#instead of whatever mess we got in the full release version of the game

[galedekarios]

🖤

[autumnsart22]

Suna x reader: Final part (smut)

Here’s the final part to my Suna series! I wasn’t satisfied with my fluff version of the ending (which you can read here if you’re interested) so I decided to write a more smutty version. 

Warning: degradation, angry sex, light choking, mostly just a lot of degrading lol

I genuinely think this is the hottest fanart I’ve ever seen of him I can barely look at it without ✨butterflies✨. 

Art creds go to @minghuaa_art on twitter!

Despite Kita seeing you that day in the car, Suna still asked to keep whatever was between you a secret. That was fine with you--you didn’t particularly want a boyfriend, especially with the second semester of college work picking up. You still got to see him pretty often, hooking up in his car or your dorm at least three nights a week or more. Never the frat house; apparently his roommates were annoying. 

It was nice. Easy. Far easier than you ever expected friends with benefits to be. And beyond the sex, you loved talking to Suna; laying together on your tiny bed, legs tangled, while he explained the new music he was listening to, or walking together to the cafeteria as he made you laugh so hard that water came out of your nose. 

The good parts were enough to overlook the bad parts. At first. 

Suna was an abnormally horrific texter, barely ever responding within the day, if at all. If you ever wanted to get in contact with him, you’d have to call directly. And honestly even then he didn’t have the best track record. 

What was more frustrating was that it was always on his time. He would text you asking to hang out that night, and you would say yes, and then he wouldn’t respond until the following afternoon with some vague excuse about being busy. The first few times it happened, you got so mad that you didn’t respond to his calls, until he showed up at your dorm with panda express and forced you to watch Tokyo Ghoul with him. 

He had apologized...but it didn’t stop happening. It made you feel like you were some sort of side whore, who he called when he was bored and had nothing better to do. Like you were second best to everything else he had going on in his life. 

You had promised yourself from the beginning that you wouldn’t allow yourself to get close enough to get hurt, but it was hard. You really, really liked him. 

You liked the way he would stare at you while you talked, actually listening and curious as to what you had to say. You liked the way he hugged you after a few days of not seeing each other, burying his face in your hair like he couldn’t get close enough to you. You liked the way he laughed, both the usual, quiet chuckles and the rare snorting wheezes. You liked the way his mouth looked when he smoked, the way he moaned your name when he came, the way he could make you laugh at anything at any time. 

You didn’t want to get the “I told you so” talk from Kiyoko, so you avoided the topic all together: with her, and yourself. 

After one month of hanging out with Suna, you were planning on meeting up and going to see a movie. Both of you were more homebodies, preferring to stay in rather than party, but you had decided that you wanted to try and expand your horizons once again. The movies seemed like a happy compromise. 

The film was something Suna had been talking about for a while, an action thriller that honestly looked like shit but got good audience reviews because of all the flashy fight scenes. He had been so excited when it came out that you hadn’t been able to say no to going, especially not after he pried you with food. 

He was coming to get you at 6 pm, and your last class ended at 3pm, which gave you plenty of time to get ready. You stared at the face of your teacher on the screen within your zoom class, zoning out as he explained the flood system around the school. You glanced over as your phone buzzed, a message from Suna popping up on the screen. 

Suna

Wha u doying rit now?

You

What?

Suna

Sorr little drynk 

You

You’re drunk? 

Suna

im at psrty

You

Are we still seeing a movie tonight?

There was no response, and you felt your stomach drop. You didn’t even notice as your teacher ended class and logged you off the meeting. Suna was at a party at 3 in the afternoon, drunk, and didn’t seem to remember you had plans. You swallowed, shoving your phone aside as you ground your teeth. Why was he so frustrating? 

You stood up, angry at yourself for caring, furious at Suna for making you feel this way, for being such a piece of shit. You knew what party he was probably at--Kiyoko had said she was going at some point--and suddenly you were moving before you could think about it. 

You dressed nice, but casual enough that it wasn’t out of place at a frat party. Sexy enough to make him want you though, of course. 

You didn’t give yourself time for nerves as you strode from your dorm and headed in the direction of the frat house, following a steady stream of people already going in that direction. You knew it was Friday, but how the fuck were so many people already getting ready to party when it was literally 3:30????

It wasn’t overly crowded in the house when you entered, but enough where it was confusing as you wandered through the crowd. You snatched two drinks from the counter, downing them as fast as possible as you searched for Suna in the crowd. You’d need to be at least tipsy before having this confrontation. 

You found him in the living room, sprawled out on the couch next to who you recognized to be Akaashi, Kuroo, Kita, and Iwaizumi--all who you knew through Kiyoko. There were a few others you didn’t know, and they were all clearly drunk out of their minds. 

As you entered the room, Suna met your eyes for a brief moment, but then they moved on without a reaction. He didn’t care at all that you had come to find him, or that he had never responded to your text. 

The drink in your hand trembled, and you walked out of the room without looking back. 

Instead of talking to Suna, you decided to get wasted. An hour after first coming to the party, you were deep in a game of beer pong and you had a pleasant warmth in your gut, the world a little hazy. You felt braver, more angry, and suddenly all you wanted to do was track down that yellow eyed idiot and slap him. 

“Where’s Suna?” You slurred, turning to look at your partner at beer pong. You knew him vaguely as one of the frat boys, Suna’s friend Atsumu. 

Atsumu grinned, raising his eyebrows as he stared down at you. “Suna? Why?” 

You weren’t drunk enough to tell him of your “friendship” with Suna, so you just shrugged. 

“He’s over there,” Atsumu pointed towards the kitchen, and you felt all the blood drain from your face as you followed his gaze. Sitting in a chair, his back to you, was Suna...and on his lap was a beautiful blonde girl with her hands in his hair as she kissed him fiercely. 

You must have made some sort of sound, because Atsuma looked back at you. “You good?” 

You forced yourself to nod. “I’m...going to go get some fresh air.” 

“I’ll come,” he said, and you decided not to argue. 

Seeing Suna had sobered you up considerably, but your emotions were still a complete mess. All you could feel was a deep, unending hurt. 

As you headed down the hall, Atsumu grabbed your wrist and spun you around to face him. “So...you and Suna huh?” He said, a strange smile on his face. 

“What are you--?” 

“It’s fine, you don’t have to keep it a secret.” He took a step towards you, and you raised your eyebrows. 

“We aren’t together.” 

“Really? Then you wouldn’t mind,” He gently took your chin, lifting your face. “If I did this?” 

“I--” 

“What the fuck.” 

All the breath wooshed out of you at the familiar voice, which was now laced with anger. Suna stood a few feet away, his hands in his pockets as he watched you and Atsumu. He was smiling, but it was icy with rage and...jealousy?

“Suna,” Atsumu grinned, releasing your face but not stepping back. “What do you want?” 

Suna jerked his chin in your direction. “How about you get away from her, and then we’ll talk?”

“Dude,” Atsumu rolled his eyes. “She just told me she was single. I don’t get what the problem is.” 

Suna’s face tightened. “If you don’t get the fuck out of here in the next three seconds, I swear I will break your--”

“Chill, ok!” Atsumu stepped back from you, given you a frustrated look before heading away down the hall. 

When he was out of sight, Suna’s head slowly turned to face you, his eyes dark. “Single?” His voice was a low snarl. 

You swallowed, feeling your anger return full force. How dare he. “Yes!” You snapped, “Since you clearly don’t view this as any sort of relationship.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“So you can go off kissing other girls, but I can’t flirt with Atsumu?” 

“Looked like a bit more than flirting,” he said, teeth bared, before the other part of what you said caught up to him. “And how drunk are you? I wasn’t kissing shit!” 

“Are you seriously lying to my face right now? I saw you!” 

“I didn’t kiss anyone! Do you really think that little of me?”

You clenched your fists. “Atsumu said--” 

Suna was in your face in a second, towering over you as he backed you against the wall. “What did he say?” He growled. 

You clenched your jaw, glaring at him in silence. 

Suna gave a dark chuckle. “So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” 

You barely had time to react before he gripped your chin, kissing you roughly and shoving his tongue in your mouth. You moaned, and the sound snapped whatever restraints Suna had. His hands ran down the back of your thighs, lifting you up so you could wrap your legs around his waist as he carried you through the nearest door into a random bedroom. He kissed down your neck as he kicked the door shut, and you gasped as he tossed you on the bed. 

Your eyes slid down his chest and across his toned stomach as he pulled his shirt over his head, completely at a loss for what to do. You could feel the heat pulsing between your legs, making your heart race and your body tremble. But this was wrong. Right? 

You didn’t have anymore time to think about it as Suna gripped your ankles, dragging you to the end of the bed. 

“Why do you still have clothes on?” He snarled, yanking your leggings off and leaving them in a tangled mess on the floor. His eyes darkened as they swept over the pair of lacy underwear you had worn, sliding towards your center where you kept your thighs clenched tightly together. 

He didn’t say a word as he forced your legs apart, dropping to his knees at the end of the bed, yanking down your underwear, and positioning one of your legs over his shoulder. You shuddered as his hot breath caressed you, and he ran lazy circles along the inside of your thighs with his long fingers. 

“Fuck…” He murmured under his breath before looking up at you. “Do you want me to--”

“Stop teasing me Suna,” you groaned, shifting your hips, and he laughed darkly. 

“Fine.”

You practically screamed at the first sweep of his tongue, managing to turn your face into a pillow to muffle your noises as he worked around your clit and used his fingers in your core. You bucked your hips up into his face, and his laughter vibrating through your body almost had you coming within the first minute. 

You let out a low cry of protest as he pulled away, raising his head to glare at you. His mouth was covered in your juices, his hair rumpled and eyes glassy. He leaned over you, yanking away the pillow you had been using to cover your mouth and throwing it across the room. 

“What are you--”

“I want to hear you begging for it,” he snapped, and you managed to roll your eyes before he shoved his fingers back into you. 

“You’re so--ah!” You shuddered. 

Over the course of a month of fucking each other, Suna had figured out exactly how to make you fall apart under his tongue and fingers, so it didn’t take long for him to work you into an early climax. Your legs shook, and you let out a series of moans as you came all over his mouth. 

He got to his feet after making sure he had licked you completely clean, gazing down at you with possessive smugness. 

“Why do you look so fucked out already? We’ve barely gotten started.” 

You didn’t even argue as you got onto your knees on the bed, hands sliding into his hair as you kissed him angrily, unsaid words erupting. He allowed you to shove him onto the bed, and you focused on unzipping his pants and throwing them aside, ditching your shirt and bra along with it. His boxers went next, and then you had his dick in your hands, stroking it while Suna groaned. 

“Here,” he panted, tossing you a condom, and you slid it over his cock just like he taught you. You positioned yourself over him, impatient, your knees on either side of his hips as you thrust yourself down on him in one go. You both moaned at the feeling of finally having him inside you. 

“F-fuck,” you gasped, slowly rolling your hips as you rested your hands lightly on Suna’s chest. You went slow, taking the time to feel how deep he reached inside you, the movement on your clit enough to send tingles up the rest of your body. 

Suna watched you ride him lazily, his yellow eyes half closed as he took in the way your naked body shifted to move on top of him. 

“Ha, you’re doing so good...god--you’re so fucking sexy,” he groaned, and you glared down at him. 

“You make me so...mad…” You managed between pants of pleasure, and Suna raised his eyebrows. 

“You can still talk? I guess I’m not doing enough…” 

Before you could protest, he flipped you over so that you were lying on your back with him hovering over you, his dark hair falling around his face as he gripped your throat lightly. 

“You’re such a little cumslut aren’t you?” He murmured in your ear, and you arched slightly. “Don’t you ever try and fuck someone else again, got it? You’re only allowed to come around my cock.”

You moaned in agreement, and Suna rolled you over onto your stomach, dragging your hips up so your ass was high in the air. He gave you no warning as he thrust back in, practically fucking you into the mattress. 

Your eyes rolled back in your head as he used his fingers to reach around and rub your clit, his other hand running along your breast. You could  barely think through the pleasure, and the only coherent word you were managing to say was his name.

Suna leaned over you, yanking your head back to murmur in your ear. “You’re mine, got it?” His words were rough, and you clenched hard around his cock. You could feel your second orgasm approaching, and he could tell too by the way you shuddered around him. He paused in his motion, and you wiggled your hips in protest, trying to get him going again. 

“Why’d you stop?” You snapped, glancing over your shoulder when he didn’t continue. 

Suna grinned. “Beg for it, bitch.”

He moved slightly, letting you feel the friction, and you gasped in anger and pleasure. This bastard wanted to tease you, make you submit to him…

Despite knowing this, you broke almost immediately. “Please, Suna, please please, I need you so bad--”

Immediately, he picked up his pace once again, adding more pressure to your clit, and you jerked. “That’s a good girl.” 

“Ah, ah, Suna, fuck, I love-- you, ahhh…” You cried, feeling moisture spill down your thighs as your stomach erupted for the second time that night. 

For a moment he stilled, and you bit your lip in tired confusion. Did he want you to beg again? You weren’t sure you had another round in you. 

You looked over to see him with a shocked expression on his face, but it quickly melted into smugness again once he caught you staring at him. “Of course you love me while I’m fucking you like this,” he growled finally. “It’s because you’re such a slut for it, right?” 

Your mouth dropped open, but you didn’t have time to say anything as he started moving once again, making you yelp at the overstimulation. Had you said you loved him? Out loud? Oh my god…

“Have I fucked you stupid already?” he purred in your ear, pulling out of your dripping cunt before slamming back in and picking up his pace. You moaned loudly, thrusting your hips back to meet his as all thoughts flew from your head. 

“S-Suna I--” You could barely speak, it felt so good, despite the fact that you had already come. Twice. 

 He began to pant in your ear, groaning as his grip on your hips tightened.“F-fuck--” He grunted, arms sliding around your waist as he jerked and came. 

You both collapsed on the bed, sweaty and exhausted, and Suna easily pulled the condom from his dick before tying it and tossing it in the trash. After a long moment, you rolled to your feet to padded over to where your clothes lay--until you realized that your leggings had a massive rip in them. 

“Suna!” You cried, holding up the fabric. He raised his eyebrows, and had the decency to at least look vaguely guilty. 

“Sorry.” 

“What do I wear?!” 

“Here.” He threw the shirt he had been wearing earlier at you, and you gave him a glare.

He had already wiped himself down with the tissues on the counter, and had pulled on his sweatpants once again, leaving him shirtless. His eyes swept lazily down your still naked body, his tongue coming out to wet his lips, and you crossed your arms in annoyance. 

“Suna,” You snapped, but finally pulled his shirt over your head, not seeing another option. “I’m going to go get cleaned up,” you said, before heading out the door without waiting for a response. 

The bathroom was thankfully right down the hall, and thankfully empty. You didn’t feel very guilty about fucking Suna when you should have been communicating in a healthy way, but you definitely still felt mad. 

After you had wiped all the fluids from your inner thighs and core, you headed back to the room to grab the rest of your stuff. 

You found Suna on his phone lying on the bed, but he looked up as you came in. 

“Where are you going?” He said as you gathered your stuff, and you huffed. 

“Back to my dorm.” 

“Wait,” he lunged out of the bed and grabbed your arm. “Don’t go.” 

“Now you want to spend time with me?” 

“Just...stay. Please.” 

You swallowed, taking a deep breath. “Fine.” 

His expression relaxed into a happy smile, and he dragged you onto the bed with him before flicking out the lights. You weren’t sure what time it was exactly, but you were sure it was far past two in the morning. Your eyelids drooped as Suna wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you back against his chest. 

You were right on the edge of sleep when he murmured, “Did you mean it?” 

Immediately you were awake; you knew exactly what he meant. “U-um--” You hadn’t worked out any of the problems between you two, and you were sure he didn’t feel the same way. How were you supposed to admit to loving him like this?

“It’s fine,” he finally muttered. “We can talk about it tomorrow.” 

You swallowed. “Yes. I did mean it.” Your voice was barely above a whisper, but you felt Suna tense around you. 

“Really?”

You closed your eyes, forcing yourself to say it. “Yes... I love you.” 

You felt his sigh against your air, ticking the little hair on the back of your neck. His hand slid across your stomach while the other gently began to stroke your hair, and the movement had you relaxing despite the tears that had built up at his lack of response. 

You closed your eyes and set it aside; you would deal with it tomorrow. Now, it was time for sleep. 

“I love you too.” You heard, so soft that it was almost just a breath of air.  

It was probably just a dream.  

[shinonometrash]

Jasper Lane’s Main Story: English vs Japanese version, full summary, comparisons & thoughts. Part 1 of 3. (TW: rape, sexual assault, drugging)

So! Jasper’s route has finally been released in English as of August 31st, 2021. It seems that Voltage is following the same release order for consorts and events as how items were released in the Japanese version. I spent wayyy too much money to binge the entire route in a day...and get all the premium content...(honestly the hardest part about binging a route isn’t the love passes, it’s getting all the spirit points. Ugh.) I took note of a lot of different things in this and wanted to make a post going over all this information. Sorry this post took me so long to make, I had to go back and reread a lot of Jasper’s story in Japanese to refresh my memory as well as make sure I didn’t miss any big details since I had read it first back in May, and my Japanese has improved a lot (I think) since then. It was unfortunate and I didn’t really want to, lol. But! Now it’s his birthday (9/11)! I get to post this on his birthday! Happy birthday, asshole! This post is why you and your route suck! I’m probably only going to be able to post this first part today though, because honestly this post is taking much more time than I expected.

The biggest thing is going to be that 

Jasper’s English (Court of Darkness) route does NOT contain any major triggering content. You’ll probably still want to punch him, though.

So, if you’re looking to find out about that, there you go. Anyways.

I’ve broken this into four posts, three that contain summaries of each chapter, regardless of changes, and one that only contains the changes. 

(As of the date of posting, 9/11/2021, I have not completed all the posts yet. Please check back later and I will add the links to the rest of  them as they are posted.)

This post is part one including the summaries. Part two in currently progress. Part three in currently progress. Post with ONLY comparisons and thoughts currently in progress. 

Since I had contacted Voltage about the triggering content in Jasper’s route (and made a very lengthy Tumblr post about it) and they told me they prefer to remove potentially triggering content from stories in the localization process, rather than simply adding trigger warnings, I was more or less expecting this. Although...I didn’t really expect it to be to this extent, nor did I realize how I was actually going to feel about it...! Of course, the CoD did a fabulous job with the content they were given and what they were told to do, as always, and I completely understand why they changed what they did. Like. Seriously. They did the best they could do with the absolute mess of a route they were given. But, like, the route was an absolute mess to begin with. So there’s only so much that can be done to fix it...💀 Anyways, please know that any of my complaining is not directed at the CoD team because they’re wonderful!! Support them by buying in game content if you’re able to!! They recently released a special VIP pack that’s honestly an AMAZING deal. This is just a criticism of the route itself and my thoughts on it, not on the CoD team.

Now, onto the main point of the post...the English and Japanese versions of this route are very different. 

Warning: This post contains major spoilers about Jasper’s main story as well as potentially triggering content including but not limited to rape, sexual assault, and drugging.

In addition, I am not including any CGs in this post as I’m not trying to break Voltage’s policy.

Please click under the read more to continue.

Okay, so first off this is probably going to sound incredibly self centered of me, but I sort of get the feeling that my post about his Japanese route had some sort of influence on the changes in his route...? Not sure how big of tabs Voltage keeps on Tumblr...but it seems like nearly all of the main points I was specifically really mad about got changed--and I’m sure they must have definitely seen my post...? Also, this too probably sounds silly, but I was kinda happy reading some of the dialogue that was nearly the same as the way I had translated it. Part of me was still afraid that I had no idea what I was talking about and just looked stupid writing a long post with misinterpretations of lines💀

Pre-notes: 1. For those who named their cat something else, Robin = MC’s cat.  2. In the direct quotes, anytime you see “---” it’s just me cutting out a part in the dialogue that I deem unnecessary for comparison purposes. 3. I bolded whether there’s differences in the chapters or not in each chapter summary, in case you only want to read the summaries for the chapters with the differences. It’s pretty much going to be the same as reading my other post, then, but I explain more of the chapter here, usually.

Chapter 1-3

Literally so dull. Nothing really of note. Pretty much the same between the English and Japanese. Jasper asks about her hands and she’s like “omg he’s so nice he was worried about my hands!!”, she meets Sherry and they become friends, the headmaster tells her she has to learn magic if she wants a chance at going back home. They go to the runes and learn about the history of Saligia. Guy grabs her again, she escapes.

Chapter 4

It starts to get a little bit more interesting here. Overall, nothing seems too different between the two stories yet. Jasper invites her to the rooftop for a tea party. Jasper is desperately trying to get MC to interact (in a positive manner) with Guy, she asks Jasper to have tea with her instead. Sherry and Rio mention a ball. Toa and Guy get into a glaring match. Toa leaves. You know, the usual. Jasper whispers something in Guy’s ear and they leave, and everybody follows them because...you know. They discover that Guy’s room has been trashed. Toa walks in and asks what’s going on, and then falls silent when he sees Guy’s room. Guy is like “Toa, you left before me, did you not?” and Toa is like “What are you trying to imply?” then they glare at each other until Lynt is like “Are you trying to say that Toa is the culprit? He would never.” Fenn agrees. Roy says they should investigate, and Toa says he will also investigate, since he is the dorm prefect after all. Afterwards, Jasper asks Guy if he thinks Toa did it, Guy says “No, Qelsum isn’t that stupid.” Guy says they need information. He sends Jasper out to investigate, tells Jasper to be sure not to be seen. Fenn, Violet, and MC go out for food or something, and MC runs into Sirius, literally. Fenn is like “what are you doing?” and MC says she ran into somebody but turns around and there’s nobody there. I guess it’s trying to imply that Jasper is stealthy and can hide away into the night or something?? But then that’s it.

Chapter 5-6

No overall noticeable changes. It’s time for the ball! Sherry lends MC a dress and they head to the ball. She sees Jasper in the hallway closely inspecting wine, without Guy. She calls his name and he startles. He tells her he’s selecting a wine for Guy because Guy is very selective and will not consume anything that Jasper has not prepared. Jasper essentially says that Guy is his reason for living. Then they go into the dance hall. And Guy is all like “why did you come in together?” then they say they ran into each other by chance. Guy goes to take a sip of the wine, looks  startled, and then ends up spitting it out into a handkerchief. He claims he choked on the wine. She finds Jasper in the hallway again, looking at the wine, and calls out. Again, he startles. She wonders why. She tries to ask, but then he dodges the question by telling MC that the dress looks good on her. He invites her to dance and says he’ll teach her. They head back to the ballroom, she asks him some various questions and they all basically end with him saying that he serves Guy or whatever, and she’s thinking all like “work, again...?”. Jasper then tries to make her dance with Guy instead of himself, and when she says she’s going to leave he grabs her arm. There’s a few choices you can make, but one of them is “Please let go of me.” And then! And then! This man literally looks at her and asks “Why?” Yikes!! And she asks why he’s asking why, and he says he doesn’t want her to go, so she agrees to stay a little longer. (Mistake #1) Then he shoves her off onto Guy again. After dancing with Guy she goes out to the balcony and runs into Aquia, and Aquia pricks his finger and it starts bleeding. She tries to look at it and it somehow brushes her lips and at that moment Guy and Jasper come out and ask what’s going on. Aquia apologizes (he did nothing wrong!! >:(  ) They then discover that Aquia’s wound has magically healed somehow. Then here’s the scene with  Guy: “That girl, I want to know everything about her.” Jasper: “Oh my, have you fallen in love?” Guy: “Something like that” Jasper: “Congratulations! We must celebrate this wonderful occasion!” Guy: “That’s enough now. Investigate that woman’s power.”

