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arcaneranger · 5 years ago

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Final Thoughts - 2019 Long Shows

Dear Lord. This is where all the good shows went.

2019 was absolutely awful on a season-by-season basis (except for Summer, anyway), but that’s mostly because most of the best shows ran longer than what has become the industry norm of a single season. And indeed, heading into the new decade, we seem to be seeing a major renaissance for two- or split-cour shows, given the massive success seen by shows like My Hero Academia, Food Wars, and Haikyuu!!..particularly in comparison to the new perpetual-runners Black Clover (which, despite running for over two straight years now, is still not the most popular show of Fall 2017 by viewer count on MAL, and sits at a ‘meh’ 7.2), and even worse, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, which is faring even worse on both counts even though it premiered two whole seasons earlier and the fact that it is the sequel to Naruto.

As a reminder of my rules, the shows on this list may or may not have premiered in 2019, but they finished airing this year. The split-cour rule (stating that I judge any show that “finishes” and then premieres a “new season” within six months) didn’t come into play for any 2018 shows, but it will for Ascendance of a Bookworm and Food Wars this year, at the very least.

With that being said! 25 shows running longer than thirteen episodes finished airing this year after being simulcast, and of those…

I skipped 6:

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part V: Golden Wind, Fairy Tail Final Series, A Certain Magical Index III, Ace Attorney Season 2 and Cardfight Vanguard (2018) because I either dropped or have not finished their previous (also long-running) seasons.

Yu-Gi-Oh VRAINS because the simulcast started late and also it was bad.

I Dropped 8:

Worst Long Show of 2019: The Rising of the Shield Hero

It’s always fun to see that a show you hated from its first episode only gets more and more distasteful afterwards, but it’s less fun when a service you have to promote because they’re the legal option is forced to shove it down your throat because they had a hand in making it and it became a massive hit that your friends don’t see any issue with because the author wrote a story that justifies its hero’s patronage of the slave industry. This is my punishment for watching the whole first season of The Asterisk War before I knew better.

YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world

A confusing mess from the word go, this ill-fated adaptation of a visual novel from the nineties seems like it was mostly made to cash in on the popularity of the Science Adventure series, but failed to present itself in a way that made an ounce of sense or looked remotely interesting.

Fairy Gone

Am I really the only one that saw potential here? I mean yes, it ended up a boring slog that didn’t care to move its plot in a meaningful direction, but the first episode was at least cool. I guess Izetta: The Last Witch should have taught me better.

We Never Learn

I know that I’m in the minority in terms of the male demographic for shows like this, but honestly, how are bland harem shows still this easy to market? A copy-pasted protagonist with copy-pasted waifus drag down what could be an interesting setup for a story.

Karakuri Circus

The first episode of this one had me excited, the second and third left me bored to tears and wondering if it would continue to look uglier by the minute. I haven’t seen a three-cour show look this janky since Knight in the Area.

Radiant

Having heard good things about this show from my cohorts, I do feel bad for saying I’ll probably never return to Radiant, but when you have a show that’s notably written by a European author...and it turns out to be a frustratingly standard shounen affair with middling production values, well, you can see my earlier annoyance with Cannon Busters.

Ensemble Stars

This one still gets to me. It almost looked like a male-idol show I would finally be able to get behind, what with its rebellious attitude and oddball setting...that is, until the setting got to be too unbelievable and the show began drowning its audience in side-characters because they had to squeeze every husbando from the mobile game into the story, and it all began to resemble UtaPri a little too much...but without the production value.

Boogiepop and Others

This was a hard drop, honestly. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I felt four episodes in, before concluding that I was bored and not particularly invested, two things that should never describe the experience of watching a Madhouse show. The fact that this was the project responsible for ruining One Punch Man only made it worse. There’s a slow burn, and then there’s walking away without turning the stove on.

And I Finished 11 (holy crap that’s like three hundred episodes just on their own).

That Time I Was Reincarnated as a Slime (5/10 & 1/10)

I’ll be honest, I had forgotten just how livid I was with the ending (and especially the sad excuse of a recap episode) of Slimesekai, and reading back through my write-up of it, it’s certainly coming back to me. While this year had bigger demons to fight (Shield Hero), the bad taste that Slime left me with hasn’t really faded, and the wasted premise bugs me to this day.

Hinomaru Sumo (7/10)

What Hinomaru lacked in production value, it happily made up for in good execution and earnest heart. I can’t believe this came from the same studio as Conception, Try Knights and 7Seeds, but if they can only get out one good show a year, I’m glad that we got one bringing attention to a sport that many will joke about but few understand, respect and appreciate.

Kono Oto Tomare (7/10)

Speaking of giving love to traditional Japanese culture, here’s a decent-if-unoriginal show about a local high school koto club down on their luck, and the troubled teens coming together under a scrappy protagonist to bring it back to life. Kono Oto Tomare doesn’t have much that you haven’t seen before, but a decently-executed club drama with Your Lie In April-inspired musical performances is more than enough to keep me interested, and since Forest of Piano kinda crashed and burned under the weight of its own self-importance this year, it was nice to have an alternative.

MIX: Meisei Story (8/10)

It’s hard to judge MIX next to the other shows on this list because it’s almost too old-school for its own good, revelling in an eighties storytelling style that didn’t end up jiving with a wide audience this year. But at the same time, its fun character dynamics (and a very good dub from Funimation, despite them saying they’d never touch sports anime again) were very entertaining to watch, even if it didn’t focus as much on the sport it was supposedly about as much as I’d have liked.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (8/10)

I fully admit that I’m very salty about the fact that this won Show of the Decade in Funimation’s poll while it was still on and I thought there were hundreds of more deserving shows, but I can’t deny that Demon Slayer was a very enjoyable experience, albeit one that I had notable problems with. That’s not gonna stop me from getting mad when it sweeps the Anime Awards in a few weeks, though.

Fire Force (8/10)

I was very afraid that David Productions wouldn’t be able to match the energy of Studio Bones’ adaptation of Ohkubo’s previous work, Soul Eater, but I was happy to be proven wrong. Even if the last few episodes contained a bit too much infodumping, it was all sandwiched between jaw-dropping fight scenes that proved that the people who make Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure can still handle the reins of a more traditional action show.

Fruits Basket 1st Season (8/10)

I know that my score for this one is a bit lower than others, but I think that Fruits Basket did pretty well in its first season, considering that it was largely spent setting up future storylines and adapting the part of the manga we’d all seen before, but with much higher production value. I’ve been familiar with this part of the story for over a decade, and the scene with Tohru and Kyo (you know the one) still made me cry. Now, we get the real plot going.

Dr Stone (9/10)

A great start to a totally new spin on shounen, Dr Stone gives me hope for survival in the post-Shokugeki world in which we’ll soon live, as a show that wears its research on its sleeve. A complex plot weaving interesting characters in and out of a narrative surrounding a philosophical battle where both sides actually do have fair points (even if one of them is going about it in a pretty cruel manner). More please.

Vinland Saga (9/10)

Once again, a great start to what will hopefully be years of quality storytelling, Vinland Saga made it seem like it was dragging in the middle only to reveal just what its slow burn had been leading up to, with twist-heavy storytelling and a fantastic cast to match the high visual quality of its brutal battles.

Run With the Wind (9/10)

It’s not often that Production I.G. gets to make a complete, fully-realized show anymore, and this one was a glorious reminder of the potential of the studio in the TV space, and a great rebound for the director of Joker Game. It’s gorgeous to look at, the cast is wonderful, and the story is both realistic and idealistic in a satisfying balance. It’s a miserable process to get to the finish line in real life, but sitting back and watching this was nothing but a treat. At least, until a minor fumble at the end.

Best Long Show of 2019: Dororo (9/10)

Speaking of complete stories, Tezuka Productions and MAPPA teamed up for a breathtaking adaptation of an underappreciated Tezuka classic that expands upon the story in exactly the right way to create a thrilling, savage, beautiful masterpiece that focuses a laser-sharp eye into the relationship between two characters in their journey to, literally and figuratively, become complete people. Also, that opening was killer.

And that’s it! That’s the fun list. Next comes the painful one. Stay tuned for the trash heap.

#final thoughts #year end anime list #long 2019 #dororo #demon slayer #Fruits Basket #vinland saga #run with the wind #Dr Stone #rising of the shield hero #fire force #kono oto tomare!#mix meisei story #hinomaru sumo #hinomaru zumou #that time i got reincarnated as a slime #tensura

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overthinkingkdrama · 4 years ago

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In regards to your Itaewon Class review: I was sorely disappointed with how the revenge plot panned out. What did you think of the fact that it was actually Soo Ah who brought down Jangga, and her revenge plot is given like 30 sec of screen time? And just in general how they handled Saeroyi’s revenge with kidnapping, terminal illness etc.?

I think I might have mentioned in my review that Soo Ah had a huge motivation gap for basically the entire middle stretch of the drama, only to have that hastily plastered over at the very end in a supremely unsatisfying way. I’m happy to expand on that a little bit:

When I say she has a motivation gap, what I mean is that near the beginning of the story Soo Ah’s decision to work for Jangga, even taking into account the fact that she feels conflicted about this decision, more or less makes sense for the kind of gray, ambitious character she is. However, as the drama goes on, more and more of the basis for that decision and any kind of loyalty she might feel toward Jangga or any excuses she might have for staying were slowly stripped away. This goes on until at some point in the middle of the drama I found myself asking, “Why don’t you just quit?” She had every opportunity to move into a different business or even work with Saeroyi directly, but she remained stubbornly in her position. Therefore , a motivation gap: i.e. nothing is motivating Soo Ah’s decisions

Of course, they retroactively explain away this motivation gap by way of “revenge” as her motivation. It doesn’t work for the audience. We don’t buy it and our frustration with her character is not assuaged. Why? Because it wasn’t set up well, or at all. The writers hadn’t developed any curiosity around Soo Ah’s decision making, never implied that there might be a deeper reason for it. On the contrary, it continued to imply that this was “just the way she was” and use it as an obstacle in her romance with Saeroyi. It was a bizarre character writing decision. I can’t prove this without going back and rewatching portions of the drama (I’m obviously not going to do that) but I somewhat suspect that the twist at the end that Soo Ah was actually taking Jangga down from the inside THE WHOLE TIME actually creates plot holes earlier in the drama. Her mid-drama motivation gap of “why continue working for Jangga if they treat you like crap and are so obviously evil?” is replaced by the new motivation gap of “why actively hide the fact that you’re working toward the downfall of Jangga from Saeroyi?” It just doesn’t make any sense at all.

If I had to guess why they wrote it that way it’s probably one of two thing: a) they hadn’t thought it through until later in the writing process and had to hastily retcon Soo Ah’s character or b) the didn’t tell us about Soo Ah’s real motivation because they needed the audience to have a reason to dislike her as the second female lead and root against her love line. I’m just speculating obviously, but regardless of the reasoning the entire last quarter of the dramas shows damning signs of hasty rewrites and plot hole back filling.

Look no further than the extremely makjang resolution of the plot lines for the entire set of Jangs (Geun Won, Geun Soo and Chairman Jang.) I can’t remember if I’ve specifically complained about this on tumblr yet or not, but the janky character development that you have with Soo Ah, but also notably with Geun Won and Geun Soo (the way they kept switching back and forth between having redemption arcs and being cartoon villains) almost feels like two different people were writing these episodes at intervals and not sharing notes with each other. I have no way of proving that, obviously, but in my opinion both brothers were wildly out of character at several points in the last 4 episodes of the run, which I think added to the unintentional hilarity of the finale week episodes.

Hope that was what you wanted. Thanks for the ask! Sorry for the slow reply.

Jona

#asks #answered #itaewon class #this is not an itaewon class hate blog btw #I just keep getting asks about it lol

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artificialqueens · 4 years ago

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Stupid For You, Chapter 6 (Crygi, Jankie, Jaida x Nicky) - Metaluna

Fic summary: A cliche lesbian AU. It’s the summer before Gigi goes to college, and she decides it’s time to take a job at a local amusement park. There, she meets Crystal, a beautiful girl that she with bonds over the anxiety of the service industry. Almost immediately, Gigi gets it BAD for Crystal. Meanwhile, Jackie definitely ISN’T gay. She likes men. Only. Men. What happens when a beautiful girl named Jan comes into the picture? And lastly, Nicky flirts with anything with a pulse. Jaida falls for anyone who gives her attention. This is going to be one interesting summer.

Chapter summary: As things are tense between Gigi and Crystal, Jan tries her best to intervene.

Crystal couldn’t sleep. All she could think about were the words she said that so deeply hurt Gigi. She didn’t know where they came from. They weren’t at all from a place of malevolence. It was as though the words came out and Crystal couldn’t stop them. Before she even realized what she had said, it was too late. She understood if Gigi didn’t forgive her, considering she wasn’t sure if she’d forgive her if the roles were reversed. After tossing and turning for hours, she looked at her phone. 6:30 A.M.

Since there was no point in sleeping for half an hour, she forced herself to get out of bed. Normally, she put on a full face of makeup. Today, she couldn’t even be bothered to do her eyebrows, opting instead to wear her thick rimmed glasses. Instead of her methodically done space buns, she threw up all her hair on top of her head without brushing it.

Walking to work was the last thing that she wanted to do, but her parents had to work, and she knew Ryan would still be mad. Right as she shut her door to embark on her walk, she heard a rumble of thunder. Shit.

Even with an umbrella, by the time Crystal arrived to work, she was soaked. Crystal sighed as she put her damp backpack into her locker. She tried her best to wipe the raindrops off her glasses, but smudged them in the process, making them worse. Even though she knew it wasn’t a big deal, Crystal was at the point emotionally where every small occurrence felt like the end of the world. She felt tears form. As she wiped them away, she hoped to God no one saw.

“Hey, are you okay?” a voice asked kindly. It was Jan, who was standing next to Jackie.

Shit.

“Yeah, I’m great!” Crystal could hear the fake enthusiasm dripping from her voice. “Just… something in my eye!”

“Sis, we know something’s wrong.”

Jackie agreed. “You don’t look like yourself. Let’s go sit.”

The second Crystal sat down, she started crying. Jan reached out to hold her hand. “Talk to us.”

Crystal sniffled. “I think Gi…one of my friends, hates me.”

“Why would she hate you?” Jackie asked. Crystal could tell that both Jackie and Jan caught wind that she almost said “Gigi.”

“I said some really nasty things during an argument. I mean low blows, things that no one should ever bring up, especially not during an argument.”

“Listen here, gorg. If your friend really is your friend, she would understand. We all say stupid stuff that we don’t mean. I say stupid shit to Jackie every day and she still keeps me around.”

“Jan’s right. I’m sure if you apologize to your friend, she’ll forgive you.”

“Well, here’s the thing. I don’t deserve forgiveness. This is stuff that she told me in confidence. She trusted me with this information, and I literally threw it in her face.”

Crystal looked up and saw a skinny blonde out of the corner of her eye. She and Gigi locked eyes. Almost immediately, Gigi’s face turned from a neutral expression to one of malice.

By this point, Crystal was sure that Jan and Jackie figured out who she was talking about. “Gigi’s never going to want to talk to me again. Did you see the way she just looked at me?”

“Maybe it’s not what you think,” Jan said optimistically. “Maybe she just realized she forgot something. I’ll go talk to her.”

