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sfiddy · 4 years ago

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So Bad

For @academialynx , who made a donation to her local food bank in return for a fic! This is a college AU, moderately prof/student (though the theme is that they DON’T break the rules) boatloads of yearning, and janky building maintenance that leads to getting locked in a closet. She asked me to consider the Brandon Colbein song So Bad. Which I did. :)

Thank you, Dear! Here we go!

Rated T

On AO3

On FF

On Tumblr! (keep reading!)

Another champagne cork popped and a delighted cheer spread through the room. Glasses, plastic cups, and hastily drained coffee mugs were refreshed and the party carried on. Theirs was not a large music department, so to have attracted a fresh, exciting, multi-talented composition and collaborative piano specialist with a few international awards, one ‘early career’ grant and another from the National Endowment for the Arts meant their modest program was about to gain a little fresh clout at interdepartmental tenured faculty meetings.

“Congratulations again, Erik!” Dr. Nadir Khan hauled Erik into a vigorous handshake and pumped for a full three seconds.

Erik winced. He’d be hamfisting the keys tomorrow if they kept this up. “Thank you, Dean Khan. It’s an honor to join as a full professor.”

“I am Nadir to you, and don’t forget it.” Nadir refilled Erik’s plastic cup and tapped his department coffee mug against it, sloshing their champagne into frothy heads. “It’s hard to believe it’s been five years, Erik! You cost me a bet, I’ll have you know. I didn’t think you’d stay after you had to teach that semester of History of Rock and Roll for non-majors.”

The lantern-jawed oboe professor laughed. “Or the infamous Intro to Music Theory.”

“No, no,” disagreed Umbaldo Piangi, the portly voice teacher. “When I went on sabbatical to Teatro La Fenice and you gave him The Chamber Music Outreach Project and graduate tutoring. No warning!” Even the big man’s clucking tongue was musical. “But, Piangi is back, no? I will cut back my performance hours and take back all the lessons and weekends and let Dr. Erik Devereaux return to his writing!”

“Actually,” Erik said, and the room stilled. “The only part I disliked was the public part. I never minded the private instruction. If you would like to split the load, I’m happy to keep the instructional portion while you handle the tours, performances, and...outreach?” He suppressed the grimace well enough.

Piangi, Italian down to his fine shoes, let out a whoop and grabbed Erik in a hug so tight it pressed his ribcage and nearly dislodged his delicate porcelain mask from it’s fine wire and leather fittings.

“Ah, my partner now! I will call donors and show off the little tweeting songbirds with my lovely Carlotta while you teach them not to call for worms! A toast!” Piangi held up his plastic cup once again.

Erik accepted a toast that crackled the edge of his plastic cup and hoped for something new and shiny to distract them. Or for the lights to suddenly flicker and fail as they were prone to do, along with randomly closing doors in the terribly laid out office and work spaces. The college had access to talent pipelines that the underfunded and neglected department had not been able to tap. Their aggressive recruitment of him was a last ditch effort for change before the tiny group was relegated to a four piece for the university reagent’s cocktail brunch and a marching band for the far-better funded football team.

“To Dr. Devereaux!”

With a conspiratorial grin, Erik drained his cup and winked at Piangi. “To the songbirds.”

…

Tenure in hand, Erik started his campaign. Once he ditched the worst teaching credits to lecturers and adjuncts, he could focus on recruiting. Specifically, to score a few respected but not-yet-headliner talents. Emerging performers without a good gig had few options and the status and modest stipend to be a ‘visiting artist’ might be more attractive than the floating gulag of a cruise ship.

A few excellent but relatively unknown performers could teach and perform, receive some finishing, and get quickly farmed out into the world. The reputation-building move would be pricey, but no one gets paid dividends before investing.

His development grant would cover three such artists. He got more than fifty applications. Erik rubbed his eyes under the mask. It was a good thing he never had plans-- it would be a long weekend.

…

The old music labs building had settled over the years and gained what the senior faculty referred to as ‘personality’. Erik took this to mean ‘genially hazardous’. No amount of facility requests or complaints brought the doors and keys division to do maintenance.

He was a quick learner though, and only got locked in his workroom twice before catching the door with his foot became second nature. He even set a flaking brick, plucked from a neglected flower bed outside, in the corner by the door and kicked it against the frame as a doorstop. Every time he came to his workroom, a narrow converted closet with a work bench and packed with shelves of manuscripts, music, errant repair kits and recording equipment, he would hit the outside light switch, unlock the door, step in, catch the door, then kick the brick.

Switch, step, catch, kick. His shoes were gaining new wear marks.

After kicking the brick into place, Erik opened his laptop and went over the last files. He’d asked the department admins to strip out the audio files to just the audition pieces and remove identifying details from the fifty applications. If he was going to invite talent, their first hurdle would be their musicianship. Once he’d culled the herd to ten, he’d submitted his picks to the dean to select the three finalists. Now they needed invitations. Two vocalists and a classical guitarist made the cut and he spent the next few hours getting more acquainted with their files and ignoring the pings of his filling inbox.

At least it was just his inbox. No one came to the music labs and his closet if they could help it.

If he was honest, no one came to meet him in person if they could help it.

…

Most performers were beautiful. Entire websites and product lines were devoted to skincare for singers, makeup tutorials, look books and wardrobe consulting. Erik’s particular variety of deformity would stand out in any circumstances, but in an entire department stuffed with the striking, stunning, and unconventionally glorious, he bordered on eyesore. Even Piangi could command a room with his generous, rosy smiles and booming laugh.

The mask was the best combination of memorable and functional he could muster. Yes, surgery was an option but who signed up for years of unnecessary pain and the risk of infection? He had better things to do.

Like meet with his new visiting artists.

The classical guitarist had supple wrists and forearms like Popeye. His rolled cuffs drew the eye to the action while his cleverly knotted scarf kept you looking at his face, framed by artfully mussed hair.

“We’re looking forward to your first concerts and hope you’ll consider collaborations with local programs.”

The baritone had a one in a million voice. How he hadn’t been snapped up for opera yet was a mystery but Erik supposed it was his poor presence. When you had the goods, you still had to sell them, and the young man’s love of neon, bad hair, and questionable repertoire (pin the tail on a Hal Leonard page) needed polish. His work was shockingly precise and sounded like he had a cathedral in his mouth.

“Our faculty and staff are a rich resource for young performers and are always eager to assist. We often work in parallel with the communications department and local professionals to prepare our artists for the culture and community as well as the stage.”

The soprano was the risk. The recording had been largely boilerplate and her prior experience thin. The reason she got in was a one-point-two second pause in her audition tape. It was the silence that told Erik she had chops.

Imagine, a soprano unafraid of silence. It had been late in the weekend when he selected her and had not yet been able to examine the head shot.

“I… um...”

“Yes, Dr. Devereaux?”

“Welcome, Miss Daaé.”

…

The visiting artists would survey classes, provide demonstrations and guest lectures, and appear at university events, auditions, and generally get the word out that the department was shifting to a growth phase. That was the official description. Unofficially, there would be a mountain of effort to make each emerging artist a shot on goal for the department. Recording deals, major and paid appearances, and successful auditions all counted toward the tally.

Guitar was not Erik’s forte, and as much as he could contribute to the baritone’s look and polish, Erik had cultivated a far more… refined profile than the young man aspired to. Erik maintained collars sharp enough to cut bread and a spotless sheen on his porcelain mask. Right now, Dean Khan aspired to cut the young man’s mullet tail off.

“Excellent, Miss Daaé, right on time.” Erik slid the fall board up and they prepared to work. She understood how to modulate her tone, how to select the emotional pitch to match the song, to contrast with it for effect. She explored her range and willingly failed to find her borders. It all made for an excellent student.

It was the quiet that made her breathtaking. The anticipation of her. Tenths of seconds that tightened the chest and made a quiver run through the blood. Not often, only when it mattered, and only when it would matter enough to do so.

When he could stand it no more, he asked her about it.

“I’m sorry, I can try to stop.”

“I didn’t ask you to stop, I asked when you started doing it.”

She considered him, her ribbons of curling hair twisting as she shifted. “When my father was sick. I could feel the need for silences because he couldn’t talk anymore. It just felt… right.”

Erik nodded. “Again.”

…

She’d been a late bloomer. A ghost on the scene and at least five years older than the rest of the sopranos at her stage. It also meant she hadn’t spent her entire high school and college career belting Broadway in the recital rooms, building nodes on her vocal chords.

They finished late one night and he walked her to her car. “So what did you do for practice?”

She pinked under the parking lot lights. “I, um… waited tables at an Italian restaurant. You know, where your server might sing opera when they bring you breadsticks?”

Erik nodded. “Parmesan and Puccini?”

Bless her, she giggled. “Bellinis and Bellini. A few really knew when they were hearing but most just wanted to hear Nessun Dorma because they heard it on Youtube. I managed to get a few singing jobs out of it but I mostly just waited tables.” They stopped at her car but she hadn’t reached for her keys yet. “I was a bartender and the second understudy for a Gilbert and Sullivan society when I saw your announcement.”

“Their loss,” Erik said. He left off the second half.

“Thanks.” Christine hesitated. “I didn’t expect to be accepted, so… thanks.”

Something changed in the breeze. Something cool and soft in the night air mixed with the gold light pouring down from the lights. It highlighted the curls that spiralled out of control around her neck as she tilted her head just so.

It was just a moment, a funny thump that ricocheted in his chest at her upturned face, her soft smile. Maybe her eyes flicked down, maybe her sharp inhale had a little catch in it. Maybe it was the way her lip twitched, but a red flag suddenly waved in Erik’s head and he stepped back carefully. He had a powerful fear of heat and burns.

“Yes, of course. The, uh, department was very happy to offer the opportunity.”

She blinked. “Of course. Well, thanks for the great session and walking me to my car. Have a nice evening, Erik.”

Christine drove away and Erik stood in the parking lot for some minutes after her taillights had faded. He imagined it. Surely, he’d taken a friendly conversation the wrong way. She wasn’t his student, strictly speaking, but he had influence over her career, which would be just as bad.

Besides, he had completely misread the whole thing. Surely. Women didn’t look up at him like that-- like he would kiss them. After a walk after dark, telling him about themselves, and looking at him like that.

No one looked at him like... that.

Oh no.

…

She wasn’t strictly his student. He was her mentor. Even a brief thought made it obvious and completely inappropriate. Did she think it would improve her opportunities?

Erik swallowed. No, if that was the game she wouldn’t have backed off. Surely he’d misread the situation.

…

They brewed tea together. She remembered his favorite oolong.

…

He saw a cascade of curling hair on his way to the post office and his heart leapt.

It wasn’t her. The disappointment was too confusing to examine.

…

His mouth went dry when her sweater slipped from her shoulder. Then he knocked the music from the stand.

She smiled and helped him pick up the sheets.

There were freckles on her shoulder.

...

Five months into the visiting artist tour and Piangi had the concert hall packed for their first performances. Franco the guitarist, who preferred just the one name, would play a twenty minute set, followed by the baritone Burton Armstrong, as baritoney a name as Erik had ever heard, then Christine, and finally Franco would play again with accompaniment.

Erik was content to stay in a tiny box seat far to the side as Piangi introduced each performer. Franco had gained the stage he deserved, and Burton had been convinced to get a proper haircut and suit, and sang a particularly impressive Russian ballad set.

Christine was introduced and settled onto the stage. She was radiant in dark blue, and decorated her baroque set with agility. From his perch, Erik could as easily imagine her distributing bellinis as gracing an opera stage. It was not an insult. After her short set, she nodded and was joined by Burton. A duet?

She looked up and found him, up in his perch. She nodded, and the two launched into a series of excerpts from Semele, Handel’s somewhat neglected tale of a torrid affair between a mortal woman and the god, Jupiter.

Their gazes met as she sang.

O Jove! In pity teach me which to choose,

Incline me to comply, or help me to refuse!

The baritone thundered.

Too well I read her meaning,

But must not understand her.

If Erik’s ears heard the rest of the concert, he could not recall it later.

…

Dean Khan adjourned the faculty meeting. “Oh Erik, if you have a moment?”

They waited until the room was cleared and Nadir closed the door, then casually looked over the remaining pastries. “Excellent concert last month. The work with Burton is certainly paying off.”

Erik leaned against the table. “His socks were bright green, but we felt it was a workable compromise.”

“Franco is excellent in front of the crowd. Has he met the flamenco dancers yet?”

“I put in a call. I think he’s going to their weekly meeting next Thursday.”

“Marvelous. Let me know how that goes when you hear, won’t you?”

“Of course.” Erik felt his chest tighten the longer Nadir perused the snacks and chose to tear off the bandage himself. “Anything else?”

“There is, in fact,” Nadir did not look up from the muffins. “Christine’s performance was exceptional. Truly filled with passion.”

Erik tried to take a sip of coffee but his cup was empty. He faked it. “She’s a wonderful artist.”

“Yes. I couldn’t help but notice--” Nadir paused over the croissants, then passed them over to examine the cookies. “You two seem to have a unique and strong mentor-trainee relationship.”

“Thank you.” It had not been a question. There was nothing here… yet. “We work well together.”

“I’m glad to hear that. The program you’ve created is admirable for it’s transparency and integrity.”

“I agree. Thank you for noticing.”

Nadir looked up with a slight nod, then selected a macadamia cookie. “I’m sure the remaining six months will fly by, Erik.”

He had no idea how to respond.

...

Six months. There were six months left in the visiting artist term. There were more sessions, a mini tour, and a series of small concerts meant to showcase the new talent the department had ‘produced’.

Six months of lies, pretending he was misunderstanding something. Pretending he didn’t notice the way she was at his side and on his mind. Then she would leave him to the dull, overworked life he’d made for himself in the hopes of making a name for himself while simultaneously avoiding attention. More lies, but easier to swallow.

Her voice came from the hallway. “Erik? I’m heating up some water, would you like tea?”

“Is it the one you brought?”

A light laugh. Sparkling. “Of course.”

He dropped his work and grabbed his cup. “Be right there.”

…

A very successful fundraiser was wrapping up on the top floor of the performing arts center. It had a view over the campus, the nice side, and the glow of downtown caught the streaking rain on the tall glass walls.

The donors had been generous, delighted with the new features of the program and the willingness to be accessible. Erik stayed to the side, avoiding the center of the room where Piangi and his wife Carlotta took up residence. Nadir circulated the room, nudging him out from time to time for a refill and to participate. When forced to do so, Erik sloshed some middling red wine into his glass and let himself slip into Christine’s gravity for a few minutes before drifting away again.

He could feel her gaze.

The cocktail party was to end at eleven-thirty, and by then nearly all the guests had left. The last ones were rushed out and Piangi hurried to the bar.

“Open season!”

A quick crush to the bar and every open bottle was ‘liberated’ to the long-suffering exhibits. Christine topped off her glass and passed the bottle to a fellow soprano, hardly twenty years old, and the two laughed and kicked off their heels. Piangi and Burton laughed over an earlier flub and the cello player, finally able to pack his instrument and relax, demanded and received a full glass.

Erik tipped back a hearty, warm swallow and emerged from the hinterlands.

“Oh, hi Dr. Devereaux! Did you just get here?” teased Carlotta. “Your legend only grows the more you hide.”

“All part of my devious plan,” he conceded. Christine’s giggle mingled with the laughs of her peers. “If you’ll excuse me. Piangi, brilliant as always.”