Chapter 7

No major changes between versions. But...Ughhhhhhhh. We’re gonna meet Sirius in this chapter. But first some humor. They go to the S rank lounge, I believe after the ball. Jasper offers to make coffee. Literally ALL the valets suddenly RUSH to Jasper’s side to ask him to teach them how to brew coffee. So there sitting in the S rank lounge with Jasper brewing coffee while all the other valets are like 👀👀👀👀 lmaoooo. Aight and so the humorous part ends there, sorry! That’s it! Now we must move on.  Fenn says he wants to go out drinking and asks Jasper if he’d like to join, Jasper declines saying he has other matters to attend to. We learn that Hawke, Jasper, and Lance are all drinking buddies. MC is all like “oh thank god, that means he does get time off!” -_- So then Toa laughs and comments how close Jasper and MC are, and is like “wow imagine using your valet for something like that” and then tells her that she’ll be a tool for Avari if she sticks with them, and that it’s not too late to switch to Qelsum’s side instead. (She does not switch. Mistake #2. Arguably her biggest mistake in this entire route, if you ask me.) Guy interjects and tells Toa that MC is his, and Toa is like “lmaooo then why does she seem closer with your valet than you?” and then they glare at each other. MC gets annoyed and leaves. Jasper asks where she’s going. She says she’s going back to her room to see Robin. For some reason, Jasper seems disappointed about this? Afterwards, she goes to her room for a bit but then decides to go explore the town with Robin. Uh oh! Robin goes missing.

She starts looking for Robin and runs into this sketch looking dude. He asks her where’s she’s going, she says she’s looking for her cat. He’s like “oh that flying thing?” and she’s like “Yeah!” and then is like “could you just tell me which way he was headed? I can get there myself.” but the guy insists that she should follow him instead, because the streets are dangerous and she might run into dangerous men. The man is then like “I’m Sirius.” (which, when I first read the Japanese, I thought he was saying “I’m serious” lmaoo) and then he frickin grabs her hand and drags her off!!! Yikes! 

Chapter 8, 1st Interlude, and Chapter 9 

Okay so we’ve got the most significant changes in these chapters. Like. A LOT. This is what the majority of my previous post focused on: the drugging, sexual assault, and morning after.  They basically did their best to make this consensual. It went very similar to what I had predicted, although played up a bit more cringe-y than I had expected...or maybe I just hadn’t thought about how cringe-y it would be. There’s literally so many changes that it’d be a bit of a pain to summarize all of them between the versions, I’m just going to put the actual dialogue/stuff from the stories for a lot of this so you can see the differences more directly. (The Japanese will be roughly translated by me, of course.)

Chapter 8

So Sirius starts walking and walking and walking and she asks where they’re going but he keeps insisting it’ll only be just a little longer or that it’s a shortcut and stuff. Ughhhhh...Then she’s like. This man clearly has no idea what he’s doing, I’m going to run away after all. But then he suddenly tells her they’re going to take a “break”. He drags her into the bar before she can protest or try to run. She tries to say no to a drink, but then he asks if she does drink and she’s like “well I do, but...” and you start seeing the differences here. In English she makes a comment of “Ugh, if only he wasn’t so charming.” Sirius further insists only one drink, even though MC tries to say she needs to go find Robin. He then just straight up orders drinks for them, despite her protesting. She then agrees, and then mentally apologizes to Robin. (Mistake #3) And we start seeing the biggest differences about right here...

For this chapter, let’s play a guessing game on which one is the Japanese version and which one is the English version, shall we? :)

Away from the table, Sirius plants a palm on the counter. Two of the usual are set out before him, bubbles frothing over the top. Sirius glances back and finds MC staring at the patterns in the wood grain. Sirius: Much obliged. Tavern Keeper: Mm-hmm. Scooping up the fizzing, popping tumblers, he tosses a wink at the tavern keeper. Then, he strolls back to spend time with his new friend. - Away from the table, Sirius plants a palm on the counter. Immediately two of the usual shot glasses are set out in front of him. Just to make sure, he looks back at MC, who is staring at the table. Sirius: Ah, thanks. Tavern Keeper: Mhm. Sirius skillfully drops the tablet he had hidden between his fingers into the shot glass of the opposite hand. Then, feigning a nonchalant look, he returns back to the table.

Did you guess which one was which in this part? :) And yes, my friends. In the fucking CANON MAIN ROUTE, it deadass has a line saying that our love interest puts a drug in our drinks. And yet...the Japanese fans still love him! Ugh. Also, that “skillfully” bit really concerns me. That kinda implies that he’s done it multiple times before, does it not??? Honestly I’m not really sure why it says it was a shot glass in the Japanese, though. I thought they were drinking like cocktails, not taking a shot. Maybe that’s why they changed that bit...? Now the stories are the same again for a tiny bit. Some time has passed that they’ve been in the bar/tavern and MC chugs her drink and slams it down on the table. She seems drunk. She’s rambling about Guy and Jasper. Like “I’m not an object!!” “and he’s like “Yes, yes, you aren’t an object.” then like “Who goes around saying stuff like “you are mine” and “give me your power”?? Like seriously! Who says that sort of stuff! It’s so messed up!” and he just listens along, amused. He then says that it’s good to drink sometimes, and she agrees, and then he asks what she wants to do. She notes how she’s only had one drink, yet her head feels a bit fuzzy already, and how it made her very talkative. She says she wants to go home. She reveals that her family died, and that she has a hair clip in her hair from her mom that’s very important to her. She mentions how there are still good people in this world, though.  Sirius tries to order her another drink, and here’s where stuff deviates again.

Sirius: Another of the same, if you please. MC: What, no! I’m fine MC: So hey, you’ve been fantastic company but I really need to go find Robin. (Man I got way too into that conversation.) (Robin must be out there looking for me.) MC: Thanks for the drink, though. You’re a really good listener. And also...really, really pretty. MC: It’s been great meeting you. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime? MC: Like...when I’m not looking for my cat. That’d be...nice.” (I have no filter. No filter whatsoever.) MC: Right, so...Bye... He stands up right as I do. The rickety old table wobbles between us and I pitch into his arms. Sirius: Steady on. Sirius: I might almost think you’ve fallen for me. (Fallen for him? But I’ve only just met the man.) Sirius holds me steady as I smile up at him, feeling silly but bold. He’s even more handsome up close. MC: Like I said, very attractive but...gotta go. Sirius: Hold fast. MC: Haha. Did you just pick me up?! Sirius hefts me into his arms like I weigh nothing, and for a moment I feel like I’m being carried off into the sunset. An electrifying thrill runs through me as I sway against him, adn then I realize we’re moving. MC: Where are we going? Sirius: ... MC: The look he gives me then makes my eyebrows shoot up. I nod and let him carry on. (English version, Mistake #4) When I next open my eyes, I’m being placed down on something fluffy. (I can’t believe I’m actually doing this. I should leave well enough alone but there’s something about him...) I peer at the unfamiliar ceiling overhead while Sirius stares down in my eyes. Sirius: No need to hurry. Sirius: The night’s just begun, after all. (Wait a second, aren’t you...?) The seductive smile on his face comes closer. For a split second he reminds me of someone, but it must be my imagination. - Sirius: Bartender, another of the same. MC: Ah, no, I’m good! MC: I really need to go find Robin. (Yikes, I got totally absorbed in that conversation.) (Surely Robin is looking for me, too) MC: Thanks...for talking with me...and listening... MC: Thanks to that I’ll be sure to...remember this... MC: From now on, I’m going...to study...more seriously...for sure.... (Wha...I’m so dizzy...) MC: Sorry...I’m...leaving now... Sirius: Whoa, hold on. MC: Ah... Unsteady on my feet, Sirius picks me up and holds me in his arms. I feel swaying and I open my eyes slightly. I’m being carried somewhere. MC: Where...are we going...? Sirius: ... Strangely, it feels like the ceiling has gotten awfully high... The next thing I’m aware of when I open my eyes is being placed down on something fluffy. (Where am I...?) I gaze at the ceiling above me and Sirius looks into my eyes. Sirius: Let’s take it slowly. Sirius: The night has just begun, no? (Huh...?) Laughing mysteriously, the man’s face comes closer. For a second, I think he looks similar to someone. But it’s just my imagination, right...?

I’m sure you can guess which one is which. One is extremely alarming, the other is cringe. It’s clear they did the most they could to try and make it consensual between them, and ended up doing exactly what I thought with having her make several comments about how attractive he is and then add some playful flirting between them. 😖 Alright! Ready for the next part? 

1st Interlude

I just read the normal first interlude in Japanese before typing out this post and...god, I thought the premium interlude was bad. So, one more time, trigger warning for sexual assault. Damn I really don’t want to write this part, I’m so tired from writing the rest TT (I saved this for last, unfortunately.) I’m not translating all of these so I’ll do a mix of translating exact lines and summarization. In all the stories, first she calls out Jasper’s name at first, confused, and then Sirius looks shocked. And she’s like, how weird, why would I call him that...he’s clearly Sirius...and then they all start to deviate. ><

Normal Interlude

Japanese version (this is the worst one): MC: I’m sorry...I must’ve gotten drunk, sorry for the trouble... Sirius: So you’re apologizing in this situation. (This...situation...?) He kisses her. (Wha...I’m being...kissed...) I’m aware of it, but my body feels so heavy, I can’t resist it. With my arms pinned to the bed, I’m forced to accept the kiss. He says “what is this power?” and then she sees an aura flare up around him. She asks if it’s magic, and he says that it’s interesting, and then asks if it has to do with the length of time or the type of physical contact. -- Sirius: Is it only your lips, or...? His finger runs along my knee, tickling it. With his other hand, he skillfully slips his hand into my shirt. Sirius: No need to be alarmed. Sirius: I simply wish to confirm. (Confirm...?) Sirius: So soft and smooth, you feel nice to touch. Sirius: But, I don’t feel anything from just touching you... Sirius: Is it different depending on where I touch? The sensation of him stroking my skin falsely spreads through my whole body while his fingertips make their way down to my lower limbs. I move my shoulders to try to tell him “I don’t want you to touch me!”, but it doesn’t matter as his fingertips continue to try to uncover something. MC: St...stop it... Yelling out makes him stop--at least, that’s what I had thought. However,  the thing that stops him isn’t my voice. He removes his hand that was feeling around in my shirt and then starts to think about something. (Is he...searching for something...?) Sirius: ...so it can’t be transferred through the skin, hm. (W-what...?) It’s finally over--is what I thought, at least. This time, he drops kisses on my ears and collarbone. When he puts his hands on my thighs again, I want to run away immediately. (Why...? Why is this happening...?) MC: Is this...is this a dream...? Sirius: Yes. It’s a dream. So, goodnight. Sirius: You’re about to reach the limit, aren’t you? (Limit? What is he talking about?) Even if I wanted to think about it, my head is too fuzzy and I can’t think of anything. I don’t like it, but...what is it I don’t like? Surely it was something important, but I can’t remember. Before I could say “I’m sorry, I’m really sleepy” my consciousness blacks out. She passes out and Sirius says something about how interesting it is, and that he must report his findings to Guy.

English version: MC: Sorry, I can’t believe I called you by the wrong name. Sirius: Is this the time for apologies? (I guess not...?) He kisses her. (We’re kissing. I’m kissing Sirius...) He’s certainly attractive enough. I’m not attached to anyone here, and yet...Why is it that I keep thinking of Jasper? He says “what is this power?” and then she sees an aura flare up around him. She asks if it’s magic, and he says that it’s interesting, and then asks if it has to do with the length of time or the type of physical contact. -- Sirius: Is it only your lips, or...? His fingers walk along my knee, tickling me. I shiver and grin as he gives me a considering look, then slips his hand inside my shirt. -- Sirius: I only wish to see what you’re capable of. (Strangest bedroom talk ever.) Sirius: You’re exquisite. Soft, smooth, perfect to the touch... Sirius: But I seek other responses. Sirius: Tell me, is this where you want to be touched? He peers down at me expectantly, hands petting along my skin as if to encourage me to speak. I squeeze my thighs together, hoping he’ll continue without the need for words. He raises an eyebrow. MC: Sirius, I need... At first I think the sound of my voice has given him pause. Then I realize something else has happened. He tidies my open shirt a little and frowns thoughtfully. (What is he doing? What is it he’s looking for?) Sirius: Hm, no transfer from the skin. (Uh, what?) My mouth falls open. Has the moment been ruined somehow? If so, what’d I do? But then he plants tiny kisses over my ears, neck, and cheeks. His hands sweep over me once more, but far more soothingly. Still, I can’t get the image of Jasper out of my mind. (I can’t be doing this. It’s not fair to be thinking of one man when I’m with another. I need to sort my head out.) MC: Sirius, I can’t do this. I’m...I think I’m developing feelings for someone else, so it wouldn’t be fair to you to do this... Sirius: Well, well. There’s an unexpected turn. ...All right. We’ll think of this as nothing more than a passing dream. Sirius: This never happened then. Good night, MC. (Good night? But we’ve only just...) Suddenly I feel very drowsy. A second ago I wanted nothing more than a crazy, one-night romp with a man who has crystalline red eyes. Now I can’t think of anything but how comfortable this bed is. She passes out and Sirius says something about how interesting it is, and that he must report his findings to Guy. --

Yikes!!!!! I was so shocked when I read the normal interlude!! Especially the Japanese version!! Now for the other one...

Premium Interlude

Japanese version:

MC: I’m sorry...I must’ve gotten drunk, sorry for the trouble... Sirius: So you’re apologizing in this situation. (This...situation...?) His voice is close.  But besides that, I don’t understand the situation very well. Sirius: Is it hard to open your eyes? MC: Yes... Sirius: I’ll make you feel better right now. (Feel better...?) She sees him put in eyedrops. She tries to ask but her voice is really quiet and her throat is dry. MC: Excuse me, could...could I have some water?”  Sirius: I’ll give you some right now I felt something cold touch my lips and water poured down my throat. MC: ...nng (No...it’s something else. I’m...being kissed...) I understand that, but, but I feel too drowsy to be able to resist.  With my arms pinned to the bed, I’m forced to accept the kiss. He says “what is this power?” and then she sees an aura flare up around him. She asks if it’s magic, and he says that it’s interesting, and then asks if it has to do with the length of time or the type of physical contact. (What...this kiss...) It’s a kiss that makes me feel as if I’ll be swallowed by the torrent of pleasure. (I’ve never experienced something like this...) Sirius: Ha...ahh... MC: ...mm, Sirius... His lips pull away with a wet sound and I sigh. Sirius: It’s as I thought... MC: Stop...it...already... Sirius: Shhh... Sirius: Be quiet. I’m going to make you feel better. He wipes his finger along my wet lips and pushes it inside my mouth. My shoulders jump and I shiver and inhale sharply, feeling like I’m being bitten on the neck by Sirius. MC: Mnn... Sirius: Suck... He moves his finger around my mouth and I move my tongue as I’m told. Sirius: That’s it good girl... Sirius: ...so it can’t be transferred through the skin, hm. (What...is he talking about...?) Sirius: How about...here? He removes his finger from my mouth and strokes my knee. MC asks if it’s a dream, and the rest of the interlude ends the same way as the normal Japanese interlude ends.

English version:

MC: Sorry, I can’t believe I called you by the wrong name. Sirius: Is this the time for apologies? (I guess not...?) I can almost feel his voice vibrate against my skin. Shivering at the sensation, I let my head fall against the pillows. Sirius: Would you rather keep your eyes closed at the moment? MC: Mm. yeah. I like the sound of your voice. It...reminds me of someone... Sirius: Then keep them closed. Sirius tells her to hold on a minute and puts in eyedrops. MC says her throat is dry and asks for some water. He gives her water, but she realizes that it’s not a cup but rather him giving her water from his lips. -- They kiss. (Who taught him to kiss like this?) It’s like some dam has burst within me and a tide of pleasure is threatening to sweet me away. (I’ve never experienced anything like this. Is this magic, too, or just him?) Sirius: Mm..Yes... MC: Ah...Sirius... A wanton moan escapes me as he gives me space to breathe. The thing is, in my mind’s eye I keep seeing someone else. Sirius: Quite as I suspected. MC: That was incredible. What was-- Sirius: Shh. Hush now. I’ll fufill that yearning of yours. He rubs his thumb against my dampened bottom lip then slips it inside my mouth. My shoulders jump as he moves his lips and teeth over my neck. Sirius: Suck. I obediently swirl my tongue over his thumb, taking it in further. Sirius: Good girl. -- Then she says she can’t do it because of having feelings for someone else, just like in the normal English and the rest of the interlude continues the exact same way.

I can’t believe Voltage was really like “hey, pay us and we’ll make the content less rape-y for you! :)” Big yikes lol. I’d only read the premium at the time of my original post, and I thought that was bad enough to write a post about it. That normal interlude though? YIKES. Like...gahhh I know I already said this same thing like three times earlier but I’m just so grossed out!!

Also, a quick note. The CG for this has Sirius laying on top of her while she has her eyes closed. This is because she’s UNCONSCIOUS in the Japanese version. I was wondering how they were gonna get around it, but like not long before it came out I was like “oh they can just have him comment telling her to close her eyes or something” and I guess that’s more or less what they did...?

Chapter 9

Okay so I realize I did make a slight translation error in my original post about the ninth chapter. She does indeed say “I don’t have a headache” rather than what I had thought it said which was “My head hurts, but it can’t be a hangover.”  which is what they went with in the English. “My head doesn’t hurt, though, which suggests I don’t have a hangover.” The rest seems about right, though. Anyways, so this chapter starts the morning after the events of the first interlude with MC waking up in the strange bedroom. While not technically as big of change as in Chapter 8 and the first interlude, this is also one of the most changed chapters between versions. 

The Japanese version:

(Where am I?) I open my eyes and am unable to move at first. ---- (Robin and I got separated in town...so I was searching for him) (And then...ah, yeah, I met Sirius) (He was showing me the way...and then there was that bar on the dark street where I was only going to drink one drink, and then...) .... ....... .......... “Shit, I can’t remember anything...” I’m not sure how I got to this room or what happened after I blacked out. My head doesn’t hurt, so it’s not a hangover.  I only had one drink, that’s the one thing I CAN remember. “No way...” Nervously, I run my hands down my body.  The hem of my shirt was untucked, all the buttons completely undone, and my skirt was rolled up past my thighs.  (I want to think it’s just from how I slept...I really want to think that, but...)  Being drunk can make you roll around and do that. I can’t hide how anxious I am about this unexpected situation. My heart thumps painfully in my chest and my legs shake. ---- (Huh? A tattoo?) I see Sirius taking a shower in the other room, with a tattoo spread across his back. (That would mean Sirius and I...) Looking at the bed with disheveled sheets, I wrap my arms around my body and hug myself tightly. “Maybe...maybe we just slept, that’s all...” (It’s a pitiful excuse, I know.) (Oh my god!! I need to go find Robin!!) Remembering something very important, she runs out of the room. ---- Sirius: “Ha, she ran away.”

English version:

Where am I? I open my eyes and stay perfectly still for the first few minutes. ---- (I got separated from Robin in town and while I was looking for him I, ended up lost.) (And then...Oh right, I met Sirius. Man, he was attractive.) (He was showing me the way, then we paused for a drink, and then...) Then...Hmm. What did happen? I’m drawing a blank here. “What the? I have no memory of last night.” I have no idea where this is or the events that led to me waking up here. There are flashes of groans and sighs, but that’s all. My head doesn’t hurt, though, which suggests I don’t have a hangover. Not that I’d expect to have one over a single drink, but I remember that drink being similar to a potion. “Uh-oh. Did I hook up with someone?” I carefully pat myself down. My shirt’s untucked, the buttons are undone, and my skirt’s hiked up around my thighs. (Then again, I could’ve just slept weird. Here’s hoping.) I’ve definitely rolled around in my sleep while drunk before. Still, I never thought I’d have to do a walk of shame in another realm. My heart pounds as I look around, trying to figure out who I spent the night with. (Did I somehow manage to book a room for myself? With what coin?) (It’s like everything that happened since I got here caught up to me all at once. What did I do...?) ---- “What was that?” (A tattoo? It was a gorgeous one, if so.) (The question is, how acquainted did I become with that tattoo last night?) The rumbled bedding comes back into view as I put my head in my hands. “Maybe we just crashed here together after our drink.” “...” (Pitiful excuse, but I’ll take it for now.) (Wait, Robin! Oh god. I have to go find him.) I run out of the room as soon as I remember. Given how little of the situation I remember, it’s probably better if we put that night behind us. ---- Sirius: “Alas. She has absconded.”

Then after she leaves, it goes about the same in both versions. She finds Robin at the gates, is rushing to Toa’s class, gets stopped by Jasper. His voice reminds her of Sirius. He then teases her for being late and is like “You said you were going to go back to your room last night, but it seems like you went out and had fun instead.” and she snaps at him and says she didn’t. He acts surprised. She apologizes and walks off, embarrassed. He laughs.

So. Yeah. One of them, MC wakes up confused after being drugged and raped and is trying to process that and then remembers Robin, runs back to the dorms, and has to deal with Jasper teasing her saying she went out and had “fun” which triggers extremely fresh, bad memories. While the other one...MC is like. Did I hook up with someone?? Whoopsies! Hm, I wonder how I did that. Oh but that Sirius guy was SO hot. Oh shit! I have a cat that’s missing! Gotta go. And then Jasper teases her but she just gets upset because she feels embarrassed about hooking up with someone. Neat. Also, what is with Voltage and their obsession with using “abscond”???

----

Are you feeling uncomfortable right now? A little horrified that Voltage would write a story like that, and romanticize it? Awesome! Me too! Let’s take a break here before moving on. Thankfully, the next parts won’t contain anything near as triggering as the first interlude and chapter 9. 

(Next post currently in progress, will add link as soon as possible! This is taking much longer than I thought it would to write;;;)

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers (March 3rd, 2021)

Here’s our latest batch of anon ask answers! Thanks for waiting for them.

Will there be a 'Our Life' game for each season? Please say we're getting a winter one! 

As of right now we’re only planning on making two, summer and fall. They take quite a while to finish and we’re not sure where we’ll be when the second OL is truly wrapped up. But it’s not impossible we can do a third. Though, four Our Life games is probably not super likely, honestly, aha. Maybe the third game, if we make one, could be switch between winter and spring or something.

What engine/engines do you use to make your games? 

We use Renpy for all our projects!

For version 1.2 of OL, did you make any changes to the DLC? If so, could you post a changelog detailing what exactly (or at least a general overview)? If it's not too much trouble, could you also elaborate on the bugs/errors you fixed in the base game? 

There aren’t really any changes to the DLCs, except for the voiced name DLC getting an expansion. We fixed very few small typos and added a couple extra lines. Unfortunately, we don’t have a list of exactly what all the little fixes were.