With that, Jan left Crystal confidently got up from the table and walked over to Gigi. Strategically, Jan made sure that the two of them were standing out of Crystal’s view.

“Jan, I’m not talking about this right now. Not here. Not now,” Gigi said firmly.

“But Crystal’s a wreck right now.”

“I don’t care.”

Jan was taken aback. “Okay, wow. I don’t know what happened between the two of you, frankly it’s not any of my business. But, something bad must have happened if you went from being hung up on her to not even being able to look at the girl. Right?”

“Be quiet! No one else knows I’m…” Gigi trailed of raising her eyebrows.

“Gotcha. But damn, whatever she said was a lot, wasn’t it?”

Gigi nodded. “I just don’t want to talk to her right now. I need time.”

“I respect that, and I’m sure she can too.”

The second Jan came back to the table, Crystal demanded, “What did she say?”

“She said she needed time.”

“Okay, but could you tell how much time?”

Jan shrugged. Crystal knew she looked pathetic, and she didn’t care. One way or another, she was going to make it right with Gigi. She cared way too much about her to give up.

–

On her break, Gigi absentmindedly scrolled through Instagram. She felt her jaw clench as she saw a picture of Crystal and her boyfriend on a hike. She noticed how radiant Crystal looked at sunset. In the picture, Crystal was kissing Ryan’s cheek, and all Gigi could think of is how much she wished it was her. She mentally kicked herself for thinking that, because she was supposed to be mad at Crystal. If anyone knew how to hold a grudge, it was Gigi. She wanted nothing more than to be mad at Crystal, to completely shut her out. But, there was something about Crystal. Gigi couldn’t bring herself to stay mad at her. As Gigi looked up she saw that Crystal was sitting at the table diagonal to her. They locked eyes for a moment, and looked away at the same time.

Even though she told Jan she didn’t want to talk to Crystal, Gigi knew it was a lie. She wanted nothing more than to run up to Crystal’s table and to talk about what happened. As she stole a glance at the redhead, Gigi saw Crystal stare at her phone intensely. After appearing to type a small novel, she tossed her phone on the table and laid her head in her hands.

Gigi looked down so as not to raise suspicion. Once a few seconds passed, Gigi deemed it an appropriate time to look up again. Gigi had never seen Crystal look so stressed, but when Gigi decided she was going to go talk to her, Crystal left in a hurry. Something was very wrong.

–

Jan had a tendency to insert herself in her friend’s problems. It wasn’t her fault, she just wanted to help. If ever there was a time to help sort out friendship problems, it was now. Jan couldn’t stand to see Gigi any less than happy, and seeing Crystal without a smile on her face hurt. Jan promised Jackie she would stop “meddling” in her friend’s problems. But she had to step in. She had to, especially after Jackie told her horror stories of how friendships were ruined over petty drama each summer. Jan had a feeling this was a little more than petty drama, but she’d be damned if her friend group would get split up.

While she was in the bathroom fixing her eyeliner, Jan heard crying one of the bathroom stalls.

“Hello?” she called.

No one responded but whoever was crying tried their best to muffle them.

“Who’s in here?” she tried again.

Jan sauntered over to the bathroom door. She opened and then closed it, and waited. Eventually, Jan heard the stall door unlock, and as she heard the faucet turn on, she rounded the corner to see Crystal staring at herself in the mirror, eyes red and puffy.

“Crystal? What’s wrong?” Jan asked sympathetically.

“Just boyfriend stuff.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Crystal shook her head. “No.”

“Okay, well if you change your mind, you have my number.” Jan dramatically turned to leave.

“Actually…”

“Yes?” Jan answered, turning around a little too quickly. Now was her chance to fix things.

“So, Ryan, my boyfriend, found out that I got really drunk at the party. He asked who got the alcohol, and I told him it was Gigi, and now he doesn’t want me to talk to her anymore.”

Jan raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Crystal questioned.

“Do you want me to sugarcoat it or do you want my honest opinion?”

“Can you sugarcoat it?”

“Actually. No. Crystal, that is the stupidest fucking shit I’ve ever heard in my goddamn life.”

Crystal flinched. “Damn, tell me how you really feel.”

“You can’t let a boy tell you what to do.”

“He’s not just a boy… he’s my boyfriend.”

“Crystal that’s even worse!” Jan exclaimed. “Never let a significant other tell you what to do.”

“I don’t want to make him mad!”

Jan looked down at the bruise on Crystal’s arm, Instinctively, Crystal covered it with her hand.

Jan groaned. “Crystal. Listen to me. If you let your boyfriend tell you how to live your life, you’re going to miss out on a lot.”

“But I love him,” Crystal whined.

“That may be so, but I can tell that you value your friendship with Gigi. Right?”

Crystal nodded.

“Okay, well you can’t ruin that.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

An idea formed. “I have an idea! Tomorrow’s National Roller Coaster Day.”

“And…?”

“And the park is staying open after close for all the employees to ride the rides. Me, Gigi, Jaida, and Nicky are all going together. You should come with us.”

Crystal hesitated. “I was going to hang out with my boyfriend. He’s gonna get mad if I cancel.”

“Come on, Crystal. When else are you going to get to hang out in an empty park with all your friends? Besides, like I say, it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

“I don’t know Jan…”

“Just think about it, okay?”

“I guess.”

“’I guess’ is better than ‘no,’” Jan said with a smile.

As she closed the bathroom door, Jan was confident that she was going to make things better.

—

The next day, the excitement of the staff of Paradise Isle was palpable. Even for the rides staff who were working the event were excited, mainly for the overtime pay. As soon as 9 P.M. rolled around, the event was officially underway. Gigi had never seen the leads and supervisors clear the store so quickly.

As she and Jan headed to the bathroom, they planned everything they were going to do.

“I promised Jackie I’d bring her a funnel cake,” Jan said as she changed into a t-shirt with her future university’s logo. “It’s the least I can do since she’s working.”

“That can definitely be arranged,” Gigi said tucking her uniform into her backpack.

“Gigi…” Jan began.

“Yeah?” Gigi slung her backpack over her shoulder.

“I uh, may have told Crystal that she could join us.”

“You what?”

“I thought that it’d be a good idea. I thought that if we were in a group it wouldn’t be weird and you could maybe make up or something.”

“Oh, shit. This is bad. Jan… Why?” Gigi groaned.

“In hindsight, this was a horrible idea.”

“You think?” Gigi’s tone was harsh, which made Jan cringe. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I deserve that. I’m sorry. I should have ran it by you.”

Gigi sighed as they left the bathroom. “It’s what it is. It’s done now. Maybe you’re right.”

Nicky texted the Gigi that she and Jaida would be waiting for her and Jan at The Landing. After scanning the area for a moment, Gigi saw her friends and waved.

“Hey, bitches!” Jaida greeted with a hug.

“What’d you two do today on your day off?” Jan asked.

Nicky and Jaida just exchanged a look.

“Ah. 10-4,” Gigi said rolling her eyes.

“Is Crystal joining us?” Nicky asked.

“I sent her a text, let me see if she responded,” Jan said as she unlocked her phone. “Damn. She said she’s going hiking with her boyfriend, and that she wishes she could have come.”

“Well she could have,” Jaida said with an eyeroll.

Gigi didn’t say anything, but internally was filled with relief.

Everyone was having an incredible time. Not having to wait for more than ten minutes for anything made the rides even more fun. After riding Sinbad’s Adventure, which was the smallest of the three roller coasters in the park, three times in a row, Jan announced. “Ladies, I need a break.”

The others muttered in agreement, and made their way to a table.

“What’s our game plan?” Jaida questioned.

“Hmm,” Nicky began. “Do you want to do all the lame rides on The Boardwalk?”

“I could take lame right about now,” Jan said. “Plus I told Jackie I’d get her funnel cake.”

“Why did she decide to work?” Nicky asked.

“She wanted doubletime pay. Plus, she claimed that once you go to an after-hours event, the novelty wears off.”

Gigi rubbed her back. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes!” Jan sprung up. “Let’s go ladies.”

Gigi had to admit, the rides that Nicky called lame were some of her favorites. They brought upon a wave of nostalgia of when she and her sister used to come to the park every summer. The way all the carnival-style rides’ signs lit up made her heart soar.

Once they did all of the rides on The Boardwalk in record time, Nicky asked. “Jan, do you feel up to going on The Genie?”

Jan nodded. “Jackie texted me and told me if I didn’t bring her a funnel cake soon, she’s going to eat her left foot.”

“We can’t let that happen!” Jaida said dramatically.

Gigi and Jan linked arms as they skipped to The Backlands. By the time they made it to the roller coaster, Gigi’s legs felt sore. She made a mental note that she’d have to make use of her university’s gym come fall.

“Baby!” Jan exclaimed as she saw Jackie at the greeter position.

“Gimme!” Jackie said as she snatched the funnel cake, taking a bite.

“Are you supposed to do that?” Nicky questioned.

“I’m your lead, how dare you speak to me like that!” Jackie said haughtily. “Nahh, literally no one gives a shit right now. I’m not even supposed to be standing here right now. Greeter isn’t a position that’s up right now.”

“Let’s ride in the front!” Jaida suggested.

“Oh, Jesus,” Jan groaned.

“We can ride in the second row,” Gigi suggested.

The front was an extra cycle’s wait, but no one cared. As they waited, Gigi looked around, and in the fifth row Gigi saw familiar red hair in familiar spacebuns. She felt her stomach drop harder than the Jinn ever did.

Gigi felt her body tense, which Jan noticed. “Gigi, what–”

“Shit,” Nicky breathed. She and Jaida weren’t well-versed in the situation, but they both knew something was up with Gigi and Crystal.

Crystal was standing next to Widow, and her expression went from excited to deer-in-the-headlights. Gigi felt her heart pound. Did Crystal really hate her that much? If she didn’t want to see her, why didn’t she just say so? Gigi had so many questions, and knew she wasn’t going get answers to any of them. Without saying a word, she through the exit gate.

“Should we…” Jaida trailed off.

“I got it,” Jan said.

“Are you sure?” Nicky questioned.

Jan nodded. On her way out, she gave Crystal the nastiest look she’d ever given in her life and said, “You really fucked up. I hope you know that.”

#rpdr fanfiction #gigi goode #crystal methyd #jan sport #jackie cox #jaida essence hall #nicky doll #crygi #jankie #jaida x nicky #lesbian au #slow burn #stupid for you #metaluna #s12 #submission

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pendragonfics · 4 years ago

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the heat

Paring: Clint Barton/Reader

Tags: gender neutral reader, no pronouns used for reader, summer, hot, moving out, light angst

Summary: It’s too hot to cope, and your boyfriend Clint isn’t the best roommate.

Word Count: 1,485

Current Date: 2020-06-14

Summertime never came easily. There were either cold days, and then hot days, and no in-between. But then, once the heat had hit, it was there to stay. And stay it did: it lingered like a bad smell that remained with a vengeance. It didn’t help that Clint Barton’s apartment was most certainly not up to code, and all of this heat made its home in his home. If only you’d taken up the Avengers’ offer of living in the tower in Manhattan, and not rent-free in Clint’s trashy studio apartment that had rats, no insulation and terrible water pressure.

At least you didn’t live in a location often targeted by any of the team’s arch-nemesis.

Right now, you’re struggling to get up from the couch. It’s from the goodwill, has a perpetual stickiness to it, and has you now stuck to it in a layer of sweat. At least from the couch, you can scroll through your feed and charge your phone relatively unencumbered -- of course, despite the lack of air conditioning. From the other side of the living area, Clint sits at the dinner table, fiddling with his arrows. Somehow, he’s not as affected by the heat as you.

While you look like a melting popsicle, he’s the sort of hot that makes his body glisten rather than melt into the polyethylene around the place. His phone, a cracked smartphone that sends janky emojis, plays the radio and he hums along to it. If you push yourself up on your elbows, you can see he’s smiling and humming along to the music while he makes a mess of his arrows. If the heat wasn’t so cloying in your mind, you might think of him as a sex god, or a complete himbo (or honestly, how he’s both of those simultaneously). But seeing him so unaffected makes you feel worse.

“How can you…” you whimper, falling back on your back, the pool of sweat-slick as you slip into it once more. “Ugh, you’re too perfect.”

“Hmm?” he looks your way. “What?”

“I can’t deal with this,” you moan. Clicking off your phone, you struggle to make your body obey your commands and getting up, you look at your practically perfect boyfriend. “It’s too damn hot!”

“Ever since that mission to that active Icelandic volcano, the heat just doesn’t get to me,” he boasts cluelessly, going on with his business. Taking a trick arrow, the signal-jamming one, he flicks the switch on. His phone stops playing the music, and panicking, he switches the arrow back off. He looks back to you, and seeing that you haven’t spoken or moved, frowns, “Babe?”

You shake your head, and with little strength, stalk off to the bathroom. Perhaps a cold shower can fix the drowsiness. But when you get in there, you’re met with an ungodly mess. How was the man you love allowed to be an adult, let alone an Avenger?

Turning on your heel, incensed, you grab your bag. Grumbling about his obsession with the putty arrow under your breath, you shove your flip flops on. You don’t look his way, and throwing things into your duffle that’s usually for longterm away missions, within five minutes you’re in rideshare on your way to the tower.

Either the heat is just too much, but when you get out and access the entry to the once-Stark Tower, there’s little to no fans or press gathering there, to which you’re glad. There’s no way that your armpit stains were presentable enough for a pic in the gossip rag. But once you get into the Tower, there’s a feeling that comes over yourself; relief or orgasm, it’s heavenly.

Thank Thor’s father that Stark spared no expense with his state of the art thermostat.

Once you make it to the level assigned for team meetings and such, you’re sure feeling like life has come back into your body. Dumping your duffle on the empty oval table, you stalk toward the minifridge by the wall of windows and take out a bottle of water.

“Is there a mission I missed the briefing for?”

You choke on the mouthful of ice-cold water, and spluttering, turn to see Sam Wilson standing in the doorway. He’s wearing his own Captain America t-shirt merch under a jean jacket and laughs as you wipe the water off your front.

“You ass,” you cough, but he doesn’t react. Taking a moment, you look at the duffle, and back to Sam. “...I can’t believe I only lasted two weeks there.”

“To be fair, that man is used to worse places to hang his jacket,” He raises a brow, and coming further into the room, takes a good look at you. “No, yeah, I see just why you’re here…” he laughs, “your sweat patches have sweat patches.”

“Stop it,” you moan. “...I’m in a proper mess.”

“Do I look like someone who can help with your love life?” he asks, deadpan. “Look, ______. It’s on you that you moved in too quickly with the team’s resident disaster.”

You agree. As you take a moment to centre yourself, Sam goes to his usual seat at the table and takes a seat sideways so his legs are over the armrests. You take a deep breath and place the water bottle on the table, and then start to rummage around in the duffle for your phone. Your hand touches everything else but your phone; your gym clothes, a sleep mask, the tee-shirt that Clint let you steal that has gosh I love arrows in writing across the chest. But no phone.

“It’s on the -,” you sigh, and turning to Sam, ask, “Can I borrow your phone?”

He looks over. “No,” he says, but slides it your way.

“I owe you so much,” you tell him, and type in your number, calling your phone. Apart from the jingles in advertisements and your parent’s landline, you can’t remember Clint’s number beyond the first two digits. “Name the favour, and I’ll do it no matter how big…”

“Just call your boyfriend so I can go back to playing my phone game,” he teases.