“Same to you, Erik! We plan many parties now, no?”

Easing his way towards the mirth, Erik relaxed. There were plenty of others around, and this was just the after party to a long dog and pony show. Listen to the pretty songbirds and throw money at the program, invitation only. They all deserved drinks after three hours of that.

Christine was plucking a pin from her hair. She shook the curls loose. “Hi Erik! God, I’m so glad to see you.”

“Oh?”

She held up a bottle. “Yeah, you need a refill.”

It had been a long night. These events could be tricky to navigate. Sometimes there was politics, other times business rivals. More often, donors expected special privilege and access in exchange for their checks, as if the last hundred years of progress meant nothing. The way a few of them had looked at Erik, maybe it didn’t.

He let her pour some white wine over the dregs of his red. Improvised rosé. “Everything go okay?”

“Good enough. I think I have some auditions, and some stuff nearby might open up for me.”

“That’s great. Who with?”

A nice chorus. A solid baroque group. Both could springboard to bigger things. A few bigger things were here.

“What’s bigger?” She asked, her eyes dark and soft.

He had not meant to speak, and now he rushed his words. “Things! Choirs, operas. There’s a few small opera troupes and there’s churches that need choral directors that know how to work with organ and piano.”

She sniggered. “Organs.” The other soprano dissolved into giggles.

Erik pulled out his phone. Clearly neither was driving tonight. He absently tallied up his glasses and admitted he wasn’t either.

“Do you play the organ, Erik?”

“Yes.”

Christine stepped closer and, on pure instinct, Erik put his arm around her as she turned her head to speak.

“Can I watch?”

His collar was tight. He pulled up the app and ordered a car.

They ran through the rain, more than sprinkled, less than soaked. Plenty wet to shiver from the chill of the driver’s exuberant air conditioning, though. Between giggles and poorly composed directions, they dropped off the other soprano who wobbled successfully to her door before their driver sped away. Christine did not shift away to the other seat, but leaned into him, tucking herself against his side.

The driver glanced in the rear view mirror, then looked away.

She was cool and smooth. Her loosened curls had tightened from the wet and tickled his neck and brushed against his mask.

Her hand on his thigh. Erik said nothing. If he was silent there was a kind of deniability, or denial at least, of what was happening. If he could deny that her fingernails caught on the inner seam of his trousers, then she could deny that his hand was firmly planted at her waist, holding her close.

And if she could deny that, then she could also deny that her nose bumped his chin, her ragged breath loud in his ears. And they could both deny that their lips grazed, a not-kiss somehow more intimate than if their lips moved and pulled at each other. Like her singing, it was the pause that made your breath catch and your insides tug.

“What number?”

Dashboards lights reflected in her eyes. “That one,” she said, and cautiously settled. The driver pulled forward and Christine unbuckled.

“Good night, Erik. See you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Christine.”

The driver glanced in the rearview. Erik looked down. “Sorry.”

The driver shrugged.

One more month.

…

He was hiding. He’d been hiding for weeks; stopped looking for her, stopped even wondering where she was or if she was alone. There was no way to be near her without the pretense of a piano that wouldn’t leave him shaking. No way to think about her without wanting.

He was Erik, a composer, a conductor, performer, designer of auditory spaces and translator of music. He was a collaborative pianist and vocal specialist. He’d given everything to music and the service of it, the delivery of it. He didn’t need this. He’d never had this.

No one ever offered. So he’d found fulfillment elsewhere, until now.

Erik hunched over his work, safely tucked into his corner of the music labs building. Between grading, senior thesis submissions, revisions to his own publications, and a request for a letter of recommendation, he could be plenty busy late into the night with no need for anyone to--

“Hello? Erik?”

Erik snatched at his mask and settled it. He’d been found. Time to lie, except he can’t lie to her.

“Can I help you with something, Christine?” He gathered a stack and stood. She met him by his door.

“Well, yeah,” she paused, blocking his path momentarily before stepping aside. “I need your signature on my visiting artist release. And another on my endorsement for my new job.”

Erik hefted his armload to the work closet. “I’m sure they look forward to meeting you. Come on.” He unlocked the door and held it open, then followed behind her, hitting the light switch with his elbow before catching the door on his foot, then he kicked the brick into place. He had to hold the stack to keep it from spilling across the work table.

She handed him the forms. Erik moved to a span of clean tabletop and started scanning the release form. Government agency boilerplate to satisfy the grant was mixed with flowery language so no one would suspect they were anything but artists. Yesterday Franco had brought Burton’s form-- yep, this was Christine’s. So on and so forth.

Erik had just finished scratching out his signature when he heard a familiar scrape.

“Why on earth do you keep a-”

Click.

“--brick?”

Erik pressed the heel of his hand into his chin.

“Are we… locked in?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” A faint rumble vibrated in the walls. “I don’t suppose that was just… construction?”

Erik let out a mirthless laugh. “There were storms brewing earlier. Besides, does this building look like they work on it?”

“Not really.”

Another rumble, louder, and the light fixture jittered.

Christine finally took a deep breath. “Have you been avoiding me?”

“No! Yes. I don’t know.” He touched his hairline, recapped a pen. “We crossed a line. I had to get back behind it and I couldn’t if we…” His hands skated across the table top nervously.

“Is this about being my mentor?”

Erik barked an ugly, bitter laugh. “What else? God, you just, out of nowhere, with your smiles, and the way you look at me, and sing to me, and the Semele…” Erik’s skin grew tight as he recalled the cocktail party. He turned, face growing hot beneath the porcelain and his throat tightening. He was a ruin.

“--and the touching and wanting and you’re… you’re just going to leave! I’m a fucking idiot!”

On cue, an extended, throaty roar of thunder rattled the stone and brick until the bare bulb above could suffer no more. With a loud pop, the narrow room went dark. They both scuffled in the dark until they had hold of something sturdy.

“Erik?”

He was embarrassed. He was frustrated. “What.”

“You need to sign the other form.”

“Want to get away that bad? Fine.” He reached for a desk lamp and tried to turn it on. He flipped the switch furiously. The power was out.

“Here,” Christine held up her phone and lit the screen. Her screensaver was… them? Beside a piano together?

Erik snatched a pen from the table and slashed his name. “There. Just search for facilities or call the university police. They can unlock the door.”

“Erik, did you even look at it?”

“Why bother.”

She snorted at him. “God, you’re so blind.”

“The lights were out.”

“Fine, you want to be a jerk, be one, but at least look at where I’m taking a job before you decide to walk.”

She lit up her phone once more and he glared at the page like it was staring at his mask. He tracked the offer and terms until he reached the party names and…

“You took a job at… a middle school? Here?” He looked up into the dim light. “You’re not leaving?”

“Meet the new grade six to eight choir director. Go Scotties. And now you have no direct influence over my career.”

Her screensaver dimmed, and before it went dark, Erik could make out a flash of their faces, turned to each other. He wondered if Nadir had seen this moment, because they looked as passionate as lovers despite being feet apart.

The room went black again, and he could hear her moving.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“That much has been apparent. What do you know?”

She was close. Close enough to feel the way she shifted the air. “I know way too much about motif design, lyric phrasing--”

Closer. “Go on.” Her hips were near his.

“Harmonic theory, vocals”

“Can attest.” Her fingertips were at his jawline, tracing his mask. “I thought it would be cold.”

“It’s been on my face all day. Early Romantic era competition and,” his voice scraped over gravel, “that I want you. So bad.”

Her kiss was her reply. Erik’s hands flew around her as she pivoted to the table with him, dragging his mask upwards. He gasped as cool air brushed his face, followed by light, curious fingertips and her hot mouth. Erik knocked over the stack of papers and files with a satisfying splatter.

“Is that light over there?” she asked, dragging her lips from his. “Around that cabinet door?”

“What?” he panted. “I thought that was a panel.”

She pushed him off gently, peering up at the wall. “Right there, see?”

Sure enough, there was a thin line of light. It was a hidden door with a magnetic latch.

“They can’t keep the regular door from locking you in but they put a trick door at the back?” Erik complained as he climbed through awkwardly. Very awkwardly. Her lips were red and swollen.

“Let me grab my things and we can get out of here.”

Erik checked his watch. “First, we’re turning in your forms.”

“It’s almost five!”

“We’ll make it if we run.��

Panting, they caught the dean just as he was packing up to leave.

“Erik, Christine? Are you alright? That was some storm we--”

Erik shoved the forms at him. “Yep. Terrible storm. Here.”

“Indeed, Erik. Why, your hair is a mess and I’ve never seen your shirt untucked.”

“Big wind. Yep. Almost hit by lightning. Here, time stamp?”

“Miss Daaé, you may want to adjust…”

“For God’s sake just take the stupid form so we can go!” Christine shouted.

Nadir laughed and scanned the forms. “I don’t want to see you until Monday, Erik. You better be late.”

He didn’t make it in until Wednesday.

...

#academialynx #poto fic #modern au #POTO college AU #e/c #yearning #So Bad

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artificialqueens · 4 years ago

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Different People (Different Arguments), 3/14 (Branjie/Jankie) - Ortega

a/n: ayo!! so sorry for the update gap fam, but chapter 3 is here! soooo hope u all enjoy. p.s. i promise I love Nicky, Gigi and Crystal…but every good story has a bad guy right???

fic summary: Brooke Lynn is a political advisor for a government department where she has to contend with an incompetent Minister, maintaining her stone-cold bitch image, working alongside a press team of slackers, and the Prime Minister’s ever-so-slightly terrifying enforcer breathing down her neck 24/7. So when a familiar face from her past arrives as her new boss, she’s not exactly thrilled to add another problem to her ever-growing pile.

And then she admits she’s got a crush on her coworker.

Last chapter: Jackie became a breakout political star after she spoke out against the homophobia and misogyny in the media, and Brooke finally acknowledged that her feelings for Vanessa maybe weren’t as platonic as she’d thought.

In this chapter: When Shadow Minister Nicky Doll and her advisors arrive at DoSac for an informal, pre-election briefing, Jan tries to cope with the stress of seeing her old colleagues again. There’s more at stake, though, when Jackie reveals a secret that cannot get out.

***

Casting her eyes over the meeting room, Brooke attempted to focus on what Jackie was actually saying. She was trying her hardest, she really was, but it was just that Vanessa was wearing the red jumper today, the really soft one that made her look more cuddly and adorable than normal.

Brooke had a crush on Vanessa. She’d accepted that now. The way to deal with it was just to never act upon it, talk about it, or to admit it to anyone outside of her own head. She’d spent so long cultivating the perfect stone-cold, heartless bitch image and she wasn’t exactly going to do anything to taint that now. The most important thing she had to remember was that she didn’t need anyone- she had no desire to be in a relationship, to be tied down and have to answer to someone else all the time. She had a perfectly good bullet to get her off and if she felt like it she could always go and pick up someone random from a bar. There was always that irritating aspect when the afterglow had faded, though, if whoever she’d used for the night wanted to stay over, or heaven forbid see her again. Things were just better as they were, Brooke concluded. She couldn’t get attached, or hurt, or fall in love this way. If there was one thing she wasn’t, it was vulnerable. Getting into a relationship with someone put you in the weakest position you could possibly get.

She would know, after all.

Still, she was allowed to dream about it; an ideal world in which love worked out the way it did in books and movies, one huge cliché where Brooke and Vanessa were happy together and lived in perfect domesticity, had the best sex of their lives and went on adorable dates. It was simplistic and shallow and completely unrealistic, but perhaps that was all it was meant to be.

Gazing at Vanessa again, she was surprised to see her eyes already on her. She was even more surprised when she looked around the room and saw that everyone else was staring at her as well.

“Brooke Lynn?” Jackie asked, staring at her expectantly. She stood in front of a huge whiteboard with marker pen scribbled all over it- generic buzzwords such as “connectivity”, “inclusivity” and “diversity” sprang out to her, but nothing really indicated what Jackie could have previously been talking about.

“Um. The fiscal year?” Brooke guessed blankly. Jan laughed from across the table, throwing her head back and letting her blonde hair cascade down the back of the chair. Jackie didn’t find it as funny.

“For God’s sake, Brooke, this policy is only going to work if everyone pays attention and has some form of input other than just staring at me with glassy eyes like they’ve been goddamn taxidermied!” she sighed, sitting her pen down on the table and sliding into an empty chair. Brooke felt a pang of guilt- Jackie had been doing well in the two weeks that had followed her Von’Du interview and had received heaps of public support and attention. The perfect time, Bianca had insisted, to get some new ideas out there and into parliament.

“Sorry. Remind me of the premise?”

Irritated, Jackie rolled her eyes before Vanessa cut in with a sweet smile. “Issa scheme to get the UK to house more refugees and get ‘em into work therefore boosting the economy, diversifyin’ the nation and basically makin’ us look like good guys to the rest of Europe.”

Brooke shot her a grateful smile across the table, trying her best not to blush.

“Thank God someone’s been listening,” Jackie smirked. “We’re basically just trying to come up with a name for it. Or a tagline or something.”

Brooke pressed her pen to her lips, thinking for a second. Nina suddenly piped up from beside her.

“What about…Don’t be bigoted. Be uninhibited,” she said, her suggestion met with utter silence from the rest of the group.

“Well that was nice, Nina, but how about something a bit less…” Jackie thought for a second, trying to find the correct word.

“Shit?” Brooke shrugged, Jan once again letting out a peal of laughter. Vanessa was clearly trying to conceal her giggles from the other side of the huge table, while both Nina and Jackie looked unimpressed.

“Do you have any better suggestions?”

“No, and I’m not going to pretend like I do! I’m not going to just yell out any old crap like I’ve got shit idea Tourette’s,” Brooke shrugged, Jan now bent over in her chair from laughter and Vanessa now audibly giggling. Brooke couldn’t tell, but she could have sworn Jackie let out the tiniest snort of a laugh before regaining composure.

“Ladies, please, this is important! This is a good damn idea, if I’m allowed to blow my own trumpet, and we’ve got to get it out there sooner rather than later,” she insisted. A loud, harsh vibration from Nina’s phone startled them all.

“Bianca’s here,” she announced, trying to keep her tone bright. Before the girls even had time to react to the news, Bianca had appeared in the room in a smart, tailored black and white suit.

“Good morning to you all, shit Spice Girls impersonation act,” she smiled cheerfully.

“Mornin’, Bianca,” Vanessa greeted her.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Jackie quipped dryly, lounging back in her seat.

“Two things from me,” Bianca began, ignoring the Minister’s sarcasm. “The shadow minister’s visit, today at 11. They’re going to be talking to Nina and the rest of those brain-dead, civil-service puppets out there about what’s going to happen if they take office. Nina, your job is to basically communicate to them that they’ll be taking it out of my cold, dead hands.”

“Fuck, that’s today?!” Vanessa exclaimed somewhat involuntarily, earning her a steely glare from Bianca which in turn made Vanessa look as if she was seconds away from death. Reaching into her pocket and retrieving her phone, Brooke fired off a quick text to Vanessa under the table.

B: It’s okay. Snakes only eat once every few weeks x

As Bianca briefed Nina, Brooke watched as Vanessa looked down into her lap and smiled, a light blush colouring her cheeks very slightly, although that could have just been the light of the room. Satisfied that she’d made Vanessa feel better, she tuned back in to what Bianca was saying.