I've been playing OL and I love the characters! As soon as Baxter showed up, I knew I wanted to learn more about him! Would you consider adding him as a prospective LI in the future? 

Yep, Baxter (and Derek) will be getting his own romance story as an optional DLC late in 2021! Glad you like him.

Hellooo! First off I'm a huge fan of the game and can't stop playing it. However, I was wondering about how much domestic life with Cove we'll get to see in step 4. Meaning the time before the wedding and the time after. In my game Cove and I talked about having children and I was hoping that would be an option in step 4. Either way, I cannot wait for the release and I send my best to everyone working on the production :) thanks! 

I’m sorry, there’s no children or scenes after the two are married. There’s sort of endless possibilities for what that future could be like, so we unfortunately can’t depict it. You only get scenes before they’re married and, if you get the wedding DLC, you can see the day they get married. It ends there, though. But thank you for the well-wishes!

Hello! I was just wondering, so step 4 is going to be similiar to the prologue/epilogue scenes of the game. Is the Wedding DLC going to be one long scene too or will that have moments? (I love the game by the way, its ruined all other visual novels for me in the most wonderful way <3 ) 

Yeah, Step 4 and the wedding DLC will be like the prologues/summer ended parts of the game. There won’t be separate Moments you can play in any order. I’m really happy you like the game so much!

You said that the OL MC's birthday can't be in summer, but what if you headcanoned it to be? 

You can headcanon it as being in summer! There just aren’t birthday events in the game even if you do know your MC was born in summer. We had to leave those out, since some people might not want their MC to be born in summer and then they’d miss out on extra birthday scenes because of it. It wouldn’t have been fair.

Hello!😺 I absolutely love your game!😻 I can't wait for DLS with Derek and Baxter. And I wonder if Baxter could have seen Cove and MC at the party during their first failed dance? Or is Baxter only paying attention to who he's dancing with, or is he not dancing with anyone at the soiree at all then? 

Baxter isn’t really paying attention to the couples on the floor. He’s just cruising the outskirts for someone available to dance with him. So he doesn’t get any memories of the MC or Cove at that party if the two just dance with each other. It’s great to hear you like the game!

time-wise/step-wise when does the nsfw dlc take place? 

It’s not super strict in terms of an exact of weeks/months, but generally it’s sometime not long after the end of Step 3.

Heya! I'm currently obsessed with Our Life (I played through the entire game on Valentine's Day, hahaha– ha... hah), and I have one silly question: if I start playing Step 3 with the less... "romantically inclined" interest levels (Fond & Disinterest), is there still a chance of getting a romantic ending with Cove? Can Cove and the MC realize "they're the one for me" in just one summer? Or... are confessions off the table completely unless at least at Crush level? Thank you in advance! 

So happy you’re having fun with it! In OL1 deciding that Cove is your friend means he’s truly only a friend. You can’t decide you have a crush partway through. But we are considering doing things differently in future games.

hey i have some questions about our life

a) is there a way to be friends with that mean bowlcut kid or is he always... like tha

b. what is coves ethnicity?

A. He is always like that, haha. At least as a kid, he does grow up to be different~

B. Cove’s mom Kyra is white, but Cliff’s race doesn’t come up and players are able to headcanon it. So Cove is half white and half whatever you prefer Cliff to be. 

how do you get to the two mc cut-in scenes from the new update?

&

Hiii! I'm doing another playthrough (it's only like my 100th time playing through the entire game) after the 1.2 update, and I was wondering how to get the new art? I also really love all the new stuff, thank you for working so hard and creating such a wonderful game :)

You can check our our CG guide on Steam for that! Thank you for the kind words.

Sorry to bother you, but I have a question about the Patreon moment. Will there be initiative settings there too? And if there aren't, will the MC lead the whole thing or will Cove lead at certain points too? Thank you~ 

There will still be flexibly in what you’re comfortable with and whether you want Cove to automatically do things or for choices to always be involved :]. And you don’t need to apologize!

Hello!! I wanted to ask a couple of questions about Our Life:

1. Will we able to buy all the DLC via Steam or will there be some of them only available in Patreon? Just to know if I should create a Patreon user XD

2. Will Our Life: Now and Forever be about the current MC, Cove and the other characters or will it be a game with a New MC, new romantic options and new characters?

1. There will be a Patreon-only NSFW bonus Moment. But all the normal planned DLCs will release on Steam.

2. Our Life: Now & Forever is about new characters- new MC, new family, new LI, etc.

just some small bug I noticed: even if you didn't ask Cove to dance, if he asks you at the Soiree in Step 2 later and you say yes to dancing, the MC acts like they got to dance with Cove again even if it was the first time. 

Thank you for the report on that! We thought it was fixed, but I guess it didn’t work.

I was messing around with the new update and I noticed that all the hands in the firefly CGs have the same skin tone regardless of what you put in, (with the exception of the really dark skin color) is this a glitch or something? 

The skin tones aren’t the same. It’s just because they’re out at night with only fireflies for light that it makes each image look dark and therefore similar. But if you line them up together it’s clear how there are changes in every option.

How long did it take to plan out and write the story for OL? Not including the programming, art stuff, or the DLC chapters, I mean just planning and writing the base game story alone. The base game story seems hefty as is, and then on top of that there's the changes to scenes depending on MC's and Cove's personalities and relationship, I'm curious how long that took 

It took basically the full development time, aha. I’m someone who doesn’t fully outline a project before start and instead continues to come up with stuff as a project progresses. There were new parts to the story being created right up to near the launch. So, starting in 2016 or so to later 2020, with some breaks/hold-ups throughout that time.

Hello! I'm really, really enjoying Our Life: Beginning and Always, it was the kind of sweet, wholesome content I needed during these past months. I had a quick question, will you be making any female characters for the MC to romance? In this game or any others like it? I'm a lesbian and I'd love to have a female love interest with such well written romance as yours! Thank you so much. 

Thank you for the nice comment! Our Life: Beginnings & Always won’t have a female LI since we didn’t want to treat other gender options as second fiddle to the male lead. But we have just started full production on Our Life: Now & Forever, which will have a starring female LI! There’s a silhouette glimpse of her Step 1 self here~

-------------------------------------------------

Thanks everyone for sending the questions :D

FAQ   If you prefer to just see the main posts without all the asks/reblogs, feel free to follow our side account instead: GB Patch Updates Bl

[lilyofthesword-writes]

Kokkuri-san (Loki Oneshot)

Summary: You are on your way back to the Tower when you sense a strange energy emanating from it. Loki is there to help.

Pairing: Loki x F!Reader (established relationship)

Word Count: 1,718

Warnings/Disclaimers: Opens with description of being unable to breathe.

A/N: I tried to provide enough information for this to be a stand alone, but it does still act like a follow-up to Sorceress. And if you would like more information on the game Kokkuri-san, I highly recommend checking out the podcasts Kowabana and Toshiden both created by Tara A. Devlin at Kowabana.net. Just a heads up, this is NOT sponsored by anyone. I just enjoy listening to scary stories, and this became one of my favorites.

Masterlist

Molasses had seeped past your skull, compressing your brain uncomfortably. Or at least that’s what it felt like. A wavering darkness flowed around you as if you were underwater. Your lungs were sluggish to take in air, and it was getting worse. The longer you were forced to endure this pressure, the harder it was for you to focus, to breathe.

-up...

A voice muddled through the inky blackness.

Wa- up...

It sounded so familiar...

Wake up...

Nat, maybe? Were you asleep?

WAKE UP!

Your eyes shot open, unwillingly taking in the light of the Quinjet. The air you sucked in felt like gravel in your throat. Nat’s steely grip on your shoulders were beginning to ground you in reality.

“Wha- What happened?” Your throat burned as you spoke.

“Some kind of dream.” Her concerned eyes bored into you as you tried to blink yourself to full consciousness. “You were breathing heavily before you just stopped altogether. You okay?”

“Y-yeah,” you half lied. You didn’t feel nearly as bad in the dream but it still felt like sludge was creeping across your mind. Whatever energy you were getting close to was some kind of nasty. “How far are we from the Tower?”

Nat released you from her hold. “About an hour out.”

The pressure on your head was only growing worse the closer you all got.

“Okay...” you sucked in a deep breath.

Sitting in the seat across from you, Nat eyed you wearily. “You sure you’re good?”

“Yeah,” you nodded, pulling out your phone. “Just going to break one of Fury’s rules. Something is going on at the Tower.”

An eyebrow shot up her forehead. “One of those sixth sense things, again?”

“You could say that...”

You pulled up Loki in the messenger app. You could astral project yourself to talk with him, but that could be more dangerous with whatever energy was infecting the Tower.

You: Hey. We’re almost back. What’s going on there?

Loki: Good evening to you as well, Darling. You can feel the energy from where you are?

You: Yes, it’s very... Palpable. ☹️

Loki: Well, we could use the extra help. It seems that the Ant-Man’s daughter played some spirit summoning game before joining him here for the summer.

You: And it followed her... Great... Is she at least okay?

Loki: She is unharmed. More spooked than anything.

You: Good, good. Did she mention any specifics? Like which game?

Loki: She did, yes. Although, she is unsure if she remembers it correctly. I believe she said it was Kakariko.

You: That can’t be right... That’s a village from a video game series.

Loki: So I learned recently with the Spiderling’s assistance.

You: Did she mention anything else?

Loki: She spoke of strange symbols as well as numbers being written in rows on a piece of paper. A coin was used as a conduit to pick each symbol.

You huffed and smacked your head in realization.

Kokkuri-san

Similar to a Ouija board in nature, missing or mucking up a step could be dangerous. Summoning spirits really should not be a game, something you concluded after cleaning up several messes on campus caused by the students who believed themselves master magicians despite their lack of experience. You couldn’t blame them too much for wanting to try since you had played a variety of those games in traveling with your family as a child. In Japan, Kokkuri-san was all the rage in schools.

Bumping your head on the back of the seat impatiently, you checked the time on your phone for the millionth time. You were about twenty minutes away now. Estimating the physical distance, you debated on just teleporting to the Tower instead of waiting in agony during the small amount of time.

Your phone pinged with a new message.

Loki: How are you faring?

You: Better than before. Energy barrier helps. How’re things there?

Loki: I have Lang and Cassie in her room with protection. The spirit cannot reach her there. However, it is lurking about. Stark is none too pleased.

You: He’s not blaming you, is he?

Loki: He tried. It did not last long.

You: Good. We should be there shortly.

Loki: I’ll be waiting, Dove.

Placing the phone in your pocket, you huffed.

“You know,” Nat chimed in, “We should be pretty close now. Just go already.”

Contemplating a moment, you answered, “I don’t know... I’ve only practiced long distance teleportation a few times.”

“And you were successful. Count this as extra practice. Now get out of here.” The harsh sound of her words was mitigated by an encouraging smile.

With a nod, you took a deep breath and teleported to the landing pad. You were about a foot away from the floor when you reappeared. Loki was already there to catch you. The god knew you too well.

“I dare say you might be getting the hang of this.” He held you close like he was making up for lost time.

You reached up and cupped his face to pull him in for a kiss. “Only because I have a very patient teacher.”

“I have missed this,” he breathed, his lips brushing against yours. “But I believe there is a young girl waiting for our help.”

Aside from Stark’s ranting about how ghosts weren’t real, setting up the library went off without a fuss. Between the salt, candles, charms, your spells and Loki’s seiðr, there was no way this could go wrong.

After confirming with Cassie that she had indeed played Kokkuri-san with a new friend who had recently moved to the States from Japan, you had coaxed the whole story out of Cassie. At their slumber party, they had started to play and were spooked by a sudden power outage and strange noises, causing them to let go of the coin used to slide over each symbol. With their connection to the conduit broken before properly closing the game, the kami/spirit latched onto Cassie and followed her here. The best bet was to re-summon the kami in a more secure environment and properly close the game. Luckily for all of you, she had kept the 10 yen coin her friend accidentally left behind, something you needed for all this to work.

You were quadruple checking the last set of charms when Loki snuck up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist and nuzzling your hair. “Everything ready, my little sorceress?”

“As ready as it will ever be,” you huffed before turning on your heel to face him. “This always makes me a bit nervous.”

He pulled back to look at you while he spoke. “Everything will go according to plan. Besides, you have me here. Nothing could possibly go wrong,” he chuckled, a teasing grin painted his face.

“What an ego,” you exclaimed and lightly smacked his chest. You couldn’t help your own smile. “Just go get Scott and Cassie so we can get this over with.”

“As you wish,” he relented, teleporting away after stealing a kiss to leave you flustered. It was certainly one way to lighten the mood.

The summoning had gone well enough. Both you and Loki knew for sure just by the feel of the energy the right kami had come. It was getting it to leave that was the problem.

“Kokkuri-san, please return.”

The coin slid to いいえ/iie no matter how many times you all reset it to the middle of the board.

No.

While you and Loki both grew in frustration, Scott was busy keeping Cassie calm. As level headed and clever this girl could be, the repetition was getting to her. Loki decided another tactic was in order. A few unintelligible words under his breath that you barely heard and the kami was visible on the table.

A tall kitsune clad in white and red robes hissed and glared at Loki, but made no move to attack. It knew it had no chance with all the preparations you two had done. Its four tails flicked in annoyance and its white, almost silvery ears pressed back. You held back a sigh of relief. This kitsune was not as strong as it could be, having not lived long enough to acquire its maximum nine tails and its full power.

“What is it you desire, Spirit?” Loki spoke loud and unwavering.

“Same as Mischief God. Fun,” it growled through its broken English. Despite the ability to hear it now, none of you dared remove your fingers from the coin.

“Well, you certainly have had your fill. Now begone! Return to your realm,” he challenged.

The kitsune’s tails waved wildly as it contemplated its next move. Its eyes flitted to Cassie, softening almost apologetically as it gazed upon her. Similar to its Western Fae counterparts, it did not fully understand that its version of fun was not the same as it was for mortals.

“分かりました。/Wakarimashita,” it huffed, bowing as it turned its attention back to you and Loki.

Understood.

You felt the coin move again. This time it was to the top left of the paper to hover over はい/hai. Yes.

It then promptly glided to the torii gates drawn in the top center. The kitsune vanished from the table, the energy it left behind dissipating rather quickly. You all said, “Thank you,” in unison before pulling away from the coin.

“So... Is that it?” Scott asked with a mixture of confusion and the need to ensure his daughter was safe.

“Not quite,” you mused while picking up the paper.

“What do we do?” Cassie chirped.

Your raven-haired god looked to you curiously. You didn’t tell him about the next part.

“You don’t have to do anything,” you grinned, “The next two parts are easy.”

Picking up the paper, you began tearing it. You counted as you went until you hit forty-eight.

You held up the coin for all to see. “Now. Part two is going to be more interesting.”

“Do tell,” Loki purred.

“We have to spend this within three days.” Your grin slipped into a more mischievous smirk.

Cassie’s eyes sparkled with hope. “So does that mean...”

“Uh-huh. It’s time for a vacation. Who wants to go to Japan?”

[the-insomniac-emporium]

i stumbled upon ur writing looking for lady d x non-binary reader fics and ur work has just been a godsend i’m obsessed. it’s inspired me to start writing my own even though i’ve never written for fandoms before. i’ve never written for other actual characters before either so i was wondering if u could spare any tips for writing for lady d and her daughters? 🙏🏻

:D

I can certainly try! I'll divide the tips into lil sections for each characters. Might be less tips, more character observations that help me figure out how to write them? Putting under read-more for length. Also! If you ever want someone to look over what you write before you post it, I offer my services! I can't guarantee how fast I can respond, but I've been editing/proof-reading/giving general feedback for my friends for years, with everything from fanfiction to college level essays.

Alcina:

Large and in charge, literally. Regardless of the situation, Lady D wants to stay in control, or at least look like she's in control. Okay, minor exception being anything involving Mother Miranda, since she's the one person Lady D has any real respect for. Otherwise, Alcina maintains a good grasp on any situation, looking for ways to put herself in control.

For example, she often uses her height as a means to establish dominance, even within RE8 canon. If you watch a video of the Four Lords meeting, Alcina stands up once she starts arguing with Heisenberg, towering over him in an attempt to intimidate. We also see the aforementioned exception in this scene, as Lady D sort of "shrinks" a little when Miranda responds.

As much as Lady D wants to be in control, she's not always actually capable of it. In the game, we see her struggle to contain her emotions, and often releases them in outbursts. Such as the infamous vanity throwing scene (god I love that so much). It can provide some nice contrast in scenes, having Lady D be so in control one moment, then as soon as she's behind closed doors she's letting it all out.

Uses the most old-fashioned language out of her whole family. It's kind of hard to describe how one goes about writing this way, but I recommend trying to find some journals that were written in the early 1900's and reading them. Or just some classic novels (not Moby Dick, tho, that one's a bit much, in my opinion). One thing I can say is occasionally swap contractions (can't, don't, I've, etc) for the full version of the word (cannot, do not, I have, etc). Something about that always makes dialogue feel older, though I can't really explain why. Whatever you do, just don't rely too much on using synonyms. Replacing common words with their cousins can make dialogue feel "fancier", but you often run the risk of unintended connotations (feelings, positive or negative, associated with a word) messing with how a text is interpreted.

Puts up a front/facade around most people, as part of her noble background and need for control, with words like "stoic" and "composed" coming to mind. Very rough with troublemakers, no mercy. But!!! So very incredibly soft with her family/loved ones. I've seen some people accuse her of "faking" her love for her daughters, but these people either played a different game than I did, or they can't read emotions as well as I can. Gentle touches when she's checking if her kids are okay, little glances and gentle nods for reassurance, pausing a chase just to help her daughters, etc.

Bela:

Wants to make her mother proud. Legally obligated to make her mother proud, because she's the eldest daughter. Not that I know how that feels, being the younger of two children. Regardless, Bela is the most well behaved of the daughters, even when her mother isn't around. However, she does resent this position to some degree, based on in game dialogue/dialogue files that are in the game but aren't used. Personally, I see her as someone who's willing to let certain things go in exchange for favors/blackmail ammo.

Cleans up after her sisters a fair bit, sometimes literally. Feels responsible for them, to the point where their mistakes are her mistakes, and she's forced to compensate on their behalf. Because of this she ends up complaining a lot, though almost only when her family isn't around.

Still very protective of her family, she simply does most of her protecting behind the scenes. Knows how to manipulate a situation, which she probably learned from her mother, and can be quite convincing when she wants to be. Less likely to use violence to solve a problem than anyone else in the family. Will she use violence if need be, or if someone fucks up enough? Yes, absolutely, but she'll focus more on efficiency than misery (unless someone really fucks up).

Generally speaking she's more eloquent than either of her sisters, though not by much unless she's trying to impress someone (usually her mother).

Cassandra:

Two words: Angry. Horny. To her, they might as well be one word. Horngry. Cassandra struggles with her emotions more than either of her sisters, being a pressure cooker ready to pop basically all the time. It's not hard to set her off, but it can take ages for her to cool back down. Let's her frustration (of any variety) build up until she can bludgeon someone to death with it. Harshest on the servants, and spends the most time toying with others in the dungeon.

Like Bela, Cassandra wants to make her mother proud, but it's less of an obligation and more of a "I'm the middle child and feel like I don't get enough attention" type deal. Is more than willing to stoop to "tattle telling" activities in order to get the attention she craves. Usually sticks to obediently following her mother's orders or hunting down enemies, though.

Bit of an artsy type, and the most likely to take trophies from her victims. Gross ones, usually. Okay, well, that's debatable, but I'm talking about general consensus rather than my specific tastes. Personally, I don't care if she's got some weird blood paintings. Hell, I've got extra blood, and also am clumsy and bleed a lot anyway, she can have mine!

Hides her non-anger emotions as best as she can. Hates talking about her feelings (even if it helps), to the point where it's usually impossible to tell how she's feeling deep down. Remember, anger is a secondary emotion! No one is ever just angry, there's always something else hiding underneath, such as: Sadness, disappointment, loneliness, jealousy, etc. Keep this in mind when you're writing her. Make sure you pinpoint the center of her anger, and hint at it, letting her actions show her true goal.

Swears the most, easily. Tends to speak in shorter sentences than her sisters, and prefers being blunt to being eloquent/flowery.

Daniela:

Love, love, love, love, love, ahhhh deep breath... love. Loves love, or at least what she processes as love. Would do anything for romance. Except she also craves "natural" romance, creating a sort of paradox that adds to her delusions, as she engages in the pursuit of unintentional romance (not to be confused with "The Pursuit of Unintentional Humor", a song that I very, very much enjoy). Wants to be loved for who she is at the same time that she attempts to mold herself into a more lovable shape. Struggles with intimacy, wanting to feel vulnerable without actually being so.

On some level she understands that draining people of their blood, and then drinking said blood, is not equatable to a healthy relationship. But seeing as this is the most common form of supposed "intimacy" that she experiences, she refuses to acknowledge the true nature of what she does. Instead she clings to the idea of "forever bonding" with her partners, pretending that each one is still with her, even when she no longer remembers their names.

Hates being rejected, no matter how gently. "Ugly" cries, but only if she's alone, often turning her pain into anger, just like Cassandra. However, her outbursts don't seem to last as long. In reality, her breakdowns simply occupy the inside of her existence, rather than the outside. Sure, she's giggling and causing chaos, like usual, but on the inside she's breaking a record for most depressing internal monologue.

Reads a ton, but not always "quality" books. Goes through a dozen books or more a week, often rereading her favorites several times, mainly within the romance genre (obvs). This affects her speech a fair amount, making her both cheesy and occasionally smooth as hell.

[halothenthehorns]

All in the Family

Chapter 114: The Lion and the Serpent

Frank groaned, already missing the towel bed back as he lay on the cold floor once more flat on his back. His leg was propped up uncomfortably on a chest, and it was only after his head stopped ringing did he realize it wasn't his whole body shaking, just that.

He jerked quickly away with a startled yelp, drawing Alice and Lily's attention at once. He watched carefully, but they were in an open office with no obvious danger in sight, the two girls circling around a desk to get to him.

He didn't recognize it, but found himself unsurprised who did when the explanation came.

"I didn't even know Madam Hooch had an office," the older Black was tapping his chin and circling curiously on the spot. "Where in the castle would that be?" They were on the ground floor he was certain, bright sun streaming in through a window that directly showed the Quidditch pitch's entrance, but none of them really paid enough attention to her when she was refereeing to notice if she came and went from any door in particular down here.

"I've heard of it at least," Frank grumbled, now eyeing the chest in understanding, everybody knew the Quidditch balls were in here in between games to stop with tampering, and were returned here after practice so teams couldn't do anything in the meantime. It was probably the bludgers trapped inside that gave him a fright.

He smiled at Alice and Lily and told them, "did you know this is probably the most guarded office in the whole castle, even better than Dumbledore's. I once heard a Ravenclaw tried to sneak in here for her team to get at those, and no matter what she tried, she couldn't get in."

The younger Black came out of an adjacent door stretching, a bed beyond him showed this was also her room compounded.

"I've never heard that," Alice laughed.

"But I believe it," Lily rolled her eyes as she looked around in exasperation.

