because they do seem to involve him completely shutting down. At least in this game, he isn’t lying completely flat on his face, as I have seen him do in a duel before.

PS How does this work?

I know I’m not supposed to think about it, and I’ve held back on talking about it for 20 episodes but like...Noah uploaded the mind of Yugi. Not Pharaoh.

Pharaoh’s mind is attached to Yugi through the puzzle...but the puzzle is not attached to the computer in any way. While Yugi’s brain now has a labyrinth problem, that doesn’t mean that Pharaoh would even be here. He is a magical ghost attached to Yugi’s body which is Not Actually Here.

So like...how is this happening?

Can you seriously trap Pharaoh here in this realm? You can’t, right? Like it isn’t possible, he’s the only one who’s not ever actually here in the first place.

Like...Pharaoh should be able to just wake up in the pod, open the door, and walk right out of there, just like he did with Bakura in Season 1 when Yugi got turned into a playing card. Mind you, in Season 1, Yugi’s soul was dislodged and not his brain, but this just seems like a little bit of a retcon.

I have already thought about this more than the people who made this kid’s show, so I’ll let it go, but this is one of those things I have to try real hard not to think about because...

...if Noah has full control of all their brain functions and projects images on to their brain via hallucinations, then how can they hallucinate anything else? How can you pass out and have dreams?

Which doesn’t matter of course--this doesn’t matter to the plot really, as this is a kid’s show and so just go with it--but I have been thinking about this in the background for 20 episodes and this is where I kind of couldn’t ignore it anymore because we’re gonna dive into some hella weird territory, get ready.

So anyways, Yugi comes down like some sort of cherubic angel and it was very hammy and legit pretty funny I mean look at this.

If this were Sailor Moon, Yugi would be ass naked and have huge, beautiful fairy wings covered in holographic glitter and cherry blossoms.

I’d normally just put in a picture of the infamous last episode of Sailor Moon I’m referring to in order to make this joke complete, but knowing Tumblr I’d be flagged in like two milla-seconds because this blog gets flagged KIND OF A LOT FOR A RECAP BLOG OF A KID’S SHOW, but just google it for yourself and bear with me here cuz like,

These two?

Same energy.

I see this image and I can immediately hear that woodwind just bounce off the back of my brain. It’s like conditioned in me although I allllways skip the intro.

So in this dream/literal brain world reality that they’re walking through, despite being in a digital world, Yugi has stuffed some hand selected hallucinations that seem to have like...a personality embedded into each.

So...Yugi can just create clones in his head that act like he remembers his friends act.

Really interesting superpower there.

And yes, this does mean that Pharaoh not only has no long term memories, he flat out refuses to check on his short term data as well. He is just acting purely on a margarita mix of impulse and anxiety. He is such a freakin mess.

I can’t believe this guy went on a date once.

And like, of course this is all a metaphor for how even if your friends can’t be with you physically, their memory is enough to push you forward when you’re feeling all alone. It’s a nice moral of the story, it’s just that it’s a little spooky when it’s literal.

So yeah, Yugi has a fake Kaiba at all times just flinging insults at him from within his own mind. It’s one thing to say you got the voice of all your rivals, friends, and parents pressuring you in the back of your mind, but to literally have them always stowed there, trapped together in the back of your mind is...that’s very Yugi.

This kid needs so much help.

PS nice little frosting on the cake that that he does not store any family members in the short term memory zoo exhibit. Sorry Gramps, you were uninvited from this show in S2 when Bakura knocked you unconscious and you fell off screen and then we just...forgot to ever check up on you ever again.

I’m sure Gramps is probably fine.

DON’T THINK ABOUT IT, GUYS.

I keep thinking about it and it never comes full circle. Just--the hearts of our dead friends are in these cards, although the friends we were just talking to were absolutely fake people that Yugi has copy-pasted into his clip board in his brain hut. Also, these cards were drawn before they would have given him these cards so they didn’t...actually give him cards. They just...lodged their hearts in there real good.

Although their minds are trapped in a weird rock state and their bodies are trapped in some pods...their hearts are good to go wherever.

It doesn’t matter, in the end, Yugi played a bunch of different moves--I want to say like all six cards in the longest and most complicated Yugioh turn in the history of the Earth--in order to finally end Noah.

I can’t have nice things.

Speaking of, I forgot to mention the most tragic death of this episode.

.

.

.