“…you tell them nothing. Except where the toilets are, but you lie about that.”

“So who’s actually accompanying Nicky today? I’ve heard nothing and I want to make sure I’m relatively prepared for whoever enters my department,” Jackie folded her arms across her chest, already defensive.

“You already know about Nicky. Privately educated daddy’s girl and massively out of touch with the electorate. Probably a lizard wearing a human skin suit, I’ve never particularly wanted to get close enough to her to check if that theory’s true,” Bianca shrugged. “The other two coming with her are going to be her advisors, Gigi and Crystal.”

“Oh no,” Jan suddenly exclaimed from her chair. Her face had gone incredibly ashen, her eyes wide and fearful. Suddenly Brooke was acutely aware that she no longer had only Vanessa to worry about. If Jan’s old colleagues and ex-friends bumped into her it wouldn’t be particularly pleasant, and Jan would no doubt be incredibly shaken. Crossing the floor was like a betrayal, pledging loyalty to one party after being aligned with another was treacherous, and so it was likely that Gigi, Crystal and Nicky still wanted Jan’s head on a stick.

“Oh yes. Gigi Goode, bit of a newborn as far as politics is concerned but she’s got impressive credentials. Graduated from Oxford University with a first class degree and a PhD in Politics and Business. Won the World Universities Debating Championships five consecutive times. She’s confident, clever, and has zero scruples. Knows every loophole in the world of politics,” Bianca reeled off. Jackie raised her eyebrows, clearly impressed.

“She sounds interesting.”

“Don’t even make contact with her, she’ll probably have you telling her the fucking nuke codes and all the department’s discrepancies within the first 30 seconds of meeting her. Crystal Harness is a different story,” Bianca frowned. “Not too good when it comes to actual political knowledge. Nina, you and her would get along. She’s a baby too, really, not been in the game long. Graduated from Oxford Brookes. Second class degree in Psychology and Sociology. Don’t think for a second that this is a reason to underestimate her. She is cunning and has intellect and knows everything about everyone, don’t let her see you break a sweat.”

Jackie looked momentarily terrified. “I didn’t realise Nicky had some kind of metahuman task force working for her.”

“They’re not that bad,” Brooke sighed, tipping her head back in her chair. “If you talk to Nicky entirely in cockney rhyming slang, she’ll just combust. Gigi is fine if you give her a fake smile or two. Crystal is basically simple. You’ve got nothing to worry about, Jackie.”

Feeling the mood in the room change, Brooke turned around in her wheely chair and was met with Bianca’s icy stare.

“What part of ‘don’t underestimate these people’ do you not understand? What, you think they’re here for a jolly little chat with Nina about worker’s rights and office hours? They’re here to get intel, and I want you all to be more airtight than some middle-aged white woman’s Tupperware. And no, that’s not a euphemism.”

Brooke watched as Vanessa wrinkled up her nose in distaste. She had such a cute little nose, and Brooke found herself imagining how perfect it would be to just kiss it gently before they both drifted off to sleep together in a little house that they shared. Frowning involuntarily, Brooke chased those particular thoughts out of her head. They were way too intense, too weird and commitment-y for her friend she had a stupid crush on. Remembering what Bianca had said earlier, she turned and faced her.

“What was the other thing? You said you had two things to tell us.”

“I’m getting there! Right, Jackie, I’ve got you a good photo op this evening. Some new charging points for electric car owners, it’s going to be the biggest one in the UK and a big step for climate change, yadda yadda yadda. We’re going to get you driving in a fucking Prius or something, charging it up and then driving out again. Pretty simple, but effective- what? What is it?”

Every head in the room turned to face Jackie, who looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Her hands were gripping the edge of the table, her knuckles white. She’d turned pale, her face ashen, and she seemed worried.

“Driving? No, I can’t drive, there’s no way,” she babbled, her usually calm and composed exterior completely destroyed.

“Jackie?” Jan prompted quietly, clearly concerned. Brooke shared a brief look of confusion with Vanessa. It was clear nobody had the faintest idea what was going on.

“I mean, you can drive. We have your drivers’ license, you sent in a photocopy as proof of identification when you received Darienne’s job. I don’t really see the issue here?” Bianca curled her top lip, completely unfazed by Jackie’s behaviour.

“Bianca, you don’t understand…I’ve not driven in ages, I…do you not-”

“Do I not what?” Bianca cut in, her irritation mounting by the second. “Look, I don’t really have time to stand here and argue the toss. This is part of your job. You’re doing the goddamn photo op. Christ, this was the girl who two weeks ago was desperate to get on prime time television. Now you’re shitting yourself at the thought of driving a bloody battery operated car. Get it done. 6 o’clock tonight. See you all later.”

As Bianca click-clacked out of the department, the mood in the room was still very tense. Almost frozen, Brooke thought, the tiny hairs on her arms standing up from goosebumps. Jan was the first to speak.

“Jackie, are you okay?” she almost whispered, her voice both deafening and quiet in the silent room. There were a few seconds (minutes?) where there was no response at all, in fact Brooke was almost convinced that nobody even breathed. Finally, Jackie spoke.

“Yep. All good. So, um, if you ladies can continue thinking up some form of line or title we can use or something while you’re finishing off that immigration data, and Nina if you can just forward me the protocol for Nicky’s visit again so I can read over it, then that would be great,” she said, her body almost frozen in place and her face wearing a fake smile.

Deciding not to push it any further, Brooke simply nodded and walked back to her desk. It wasn’t long before Vanessa was following behind, rolling her own wheely chair along to sit beside her.

“What d’you think all that was about?” she whispered, leaning her elbows on Brooke’s desk expectantly. Brooke couldn’t help but stifle a laugh- Vanessa could be such a gossip and it was one of the things that was oddly endearing about her. Trying not to be too taken in by her perfume and parted lips, Brooke instead threw up her defences again and rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know, ‘Ness. To be honest, it’s not my place to ask. It’s not yours either,” she chastised softly, hitting Vanessa gently on the nose with her pen. Wrinkling her nose and pulling away, Vanessa shrugged.

“You’re right, I know. Still, she was kinda rattled. Hope she’s okay,” Vanessa frowned, nibbling on her bottom lip.

“She’ll be fine. Honestly. Just go and do your damn job.”

“Hmm. Winding you up’s more fun, baby, but I’ll do what I’m told,” Vanessa winked at her, shooting back off to her desk in her chair.

Feeling her heart speed up, Brooke fleetingly wondered if maybe the feelings she had for Vanessa weren’t entirely one-sided. That was flirting, right? Brooke wasn’t reading too much into it? Or maybe she was. Reality brought her back down to earth with a bump, telling her what a ridiculous thought that was. Vanessa saw Brooke as a friend and a co-worker, and that was where her feelings ended. Brooke couldn’t let herself get carried away or distracted with the idea that Vanessa would ever treat her as anything more than what they already were.

Letting out a huge exhale of breath, Brooke opened up the immigration spreadsheet and was about to start working when there was a thud of two elbows on the empty space to her left. Turning slowly in an attempt to conceal her flinching, she was met with Yvie; head in her hands, black dreads cascading over her shoulders and a huge, smug grin on her face.

“Don’t even say a word,” Brooke warned her, clearly too late as Yvie began sniggering a laugh behind her hands.

“I wasn’t actually here to gloat, but now you mention it…” Yvie joked, lolling lazily against Brooke’s desk. “So you’ve not admitted anything to anyone else. In fact, you’re probably maintaining the fact that there’s nothing to admit. But you’ve definitely admitted something to yourself, because I think your face is so red that you could go stand at a street corner and act as a traffic light.”

“If you keep talking, I’m going to staple your mouth shut,” Brooke glared, grabbing the stapler on her desk for emphasis. It didn’t seem to intimidate Yvie at all, who was still grinning maniacally and completely unfazed.

“Hey, like I said! Not here to gloat at all. I’m actually not here to talk about your deep feelings for your coworker in any way. Just thought you might like to know that Akeria texted me this a couple minutes ago.”

With that, Yvie produced her phone and held it out to Brooke so that she could read the screen.

A: ahahaha yeah. Big Silk with the fuckin bodyshots man!! Don’t actually know how she made it in today. Also, 100% confirmed Nicky’s looking for stuff to take Jackie down with bc she’s still pissed about that dig in the Von’Du interview. watch ur back xo

Attempting to ignore whatever conversation that had been going on before, Brooke focussed on the important information. She wished she could say she was surprised by the shadow minister’s plan but in all honesty, she’d highly expected it. Sighing, Brooke handed Yvie her phone back.

“I mean, I’m not too worried. What can she possibly dig up? Jackie will’ve been vetted by Bianca already,” she shrugged, clicking on a single cell of the spreadsheet half-heartedly.

“She got pizza delivered to the office last week?”

“That’s not even- Yvie. Come on,” Brooke raised one eyebrow in disbelief. “The papers would be hard pressed to conjure up a paragraph on that. Jackie will be fine.”

Appearing to be satisfied, Yvie pushed herself off the desk and made to return to her seat, but not before turning back to Brooke with the same smug look on her face as before.

“You know, I don’t think anyone in the office could’ve missed that wink Vanjie gave you just there. Whatever you’re feeling, I don’t think it’s as one-sided as you think,” she smirked, making sure to keep her voice low. Unsure of what to reply, Brooke simply narrowed her eyes, picked up her stapler and clicked it twice in warning. Chuckling, Yvie sauntered back to her desk.

Trying not to even entertain the thought that Vanessa could like her back, Brooke continued with her work. All of the numbers suddenly seemed scrambled and jumbled up, making no sense to her whatsoever. Feeling as if she was about to scream with frustration she made to ask Jan for advice until she noticed her desk was empty. Come to think of it, Jan hadn’t actually left the meeting room with her and Vanessa. Bullshit if she was getting away with doing nothing while Brooke worked on this entire set of figures by herself. Getting up and smoothing her skirt down she made her way to the meeting room only to find it empty. Puzzled, she began to walk slightly aimlessly down the corridor, her curiosity piqued at the disappearance of both Jan and Jackie. It was unlike Jan to just wander off without telling either Brooke or Vanessa where she was going.

Reaching the photocopier and a dead end with no Jan in sight, Brooke was about to give up and ask Nina for help instead when she heard two sets of muffled voices coming from the stationery cupboard.

“I’m just panicking, I know. But I feel like I have good reason to. I mean, it’s going to be absolute carnage if this gets out.”

“It won’t, don’t worry. I still can’t believe Bianca missed that when she vetted you. But please don’t panic, it’ll all be fine! I’ll speak to Nina and I’ll get her to quietly cancel it.”

Jackie and Jan. What the hell were they in the stationery cupboard for, and most importantly, what were they talking about? Whatever it was, it sounded serious. If it was serious business, Brooke deserved to know. Making to burst open the door in a show of outrage, she stopped herself when Jackie’s voice spoke again.

“I just feel like such a failure. I should’ve known it would get out, I should’ve said something-”

“Hey! You are not a failure,” Jan’s voice cut in urgently. There was an odd sort of pause in which Brooke wasn’t quite sure what was happening. “You’re a good person, Jackie, and a kick-ass politician. You’re the best thing to happen to this department since I arrived, even if I do say so myself.”

Soft laughter, then Jan’s voice again. “You’re incredible. Don’t ever doubt that.”

Another pause. Brooke couldn’t quite bring herself to move, somehow feeling as if she shouldn’t be hearing this at all. Composing herself, she rested her hand on the door handle.

“Jan I…this might seem inappropriate, but-”

“Okay, what the hell is going on in here?” Brooke demanded as she flung open the door and revealed herself. Both girls seemed to jump back a bit, Jackie looking to the floor awkwardly and rubbing the back of her neck, Jan’s mouth forming a perfect circle as her jaw dropped in shock. They had both gone bright red, which Brooke thought was odd for two colleagues having a professional conversation.

“Jesus, Brooke, you scared the crap out of me,” Jackie breathed out raggedly, her voice spooked but holding an underlying note of irritation.

“I don’t care, you haven’t answered my question. What were you talking about? What’s going to be carnage?” Brooke replied, keeping her glare cold. Jackie kept her eyes trained on the floor, not seeming to want to look up anytime soon. Jan still hadn’t spoken.

“Close the door,” Jackie said finally, sounding a little shaken. Feeling the wind slightly knocked out of her sails, Brooke did as she was told and watched as Jackie steadied herself on the shelf and sat on an unopened box.

“Um. Do you remember I kind of went off grid after uni? A lot of people were asking after me and couldn’t really find me.”

With a pang of guilt, Brooke’s first reaction was that she hadn’t really cared. She’d been glad to see the back of Jackie at the time, if she was honest. Times had changed, though, so Brooke simply nodded instead. Jackie wrung her hands together, her face completely racked with nerves.

“I wasn’t in a good place. My mental health spiralled out of control pretty dramatically once I graduated, I struggled to find a job for a while and when I did, I got way too into it. I would work myself into a frenzy, I’d do consecutive days on two hours of sleep…at one point I was averaging a panic attack per day. I didn’t really, um. I didn’t really have anyone to talk to about things. I tried going to therapy but it just didn’t help. I don’t know…it felt like I was making progress just being able to know that I was visiting someone, I guess, but I wasn’t really. Anyway, you don’t need to know my sob story,” Jackie frowned, shaking her head repeatedly. “To cut a long story short, I was driving into work one day, trying to do twenty things at once as usual. It was idiotic, but I was on the motorway and a text came through from my boss and wanting to seem like I was organised and in control, I tried to type and drive at the same time…the motorway was quiet, there was nobody around me…fuck, sorry-”

As Jackie’s voice broke slightly, Jan crossed over to where she sat and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I crashed into the barricade in the central reservation doing fifty miles an hour. God knows how I’m still alive. The police obviously came along with the ambulance and the fire brigade and of course they wanted to know how it was that I managed to crash on a clear stretch of road with no other drivers around me. I’ve never been able to lie to save myself, so I just told them. I’d only passed my test the year before that, so they took my license away. That’s why I can’t do the PR thing. It’s illegal for me to drive. I got a fake license purely so I could take this job.”

Leaning against the door, Brooke felt she wanted to sit down too. This was so much to deal with. She couldn’t style herself out as not caring about this, because she actually felt sick to her stomach with guilt. She couldn’t believe Jackie had coped- or not coped- completely on her own through all this horrible mess. Even though there was no way she could have known, Brooke just wished she could’ve done something differently. She desperately hoped Jackie was better now.

“Jackie, I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, don’t be sorry. This isn’t about me being…enormously god damn mental in the head, or whatever,” she snorted a derisive laugh. “I’m more worried about how we’re going to placate Bianca. Jan said she’d talk to Nina and get her to cancel the shoot but Bianca’s going to ask questions.”

“Well it’s not your fault she didn’t vet you properly,” Brooke shrugged, how Bianca would feel the absolute last thing on her mind right now. “So she can just deal with it. How Bianca feels doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re okay.”

Jackie looked up at her, her face grateful but slightly taken aback at this raw show of compassion. Truthfully, Brooke was also slightly shocked at how kind she was being towards her. She was grateful for the shout that came from the hall suddenly.

“Brooke? Guys? You in there?” Vanessa asked, as she opened the door and stepped inside the stationery cupboard that was ever-decreasing in space. Confused by the presence of her boss and the two other advisors, her perfect eyebrows became furrowed together. “There some meeting I didn’t know about?”