Clint picks up on the second ring, and answers, “Sam! I know you’re cheating on me with ______!”

You can’t help but laugh. “Clint! No, it’s me. I’m at the tower.”

“Huh,” he says. “...are you cheating on me?” he asks.

“No!” you sigh and palm your forehead. “Clint, no. I - I love you.” He’s quiet on his side of the phone line. Maybe it’s because this whole thing is unprecedented, or because neither of you has ever said the l word before about each other. Taking his silence as a good thing, you add, “but I can’t live with you anymore. It’s just so...hard to live there.”

“I love you too,” he says, quietly.

For a moment, both he and you are silent, and you feel a small thing in your chest; whether it’s sadness or a tinge of hope, you’re not sure. But it’s growing with every second that you can’t find the words to say what you need.

“I - I’ll move places. We’ll get a nicer apartment, with no rats and good water pressure. Closer to the water. I have the money for it,” he says.

“Clint, I can’t live with you,” you say again. “I’m moving into the Tower.”

“Is this…” he says, and quietly, asks you, “Is this you breaking up with me?”

“No, no…” you murmur. “No. No, Clint, I love you. I just can’t live with you right now. Especially with this heat, and the way you leave a mess all over the place, and I really - I think we need some time living apart. But no, gosh no, I’m still into you. Big time.”

“Big-time?” he repeats, and for a second, you wish that you could see his face. God, he was stupid, but beautiful, a skilled Avenger but a child at heart and soul. “Okay, um, okay. I’ll bring your stuff over next time I can, your phone too.”

“I’m sorry about how I handled all this,” you tell him. “I’m...you know all this relationship stuff is new to me.”

“Yeah,” he sounds like he’s smiling as he says, “Don’t worry. I’ll be the best boyfriend that doesn’t live with you that you can ever have.”

You smile. “Thanks, Clint.”

“You betcha, babe.” He says, and with a few more words, hangs up.

You look over to Sam, but he’s not sitting over where he was. You can’t see him at all, and when you look down at his phone, you realise that the last time it was used before you got it, was yesterday.

“...I gotta get my powers in check,” you mutter, putting the phone down. Gathering your duffle, you move back to the elevator, and start the process of setting up yourself for your new life in the Tower.

#clint barton #clint #clint barton x reader #clint x reader #hawkeye #hawkeye x reader #hawkeye/reader #avengers x reader #Avengers #marvel fanfic #marvel x reader #chaotic--lovely #pendragonfics #gender neutral reader

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ducktracy · 4 years ago

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172. porky’s railroad (1937)

release date: august 7th, 1937

series: looney tunes

director: frank tashlin

starring: mel blanc (porky, bull), billy bletcher (rival conductor)

frank tashlin’s love of streamline design is incorporated into this fast-paced cartoon about life on the railroad: it’s up to porky and his “percolator on a roller skate” to win a race against an uppity conductor and his streamline shoe-in.

the typography lettering the animated title card melt away to reveal a rather complex steam train, chugging along to a merry score of a stalling favorite, “california, here i come”. as to be expected with frank tashlin, we’re treated to close-ups of the train (usually in conjunction with the music score): bells, whistles, wheels and all. some footage of the train itself has been reused time and time again, dating as far back as the buddy era, but the close-ups and camera angles add a layer of freshness to it. the train hurtles straight towards the audience, labeled triumphantly “the 30th century limited -- the railroad’s crack train”, a take on new york central’s 20th century limited train.

for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. iris in to the antithesis of the crack train, a sluggish, bulky locomotive named “toots”, headed by porky pig himself. tashlin takes a job towards hi (least) favorite porcine as the text narrates: “the 15th century unlimited - also a crack train. everything cracked -- including the engineer”. the typography is expertly done, the “15th century” lettering done in an old, archaic font. it’s all too easy to take font for granted these days--remember, these are all hand-painted letters, including title cards!

porky and his crack train toots are headed straight for piker’s peak, a daunting mountain whose height is pronounced in camera pans. the camera pans up a layout painting of the mountain, and then we get a wide-angle distance shot of the train itself attempting to chug forth. to assert the unreliability of the train and its speed, or lack thereof, porky observes a snail scaling up the mountain at lightning pace in comparison. finally, the train stalls out all together.

cut to an overhead angle of porky inside the conductor’s booth, where he reaches into a compartment and withdraws a pepper shaker (a brief closeup of the pepper shaker dispelling any confusion as to what’s in the pig’s hand.) with that, porky shakes the pepper shaker over a burning candle situated where the engine is--note his tail uncoiling and recoiling with each shake--and, predictably, the train begins to sneeze its way uphill, porky giving his blessing with a polite “gesundheit.”

soon enough, the sneezes grow rapid, and the train speeds over top the mountain like it was nothing. a habit of his, tashlin gets a bit too trigger happy and cuts too quickly for the gag to sink in--the caboose and a few of the box cars actually fly off the tracks on account of the speed. props for conveying such fast speeds, but it’s a little too fast, a problem area of tashlin’s at times. nevertheless, we’re greeted with more layouts of the scenery, motion conveyed by a camera moving closer to the backgrounds. at one point, the train even goes through a very short tunnel. the camera movements of the early LT cartoons can be janky at times, but here they’re conducted very well.

next, a bird’s eye view of porky’s train traversing a number of intertwining tracks. whoever animated this next scene, my hat is off to you--the boxcars all weave in and out of different tracks in a rather short yet complex bit of animation before realigning on one single track. very well executed and very fun, just one of the few scenes that make me say “i’m glad i didn’t have to animate that!”

unbeknownst to porky, however, is a train hurtling right in his direction. porky finally takes note, and hurriedly pulls his train up to an adjacent track just by a depot. however, the caboose is still on the track. at the very last minute, he manages to squeeze in and pull foreward JUST as the train roars by, giving an audibly “whew!” of relief (which i believe is bob bentley animation.) the layout of the two trains “colliding” is nice, but the scene itself has some execution issues: porky pulling up is a bit too quick and looks comically unnatural, and the odd crunching sound effect makes it sound as though the oncoming train actually did collide with the caboose.

porky doesn’t have much time to relax as he’s back on the rails. even tugging on the whistle wildly does nothing to alert the obstacle in front of him, yet thankfully he manages to squeal to a stop. he’s greeted with an obstacle that has haunted cartoon characters for years: it halted oswald in 1927 with trolley troubles, it plighted mickey and minnie in 1928 with plane crazy, it stopped bosko and honey a mere two years later in sinkin’ in the bathtub, and now porky is up to battle: a cow lying in the middle of the tracks.

carl stalling switches from “california, here i come” to a slow, lumbering yet fitting rendition of “rural rhythm” to accommodate the lazy cow chewing on some grass. the animation of the cow is rather amusing--her tail is high in the air, her exaggerated cycle of chewing is great, and the detail of her haphazardly cracking an eye open to pay porky any mind is another plus.

stepping off the train, porky opts to bargain with her with a polite tip of the hat. “excu-uh-excu-uh-pardon me, uh-muh-meh-missus cow, will you eh-keh-keh-kindly get off the t-teh-eh-teh-track?” despite his efforts, coupled with another tip of the hat and a smile, mrs. cow stays right put, barely acknowledging porky’s presence. porky’s attempts to make pleasantries quickly fade away in favor of a more hostile attitude, telling her to amscray (putting the “pig” in “pig latin”, i see!) and calling her a mess of T-bones, all while pushing her from behind.

finally, the cow does step off the tracks on her own, prompting porky to fall flat on the tracks as she lazily stalks away. porky fumes as he marches back onto his train, ranting about how cows like her give milk a bad name, how she can’t give sweet milk with a sour puss like that, etc.

enter the bull. the bull’s entrance is great: i love the bristling hairs, the assertive glare at the camera, the missing tooth, the flared nostrils. stalling’s score of “rural rhythm” is also wonderfully moody and alert. the bull marches across the tracks and hides behind a bush, with only its tail exposed. porky, not typically known for his intelligence, thinks it’s the cow from before and grows confrontational. “so, you weh-won’t walk, eh? i'll sheh-show you, you feh-four-legged eh-peh-piece of hamburger!” porky tugs on the aggravated bull’s tail before cursing at the bull (which is just dialogue reversed. reversed, the dialogue is “...toots, old gal. don’t pop your...” you can hear a comparison here.) the bull grunts, causing porky to rush back to his train and hurtle across the tracks in a flash. don’t quote me on this, as i’m not 100% sure, but i believe the animation of porky and the bull may be joe d’igalo...?

spark the ever prevalent Tashlin Montage: up-angles of disjointed hands tapping away on a telegraph to communicate the message (that comes out on a paper strip) “stop porky’s train”. more cinematic angles of brakes being pulled, barriers being put up. porky himself screeches his trusty train to a halt, waiting outside the depot as a paper rolls across a wire line to him. he grabs it and observes the news:

“streamline train” is highlighted, and sure enough, we fade to meet tashlin’s streamlined fantasy, a sleek feat of modern architectural design barreling down the tracks, named THE SILVER FISH. there’s a nice little intricate piece of animation as the train weaves closer into view, the conductor tipping his hat to the audience with a commanding grin.

elsewhere, porky bids his train a tearful goodbye. “au rev-v-vo... au rev-v-v... au rev-v-v--goodbye, teh-t-toots old gal. parting is seh-seh-such sweet seh-seh-sorrow...” however, william shakespig has little time to mourn his loss, for the silver fish itself comes whipping into place in the adjacent track, nearly knocking porky off his feet in the process.

ever the good sport, porky marches over to greet the conductor (towering feet above him) and wish him good luck. as he sticks his hand out, “mr. silver fish” reaches down and grabs porky, shaking him vigorously. the animation being shot on one’s paired with mel blanc’s near-incomprehensible cries for help pair together for a nice gag. porky flops to the ground, his lowly status only confirmed as the conductor (voiced by billy bletcher) regards his train: “saaay, what is that? a percolator on a roller skate?” the train deflates from the insult, coupled with bletcher’s signature laugh.

volney white animates porky’s close-up as he mutters to the audience “i’ll buh-be-beh-be-bet my eh-t-teh-t-tootsie can beh-beh-beat his old eh-seh-seh-eh-seh-silver fish.” the camera pans out as the conductor lurches into view, picking up porky by his tail and giving him a few pokes in the eye stooges style as he sneers “oh yeah? it’s a bet. we’ll have a race and see!” volney’s animation is very well executed, very dimensional.

fade to reveal both trains on adjacent tracks, complete with a referee toting a starter pistol. tashlin’s need for speed is unmistakable--as soon as the referee fires, the silver fish rockets off in a cloud of smoke, leaving porky’s old train tangled in a pretzel (complete with a score of “you’re a horses ass.)

the cartoon, at least for me (i am a tad biased on account of my unabashed love for porky), has been rather enjoyable up to this point, but here’s where things get sour. it’s literally 5 seconds, but enough to be incredibly uncomfortable and infuriating: the silver fish rushes past a woodpile (explicitly labeled as such), revealing a black caricature sitting beneath it. the gag itself is based off of an incredibly racist saying synonymous to “a fly in the ointment” or “a skeleton in the closet”--it’s in extremely poor taste and more than uncomfortable. i love frank tashlin, he’s one of my favorite directors, but this leaves a sour taste in my mouth, even if it was 83 years ago.

nevertheless, the silver fish speeds through a tunnel with such frightening speeds that it actually turns the tunnel inside out--the animation is a bit matter of fact, and thus the gag doesn’t reach the amount of potential as, say, porky pulling his entire garage inside out, but working with a tunnel also poses flexibility issues. it’s easier for a garage to appear rubbery than a tunnel. the silver fish screeches to a halt near a harbor as the bridges raise to let a boat through. it is then when a fish caricature of mae west pops out of the water, spotting the silver fish and cooing “oh boy, what a man!” the tashlin looney tunes shorts of the 1940s would use burlesque and sex comedy as a main topic for lampooning--this is a neat little precursor to that.

porky finally gets his share of screen time, chugging along frantically. the animation of him pulling on the whistle is incredibly smooth--judging by the complexity of the train and the thickness of porky’s eyebrows, i’d wage this as bob bentley animation. the bridges raise to pass another ship through, the S.S. leon. yes, as in leon schlesinger, who was actually a boatsman! according to a 1939 trade paper, schlesinger was a skipper--he’d bought actor richard arlen’s yacht (named dijo) and rebranded it as, fittingly, the merrie melody. porky’s train rushes right across the bow of the S.S. leon, bringing back a few unwarranted treasures in the process: a life preserver and a singing sailor in a lifeboat (singing “don’t give up the ship”), dangling from pulleys attached to a boxcar.

the temperamental bull from before makes another appearance, watching porky’s train speed by from the hilltops. mel blanc provides the bull’s raspy monologue as the bull recalls his prior experience with porky--”he can’t get away with a thing like that, i’ll show him!”

sure enough, the bull rushes onto the tracks, bellows out a roar, and rams into porky’s train at the speed of light, literally just a mass of dry brushed streaks. the animation of the bull plowing into boxcars like nobody’s business is more than satisfying to watch. the lack of a music score, just the chuffing of porky’s engine, adds a greater burst to the bull’s impact when he makes contact with the train. the bull, as it turns out, does porky a favor: as he collides with porky’s section of the train, the impact is enough to send him flying. that is, flying right over the befuddled head of the silver fish’s conductor. conveniently, porky lands right across the finish line, where he’s met with cheers and applause from the stands. the underdog wins at last.

iris in onto the side of the silver fish. we pan out to reveal the conductor, a happy porky pig waving his hat in the air in a direct parallel to the conductor’s initial debut. despite the upbeat, celebratory nature, we meet a rather morbid end: the camera pans back to reveal a crushed and mangled toots, a sign draped over it reading “headin’ for the last roundhouse”. iris out.

for its time, this is a very fun and lively cartoon. as to be expected in a tashlin cartoon, the camera angles are divine as always, and the fast-paced cutting, although a bit too fast at times, adds a nice bit of exhilaration to the cartoon. the race between porky and the conductor truly does feel like a race and leaves you breathless at parts. carl stalling’s music score is a joy like always, and the backgrounds are beautifully painted. there are some really unique pans and camera angles of just the layouts alone. tashlin has a fine concept of speed--more than fine, really. he serves as a rather suitable competitor to tex avery in that department. in some cases, he may even surpass him. my only true gripe with the cartoon is the incredibly racist gag--it can be easily skipped, it’s very much a throwaway gag that the cartoon’s success doesn’t rely on, but it does sour my glowing review quite a bit.

nevertheless, this is a fun, early porky entry that’s worth a watch. the racist gag is around 5:28-5:33 in the link i provided.

link!

(you can also watch the short on HBOmax if you have it--that’s where i got the screenshots from!)

#lt #looney tunes #porky’s railroad #tashlin #reviews #long post #racism m

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missjanjie · 4 years ago

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Hold Me Tighter (Even Closer) | (1/?)