He may have been resurrected, but his soul was deffo disconnected with his body, or at least my PAD data (during Monster Hunter fest even) and all of my pictures and videos are gone. My auto correcting is also really effed up now, and it’s been auto correcting in kind of...really offensive ways...and I have no idea why because it’s only been rebooted for like...2 days. So it’s almost like my phone got resurrected as an evil person or something like it got Marik’d or something. Either way, I had a fun time explaining some texts at work that my dumbass phone decided were a cool idea.

The things I do for this side blog.

Anyway, if you just got here, this is a link where you can read these from the start in chrono order.

[wirewitchviolet]

RPG Campaign Setting Thoughts - The Origins of Magic

Previous entries in this series of posts:

The Planes

Alignment, Death, and Outsiders

The Actual, You Know, Setting

Today’s topic is something I think should really be the biggest preoccupation of any RPG campaign setting where it’s a concern, but one that most seem to gloss right over- Where the hell did all these spell casters come from? While I’m at it, I have officially decided that if I get a book out for all this, I’m going to include 4 PC classes (in addition to compatibility with all the existing options out there), covering the basics of Standard Party Composition and filling in some setting gaps here. Swashbuckler for a fighter type (never been happy with Paizo’s take on finesse-y fighters, might call it something else), single-school-focus wizards (gonna have to bust out the thesaurus for an unused name), divine casters who allow themselves to be possessed by agents of their deity (will likely come out like some kinda variant druid as a result), and something for the general rogue/bard 4th slot that’s a bit different that I’m tentatively calling The Party Mom Class.

Anyway, on with the magic origins. As I’ve already largely established, I think, most deities don’t really hold any direct sway over the prime material plane, and physical manifestation type stuff isn’t a thing. Divine casters of course open the door for all kinds of stuff, but you need to learn how to pray to your deity first, so as kind of a weird quirk I guess, every tradition of divine casters here is inherently rooted in arcane casters working out the whole astral projection thing, or people coming back from the dead having learned some things out there. The core deity list is something I’d really like to get some creative input on from practitioners of actual pantheistic religions, but I definitely want to get into the first follower of each once I get to listing them out, and how they came to be such.

So OK. Clerics come after wizards, but with wizards, there’s two things to worry about. They need some existing magic in the world to study, and they need a real good in-world reason to draw sharp divisions between different schools of magic. Well, OK NEED is a strong word. You could pretty much just merge everything together with no effect beyond it being a lot easier to look up spells by level and drop the whole school thing with little to no consequence, but I LIKE schools, so I need to rationalize them.

So my thinking is, every school of magic originally started as literally a different school, isolated from the others in a different part of the world, coming at the whole “magic” thing from a different angle. And this of course all only really applies to STUDIED magic. The whole concept of the prime material plane being painted with the inner planes used as a palette, coupled with the inner planes being inhabited just inherently means you’re going to have elementals and genies around from the beginning of time, along with dragons. And while I am writing out the whole concept of half-orcs and half-elves, all bets are off for people like ifrits and oreads and tieflings, so sorcerers are also going to be in play well before wizards.

So really, let me just put together a rough timeline on all things magic here:

Deities have just always been out there, with various outsiders forming as deaths happen and so on.

Elementals and anything else from the inner planes, while rare, have always been hanging out on the prime material, with half-mortal children following as soon as other creatures hit the table, really.

Dragons were probably one of the first types of creature to be created in the world, linnorms especially. And again, there’s some innate magic to them plus plenty of capacity for half-dragon children.

The first spellcasting class to really come about in the world though is going to be oracles. Oracles just happen after all. Mysterious circumstances of birth, ties to the great mysterious magic of the wold, no real teachers or questing or heritage involved. They’re rare though.

Sorcerers are next to hit the scene, because hey, after a few generations those half-genies and half-dragons are going to dilute down to bloodlines. Bloodragers come in at the same time, two sides of the same coin and I see it.

I’d go one further too and say all of the above predate even the basics of civilization. Which you do need at least a bit of to really get the ball rolling on the rest of the classes.

Druids come in next. A long secretive tradition of just trying to study and worship the natural world around them without bringing in any expectations, secretive order though, so they keep what they know to themselves. The more learned druids are probably going to work out some notion that there’s an afterlife thanks to reincarnate being a spell and all, but I don’t really see any other religious beliefs splintering off there. Just a weird thing to not think too hard about while you get used to being a dwarf woman or a boar or something

The first proper schools of magic I see springing up as people really start to settle down and invent systems of writing and social structures allowing for dedicated scholars are Evocation and Transmutation. Likely founded close enough together in terms of the actual date, but far enough away that nobody can really conclusively sort out the various calendars or lack thereof and be certain which came first. You’ve got raw elemental forces clearly evident as something magical because, again, elementals on the prime material plane are absolutely a thing, someone’s going to try to pin down how they work. Elves are out there routinely having their Doctor Who regenerations, along with the odd druid wildshaping, so, changing things around is equally likely to be stumbled across.