“Yeah, in the stationery cupboard. It was really important, girl, did you not get the memo?” Jan laughed affectionately. Laughing briefly at her own ridiculous assumption, Vanessa then tentatively looked at everyone else again.

“So…why we all here?”

Brooke briefly looked at Jackie, then sighed. “Jackie can’t do the PR stunt because legally, she’s not allowed to drive. She got done for texting while driving years ago and her license got revoked.”

Vanessa’s mouth dropped open a little as if she was about to ask how, then shut again as she clearly decided against it. “Does Bianca know?”

Giving her an affectionate smile, Brooke raised her eyebrows at her. “V. Come on. Use your brain.”

“Fuck, ‘course not. I’m so not with it today. So what’s happenin’?”

“Jan’s telling Nina to cancel it and when Bianca finds out, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What’s important here is Jackie,” Brooke said decisively. Shocked again at the vulnerability she was showing, she smoothed down her black pencil skirt and sniffed once, trying to ignore just how close Vanessa was in the tiny space. “So that’s settled. Can we all get out of this cupboard and do some damn work? I feel like I’m suffocating.”

Without speaking, the four girls filed out of the cupboard as if the conversation had never happened. Brooke’s head was still slightly spinning as she slumped back in her chair, the excel spreadsheet now more confusing than ever. She was still attempting to take in everything that Jackie had just told her. It was so much to process, and Brooke couldn’t shake the guilty feeling that was settling in the pit of her stomach, the feeling that maybe there was something she could have done to help all those years ago. Sighing, she cast her eyes to Jackie’s glass-fronted office where the Minister was now typing into her phone, her face failing to betray anything about the heartfelt conversation that had just taken place. Why the hell did Jackie have to confide in her like that? Life would be so much less stressful if everybody just kept their guard up like Brooke did.

Still, she mused, everyone would probably be a whole lot more lonely.

Suddenly, Brooke’s phone screen lit up with three messages at once- two from Jan, one from Vanessa.

J: I would love to, that sounds amazing (: we could go for sushi?? Wardour Street has some really nice places! Xxx

J: whoops wasn’t meant for you lol sorry

Brooke would probably have been about ten times more intrigued and curious about Jan’s text if she didn’t have a text from Vanessa awaiting her.

V: I don’t care what kind of front you try to put up, you’re kind and caring and a total sweetheart x

Not even daring to look up and risk meeting Vanessa’s eyes, Brooke reached for a piece of paper on her desk and began to fan the blush that had just flooded her cheeks. Trying her best not to think about what Yvie had said earlier, she began to compose a reply.

B: You’re a cutie. Don’t tell anyone I was nice to you though, being a bitch is kind of my brand x

Risking a peek up over her monitor, Brooke watched as Vanessa picked up her phone and giggled, covering her mouth with one perfectly manicured hand.

God, it was going to be a long day.

***

They had arrived.

Brooke felt like a bird of prey as she stood beside Jan and watched from above as Nicky and her two advisors were greeted by Nina in the lobby. Even from six floors up Brooke could tell that Nina was hating the fact that she had to be at the very least civil to the three opposition members. Narrowing her eyes, Brooke watched closer.

Nicky was using the tactic she employed every time she had a television interview; gushing about how happy she was to be here, playing the humble, meek elected representative of the people. She was wearing an immaculate navy pencil dress with what appeared to be a Tiffany heart around her neck, and her sleek blonde hair was piled on top of her head in a bun. Following dutifully behind her were two others. The first girl Brooke heard before she saw- a cry of excitement at being in the building had been the very thing that proclaimed the arrival of the opposition. She was still making an obscene amount of excitable noise which travelled up the floors of the lobby as if it was riding the elevator. Squawker- or Crystal, Brooke supposed she should call her- was equally well turned out. She gave off a clear professional vibe in her button-down shirt, blue skirt and little heeled boots, and her curly red hair was swept over one shoulder.

“Gigi needs her roots done. See?” Brooke whispered to Jan, not taking her eyes off the three opposition members. Receiving no response, Brooke turned to look at her friend. Jan’s shoulders were tensed up as she trained her eyes on the member of the opposition in question. Her style was immaculate and she wore a pressed white shirt with huge sleeves and a pair of smart tailored black trousers with her high heels. Her long, blonde hair had been immaculately styled and blow-dried, and Brooke found herself wondering how or if she had the time to do that every day. Looking to Jan again she found her brow furrowed, biting at her long, painted nails.

“Jan, come on. Don’t ruin your nails, you’re better than that,” Brooke scolded, grabbing gently at Jan’s wrist and pulling it away from her face. Jan finally turned to meet her eyes before looking quickly back down at the floor again. “Hey. Talk to me.”

Sighing, Jan leant against the balcony, watching as the opposition were led away to the lift. “Sorry. I know I’m not myself today. It’s just this is really, really freaking me out. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve seen these girls since I crossed the floor, but to have them here where I work? It’s just a lot. It sounds dramatic but like…it kind of feels violating, if that makes any sense?”

Brooke nodded slowly. “I know you’re worried about it. But you’re being really brave about the whole thing. And hey, you kind of have an advantage, I guess! They’re on your territory, they’re not familiar or comfortable with anything here. Mainly because nothing’s engulfed by the flames of hell or costs over £10,000.”

Snorting a brief laugh, Jan’s face grew somewhat blank again. “I mean. Their tanks are on our lawn, though, they know we’re shook.”

Rolling her eyes, Brooke laughed derisively. “Jan. These private school bitches are not going to take power. You live in this country at the moment, do you really think the public are going to vote for people like Nicky?”

“Well, the public are idiots.”

Brooke gave a snort. “Jan, you can’t say the entire nation are idiots.”

“Yes I can, I’ve met them,” Jan deadpanned, signing off with a smile. Brooke relaxed against the balcony, comforted by the fact that Jan clearly felt a little better.

“Listen. One single day. One day of smiling and nodding like a puppet and just taking whatever crap or snide comments or shade they throw at you. You’ve handled so much worse,” Brooke smiled reassuringly, resting both hands on Jan’s shoulders. Comforted, Jan made to turn back to the department when suddenly she whipped her head back round.

“Brooke,” she murmured. “What if they find out about Jackie?”

“What, that she exists? I know it was a crushing disappointment to us all but they’ll get over it some day,” she deadpanned. Jan gave a colossal roll of her eyes.

“No, you bitch! The license thing,” Jan sighed in exasperation, raising her voice just a little.

Brooke paused for a moment. It was weird how protective Jan was of her boss. She was never like that with Darienne at all. Fair enough Jackie was far more competent but still, it wasn’t as if the two shared some deep personal connection or anything. Brooke thought about asking her about it, but instead decided that that probably wasn’t what Jan needed right at this very moment.

“Who’s going to tell them? Me? You? Vanessa? Jackie herself? We’re the only ones that know. Come on, Jan, think,” Brooke tapped the side of Jan’s head once, punctuating her point. “It’s not going to get out.”

Smiling slightly, Jan seemed to compose herself and took one deep breath. As if something had occurred to her, she let out a laugh.

“God, what’s happening to you, Brooke? First you’re nice to Jackie for once and then you listen to me vent for ages. Your cracks are showing,” Jan smiled. Brooke attempted to style it out by shrugging, secretly a little unnerved that her recent empathy was being noticed.

“Stop psychoanalysing me, psycho, and let’s get back to our desks.”

No sooner had both girls turned the corner towards their office when they came face to face with the three members of the opposition coming out of the lift, Nina leading them. Jan immediately froze in place, seemingly unable to move. Brooke wanted to do something, anything to reassure her but before she could even look at Jan, Gigi’s cold grey eyes met her own.

“Nicky,” she turned to her boss, her cheerful, light voice at odds with the stare she was giving Brooke. “You go on ahead with Nina. Crystal and I are just going to have a little catch-up with a couple of old friends we haven’t seen in a while.”

Brooke wasn’t easily intimidated and she swore that today would be no different. As Gigi and Crystal advanced towards them, she drew her shoulders back and tilted her head, not giving a single thing away on her face. She could feel Jan growing more and more timid beside her. Christ, if these girls were planning on giving her friend a hard time then they’d be leaving the department in an ambulance.

“Brooke Lynn. Jan! So good to see you both,” Gigi began, her smile smug as she rested one nonchalant hand on her hip. “God, how long has it been? When was the last time we saw these two, Crystal?”

“Gee, Gigi, I don’t know! Did they not serve us at McDonalds when we went to get nuggets a couple days ago?” Crystal chimed in, flashing a quick, amused smile at her friend. Brooke muffled a derisive laugh as she shook her head. She couldn’t quite believe the schoolyard bullshit that these adult women were trying to start in her department. Still, if this was the game they were playing, then Brooke would play accordingly.

“Clever, implying that we’re both in minimum wage retail sector jobs! Something which your party loves to shit on very often. I love it,” Brooke smiled sweetly, gently clapping her hands. Gigi gave a fake laugh.

“Ladies, relax! It’s just some classic cross-party fun, no harm meant by it. You know that, right, Jan?” she flashed her a false smile. Brooke watched as Jan, shoulders now so hunched she was practically concave, gave a meek nod in response.

“You know, we really miss you, Jan,” Crystal nodded somberly, her voice high and sweet and almost-but-not-quite masking the fake sincerity behind her words. “Nicky’s always saying how open she’d be to having you back if you’d ever want to cross the floor…again! Gigi and I miss you too. We miss our friend.”

With that, Crystal reached a hand out and touched Jan’s arm gently. Flinching a little, Jan finally met her former colleague’s eyes and gave a weak smile. Brooke felt a flame of anger sting her veins as she watched the whole interaction. It was the same every time Jan ran into these two- they would start with the bitchy high school bullshit and Jan would be unable to ignore it, growing more and more quiet and subdued with every passing comment. Fuelled by her anger and dislike of behaviour of the two girls in front of her, Brooke snorted sardonically.

“Friend? Spare me the bullshit, you’d stab yourself in the back if it meant you got ten more followers on Instagram. Now if you’ll excuse us, we need to get back to work. You know, being in power? But this has been lovely,” Brooke flashed her bright white teeth in a smile, which Gigi returned equally as insincerely. “I haven’t had the conversational equivalent of hepatitis C in a long time.”

“As always, Brooke, you’re a very funny girl. Quite the comedian,” Gigi gave a tight-lipped smile as she stepped to one side and cleared a path down the corridor for the two girls. Hooking her arm through Jan’s, Brooke began to leave and had taken roughly three steps when she yelled her retort over her shoulder.

“I’ve got a lot of jokes, but none as good as your boss!”

Still fuelled from the frustration coursing through her veins, Brooke steered Jan the rest of the way down the hall and into the small kitchen like a demented steam train. It was only after she flicked the switch on the kettle so hard she thought she might have broken it when Jan spoke.

“I know they annoy you, babe, but don’t be too hard on them.”

“Don’t be too…Jan! They were standing there making you feel like a sack of shit, I wasn’t going to sit back and let them rip you to shreds! God, I can’t believe you’re defending them,” Brooke cried, grabbing two mugs and two teabags so hard she felt they might crumble apart in her hands. Silent for only a moment, Jan began playing with the edge of a tea towel, deep in thought.

“They were my friends once though. Who knows, maybe…maybe they were being serious. Maybe they do want to be friends again.”

As the kettle reached boiling point, Brooke took one deep, calming breath and began pouring them cups of tea. Part of her hated the way that she’d been conditioned into going straight to the kettle when something was angering or upsetting either her or her friends, as if a ridiculous hot drink was going to help make things any better. Vodka, now that would go some way to really help the situation. If Brooke and Jan shared a 75cl bottle, they’d be able to get so wasted that those idiots from the opposition wouldn’t bother them anymore. The bottle would also be ideal for smashing over Gigi’s smug face. Too bad it was too early for alcohol, Brooke mused, as she handed the smaller girl a steaming hot mug of tea. As Jan gave a grateful smile and began to sip, Brooke found herself wishing she could knock some sense into her. One of Jan’s biggest strengths was very feasibly also her biggest weakness; her determination to always focus on the good in people, to ignore their flaws and instead choose to look at their positives. It was something that made Jan such a horrendous judge of character. Christ, she’d worked for the opposition for a year, after all.

Casting another glance at her friend and deciding she’d visibly gained back a little of her confidence, Brooke grabbed her own mug off the countertop.

“Right, come on,” she said decisively. “We’re going to go back to our desks and drink these up and get on with our work, because these snakes that have slithered into the department don’t change a single thing about how capable you are as a professional. Okay?”

With a stifled smile Jan led the way back to the office, leaving Brooke wondering if she could still maintain the bitchy façade she always presented to the world if she was getting this good at cheering people up.

***

Sadly that wasn’t the only encounter they had to suffer with the opposition that day. Nicky soon appeared in the department’s offices with Nina, almost as a grand finale to the tour of Dosac she’d been given so far. She watched with narrowed eyes as Nicky made her way from desk to desk of the comms team, shaking hands and smiling in a sickeningly sweet manner that made Brooke want to hurl. Gigi and Crystal hovered behind Nicky’s shoulders like little cartoon devils and angels, except in Brooke’s opinion neither of them had many angelic qualities about them.

Attempting to ignore the gatecrashers in her office, Brooke turned back to her monitor. She supposed that maybe both Gigi and Crystal were pleasant people. Perhaps even Nicky at a push. They might still have been fun and friendly people to hang out with, after all, the politics they followed didn’t define them. Suddenly remembering a very obvious exception (Hitler), Brooke sent another withering glare the opposition’s way. Hit with another pang of doubt, she reasoned that comparing Nicky Doll to Hitler was perhaps an overreaction. Tuning out of the immigration stats that sat in front of her, Brooke instead found herself listening in to the conversation between Nicky and Nina.

“The space here is lovely. Very professional, very focused. There’s maybe about twenty-five percent that I’m not okay with, though. I think I’d prefer isolation booths for everybody to work in- it’ll keep everyone more on task,” Nicky asserted, Brooke noticing out the corner of her eye how Yvie and Scarlet both recoiled in horror at the thought of not being able to chat and keep each other going throughout the day.

“Okay, so you’d prefer isolation booths in addition to the longer working hours of 8.30am til 7pm, and only half an hour for lunch,” Nina confirmed. Her hair was twice as big and frizzy as it usually was, probably as a result of tearing half of it out in frustration after the amount of hours she’d spent with Nicky.

“Christ, does she want us chained to the phones as well?” Adore mumbled. Brooke immediately tensed up- if she had heard that comment, then Nicky definitely had too. Sure enough, Nicky whipped her head round and stared Adore straight in the eye.

“That’s very funny, but no. I would not be chaining people to phones, I would simply be employing popular and common tactics that are used by employers the world over. Something which you wouldn’t have to worry about, because I wouldn’t have you working for me,” she smiled fake-sweetly, her voice getting more and more clipped as she reached the end of her sentence.

Brooke found herself praying that the opposition would never reach any position of power whatsoever if they were going to have this tiny dictator running the department. Adore had slunk down into her wheely chair, as if trying to make herself invisible. Suddenly, Brooke heard Jackie’s office door open behind her.

“What the hell is going on out here?” she muttered as she reached Brooke’s desk, looking straight at the visitors to the department. Glad of an opportunity to relieve the tension, Nina once again plastered the fake smile on her face.