"Must be a Quidditch chapter!" Potter hooted in delight, shouting the summoning spell first. The chest went zooming across the office, Potter yelping in shock and ducking just in time as it sailed over his head and crashed into the wall behind him. Frank was now even more grateful he'd moved when he had the chance or he would have gone with that thing.

He tried to pry it open, but the lock on it would not give. Muttering in disdain, he went circling around the desk and went rummaging through it with no care for some keys, throwing things pell-mell in his wake.

"And here I thought this was the one place you'd show some restraint," Lily sighed as she spoke to him and had to dodge a magazine lobbed near her. "Madam Hooch is the only adult in this place you lot actually use her title for."

To everyone's utter disbelief, he ignored her and abandoned the desk to go into the room instead.

Every eye in the room turned to Sirius for explanation, and he quickly scrambled to hide his face wasn't as shocked as everyone else's, muttering audibly about body snatchers as he followed and keeping the building shame to himself.

How had he not realized the last time he'd talked to Prongs something had been on his mind? Sure he'd been distracted by having some fun with Moony, and then Longbottom just confirmed he was an arse, plus the mess with Regulus and Peter, not to mention the entire mess that was this future every time his name came up, but still, it bothered him greatly if James had somehow fallen through the cracks by not even registering if his best friend wanted to talk about something during all of that!

He walked in the room brazenly, determined to put Prongs in a headlock until he told whatever his problem was, but he'd already found the keys in a side drawer next to the bed and was trying to skip past him just as fast.

Sirius seized the back of his robes and kicked the door shut instead.

"The hell Padfoot?" James yelped in surprise, turning to him in genuine confusion. "Quidditch?!" It really would have been all the explanation needed under other circumstances, even he'd been distracted from Evans when one of their games was coming up, but Sirius wasn't buying that this time.

"Sure that's the only thing on your mind? I know there's not space up there for much else, but I'm just checking," he frowned, still casting his mind back to try and place when this could have started and still kicking himself violently he really couldn't say the last time Prongs had spoken up what was on his mind.

"I, err," he met his eyes uneasily and still glanced longingly at the door. "I was, just," finally he huffed and put it as bluntly as he could. "I was trying to give everyone some space, thought that's what you wanted."

Sirius looked stunned stupid, and James found himself just as confused as him now.

"What on Earth gave you that impression?" He demanded, glowering back at the door with a now familiar look that made James exhausted just recognizing it.

"You, you idiot," he said quickly. Sirius opened his mouth to protest so James continued with a halfhearted shrug, "I get a lot's been going on with you lately, I've been dead through all this so it's not like I know how it feels to be hearing about this future version of me, and you've been talking to Moony about it 'cause, he's alive, I guess, and I'm glad you two are friends again, honestly, but ever since you two have been talking to each other again," he stopped and rubbed at his temple, thinking that had come out all wrong.

Sirius wished a pit would swallow him whole already. Was he just cursed to ruin everyone's life? He really hadn't considered any of that at all!

The two were interrupted by a tentative knock on the door, and then it opening anyways and Remus shoving Peter inside.

Sirius had half a mind to kick the two out, he clearly needed to have a chat with his best mate, but Remus quickly intervened by smiling at the two and saying cheerily, "oh good, we weren't interrupting."

Peter laughed awkwardly, still eyeing the door like he wasn't even sure if he was supposed to be in here. Just because they didn't want to kill him now didn't make him automatically think he was invited back just like that.

James tapped the jangling key ring against his hip with nerves as he realized this was the first alone moment they'd gotten in a very long time, and they all just stood there awkwardly now. He was really starting to believe nothing was going to be the same anymore, and he looked miserably at the door and tried to stammer some half-hearted excuse to leave.

Sirius startled him by throwing his arm over his shoulder like old times, and then tightening around his throat in that choke hold that meant he wasn't going anywhere.

"Look, I'm sorry Moony and I didn't share our brilliant idea to try and get those others to relax around him by making a few more furry little jokes in front of them," Sirius said honestly, bouncing on his toes a bit and making James squirm all the more uncomfortably under his arm.

"Our?" Remus frowned at him, but Sirius ignored him and kept going.

"It, err, was a bit spur of the moment, and look, we really should have, but look, we-"

"It's not like I disagree," James nodded now that he understood, finally wrangling out of his grasp. "Just, I'd have liked a little warning."

"Sorry Prongs," the two said together, Remus adding, "I just, I saw an opportunity and went for it before I chickened out."

"Don't be ridiculous Moony," Sirius snorted, "you'd rooster out, and even then, it certainly wasn't a full moon, you had too much energy."

He stopped with a remorseless laugh as Remus shoved him. James smiled at the display as he told himself that whatever had happened, he was glad for it. If things had changed enough that Remus got through to him but he couldn't anymore, well, it's not the first change that had happened, and probably wouldn't be the last. He'd adjust...

Peter laughed in surprise at the idiots again, and then Sirius lunged without warning and snatched the keys away from Prongs, darting for the door himself now. James pounded after him shouting profanities, and the two barely had time to get out of the way of the door as the two began pushing and shoving each other, laughing madly by trying to get back to the trunk first.

James finally tackled Sirius to the floor, and the two went rolling around for several minutes before he came up victorious with the keys once more and finally retrieved his prize.

Sirius just grinned and threatened to release the bludgers on him if he didn't get started.

Remus stayed leaning against the door jam with a fond smile as Prongs read out The Lion and the Serpent, and wasn't even surprised when Peter wandered back over to Regulus and the two began smiling about the feeling Harry carried of his pride in the DA group.

He still winced internally as the root of the problem definitely hadn't been solved, they hadn't even seemed to realize Peter hadn't gotten a word in, again, but they weren't looking traitorously at him anymore as he went off. He didn't know if that marked a good thing that they had faith he'd come back if needed, or if he really wouldn't try to be a part of their group anymore. He seemed like he still wanted to be, having knocked and all, but Remus wasn't any better just shoving him like that, he scolded himself far too late. Would an apology just sound dumb so long after the fact?

Sirius finally seemed delighted to fix one problem right now though, as he stayed attentive at James's shoulder, trying to read with him and the two chatting loudly about the brilliance of Hermione's coin system.

As talk of Quidditch was built up and the two were louder than ever, she turned back to Frank and the three of them continued their much quieter conversation.

"I know you didn't mean anything by it darling, and you apologized right away," she squeezed his hand once more, "but I know you've been uneasy from him since all this came out, and it seems like he's trying a bit now. Can't you do the same?"

"It's not that simple," he wasn't even sure how he had to explain this to her, it still baffled him he seemed the only one with this problem. It's not like he'd been the only one in that cage, the mad animal having to be pinned down to stop from killing them, yet they'd gone back to acting like that never happened, that it couldn't happen again before all this was up. "Telling myself that and still doing it just aren't," he waved his other hand vaguely, but turned to watch him again. Seeing him now laugh along at Ron's inept yet impressive Quidditch save of accidentally kicking a Quaffle across the field into a goal post was the most normal thing anyone could do, but he doubted this would be the first thing his brain thought of if any of them had copious amounts of blood while in his vicinity again.

"I think Alice was right before though, maybe it would do us some good to, talk to them more," Lily paused with an eye roll as Crabbe and Goyle were announced as the new Beaters for the Slytherin team and the boys were mocking this. "At least, maybe when they stop being idiots about this game later."

Both of them watched her in surprise, she certainly hadn't agreed moments ago when Alice had said such a thing.

Lily just shrugged, waving vaguely at Lupin as well. "Couldn't hurt, maybe we've had them pegged wrong all this time, I know they've surprised me more than once during all this."

"I, yeah I guess," he sighed. "What are we even supposed to talk to them about? I'm with Lily, you know neither of us are the biggest Quidditch fans," he needlessly informed Alice.

"Oh, I'm sure we'll come up with something," Alice answered him with a beaming smile, leaning forward and planting a kiss on his cheek, before standing up properly and now sitting on the desk, joining the others in their disgusted shouts of this new low by the opposing team of making a full song about the Weasleys' life just to mess with them while the game was in full swing.

Lily and Frank exchanged an exasperated look, but still decided they'd wait for a better opportunity and began discussing games they wished they could be playing in a much more normal volume, like Gobstones. No one ever almost died playing that. The two did stop in outrage when Malfoy lost the game, and continued further insulting Harry now, even dragging Lily into it with more crude language.

She pursed her lips and couldn't say she blamed Harry or George attacking Malfoy, she'd curse anyone who called her that. She'd mostly forgiven Regulus for once doing the same, especially as he hadn't ever since that one time, and he'd only technically laughed along rather than out right saying it. She'd caught Sev even laughing at some cruel jokes before looking apologetically at her and changing the subject, insisting it was just force of habit from having to pretend around the others in his year.

Regulus's moment with his brother back in their house, each expressing they didn't want the other dead, was honestly the first step any of them had seen he'd even been willing to change. More than her own best friend had ever made, he wouldn't even say with any force he'd stop hanging around that awful lot.

The dragon bogies really hit the wind when McGonagall dragged the two up to her office for a telling off, but even though however much of that was deserved varied per person, Umbridge's arrival and banning Harry and the twins from said sport met a deadly silence from all.

"Well that sucks," Frank finally spoke into the heavy air.

Lily gave a nervous kind of laugh beside him, still watching all of them as if she expected someone to blow up any second.

"As if we didn't have reason enough to kill her before all this," Lupin said with an ugly scowl, then shot a guilty look at him, and Frank almost wanted to laugh at himself; Alice had been right already, he agreed with him. He still hadn't quite gotten over his fear of what this woman would do to Neville and the rest of the DA if she found out about that, but it would likely be the same if not something crueler as this woman carving up Harry's hand, and now stepping in from his own head of house and dueling out such punishments as lifelong bans.

Potter finally kept going with that same cold, calculating look in his eye Frank was now all too familiar with, but he'd help along with any plan these guys came up with to keep this woman from ever entering their school, let alone getting as far along in life as she had when they got back.

It was only in the last line of the chapter did any good news seem on the horizon, Hagrid was finally back.

[whmguidetoffxiv]

A White Mage's Guide: Tomestones and the House of Splendors

If You're sub-50, you won't have to worry too much about this yet. But for those of you just cresting that beautiful 5-0, you've probably heard about and been confunded by Tomestones. What are they? Why do they keep changing? Who's this Rowena person everyone's terrified of?

Well, look no further.

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the Bane of your existence.

Rowena runs the House of Splendors, and end-game, high-end shop from which you buy gear, weaponry, items, and so forth. however, Rowena doesn't deal in gil; instead, she deals in those enigmatic tomestones that you'll start collecting once you've reached level 50.

These are Tomestones; they're accessed by clicking Ctrl+C to open your currencies window, under 'battle'. These are collected automatically when you run dungeons after reaching level 50. Tomestones of Poetics, the base level, are earned with any post 50 dungeon or roulettes run under level 80. The next three are on a roatation; the second one (under poetics) is the 2nd-high end; you earn it at level 80 by running roulettes or level 80 dungeons. The Third is the Highest tier you can currently get; it's earned the same way as the previous, but you're capped at earning 450 of them per week. Each set of tomestones can purchase a different set of gear or items.

Notice that I never gave them names? Well, that's because they rotate out whenever a post-MSQ patch is released. (Or rather, every other one.) The 'discontinued' tomestone you see was the previous 2nd-high end. So when a new patch hits, a new tomestone is released. The high-end becomes the 2nd-high end, and the 2nd-high end is discontinued and its purchaseables switch to poetics. If you happen to have any of the discontinued ones, you can trade them in for an item that will give you an equivalent you can spend.

Rowena's got her claws in almost every corner of Eorzea and beyond. Practically speaking, it means she's not hard to find. She's got representatives in every major city, and in certain end-game areas for each expansion pack. They're represented by a blue bag on the map for the sundries girls, usually near the aetherytes. The full suites of the House of Splendors are going to be in the endgame areas.

The Girls in Gridania, Ul'Dah, and Limsa, and Mor donuts Dhona will all sell level 50 gear, regardless of what class or you currently are. The girl in Ishgard and Idyllshire will sell level 60 gear, and so on. The sundries girls will only sell items you can buy with tomestones, and there's a reason this is important.

The House of Splendors deals in a LOT more than just tomestones. You'll find random items from raids, fates, and events that you may not know what to do with. Chances are, you can spend them at the House of Splendors. Odin's Mantle, for example; you get it from a Fate that spawns randomly in any of the Black Shroud areas. You can trade it in Mor Dhona for gear, a sword, or a barding. However, you can only do this in Mor Dhona; each end-game area will deal with different 'rare' items you can only gather in that particular expansion.

The items you are most likely to collect come from the 8-man raids that were introduced in Heavensward. You'll get one for completing any of the raids, but the item will differ depending on which of the 12 in the raid series you do. You can trade these in at the Splendors house in the relevant area (which I'm avoiding naming all of them for spoilers reasons) to get a different selection of high-end gear from the normal tomestones. There's a different selection of items that you get from the savage version of the raids that will let you purchase the augmented item (which is dyeable).

It's important to note that, unless you're a glamour fiend, you don't need to save any of these special 'raid' commodities until you reach the current end-game. (As of This writing, that would be Shadowbringers Post-game.) Whatever the high-end Poetics armor/weapons are will always be the 'top' gear over anything else available. A recent patch even removed the normal versions of these poetics gears; you can only purchase the augmented ones now. So for ARR, that would be the Augmented Ironworks gear, for Heavensward it's the Augmented Shire Gear, and so on.

This being said, the Augmented gear will usually last 5-6 levels into the next leveling segment; if you play your cards right (and only do certain roulettes) you can make the armor last until it's time to buy the next set. (We don't recommend this for progressing through MSQ, though; usually the level 65-67 dungeons purposefully have a skill/damage boost to prevent people from coasting through on lower-leveled gear. This tip is more for leveling subsequent classes)

I do want to add this, just to explain how tomestones work once you DO reach the endgame. In addition to straight armor and gear, you can buy items. You can use these to buy crafted armors and glamor sets. I have an example of a piece of armor you can use the highlighted material to get. Again, unless you're a glamour fiend you won't be messing with these too much until the endgame. whatever the 'top' tier of armor is changes with the patch, alternating between crafted gear and gear available from tomestones or raids. Unless you want to be a savage/ultimate tier raider, you won't miss much if your gear lags a bit behind.

Crafters and Gatherers aren't excluded from this, either! The House of Splendors has a separate set of currencies for each that can be used to buy equally high-end gear and tools. These are called scrips. They break down in a similar way to the tomestones, and rotate out, though on a less frequent basis.

Editor's note: The Skybuilders scrips are from a separate event called the Firmament Restoration and are not associated with the House of Splendors in any way.

Earning Scrips is a different process from earning Tomestones, one that you don't even fully start until you reach Heavensward. To earn scrips, you need to complete turn-ins similar to your Grand Company. Unlike the GC, though, the 'collectablity' of the item dictates how much XP or Scrips you get in exchange. (Functionally, the rarity replaces the 'HQ' meter when you're crafting.) These 'collectibles' are separate recipes within your crafting menu.

90% of Crafting/Gathering scrips is going to be the same as tomestones; earn currency, trade for loot. There are, however, two extra things to know about Scrips. The first is that there used to be a LOT more items you could trade in for scrips. As the game expands these processes tend to get streamlined. To prevent old players getting completely screwed over after a 2-year break, there is a vendor in Idyllshire that will trade a lot of these items for Blue tokens. You can get these with Yellow Scrips too, and this is the other extra thing to know.

Crafters can learn 'expert recipes' and gatherers can learn about 'unhidden' nodes, but only through books purchased through the House of Splendors. Crafters purchase their books with scrips, but Gatherers need to use the blue gatherer's tokens. They aren't super necessary for progression, but they DO allow you to gather rare items for that high-end crafted gear, and are worth grinding out.

Probably the best thing you can buy with your scrips if you're still leveling a crafter or gatherer is the manuals; these are one-use items that provide a 2-hour buff to your XP gain as that class, up until a certain point. After that, you can buy materia, orch rolls, and lots of other sundry little goodies. Or materia.

And... that should be everything! Best of luck with your dealings with Rowena, and see you around Eorzea!

[theloyaltyofthewolves]

recently the mood has just been no thoughts, head empty; just soft SKZ Virgo boys~

okay okay okay. okayokayokay. let’s talk about the virgos. (this is going to be a long post, so go make yourselves some popcorn or tea or white wine or somethin because i have been wanting to write this from the moment i started this blog and this bitch is long.)

it’s a little impressive, honestly, to have a group of eight people consist of three virgos. considering it’s one of the most underappreciated signs in the zodiac, that’s a lot of earth sign, and that’s a lot of virgo. but i think the interesting thing about the virgos in stray kids is that they are all different versions of the same sign. like one of those pokemon whose evolution is the same creature, just with a different coat color. they play so perfectly off and into each other. it very much feels as if it was meant to be. 

let’s start with the baby.

seungmin is almost a cusp. he’s right on the border of libra and virgo, which means he inherited a little bit of both. cusps are often pretty conflicted people, but i think seungmin wears it well. he’s got the steadiness of a virgo—his feet are planted firmly in the soil. he’s got the motivation of a virgo, that self-discipline that verges on cruel. listening to the paranoid ways that he cares for his voice—no a/c, only masks, no shouting—that’s that virgo neurosis. he’s the controlled virgo, the perfectly-aligned virgo. the stereotypical virgo. good with money, level-headed in an argument, prone to fits of contained anger if things don’t go his way or he experiences unanticipated setbacks. he’s the impatient, exasperated, long-suffering virgo mom friend. tough love, rough love. brutal honesty and uncensored opinions. getting his teammates out of bed and into the van, forcing vitamins down their throats, throwing sunscreen at their backs and water bottles at their heads because god fucking damnit, can’t they take care of themselves for once? the advice-giver, the maknae with a head full of barbed wisdom. he’s the knows better kid, because he does. seungmin knows better. he knows what to do, so he’s the one they call. night or day. i’ve messed up, i think i really messed up this time. and he’ll talk them off a ledge, go to the only all-night grocery store, buy some ice cream and some gummy vitamins. show up at jisung’s door and say take a deep breath. you’re going to be okay, peabrain. grow up a little. sharp and a little bit caustic, but his friends have learned that the sting usually means he’s right.  

and within that rough love, there are moments of unthinkable sweetness. holding hands under the table to calm nerves at radio interviews, pressure on the back of a neck to hold back a panic attack at an airport, warm arms under the covers the night before a concert. the ability to bring such profound comfort is uniquely virgo--it exists nowhere else in the zodiac. no other sign has the capacity to ground, to center. there is assurance of course in the gentle touch of others, of the i feel you, i am with you, you’re going to be okay. but that’s not how seungmin brings comfort. it’s not gentle, it’s not soft. it’s not treating someone like they’re about to shatter to pieces. it is an unyielding and forceful kind of comfort. you are breathing. your heart is beating. you are alive--now fucking act like it. that’s what seungmin does, he brings his teammates back to the ground and he ties them there, strings a rope between his hand and theirs so that there is no slipping away. it’s a rough love, a tough love, but it works. like splashing your face with cold water, or pinching the back of your hand. a little bit of pain – just a little – to remind you that you are still alive. you’re still feeling. and then seungmin will sit and he will wait and he will keep his teammates together until they’re strong enough to do it themselves. nothing weathers the winds and the waters of time like a virgo’s love. 

there are souls in this world who have lived many lives. people that you encounter and can sense, somehow, somewhere, a very immense sort of old. not old like grandparents or textbooks, not old as in dusty attics or love letters, black and white photographs. old as in ancient. like the sea, or the mountains, the canyons. the redwood trees and the milky way. sometimes you encounter people who hold that great vastness of time in them, and yongbok is one of those people. his soul has been around for a very, very long time. it’s seen the oceans rise and the moon go yellow. this is not its first time on earth, nor will it be its last.

yongbok is the old-soul virgo. the contemplative, philosophical one with his head in the clouds. he spends a lot of his time thinking, just like all virgos do. they are the overthinkers, the worriers. worring over things that have happened, are happening, will happen. past, present, and future, worry worry worry. and i know he doesn’t really come across like that at first. i too was fooled into believing that yongbok does not have a brain. plot twist: i actually think yongbok might use his brain the most. not for common sense, or anything. like let’s be real: yongbok has definitely never asked himself whether the thing that he is doing, such as eating a banana peel or gluing googly eyes to all of minho’s possessions, is a good thing to be doing. that thought process has never entered his head, nor will it ever enter his head. this is because wisdom and intelligence are different traits, and while yongbok’s got wisdom coming out the ass, he’d sit on wet paint because he didn’t take the time to read the sign. i think that’s why i’ve always felt like yongbok wasn’t really made to be an idol. like, of course he deserves it and he belongs with stray kids. he’s good enough and he’s brave enough and he’s strong enough. but there’s just something about him that screams i was not made for a life of glass and steel and concrete. i was not made for a camera lens. he was made for a cottage on the edge of the sea where he can sit and contemplate the great unknown unhindered by paparazzi or a world-class act. he’s too soft for that, too gentle. too sincere and genuine and open-hearted.

i think yongbok learning to make peace with the discord within himself though – an inner yearning for a simple life and an unquenchable thirst for success – by finding fulfilment outside of the business end of stray kids and devoting himself instead to his members. i could talk for hours about yongbok and his cooking and his sunshine, but i’ll restrain myself and just say: yongbok isn’t the backbone of the team. he doesn’t have the strength and willpower the way chan or minho do, the physical capacity to endure weight and pressure and carry his teammates to the finish line like changbin. he’s not grounding like seungmin or jeongin, he’s not electrifying like jisung, and he doesn’t bleed humanity like hyunjin. yongbok’s power, his role in stray kids, comes from his softness and his genuine love for them. the way he looks at them like they hung the stars. the gentle, silly, dumb ways he loves them, gives and shows that love just by being present. he’s the sunshine kid, he brings warmth because he brings love, because it comes off of him in waves. 

and then there’s jisung. little jisung! a virgo in his own right, although you wouldn’t think it given his propensity for dramatics and conflict and stage-stealing. what makes jisung a virgo is his defiance. i’ve talked about it before, could talk about it until i was blue in the face, but jisung is filled with fire. i don’t know what force made him this way, but whatever it was, it made him with the intention to burn. burn down stages, burn down cities, burn down countries. ashes to ashes and dust to dust, jisung is meant to bring the world to its knees. there is a hurricane in him, a maelstrom. it strains at the seams of his skin to be released, rages against his bones until they crack under the weight of all the life he’s kept contained. there is a light in him that will never go out and every day he fights against it swallowing him whole. 

that kind of fire knows no master. cannot be handled, cannot be contained. cannot be scripted or framed or repositioned. there is no politics in jisung’s fury and ocean, it is just sheer energy and flame—human spirit, you could say. virgos are masters of their own fates. they do not let higher powers take their will from them. the backbone of every revolution is a virgo, because they’re unfazed in the face of authority. virgos only believe in power they can see and touch. that means they are not fallible to state or god. no wonder why jyp had such trouble with jisung at first—there’s no way a kid like that, with that much cyanide and gasoline in his veins, fell into line. in fact, we know he didn’t. in a place so constrained and regimented as an entertainment company, someone like jisung must have chafed at every corner. virgos can’t be tricked into believing, there will be no blind faith from them. you have to put your money where your mouth is and prove yourself. not just that you’ve got a cause worth fighting for, but that you’re even worth the time of day to listen to in the first place. i don’t know about you, but i kinda doubt jyp’s menacing management staff and their consumerist rhetoric made the cut. it’s one in a list of a million reasons why chan stands out to me, why i know he’s so much more than he lets on. because for all that jyp entertainment tried to force jisung to his knees, chan only needed to ask. 