Alchemy begins as a tradition sometime after these, largely born out of a movement of skeptics seeing some of these early evokers and transmuters, trying to recreate what they do, maybe swiping some glances at spellbooks. Potions and recipes for them inherently spread around the world a bit faster than a bunch of nerds filling libraries in budding schools, too.

Next up, Necromancy. If humanity as a whole has people who can manipulate the elements, and make changes to people’s bodies out there, someone’s going to get it into their head to go all Full Metal Alchemist and work out exactly what’s so different about a living creature than a rock or something, and start some pretty depraved experimentation. Probably really focused on poisons and diseases at first, eventually getting some handle on the whole notion of souls and alternate forces that can animate a body, and eventually working up to the real serious game changer that is astral projection, and getting a handle on the whole notion of the outer planes.

One of the first proper divine casters is going to come along real shortly thereafter when some necromancer makes a new friend out there... and probably one of the nastier ones too. Like, when I have a pantheon nailed down and need to have a real proper “this is just the WORST deity who needs to seriously be fought against, probably the first to make contact with humanity.

So now we have this divine class I’m working on, followed shortly by clerics. And evil outsiders possessing people and corpses and generally making things less than great, along with giving the whole school of necromancy kind of a bad name for opening that up.

Tieflings naturally follow, and some more bloodlines of course.

Enchantment is the next school to be founded, because we have all these outsiders around now to give examples of how charms and profane gifts and such work to use as a model.

Illusion follows, kind of a parallel development, again, there’s a lot to learn from studying evil outsiders.

At this point in the history of the world, magic is going to have a pretty bad reputation in general, but hey, fight fire with fire, right?

Next out the gate though is bards and skalds. There’s 5 schools of magic out there in the world, so naturally you’re going to have people trying to pay them all a visit, learn a few handy tricks, pick up a lot of other esoteric knowledge as they go, and tell a good story. This also helps really spread the whole magic notion to any parts of the world who haven’t been paying it much attention.

So, the other schools are going to all spring up in bursts, as new eyes get on the whole magic concept. Abjuration to try and avoid dealing with the dangers of other forms of magic (and consequently, one with very few pure practitioners, nice to know at least a few other spells to know how to counter them). Conjuration largely as a fusion of the theories behind Necromancer and Evocation to see what can be pulled out of these other planes without the nastier baggage. Divination largely as a means of working out what’s up out there, and Psychic magic as a sort of alternate take on the whole thing, building up inner strength against these things, tied to monks culturally.

Other religious practices and paths to power are going to spring up along the way, fuzzier to pin down what crops out when without a full pantheon nailed down or major nations of the world. Shamans are probably about as old as druids, similar mindset involved. Witches probably crop up shortly after learning about some of the more powerful outsiders, with experimentation on how to get in touch with such without all the possession and astral projection and so on, and informed by some of the more naturalistic magic practices.

And while I do like the concept of the world’s first interaction with divine powers being on the grimdark side, I would think the rest of the pantheon would get in touch with people pretty soon after. Plenty of other necromancers to astrally project, learn what else is out there, make contact with other deities and outsiders. Divination is another gateway. Religious traditions that don’t involve spell-granting deities are going to precede all of this, and some practicioners on learning about this class I’m creating are probably going to try going receptive on blind faith, getting in touch with outsiders with similar sensibilities.

Then as we get closer to the present day of course, the trade in magic bards got started is going to get books on at least the basics propagating all over the world beyond these few founding schools so regular ol’ wizards with a full range of spells are now the most common by far, magi pick up enough to pair with swords. Arcanists to really go all turbo-nerd and try to break down theoretical fundamentals underpinning everything. Churches get big and militant enough for paladins, inquisitors, war priests. Anything I’m forgetting here?

Oh, and ironically enough, the creator god I’m calling Brin as a placeholder, despite having the most obvious visible impact on the world from the dawn of time is one of the last to really get a formal church. They don’t need mortal agents to influence things, they don’t have any reason to care what happens with anyone’s souls, and they aren’t based out in the outer planes, Really they’re a bit like Paizo’s Groetus in terms of ”why would anyone pick you to formally worship?”