“Minister, may I introduce your opposite number, Shadow Minister Nicky Doll,” she smiled at Jackie, waving a hand at Nicky as if she was unveiling a booby prize on a game show.

It was interesting to watch how the two women regarded each other. Nicky immediately narrowed her eyes, pursing her lips together in a display of agitation at no longer being the highest authority in the room. She made no show of moving to shake Jackie’s hand, in fact she didn’t appear to want to speak to Jackie at all. Instead, Jackie herself made the first move and stepped forward once, twice, finally reaching a safe distance and holding out a hand for Nicky to shake. Her face was placid and gave nothing away. Almost Sleeping Beauty-esque, Brooke thought.

“Nicky, it’s so good to finally meet you properly,” she smiled calmly as Nicky gingerly took her hand to shake. “I hope you and your team have had a good day in the department?”

“Oh yes, it’s been lovely. Although obviously there are a number of things that will need changed once we get into power!” Nicky gave a fake little laugh, her eyes still hostile.

“Well. If,” Jackie wrinkled her nose in a smile, which Nicky returned sourly.

Brooke was suddenly distracted by a buzz from her phone. Yvie.

Y: Christ there’s more fake smiles in here than the outpatients’ at a fucking plastic surgery

If Brooke had been in the mood she probably would have been howling with laughter, but the tense, uncomfortable conversation was still taking place.

“I found it interesting that you chose to highlight my disagreement with Manila Luzon in your interview with Chad Michaels. I felt it slightly undermined your point about the need to raise other women in politics up when you yourself were clearly intent on taking me down,” Nicky continued to smile falsely, the bitter undertone to her words not going unnoticed by Brooke. Jackie kept calm, smiling lazily back and raising her eyes to the ceiling.

“Oh, I don’t know about undermining my point. In order to make a good argument, you have to present some evidence to back it up, and that’s all I was doing. I’m sure you understand it was nothing personal,” she said, giving a little nod.

Nicky flared her nostrils, her face now unimpressed as she swept a hand through her hair, rendering her bun a little messy. “Well. It was lovely to meet you anyway, Jackie, but I still have numerous issues to talk through with Nina. If you’ll excuse me.”

With that, Nicky turned on her heel, not even bothering to wait for a reply. On her way back to Nina, she stopped to murmur something in Gigi’s ear, which then resulted in Gigi marching round the corner. Brooke could have followed her up, but was too distracted by Jackie coming to hover at her desk.

“Numerous issues? I’ll bet she has numerous fucking issues, God. Let’s hope that lot never get into power, she’s more unhinged than a flat pack IKEA cupboard,” Jackie whispered, causing Brooke to splutter a laugh. Jackie smirked at her reaction, then her face grew suddenly serious. “Did you know if Nina managed to get that photo op cancelled?”

“She did it about half an hour after we spoke. Jan really got on her back about it, so it was pretty impossible for Nina to wriggle out of it,” Brooke explained offhandedly, trying in vain to focus on her work. Looking up, she noticed that Jackie seemed to have a faraway look on her face.

“She’s so good, isn’t she? Jan. She’s just incredible. So organised and on it,” Jackie said quietly to no-one in particular. Confused, Brooke simply nodded. Apparently remembering where she was, Jackie cleared her throat, smoothed her skirt down and returned to her office.

Around ten minutes later, Brooke thought she was making some real headway with the persisting immigration data. That was until she almost jumped out of her skin when she felt a hand come crashing down on her shoulder. Spinning around rapidly in her wheely chair she was shocked to see Bianca looming above her, her face grave as her eyes met Brooke’s.

“Bianca, holy fuck. You scared the crap out of me,” Brooke sighed, Bianca not even cracking a smile as her grip on Brooke’s shoulder tightened and she escorted her out of the room. Brooke’s stomach churned as she was led out into the corridor. What the hell was happening, or what the hell had happened, or what the hell was about to happen?

The bright white light of the corridor contrasted violently with Bianca’s expression, which was the personification of the wrath of God itself. She was silent for a moment, which prompted Brooke to tentatively speak first.

“So, um. Why did you want to see-”

“I want to know why a certain Sasha Belle over at transport now has the very same PR stunt I very nearly passed a kidney stone to secure for Jackie,” Bianca snapped. Her voice was cold and low, and Brooke felt goosebumps prickle over her skin just hearing her speak. She felt conflicted. Half of her wanted to reveal Jackie’s personal reasons for having backed out; it was a legitimate excuse and might even make Bianca feel some form of remorse, God willing. On the other hand, it was a part of Jackie’s life which Brooke was sure she wanted to leave behind, and if more and more people knew about it, well. That would make it increasingly hard to forget. Biting her lip, she tried to tell a white lie.

“She had personal reasons for backing out. We decided as her team of advisors that it would be best if she didn’t go through with it.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what deeply held personal fucking reasons she had against it, it is her JOB to go to photo ops, it is her JOB to give herself media coverage!”

“Well she couldn’t even if you wanted her to. Not legally anyway,” Brooke found herself saying, her voice too loud in the echoey hallway. Bianca raised her eyebrows a little, as if urging Brooke to go on. Slightly regretting having not simply kept her mouth shut, Brooke continued.

“Jackie had her driving license revoked. It was years ago- she was texting while driving and crashed on the motorway. So even if she wanted to do the damn publicity, she couldn’t,” she explained, sighing as Bianca’s face slowly took on a look of realisation. “I don’t know how you didn’t already know this, Bianca. Her license was fake, I don’t get how that slipped by you. I thought you did background checks on everyone that came within a five mile radius of the party.”

Bianca exhaled loudly, slowly running one hand down her face. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it, then opened it again.

“When I asked you about Jackie, it wasn’t just a casual, out-of-interest enquiry. We were seriously fucking desperate. We had nothing on her, nothing on her at all apart from the fact that we knew she had a degree in politics and she’d been around the stock exchange for years. We were just desperate to get Darienne out of the party and stop the fucking spiral of madness she was driving us all down. Her position had become toxic, Brooke Lynn, nobody we approached about the job would touch it. So we needed somebody unknown, someone who wouldn’t know or understand who she was succeeding. That’s why we failed to do intensive background checks. I mean, we established that Jackie hadn’t murdered or stabbed anyone, for Christ’s sake. But everything else we had to skim over. We couldn’t have had Darienne in her job for any longer, it would have just…it would have just killed the party.”

Brooke could sort of understand where Bianca was coming from. Taking a calming breath, she suddenly felt the panic rise up in her throat again. “But Bianca, if this gets to the papers-”

Bianca cut her off, holding a single hand up in front of her face and looking down the corridor with suspicion. Wordlessly, she walked to the double doors at the end of the corridor and wrenched them open. Behind them stood Gigi, who jumped at the sudden movement.

“Oh. Hello Bianca. I was just, uh. Trying to find the toilets. This department is like a damn labyrinth, you know?” she laughed awkwardly, almost paralysed under Bianca’s glare.

“Do you want a massive cup to press against the door too, or are you good?” she quipped dryly.

Brooke’s heart began to palpitate nervously. Gigi had clearly been behind that door and listening for quite some time. How long, she didn’t know. But if she’d heard the reason why Jackie couldn’t drive, this was all different kinds, shades, textures and flavours of bad.

“Bianca, really. All I heard was that Jackie wasn’t exactly vetted properly. Which, you know, could be kind of a big story in itself, I think,” Gigi smiled cunningly. All at once, Brooke wanted to laugh. Attempting to get the upper hand on Bianca Del Rio was an interesting tactic, one which basically ensured you weren’t going to win. Deciding to step back, Brooke let Bianca take the reins.

“Oh, I see! You were looking for a story! Well here, here’s a great one for you,” Bianca smiled sinisterly, putting Brooke in mind of a predator about to pounce. “Did you know that Jaqueline Cox is sitting in that office there despite the fact her driving license got revoked? She crashed her car on the motorway because she tried to text and drive at the same time. Did you not know that?”

Brooke watched as Gigi’s face lit up at the revelation. She had to admit she didn’t really know where Bianca was going with this or what she had to gain from revealing the information to one of the Shadow Minister’s aides. As Brooke attempted to interject, Bianca simply turned and fixed her with a smile.

“You didn’t know that, no?” she asked Gigi again. She simply shook her head, delighted at what had just been revealed. “Oh, wait, of course…you wouldn’t know that! Because the only people who do know that are, um, Miss Cox…her three advisors…and me. If this information got to the press…I would know that it came from you.”

Brooke wanted to practically jump for joy as she saw Gigi’s face fall, growing very apprehensive as Bianca took two steps towards her. Her voice lowering, Bianca continued the onslaught.

“And I would rain down upon you so hard that your body would have to be re-assembled by crash team investigators-” she hissed. Gigi opened her mouth to defend herself and Bianca immediately stopped her. “- do not fucking interrupt me, girl. Now, you breathe a word of this to ANYONE, you fucking living toothpick, and I will-”

Already shaking with laughter, Brooke ducked her head out of the door and ran into the offices.

“Jan! ‘Ness! Come quick. Bianca’s going off on one at Gigi,” she stage-whispered, the two girls looking up, bemused but quickly following Brooke back to the corridor doors nonetheless. The double doors were fronted with a small pane of clear glass, which the three girls all peered through to see Bianca continuing to verbally grill Gigi, now far less composed than she was before.

“…I will eviscerate you, right? And I mean, I don’t have your education, I don’t know what that means. But I’ll start by plucking your eyes out and I’ll busk it from there. Okay? Glad we’re agreed. Have a great day.”

As Gigi stumbled back down the hall in a daze as if she’d just crawled out of an avalanche, the three girls on the other side of the door tried to compose themselves after their laughing fit.

“Bianca has such a way with words,” Jan mused, wiping tears from her eyes. “So why was she yelling at Gigi, what had she done? Looked at her?”

Brooke explained what had happened to the two girls, watching as their facial expressions shifted from confused, to fearful, then some semblance of reassured. There was still an aspect that was a little panicked, however, the knowledge that Gigi knew about Jackie’s past clearly worrying them both.

“Look, don’t give it too much thought. Bianca has it all under control. She always does,” Brooke reassured them, shrugging as she walked back to her desk.

“Guess I’m happy to trust Bianca,” Vanessa smiled, relaxing a little. “Hey, you ladies had lunch yet?”

“Not yet. Pret?” Brooke offered, Vanessa smiling beautifully and picking up her bag from her chair. Brooke didn’t miss how Jan simply nodded silently, her face still troubled, clearly not as trusting of Bianca as Vanessa was.

***

As the three girls sat huddled around Jan’s desk eating their lunch, Brooke watched as Vanessa scoffed down her messy meatball panini with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese that oozed out the side and made long, inconvenient strings. She could have teased Vanessa for her shambles of a lunch but she decided against it, instead choosing to compliment her.

“‘Ness, how can you eat literally whatever you want and still look so good?” Brooke asked, attempting to look offhanded but still feeling like her guts were made of jelly as the words came out her mouth. It was hugely tiresome how much more nervous and self-aware she was around Vanessa now that she’d actually acknowledged her crush on her. It was much harder to pretend things were purely platonic if she gave her a compliment.

In response, Vanessa simply smiled bashfully and shrugged, her mouth full of food. “Hey, I always wonder the same thing about you, baby. I’d kill to look like you.”

“With these thighs? Girl, no you wouldn’t,” Brooke snorted, trying to keep herself from blushing.

“You got good thighs,” Vanessa insisted, making Brooke wonder just how much attention Vanessa paid to her legs. Snapping out of it, Brooke told herself that she was probably just being kind. After a beat of silence, Jan cut in.

“Well, I know both of you find me wildly attractive and are also madly jealous of my amazing figure, which is why neither of you have said anything,” she joked through a mouthful of salmon salad. Brooke gave her a playful shove, shocked when she heard a little cry.

“Jesus, Jan! It wasn’t that sore.”

“That wasn’t me. That came from Jackie’s office,” Jan said gravely, looking at the Minister’s office door where she could just see the blonde bun belonging to Nicky peering over the strip of frosted glass. Exchanging concerned looks, all three girls made their way over.

Brooke was the first to walk in and when her gaze met Jackie’s her heart sank. She was sitting behind her desk and had turned pale, her eyes frightened and huge in her face which had gone almost ghostly white. Turning her gaze to Nicky she noticed that the girl seemed smug in some way, as if she had the upper hand. In a moment, Brooke knew exactly what had happened.

Gigi had spilled.

“Miss Doll, you ain’t actually allowed in here. This is the Minister’s private office,” Vanessa began in a valiant effort to stick up for Jackie who was clearly past sticking up for herself.

“Oh, it’s quite alright. Jackie and I were just having a little chat. A little reminisce on the past, if you like. Well. Her past,” Nicky smiled, casting an amused gaze at Jackie whose face was ashen and defeated as she sat at her desk. Brooke suddenly felt herself overcome with fury.

“I hope you’re giving Gigi a big pay rise for that information. She won’t have much time to spend it though once Bianca finds out. I’d maybe give her two…three days left to live?” she hissed, her face contorted as she glared at the shadow minister.

“Brooke Lynn, is it?” Nicky addressed her, Brooke momentarily wondering how she knew her name. “Brooke Lynn. We all know what it’s like in politics. Unfortunately if someone has some information on someone else, it’s only natural that they’re going to exploit it. And that’s all that’s happening here! It’s not personal. Just professional.”

“Like hell are you exploiting anything,” Jan spat, her face dark. Come to think of it, Brooke had never really seen her so angry, but the tiny girl was like a spitfire as she narrowed her eyes at her old boss. “You know full well where to draw the line between personal and political information. If you leak this to the media then you’re more reprehensible than the party you represent.”

“I’m sorry ladies, but this is how you play the game, and I play to win. I’m not really prepared to discuss it any further,” Nicky rolled her eyes, picking up her bag from where it sat on Jackie’s desk.

Just as she made to leave, Nicky turned to see Bianca standing in the doorway of Jackie’s office, glancing with confusion at the scene in front of her.

“Bianca!” Vanessa cried, for once happy to see the Prime Minister’s enforcer. “We were just talkin’ about how Nicky maybe shouldn’t go to the papers about Jackie…? Telling them about her driving license? Tryin’ to think of a reason why this would reflect badly on her party in some way…?”

Brooke watched as Vanessa looked pleadingly at Bianca, willing her to do something, anything to spin them out of the situation. Bianca for her part seemed calm, upbeat even.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe she should! Good idea!” she shrugged, flashing a smile Nicky’s way as she turned and made to leave the room.

Vanessa’s face immediately dropped as if she’d been slapped. Jan’s expression was completely blank. Brooke didn’t know what to think. It seemed as if Jackie was holding her breath, and Nicky simply stood rooted to the spot, her eyes still on Bianca as if she knew there was more to come. Sure enough, Bianca reached the doorframe, stopped, and turned on her heel.

“Oh, shit, wait a minute! I know why she shouldn’t! Because you know, if she did that…she’d be dead,” Bianca said simply.

Brooke watched as Nicky blinked silently at her. Bianca continued to speak.