aside from raging against the machine as all good virgos do, jisung is- how do i put this? jisung’s really fucking smart, in the way only virgos (and scorpios!) ever are. like okay, no lie. the kid’s this close to being a genius. whenever they play games based in deceit or lying, jisung can play them under the table. remember when i said jisung’s got an emotional intelligence that’s off the charts? this is an example of that. he knows his teammates better than they know themselves because he spends every waking hour of his day paying attention to them. i’ve noticed this with most of the “mood-makers” in kpop. their role is to keep the pulse of the group up and racing, and that means they need to know how each one of their teammates is feeling, regardless of whether he’s hiding it or not. jisung needs to have his teammates’ tells so thoroughly intuited that he can read them from the other end of a stage during a black-out between performances. that’s his job. so of course he’s a virgo, because he needs that virgo intuition and logic, the ability to fill in the gaps on the heel of a dime. to know in the hair’s width of time before the commercial break ends and they’re back on the air, if jisung needs to draw the spotlight because hyunjin’s feeling a little bit ganged up on by the hosts or chan’s voice is starting to give a little. to smooth out the edges, hide their rough edges under a veil. because that’s what he does, and that’s what he’ll always do. cover for his teammates. hold them up the only way he knows how. 

they make a pretty formidable trio, don’t you think? between seungmin’s brutal honesty, yongbok’s stubbornness, and jisung’s wit, i imagine the three of them get what they want. that’s how virgos are. they expect more and they expect better and they do not take shit from anyone. if a virgo thinks that they’re right, there is a zero percent chance that you will get your way. it will save everyone involved time, energy, and effort to give in and acquiesce. otherwise, you’re facing an uphill battle that you will not win. not with one virgo, and certainly not with three. i honestly pity the rest of stray kids. no one does stubborn quite like an earth sign. 

they are also, quite bluntly, essential to the team. stray kids are eight pieces of one whole, and the virgo line take up a pretty considerable fraction of that whole. without their support, be it through seungmin’s fierce and brambled comfort, yongbok’s soft and humble warmth, or jisung’s quick-thinking, stray kids would implode. there’s a reason there are earth signs in every kpop group—they’re the ones with their shit together. they’re the ones that keep everyone else’s shit together, either through nagging or just brute force. they are the grounding weight, the support net. smart, sharp, ever-aware, to show up on top of their game. stray kids’ virgos are nonstop. they’ll keep it together, keep their team together, if it fucking kills them. 

you know how it is. different circus, same clowns. - @hexglyphs 

[pestopascal]

why are you defending cyberpunk so much? its a really buggy mess, it barely works on even some of the best pcs, they lied when they advertised it working on the ps5 but not ps4, and there were a ton of issues even before release happening with their social media team

my point is that people pick and choose when they wanna throw their arms up over the standard that is AAA gaming releases, and has been since prooooobably da2′s release (14 months to produce and release a game). maybe even earlier if you consider kotor2′s release (aka, given 11 months to make a game).

my point is that fallout 76 was an unplayable, game breaking, exploitative game riddled with many of the same issues. and i dont know anyone who continues to play it to this day but i know faaaaaar more people who refunded it or cancelled their orders just prior to launch because they didn’t want to brick their consoles.

my point is that one of the biggest blowbacks towards crunch was in regards to rockstar and red dead redemption 2′s release, a game which is now heralded as one of the best of all time, despite the way it treated everyone who worked on it. the moment it fixed everything, people forgot about just how hurt people working on that game were

my point is that skyrim is treated with this gentleness and fondness for dragons flying backwards and giants leaping into the sky and glitched quests (and how trophies, still to this day, sometimes will never work so you will have to put in another 100+ hour playthrough to be able to MAYBE get something). the irony in sony going after cp77 but STILL not forcing companies to fix broken quest lines

remember daa, with the silver mines? how if you happen to get that bug, that’s it. you basically have to restart. all ur items are gone, you can’t proceed. boom. bioware has never made an effort to fix it. they just released awakening as is, and proceeded onto their next project.

you also have to take into account that, okay sometimes they can’t pick up on all the glitches prior to testing like one or two are gonna slip through! but there’s a difference between that and a glitched out unplayable mess. cp77 honestly isnt unplayable, in fact it is one of the better games ive played at launch in a long time. do you know what gets these ppl notes and likes on the internet? blowing this shit out of proportion. in my 30+hrs of playing already, where im still just wandering around and picking up side missions and checking out clothes and whatever, sincerely have not seen half the shit ppl have said. not that it isnt true! the screenshots and vids are there! but people are piling it on, completely and totally, just for the sake of interest.

remember when mass effect andromeda dropped, and they had that beta test version that like journalists got to play, and how the models for cora and ryder had weird kind of motions and how sara ryder’s facial expressions are still a meme to this day? and how it kept getting piled on sooooooo much when it was like... not actually like that gameplay wise, and the story was quite nice, but who actually talks about that when you can talk about how bad the game looks ugh loading sequences ugh 360 head spins. fallout 4 had those weird smiles coming from npcs that are quite haunting, weren’t fixed.

you can actually tell that cdpr paid attention to writing a story that works, the endings are cathartic and not 2edgy2bedifferent like me3′s fucking starchild bullshit. also speaking of games who spent so long in production their story fucked up: persona 5 and final fantasy 15 are examples of spending too long being worked on with the story that despite how good it looks, it is a vapid excuse of a game that you HAVE to play either sequels or the dlc to get the full brunt of it. remember persona 5′s advertising? COMING SUMMER 2013. final fantasy 15 was ff versus for the lonnnngggeeesssstttt time too before square enix took it upon themselves to fuck it up and then GET MAD when ppl pointed out the story was kind of shallow (and also “why arent you releasing ff7r already”)

oh and then we also have things like kingdom hearts 3, which was quite frankly? awful and was FULL of corporations just getting their hands on it and doing whatever with it story wise (disney wanted frozen to feature so bad they intervened completely). borderlands 3 which keeps messing with the dlc and im amazed they even keep trying. bl3 was the sequel no one asked for, because it had no idea what it was doing. it was setting up to a story that i think very few ppl are now interested in.

yes cdpr lied. yes there are issues with their social media team. who do you actually blame though? the investors? corporations like sony and microsoft who no doubt wanted the game released as well? project managers, their bosses, the CEO? shareholders? fans who wanted the game now instead of putting up with another delay because lets be real: if a company needs to delay the game, they need to delay the game. its a demand and supply thing going on and the ppl who sit behind desks just see numbers they dont give a fuck about the people and we all know this. it fucking sucks.

this is not the first company, this is just the most public blowup because this game was teased in 2012 and people have held out for years and i get it! i do! ive been waiting for this game for years as well. and we can argue about how you shouldnt preorder games or not play stuff at launch or like how you should already have the latest console that has been sold out since it was announced and wont arrive in your country until march ! this can go back and forth and we can talk circles around cdpr but the point is: this isnt the first instance of it. it wont be the last.

if sony actually gave a fuck, they would review every single goddamn game that has been released to this day and has had bug reports. they dont. this is to clear up their public image. these companies truly dont give a fuck. bethesda admits to relying on fans to make their games playable with modding and to ALSO keep track of their story because it doesnt matter to them.

[seyaryminamoto]

I recently saw a heavy criticism of The Beach saying "it's the single least realistic portrayal of teenagers on television: spoiled, rich kids don't actively shun Zuko for having a disfiguring scar on his face, no one tries to start shit with Azula over the volleyball game, teenagers referring to themselves as teenagers, a teen boy tells people not to make a mess, a bunch of 14-16 year-olds sit in a circle and psychoanalyze each other, everything else about the campfire scene." Your thoughts?

:’) that someone looks at the Beach and dismisses it for being “unrealistic” by whatever their cultural standards are is probably enough of a sign of the irrelevance of said person’s opinion. I mean, obviously they’re free to think what they will, but...

Fire Nation society is not American society. I’m going blind here, maybe this person isn’t American at all, but somehow I mostly see such kinds of narrow-minded criticism from first-worlders who are seldom exposed to lifestyles outside their particular, contemporary bubble of experiences. 

Now then, let’s get into the actual debate: Fire Nation society values violence quite a lot. Fire Nation society is full of people who saw Zuko’s literal Agni Kai burning scene, and didn’t look away: the only character who does is Iroh, a very obvious hint by the writers that Iroh has discarded the cruel moral values the rest of the Fire Nation upholds.

With this in mind, a boy with a scarred face might earn all sorts of “ews” from our societies, damn right. From Fire Nation society, though? If even watching how the burn is inflicted didn’t bother most of them, why would the result be a problem? If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if people with burn scars are even seen more attractive because it implies they were caught in violent scuffles with fire and still survived? Of course, the argument might go that Zuko’s burn is meant to be a mark of shame... but it’s a mark of shame for PRINCE Zuko. For that mysterious boy with the emo haircut in Ember Island, whose real identity is a mystery? It is shown, instead, to result in this reaction:

Now then, we could say that this is meant to be a jab by the creators and writers at Zuko’s hordes of fangirls, because frankly, Book 3 has several instances of groups of girls swooning over Zuko and it might be what they were going for. In this case, though, they’re swooning over him WITHOUT knowing who he is, as opposed to the fangirls in Nightmares and Daydreams. So, while it absolutely can be inspired on the many Zuko fangirls the staff knew about, this actually ends up serving to characterize a society, a culture: they don’t think his scar makes him unattractive. It’s blatantly stated that their reaction is the opposite. So, instead of thinking “oh god that’s so unrealistic”, how about we actually stop trying to measure everything by our standards and consider that this could be an element of WORLDBUILDING...? :’)

(Also, I’m pretty sure there’s a fair share of privileged young women in our current society who think Kylo Ren was hot as hell with a huge scar across his face... are those people not real, by any chance? :’D If anything, they’re living proof that girls swooning over a scarred boy in ATLA are absolutely feasible, no matter if not everyone shares their opinion)

Continues under the cut becasue this got long....

Now then, Azula is shown to take the Kuai ball game too far. She outright causes the ball, in the final kick, to burst into flames and burns the net. Going by Chan and Ruon Jian, these kids are privileged idiots, why lie... but are these privileged idiots stupid enough to see a girl flying three feet into the air, kicking a firebent ball and then giving a foreboding speech, and say “OKAY WE’RE GONNA PICK A FIGHT WITH YOU FOR BEING SO COMPETITIVE!”???? I mean... honestly. Why would anyone do this? Azula turned an inoffensive Kuai ball game into a battlefield singlehandedly: THIS, as well, is meant to be a display of characterization. That people don’t take the game so seriously, that they wouldn’t pick a fight with her because she’s dangerous or because they just don’t care as much as she does... it’s characterizing Fire Nation people every bit as much as it characterizes Azula.

Azula and Zuko are both shown reacting in ridiculous ways to casual things in this episode: Azula takes the game too far, potentially stages the burning down of a house in retaliation for being rejected by a boy, Zuko is hysterical and jealous and snaps at Mai over stupid things... it’s, again, a matter of showing how poorly adjusted these characters are. They’re not normal kids. They DON’T behave like normal kids. Normal, privileged kids in the Fire Nation, are kids like Chan and Ruon Jian. The episode literally gives you the chance to see Fire Nation society for what it is, in a way no other episode does... and because it’s not like our societies, it’s somehow wrong?

... Also, teenagers referring to themselves as teenagers is somehow unrealistic? I mean... is it nowadays? I don’t think any teenagers had a problem with saying they were teens in my youth :’DDD literally remember MCR released a song called Teenagers and a lot of us loved it to pieces. What exactly is so outrageous about it? Might be that this worked better in the mid-00′s, but I hardly think this makes no sense? Aang refers to himself as a kid earlier in the show, is that unrealistic too and worth rebuking a whole episode over? Are all teenagers supposed to be pretending to be grown-ups, like so many 16-year-olds on Tumblr who always talk like they’ve figured out the world and try to impose rules on fully-grown adults upon whom they have absolutely no power? :’DDDDD Yeah, I think this particular point is a stupid thing to make a fuss over. Honestly, it is.

Chan tells people not to make a mess = unrealistic. Ha. Did this person ignore his reactions at the chaos Azula, Zuko, Mai and Ty Lee caused in his house? “YOU BROKE MY NANA’S VASE!!!”, anyone? Like... I’m sorry, but this IS characterization, yet again! This shows Chan is a spoiled brat who wants to stay in his family’s good graces. The party isn’t at all as crazy and wild as you’d expect from, again, an American teenage party... and why? Because, for one thing, Chan is clearly afraid of the consequences of too much chaos in the beach house: this implies fear of authority, of his parents, perhaps even his grandparents. 

For another, again, FIRE NATION SOCIETY: what does this clever critic know, by any chance, of Nazi Germany’s Hitler Youth? I’ve watched a few documentaries about it, and basically if you were a boy and you weren’t in Hitler Youth, you were no one. You were worthless. And what happened in Hitler Youth? Conditioning to the extreme. These kids were taught all the alt-right ideology that Tumblr despises, and they were made to believe it was an undeniable reality. Were there cases of kids who didn’t like it, kids who didn’t approve of it? Surely. But the general idea of Hitler Youth was to educate every kid to behave in the way Hitler considered appropriate, to the point where “the notion "Germany must live" even if they (members of the HJ) had to die was "hammered" into them.”

This is, of course, an extreme example and I’m sure Fire Nation education wasn’t that extreme because we saw it for ourselves, it’s not. But a slightly milder version of it? That’s absolutely feasible and consistent with what we see in The Headband. Therefore, kids getting high and drunk at a party? Maybe that kind of thing simply DOESN’T happen in a Fire Nation party? :’) Maybe they’re taught that those kinds of things are off-limits to anyone under a certain age (or outright forbidden, might be the case with drugs), and as they live in a tyrannical society that priorizes the Fire Lord and his decrees above all else, where his word is treated as that of a god, even mischievous teenagers refuse to act out? :’D oh, what an implausible concept, this just can’t possibly make any sense! Hitler Youth is unrealistic too!

Lastly, that a bunch of kids would sit in a circle psychoanalyzing each other seems implausible to this person is actually laughable for me. Not only have I constantly found myself, from my early teenage years to current days, serving as some sort of unofficial therapist for many of my friends, who share their woes and ask me for advice (whether they’ll heed it or not), most importantly, I once had an experience with a friend, back in high school, much like what happens with these kids in The Beach, after I’d spent years doing a lot of post-depression introspection. I shared a lot of stuff I didn’t often talk about, and beats me WHY I felt completely comfortable sharing it with my friend that day, but I did. She understood me, listened, offered her opinion, and we talked about her problems too. This happened when I was 15-16. If this person has never experienced such situation... why, that’s not anyone’s business. But it’s certainly not their business to determine this just DOESN’T happen, to anyone, ever. I can safely say it does, to people who do have problems and who sometimes just need a friendly shoulder to rely on. Maybe this critic’s life is just so perfect they’ve never had to share their woes with anyone else :’) I’m afraid that doesn’t invalidate those of us who are different, and it doesn’t invalidate the possibility that those four could talk, as they did, without breaking characterization, in the scene of the fireplace at the beach.

ANYWAYS...

Saying that a show about a group of kids who save the world and then effectively become leaders of such world, facing very little opposition in the process, is unrealistic because “teenagers aren’t like that becuase I wasn’t like that as a teenager” may be one of the most ridiculous and shortsighted things I’ve seen in this fandom, AND I’VE SEEN A LOT OF RIDICULOUS AND SHORTSIGHTED THINGS. A person’s experiences are NOT universal, regardless of how widespread their culture may be. More importantly, fiction does NOT have to abide by rules established by our current society’s state and cultural values. ATLA, as it is, is a completely different world from our own, regardless of its inspiration in many Asian cultures.

I, personally, find it a lot more unrealistic that Fire Lord Zuko can become Fire Lord without much in the way of visible protesting or boycotting when he was a banished prince who didn’t even win in his Agni Kai against Azula since it’s Katara who ends up defeating her and, as far as the rules go, Azula technically won even if not in the most dignified of ways. I find it even more unrealistic that LOK tells us Zuko was Fire Lord successfully for 70+ years and the Fire Nation has been fully reformed into a non-warmongering country despite the 100+ years of indoctrination started by Sozin’s rule. That this gets swept under a rug, not only in the neatly wrapped finale that leaves a thousand unanswered questions, but in the sequel show that merely confirms Zuko succeeded and shows NOTHING of how he managed to reform such a fucked up society...? That is a thousand times more important to me than “privileged kids aren’t acting like privileged kids OMG!”. Honestly, you want privileged kids abusing all their privileges in our society? Go watch Gossip Girl, I genuinely recommend it. You want something that proposes a completely different possibility and a glance at what a society guided by a tyrannical dictator looks like? Feel free to watch The Beach again with a completely different focus and MAYBE you’ll understand what the writers were going for.

If this person happens to see my answer, I hope they learn that worldbuilding, for a storyteller, entails CREATING a world that isn’t necessarily like the one we’re familiar with. There are multiple layers to such a world, and society and culture are some of them. Not all cultures and societies work the same way, which is part of why sometimes you’ll find behaviors from people who belong to wholly different cultures and wind up perplexed because whatever they’re doing is completely unfamiliar for you. Are there any universal behaviors in humans? Maybe! But in a work of FICTION, even the most universal of behaviors can be changed, deleted, altered however the writer sees fit! :’D it’s not a novel concept, and as far as logical fallacies are concerned, this show features a whole slew of those that have nothing to do with this peculiar sense of “realism”, fallacies that absolutely can and should be called out. Namely, things that contradict the internal logic of the show, rather than things that are incompatible with OUR world. Portraying a world that’s very different from ours, on virtually every level you can think of? That’s called creativity, not lack of realism. Please learn the difference.

[riverboundao3ff]

Riverbound Chapter 7

You are THE GUARDIAN, which is kind of unfortunate because you’re currently face down and up to your chest in a medicalizer, which has clamped down on your torso so hard you think you’re going to throw up. It’s not like you’re not grateful for the opportunity to heal your broken ribs, but feeling the machine forcefully fuse the bone and muscle back together is not a pleasant experience. Even advanced technology has its setbacks, you suppose.

“If it hurts too much, we can take a break.”

You look up to Mallek, who is sitting beside you like a very anxious guard dog. Somebody put a big plastic bowl underneath you in case you puke, but you guess he wants to be ready to either hold your hair up like a drunk sorority girl at a party or pull you out of the medicalizer.

You manage a wheezy laugh. “Nah, I don’t feel pain. I’m a robot, remember?”

An unhappy whine rises up from the back of Mallek’s throat, kind of like a stressed cat. “These things can suck even for highbloods. Are you sure?”

“Yeah, dude. I just--” Something clicks back into place in your side, and your vision goes fuzzy for a couple seconds. “Augh. Just need to be uncomfortable for a little while longer. I’m not running around Thrashthrust with broken ribs any longer than, than I have to, oh shit.”

Your stomach rolls like a fighter jet and you let loose into the strategically placed bowl beneath you. Hey look, there’s the grubflakes you ate for breakfast.

Mallek grimaces, and you feel a cool hand rubbing circles into your upper back. You turn your attention towards breathing in and out, in and out, just focusing on the physical contact. It’s only a little after midnight but you’re already exhausted. The painkillers Lynera gave you early in the evening have long since worn off.

“What happened to you?” you hear him whisper.

You force your eyes back open. “Daraya already told you? I got thrown into a tree by a goddamn cholerbear. Nasty sonuva bitch.”

“No, I know that! Why did you disappear for like, half a sweep?” he demanded.

His voice cracks about halfway through, and guilt hits you like a sucker punch. You just want to see him smile again. Granted, you’re looking down at the bowl-o’-puke instead of your friend, but you don’t really have the strength to do anything else.

“Long story short, I got kidnapped. Made some new friends to cope. Escaped, made sure my new friends were okay, and then I came back here. I’ll tell you the full version when I’m not on the verge of passing out,” you explain.

“Kidnapped?” Mallek explodes. “The hell you mean, kidnapped?!”

You wince at the noise and reach out to pat his knee. “Sshhhhhhhh. Shhhh. Calm down. It’s fine now. Be calm.”

His face lights up blue. It’s only then you remember telling that shushing a troll is considered lowkey sexy or something. Whoops.

“I would never leave you on purpose, Mallek,” you say, quickly pulling away before it can get weird. “Or… or anybody. Okay?”

“... Okay,” he mumbles.

You smile encouragingly at him. He grabs your hand and squeezes it. It would have been a really sweet moment, except you’re sweaty and shaky and everything stinks like vomit. You can’t imagine how much it must reek to Mallek and his better sense of smell.

The both of you stay like that for a few more minutes, and then the medicalizer goes off with a sharp buzz and releases your torso from its clamps. You immediately inhale as much as you possibly can, groaning with relief when there was no more stabbing pain. There’s still a bit of soreness; a medicalizer can only do so much for bruising, but by all the horrorterrors have you missed breathing like a regular person.

“How’s it feel?” Mallek asks. You can feel the anxiety coming off him in waves.

“So much better.” You’d fall asleep right there and then if he gave you the chance, but you feel him gently grab your hands and pull you out of the medicalizer. A pair of strong arms lift you up, carry you a short distance away, and then set you back down on a sofa.

You accidentally let out a squeak when you feel a chilly finger poke your stitches.

“Sorry.”

“Nah, you’re good. You’re just cold.”

Mallek huffs and touches the scarred-over gash again. “The medicalizer took care of this big wound right here, but the stitches need to come out. I don’t know how, though.”

The fun never ends. “Lanque did ‘em.”

“I’ll go get him. Be right back,” he promises. You hear him jump to his feet and leave the room, the door creaking slightly on his way out. Downstairs, you can hear your friends discussing something, most likely Tyzias and Daraya cooking up a crazy new plan for the rebellion.

You can’t wait to join them and help save the planet. Vriska’s demand that you return in ten nights is a constant reminder of what you came here to do, but it also makes you nervous about the inevitable teleporting you’ll need to do. What if you messed up and ended up somewhere you shouldn’t? Causing a paradox wouldn’t just screw up your mission, it could ruin the fabric of reality. That fear kept you from so much as doing a measly little jump down the mountainside when you left the caverns.  

Having powers was handy, sure, but sometimes it made everything, like, a thousand times more stressful than it actually had to be.

The thumping of footsteps up the stairs gives you the distraction you need to calm down. You crack open an eye in time to see Mallek and Lanque striding in.

“Hey,” you croak.

“Damn, Adalov, did you have it up in the highest setting?” Lanque mutters, turning from you to Mallek with his arms crossed. He doesn’t look very happy with what he sees.

“Medicalizers are made for trolls, not aliens,” Mallek shoots back. “You know they hurt.”

“That thing was old when you let me use it.”

“I’m sorry, did you know any other highbloods with top-notch medicalizers that could do that surgery you wanted? I don’t think so, fucker.”