Title: Hold Me Tighter (Even Closer) Summary: A sequel to Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dancer. Brooke Lynn and Vanessa are back at NYU, but with new and improved positions. Brooke's ready to start her career as a professor when, as fate would have it, she realizes her TA, Jackie, might have the hots for a student named Jan. The couple just might see it as a sign to give two new girls the love story they found in the same place. Word Count: ~3k (this chapter) Relationship(s): Branjie (Brooke Lynn Hytes/Vanessa Vanjie Mateo), Jankie (Jan Sport/Jackie Cox) Rating: T (so far)

Read on AO3

“Okay, are you ready?” Brooke Lynn slung her messenger bag over her shoulder and looked over as her wife came out of the bedroom with her belongings.

Vanessa took a deep breath, pressing her lips into a fine line and offering a nod. “As I’ll ever be,” she replied as the two of them left their apartment. While the commute was longer than when they were shacked up in Brooke’s off-campus apartment, it was manageable enough for them to keep making that journey.

Besides, when they made their way into the performing arts building, it just felt right. That was where it all began, and in a way, it had become a home away from home, many of their coworkers had become a second family for them.

Then there was Katya, who had crossed the line between second and first families long ago. She was part of their wedding party, she pet-sat while they were on their honeymoon. Vanessa would often describe her as a ‘kooky aunt,’ and Brooke conceded that the title was rather on the nose. She beamed brightly as she ran up to the couple. “Good morning ladies, I’m here to pick up my TA,” and in a literal move, she picked up Vanessa, who let out a surprised yelp and a laugh.

“And yet there’s still no one I’d trust more with her.” Brooke chuckled as if she were truly questioning her faith in Katya’s mentorship. She leaned over and kissed her wife’s forehead. “I expect both of you to behave.”

“I’m gonna need you to lower your expectations, Professor Hytes-Mateo,” Katya replied as she set her new teacher’s assistant back down. “Your girl’s on the way?”

“She is. Offered to go on a coffee run, so she’ll be here soon enough,” she confirmed. In the interim, the three of them went to Brooke’s new classroom. This semester, she would be teaching the History of Dance course, one that was required for second-year students. Her options had been either that or Improvisation, which had made the decision easy on her.

Only a few minutes had passed before they heard footsteps coming down the hall until a woman came in, holding a drink tray that she then sat down on Brooke’s desk. “Morning, everyone,” Jackie greeted, taking her own drink from the holder and sipping from it.

“Hey, Jackie,” Brooke smiled warmly, trying to hold her focus just long enough to slide Vanessa a couple of bills to slip into Jackie’s pocket. It was a system the two of them had stuck with to avoid the back and forth courtesy refusals and ‘but I insists.’ Brooke would affectionately refer to it as ‘reverse pickpocketing’ while Vanessa simply called it ‘efficient.’

Katya looked at her phone, then cleared her throat to redirect attention. “We’ll have to reconvene later, ladies. Vanjie and I need to get set up in the studio,” she said, picking her binder back up and tucking it under her arm.

“Catch you later, boo. Good luck,” Vanessa smiled and shared a quick kiss with Brooke before following Katya out the door.

Jackie watched them leave before looking back towards the professor. “It must be nice being able to work in the same building as your wife, huh?” she mused as she set her backpack on the side of the desk and took out a small stack of manila envelopes, all filled with varying amounts of papers.

Brooke grinned, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear as her eyes drifted to the framed picture she kept on her desk – one from their wedding just about a year earlier. “It really is, we lucked out.”

She nodded as she took her seat, believing the sentiment wholeheartedly. Something about the idea of finding someone and having the instant bond over a shared passion spoke to her and left her with a quiet sense of yearning. But her wandering mind had to reel back into focus when students began filing into the classroom and taking their seats. Everything was pleasantly calm as she watched seat after seat fill up.

Then suddenly, it all changed.

The energy in the room brightened, but no one seemed to notice but Jackie. The source of it, however, was as clear as day. It was a student with a warm, friendly disposition and soft features that Jackie just found beautiful. And she didn’t think she was staring until she felt someone poking her shoulder.

Brooke Lynn was looking at her, a smirk curling up her lips that made Jackie’s face heat up. She knew that look, could spot that look a mile away. Hell, she was probably the poster child for that look, she had to take a sip of her drink just to keep herself from laughing. Instead, she sat and sipped her drink until the flow of students came to a halt.

As Brooke began taking attendance, Jackie walked around, giving a copy of the syllabus to each student. But she looked up every time a feminine name was called, eager to put a name to the face that’d caught her eye.

“Jan Sport?”

“Here!”

Ah, she thought. There we go. It was enough momentary satisfaction to get her through the rest of the task, and hopefully enough to keep her focused for the rest of the class. The last thing she wanted was to drop the ball in the first ten minutes because a pretty girl clouded her sense of rational thought. She, for the most part, decided to keep her nose in the paperwork. There wasn’t too much she needed to say yet anyway.

“...And Jackie’s contact info is there, your best bet is to reach out to her first.”

Jackie looked up when she heard her name, offering a smile and a nod as Brooke Lynn continued talking. She did finally allow her gaze to drift back over to Jan, who had been alternating between listening attentively and whispering with the girl sitting next to her. But just as she looked over, they made eye contact, and Jackie’s heart skipped a beat.

Jan smiled at her, oblivious to all the thoughts running through the grad student’s mind. But she did welcome the attention – Jackie was attractive and held herself professionally – two traits she definitely appreciated. When the eye contact was broken, she shifted her attention to Brooke, until her friend tapped her desk to get her attention.

“Am I crazy, or was she checking you out?” Gigi whispered.

“I’m leaning towards both,” she retorted with a soft chuckle. She wasn’t actually sure if Jackie was checking her out – it might have been wishful thinking. But if Gigi saw it too, she could let herself think that maybe something was happening.

By the time class ended, everything seemed calm once more. Jan got up and she waved to Jackie as she walked past, one of those subtly flirtatious waves where each finger curls down one at a time. She wanted to linger a bit longer but decided to follow Gigi out.

When the class was back down to just Brooke Lynn and Jackie, there was a moment of silence while they both allowed themselves to process the first day of class. Then Brooke turned to Jackie with what could only adequately be described as a shit-eating grin.

Jackie sighed, realizing it wouldn’t end until she addressed it. “Okay, what?”

“Nothing, I just love watching history repeat itself,” Brooke hummed.

“I beg your pardon?”

Brooke looked to her wedding picture, then back at Jackie. “Do you know how Vanjie and I met? I know you didn’t have a lot of classes together, but still.”

She furrowed her brows. “I know you guys both got your undergrads here, and that you used to be Katya’s TA, but that’s about it,” she explained, having never been much for keeping up with gossip.

Getting the chance to retell her and Vanessa’s story made Brooke light up in a way that almost startled Jackie. “Let me set the scene for you.” She got up, standing in the empty space at the front of the classroom. “Picture me, an awkward, introverted grad student. It’s my first day as Katya’s teaching assistant. I’m there before her, before anyone, sitting on the floor and wondering, ‘what the hell is this semester gonna be like?’ Then in walks this spunky little brunette that ends up turning my whole world upside-down, yet somehow makes me feel truly alive for the very first time.” She sighed fondly. “And then I married her, the end.”

Jackie nodded as she listened, it was a nice story, and she did like that everything worked out in the end. But then she furrowed her brows. “So… You think I’m gonna marry Jan?”

Brooke chuckled. “I’m just saying… Well, you never know what could happen.”

“I think you might be a little bit biased,” she retorted as she gathered her things. “Look, she’s very pretty and seems sweet. I’ll give you that. But I’m certainly not setting a wedding date anytime soon.”

“If you change your mind, I have a friend that’s an ordained minister,” Brooke teased.

------

“Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I think this could mean something. She’s Brooke Lynn’s TA, and everyone knows how that story went,” Gigi was saying, sounding very certain in her theory. Many students had a story where they knew someone that knew someone that saw everything that happened with Brooke Lynn and Vanessa. It wasn’t uncommon to be in on the legend.

Jan quirked her brow. “So, you think this is kismet? That when our eyes met we were bound by the fate set by our predecessors?”

“No, Shakespeare. I just think that you should pursue this.”

She huffed. “You know, just because you have a girlfriend doesn’t mean that you need to curate a story for my love life.”

Gigi shrugged. “I don’t have to do anything, but that’s not going to stop me. Jan, I haven’t seen you go on a single date since we met. If there’s a chance for you to actually connect with someone, I–”

“We haven’t even spoken!” Jan finally exclaimed. “You’re creating a narrative based off of eye contact, Geege. I think we need to center back into reality a little bit.”

“You’re right, you’re right.” She put her hands up in surrender. “I just need to throw myself into something, it’s hard being in a long-distance relationship, you know.”

Jan looked at her friend as if she’d grown a second head. “Long dis– sweetie, Crystal’s going to school upstate, and not even like, actual upstate, it’s literally just Westchester. You know you can drive up there whenever.”

Gigi let out a dramatic huff. “It’s not the same,” she whined, stomping her foot. But she switched back into her normal demeanor almost instantly, in a way that would’ve been jarring to someone that wasn’t her close friend. “I digress. Just keep an open mind, okay?”

“Whatever you say, you little weirdo,” she teased lightly as they left the building, having a couple of hours before their next class, Katya’s, of course. And Jan only hoped they got there before anyone else picked up on whatever it was Gigi had noticed.

------

“Okay, you’ve been staring at that corner for like, five minutes. It’s giving me The Blair Witch Project vibes. You good?” Katya asked curiously.

Vanessa blinked, seemingly snapped out of a trance. “Hm? Yeah, I’m good. Just kinda having a moment.” She looked down, grinning broadly to herself. “That spot right there was where I first met her. She was all wound up and tense, ready to kick your ass… Prettiest fucking thing I ever seen.”

“If you think about it,” Katya started, “none of this would’ve happened if I wasn’t late to class,” she mused. “So, you’re welcome. I expect you to name your first born after me as retribution.”

She chuckled, leaning against the desk. “You know, we been talking about having a baby or adopting… Got pros and cons to both.”

“Wow, that’s a big step. And I get it, on one hand, it makes sense to take in a kid that doesn’t have a family, but on the other, you guys have really good genetics.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” Vanessa nodded. “But we ain’t rushing it or nothing,” she assured, looking up and watching as students filed into the studio. “It’s showtime,” she said to Katya before starting to pass out copies of the syllabus.

Everything was business as usual until about a half hour into class, when Jackie tried to inconspicuously let herself into the room. She tried to silently get Vanessa’s attention, but Vanessa and subtlety were just two things that would never mesh.

“What’s up, Jackie? C’mere!” Vanessa waved her over, leaving Jackie to awkwardly shuffle to the front.

“Didn’t mean to interrupt, Brooke just asked me to drop off your lunch,” Jackie explained, handing her a paper bag. “Anyway, I’ll leave you guys to it.” As she started to leave, her eyes met with Jan’s yet again, but she was determined to play it cool this time. “Oh, hey Jan,” she hummed, lightly fluttering her lashes with a confident smile.

And Jan reacted just the way she’d hoped. She giggled and twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “Hey, Jackie,” she cooed, eyes following her out the door before trying to refocus.

“Very subtle. I’m clearly the crazy one here,” Gigi remarked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Eat me,” she retorted through gritted teeth, without breaking her cheery demeanor.

Gigi rolled her eyes. “Seems like other people might be trying to get that job instead.”

The bickering continued a bit longer, but they quieted down long enough to actually hear the tail end of Katya’s speech, which she finished by dismissing the class a little bit early. “Remember, you should have a list of five potential final project songs by the end of next week. Make sure you get them to Vanjie one way or another,” Katya was saying as the class began packing up and leaving.

“So how’d you feel about your first day of classes?” Katya asked once she and Vanessa were alone in the studio again.

“Think that went well; didn’t see anyone too much like me, so you’re gonna catch a break this time around,” she chuckled.

Katya laughed softly. “Oh Vanjie, you were a delight to teach. Mostly because I could pawn you off on Brooke every time, but still.” She looked up at the sound of footsteps. “And speak of the devil.”

Brooke rolled her eyes and grinned. “You speak so highly of yourself,” she replied, going right to Vanessa’s side and wrapping her arm around her waist and kissing the side of her head. “Everything went as anticipated?”

“All good, boo.” Vanessa hummed, leaning against her wife. “Thank you for lunch, by the way,” she added.

“Of course,” she cooed. “Oh, did you have Jan Sport in this class?”

Katya looked down at the attendance sheet. “Yeah, why?”

“Jackie went all heart-eyed for her, and I’m finding myself physically incapable of resisting the urge to play matchmaker. You should’ve seen it; Jan walked in the room and Jackie just couldn’t take her eyes off of her. It was really cute, like something out of a romcom,” Brooke explained.

Vanessa perked up, grabbing Brooke’s arm with both of her hands and started shaking her. “Are you kidding? We gotta match-make them! We’re throwing the torch!”

“You make it sound kind of violent, but yes,” Brooke chuckled. “What do you think, Katya? Should we give the matchmaking thing a try?”

Katya laughed. “What are you gonna do? Wait for a field trip and stick them in a room with one bed? I mean, it worked the first time.”

“We can’t build a curriculum around getting two people to fuck,” Brooke pointed out.

“Not with that attitude,” Vanessa chimed in.

------

“Geege, look!” Jan stopped dead in her tracks and grabbed her friend’s arm, reeling her back in. “They have a sign-up for winter musical auditions, and they’re doing Heathers!”

Gigi watched in amusement as Jan eagerly signed up. “I feel like this is your version of a wet dream.”

“I can live with that. You gonna sign up?”

She shook her head. “Not for me, I’d rather try to find out how I can get involved with costume design,” she told her, though she wasn’t entirely sure that Jan was listening, so she moved on. “Who are you going for?”

“My heart says Heather Chandler, but I feel like I could really kill it as Veronica.”

“You’d steal the show as a tree in the background, so I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll definitely get a good role,” Gigi assured.

Just as Jan was about to reply, a newly familiar voice came up behind her. “You’re auditioning for the show?”

Jan turned around to see Jackie. “I am. Did you do any of them during your undergrad?”

Before Jackie could answer, Gigi suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, I gotta go, Crystal’s calling me,” while waving her phone around, and was gone in a flash, leaving the other two without a chance to reply.

Jackie watched her leave for only a moment before answering Jan’s question. “Yeah, a couple. If you need any help auditioning or rehearsing or whatever, I can totally help.” Unlike any of the earlier incidents, she now seemed genuinely relaxed. There was a different energy when she was in her element, talking about the things she loved with someone that shared those interests.

And Jan was just happy that Gigi didn’t try to lock them in a closet or something like that. “That would be great. If you’re sure you’re not too busy, of course.”

“I can definitely make time for you,” Jackie chuckled softly, tucking her hair behind her ear and adjusting her glasses. She looked to the sign-up sheet, then back at Jan. “Auditions are on Friday, you wanna come over tomorrow?”

Jan nodded brightly. “Tomorrow’s perfect. I’ll text you so you have my number, and we can work out the details from there.”

“Perfect,” Jackie echoed, not referring to the time at all.

#branjie #jankie #rpdr rpf

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luckyfirerabbit · 5 years ago

Text

Jaune Doe Pt 3

(It’s a little janky, but meh)

It will be a few days before Blake gets back to her with anything in regards to the photo, and in the mean time Pyrrha will keep up with Jaune Doe’s slow but steady recovery. Sahv brings her somewhat regular reports - “I think he’s a musician, his fingers move to my music when he’s sleeping”-, and though Billy lets her know that he’s been conscious and responsive the last day or so, she has yet to visit his room again. She doesn’t feel like it’s her place just yet, never mind that she’s in charge of patient advocacy; surely the poor man wants time to himself to process his situation without a stranger bothering him. He’s likely had enough of that just with doctors and nurses and security guards.