“To me. To her advisors. To her party. To the electorate. And the only job she’d get in power is for this government’s catering company sweeping up crumbs as a kitchen cleaner, because I’d call every journalist I know, which of course- that’s all of them! Isn’t it Nicole! And I’d tell them all that lovely little story I’ve had saved for a rainy day, about a certain Right Honourable Lord Doll- how is your Dad, by the way?- and how he enjoyed a lovely five years as a member of the Bullingdon Club at university, a club so fucking morally bankrupt they had a exposé film made about them! Of course, the homeless person your Dad had to burn money in the face of for his initiation- he didn’t enjoy it so much. Nor did the live pigeon he had to bite the head off of either. And I believe there’s also rumblings about…something about a pig, which I won’t go into. And so I’d quite happily email all these journalists any photos and soundbites and CCTV footage they wanted, because I’d say…I’d say that’s quite a big story. I’d say that would probably contest a Minister’s silly little eight-year-old car accident in the running order of the ten o’clock news. That’s what I’d tell her,” Bianca finally finished calmly, smiling a little at Nicky whose mouth was now hanging open like a goldfish. Turning to Vanessa, Bianca simply nodded on her way out of the door. “But maybe you should tell her!”

Catching Vanessa’s eye, Brooke couldn’t help but burst into a triumphant grin. Vanessa returned the smile, now completely relaxed knowing that Jackie had the upper hand. Nicky was still standing completely still and hadn’t moved since Bianca had left.

“I’ll, um. I’ll ask Nina to get your coat,” Jackie addressed Nicky pleasantly, sitting at her desk and pushing a single number on the phone as Nicky simply nodded wordlessly.

Brooke wanted to burst out laughing. Bianca had her enemies in Westminster, but she was also an absolute mastermind.

***

They had made it through the day. They always did, after all. They were a great team, Brooke thought, and God help them if they were ever disbanded in any way. Sitting in a quieter corner of the office with her head tipped against the head of the sofa, Brooke took a deep breath. It was often needed at the end of days like these. Jan sat to her right, curled up against the arm of the couch and simply staring into the distance. Thinking for a moment, Brooke turned her head and stared at Jan.

“Do you think Bianca really had all that stuff to back up what she said about Nicky’s Dad?”

Jan smirked and met Brooke’s eyes. “It’s Bianca. She’s a walking, talking database. She probably has shit on all of us. She probably knows stuff about us that we haven’t even done yet.”

Before Brooke could even try to get her head around Jan’s words, Vanessa joined them. She flung herself against the sofa dramatically, gently tilting her head so that it rested in the crook of Brooke’s shoulder. For a second she could barely breathe.

“I wonder what she’s going to do to Gigi when she next sees her. Can’t imagine I’d want to be in her six-inch heels right now,” Brooke continued, trying to talk through her breathlessness.

“We talkin’ about Bianca?” Vanessa murmured, nuzzling her head against Brooke’s shoulder to get comfortable. Christ, why the fuck did she have to do that?

“Yeah,” Jan smiled wistfully. “God, I’d be running for the hills if I was her. Alyssa’s charity ball is in three weeks, remember? I wouldn’t put it past Bianca to stage a live crucifixion as the night’s entertainment.”

Brooke felt Vanessa laugh softly against her side. She was such a warm, happy person, at least when she wasn’t stressing her head off at the latest party shambles. She was too good to be working here, but Brooke was so glad that she was.

“So you’re not going to be ditching us to run back to the opposition anytime soon then? Not going to be meeting up with Gigi and Crystal for a cute little catch-up coffee?” Brooke only half-joked, turning to address Jan again. She watched as Jan’s face grew a little dark, her brow furrowing as she let out a derisive laugh.

“I’m not fucking with anyone who attempts to sabotage Jackie’s career,” she said forebodingly.

There it was again, Brooke thought, this protective side to Jan which she’d never really seen before. She didn’t think she’d ever get over how strange it was.

Footsteps behind the sofa prompted all three of them to turn around. It was Jackie- she’d freshened up her makeup a little and had sprayed some deodorant or perfume or something that smelt nice. Reaching the sofa, she gave a warm smile to the three girls.

“Thanks for your support today, ladies,” she said sincerely, leaning on the back of the sofa. “It was a tough one, but we got there in the end.”

“Sorry that Nina couldn’t arrange an alternative bit of PR in time, Jackie,” Vanessa smiled apologetically. Jackie let out a small laugh.

“Are you kidding? That was a blessing in disguise. After the day I’ve had the last thing I want to do is go and feign interest in electric cars for an hour,” she shook her head. “Seriously though, thank you. You three are a total blessing.”

Brooke was surprised when she then turned to face Jan, her expression turning a little shy. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, two minutes. I need to pack up and I’ll be good,” Jan smiled timidly back at her, her cheeks going a little red.

“Okay. I’ll wait at the lifts. See you tomorrow, girls,” Jackie said finally, waving goodbye to Brooke and Vanessa before walking away.

Vanessa tipped her head off Brooke’s shoulder to lean forward and look at Jan, who was grabbing her coat. “Where are you two off to then, Miss Ma’am?”

Jan stopped in her tracks, as if she hadn’t really been expecting the question. “Oh! Um, Jackie’s just giving me a lift home.”

Brooke screwed up her face at her friend. “A lift home? In her car? That she drives? Is that meant to be a joke?”

Seemingly realising her mistake, Jan smiled and shook her head. “I meant her driver. Her driver’s going to drop me home on the way back to Jackie’s.”

Brooke sat blankly for a moment, turning to Vanessa and seeing her face hold the exact same expression. Vanessa laughed in disbelief. “Your flat’s five minutes away, you lazy shit!”

“Hey, give me a break! I’m exhausted, a five minute walk is still a walk I don’t want to do, and I’ll take what I can get,” Jan shrugged, grabbing her bag and making to leave. “Bye, girls. See you both tomorrow.”

Brooke gave a tired reply as Jan made her way out of the department. Sighing, Vanessa leant against the arm of the sofa, kicking her legs over Brooke’s lap and subsequently causing Brooke’s pulse to quicken by about 90%. They sat in silence for a moment, Brooke’s brain too full to even contemplate starting a conversation. Luckily, it was Vanessa that spoke first.

“Do you think something’s goin’ on there? Between Jackie and Jan?”

Brooke paused. If it were any other situation, she’d maybe have thought Vanessa was right. But this was work, and sometimes people got incredibly passionate about their party and the people that ran it. Jan had had to put up with Nicky, and then Darienne. It was only natural that now that she was finally working for someone competent of course she was going to want with every fibre of her being for that person to do well. Turning to face Vanessa, Brooke made a doubtful face.

“No, girl. Jan’s just loyal. She wants to see Jackie do well. That’s all I think it is anyway.”

Brooke watched as Vanessa knit her brows together, frowning momentarily then casting her gaze into her lap.

“You know-” she began, then cut herself off as she decided against saying whatever she had to say. Then, changing her mind, she began again. “I swear you’re so blind half the time, Brooke Lynn. I think you have your guard up so high you can’t even see when someone has feelings for someone else. It’s kinda…I don’t know. Anyway. It don’t matter.”

Brooke watched, astounded as Vanessa swung her legs off her lap and stood up. Her face was bright red, as if she was embarrassed in some way. Brooke felt she had to reply, but she had no idea what to say or how to respond. She simply blinked at Vanessa, as if her last ditch attempt at communication was morse code.

“I’ll, uh. I’ll see you tomorrow then?” Vanessa continued, smoothing down her dress and smiling as if she hadn’t said a thing. Going along with the façade, Brooke nodded slowly. “Bye, Brooke.”

As Vanessa’s footsteps retreated down the office and into the lift, Brooke just stared straight ahead and tried to make sense of what Vanessa had said, or what it even meant, or what the implications were. It had felt like she was mad at her in some way, although Brooke couldn’t figure out what she’d done. What had she meant by it all? It made Brooke’s head hurt.

She was still there when the cleaners arrived half an hour later, and she still hadn’t managed to unscramble her brain. Giving up, Brooke grabbed her coat and bag and made her way to the lifts, stuck with the feeling that somehow she’d left something behind.

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synthesis-music · 5 years ago

Photo

On the importance of not storing random crap in your instrument cases.

Trombone came in with a janky rotor that was sticking at the end of its arc of travel. Lifted the bell out of the case and heard something rattling around inside. Shook the bell around and a bobby-pin fell out.

Popped the rotor out to see why it was sticking. A good nine times out of ten it’s because things are dirty and need a good cleaning, but this rotor wasn’t gross at all. What it did have was this tiny chewed-looking bit, which was catching on the casing wall whenever it rotated past the opening.

The bobby-pin was small enough to make its way around the curve of the main tuning slide and into the valve casing. When the rotor was activated it jammed up on the pin. Releasing the lever let the pin come loose and fall back out of the casing, but of course the damage it did was still there and causing problems.

It was, luckily, a relatively quick fix with a very tiny bit of filing down the high points and carefully burnishing it smooth again, and the interior of the casing itself escaped with no damage from the incident.

The lesson to take away from this is: don’t leave random items loose in your instrument case, especially if it’s small enough to work its way through the tubing to get stuck deep inside your instrument. Woodwind players, you are not immune to this. Sax mouthpieces get stuck inside saxophones way more often than you would think.

#musical instrument repair #trombone #brass instrument #brasswind #brass

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writing-and-uhh-stuff · 5 years ago

Text

My sweater half

On ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21886408

Summary:

The day before Christmas Eve Roman is faced with a problem: his own Christmas present plus his upset beloved Patton, who did his best at making said present. Would Roman be able to fix it?

Pairing: romantic Royality

Warnings: None

❤️💙👑👕👓💙❤️

‘Roman!’

Creativity almost dropped his almost-fully-manicured sword upon hearing the whine that had escaped from his lover’s mouth.

The mindpalace’s commons had been completely silent only brief seconds ago, when Roman was the only one there. The Christmas tree shone bright and showed off its colourful baubles and garlands like a French aristocrat from the 17 century. It was the 23. December, just a day before Christmas eve.

‘Roman!’ the plea echoed across the room once more. A cardigan-clad man, glasses nestled janky in his bed hair and clothes wrinkled, made his way slowly across the room, each step a soft and at the same time distraught sound. From his movements alone, from the shaky-breaths to the relentless rubbing of his face, Roman understood the other was feeling perturbed. His breath got stuck in his throat; normally, whenever he saw the love of his life, he made the room seem brighter. Now he stood there, the portrait of a sad subject. And Roman would do anything for him to be happy.

Patton, teary-eyed and hugging something Roman could only describe as a mess of wool, stood droopy in front of the sofa, hunched shoulders, unable to make eye contact with the other Side. Not being able to get lost in his eyes or caress his face, his cheeks with freckles sprinkled like stardust, was about to crush Creativity.

He threw his sword out of the way as soon as he could. The blade clanked uselessly on the floor.

‘Padre, dear, what’s the matter?’ Creativity quickly sprang to hug him, squeezing tight, brushing the other’s hair with his fingertips. ‘Your prince is here to slay any monster and punish any bandit that dares upset his beloved!’

Albeit a few more tears slipped out and watered Roman’s sash, Patton couldn’t help but crack a smile and nestled himself even closer, practically rubbing his entire face on Roman’s chest. The two of them remained like this until Patton’s breathing had calmed down completely. He pulled away gently and put his smudged glasses back on. Roman was about to say something else but saw that Patton wanted to explain:

‘This is… was supposed to be your Christmas present, Ro.’ Patton’s arm swung meekly. Creativity’s attention was immediately focused on the thing in it, mostly because he really wasn’t sure what that was supposed to be. Afraid of upsetting his boyfriend further though, he didn’t say a word. ‘I wanted to knit you a Christmas sweater, just like you do for us every year. But I messed it up! I tried fixing it but couldn’t, and now there’s no time to make you another gift. I’m so sorry… I ruined your Christmas before it’s even began!’

‘No, no! Are you kidding? You haven’t ruined anything!’ the creative Side wiped away the tear marks on Patton’s face and planted two kisses on each of his cheeks, as well as on his nose. He took his time to gaze with the utmost affection at his aquamarine irises. ‘The only gift I want is to see you smile! I don’t need a grandiose romantic gesture to be satisfied – simply the thought that you took time to teach yourself how to knit just for me is flinging me right up on cloud nine!’

Patton held Roman’s hand on the side of his face.

‘Yeah, but… this isn’t really something particularly hard to make and I still couldn’t do it properly.’ Morality averted his eyes sideways.

‘It’s fine, really.’ Roman looked at Patton’s attempt at knitting and an idea sprung to mind. ‘Hey, can I have it for a moment?’

‘Sure, if you insist.’ The failed jumper was passed onto Roman, who sat back down on the couch and had a closer, more thorough look at it.

Most of it seemed to be relatively competent knitted, if you didn’t count the sleeves and the collar. And the fact that on the left it had started to completely fall apart because Patton had tried to unweave and reassemble the fabric several times to get it right. In the process, a lot of it had been torn and severed. However, Roman was absolutely and utterly charmed by the colours chosen and the quite intricate pattern Morality had wanted to impress him with.

‘You know, now it may seem in a rough state, but I think we can save it from the premature demise you could have relegated it to in the depths of the trash can. If you want to help me with it, of course.’ Roman wiggled his eyebrows and grinned teasingly, then conjured a few balls of yarn, scissors and each a pair of hooks. In spite of his surprise that the sweater was not a lost cause, Patton’s smile now threatened to outshine the sun. ‘We’re going to have to cut it in half because – do you see that on the left? – it’s going to tear completely, and we need to fix the sleeves. What do you say – I’ll take the right and you do the left sleeve, alright?’

‘Let’s see if we got any tricks up our sleeves!’ said Patton and Roman’s laughter rang through the mindpalace.

The creative Side had already grasped the scissors and started cutting with surgical precision. The jumper came undone easily and allowed the two to revamp it whole. Listening to Roman’s instructions, Patton worked slowly, but surely, on fixing his part. The other Side had purposefully left him preoccupied, which perfectly served his cunning and, in the end, stunning plan. The amount of wool used on the main part was altered heavily, yet that was done in such a sneaky-cheeky way so that Morality wouldn’t notice the difference. Sure, Roman often thought Logan was too stuck up on planning. He now had to admit to himself that it was actually quite fun, seeing how his dear Patton had bit his lower lip and furrowed his eyebrows in concentration, who would be so astonished with the final result.

Hours passed. At some point after the banter had dried itself out Patton was humming “Jingle Bell Rock” and Creativity joined in. Gradually the hum grew into a complete melody and then transformed into the song. Roman knew how much Patton loved both to hear him sing along and for their voices to harmonize effortlessly. The songs changed – “All I want for Christmas is you” replaced the old tune and so forth until they somehow ended up singing “All Star”. Right about the middle of the song Roman put down his hooks and glanced at the moral Side.

‘Wait – ‘Patton mumbled. ‘This is all wrong!’

Lifting up the cloth he was about to realize that –

‘It’s too big!’ His face scrunched up, his lip was trembling. ‘We made it too big!’

‘We made it just right, my ever-daylight!’ Before Patton could become sorrowful again, Roman planted a quick kiss on his jaw. Afterwards he grabbed the new, improved jumper. ‘Put it on!’

‘Princey, this won’t – ‘

‘Please, just do it!’

Patton nodded and obliged by clumsily shoving his head through the neckhole and his arm in the left sleeve. What he didn’t expect was that Roman would do the exact same, his head popping in next to his boyfriend’s to witness his delightfully stunned expression. The sweater fitted both of them perfectly. Beaming at this, Roman threw his right arm in the air proclaimed:

‘Surprise!’