“Boys, can we save the pitch stuff for later? I want these stitches out so I don’t have to keep laying around like a dead body,” you growl.  

Mallek and Lanque glance back at you, both looking a little sheepish, before Mallek slinks away to sit down at your feet while muttering something about never being pitch for pretentious assholes who can’t even wear their jackets right. Lanque messes around with a few first aid kits on the shelf beside the medicalizer before finding what he’s looking for-- a small scalpel and a pair of tweezers.

“Alright, you know the drill. Off with the sports bra,” he orders.

You groan but obey, pausing with your hand through one of the straps when you notice another pair of wide eyes on you. “Mallek. Turn around, my guy.”

A very interesting squeaky noise escapes Mallek’s chest before he turns around and all but slithers over the armrest he was leaning on. You hear him hit the floor with a thump. Lanque rolls his eyes.

“You two know each other?” you ask as you flip over to lay on your stomach.

“We’ve met a few times, yes,” Lanque confirms, kneeling down to start picking at the stitches with the scalpel. The way he says it makes you suspect there was a lot more to the story than he was letting on. “Have you already told Mallek everything?”

That was Lanque’s way of saying “Let’s change the subject”, so you let it go. “Not… everything. Are you listening, Mallek?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, because I only want to explain this once. Basically, the multiverse is a whole lot more complicated than anybody knows, and there are a lot of… powerful beings out there that like to meddle. Like, with timelines, and universes, and that kind of stuff. Are you following me?”

“I… okay?”

“So basically, this fucker called Doc Scratch is one of these god things, and he was using me to control his timeline… area… whatever. That’s why I was running around Alternia before I left, because I guess I had to help bring certain people together for the timeline to work? I don’t know. Anyways, he kidnaps me when he’s done making me do his business and makes me read this fucked up comic in his own fucked up dimension, which is also on one of your moons. Long story short, the comic’s about some other friends I made and the shit they get into in another timeline. Eventually I manage to escape from Doc Scratch with only moderate trauma. Yay, me. How are we doing so far?”

You can’t see him, which is probably a good thing. “You… the multiverse and the… okay, sure. Why not.”

“I end up on Alternia again, but in the future, and then Earth, which is my home planet. Well, not that exact version of Earth, but whatever. I end up befriending all these kids and try to help them lead better lives than they would originally in this other timeline where they all play a game that destroys the universe. I should also mention that Doc Scratch somehow wiped my memories before I escaped, so until I meet this cool chick called Aradia I… had completely forgotten about you guys.” You swallow back the lump in your throat and try to focus on Lanque pulling out your stitches. It stings.

“The last kid I made friends with was this boy called Dirk. Good kid. So we’re hanging out, and this other version of Dirk rocks up from another universe, and this bastard is a kind of god called an… Ultimate Self, I think. He tries to stop me from rewriting the timeline and then tries to kill me or whatever. I get away from him and manage to…” Crap, how do you explain this part without telling your friends you created an entire universe? “I get him to go home and leave me and the kids alone. He can’t hurt us if he’s in his own universe. After all of that I wanted to come back to see you guys again. So I did.”

Like before, you don’t mention the Director, or the little showdown between you, her, and Ultimate Dirk in Doc Scratch’s mansion. You definitely don’t tell them you’re here to help them win the rebellion. You remind yourself you’re not lying to them, you’re just… not telling them everything. To protect them.

Yeah.

“What worries me is this Scratch character,” Lanque mutters. “You said that Ultimate Self god went back to his own universe, but if Scratch still has influence over our reality…”

“I… have no idea about Scratch,” you say truthfully.

“What is he, exactly?”

You release a long sigh. “Every planet with intelligent life has a thing called a First Guardian to guide it and its people to their destinies. Timelines can have Guardians too, I think? I know that sometimes entire universes have Guardians. They keep time and space in order, basically.”

“... If this universe has a First Guardian, why can’t it go beat Scratch’s ass?” Mallek jokes.

It’s a good question, and you know he’s just trying to lighten the mood, but it still fills you with misery, anger, and a fear so powerful you almost start shaking. If… when you meet Scratch again, what will you do? Would you be able to fight him? Protect your friends from him?

If your friends knew who you really are, would they still care about you?

“That’s something I would love to see, believe me,” you manage to say.

“I’m so sorry that all of that happened to you. It’s so fucked up,” Mallek says hoarsely. “I was so pissed that you were gone. I just spent six perigees of my life thinking one of the best friends I ever had was dead and I didn’t even stop to consider that they might be having it even worse.”

“It’s not your fault. Grief makes people do and feel weird shit,” you assure him. You’re trying not to cry yourself, because you’re half-naked with a super hot guy pulling out your stitches and another hot guy hiding behind the sofa. Your life is a lot of things but boring is not one of them.

Your pain tolerance must be through the roof by now, because you don’t even feel it when Lanque pulls out the last couple threads. “All done.”

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. “Thanks, Lanque.”

He pats your back. “Come join us downstairs when you’re ready. Tyzias has something I think you’d be interested in.”

Your tiredness instantly fades away. “Oh?”

“You can’t be serious, Bombyx. They’re still recovering,” Mallek protests.

“Then get off your privileged highblood ass and come with us,” Lanque calls over his shoulder as he saunters out the door.  

Mallek yelps and dives back behind the sofa when you hop up to get dressed. Your shirt was slung over the desk chair, which you gladly yank back on over your bra as you start to shiver. Mallek’s place was always pretty chilly since he ran cold, so you’d always have to bundle up a bit when you came over to hang.

“Alright, I’m decent. My pasty white ass won’t blind you anymore,” you tell him.

“You’re more of a really pale… pinkish tawny?” he notes, tossing you your hoodie.

You decide you’d explain the different ethnic and racial categories humans have to him later. “Yeah, sure. Thanks for letting me use the medicalizer.”

“Duh. I don’t let my friends run around with broken ribs,” Mallek snorts. “Yours sure break a lot, though. Maybe I should just stick you back in there from time to time, just in case.”

You pretend to chuck the puke bowl at him and cackle when he instinctively dodges. Once upon a time, you might have told him that human vomit is acidic. Granted, it definitely is; you can feel your throat and tongue burning like a bitch, but you never specified that it wasn’t deadly or anything.

“Just put it in the load gaper!” he begs, and you laugh as you follow him down to the bathroom. You forgot how much fun it was to fuck around with him. Maybe you’d introduce him to Kuprum and Folykl, you just know that the three of them in one room would be the best thing that ever happened. That, or they’d all kill each other. Those kinds of things could be a little difficult to predict with trolls.

The puke bowl gets cleaned with water, soap, and a lot of vigorous scrubbing. Your hands get the same treatment. Once you gulp down some water and splash your face in the sink, you turn, only to realize Mallek is staring at you again. His eyes are much more blue than when you last saw him. He’s an inch or two taller as well.

“... Yeah?” you ask. Did you have vomit on your face? Fuck.

All at once, Mallek wraps you up in a hug that leaves you breathless. You hug him back instinctively, and then really go all in when you feel him shaking ever so slightly against you. He smells like chips and something vaguely smoky.

Neither of you say anything for a while. There’s something incredibly fragile in the air, and it warms you from the inside out and fills you with worry.

“I missed you,” he mumbles into your hair.

“I missed you too. So much.”

“... You don’t have to join in on whatever crazy shit they’re cooking up down there.” He chuckles nervously. “Really. You can just… I dunno. Stay with me, if you want?”

You bump your head against his chest and gently squeeze his arms. “Mallek. The world is going to change, and I want to be a part of it. Don’t you?”

“I don’t want you to die.”

You reach up to gently cup his cheek. “I’ve died before. It’s not so bad, really.”

Mallek leans into the contact, looking at everything but at you. You let yourself be held by him for a little while longer before pulling away. He doesn’t say anything else, but he does follow you down the stairs to the rest of the group.

You grin at Tyzias when she looks up at you, hopeful. “So whose lives are we gonna ruin tonight?”

[autumnsart22]

Suna x reader: Final part (fluff)

Here’s the final part to my Suna x reader series! I wasn’t fully satisfied with this version, so I decided to make a *ahem* rougher version as well. If you’re interesting, click here. 

Art creds: @youneedasahi on twitter! 🤪

Despite Kita seeing you that day in the car, Suna still asked to keep whatever was between you a secret. That was fine with you--you didn’t particularly want a boyfriend, especially with the second semester of college work picking up. You still got to see him pretty often, hooking up in his car or your dorm at least three nights a week or more. Never the frat house; apparently his roommates were annoying. 

It was nice. Easy. Far easier than you ever expected friends with benefits to be. And beyond the sex, you loved talking to Suna; laying together on your tiny bed, legs tangled, while he explained the new music he was listening to, or walking together to the cafeteria as he made you laugh so hard that water came out of your nose. 

The good parts were enough to overlook the bad parts. At first. 

Suna was an abnormally horrific texter, barely ever responding within the day, if at all. If you ever wanted to get in contact with him, you’d have to call directly. And honestly even then he didn’t have the best track record. 

What was more frustrating was that it was always on his time. He would text you asking to hang out that night, and you would say yes, and then he wouldn’t respond until the following afternoon with some vague excuse about being busy. The first few times it happened, you got so mad that you didn’t respond to his calls, until he showed up at your dorm with panda express and forced you to watch Tokyo Ghoul with him. 

He had apologized...but it didn’t stop happening. It made you feel like you were some sort of side whore, who he called when he was bored and had nothing better to do. Like you were second best to everything else he had going on in his life. 

You had promised yourself from the beginning that you wouldn’t allow yourself to get close enough to get hurt, but it was hard. You really, really liked him. 

You liked the way he would stare at you while you talked, actually listening and curious as to what you had to say. You liked the way he hugged you after a few days of not seeing each other, burying his face in your hair like he couldn’t get close enough to you. You liked the way he laughed, both the usual, quiet chuckles and the rare snorting wheezes. You liked the way his mouth looked when he smoked, the way he moaned your name when he came, the way he could make you laugh at anything at any time. 

You didn’t want to get the “I told you so” talk from Kiyoko, so you avoided the topic all together: with her, and yourself. 

After one month of hanging out with Suna, you were planning on meeting up and going to see a movie. Both of you were more homebodies, preferring to stay in rather than party, but you had decided that you wanted to try and expand your horizons once again. The movies seemed like a happy compromise. 

The film was something Suna had been talking about for a while, an action thriller that honestly looked like shit but got good audience reviews because of all the flashy fight scenes. He had been so excited when it came out that you hadn’t been able to say no to going, especially not after he pried you with food. 

He was coming to get you at 6 pm, and your last class ended at 3pm, which gave you plenty of time to get ready. You stared at the face of your teacher on the screen within your zoom class, zoning out as he explained the flood system around the school. You glanced over as your phone buzzed, a message from Suna popping up on the screen. 

Suna

Wha u doying rit now?

You

What?

Suna

Sorr little drynk 

You

You’re drunk? 

Suna

im at psrty

You

Are we still seeing a movie tonight?

There was no response, and you felt your stomach drop. You didn’t even notice as your teacher ended class and logged you off the meeting. Suna was at a party at 3 in the afternoon, drunk, and didn’t seem to remember you had plans. You swallowed, shoving your phone aside as you ground your teeth. Why was he so frustrating? 

You stood up, angry at yourself for caring, furious at Suna for making you feel this way, for being such a piece of shit. You knew what party he was probably at--Kiyoko had said she was going at some point--and suddenly you were moving before you could think about it. 

You dressed nice, but casual enough that it wasn’t out of place at a frat party. Sexy enough to make him want you though, of course. 

You didn’t give yourself time for nerves as you strode from your dorm and headed in the direction of the frat house, following a steady stream of people already going in that direction. You knew it was Friday, but how the fuck were so many people already getting ready to party when it was literally 3:30????

It wasn’t overly crowded in the house when you entered, but enough where it was confusing as you wandered through the crowd. You snatched two drinks from the counter, downing them as fast as possible as you searched for Suna in the crowd. You’d need to be at least tipsy before having this confrontation. 

You found him in the living room, sprawled out on the couch next to who you recognized to be Akaashi, Kuroo, Kita, and Iwaizumi--all who you knew through Kiyoko. There were a few others you didn’t know, and they were all clearly drunk out of their minds. 

As you entered the room, Suna met your eyes for a brief moment, but then they moved on without a reaction. He didn’t care at all that you had come to find him, or that he had never responded to your text. 

The drink in your hand trembled, and you walked out of the room without looking back. 

Instead of talking to Suna, you decided to get wasted. An hour after first coming to the party, you were deep in a game of beer pong and you had a pleasant warmth in your gut, the world a little hazy. You felt braver, more angry, and suddenly all you wanted to do was track down that yellow eyed idiot and slap him. 

“Where’s Suna?” You slurred, turning to look at your partner at beer pong. You knew him vaguely as one of the frat boys, Suna’s friend Atsumu. 

Atsumu grinned, raising his eyebrows as he stared down at you. “Suna? Why?” 

You weren’t drunk enough to tell him of your “friendship” with Suna, so you just shrugged. 

“He’s over there,” Atsumu pointed towards the kitchen, and you felt all the blood drain from your face as you followed his gaze. Sitting in a chair, his back to you, was Suna...and on his lap was a beautiful blonde girl with her hands in his hair as she kissed him fiercely. 

You must have made some sort of sound, because Atsuma looked back at you. “You good?” 

You forced yourself to nod. “I’m...going to get some fresh air.” 

“I’ll come,” he said, and you decided not to argue. 

The porch was thankfully empty, and you took a deep breath of the night breeze, trying to clear your head. Seeing Suna had sobered you up considerably, but your emotions were still a complete mess. All you could feel was a deep, unending hurt. 

“So...you and Suna huh?” You looked up at Atsumu, who had a strange smile on his face. 

“What are you--?” 

“It’s fine, you don’t have to keep it a secret.” He took a step towards you, and you raised your eyebrows. 

“We aren’t together.” 

“Really? Then you wouldn’t mind,” He gently took your chin, lifting your face. “If I did this?” 

“I--” 

“What the fuck.” 

All the breath wooshed out of you at the familiar voice, which was now laced with anger. Suna stood on the threshold of the porch, his hands in his pockets as he watched you and Atsumu. He was smiling, but it was icy with rage and...jealousy?

“Suna,” Atsumu grinned, releasing your face but not stepping back. “What do you want?” 

Suna jerked his chin in your direction. “How about you get away from her, and then we’ll talk?”

“Dude,” Atsumu rolled his eyes. “She just told me she was single. I don’t get what the problem is.” 

Suna’s face tightened. “If you don’t get the fuck out of here in the next three seconds, I swear I will break your--”

“Chill, ok!” Atsumu stepped back from you, given you a frustrated look before heading into the house. 

When the door clicked shut, Suna’s head slowly turned to face you, his eyes dark. “Single?” His voice was a low snarl. 

You swallowed, feeling your anger return full force. How dare he. “Yes!” You snapped, “Since you clearly don’t view this as any sort of relationship.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“So you can go off kissing other girls, but I can’t flirt with Atsumu?” 

“Looked like a bit more than flirting,” he said, teeth bared, before the other part of what you said caught up to him. “And how drunk are you? I wasn’t kissing shit!” 

“Are you seriously lying to my face right now? I saw you!” 

“I didn’t kiss anyone! Do you really think that little of me?”

You clenched your fists. “Atsumu said--” 

Suna was in your face in a second, towering over you as he backed you against the wall. “What did he say?” He growled. 

You were breathing hard, wanting to punch Suna, but… he didn’t seem like he was lying. The person you had thought was Suna did have their back to you, and you had been drunk. Had you made a mistake? Even if you had though, it didn’t excuse any of his other behavior. 

“Why didn’t you answer my texts?” You finally snapped, and Suna gave a cold smirk. 

“Trying to change the subject?” 

“No, you bastard! I’m trying to figure out why you seem to be so upset when all you do is treat me like your side bitch!” 

His mouth fell open. “What?”

You could feel your throat getting tight, but you did not want to cry. 

“You never respond to my texts, you’re always cancelling plans with me to do other things, you act like you don’t know me in public, and you only seem interesting in having sex with me.” By the end, your voice cracked with a sob, and you turned your face away. 

Suna’s face was pale, his eyes wide as he stared at your hurt expression. “I didn’t…” His breath shuddered out, and he ran his hand roughly through his hair. “That isn’t what I think of you at all.” 

“Then…” you still wouldn’t look at him, and he wanted to punch himself. 

“Look, I’m terrible at being in relationships. I always feel like they lose interest, so I break it off early on. I just...I don’t want that to happen with you.” 

“How does you being a piece of shit help?” 

“Y/n,” Suna gripped your face in his hands, his eyes desperate. “I want to be with you all the time. I think about you constantly, what you’re doing, how soon I can see you again. It drives me crazy how much I--” He stopped, clenching his jaw. “I don’t want to overwhelm you, or pressure you into anything. I thought that by keeping it relaxed, you would…” He trailed off again, and all you could feel was your heart racing. 

“Then why do you always act so...uninterested?” You finally whispered, voice trembling. 

“Do you mean around my friends?” 

After a moment, you nodded. It was only really around them that he gave you the cold shoulder. 

“They’re all assholes, and I don’t want you to get involved with them. The second they think I love you, they’ll try and see why. To hurt me through you.” 

Your mouth fell open and I suddenly couldn’t think past one word. “L-love-?”

Suna’s eyes went wide, and he tried to step back. “I…fuck...” 

You gripped his shirt, forcing him to stay where he was. “Do you?” 

He paused, his face so red you thought he might pass out. “Yes.” He cleared his throat and met your eyes. “I’m in love with you.” 

He shifted nervously, waiting for your reaction, and you couldn’t stop the smile that spread across your face. You stood on your tip toes and kissed him, arms going around his neck. He sighed into your mouth, grabbing your waist and tongue sliding along the seam of your lips, prompting you to open your mouth. After a long moment, you pulled away. 

“I love you,” You whispered to him, and Suna pressed himself against you, groaning into your mouth. 

“Really?” 

“Mhm.” You tugged away from him, meeting his eyes. “But will you try to respond to my texts? Not cancel plans? I need to know that you won’t just...ditch at a moment’s notice.” 

He nodded, expression seriously. “I’ll do anything to keep you here with me.” 

He kissed you on the nose, and you smiled.

“Ok.”

[satan-chillin]

Fair Game

(Chapter 1/2)

Summary: Sam and Dean encountered a completely different version of themselves. An AU of Episode S15E13 "Destiny's Child".

Pairings: Destiel & Samwena/Samwitch

Rating: T

Also available in Ao3

The heavy and ornate mahogany doors opened at exactly 12:30 in the evening and came in a couple dressed handsomely, their cheeks streaked with redness from one too many flutes of champagne from the evening celebration they came from.  

  “Remind me not to wear this outfit again,” the man muttered. He wasn’t one to normally voice his complaint, thinking he would sound whiny, but it seemed that the alcohol was loosening up his tongue. “I look ridiculous in purple. Like… Like Barney.”  

  The woman raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you seriously comparing yourself with a purple dinosaur?” Her sigh was fond. “You should have seen yourself in the mirror, dear.”

  “I mean, I did? While you were helping me with the pocket square.” He idly touched the handkerchief. “I don’t know. I thought it’ll be nice, but, er, I might have stood out too much earlier.”

  “And that’s a bad thing? To stand out on your own book signing event?” the woman snorted. “Honestly, you’re the only person I know who doesn’t want the spotlight even if he earned that right.”

  The man shrugged. “That's me.”

  “Aye. I know you too well.” The woman walked closer to him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I know as well that you deserve everyone’s attention the most, you humble giant.”

  With their difference in height, she has to tiptoe to peck his cheek, though the man eagerly met her halfway to give her an eskimo kiss in return, making her giggle a little uncharacteristically. 

  It only served to make her endearing to him.   

  “Thank you, though, for helping me pick,” he said earnestly. He let his hands stay on her slim waist, nuzzling the top of her head affectionately. “Should I get used to this from now on?”

  “Well,” she began, patting his chest teasingly. “If you haven’t realized it yet that I’m gradually improving your wardrobe, then you’re not paying attention, dear.” She smirked at his mild indignation and pulled herself from his hold. “Although, if I have to choose,” she made a show of running her eyes from his head to toe, “My favorite will always be getting you out of your clothes.”

  The man went red from root to tips, much to the woman’s utter amusement. 

  “Come join me upstairs if you’re willing to let me do so tonight,” she said, flicking her long red hair over an exposed milky shoulder. She walked up the stairs, sashaying her hips, knowing full well that the man's eyes followed her and the sway of her lacy black dress that seemingly molded itself with her curves. 

  As the man stood there dreamily and thinking what a damn lucky man he was to have someone so beautiful not only on the outside but also on the inside, someone who understood all his quirks and accepted him for what he was, he couldn't help but finger the small velvet box he was keeping inside his pocket. 

  Tonight, he promised himself. He would ask the big question tonight. 

  He could have done it during tonight's event, but then again he wasn't really into big gestures. He was in his element in moments where it was quiet with just the two of them sharing a blanket of comfortable silence. 

  Well, springing out the question right before he was about to get sex was not the romantic scene he was aiming for either, but… anymore prolonging and he would butcher this one out.

  He knew her and been together with her for three years now, and yet he found his hands shaking and sweaty in nervousness. She loved him back, of that he was sure of, but what if she didn't want the same? Would she think that they were moving too fast? He didn't want her to think that he would limit her freedom and independence once they were legally bound together. 

  The man was roused out from his thoughts when a black mass of fur rubbed itself against his leg. He picked up the cat and scratched it behind the ear. 

  "Do you think your mom will say yes, Merlin?" the man asked anxiously. 

  Merlin merely purred in response at the attention it was getting, closing his eyes in bliss. The man humored him for a bit if only to delay a rejection he could possibly get. 

  Oh, god, I'm being a coward, he thought. An indecisive coward. 

  Merlin perked his head up and stared at the man. The cat seemed to agree with him, he thought gloomily. 

  The cat jumped back to the ground, sniffing the air and looking around. The man watched Merlin's odd movements before he broke into a run to the kitchen and out in the back. Puzzled at Merlin's sudden bolting, the man followed the cat sedately to the backyard. 

  "Merlin?" he called when he heard a loud and almost incessant yowl from the cat. Must have scented a prey, he thought. 

  And upon walking out to follow, what greeted him was…

  A line. 

  The man stared, stupefied. Line was putting it mildly. It was glowing in an orange hue, for god's sake! It was floating, he supposed, like a tear of some sort in the middle of—he didn't know, space, maybe? 

  "What the hell?"

  Merlin continued to yowl on the ground, encircling the line. If the man didn't know better, he'd say that the cat was excited at the discovery, like it was just handed a new toy. Merlin's pupils were round, illuminated by the reflection of the orange light. He looked up in wonder and awe. 

  It was unnatural, indescribable by words—and the man has plenty of those—yet his hand itched to reach out, to touch and see how it would feel. 

  Curiosity killed the cat, they said, though in this case, its victim was the man instead. 

  "No, Samuel, don't!"

  The last thing he heard was Rowena's warning that came a little too late. 

  ***

Dean woke with a pounding headache. 