Ren and Nora haven’t been able to get an official statement from him either, not until he’s deemed healthy enough for it.

So Pyrrha makes ample time to study his file at length and run it across Blake -when she’s available- as to what it all could mean. Being a psychologist, Blake had incredible insight, and her experience with trauma survivors is just icing on the cake. At least, it certainly would be if Blake hadn’t looked so dour when the she and Pyrrha met in Pyrrha’s office.

“Everything okay?” Pyrrha asks gently, standing up on some unnamed reflex.

“Sit, this probably won’t be long.” Blake gestures with her hand, putting the other woman back in her chair while she closes the door behind her. She’ll cross the floor with no real hurry to prop on the edge of Pyrrha’s desk, appearing comfortably perched. “I checked with the folks at the parlor, they didn’t have anything. Turns out, this particular brand of body modification is illegal in Argus, so none of my guys knew a guy who knew a guy.” she chuckles lightly.

“Oh. Okay…but,” Pyrrha hesitates, “what’s the matter?”

Blake’s ears flip back. “…Yang might know Jaune Doe.”

Pyrrha’s brows rise and her eyes widen. “Really?”

“Yeah, but don’t get too excited, she kind of hit a depressive spiral after seeing the photos. It’s going to be a while before she’ll be okay to talk to him.” It’ll be a while before he can talk at all, so it’s fine. “I’m sorry, Blake, is there anything I can do?”

“She wanted to help, don’t beat yourself up about it. But,” she tips her chin and her ears slant forward, “this brings to mind what I said before, that thing about you maybe not liking what you find.”

Pyrrha’s brow knits in the middle. “I’d be worried if I did like it. Gods have mercy,”

“Sorry I couldn’t find more for you, though.”

“But it’s still a lot, Blake, thank you so much. And tell Yang I owe her big time. If you two need anything,”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Blake smiles softly, her ears up and neutral. “Anything else I can do?”

“Just take care of Yang, I know she needs it.”

Blake nods, sliding to her feet. “So have you talked to your guy yet?”

“Not yet, soon maybe. I mean, he’ll be here a while.” Pyrrha tries not to laugh, but a little giggle slinks through. “And what’s this my guy talk?”

“I mean, he’s a patient, you’re his advocate, and he’s your only case right now. He’s your guy.”

“But the way you say it,” she giggles again, a little louder, “so suggestive.”

“Now, Pyrrha, I’m a professional,” Blake bats her eyes and throws the most innocent look she can at the lawyer, “and I know nothing can come between you and your cat.”

“Pfft, I’m a divorcee, not an old woman.” Pyrrha rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Later, wonder woman. I’ll keep in touch.”

–

Everything hurts, at least, that’s how his addled brain translates the buzzing in his nerves. Sure enough it is pain, but it’s being filtered through a screen of morphine. He still feels the sharp prodding of his broken ribs when he takes a breath too deep, or when he shifts just right to aggravate the lump near the base of his skull, but the drugs keep them mostly quiet, enough for him to sleep when the doctors let him. He hates that they still wake him up in accordance to some kind of schedule, but he’s too scared to say anything about it. He’s too scared about a lot of things, been too scared for too long to believe he’s safe here. That he could be safe anywhere. It’s why his pulse shoots up whenever anyone enters his room, doesn’t matter who it is. Even the custodian, the littlest old lady he’s sure he’s ever seen, made him jump.

Every time someone wakes him they have questions -How are you feeling? Do you know what day it is? What year is it? What’s your name?- and he answers them as best he can. They keep asking, he keeps answering, and he would probably be annoyed by it by now if he could keep track of the ones he had answered and which ones he had forgotten. Even without the blow to the head he feels more than remembers, he knows he wouldn’t have most of the answers. His life had felt like a hectic blur for a while now, and while he remembers most of that fever dream, he’s forgotten so much of himself.

His dreams are full of music and faces and places that don’t make his heart race, but he has no explanation as to why they’re there -what they mean to him. So he focuses on the music to help him sleep, it quiets his mind enough to let the exhaustion through to drag him under and keep him there. He has yet to meet the person who owns the scroll emitting the sounds, but he thinks he should thank them. He will, so long as their mere presence doesn’t scare him silent; like it had with those cops this morning.

The next time he remembers waking up, the music has stopped, the abrupt stillness in the air making him blink into awareness.

“Evening, sir, sorry if I woke you.”

Only his eyes move, sliding to one side to follow the sound and focus on the incredible form occupying the once empty space beside his bed. Already panic is knotting in his chest and he feels trapped in his bed. His hands that were once resting flat against his stomach have curled into fists.

“I’m Sahv Starborough,” she hasn’t missed the change in him, turning on the softest voice she can, “I just came by for my scroll, I kind of need it now. But I got you a little something.”

He just watches her, his gaze jumping quickly from her huge hands to her tusks and back again. She’s unplugging the scroll and replacing the device with a smaller one.

“This just plays music, but it has all the Caravaan tunes just like my scroll. You can even take it with you when you’re discharged if you want.”

“…Th-thank you.” it’s raspy and broken, but comprehensible.

Sahv lights up a little, smiling at him, but not too much. “You’re very welcome.” She finishes setting up the device, lingering just long enough to set the volume to where it had been on her scroll. “I’m here all night if you need anything else.”

He just nods and watches her leave, finally letting himself relax again once her shadow slips out through the door after her. He tries to focus on the music again, doing so with such ease that he doesn’t notice when he falls asleep.

When he wakes this time it’s morning, at least he assumes by the pale light coming through the space between the curtains. There’s someone else in the room again, but just as the knot in his chest starts to wind up, it releases. Somehow he recognizes those eyes, soft green ones that he would have sworn he dreamed up.

Pyrrha smiles reflexively when she realizes he’s awake and looking at her, pausing just inside the room. “Hello again.”

His brow furrows, puzzled. Again? Maybe it really hadn’t been a dream.

That smile falters when he doesn’t answer. “I’m sorry, do you want me to go?”

He swallows, shutting his eyes for a second. “Do you know me?” he croaks.

“Hm?”

“You said my name before.”

“Oh, well, no, I’m sorry. I’ve only read your file.”

“Oh.” The idea of being on file is discomforting, but he ignores it for now. “Do you have questions for me too?”

“Not really, not at the moment. I just thought I would come and introduce myself, maybe talk a little if you were feeling up to it.”

“Talk about what?”

“Whatever, I suppose.” Pyrrha is mentally berating herself for her apparent lack of professional air. For all intents and purposes, this was her client, you don’t just talk about “whatever” with clients.

“So who are you? You work here?”

“I do.” She chances to take a few steps closer. “I’m Pyrrha Nikos and I’m the legal adviser for the hospital. I’m also head of the patient advocacy department and in charge of your case.”

He swallows again, the corner of his mouth kinking upward just a little. Almost missable. “Didn’t think a druggie warranted that much.”

“Well, seeing as you really don’t…have any one else to represent you at the moment, at least until your memory recovers, I’ll be acting in that capacity between you and the hospital. I’ll handle all the legal matters of your case -working with the police and whatnot- as well as seeing to it your best interests and personal rights are upheld while you’re being treated.”

“…I hope you don’t expect me to pay you.” Because he just remembered all he owned was a pair of pants.

“Don’t worry about that.” Pyrrha laughs. “I’m just here to help.”

What a nice sound. What a nice smile. “Gods know I need all I can get.”

She didn’t want to agree with him too readily, no matter how right he was, so she just nods with inching shoulders. “Do you have any other questions for me? Otherwise I’ll stop bothering you and let you rest.”

He tries to think for a moment, his thoughts breaking up like he’s trying to grab at threads of smoke. “Not now, thank you.”

“Of course. If you should change your mind, you can have someone page me. My office is just downstairs.”

“Okay.” he tries a nod of his own, a stiff dip of his chin. “Nice meeting you, Mrs. Nikos.”

“Oh no, miss, and it’s just Pyrrha, if that’s okay with you.”

“Okay, just Pyrrha.” he likes hearing her laugh again.

“And is it all right if I call you Jaune?”

“It’s the only name I have right now, so yeah.”

Her cheeks redden a little embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t… It was nice meeting you too. Could I come by later, or maybe tomorrow would be better?”

“Tomorrow. Yeah, probably.”

“Alright, see you tomorrow.”

Billy is at the nurse’s station down the hall from Jaune Doe’s room, can see down either end of the corridor from there. But they also have leave to watch the monitor feeds for each of the rooms, see the cardiotach for all of the patients. They had noticed the pattern of spikes in Jaune’s heart rate whenever someone went into his room and he happened to be awake, and as observant as they are, there was no way even Pyrrha could slip in or out of there without them knowing.

“Hey, Velv, check this out.”

Rabbit ears flit upright from over the counter, Velvet having just straightened from picking up a dropped file form the floor. She quickly rounds the desk and props up on her fellow Faunus’ stout shoulder, taking a look at the numbers on the screen in front of them.

“What is it?”

“Look at Doe’s read-out.”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“It hasn’t changed in the last five minutes or so.”

“So?”

“Pyrrha was in there just now.”

“So?”

“And he was awake, camera showed the two of them talking.”

“…Oh. Well isn’t that something?” Velvet straightens and stretches with a little chuckle. “But it’s Pyrrha; she’s so sweet she could fill our diabetic ward to capacity overnight.”

Billy laughs.

“Makes you wonder how she ended up with that shitty ex of hers.”

“At least he’s an ex now, though, right?”

“Right.” Velvet nods once, decisive. “I’m hopping across the street for coffee, want some?”

“Says the Rabbit.”

“Oh eat me.” Velvet’s ears snap back, but she’s smiling.

“But I would love some, just make sure it’s decaff, please, this ticker can’t do high octane anymore.”

“You got it.”

Billy goes back to the monitors after passing Velvet a few Lien for her trouble. They watch Doe’s numbers a little longer, thinking and smirking to themselves. It’s good, they think; if that poor kid was going to be easy around anyone, it might as well be Pyrrha.

#jaune doe #arkos #jaune arc #pyrrha nikos

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miyoron · 5 years ago

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Miyo’s Anime of the Decade though Actually Just 2019

***Before I start this list, I would like to continue to send out good vibes and hope to all those affected by the Kyoto Animation arson attacks this past summer. It still hurts and I hope things can get better for everyone affected by it, even though I'm sure some things will take a long time to heal, if they ever will. Just know that you will always have me wishing you the best I can and sending out hope for you to recover at your own pace.***

I like writing these things every year. Whether it lets me know if my tastes are changing or staying the same, or if I'm just sentimental, writing about things I like is fun. Anime is good and I like watching it. I watched a good amount of stuff this year even if some seasons I couldn't find anything I say would fit this list.

For example, I started watching the Symphogear series and it's fun but I wouldn't say I liked it as much as any of these shows. Anima Yell is a very cute show but I didn’t have much to say about it, same for Aggretsuko again. I liked the main characters of JoJo part 5, but I wouldn't say I liked watching that, especially as the villain was revealed more and more. Fire Force was fun for me for like 5 episodes or so but then I bailed so take that as you will.

But I don't want to sound too mean here. No, this is for stuff I liked a lot and I wanted to write about things I enjoyed. This year I actually kept track of shows I liked as opposed to figuring out what I'd go on this list at the last moment. Crazy, I know, but this could be a good idea. Don't worry, I didn't take TOO many notes so this will be pretty off the cuff of my head like normal though I'm sure. As always, I will be using whatever title is easier for me to write/preference.

With this bit of text out of the way, let's la GO! In no particular order (as always)...

Mob Psycho 100

This entry counts for both season 1 and season 2. I kind of sped through the first one a little so I could catch up in time for the second one. I feel it stuck with me just as much though. Mob Psycho is a solid action series with very silly things going on in the background of it...and foreground honestly). I suspect ONE is very good at making this sort of series. Honestly though, every character in this show is great and there's so many feel good moments. Mob himself is a wonderful character. The most powerful psychic force in the universe but he just wants to get buff to go out with his crush.

There's a lot to like about this series. The humor is on point and anything with Reigen is going to be hilarious, especially if it takes a while. Animation is consistently top notch, especially in season 2, and I love the psychic effects. They end up looking like an old 90's video filter or trapper keeper or something. However, the most impressive thing this series does is show that maybe fighting isn't the way to do things all the time and that the most important thing you can show isn't just sympathy, but empathy.

Mob is a really good show and both of the OVAs are fun as heck. I dunno why I originally slept on Season 1, but I'm glad I came aboard.

Kaguyasama: Love is War

You probably know this one from that one ending with the pink haired girl dancing, that was going around for a while even though it was only for one episode. This series actually took me a little bit to get into mainly due to being WAY too tired to keep up with it. The set up being that the smartest boy and girl in the most elite high school both want to ask the other out. However, being the one to ask the other out would be to give up all power and admitting defeat. Basically it's a battle of two love struck idiots trying to get the other to ask them out.

As dumb as that sounds, the setups are often hilarious. Seeing the main characters trying to out scheme each other and keep a straight face while watching is a challenge in itself. It's like that 4th dimensional chess but the end result is seeing who will hold the other's hand first. Then throw in the wild card of Chika who seems to both not know what's going on while understanding how easy it is to end up on top in these battles and...look it's very funny ok? Even if sometimes the joke is just "weiner".

Shows that made me tear up count: 1

Kemurikusa

Similar to the Kemono Friends and its big gold star award, I felt like Kemurikusa deserved a shoutout this year. It's still janky like Kemono Friends before it, but after everything that went down with that series, it was definitely telling when this was the better of the two. This is a weird series and only some of that is due to the animation. The studio does a wonderful job of making a world that's both interesting and haunting at the same time. Everything that happens all ties to a big mystery that isn't revealed for quite a while.

The characters are fun enough. From the serious Rin to the caring Ritsu. From the voracious Rinas to the dweeby Wakaba. It's a fun cast going on a road trip throughout the apocalypse as they try to find good water for their big plant friend that drives around their husk of a bus. It can get pretty dark at times even with the neon bright colors the titular kemurikusa shimmering softly in the background. Oh also there's a roomba friend and a girl with sharp teeth so I mean, it's got something for everybody.

Hitoribocchi

This series is a cute little show with a setup which is potentially mean if you think about it. Bocchi's best friend is afraid she won't ever be able to make any other friends since they're going to different middle schools. Because of this, she says they can't be friends again until she befriends everyone in her class. The biggest hurdle to this challenge being Bocchi is horribly shy and socially awkward which just makes things seemingly impossible for her to overcome. Luckily, this is a cute comedy series.

The show is basically about Bocchi trying to make new friends so she can hopefully one day reunite with her bestie from the past. As I said before though, she's kind of bad with knowing how to communicate with people so she has a bad habit of say following friend making tips she read in books or online to a t and not deviating from them. Thankfully she is able to meet with lovable weirdos like blunt Nako, pitiful Aru and ninja girl Sotoka. It's a cute little series that also has a lot of heart, especially if you've ever had to overcome your own social anxieties to interact with others before. It's also funny too so there's a bonus even.