A cannonry of smooches showered the prince as Patton clasped him in a tight embrace and nuzzled him close. During this sentimentally vicious attack both Sides had become giggly blushing messes.

‘You were right, Ro, that two heads think sweater than one!’ Morality lied down on Creativity’s chest. ‘I’d have never come up with something quite like this!’

Suppressing his giggling, Roman took a deep breath.

‘The best Christmas gift is you, my sweater half.’

#royality #roman sanders #patton sanders #romantic royality #sanders sides #sanders sides fic #my fics #ts fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction #christmas

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doctorocsid · 5 years ago

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THE MAKING OF PHOENIX WRIGHT’S SECOND DAY OFF

Or: The Immense Struggle of Trying to Make Decent Content

A good year and a half. That’s how much time passed between me starting Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off and me uploading it to YouTube. What a hell of a load off my back that was. If you couldn’t tell, making this video was a bit of an undertaking, to say the least. And by “undertaking” I mean “an exercise in pure agony”. So, I figured I’d do a bit of a writeup here so I can get across to you the absolute hell of an experience making this video was.

PART 1: THE INITIAL PLANNING STAGES

The original “Phoenix Wright’s Day Off” was released in February 2018 to, though not a lot of views, a generally very positive response. Despite its janky animation, people seemed to enjoy it for its complete ridiculousness, comedic timing, and overly-choreographed fighting. Not to mention literally being the only Ace Attorney-themed Garry’s Mod video ever made that actually uses the Ace Attorney characters. (I’m still the only person to ever do that as of the time of writing. Woohoo.)

Given the positive reception and the fact that I literally ended the video with a “To Be Continued”, I was ready as I could ever be to start work on a sequel. The first one only took me a couple weeks to make, so surely a sequel wouldn’t take much longer, right?

Oh, how wrong I was. Still, I started planning out exactly how things would go. Throwing around ideas in my head. I needed it to be bigger and better than the original, of course. How was I gonna do that? Well, my initial plan was, uh, misguided, to say the least. What I wanted to do at first was create the sequel entirely in Source Filmmaker, along with giving it a darker, more serious tone to contrast the ridiculous slapstick of the first. Not a great idea for a sequel to a video that mainly relied on throwing ragdolls around for comedy.

https://streamable.com/taxrn

The original intro for PW2DO, based off the intro for “Fargo”. A lot less cool-looking than the final intro I made. (Even though I intended the video to be made in SFM, I made the intro in Gmod solely because I could just film myself driving the car instead of having to animate it manually.)

The final intro was done in a not too difficult fashion - the characters were animated in Garry’s Mod on top of greenscreens, which I then imported into Premiere and changed to solid colors. Added some extra video effects I found in places. Set it to an instrumental of Propane Nightmares. I’m proud of how it turned out, mostly. I won’t deny after I introduced the characters I didn’t exactly know what else to do with it, so I just filled it with some random actiony shots I thought might look cool. Incidentally, this was the only part of the final video that was made in Premiere - the rest of it was just edited together in Vegas Pro. Which crashed many times during editing. Fun.

PART 2: THE PAINS OF INDECISION (AND ALSO SOURCE FILMMAKER)

Nonetheless, I got to work, despite not actually knowing how to use Source Filmmaker. “I’ll figure it out as I go along,” I figured. And over time, more or less, I managed to figure it out. Sort of. And by “figure it out” I mean “become subject to the true hell that is SFM”.

Let me give you some quick background here. SFM has two main editors for animation: The “motion editor”, and the “graph editor”. The motion editor uses a relatively easy-to-understand method of animating: you select an object you want to animate (a prop, weapon, ragdoll, etc), select the span of time in which you want the thing to move to its new destination, and then you move it to the new destination. Sounds simplistic, but can be used extensively to create good-looking animation. (I myself used this method for the bar fight in PW2DO.) The graph editor on the other hand, is much more involved, depending on the tried-and-true method of using keyframes for animation. Some people prefer this one because it allows you to directly edit and fine-tune each little animation curve to your liking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUXnpk8xDLg

This unfinished PW2DO prototype was animated entirely with the graph editor in SFM.

Really, you can use either one for animating, whichever suits you best. For me, personally, the graph editor feels like something designed in the seventh circle of hell specifically to torture me. Why does adding a new keyframe screw up all my preexisting animation? Why does adding a new keyframe make the ragdoll’s bones stretch out to infinity? Those are just a couple questions I shouted at my computer screen while trying to figure it out.

Eventually, I just gave up. I came to terms both with the fact that I wasn’t satisfied with what I was making, and with the fact that trying to use SFM’s graph editor to animate was making me want to julienne my keyboard. (I hadn’t figured out, or really even considered the motion editor at the time.) “Screw it,” I said to myself. “I’ll do in Gmod, like the last one.”

PART 3: OH RIGHT, GMOD SUCKS TOO

The first PWDO was relatively simple to make, at least compared to the second one. There were two main tools I used: Stop Motion Helper (a tool for animating stuff within Gmod itself without the need for actual stop motion or whatnot), and the classic technique of “throw stuff around in front of the camera”. I had little to no experience doing 3D animation when making it, but it worked out anyway. It let me practice some camera framing stuff, too. All I was really doing for most of it was animating the characters moving along with the camera. But for the second video, I desperately wanted to up the ante. I wanted it to be cooler. More edgy. More cinematic. Turns out, there’s one main reason that proved difficult for me. And that’s that Garry’s Mod kinda sucks for long-term animation.

Here’s the difference between animating in SFM and animating in GMod. SFM is made for animation. GMod isn’t. So, if you want animating in GMod to be anything less than horrendously tedious, you need some addons to help you. Stop Motion Helper is a neat little addon that lets you animate stuff in Garry’s Mod with the ��tweening” type of animation. Simply put, you pose something in point A, make a keyframe, move it to point B, and then make another keyframe. Stop Motion Helper will then automatically animate it moving between the two points. Thus, instead of the stop motion method where you have to pose every individual frame, you technically only have to pose the beginning and end. Not that it looks very good if you only do that. Of course, like any kind of animation, it’s still something that requires a lot of effort if you don’t want it to look cheap and robotic. But it works. Sort of.

Doesn’t work too well with vehicles, though.

There were a multitude of small limitations and annoyances, however, that proved to be annoying to deal with in GMod nonetheless.

FIRST PROBLEM: Because GMod isn’t made specifically for animation, resuming a project within it is kind of a hellish endeavor at times. Unlike Source Filmmaker where you can just open a project file and everything remains the same, Garry’s Mod’s saving tool doesn’t save a lot of the addon-related data when you create a save file of whatever scenario you’ve made. That includes stop motion helper animation. While SMH does have its own support for saving animations, you have to save every single animation as its own separate file. Take the scene in PW2DO, for instance, where Phoenix shoots those cops to get the security footage.

https://streamable.com/2ikd1

There are seven moving parts in this scene - Phoenix, the picture frame, both cops, the gun, the shampoo bottle, and the camera. Note how many of these are moving in each camera shot along with how many shots there are (ignoring after the cop goes out the window, because that’s not done with SMH). That’s ten shots, if you didn’t want to count. If I wanted to save this whole scene for potential later tweaking, I’d have to make a save file for the session along with saving the animation data for all ten shots - that’s ten separate animation files for this one scene - and then I would have to manually reapply the animation to each individual moving element.

On top of that, not everything can be saved at all just by sheer concept. The muzzle flash, for instance. While the flash graphic over the gun was added in post, the actual light emanating from it was something I had to do in-game, and it’s not something you can animate with SMH. Therefore, I had to play the animation in GMod, and then specifically time me hitting a button on my keyboard to make the flash happen at just the right point. That’s just one workaround in a program that, when animating in it, is like 80% workarounds.

But nothing about Garry’s Mod frustrated me quite as much as the final fight scene.

PART 4: THE BAR FIGHT

The final fight scene of PW2DO was the one thing that kept me from releasing the video sooner. Seriously, out of that year and a half or so, I’d say only a month or so was spent working on the GMod portions of the video. The rest was just that stupid, godforsaken fight scene. (And mostly procrastinating on making it.) Allow me to try and outline to you what I went through doing this.

Now, the fight scene went through three specific incarnations. They were all based around Maya and Athena tracking down Phoenix and beating the crap out of him, it just differed on two basic things: the location, and the fight music. The first idea I had was them fighting Phoenix in an alleyway while ABBA’s “Waterloo” played in the background. (i know that sounds silly but i swear i couldve made it work) That one didn’t get beyond planning stages - I’d kinda choreographed some of it in my head, I know Phoenix was supposed to get a crowbar at some point, but it didn’t get any farther than that.

The second incarnation was much more well-developed. The way I figured it was as such: Phoenix, after retrieving the security footage from his office, would go on the run and get on a bus. However, when he got on the bus, it’d be revealed that Athena was driving it, and Phoenix would fight Maya as they went down the road. (No comment on how Maya and Athena got a bus.) This was gonna be set to “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince, inspired by the opening car chase scene from Kingsman: The Golden Circle. (Meh movie, neat fight scenes.) Eventually they’d crash the bus, all go flying out the window, and then Phoenix would get arrested by the cops as he did in the final video. Sounds neat, right? So, what stopped me from doing this?

jesus christ so many things

Everything wrong with this concept centered around one particular problem. I absolutely could not, for the life of me, figure out how to animate a fight scene in a bus that was moving down the road. In SFM that might’ve been possible, but in Garry’s Mod? Good luck with that one. I practically tore my hair out trying to come up with a single working solution to this. Allow me to present to you the various ideas I had and why they all failed miserably.

IDEA 1: Animate the bus moving and the characters moving in it at the same time

This was the fastest-thrown-out idea because the complexity of something like this was just too much for Gmod and an animation addon. What’s that? You want to be able to stay with the scene as it animates? No, that’s basically impossible to do. It’s not like SFM where you could just attach yourself and a camera to the moving vehicle and animate from there. It just wasn’t feasible.

IDEA 2: Create moving textures and place them outside the windows to give the illusion of movement

This one went out the window too, unfortunately, as rotating the camera to any degree kinda just seriously killed the illusion. I could’ve done the scene without the cool cinematic fighting camera movements, but… is it really Phoenix Wright’s Day Off without those?

IDEA 3: Create a 3d video of going down the street in GMOD and paste it onto a greenscreen outside the bus, and animate it rotating properly in Premiere

I don’t blame you if you don’t understand what the hell I’m talking about. See, miraculously enough, there is actually an addon for GMod that allows you to record 360 degree videos within it - and after a decent amount of finicking around with it, I actually managed to make one that seemed to work fine. It was from this point I actually set out and started making the scene - I got about ten seconds in, mostly comprised of driving shots, a neat easter egg with Homestar Runner (not something i’d do nowadays tbh) and a single shot of Phoenix beating on Maya. I was all set to get going.

And then Premiere just refused to work with the 360 video. Don’t get me wrong, I was able to animate it rotating and stuff, but it wouldn’t let me do this at the same time as the normal 2D video that was meant to be pasted on top of it. It frankly just. Wouldn’t let me. And after a lot of struggling, I just. Gave up. That ten seconds of video, trashed.

https://streamable.com/4omnep

I did manage to re-piece it together from the old files on my drive, though. With mostly missing sound effects.

So, that was scrapped. I wasn’t doing the bus fight. What, then, would work out better than a fight scene based off the first fight scene of Golden Circle? Apparently, my mind decided that would be the last fight scene of Golden Circle. Cool.

Thankfully, things went a lot smoother there, but it wasn’t without hiccups. Now, if you’ve seen Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off - I don’t know why you’re reading this if you haven’t - there’s a chance you might’ve found the music choice for the bar fight scene a bit odd. If you’re not aware, it’s a cover of the 1986 Cameo song “Word Up”, by a German country band called The Bosshoss. This is the song they used in the movie so you’re not allowed to question me on this.

Given how western-y the song sounds, though, I had to at least make the context fit. Despite that, I couldn’t really find any GMod maps that had a good enough bar interior for a while - and I really wanted it to be a bar fight. Bar fights are cool. Thankfully, I did eventually manage to find one. This one, in particular: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=806759276&searchtext=

Yes, that’s a My Little Pony based map. I worked with what I had, okay? That was the least of the issues, anyway. By this point I’d had enough of trying to animate with GMod, and as such I’d decided to move back to SFM, but that caused a whole new issue. This map wasn’t made for SFM. And opening it in SFM just. Crashed. I won’t go super into detail of how I fixed this, but essentially I had to download a program called BSPSource so I could decompile the map, re-open it in Hammer, and export it to properly work with SFM.

Still left me with some annoying issues though, as you can see. Not too difficult fixes, though - The first one I just covered up with another corkboard, and the second thing was fixed by typing mat_specular 0 in console. Was a bit annoying that I had to do that every time I reopened SFM, but whatever. It was working, at least. (that’s something you’ll think to yourself a lot if you ever get into using SFM.)

Anyway, things went pretty okay from this point on. You know, aside from me proceeding to barely ever work on the thing for like a year and a half. I didn’t have many hardships during it other than my own procrastination, so instead take a look at some of the funny tricks I pulled to get this scene to go the way I wanted.

https://gfycat.com/OldfashionedForkedFlatcoatretriever

Engineer telekinetically swooces his shotgun back to himself.

https://gfycat.com/SleepyShadowyLadybird

I had to make Phoenix hover over Engie to let his arms reach him without his legs obscuring the camera.

https://gfycat.com/AptHomelyGoral

The rope was way too short to reach the soldier, so I had to have Phoenix basically throw the rope in order to reach his gun. I also forgot to detach the rope from his hand afterward, so it kinda gets flung around with it off-camera.

https://gfycat.com/AgonizingScrawnyAbalone

Phoenix apparently decided for himself he wanted to go out the window.

Aside from all that, though, things finally went okay. Eventually. I managed to finish up the animation, add some extra ending stuff in GMod, and do a neat credits sequence to David Bowie music. All in all, it went okay.

And that’s it. After all that waiting, I finally managed to put an 8 minute video out from one and a half years of it not being finished. It was quite a load off my mind, for sure, and to this day it stands as my proudest video. It’s silly, has its down moments, but I can at least confidently say it’s the best Ace Attorney gmod video. If only because there is basically no competition.

So, what’s in store next? Not much of anything as far as I feel right now. I could make a third one, one day - I did envision it as a trilogy - but although I do have some ideas for it, I still have zero motivation to actually make it. So who knows. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe Phoenix Wright will escape from prison one day.

So, this was the experience of making Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off. I hope this gave you something of an idea on how agonizing this video was to make, and totally means you should go and share it everywhere to get me more views because I DESERVE it after the hell I went through.

Seriously, though, thanks for reading, and may this post serve as a warning if you ever decide to do Garry’s Mod or SFM videos. Not a warning against it, mind you, you can make some totally cool stuff. Just be prepared to suffer a bit in the process.

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jeremy-ken-anderson · 3 years ago

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Shadowrift

Aside from keeping myself sane and keeping the animals alive, during the upcoming Time Alone that starts tomorrow, my main goal is to have a playable copy of Shadowrift 3rd Edition printed for my brother to play when he arrives in town. So that’s...11 days.

Granted I have a technically playable version now. But I want to reintegrate a currency system, and that means rebalancing all the cards.