  He groaned, sitting up from the cold hard floor and…

  Where in the world was he? 

  Dean looked around his surroundings wildly and noticed that not far from him was someone lying face down and—God, the guy wasn’t dead, was he? 

  He was saved from the trouble of checking for a pulse when the man twitched and shifted on his back, groaning aloud and blinking awake before shooting up in a sitting position and finally noticing Dean. 

  “You too, huh?” Dean said. 

  “What?” the man asked. “What do you mean by that? Where are we?”

  “My guess is as good as yours, man. I just woke up a minute earlier.”

  The man made a move to stand, straightening on his feet. He was tall, and Dean himself was tall. Dean respectfully didn’t take note of the atrocious purple suit and the hideous man-bun that got messed up. 

Just when Dean was having the impression that the man was posh with the getup and all, he approached Dean and stooped down to lend him a hand. Dean thanked him, patting away the dirt from his coat. 

  He got a better look of the area once he was standing and woah, the number of vintage cars he could see everywhere should be enough to trigger some kind of familiarity; it didn’t. They seemed to be in some kind of a large, rich man’s garage. 

  “Battery’s dead,” he heard the man mutter while tapping on his phone. 

  Dean checked his. “Mine too.” 

  His watch was ticking at 7:42 PM, and the last time he checked it had been somewhere around 11:30 PM. Dean couldn’t believe he was out cold for almost a day. Whatever tranq they administer to him, it must have been enough to knock out at least a baby elephant.

  “Are we kidnapped or something?” he asked aloud, mostly to himself. 

  The man ran his hand through his hair, his loose man-bun gone. “It’s what I think as well but the lack of bindings and the presence of a kidnapper suggest otherwise.”

  “Or this is some kind of Saw shit,” Dean suggested. At the man’s puzzled expression, Dean waved his hand. “Nothing. It’s a bad joke.”

  “Are you alright, at least? No injuries on you?” the man asked. 

  “Headache from waking up that’s ebbing away, thankfully,” Dean answered honestly. “Other than that, nothing that I know or can feel on me. You?” 

  “Mild headache. Nothing more,” the man said. He closed his eyes briefly. “Um, I know this is a weird situation we find ourselves in, but if we’re going to work together, might as well get to know each other’s names.” He extended out his hand. “I’m Sam.”

  “Dean.” Dean shook the hand. “Dean Winchester-Novak,” he said fully before he could hold himself back. Force of habit. 

  Sam frowned. “Winchester?” He smiled amiably. “Are you the Winchester one? Because my name is Sam Winchester.”

  “Seriously? Yeah, I’m the Winchester. What are we, some kind of distant relatives?”

  “Maybe? I don’t know. Lots of Winchesters in the States alone, but, yeah, that’s some coincidence.” 

  “I don’t know, man. It’s interesting to find out. Sucks it’s this way, though,” Dean said regretfully. He spotted a door at the far end of the garage. “Think that one’s locked?”

  Sam followed his line of sight, deep in thought. “Only one way to find out.”

  Apprehensively, they approached the door. Dean kept his eye open for any traps because you’d never know; better be prepared, right? There weren't any visible cameras that he could see at a glance so there was that. 

    Dean twisted the knob, half-expecting an explosion or poison spikes or whatever this possibly rigged doorknob could release. 

  Nothing came. 

  Sam peered at the long hallway ahead and gave an all-clear sign. Tentatively, they exited the garage and traversed the corridor whilst frequently looking behind their backs. It was eerily quiet and a bit dark, and it felt like they were actually the one trespassing in someone else’s property. It was ridiculous. 

  There was another long hallway when they turned at the bend, though this time there was a light at the far end of it. Cautiously, they approached the room, a little emboldened since they haven't encountered anyone or anything so far, and noticed that it was a kitchen with a man standing there, his back turned as he prepared coffee. 

  When the man turned around, Dean couldn't keep down his relief. "Cas," he said with a wide grin and rushed to meet him in a tight embrace. 

  Cas was taken aback, a deep frown etched on his face and was about to ask when Dean had beaten him to it. 

  "Cas, what's going on? Where are we? I woke up in the garage of this place with Sam here. Oh, yeah, this is Sam. Sam Winchester—can you believe it?" The words rushed out of Dean. "Sam, this is Castiel Novak. Cas for short. He's my husband."

  "I'm your what?"

  Sam genially extended a hand in which Cas shook dumbly. "Nice to meet you, Cas."

  Cas glanced confusedly between Sam and Dean, studying them carefully as if trying to figure them both, particularly the one they were wearing. "I don't understand. Is this what you call a prank?"

  "What? What you mean pra—"

  "Hey, Cas, you done there?" came a male voice from outside. "We're just—"

  Sam and Dean turned to the source of the voice and found two men standing there. 

  Two men who have their faces. 

  What the hell. 

  ***

  “This is like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, isn’t it?” Cas heard the other Dean say. 

  “What part of the alternate universe you don’t understand?” Dean retorted. “You and the Sam here with you are our alternate versions.”

  “I think it’s like in the comic books,” Sam in the purple suit said. “For example, Peter Parker is the Spider-Man in his world but there’s another world where it’s his girlfriend Gwen Stacy who’s the Spider-Woman instead.” At the blank stare he got from the other three, he sheepishly added, “It’s a popular thing in our world. I used to be a fan when I was a kid—which isn’t the point, right.” He cleared his throat. “So. You said that you’re our counterparts, and you two are brothers?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Aren’t you?”

  “We just met today, actually. I think Dean here is from another separate world that is not from where I came from.”

  "Alright, stop. This is going to be confusing. I am Dean, and my brother here is Sam. Other Sam, we're calling you Sammy. Other me, you're Squirrel."

  "Why am I called Squirrel?"

  "I didn't make the rules."

  "You just did."

  "Dean," Sam interrupted with a sigh. "Sorry. Is Deanno fine by you?"

  "That's much better."

  "Yeah, you look like a 'Deanno'." Dean snickered. 

  Sam leveled his brother a stare.

  "What's the deal with you two, anyway?" Deanno asked, ignoring Dean. He gestured around himself. "Like, is it your family's thing to kidnap your counterparts?"

  "What? No. No one's kidnapping anyone," Sam defended. “Look, like you, we honestly don’t know how you got here either. What’s the last thing you remember before waking up?”

  “I was driving home from an event,” Deanno recalled. “I might have stopped on the road. It was, uh—I thought I saw something.” 

  “Saw what?”

  “Wait,” Sammy cut in. “That thing you saw… It didn’t happen to be a line, right? Like a tear in space or something.”

  Deanno snapped his fingers. “Yes! That was it. Big orange line thingy!”

  Sam and Dean shared a look. 

  “It was a rift,” Cas spoke for the first time. “You two encountered rifts in space, portals to another world which is… here.”

  “What happened on our side then? Did it remain open?” Sammy asked Cas. 

  “I checked the garage. There are no rifts open there. It’s safe to assume both are closed,” Cas answered. 

  “That’s good.” Sammy sighed in relief. “I mean, my girlfriend’s probably worried to death after she saw me touching the rift, but at least she didn’t follow and possibly landed somewhere.” 

  “And my husband’s bound to be doing the same by now after I left a voicemail I was on my way home and did not arrive.” Deanno rubbed his face. “Fuck.”

  “Woah, wait, husband?” Dean reacted. 

  Deanno gestured at Cas. “Yeah, him.” 

  Dean whirled incredulously at Cas. “Hey, Cas is nobody’s husband!” 

  “Well, not him exactly, but my husband’s name is Castiel Novak. I suppose he’s my Cas’s counterpart then.” Deanno addressed Cas. “But are you really not my Cas? ‘Cause I have to say, you got his character from that adorably confused frown and the trenchcoat.”

  Cas didn’t know what to make of the wink sent his way. 

  “Can you not—he’s not your Cas, alright? For one thing, he’s a freaking angel.”

  “So? My husband is too! He’s a saint!” 

  “I think Dean means to say that I am a literal angel,” Cas put in. “Which I am. I am an angel of the Lord.”

  “Oh,” Deanno said. “My Cas is a theology professor. He’s very much human except in bed—”

  “Dude, TMI!” 

  Hm. It seemed that his alternate self has quite a prowess in copulation, Cas mused. Interesting. 

  Sammy looked like he was embarrassed to be acquainted with the other Dean while Sam wasn’t sure whether to cringe or laugh. Cas believed it was the latter given that Sam was hiding his sniggering behind his fist. 

  “Okay, enough of that,” Sam said, thankfully. “I think it’s safe to assume that you two are our non-hunter versions.”

  “Is that what you do? Hunting?” Sammy asked. “Like professional deer-hunters?”

  “Uh, no. Dean and I are hunters of the supernatural. This place is more or less our home and headquarters.” 

  “You hunt supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves?”

  Sam nodded. He was thoughtful for a second. “You don’t… Have you ever encountered any supernatural in your world?”

  “No,” Sammy said, eyes wide in awe. “Your job—I thought that’s only something I’ll read in books or watch in films. It sounds exciting!” 

  “It’s dangerous,” Sam told him. “We also lost our family and some friends in our line of work.”

  “Oh.” Sammy’s face fell. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound insensitive. I’m sorry for your loss.” 

  “Thank you. It’s already quite some time now. Doesn’t mean it’s no longer painful though,” Sam said, smiling tightly. A somber mood fell on them. “How about you? Lawyer?”

  “Ah, no. I thought about continuing to law before and realized that if I did, I would have plenty of lives on my hands in that line of career. I didn’t think I could handle that kind of responsibility,” Sammy said wryly. “I took creative writing instead, and now I’m a book writer with a few books under my belt.” He chuckled shyly.

  “It’s not something I saw myself as, but I’m happy for you,” Sam said genuinely. 

  “What about you, Deanno, what do you do?” Dean asked.

  “I own a small business,” Deannos said vaguely. “I used to be a car mechanic.” 

  “What kind of business?”

  “The car manufacturing kind.”

  “That’s far from a small business,” Dean deadpanned. “We get it, you two are our rich selves. We can handle the bragging.” 

  “Are you kidding me?” Deanno snorted.  “Okay, so maybe we pride ourselves in being successful, but we work hard to get to it. The same way you apparently do as well, except you two put your lives on high risk every single time. Now, I don’t know how much hunters get paid for, but I think your jobs are nothing on us.” 

  Sam fell silent while Dean looked startled before catching himself and settling for appearing chastised instead. 

  “I guess you’re not so bad,” Dean muttered. He knocked on the table. “So what now?”

  “You got beer?” Deanno asked. 

  “We do.” 

  Cas watched the four of them file back to the kitchen, smiling a little as he followed them sedately. 

  The tension was finally diffused. Now, on to the solution to get the two home. 

***

Sammy almost forgot the small box in his pocket. 

  He pulled it out and opened it. The ring remained safely settled within. He pocketed it with a sigh. Sam and Dean and Cas were good people—like men from fiction but good people nonetheless. Sammy’s imaginative brain that thrived on fantasies for future story plots couldn’t help but drink in all the knowledge Sam shared with him about this world. It was amazing, the elements of it all, from the creatures that existed aside from the humans and to the magic and beings that governed this universe. 

  Okay, so God being their present enemy was concerning, but still. 

  He would have thought that he was dreaming, but a pinch on his arm said otherwise. It occurred to Sammy he was probably the first man to discover the truth of the theory on Multiverse. He was exactly living a comic book or a fictional storyline right now. It was a paradise for a writer like him!

  And yet… And yet he just wanted to go home to Merlin and to Rowena. 

  “Oh, wow,” Sam suddenly said. Sammy noticed him looking at his pocket. 

  “It’s, um... I was actually planning to ask the big question before I arrived here,” Sammy told him. He sat comfortably in his borrowed clothes (the choices were flannels of varying colors, not that he minded) across Sam who poured two cups of coffee, one for each of them. “Thank you. I’m not really a heavy drinker. I’m a lightweight.”

  “Somehow, I can see that,” Sam said with a grin. “I drink moderately unlike Dean. He’s not hearing me whenever I say we’re not getting any younger.” 

  Sammy chuckled. He was an only child himself, but he thought that if he had an older brother he would either be like Deanno or Dean. There would be no in-between.  

  “How long have you been together?” Sam asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Three years,” Sammy said fondly. “We’re already living together and have a cat.” He glanced down on his drink. "I miss them, but to be honest, I don't know how to pop the question when I come back."

  "I don't think there's a formula on how," Sam offered sympathetically. "It's not easy, but if you already made up your mind to ask, then it should come to you naturally."

  "Thank you," Sammy replied sincerely. "If my Dad is still around, I would've asked him for advice. Bobby was helpful with this kind of thing." 

  Sam perked up in surprise. "Your Dad is Bobby Singer?" 

  "Pretty much. My real Dad, John, died of a heart attack when I was six months old. Bobby was a family friend and raised me with his wife, Karen, and my mother, Mary. It sounded weird but they made it work between themselves," Sammy told him. “Bobby was the one who got me into books, mostly sci-fi, fantasy, and mythology. That might have influenced me into being a writer as well.”

  “Bobby, huh? We had a Bobby Singer too, and like yours, he was our surrogate dad. He died eight years ago, and John five years before him,” Sam shared. “Mom’s case was a bit complicated. She died when I was six months old and got resurrected four years ago and died again last year.” Sam’s mouth twitched into a smile. “I told you, it’s complicated.” 

  “I shouldn’t be surprised by now,” Sammy murmured. “I know I’m only saying this because I don’t live here, but the writer side of me actually finds this world fascinating already based on what you told me so far. It’s like there’s an itch in me to explore this world.” 

  “I understand,” Sam said. “It’s not the safest place, but I love it. This is our world, and it has seen a lot of close calls in the last few years, but this is home, you know? Dean and I don’t see ourselves wanting to replace it with a better one, a more normal one. It’s funny because I used to think it hated us with everything life had thrown us so far. Then you find out that it’s not the world or life, but it’s God himself.” 

  Sammy nodded solemnly. “And I can’t believe I’m saying this but I don’t doubt that you’ll give God hell.” Sam's expression lightened. “I���m lucky to lead a different life because if I’m in your shoes, I don’t think I can have the same lifestyle as you do. Frankly, the brave one between my girlfriend and me is her. She’s more decisive and confident, and she’s the kind of independent woman who learns and moves on easily from her mistakes. It’s the main reason why I’m uncertain to ask her to marry me. What if she doesn’t want to be tied down? Or, say that it’s fine by her, but is it okay if it’s with me? I’m not like her or you, Sam. I honestly still think she could have done better.”

  “But you’ll never know if you don’t ask her,” Sam reasoned. “You can’t let your insecurity eat you from within. It sounds to me that you two are fine in terms of communication. Maybe you can open this up to her as well.”

  Sam, who was fully aware that he couldn’t hold a decent length of relationship with a woman without his life as a hunter hindering it, couldn’t believe that he was hearing himself giving advice in romance. To another version of himself even. Strange times. 

  “Is it Jessica?” Sam decided to ask; he was curious, sue him. “It’s ages ago since I’ve been in a committed relationship myself, but Jessica is the last woman I saw myself having a future with.”

  Sammy frowned. “It’s not her, though I recall knowing a Jessica back in college.” He reached for his wallet to show a picture of Rowena. “Actually, her name is—”

  The bunker’s siren suddenly blared, and the kitchen was illuminated by the warning red lights that darkened the room and lit the hallways. 

  “What’s going on?” Sammy asked when he stood abruptly with Sam. 

  “It’s the bunker’s alarm,” Sam told him, pulling out a gun from his waist. “Stay close to me. I think we got an intruder.”    

***

Deanno whistled at the impala. “This is your ride? Sweet.”

  “That’s my Baby.” Dean stood straighter in pride. “Been taking care of her for as long as I remember, even before Dad passed her down to me.”

  “Inherited cars are often the most taken care of and loved,” Deanno said factually. “Well, I’ll be damned. I don’t think I’ve seen this kind of model back home. I should propose this.” 

  “What kind do you drive then?”

  “A ‘78 Lincoln,” Deanno said, much to Dean’s utter distaste. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. My husband chose it.”

  “That’s equivalent to Cas’s pimpmobile.”

  Deanno laughed. “Pimpmobile is the endearment we have for it, alright. What can I say? It’s reliable. And at least it ain’t a Fiat.”

  Dean was inclined to agree with the last one. He wouldn’t be caught with a ten-foot pole with that vehicle. 

  “Everything in here belongs to you, your brother, and Cas then?” Deanno gestured at the other cars. 

  “They’re all here when we inherited the place,” Dean told him. “We use them as spares.” 

  “And you call me rich.”

  “You’re the one with a large business.”

  “We expanded just recently,” Deanno allowed. “But we’re not there with the big players yet.”  

  Dean grunted. Business wasn’t a forte of his, though that was largely because he never bothered to find out. Who knows? 

  Deanno was fine, Dean supposed; a little uncharacteristic for Dean to consider him another self but then again their circumstances were vastly different too. 

  On their way back inside, Deanno told him that he was raised by Mary after John died in a car accident. Mary was a handy woman who learned the rudimentary of car mechanics after John passed and left the startup company he had invested in. It had been a rocky start for both the family and the business, but with some help from friends like Bobby and his wife, Jody, they managed to make it into a stable business. 

  Deanno was put in college, initially for a degree in mechanical engineering until he had thought long and hard and went for business administration with a major in marketing instead. He said that it was the best decision he made since that was also how he met Cas after a series of girlfriends and random hookups.

  “Right,” Dean said flatly. “Your husband.”

  “I don’t get why it’s such a big deal to you, Dean,” Deanno said seriously. “This is not homophobia, is it?”

  “Of course not,” Dean replied shortly. No, it wasn’t that at all. 

  “Then what is it?” 

  He was spared the chance to answer when Jack walked in the war room, staring between the two Deans that he was seeing. Cas was close behind him, nodding at them. 

  “Hello,” Jack greeted them indifferently. 

  “I explained to Jack the situation,” Cas said. “He wanted to help but Billie specifically told him not to use his powers.” 

  “But we can still look for an alternative to bring you and the other Sam to your respective worlds,” Jack said. “Although it might take some time.”

  “Not like we have a choice, right?” Deanno smiled wryly. “Don’t sweat yourself, kid.”

  “I’ll be talking to Billie for the next step,” Jack told them, excusing himself. “Later.”

  “I’ll come with Jack,” Cas said. “If you need me, simply knock on Jack’s door.” 

  "Sure, Cas," Deanno replied on behalf of Dean. He mock-saluted, grinning from ear to ear as he watched Jack and Cas go. "We'll be here too if you need anything," he hollered after them. 

  "Can you stop doing that?"

  "Doing what?" Deanno asked innocently. 

  "That." At Deanno's straight face and the raised eyebrow, Dean elaborated, "The flirting."

  Deanno snorted. "C'mon. All in good fun."

  "You have a husband."

  "And I'm flirting with someone who's technically him but an actual angel." Deanno paused to consider for a moment. "Wait. Is that why?" A smirk formed on his lips. "You're jealous."

  "I most certainly am not," Dean said a little too quickly. 

  "See, that's the thing. You won't be doing that if you already bagged him," Deanno pointed out pityingly. 

  "Alright. That's it. No more of this topic."

  "Eh. Fine by me," Deanno allowed easily. "So who's Jack?"

  "It's a long story."

  "You can summarize," he suggested. 

  Dean sighed tersely. He should get this out of the way. "He's Lucifer's son biologically. Cas is the Dad he recognizes," he said gruffly. "He's half-human and half-archangel, and he doesn't have a soul right now."

  "Oh."

  "Yep. That's our lives."

  "Yeah. Sorry man, I won't be touching that subject too much," Deanno muttered. "I just thought the kid is yours and Cas's."

  "Cas's, not mine," Dean reminded him tersely. 

  "No, like, Jack was from both you and him."

  "What?" Dean exclaimed once he understood what Deanno was implying. "Where in the world are you getting these ideas?"

  "Hey, now. You're the one who said he's an angel."

  Dean wanted to bleach his mind when it began forming a certain image. "Jesus Christ. Cas is a guy! And he's wearing a male vessel!"

  "How about angel magic?"

  "Angel mag—" At this point, Dean believed that Deanno was sent to make his day even more difficult. "Okay. If that is even friggin’ possible, Cas and I are not together that way.”

  “Why not, Dean?”

  “He’s my best friend.”

  “Weak argument. My Cas is also my best friend. What’s your better excuse?”

  “How about: this is a different world, with me living a different life with different circumstances,” Dean said a matter-of-factly. “I am not you, Deanno. I am not some kind of business man with a college degree and a peaceful married life where the most exciting thing that happened to him is accidentally jumping in a portal to another world.”

  A small empathetic smile was the last thing Dean expected to get. “And doesn’t that tell you something that despite the completely different lives we have, the one thing we have in common is Cas?”

  Deanno was right, Dean was aware, and because Deanno was right and his statement was forcing Dean to reexamine things that he didn’t want to in the middle of their crisis right now, Dean was irritated and slowly but surely coming close to being mad. 

  Fortunately for Dean, he was, once again, saved by the bell. Literally. Or saved by the bunker’s alarm, to be exact. 

  Red lights fell down in the war room in an instant, alerting both of them. Amidst the siren, there were scuffling noises against metal. 

  “Dean, what’s that?” Deanno asked cautiously. Dean wasn’t sure if he was asking about the alarm or the sound along with it.  

  “Shit. Intruder.” Dean reloaded his pistol. He reached for another one and tossed it to Deanno. “Take that. We’re gonna need it.” He gestured for Deanno to stay close. 

  “I hope not,” he heard Deanno whisper. 

“And I hope that we won’t need anything stronger than a gun.” 

  Dean crept nearby the stairs leading up to the entrance. From his position, he could see no sign of forced entry. He peered upstairs for any movement. Nothing. 

  Dean was on an even higher alert, the alarm ringing incessantly in his ears. “Let’s go get the others. Something’s wro—”

  A huge black mass collided against Dean, sending him skidding across the floor and crashing him against a marble pillar. 

  “Dean!” 

  Deanno fired three shots at the… thing that tackled Dean down. It whirled at him, its attention was on him in an instant, growling and ready to pounce.  

  It was a fucking black panther. 

  “Take him down, Merlin,” commanded a voice.

  Deanno stood frozen at the huge animal lunging towards him. Its weight slammed him down on the floor where his head smacked loudly he swore he saw dark spots on his vision. Deanno fought back against the unconsciousness and was met face-to-face with sharp rows of teeth glistening with saliva and predatory golden eyes that considered Deanno as the prey.

  “G-Good kitty,” Deanno attempted. The panther snarled, its breath hot on his face. He decided to shut up instead. 

  “Where is he?” came above the same voice from before. 

  Under the red light, Deanno realized that it was a woman in a black dress. Purple lights danced around her hands, poised to attack. 

  “I won’t ask again, where is Sam Winchester?” said the woman furiously. 

  “Sam?” Deanno clarified. “You know Sam?”

  A loud piercing sound rang within the bunker, so deafening that it broke the lightbulbs and the nearby glasses. It was enough to bring the woman on her knees before she snapped her head upwards, her ears bleeding, and sent a spike of purple lightning to someone above. 

  Deanno covered his head when plasters and debris fell on him. To his amazement, though, nothing hit him and the weight on his chest lessened. 