Shows that made me tear up count: 2

Carole and Tuesday

Shhhh. Don't let Netflix know I finished this before they did. Carole and Tuesday is a fun show from the creator of Cowboy Bebop, as evidenced in the fact it takes place on Mars and uses the same currency. It's a fairly simple plot, two girls meet up one day on the streets and start playing music together. One's an orphan who's basically lived alone for most of her life, the other is a rich girl running away from her politician mother (whose politics are a little too close for comfort these days). They just wanna make music man, and with a former big time agent with them, how can they lose!

Carole and Tuesday are fun characters and the show has a fun future sci fi vibe while still being grounded in reality. One of the biggest highlights is definitely the music though with lots of new songs in every episode and a good number of them being certifiable bangers. There's an overarching plot that also hits too close to home at times but the big finale at the end made it all worth it in the end really. This is an easy show to recommend and I am doing so to you right now. Go see these girls trying to make it to the big time!

Shows that made me tear up count: 3

Fruits Basket (2019)

I skipped out on Fruits Basket the first time around. I always told myself I'd go back and check it out but, knowing how I do things, this never actually happened. Part of me is kind of glad I waited to check it out though since I really like the style of the new show compared to the one from the early 00s. What I'm saying is I should have checked this out a lot earlier than I did but I don't feel visually bad for doing so.

Fruits Basket is a show featuring Tohru, the most helpful lovable girl, and a cast of characters who all start to love her because she is the most helpful lovable girl. This might sound like a bad thing but it's not. All of the characters are really fun, save one who I don't know WHY they don't just beat up, and I love seeing all their interactions. I just grew really invested in all of them and keep hoping everything will end up ok for them in the end, while in some cases waiting for a really big shoe to drop and biting my nails in the process.

I dunno if I have a super bunch to say about it other than my favorites are Uo-chan and Hana-chan and I can't wait until part 2 shows up. I am ready to see more of these Zodiac weirdos get hugged by Tohru and become animals and have her solve their problems in that order.

Shows that made me tear up count: 4

....Now, as usual, I will take a break to talk about the Precures I watched this year...

Futari wa Precure

This year, my friend Cheapsteaks and I decided to go after the OG Precure scene by watching the series that started it all. School girls run into fairies being pursued by weird monsters from another dimension/world/whatever and have to become legendary warriors to help them out. It's a story we all know well, just with lots of dropkicks and judo tosses.

As much as I like Honoka and Nagisa, and the opening theme...Futari wa has a lot of growing pains which is to be expected. Being the first one, it feels more like other magical girl series of the time compared to the style of later Pretty Cure series. From the rather uninspired villains, including one named Pissard, to the bland crush of Fuji P-senpai, and especially the obnoxious fairies, this is definitely one of the weaker series in my eyes. Again, it's probably not fair to judge it though since they didn't know what they were doing yet with this series.

That being said, there is a dumb fun to watching the Crunchyroll subs for a nostalgic taste of hard yellow subs and often not great audio. Again, the best parts of this are Honoka and Nagisa and I can see why they still get to be super popular today.

Smile Precure!

The other older series we checked out this year was Smile Precure which is much more my speed. The characters are all really good and they're all super good friends and it just makes me feel good. Like just in general they'rea really good and strong cast and I love all of them. Reika/Cure Beauty is the secret funniest character just by being the straight man on a team of doofuses and it works so well.

Miyuki's desire to make everything around her "Ultra Happy" just makes you feel good seeing a character who just wants others around her to be as happy as she is. All she needs is a smile and that makes me also smile. Akane is fiery and powerful, Yayoi is a big sweetie whose artistic trials and tribulations I SUPER identify with, Nao is a super cool big sister and I already brought up Reika being great. This is really one of my favorite Precures I've watched so far and I'm going to be sad to see it go in a few weeks.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that I love the stupid villain trio. Especially Akaoni. I love you big red oni doofus. (Please see oni times in the link below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXA5jfSJz_c&feature=youtu.be

Shows that made me tear up count: 5 (ANY NAO EPISODE AAAA)

Star Twinkle Precure

The newest Precure series! One we also dragged fellow anime friend Metalray into and I feel like it was a fun enough one. Cute alien encounters trying to help space zodiac princesses with a fluff unicorn and a tentacalien? Sign me up my dudes. Star Twinkle is a fun series and has a lot of things going for it, while also having weird similarities to Smile sometimes like soccer related attacks from good big sisters and prim and proper arrow girls.

The characters as always really make the show I feel when it comes to Precure and Lala is adorable enough to carry it entirely herself? But the enthusiasm of Hikaru is always fun because it usually just involves her being really into outer space and everything in it. Hey there's even Elena who is Mexican-Japanese and the show even explores a bit of her growing up being different from others so like, that's pretty cool I think? If it helps little kids learn to accept others and be cool through lil hermit crabs and dog space police officers, I think that's a real good thing.

...Now Precure time is over but I'm looking forward to next year's offering and seeing what old ones we go after next. (Spoilers, we will probably do Max Heart and Fresh!)...

How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift?

So this series has some problems in that like...wow sometimes during the exercise segments of the show, it just gets way too horny like...I dunno if I needed to see sensei in nothing but a bedsheet to show off how she worked her lats fellas. But I digress.

The main reason this show is on here is because it affected me enough to actually look at myself and start wanting to become healthier? Like the show is just a framing device for jokes and showing off exercise routines but the characters are all really sincere and the translation of the opening is even moreso? Like I feel this show helped me out a lot and I'm gonna let you all know about it cuz maybe it can help you out too if you need it.

I don't have a whole lot more to say but I will leave you with the opening I mentioned. Turn on the captions for this banger and remember that you can do it too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxi2Y4-NNXY

Wasteful Days of High School Girl

Hey, so can I say something amazing? Much like Asobi Asobase last year, this series was a very weird comedy that I absolutely ended up loving a lot in the end. The cast is full of delightful idiots, one aptly named Baka by her friends being the standout moron of the cast. The title pretty much says it all but you will find all sorts of high school girls here just wasting their youth away in their favorite ways.

You want a girl who draws BL doujin while listening to vocaloid tracks? We gotchu. What about a girl who is more invested in micro organisms in Petri dishes than her friends? Yo, we're set. A dipshit chuuni who climbs on top of absolutely anything tall and regularly needs to be rescued/leap out of trees because of it? Yea, that's here too. The show is not afraid to be weird any chance it gets and there's something I can respect about that. This series also had one of my number one laughs in an anime this year in one of the last episodes too and it still makes me laugh as I recall it right now.

Also like Asobi Asobase, it has the plus of having a lovable witch girl who is as pure as she is into weird occult shit. Majo you're a sweetie. Even if your room is creepy.

The Demon Girl Next Door

This show feels like something that should have come out about 5 years ago in terms of animation style, story set up, characters and even the jokes. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing though because not only is it pleasant and cute, it also knows when to step back from teasing its unfortunate main character. Shamiko, the demon girl formerly known as Yuko by everyone who isn't her family, is a kind of pitiful character and this series could easily just make jokes that punch down and humiliate her way more than it did.

Thankfully, the show actually does it's best to show that she is comic relief but also that she is genuinely a good person. She's not very good at being a demon as she is still learning so maybe she gets easily tricked by resident blase magical girl Momo more than she should. However, she will go out of her way to make sure her rival is eating more than the crappy instant food she frequently microwaves. Like I said, it's ultimately a silly, kind of dated feeling series but the character interactions are nice and it's just genuinely good

hearted to see these girls become friends, even if sometimes it's due to trickier. The show makes sure not to be mean at all times to Shamiko compared to say Satania in Gabriel Dropout's treatment, or the snake girl in that Dropkick show I dropped after one episode. Shamiko is good and hopefully one day she will be able to use her demon powers to rule the world so her family can have a bigger, non cursed, budget to live on.

O Maidens in Your Savage Season

Puberty is hard. Puberty is also maddening, wanting to drive you up the wall with new urges you are not used to. Simple joys like trains are replaced with weird videos you order off websites or somehow get from the back of a video store. Puberty is an inherently frantic time but it's also kind of funny if you think about it enough.

Maidens explores the tales of the Literature Club members as they go through this important stage of life and that's the fun of this series. All of the girls are each trying to find out exactly what it is they want out of a relationship. Is it just friendship? Is it Ess Ee Ecks? There's a lot of fun to be had as the series goes on. Whether it be Kazusa trying to get a bit further with a childhood friend, President Rika questioning her stance on relationships being even proper to have in high school or the writing adventures of HItoha going to sex chatrooms, there is a lot of different things going on in this show.

It's got a very good sense of drama as well; there were more than a few episodes where I found myself worried about what would happen next and hoping things would be ok. Niina's arc is very intense and gave me creeper vibes any time her old mentor appeared. The show is very good in general at just showing emotions and none of it felt like it was shoehorned or phony. The writing is top notch and I love all these girls. Puberty is a weird time but...they got this I'm sure.

Here are a couple of other shows I watched that didn't come out this year but enjoyed a lot!

SSSS.Gridman

Thank God Trigger was able to come back from its previous offering to give us Gridman. At first I was afraid that all of its Transformers color scheme easter eggs were just trying to lure me in with a mediocre show. This was not the case because Gridman just rules hard. A sequel/spinoff to the old 90's series, localized here as Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, this show was a love letter from the creators to the show and other tokusatsu shows in general.

Kaiju appear to devastate the city, shown from low angles that just make it seem even more like you're watching an old toku show. The toyetic nature of Gridman's various powerups and the design of Gridman himself just further pay homage to this. There was one Kaiju for a moment I swear you could see a string operating it (for the record, it was not a string but was in fact part of the Kaiju). It's not just a cheap nostalgic trap though because the animation is superb, the action is top notch and the main theme song just kicks ass. This is a really cool series and if you have any passing interest in toku shows, are a Trigger fan, or like seeing Actionmaster Thundercracker's color scheme, go and check this thing out!

Other highlights include another version of Inferno Cop and Rikka's mom who is always fun and good.

Dirty Pair (TV series)

Dirty Pair is a series I watched a good chunk of before but never actually finished. Thanks to the #DirtyDecempair hashtag though, I finally went and did it and well...Dirty Pair is still really good y'all. It's got space babes who kick ass and are not afraid to go after hunks along the way. Seriously, it's great when you watch a show older than you and it lives up to its hype.

Kei and Yuri are really good characters because they will snipe at each other but in the end, they are still besties and will mess up anything that gets in their way. I appreciate that they always try to get more PTO and pay out of their boss. Even more, I appreciate that the chief will put up with all their shit, whether it be the aforementioned blackmailing for vacation or the sheer amount of destruction they leave in their wake, and still is 100% behind them. He knows they're the best he has and nothing will get in their way.

So yea, Dirty Pair. Still a good show over 30 years later. You should check it out next December! Or sooner, whatever!

That abut wraps up my list of anime I watched this year, but I'm also gonna throw a little bonus round on you! Some anime movies I watched and liked! Lightning round go!

Promare Good fucking movie, good fucking soundtrack. Good Trigger things this year. It lives up to its hype for sure. Go see this when it is out on DVD and Bluray!

Sound Euphonium - Our Promise: A Brand New Day This was a nice movie that felt like a good third season condensed into about 2ish hours.

Love Live! Sunshine!! The School Idol Movie: Over the Rainbow I actually like the music from this one more than the movie itself but seeing Ruby's arc gaining confidence is good and I love it.

Bonus Saint Snow Track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUNNWxK2Dfs

Redline A movie I kept meaning to see and finally did thanks. Stylish and cool as hell, and the dub is really good too.

Dragon Ball Super: Broly They made Broly a compelling character finally, holy shit. Also some good Frieza comedy.

KonoSuba! Legend of Crimson Imagine a village full of dipshit chuuni wizards. This movie was fun and funny as shit. Warning: It does have one awkward joke related to gender but it thankfully passes by it real quick.

So I think this is my list. I hope you enjoy it. The next time you'll see one from me will be in the distant future of 2020! Hopefully things will be cool by that point to go with the good anime.

#MiyosAnimeListISatItAgain

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viridian-angel · 6 years ago

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Black Pearl [Chapter 1]

Series: Original [Sara]

Genre: Thriller

Characters: Original [Rights Reserved]

Wordcount: 2,306

Prologue to this chapter here

“Boss, you’re back!”

A round of cheerful hollers rose from the room as Sara entered, followed by a few confused mumbles and curious glances.

Held close to her chest, a frazzled-looking, skittish, scruffy black cat trembled in her arms, eyes darting around the room. Everybody gave it at least one look before returning their gaze back to Sara, who was currently more stone-faced than her typically charismatic and cool self.

“Uh… Boss? What’s with the cat?” one of her yakuza clansmen asked, scratching the back of his head.

“Ain’t that typical, goes out on a hit, comes back with a stray,” another joked, laughing to himself and stretching in his chair. The man behind him scooted closer in his chair, letting out a not so quiet whisper of “Isn’t that how she found you, dipshit?”, prodding him and laughing.

A massive man, about as tall as her and twice as wide approached her, reaching his arms out with palms open. “Here, I’ll take it, Boss. You still got blood on yer hands, you outta wash up.” Sara stared him in the eyes, conveying a silent message that he nodded in response to. She carefully offloaded the cat into his arms, the man holding it close to his shirtless, tattooed chest.

Sara took a deep breath and took a moment to stretch, clearing her throat. Everyone else in the room immediately fell silent and all eyes fell on her.

“Matano’s dead. Be on the lookout for retaliation– anyone loitering around the building, cars parked a little too long outside with no one coming out of ‘em. So on and so forth, you know the drill. As far as a lot of people are concerned, we’re even now. He put out the hit, he got hit back, no extra collateral racked up in the process. It’s about as cut and dry as you can get, we should be good– but you never know.”

Everyone in the room began to chatter quietly to themselves, picking straws as to who would be doing what and when. One of them spoke up above the rest, idly flicking the toothpick held between his teeth.

“’Grats Boss, but where’d the cat come from?”

“Heard it mewling from a janky old abandoned lot after I finished my business. It’s way too cold and wet out there right now for a stray to survive, so…”

She scratched the side of her head, just sort of ending the sentence there.

“Anyway, I need to wash up.” she continued, preemptively rolling up her sleeves. “Kentaro,” she addressed the large man, “Bring the cat to my room and just take care of ‘em for a little bit. As soon as I’m not covered in dry blood I’ll pay a visit to a convenience store and get some cat food for them.”

He nodded without another word, letting the cat have some wiggle room and shift back and forth between his massive hands.

Sara scrubbed her hands thoroughly in her bathroom, the dried blood on her hands flaking off and falling down the sink drain. She splashed some water into her face for good measure, drying her eyes with a hand towel and staring into the mirror.

“You’ve been dealt a real shitty hand–”

She shook her head. What could he have even meant by that? The implication was that something big was about to go down– but she hadn’t heard so much as a little blip on the radar regarding anything huge in the works. Then again, her clan was very much detached from any huge alliance– she was on her own, an outcast followed by punks. No one to answer to– but no one else on her side beside the people who pledged their loyalty to her. So, no one tended to give her friendly tidbits advice. Mainly, they just flung lead and shrapnel her way.

Cupping her hands, she gathered and poured water down her thick, silver hair. She worked little specks of red out of it the best she could, meticulous in her cleaning.

“All eyes are on you now, kid.”