  “Don’t touch him,” warned a different voice, a much familiar one.  

  Deanno blinked. “Cas?”

  “Dean.” Cas—his Cas, Deanno was a hundred percent sure—crouched down to check on him. “Are you alright?”

  “I am, but we’ll talk later—look out!”

  The warning seemed to be unnecessary when the purple lightning from the woman hit Cas on his back and he didn’t flinch one bit. 

  “What are you?” the woman hissed. The black panther retreated to her side, snarling ferociously at them. 

  Cas’s answer was a thin, pointed blade that appeared on his hand in a blink. A flicker of recognition flashed on the woman’s face. 

  “Impossible,” she growled. 

  “If that’s what you think,” Cas shot back evenly. 

  There was a large shadow that loomed above them, forming into the shape of a pair of huge wings that encompassed the vicinity. 

  “Stop!” 

  Jack, the kid from earlier, emerged from another part of the room with eyes lit brightly in gold. Cas turned to him with wariness but more so his fascination with the newcomer and the realization as to what Jack was.

  There were hurried footsteps that followed, and Deanno didn’t have to look to know who arrived. With the present amount of people, it was bound to be a shitfest. 

  “Rowena?!”

  The woman abruptly stopped, eyes darting past Cas and to the two men who came in. “Sam?” she whispered before confusedly glancing between the two Sam Winchesters. “Who is this fake?” she demanded. 

  The fighting had thankfully stopped, but another set of explanations was clearly needed. Again.

  Deanno groaned from the ground. He wished he was as lucky as Dean to be unconscious for all of these.

[bltngames]

Review: Lloyd the Monkey 2

Back before TSSZ News imploded, I would often do write-ups for many of the games at the Sonic Amateur Games Expo (SAGE). SAGE is an annual online expo that I started all the way back in September of 2000. I personally ran SAGE for over a year, and remained deeply hands on for at least another two years as it continued to grow. The main focus of SAGE was primarily to showcase fangames, in particular Sonic fangames, but the event never limited itself to any one type of game. It's never been uncommon to see original games appear in the lineup -- especially now, given the modern indie scene. 

One such original game was Lloyd the Monkey, a bit of a strange game, written in Javascript of all things and run through a webpage. That by itself was notable enough to stand out from most of the games at SAGE, but Lloyd was also a completely original product created by someone who possibly seemed to be young and new to game development. Making games is no easy feat, especially when they’re written in Javascript and you’re doing tons of original artwork yourself. Taken as that whole, the game impressed me, even if it was more than a little rough around the edges.

Now we have Lloyd the Monkey 2, written in Unity. The developer, Noah Meyer, sent me a Steam key in order to review the game. Up top, I just want to say how I think it’s kind of brave to go all the way in putting the game on Steam and everything. It felt like just a few years ago, newer indie developers sort of had to work up to releasing their game on Steam, usually getting a few releases under their belt first. People view games differently when they’re asked to pay for them, and critics may not be so willing to let circumstances influence their review. It can be a harsh world out there for a beginner.

Lloyd 2 is a much bigger, more ambitious game than the first. Whereas the original Lloyd didn’t even have sound effects, Lloyd 2 introduces voiced cutscenes, some of which are full-on animated cinematics. Quality is about what you would expect -- I would assume the developer sought out friends and acquaintances to voice characters in Lloyd 2, leading to wildly varying audio quality due to differences in recording hardware. Lloyd himself sounds fine, but some of the other characters are a bit quiet, while others have clear background noise. Nothing I heard was unlistenable, however. 

The story is also a little hard to follow. Not much is done to refresh our memories as to who anyone is or what’s going on, we’re just kind of thrown into the middle of things and turned loose. On one hand, it’s nice that the story doesn’t slow the pace of the gameplay down too much. On the other, you’re given a map screen with different objectives to clear but there’s very little context as to what you’re doing or why. At one point I made my way to the end of a Power Plant level only to confront what appeared to be an evil monkey. Despite a whole cutscene involving a conversation between four or five different people, this evil monkey never seemed to say a single word. He just stood there in total silence with a sinister smile. Then I killed him.

I suppose maybe I missed something, however. With greater ambitions comes a number of unfortunate bugs in Lloyd 2, one of which happened not long after our monkey and his crew landed on planet Grecia. I entered what appeared to be a castle to talk to the Queen, but I think the game expected me to take a lower route, where I was apparently meant to overhear the Queen making secret preparations before my arrival. Instead, I took the direct route straight to her chambers, and triggered the cutscene with Lloyd standing in front of her while ominous music played, even though the camera was still clearly focused on the next floor down. I apparently still had some amount of control, because midway through her dialog I touched a teleporter that sent me to the game’s map screen before she was done talking. If that cutscene was meant to give context to what I was doing, I didn’t get a chance to see it.

That was one of the more harmless bugs in my time spent playing Lloyd 2. Harder to ignore was the fact that, within the first 30 seconds of getting control, I soft locked the game. Lloyd 2 opens with a short prologue section where you play as a man with black hair. If you decide to ignore the obvious and go left instead of right, you quickly run out of solid level tiles and begin falling indefinitely. Later areas feature invisible walls presumably to prevent this exact scenario, but for whatever reason they weren’t implemented in the prologue. 

For the most part, Lloyd 2 seems to be a co-op game. Many levels see Lloyd teamed up with an alien princess named Lura, with gameplay vaguely reminiscent of Mega Man X crossed with the tag mechanic from Sonic Mania’s Encore Mode. At the touch of a button, you can switch between the Swordsman Lloyd and the more projectile-based Lura… assuming your partner is still alive, I guess. While playing alone, your partner is controlled by artificial intelligence, but it’s incredibly basic and prone to accidentally committing suicide. That wouldn’t be such a big deal (considering Tails in Sonic 2 never acted in self-preservation either), but once your partner dies, they stay dead. Your only option to bring them back is to either restart the stage or hope another cutscene triggers, since they’ll magically spring back to life in order to say their dialog (though, again, usually only seconds before they fall back into the next death pit). 

This might not be much of a problem, depending on your viewpoint. There’s not much incentive to switch between Lloyd and Lura, so once you pick whoever you think works the best, chances are, you’ll just stick with them. You do unlock special team-up attacks after beating each boss, but this just reinforces the idea that Lloyd the Monkey 2 is meant to be experienced with another person holding a second controller, as most of the team-up attacks require both characters to do something specific that the single player artificial intelligence usually can’t interpret. Regardless, the team-up attacks never seem strictly necessary to progress, so they can be safely ignored if you’re playing solo.

I understand this is a pretty negative review I’ve written here. Lloyd the Monkey 2 aims high and tries to the best of its ability to get there. I assume it was a struggle to get even this far. Making games is hard work, and like any skill, takes practice to get good at. Just because this is Lloyd the Monkey 2 doesn’t mean Noah Meyer, its developer, is automatically an expert. I'm sure he's doing his best, and, quality aside, this game has a lot of heart put into it. This isn’t something cheap, quick, or lazy. It’s really, genuinely trying, and that matters. 

I’ve said a few times here and there that I see pieces of myself in the releases of Lloyd the Monkey, and I still see them here. I remember, for an early SAGE event, I was working on a fangame project of mine called The Fated Hour. I was probably already a year or two or maybe even three deep in the game by now, and after a lot of hyping up the community, this was their first chance to play the game. I spent months and months coding this iteration of my engine, and by my standards back then, it seemed like bleeding edge technology. I felt like I was going to blow everyone's minds. 

It was a mess. Few were impressed. Even worse, the game straight up didn’t even run correctly for some people. What followed was multiple patches, and even rebuilding some entire areas from scratch. My ambitions got the better of me and I unintentionally cut corners -- not because I was trying to cheap out on doing proper development, but just because I simply didn’t know any better. I may have done the best I knew how to do, but I was running faster than my body could keep up with and I stumbled.

When I see things like the missing invisible walls in the prologue, or how easily partner characters commit suicide by accident, I think back to that demo for The Fated Hour, and how I've been in this exact place myself. There’s even a side quest in Lloyd 2 where you have to track a floating girl as she drifts through a level -- there was a nearly identical set piece in The Fated Hour, where you were chasing a robot. It’s a very strange feeling to see something like that and think, “I’ve been here before.” Like looking through a window at a younger version of yourself.

It’s true that I stumbled, but I didn’t let that stop me. I learned by doing. I kept going. Three years later, a game of mine was featured on TV, leading to more than a million downloads. The mistakes of past projects did not weigh me down and I soldiered onwards, newfound knowledge in hand. 

So where does that leave us with Lloyd the Monkey 2, then. Well, it's not exactly a game to compete with Super Mario Odyssey, but given the circumstances in which it was created, I don't think that's necessarily the point. As a learning experience clearly made for the fun of its own creation, I think it's a success. And who knows what awaits in the years to come?

[kingofthewilderwest]

Some Incomplete Ramblings on “Liza / Riza Hawkeye”

One thing I’ve always found fascinating about FMA character / location names is that it’s like a game of telephone from European languages --> Japanese --> (in my case) English. As is such, with telephone, information has the potential to get distorted.

I own lots of FMA guidebooks in English and Japanese, and frequently entertain myself with the name variations. Liore / Leole / Reole / etc. is one of the most entertaining spelling conundrums, official sources constantly varying the name, and never honing in on a consensus over the many years’ passings. But while I could yab on about Martel and Ling and Dolcetto and Kimblee and many other names, I’m here to smile about Riza Hawkeye.

Official sources in English and Japanese almost exclusively spell her name as “Riza Hawkeye.” Over and over, it’s Riza Hawkeye. Compared to many characters, her name’s very consistent. But in some of the earliest materials from the franchise, she’s sometimes labeled as “Liza Hawkeye.” For instance, there’s an early Bandai figure with that name - a figure that would have been developed (and its label created) through Japan.

The English version of the Fullmetal Alchemist Trading Card game sometimes calls her Liza, too. Because I’m a linguist who (as my career probably implies) loves Little Language Things... I had to nab a few FMA trading cards with that variant name! I don’t collect cards, but these were irresistible! These cards came in my mail yesterday!!! Tadaaaa!

It’s hard to see in the photograph, but these cards are copyright 2005. I’ve tried to find more information on when in 2005 they were printed (no success yet), but the date 2005 is interesting. This isn’t long after the first anime’s English dub began premiering in the USA starting November 2004. 

These cards may also have preceded the first official English manga  publications. The manga received two official printings in English, one by Viz Media in the USA and one by Chuang Yi in Singapore. Viz Media published Vol. 1′s First Edition in May 2005; Chuang Yi was November 2005. I doubt there’d be any coordination between different companies in different parts of the world creating cards and manga and anime. Different name interpretations were far more likely to happen with FMA being turned into English for the first times. There was no established precedent for how-to-spell-what. As everyone in 2005 was working through their stuff independently or semi-independently, they were giving our girl a different first name.

Now, Riza’s name had been published in the Roman alphabet as “Riza Hawkeye” earlier than when my cards came out. The Japanese company Bandai (that gave us the Liza Hawkeye figure)... also gave us a 2003 card calling her “Riza Hawkeye.” That is, within the same company within a short amount of time, they printed two different spellings of a character’s name. There’s another card set, from 2004, that lists her as “Riza Hawkeye” as well.

After FMA’s nascent years, Hawkeye’s Roman-spelled name quickly became solidified as “Riza.” Almost all “Liza” materials I’ve seen are 2005 or earlier. The latest material I’ve seen listed as “Liza” is a card with a copyright of 2007. 

The English release of the two most important FMA franchise materials - the manga and the anime - would have solidified Hawkeye’s first name as “Riza.” On September 17, 2005, Riza’s full name was stated on screen for the first time in the English airdate... as “First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye.” This was in Ep. 27 “Teacher.”

Viz Media worked alongside all this. Viz Media published both the English anime book materials (like Fullmetal Alchemist Anime Profiles, printed in English in 2006) and the manga itself. I believe the first time Riza’s first name was given in the manga was Chapter 24, when Riza introduced herself to Winry. Viz Media printed Vol. 6 (which contains Ch. 24) in February 2006. By this point, for English-speaking fans (especially in the Western Hemisphere), all major FMA materials would have called her “Riza.”

I imagine that by then, that now-iconic name would have been foolish to change. One of the most popular characters was branded firmly as “Riza” by the start of 2006. Couldn’t change that now. Unlike the earliest merchandise, now everything about Riza - both English and Japanese materials - called her Riza. All my Japanese guidebooks that never got English translations call her “Riza.” (And these are guidebooks that continue to have Roman alphabet spelling variations between other characters - even when all published in the same year). None variation left beef for Riza. I want to buy the Perfect Guidebooks, which are older than all the guidebooks I currently own, and see what they say for her name... but for now... everything I’m holding that’s in Japanese is post-2006 and all say “Riza” when they print her name in Roman letters.

I don’t know what Arakawa intended, especially as the earliest Japanese merchandise gives us both Riza and Liza. If the earliest merchandise all said one name, we could have guessed that Arakawa gave the approval. But that’s not the case. The names vary in early Japanese Bandai merch. Nor can we trust major English translated sources as hints of Arakawa’s intentions. It doesn’t seem like they asked Arakawa for explanation on everyone’s intended names. Viz doesn’t provide a good representation on what Arakawa wanted, given as they messed up majorly on other names and are only correcting them NOW, in 2018 and 2019, in their Fullmetal Edition of the manga (in the trade paperbacks, they called Kyle Halling “Khayal,” spelled Kimblee’s name two different ways, wrote “Isvharlan” in Vol. 2, gave the country’s name as “Ishbal” above drawings from the manga that wrote “Ishval,” misinterpreted Xerxes as “Cselkcess,” and lots of other fun oddities...).

And while some names get written in English in the manga artwork proper, I’ve only seen Hawkeye’s last name.

I know far from everything. There’s still lots I have to check. Don’t take my word as law.

THAT SAID. 

From the information I know... I find it fascinating it’s VERY possible Arakawa’s initial inspiration was “Liza Hawkeye.” NOT Riza. There’s in fact good linguistic reason to suppose this.

For people who aren’t familiar with Japanese typography / orthography, the Japanese writing system is composed of kanji and kana. Kanji are characters with semantic complexity to them; the kanji are usually included in a word for meaning-related reasons, but the pronunciation of the kanji can vary depending upon whether the word it contextually represents is a native Japanese word, a Chinese loan word, the first or second kanji in a compound, etc. Kana, unlike kanji, are basically read the same way every time. Instead of being symbols depicting semantic content, kana depict pronunciation content. Kana are written in a syllabary system. A syllabary is like an alphabet except that every symbol represents a syllable you pronounce (or, in Japanese, a mora). Japanese kana are two sets of syllabaries, the hiragana and katakana. Katakana is used to spell recently adopted loan words.

Because FMA characters’ names are (almost) all taken from European names, their names are written in katakana. But because Japanese is a different language than European languages, it has different sounds in it. This means that, when European loan words get imported into Japanese, pronunciation changes happen. The pronunciations allowed in European languages are altered into acceptable sound structures Japanese allows - its phonetics and phonology and phonotactics.

Now, Arakawa doesn’t always spell European words “typically” for katakana. Japanese has over the last few decades adopted many English loanwords. For instance, there’s a loan word for “mustang,” which is 「 ムスタング 」. Roughly, ム = mu, ス = su, タ = ta, ン = n, and  グ = gu. So, the Japanese word for “mustang” is musutangu. Arakawa actually gives Colonel Mustang a different spelling than that - he’s masutangu 「 マスタング 」.

Perhaps this was because Arakawa saw the name “Mustang” in Roman letters and did her own import into kana. In the process of her changing “Mustang” from Roman letters to katakana, she might have chosen “ma” instead of “mu”. Perhaps this was because she thought this would make his name sound cooler, look unique, or make her metaphoric name more subtle. Or, perhaps this arose in foresight with the eventual “Madame Christmas” wordplay (“Christmas” in Japanese is 「 クリスマス」kurisumasu, which makes her full name kurisu masutangu - get how that works perfectly?). Whatever the reason(s), we know that Arakawa’s katakana spelling of imported European words isn’t always what Japanese’s loan word katakana spelling officially does.

Riza’s name in the Japanese could be another instance of this.

To explain what I mean, let’s take a look at my graphic:

Each line is a name in Roman letters (acceptable in English) with its corresponding Japanese spelling. In parentheses is a rough pronunciation of how that katakana’s pronounced.

First: There are indications that Riza’s full given name is Elizabeth. Some fans say it’s just her code name, akin to how “Jaqueline” is Havoc’s code name. It’s true we hear Roy call her “Elizabeth” in that code name setting. However, it’s also interesting that he calls her “Elizabeth” when he’s visiting Madame Christmas. In his home environment, where he’s dropping his walls and being far more honest and open to family, where he’s even blabbing about being romantically interested in Hawkeye OUT LOUD, he calls her “Elizabeth.” You could argue that it might be another instance of intentional code naming to protect her identity, but it’s still very interesting that this is a second, different, emotionally open, trusting context in which Roy names her “Elizabeth.”

Linguistically, her name seems derived from “Elizabeth,” too. Again: while spellings and pronunciations are slightly altered when Arakawa imports European names into Japanese, she’s still taking those names from a European source. But I don’t know of a common Western European name that’s essentially Riza. Go to baby names websites. You don’t get a long list of female names that are Riza, especially not in Western Europe, where Arakawa took most names. Where’d she get this?

A shortening of “Elizabeth” is likely.

Look at Line #1 of my graphic. I have the word “Elizabeth” in Roman letters alongside the katakana spelling of “Elizabeth.” 

That first line is how “Elizabeth” is usually spelled in Japanese writing. It’s 「エリザベス」. エ = e, リ = ri, ザ = za, ベ = be, and ス = su. So the Japanese version of “Elizabeth” is more or less erizabesu. Note that the same symbol 「リ」is used for both r+i and l+i. This could be a long linguistics explanation in itself, but more or less: Japanese doesn’t have separate “r” and “l” sounds. They have one sound that’s like an “r.” But, it has pronunciation variation based upon dialect, and, within a single dialect, where said “r” is placed in relation to other sounds surrounding it. The “r” can make lots of sounds (allophones), including what English speakers would call an “l.” So when imported words from European languages which have separate r and l sounds (phonemes), these r’s and l’s get reduced in Japanese into one thing, interpreted as that single “r” sound their language has.

Now, let’s go to Line #2. A common nickname for “Elizabeth” is “Liza.” Notice the spelling. Elizabeth contains the actual, unaltered spelling of Liza. However, pronunciation changes occur. The “i” in “Elizabeth” is a different sound than the “i” in “Liza.” The spelling’s the same between full name and nickname; the first vowel just sounds different.

The Japanese katakana spelling of “Liza” is based upon the pronunciation. NOT the spelling! See my visual. The way “Liza” is spelled in Japanese is 「ライザ」- that is, raiza. ラ = ra, イ = i, and ザ = za. As a result, the name “Elizabeth” in katakana does not contain the unaltered spelling of “Liza” inside it.

Note, however, that the name **RIZA** is DIRECTLY spelled inside the Japanese spelling of “Elizabeth.” 「エリザベス」 contains 「リザ」. That is, erizabesu can be truncated to riza without any spelling changes!

That’s what we see in Line #3. Note that, in red, I have highlighted where the spellings stay the same within full name and nickname.

Ergo, “Riza” is directly derived from “Elizabeth” in the katakana spelling of “Elizabeth.” That’s indirect indication that, when Arakawa was giving Riza her name, she was looking at “Elizabeth.”

In which case, “Liza” WOULD be a correct reading for Hawkeye’s first name.

Similar to the Chris Mustang thing I mentioned, making a spelling change for an “Elizabeth” nickname makes sense in Japanese. Japanese readers might not be familiar that “Liza” is a nickname for “Elizabeth.” The fact that raiza for “Liza” is spelled very different in Japanese kana compared to erizabesu for “Elizabeth” ...would make it hard to connect the dots between the two names. But giving the spelling riza makes the connection easier-to-see: for them, in katakana, they can see riza spelled inside erizabesu. Just like, in English, we can see “Liza” directly inside “Elizabeth.”

So, from what I know, I postulate that Arakawa initially envisioned “Liza Hawkeye.” It all makes linguistic sense, and the fact that early FMA merchandise from Japan sometimes uses “Liza” only helps my case. That they sometimes also called her “Riza” is a common phenomenon of Japanese publications not knowing when to make something an R and when to make something an L. I mean, in the Death Note anime, you see someone’s name listed as “Rally” instead of “Larry.” The L/R confusion is common and appears commonly in officially released Japanese materials.

I mentioned at the start of this ramble that translating names multiple times is like a game of telephone. Thus far, it seems like we went from Liza --> リザ. Then, when North American native English speakers got the Japanese 「リザ」, they had to figure out what to do with it. Because the character’s name was spelled 「リザ」 - NOT the standard「ライザ」 Japanese use to spell “Liza” - then translators wouldn’t have thought this was an intended “Elizabeth” nickname. It doesn’t help that Roy doesn’t call Riza “Elizabeth” as code until several volumes after we’re given riza (Ch. 37 Vol. 9, I believe). So, translators were left with a really oddly spelled, indeterminate name... something that could have been spelled “Leeza” or “Reeza” or “Riza” or “Leaza” or who-knows-what. But “Liza” would have, to them, seemed like a phonetically poor choice - English readers would see “Liza” and pronounce it very differently from how the Japanese would pronounce 「リザ」. If Arakawa had intended “Liza,” she would have spelled it markedly differently, right? So “Liza” would have been an unintuitive translation option for Japanese --> English translators. On the other hand, English readers would see “Riza” and pronounce it close to how the character’s name was spelled in Japanese. So even though “Riza” isn’t a normal Western European name, that’s what seemed to make sense. Ergo, “Riza” became the “intuitive” choice for translators, and that’s what they put.

It’s not unfeasible that this “Riza” choice was made independently with several groups of people - the manga translators and the English dub script workers, namely. “Riza” seems the most default “sensible” choice. And once both Viz Media and Funimation Entertainment gave English consumers, consistently, “Riza” - well that was that! It probably influenced Japanese publishers with their next materials. It would have influenced all other English products. Thus, henceforth, Japanese or English origin, we’d only see her name as “Riza”.

Don’t take this as a flawless or conclusive analysis. Opening the Perfect Guidebooks, after I buy them, might tweak or solidify some of my thoughts. There’s many materials, other merchandise, I haven’t seen the packaging to, or seen inside of, or know what year it was made. I might not have accurately remembered / researched the first instances in which names were given across the animes, manga, etc. I don’t know hoards about the Trading Card game. I’m not fluent in Japanese, just a beginner. I’m a linguist but academically I spent little time with Japanese in my studies and research. I definitely can’t mind read Arakawa. Other fans may know more(?). This is meant as a happy ramble of thoughts, not a conclusion. And I wrote this overnight instead of getting sleep. Because this is a wise use of time, right?

I will always call her “Riza.” The name fits her. It’s a unique name. It’s a cool name. I think it sounds better than “Liza Hawkeye.” I grew up with “Riza.” I’m attached to Riza. 

But I find it so fascinating to acknowledge and study the background of when she was labeled “Liza.”

I’m quite happy to be hold cards from 2005 - in my hand - that label her such.