More than usual? She was always going to be viewed as an unstable upstart to every other clan, and that much wasn’t new to her. What could she have possibly done? Something that he was going to do instead of her… something that he was sure of. What could he possibly be sure that she’d do?

She did a quick comb through her hair, pulling a hair-band from her pocket and tying it up into a neat ponytail.

“Guess I’ll just have to bide my time and find out…” she muttered quietly, stepping outside and walking into the main room again. Quick count– two, four, eight, sixteen… and Kentaro makes seventeen, in her office with that cat. Everyone here. Two of them were on relaxing back in their chairs while watching multiple camera feeds set around the surrounding streets and buildings. Five of them were playing cards and laughing together, waiting for their turns to do the basic tasks the others were currently taking care of. Three were doing routine check-ups and tune-ups on their small cache of weapons, four of them had taken point at the only reliable ways to enter the building, just out of view. The last two were hanging out in the kitchen attached to the main room, cooking a large meal for the rest of the group.

She couldn’t help but smile a little at it all. Despite not having any real instructions from her, they always managed to settle into the natural rhythm of work to keep the place safe. Sara knew she could trust each one of them, and it was the kind of peace that she always doubted she’d ever really be able to have.

“Boss!” one at the table shouted, reaching to the ground and flinging a raincoat up at her in one smooth motion. She instinctively caught it in her hands, earning a little dramatic “Ooooh!” and applause from the rest of the table.

“Figured you’d want to actually be a little dry when you go out there this time.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Michiya.”

The woman stepped into the rainy streets, now properly protected from the downpour the weather had turned into. Not cold enough for snow, but cold enough that this would turn pretty dangerous for anyone just trying to hang out outside. It was really late at this point, so most anyone would simply be sleeping at home. Anyone with a more… typical job, that is.

Sara looked around, eyeing the surrounding area for anything suspicious. Almost like clockwork, she saw a car parked across the street start up, lights flaring up.

She didn’t flinch, merely walking forward with an unsettling, unblinking glare focused on the car’s tinted passenger window. Within a few steps, the car’s tires begun to spin and screech against the street, quickly speeding off into the wet roads.

“Great. That’s real reassuring.”

Sara put her raincoat's hood up, taking more relaxed steps out into the rain. Whatever the case for someone to be watching her currently, she’d have to trust her crew to be able to handle themselves for now. She did have a hungry cat she needed to take care of right now.

There were few times in her life she had been happier for 24-hour convenience stores. It was a true boon to the people who didn’t typically get to live out their lives during the day– such was true for her now, and it was back when she was a temporarily homeless teenager. It didn’t take long for her to pick out a decent amount of cat supplies, pay for it, and get out.

From the crowd of people waiting for her outside, it looked like getting back home would be another matter entirely.

A large group of fourteen men formed a semi-circle a couple of meters away from her, all equipped with a range of close-range weapons from bats to katanas. Her eyes narrowed, observing all of them and making mental notes to herself.

“I don’t suppose you guys came to help a lady carry her groceries, did you?” she commented, forcing a laugh and shrugging her shoulders.

The most nicely dressed one of the bunch attempted to light a cigarette, not offering a response as much as his frustrated noises over the rain.

“Tsk. Real shitty weather tonight, huh?” he said dryly, giving up and tossing his now soggy cigarette onto the ground.

“Yeah.”

A tense silence fell over them before the man started to speak up again.

“So, Matano finally bit the dust, huh?” he muttered rhetorically, leaning against his car and sighing. “Well, I suppose that’s what he gets. Not really a smart idea to go starting shit when we got more important things to be doin’.”

Sara remained silent, keeping her eyes trained on everyone she could to be ready for an attack at any moment. The man straightened himself up, walking with a casual pace up to Sara. He stopped about half a meter in front of her, hands in his pockets. Looking her up and down, he let out a short whistle. Sara’s left eye twitched.

“Well, they weren’t kidding when they said you were big, huh?”

“Am I supposed to know who you are?” she said, an unsettling grin spreading across her face.

“Nah, not really.” he replied, looking past her at the bag of cat supplies she was holding. “Just Matano’s soon to be replacement. You really opened up a spot for me on the ol’ corporate ladder. Say, what’d you got there in the bag–”

The second he began to reach for the bag, Sara’s free hand lashed out and tightly wrapped around his throat. He let out a startled sputter and wheeze, his hands instinctively latching onto Sara’s to try and pry it free. No matter how hard he attempted to, he didn’t get so much as a budge.

The men behind him stumbled a bit in place, quickly readying their weapons and inching closer.

Sara squeezed tighter, eliciting another pained grunt from the man in her grasp. “Name.” she commanded, her eyes hard at work keeping tabs on each yakuza as they moved forward.

“N… Noboru…” he managed to choke out, relinquishing his grip on her hand and waving hurriedly at the men behind him. “F-Fucking stop moving you idiots! She could break my throat right now…”

“Okay, Noboru. I’ll fill you in on any details you might’ve missed. Matano died because he tried to kill me. I’m not looking to start shit, but when people try to hurt me, I can’t help but lash out. I don’t care if you’re his replacement, or you end up being the big bad boss of your clan. You don’t piss me off, stay out of our turf, and leave us alone, we’ll get along just fine.”

“G… Got it…”

Sara stared at him in silence for a few moments, before unceremoniously letting go of his windpipe. He sputtered and coughed, massaging his throat with a hand and stepping back. “J-Jesus, alright then… you really outta loosen up, lady. I thought you were supposed to be the goody-two-shoes pushover of the patriarchs around here…”

“I’m nice to those who deserve it. People who come up to me with their entourage of goons to small talk don’t really fit that description.”

“Fair enough,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I didn’t come here for a fight anyway. They’re just protection, really. More specifically, we’ve been searching around her for something…”

He scratched the back of his head, a knowing smirk on his face as he eyed Sara’s bag. “More specifically, Matano was around these parts looking for a little stray cat… it was pretty important, actually. I don’t suppose you happened to see one after you, uh… offed him, right?”

Sara kept a calm poker-face and shook her head. “No. Do you think I’d be looking for a cat in this weather?”

“Nah, I guess not. Just, you know… you happened to have a bunch of cat food and whatnot in that bag, and it seemed a little late to be going shopping for that kind of stuff.”

“I ran out of food. My cat’s hungry and yelling about it, so I went out.”

“Oh yeah? What color is it?”

“White.”

“What kind of cat?

“Persian.”

“What’s his name?”

“Yuuto.”

The rapid-fire exchanged paused for a moment, and he scratched his chin.

“Huh… so, a white Persian cat named Yuuto… how old is she?”

“He.”

His smirk widened, scratching the back of his head again and laughing. “Ah yeah, I’ve got a bad short term memory, sorry.” he said, casting Sara a cold glare despite the smile plastered on his face. “But you’d remember that for your own cat, of course…”

Sara returned the glare, but any trace of a smile was absent on her face. “Yeah. Are we done here now?” Sara hissed between clenched teeth, gripping her bag tighter.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to hold you from you cat any longer. Youta, was it?”

“Yuuto.”

“Right, right, sorry, sorry. I’ll getting out of your hair now.”

He opened his car door, taking a step inside before stopping. “Oh, and Miss Reighs…”

Sara didn’t offer a response, merely staring him down instead.

“… Might want to get indoors soon. Heard this weather was going to get even worse later tonight. Heh.”

He stepped fully into his car, sitting down and shutting the door as his crew begun to wander in different directions, offering her silent scowls.

Sara waited in place until all of them were out of sight, then let out a long, deep sigh. She tilted her head up, staring at the stormy sky and blinking through raindrops.

And then, a quiet, almost inaudible,

“What the fuck?”

#writing #ocs

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valeriehalla · 2 years ago

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this is the first finished illustration i've made in krita! it is also probably gonna be the last, at least for the time being. hear ye now my tale, people who want to read a comic artist talk about linux for way too long for some reason:

i actually used to be a linux user. for most of my PC-using life, i didn't even have windows installed -- it was all linux, all the time. when i first started getting serious about learning to draw, i did so in linux, using a very nice and minimalistic program called MyPaint. i loved it!!

when i tentatively migrated back to windows, it was expressly because i began needing more specific features out of an art program because i was starting to have dreams about doing weird stuff like making comics, or maybe a visual novel. i used paint tool sai, then switched to clip studio paint, which i've been using for most of the time you've ever heard of me.

clip studio paint is great, but windows... windows deadens my soul to interact with. every time an update adds a new checkbox i need to untick to make it stop exporting more and more of my personal information to advertising agencies, i feel this darkness bubbling within, like i'm watching the window of all the possibilities the personal computer has to offer narrow to a pinhole. i despise what the modern operating system has become. yucky!!!

i forget why exactly, but a month or two ago i was suddenly filled with determination to finally switch back to linux, no matter the cost, so i bought a new hard drive and dug in. it's been a good 8 years since i used linux daily, so i was really excited to see what all is new. the answer is kind of a lot!! it is a cold hard fact that the linux desktop is easily as capable and user-friendly as any other OS these days. if you stick with a beginner-oriented distro and pick a desktop environment like KDE, you may never have to edit a single config file!!!

and if you want to do some illustration on linux, you have one extremely good option these days: krita. (it's also available on windows!) krita is an all-in-one paint program that genuinely rivals the likes of clip studio paint. like most free open source software, it's a little janky, with plenty of small bugs and minor UI artifacts, but it can do a really astonishing breadth of stuff; the brush engine is great, and the drawing feels as good as it should on any paint program. it can even do some things very few paint programs can, like work with 16-bit or 32-bit color and blend with linear RGB. if you don't know what that means, my advice is try not to ever find out, because if you ever have to go back to a program that doesn't have those features, it'll be like a permanent splinter in your brain.

anyway, as a long-time user of clip studio paint, i'm delighted to find that krita can do pretty much everything clip can, often better, with (in my view) exactly two exceptions:

there's no option for temporary tool switching via shortcuts. clip studio and most other paint programs i know of can be configured so that if you hold the hotkey for switching to a tool, then when you release the key, it'll switch back to the previous tool you were using. it's hard to understate how big an impact this has on efficiency: if you use a lot of keyboard shortcuts while you paint, this temporary tool switching behavior can potentially halve the number of keys you have to hit over the course of an illustration. during some parts of the illustration process, i'm switching tools as frequently as once or twice every couple seconds, so you can see why i'm into this approach. it's a mystery to me that this feature hasn't been implemented in krita, but it's entirely possible it will be in the future!

i can't use it because it's too slow and now i'm back on windows sobbing as my body is consumed by the locust-plague of telemetry checkboxes and ui-embedded ads for candy crush

yeah, the program is just kind of slow. it's heavily multithreaded, so if you have a more modern processor with 6+ cores, the performance gets proportionally better, but it's unfortunately still not enough to overcome the amount of time i was losing in my workflow simply waiting for the image to process.

i'm not sure what it is, but to put it in perspective, tools like the magic wand or flood fill can potentially take 1000ms or more on both PCs i tested, irrespective of the actual number of pixels they're crunching through. this is slightly dependent on the size of the image you're working on, but operating at print resolution with even just one filter applied was enough to render krita very difficult to use for the duration of coloring the image above.

i'm an armchair coder at best, with no experience in this kind of software, so i can only speculate on what's happening behind the scenes to make certain tools behave this way. it strikes me as the kind of thing where there's either a simple optimization that's just been overlooked, or it's something where fixing it would be a months-long slog through hell, and besides, whose art workflow could possibly involve making contiguous selections that often anyway? well: mine does, unfortunately!!

anyway, i need to be able to work fast given the volume of illustrations i'll be churning through this week, and clip studio is nonfunctional in wine (linux's windows emulator), so with a heavy heart i've had to switch back to windows. it sucks, because barring my particular professional requirements, linux on the desktop and the suite of software available for it is really good. it's better than ever! i can't emphasize enough that krita owns, and is an excellent option for most people with most use cases. and kde plasma, the desktop environment i was using, kicks windows's ass to the curb and back in terms of its breadth of customizability and user-first design. both of these pieces of software remain under very active development, so they will only continue to get better over time.

i, in the meanwhile, have to go delete two consecutive disney+ ads from my start menu.

streeeetch 🎵

#text #linux #krita #you really don't need to read this

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m4n71c0r3 · 7 years ago

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No Sacrifice No Victory: A Warrior Tribal EDH Deck

Why Warriors?

Because you’re not a COWARD, are you?

In all seriousness though, Battlebond, the upcoming 2HG set features some pretty neat Warrior cards in almost every color, including a super sweet new 5 color Legendary Warrior to head up your EDH deck.

Now that the spotlight has been put onto my favorite tribe in the game I’d like to show off the current incarnation of my 4 Color Warrior EDH Deck looks like. With all that said, let’s get down to business!

NO SACRIFICE, NO VICTORY

Warriors as a tribe are much more than just attacking. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll be doing a LOT of turning creatures sideways, but the tribe has a lot of synergies that are often overlooked in the place of just swinging face. What my deck focuses in on is generating tokens and taking advantage of +1/+1 counter generation to make a big army that can win either through direct combat or by other various means which I’ll elaborate on later.

OUR COMMANDER(S)

For a while I initially used Saskia just for her colors, but after a while I saw that I just wasn’t casting her, so I decided to go with a much more powerful partnership.

Not only is Reyhan a Warrior, but her ability to transfer counters from our dying creatures plays a key role in the deck and I’ve had more overall consistent results with her in the Command Zone instead of the 99.

Bruse is pretty much just here for his colors, but having something gain double strike and lifelink in a pinch sure doesn’t hurt either.

CORE CARDS

These are what I consider to be the core cards of this deck. Reyhan and Kresh are able to make a powerful engine that let us trade in both token and nontoken creatures for additional counters onto Kresh. Primal Vigor lets our various token generators get out of control while Cathar’s Crusade and Bramblewood Paragon gives them the necessary counters when they enter the battlefield, while Death’s Presence lets us net additional counters from them dying. Daghatar the Adamant is probably the most efficient nontoken creature for the strategy considering he’ll yield the most counters on death, and Dragonscale General lets us get even more out of our unrelenting assault with even more counters.

This core package of cards essentially enables us to relentlessly press the attack with little concern of what lives and dies because either way we still get value regardless of outcome.

REMOVAL AND SACRIFICE

Nothing too outstanding with these cards, just some ways to remove threats on Warrior bodies. Kindred Dominance is more often than not will wipe everything except your side of the board, and Utter End is there just to make sure that any extremely annoying permanents don’t stick around after the wipe.

There is a neat little interaction between Champion of Stray Souls and Butcher of Malakir that lets us retrieve creatures from our graveyard wile forcing our opponents to sacrifice their own creatures. Not the most efficient way to clear a board, but in the face of some graveyard hate it can save anything in the yard from being exiled and punish opponents for trying.

TOKEN MAKERS AND DOUBLERS

This package of cards lets us generate an obscene number of Warrior tokens. Anointed Procession, Parallel Lives, and Second Harvest are pretty self explanatory.

Oketra’s Monument rewards us for casting nontoken creatures while also reducing the cost of White cards by a bit. Doesn’t seem like much but with a few of our doublers out we can get a good bit of tokens out of one creature cast.

We can often mitigate the X/X Treefolk token that Sylvan Offering gives an opponent with some forced sacrifice from the previous package, and our opponents generally aren’t able to get as much value out of their X 1/1 Elf Warriors as we are so it’s pretty negligible.

Mercy Killing is an odd card because more often than not we will be targeting one of our own creatures that would be killed by targeted removal.

RAMP AND ACCELERATION

Mostly because of my own hubris the little bit of ramp/acceleration is creature-based like with Cryptolith Rite and Growing Rites. Civic Wayfinder is a neat little Warrior that gets us a basic, and Black Market will reward us for all the stuff that’ll be dying. Other than that we have some signets and a Pillar of Origins to fix for any colors that we don’t have.

(If you have the money for it though a Cavern of Souls would be pretty amazing for the deck, but since I don’t it’s not included here.)

MISC. WARRIORS

These are just some nontoken Warriors that were good enough to make the cut. Brighthearth Banneret is good cost reduction in addition to a +1/+1 if we draw it too late for it to be useful. Champion of Lambholt is good with this kind of strategy because she can get out of control relatively easily and grand make our whole army unblockable. Den Protector is a slower Eternal Witness but with the relevant tribe. Grand Warlord Radha can help with mana issues and Reassembling Skeleton can help us abuse our ETB counter effects.

Boldwyr Intimidator is mostly just a flavorful inclusion that won’t let COWARDS BLOCK WARRIORS and makes our opponents creatures COWARDS.

Herald of Dromoka and Chief of the Edge are pretty self explanatory, although it’s worth noting that the reason I’m only running Chief of the Edge and not Chief of the Scale is because of Kresh’s ability since it only cares about power and not toughness.

CARD DRAW/DECK DIGGING

All of these cards can either help us find what we need or draw us some cards. This Garruk is just an absolute card draw monster in this deck, plus his minus 3 and ultimate can really just let us go to town with getting things onto the board. Duskwatch Recruiter does a good job of imitating Garruk’s plus 1 with letting us filter through our deck and has cost reduction on his other side. More often than not we can cast out a pretty big Kindred Summons and get a good amount of creatures onto the battlefield.

Herald’s Horn gives us some nice cost reduction plus an additional card every now and then, while Vanquisher’s Banner boosts our army and gives us a card every time we cast a Warrior. Inspiring Call doubles as a card draw/combat trick in this deck that can make all of our creatures with a +1/+1 counter on them indestructible for the turn and give us a card for each. With the way this deck plays it’ll pretty much always net us a nonzero amount of cards.

I’m sure that Birthing Pod needs no introduction needs no introduction, but to those who are unfamiliar the card will let us sacrifice a creature to get one out of our deck which is super sweet.

Greater Good is a nice free sacrifice outlet that can get us cards in exchange for some powerful creatures and also has some nice interactions with Garna, the Bloodflame that I’ll talk about in the next segment.

BIG FINISHERS

This deck has a lot of very consistent ways to close out the game depending on how it’s going. Cards like Kessig Wolf Run, Stonehoof Chieftain, and Stoneforge Masterwork are great if you’ve managed to build up the board with big Warriors and can generally finish the game off just through combat alone.

But this is EDH and things are rarely that simple so luckily the deck has a few ways to deal with that. Blood-Chin Fanatic, Goblin Bombardment, Roar of the Crowd, and Throne of the God-Pharaoh all give us ways to close out the game in a board where we might not be able to directly attack our opponents.

Throne provides some nice drain early on with a Cryptolith Rite and a few creatures, but can also just end the game on its own later on if we’ve managed to build up a big enough board to just dome everyone else at the table.

Blood-Chin Fanatic and Goblin Bombardment fill the same kind of direct damage as Throne, but work better in different board states, although sacrificing a lot of tokens with +1/+1 on them and then a big Kresh to Blood-Chin Fanatic is probably my favorite way to end a game. Bombardment also has a nice bit of utility in the face of a mass exile like Merciless Eviction or another similar spell.

Garna is a very recent addition, but she’s served the deck well in that short time even if winning with her is really janky. Essentially what we would want to do is sacrifice almost everything to Greater Good and discard as many creatures as we can, then play out Garna and return everything for one big swing. It’s not very consistent but it’s still a very satisfying way to win.

LAST CARDS

These are mostly just things that I had laying around that I thought would slot into the deck pretty well, and so far they have.

Metallic Mimic is an honorary Warrior since it grants an additional +1/+1 counter to every other Warrior that enters the battlefield.

A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES!

With the reveal of Najeela a lot of people have started to show interest in my favorite tribe, and though I claim no authority on the matter, I thought I would take some time to show off some options that I would consider adding to this deck as well as some cards from Battlebond.

BEAT EM BLUE!

If you’ve been following my blog for a while then it should be no secret that Blue is my least favorite color, so if you haven’t I’m just making my bias known. Even with that being said though, the pool for Warriors in Blue is extremely shallow, but the few that do shine through are pretty sweet.

Grimgrin, Ezuri 2.0, and Herald of Secret Streams already fit really well into the counters theme of the deck and push it just completely over the top, while Surrak makes all of our creatures uncounterable and grants Trample to the whole team.

And even though I don’t like Blue very much I’d like to take a second here to specifically talk about Grimgrin and how good of a card he is for Warrior tribal. Specifically though, how he goes infinite with Presence of Gond.

Once you’ve got Presence of Gond onto Grimgrin all you have to do is tap him to make a Warrior token and then sac the token to untap him and get a +1/+1 counter onto him. That’s good enough on it’s own but with Cathar’s Crusade, Death’s Presence, and Primal Vigor you’ve pretty much got infinite Warriors with infinite +1/+1 counters for your whole team.

Sure, it’s super sweet, but if you run this combo then you better be able to close out the game on that turn or be prepared to become the target of the table.

BATTLEBOND

The pickings from Battlebond are pretty slim for this deck, but the ones that make the cut are pretty decent. Rushblade Commander is a nice haste-enabler for our Warriors. Decorated Champion slots into the +1/+1 counters subtheme of the deck and makes for a nice juicy target for Blood-Chin Fanatic as well. Blaring Recruiter is just more token generation, Mindblade Render is more card draw, and Thrasher Brute pings an opponent every time a Warrior enters the battlefield which will be pretty frequent. Thrilling Encore is basically just another Garna effect which, while not super consistent, can still be really fun.

Anywho, that’s the rundown on Warrior tribal! This is by no means a comprehensive analysis of the viability of the tribe or anything like that, it was mostly just me gushing about my favorite tribe in all of Magic! I hope that y’all see what I love about the tribe and maybe consider giving them a chance for your next EDH deck!

(@queen-marchesa @rhonas-indomitable @gardianforce @dad-nixilis I remember y’all wanted to see it the most so here it is!)

#mtg #edh #decklist #commander

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agilenano · 4 years ago

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Agilenano - News: The $50 Ham: WSPR-ing Around the World

Everybody has a bucket list, things to be accomplished before the day we eventually wake up on the wrong side of the grass. Many bucket-list items are far more aspirational than realistic; very few of us with “A trip to space” on our lists are going to live to see that fulfilled. And even the more realistic goals, like the trip to Antarctica that’s been on my list for ages, become less and less likely as your life circumstances change — my wife hates the cold. Luckily, instead of going to Antarctica by myself — and really, what fun would that be? — I’ve recently been getting some of the satisfaction of world travel through amateur radio. The last installment of “The $50 Ham” highlighted weak-signal digital modes using WSJT-X; in that article, I mentioned a little about the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter, or WSPR. It’s that mode that let me test what’s possible with very low-power transmissions, and allowed me to virtually visit six continents including Antarctica and Sweden-by-way-of-Alaska. Whispers in the Noise Ask a random amateur radio operator what’s on his or her mind at any given moment and chances are pretty good the answer will be, “How are the bands right now?” That’s shorthand for what the current state of the ionosphere is, which largely determines how well RF signals will bounce off the various layers of charged particles that wrap around the planet. These layers shift and move in diurnal cycles, and undergo longer-term cycles of strengthening and weakening that depend on the cycles of magnetic activity on the Sun. Assessing the state of the ionosphere and finding out which bands have a path to which points on the globe used to be something that hams had to do by spinning the dial and listening for beacon stations. Beacons are stations that transmit a generally low-power signal from a fixed, know location on a regular schedule. If you can hear the beacon, chances are good that you’ve got a propagation path between you and the general area of the beacon on that frequency. While beacons are useful, they have their limits. They depend on the kindness of strangers, who devote resources to running and maintaining the beacon station. Beacons are also subject to occasional maintenance outages, so not hearing a beacon you expect does not necessarily mean that you don’t have a path between two points. But perhaps the most limiting aspect of traditional beacons is that they operate on a pull model — you have to sit down at your radio and intentionally tune into the beacon’s frequency and decode what you hear — beacons almost always use continuous wave (CW) mode with Morse code. Add to that the fact that whatever you learn about the propagation paths available to you stays pretty much within your shack, and beacons have limited utility. WSPR signal by Louis Taber, CC BY-SA 4.0 With those limitations in mind, Joe Taylor (K1JT) began working on a digital mode in 2008 specifically for exploring propagation paths. The protocol was dubbed WSPR, which of course everyone pronounces as “whisper,” which given its capabilities is an apt name indeed. WSPR is a digital mode that employs special digital signal processing algorithms to decode signals with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of -28 dBm in a bandwidth of 2,500 Hz. When transmitting, WSPR sends a compressed 50-bit message that encodes the station’s callsign, the grid location, and the transmitter power. The message is modulated using frequency-shift keying at a very low bit rate — less than 1.5 baud. This means an entire message with error correction takes almost two full minutes to send. Transmissions are synchronized by the WSPR software to begin one second into each even-numbered minute, making accurate time synchronization essential. Propagation Made Visual The shape of things to come — east coast stations are hitting Antarctica on 20 meters, which means I might too in a few hours when the Sun sets over my QTH. As cool as the WSPR protocol is, the magic of WSPR comes from the “R” part of its name: reporting. This is where WSPR closes the loop that traditional beacons leave open, since WSPR client software can be configured to log any WSPR signals received and decoded by a station to a central database. WSPRnet.org is the place where all the reports go; the site contains a searchable database of all “spots” reported as well as a map that shows current contacts by many, many stations. The map on WSPRnet is admittedly a bit janky — it’s based on Google Maps, and an error dialog pops up every time you load a new view. There are other visualizations, though, but even with the issues, WSPRnet’s map is a great way to see what propagation paths may be available to you at the current time. For example, I took a quick peek at the 20-m band just now and found that from my area, I’ve got solid paths to pretty much all of North America. More importantly, I can see that I have no paths into Europe or Asia, and very little to the south into Central and South America. But, by looking at what’s going on with paths on the east coast of the US, where the sun is currently setting and which are actively reaching several stations in and just offshore of Antarctica, I might have a path to the bottom of the planet coming up as the sun sets over me. Doing My Part As I mentioned in my first weak-signals article, I’ve currently got WSJT-X running on a Raspberry Pi 4 that I have dedicated to ham radio use. WSJT-X has a built-in WSPR mode, which makes it easy to switch back and forth between exploring possible propagation paths with WSPR and exploiting that information to make actual QSOs using FT8 or one of the other supported modes. The beauty of using WSJT-X for WSPR work is that it’s basically completely automated. Depending on how you set it up, you can either be a dedicated WSPR receiving and reporting station, or you can choose to also transmit. When I’m going to be in the shack / office, which is almost always, I set up WSJT-X to transmit on WSPR with a 20% duty cycle — that is, one out of every five two-minute blocks will be dedicated to transmitting. That way, I can do my part contributing to the WSPR map — there generally aren’t many WSPR beacons operating in my part of North Idaho, so I figure this is my way of pitching in. Plus, I get the occasional bonus of nabbing a cool contact, like the aforementioned hit on DP0GVN-1, a German research vessel parked off the coast of Antarctica that I reached on the 30-m band using just five watts. Sweden, By Way of Alaska As cool as it is to know you’ve made a solid contact over a path of about 10,000 km on less power than it takes to run an LED light bulb, there’s also a lot to be said for the unusual stations you receive when you leave your WSPR station running. Case in point: the other day I glanced up at WSJT-X and noticed a strange callsign, SA6BSS. After a while of looking at callsigns you get to know which general areas they come from, and I suspected this was a “rare DX” coming from Europe, which is really hard for me to hit with my antenna from the inland Pacific Northwest. A quick lookup on QRZ.com confirmed that SA6BSS is a ham named Mikael Dagman, based in southern Sweden — cool! I quickly spun up the WSPRnet map and was surprised to see that Mikael’s station was reporting its position as coming from Alaska rather than Sweden. I zoomed in the map a little and found that the signal was coming from a grid hundreds of kilometers south of Unalaska Island in the Aleutians. What in the world would a Swedish ham be doing in the North Pacific in February? I shot Mikael a quick email about the contact, and he confirmed that I had indeed received a correct position report from his WSPR station, currently floating around the world on a party balloon! Since he released the balloon on Feb 23, it has traveled at around 11,000 meters altitude from Sweden to the Middle East, across Asia, and over the Pacific to just off the coast of Oregon. There it took a hook and headed back out to sea; as I write this it’s heading roughly in the direction of Hawaii. Literally WSPR-ing around the world — at least halfway so far. SA6BSS launched a balloon carrying a WSPR transmitter on Feb 23 that crossed the Pacific; I copied it when it was south of the Aleutians. Mikael was kind enough to include a little information on the WSPR transmitter he included on his balloon, which is completely solar-powered and weighs in at only 2.6 grams. The spareness of his design is almost comical — it’s just a GPS module, an ATMega328, and an Si5351 for the transmitter. It’s a perfect example of what can be done on a budget, which is right in line with “The $50 Ham” concept. So naturally, building a lightweight, inexpensive WSPR beacon will be the basis of the next installment in this series. #JoeTaylor #WSJT-X #Propagation #The$50Ham #WeakSignal

Agilenano - News from Agilenano from shopsnetwork (4 sites) http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Agilenano-News/~3/71GKKpe0ScU/the-50-ham-wspr-ing-around-the-world

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artificialqueens · 4 years ago

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Hold Me Tighter (Even Closer), Chapter 1 (Branjie, Jankie) - Joley

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“Okay, are you ready?” Brooke Lynn slung her messenger bag over her shoulder and looked over as her wife came out of the bedroom with her belongings.

“I’m gonna need you to lower your expectations, Professor Hytes-Mateo,” Katya replied as she set her new teacher’s assistant back down. “Your girl’s on the way?”

“Catch you later, boo. Good luck,” Vanessa smiled and shared a quick kiss with Brooke before following Katya out the door.

Then suddenly, it all changed.

“Jan Sport?”

“Here!”

“…And Jackie’s contact info is there, your best bet is to reach out to her first.”

“Am I crazy, or was she checking you out?” Gigi whispered.

Jackie sighed, realizing it wouldn’t end until she addressed it. “Okay, what?”

“Nothing, I just love watching history repeat itself,” Brooke hummed.

“I beg your pardon?”

Brooke looked to her wedding picture, then back at Jackie. “Do you know how Vanjie and I met? I know you didn’t have a lot of classes together, but still.”

Jackie nodded as she listened, it was a nice story, and she did like that everything worked out in the end. But then she furrowed her brows. “So… You think I’m gonna marry Jan?”

Brooke chuckled. “I’m just saying… Well, you never know what could happen.”

“If you change your mind, I have a friend that’s an ordained minister,” Brooke teased.

——