Also there were two or three known issues:

1) There’s a bit of jank around the turn structure. It’s easy - in spite of players only needing to count to three - for players to lose track of how many actions they’ve used up. Current proposal is a 16-card deck with 12 “Player Action” cards (Perhaps detailing what players can spend an Action to do) and 4 cards for the automated phases of the game: Draw, Ravage, Arrival, and Town. Right now the Draw step has the players refilling their hands, Ravage has the monsters in play doin’ bad stuff, Arrival has new monsters entering play, and Town has townsfolk swapping out (and wounded townsfolk possibly bleeding out). I like the system where players can take turns in whatever order they want, but a player can only take a second turn once everyone has taken one. For instance if there are 5 players Al Beth Cat Dobbs and Edie, you could have the Arrival, then E-D-B, then Town, then A-C-B, then Draw, then D-C-E, then Ravage, then A-A-D (In this last situation Al was last in the set of five that started with Beth between the Town and Draw steps, so it’s fine for him to be the first in the next set of five). The nice thing about a turn order deck is that the players can literally take the cards to indicate they’ve taken a turn. If you have one you can’t take a turn, and then once everyone has one everyone puts them back. The bad thing about this setup is that the players have to put the cards back in order over and over, and if there are more than 3 players the reordering process includes making sure the automated phase card is in the right place relative to the action cards when they set it up again. This still feels a little janky. Potential awesome thing: Some kind of blessing mechanic where you could put positive events into the deck.

2) There’s a bit of jank around the process of the players redrawing. Making sure that bonus card draw is a cool and desirable thing, that wound cards can’t simply be ignored, and that the game works well for 1-6 players...The current solution is extremely kludge, involving redraw tokens that players can use to refill their hand partway when at lower player counts. ... Rather than redraw tokens, it could work to have multiple Draw phase cards in a turn structure deck. Huh. They could even permit a different number of cards drawn, such that the proper refill would occur for, say, a 5-player game. This could allow players to flat-out shuffle the turn order deck - to not know exactly when the monsters would attack or arrive on the scene.

3) There’s a lot of jank around the skill system, where a) it permits players to semi-trash their starting deck, especially in large-player-count games, by putting out cards “as skills” and then never using them, b) it can conversely lock up a good card for a long time for no real reason, and c) it clutters up the table pretty badly and makes things confusing if players play multiple cards in a row with quick actions. Solution to this is skill tokens. Basically there will be six shared currencies all used for boosting different cards. If I play Distract I can give the party one Stealth token usable for a later Backstab. The current system has my Distract card sit in play until the Backstab gets played.

4) Balancing needs to happen around Wounds - both as far as the Town and the heroes are concerned. If I remember, the latest version of the game was way too easy because villagers could get wounded but then get healed by the heroes before they’d bleed out and healing was too easy/quick. First pass idea on a solution: No heals that affect Villagers can be quick. They can be powerful and cost-effective (a life-transfer that does damage to a monster and heals a Villager). But they can’t be time-free. And there can be time-free heals...for the heroes.

There are also pending questions. Some were answered for the short term in the prior printing, but either I’m discontented with how those answers play out or I can tell they’ll be untenable once I make the changes I already have planned.

Such as: What happens when you kill a monster? What’s needed to kill it? Can a monster be fended off in the short term but escape to trouble you again? Can players with enough damage just run the monster deck out of dudes and win that way? The answer to this last question should be either “no” or “maybe, but they’d be better off not trying to focus quite that totally on damage because they can win easier by spreading out their efforts just a bit.” Setting up the rules to feel fair as the game progresses - so the players don’t get curbstomped on turn 2 And so the players can’t “train up” on weak monsters And so players aren’t feeling like they’re actually getting weaker relative to enemies as the game goes on...It ain’t easy.

Or such as: How do you win the game? Do you have to defeat the last boss? Can you close the last rift and suddenly win? Is there a viable way to make the goal actually vary slightly from game to game?

#game design #board games

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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How the Raptors defense is making other teams see ghosts

Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images

Zone defense, man defense, full-court press, half-court trap, it doesn’t matter. The key to the Raptors’ success is their unrelenting pressure.

Picture yourself on a haunted house ride at your favorite amusement park. You’ll be spooked by pop-out faces, fluorescent lights, and ominous sounds, but you don’t know exactly how, where, or when they will hit you. Intellectually, you know there’s nothing to really fear and you’ll eventually finish the exhibit unscathed. But as soon as you enter that front door, those rational thoughts give way to base fears that you can’t escape. You scream. You yelp. You gasp. You lose your nerve. You’re scared shitless. And you forget, for a brief moment, that the ride is all an illusion.

If this experience describes one you’ve had before, congratulations. Now you understand what it’s like to go against the Toronto Raptors’ defense, and why so many skilled teams and star players look shockingly out of their depth when they try.

You also understand why the Raptors have responded with even more vigor after losing the star that carried them to last year’s NBA title. Toronto was expected to slink back into the league’s middle class after losing Kawhi Leonard in free agency. Instead, the Raptors are two games better off than they were at this time last year and riding a 15-game winning streak, the longest of any Canadian professional sports franchise ever.

They constantly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, no matter who’s healthy enough to suit up. The most recent example: a one-point win over conference rival Indiana in which they scored 11 straight points in the final 2:25. After watching Indiana calmly move the ball and nail scores of open threes for 45 minutes, the Raptors dialed up their pressure, deployed a full-court press, and watched the Pacers wilt.

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It wasn’t the first time Toronto used unconventional methods to take teams out of their comfort zone. They deployed that same full-court press to devastating effect to overcome a 30-point third-quarter deficit against Dallas. They held LeBron James to 13 points on 5-15 shooting in a win in Los Angeles, flummoxed Damian Lillard into a 2-12 night with a mix of box-and-one and triangle-and-two zone defenses, and didn’t even let Joel Embiid score a single point in a November victory over Philadelphia. Their aggressive double-teaming of James Harden in a December game against the Rockets inspired other imitators and played a role in Houston’s decision to go all-in on small ball. Turns out the box-and-one they famously deployed against Stephen Curry in last year’s NBA Finals was merely a precursor to the “janky” defenses they’ve effectively rolled out this year.

Toronto’s adaptability is attributed to second-year coach Nick Nurse, an innovative basketball tinkerer willing to try many different defensive alignments. Nurse is indeed a creative soul, and his nonchalance at the possibility of embarrassment inspires buy-in from his players. Toronto’s roster is stocked with athletic wings and some of the smartest veterans in the league, the ideal mix to carry out Nurse’s experiments.

But ingenuity and intelligence only succeed when they’re used in service of a common purpose. That goal for the Raptors is simple: create a feeling of constant pressure that scares otherwise-poised players shitless. Zone or man, full-court or half-court, 2-3 or box-and-one, trapping or switching, hard double-teaming or softer digs down, the point is to facilitate the same kind of base fear one gets when riding a haunted house exhibit. They make you see ghosts.

“Constant pressure” does not mean sprinting directly into ball-handlers’ faces. The Raptors do attack the ball sometimes, with targeted surprise traps at opportune times. D’Angelo Russell certainly wasn’t ready for this.

But these frontline maneuvers are useless if the back line of defense isn’t moving in concert to shut down potential outlets. Every team strives to cut off drives to the basket, but the Raptors commit to the cause with all five defenders sinking deep into a shell, on or even before any move to the basket. They have two goals: clog precious driving space and cut off the most obvious escape routes a ball-handler might use when they draw multiple defenders to them.

When they accomplish both, they force offenses to be indecisive. That’s when they pounce.

To make that style work, Raptors’ extra defenders don’t actually go directly to the ball. Instead, they anticipate where the offense wants to take it and position themselves to stand in the way, or at least in the vicinity. Get past one guy, and a second is already in position to replace him while a third lurks nearby.

Every player must see the big picture to make this five-man strategy work. Luckily, Toronto’s roster is stocked with players capable of doing just that. This is not a group that gets tunnel vision on their own matchup. Instead, they happily block off potential driving lanes, as if they are human banana peels.

One downside to a collective paint-packing approach is that it leaves the perimeter relatively unguarded. The more compressed the shell, the more room for offenses to suck the defense in and deliver kickout passes for open jumpers. The league’s three-point revolution, in theory, makes these drive-and-kick easier to execute, not to mention more valuable on the scoreboard.

To solve that problem and maintain their pressure anyway, the Raptors do two things that most teams don’t.

One is that they close out incredibly aggressively to open shooters, often to the point of looking reckless. They don’t merely run shooters off the line. They catapult them off it.

This is a high-risk approach because a simple shot fake gives the offense an odd-man advantage. It can often look undisciplined and silly, so I wouldn’t recommend coaching your youth team this way. But Nurse and the Raptors find a way to make it work with their personnel and commitment.

How? Stack up enough help-and-fly recovery sequences, and suddenly the offense is wasting precious time trying to find a perfect shot that doesn’t exist. Every additional decision the offense must make to avoid or shoot against a flying closeout is another chance for them to mess up and/or hesitate due to self-doubt. Toronto gets so many “coverage sacks” like this because they force opponents into endless drive-and-kicks that don’t go anywhere and mentally drain them.

Every Raptor plays an instrument, but Pascal Siakam is the orchestrator of the Raptors’ closeout crescendo. He is so fast, long, and versatile that he spooks potential shooters the second he surges toward them. Per NBA.com tracking data, Siakam contests six three-point attempts per game all by himself, the most among players with at least 25 games played by a wide margin. Because he can guard all five positions effectively, opponents never know exactly where he might be on a given possession. And because the Raptors’ system is so well drilled at rotating down early to stop drives to the basket, Siakam is free to run at shooters all over the court without worrying about getting beat on drives.

The other key is that the Raptors’ five players switch seamlessly in scramble situations to lessen the distance any single player must travel to get back in position. Most teams have mastered the art of the “scram” or “kickout” switch, a maneuver used to prevent offenses from exploiting big-vs.-small mismatches inside. (Here’s a good breakdown from 2017).

The Raptors use the same principle, but on the perimeter. Rather than scram switching to stop post mismatches, the Raptors scram switch players of all sizes to shorten the distance needed to close out on shooters or stop drives. Watch Fred VanVleet pick up Patrick McCaw’s man on this Pacers curl.

Or Rondae Hollis-Jefferson boot McCaw to his spot-up wing assignment to cut off Caris LeVert’s drive.

Or Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka covering for each other on two straight Thunder spot-up drive attempts.

Collectively, Toronto’s frantic closeouts and quick-thinking switching make opponents feel pressured in moments where they should feel comfortable. Shots that are objectively “open” against Toronto often feels like they’re too contested to take, but when opponents choose to drive instead, they’re bound to find someone unexpected cutting off their path before they even get started. Their only choice is to restart the process with another drive-and-kick that hopefully yields a less stressful situation for a teammate.

Sometimes — nay, often, it does, but Toronto’s OK with that. This seems counterintuitive on many levels. Historically, the league’s best defense are the ones which limit three-point attempts rather than three-point percentage, because they have much more control over the former than the latter. Yet four out of every 10 Raptors opponents’ shots are threes, the highest rate in the league. More significantly, Toronto yields the highest proportion of corner threes in the NBA, according to Cleaning the Glass, and the difference between them and 29th-place Miami is larger than the difference between the Heat and 10th-place Detroit.

If the goal of a defense is to limit high-efficiency shots, Toronto’s would fail spectacularly. Cleaning the Glass uses a metric known as Shooting Location Effective Field Goal Percentage, which estimates how well an opponent would shoot if they converted the shots a defense gives up at a league-average rate. Based on this, Toronto’s defense should surrender an effective field goal percentage of 53.7 percent, the sixth-worst mark in the league. Instead, the Raptors actually hold opponents an effective field goal percentage of just 50.8 percent, mere percentage points behind Brooklyn and the Clippers for the second-best mark in the league. Since 2014, only two other teams (the 2016-17 Warriors and 2017-18 Celtics) have maintained a wider positive disparity between those two numbers over a whole season. Usually, those large discrepancies indicate good fortune and stabilize over time.

But there’s a growing case that Toronto is actually the exception to this rule. Teams may get juicy three-point looks against them, but only after surviving what seems like a never-ending a gauntlet of closeouts, switches, and traps. This shot is “open” in literal terms, because there’s no defender in sight.

But in the same way an unexpected tap on the shoulder gives you anxiety, this shot seems more contested than it is because the Raptors’ constant pressure screws with the shooters’ senses.

Those numbers also don’t account for the many “open” shots teams pass up, only to turn the ball over because they feel the Raptors’ footsteps. Toronto is second in the league in live-ball turnovers, second in points off turnovers, and tops in most points added per 100 possessions via steals. They strike quickly off the many mistakes they force, which only stresses their opponents out even more.

Nurse’s deployment of a shapeshifting defense with pressure as the foundational principle is unconventional and creative, but hardly unprecedented. In the early and mid 1990s, the Seattle SuperSonics emerged as a defensive powerhouse using Bob Kloppenburg’s “SOS” system, a frantic style of play that was often seen as a gimmick by its detractors. Among the core tenants of the system: switch all 2-on-2 screens, defend each action with all five guys, and force opponents to vulnerable “checkpoints” on the court before turning up the heat.

This system, combined with the Sonics’ athleticism and quick-strike ability, helped them overcome their lack of size and probably should have yielded a title. It looked bad when teams managed to beat it, but those moments were more than cancelled out by turnovers, rushed shots, and the general discomfort opponents felt trying to navigate what seemed like an endless supply of bodies in the way. (The three-point shot wasn’t en vogue in that era, but it like Toronto, those Sonics teams surrendered more long-distance attempts than most of their peers).

Nurse and the now-retired Kloppnburg were never on the same coaching staff. (The head coach Nurse replaced in Toronto, Dwane Casey, did overlap with Kloppenburg for one year as George Karl assistants in 1994-95). Still, it’s not hard to spot the parallels between the two men and their teams’ defensive systems. Both understood they needed to throw opponents off kilter to win the larger defensive war, even if it meant surrendering some easy buckets along the way. As Bernie Bickerstaff, the Sonics coach who initially hired Kloppenburg, told the Seattle Times in 1993, playing against Kloppenburg’s SOS defense “was like you were still picking something off you after the game.” They both make five defenders feel like 15.

Nearly three decades later, Nurse’s Raptors have translated the principles of those legendary Sonics defenses to the modern game. We don’t yet know if their haunted house defense is creative enough to take them all the way to the promised land again. Maybe, like Seattle’s style, it’s too gimmicky to ultimately triumph on its own.

But no matter the outcome, the Raptors have made the NBA a more interesting place. That’s the power of creativity and innovation.

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wizardofbits · 7 years ago

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Sonic Forces. Hoo, boy.

Strap yourselves in, folks, this is gonna be a long one. I have numerous thoughts about Sonic Forces. The latest "modern Sonic" game from Sega to use the "Boost formula", Sonic Forces saw a multiplatform release on November 7, 2017. It features three playable characters: Modern Sonic, Classic Sonic, and a new character called the Avatar, as they work together to stop the evil Dr. Robotnik (fuck you, that's his name) who has already taken over the world, with help from the mysterious Infinite.

Ask a diehard Sonic fan and they might be hard-pressed to find anything good about this game. More likely, they'll probably say "Nothing about this is good, Vector. That's why it's called war." And then laugh at themselves for their oh-so-creative sense of humor, repeating memetic lines from the game. But the game is a good game, just not a great one. It's a step down from Generations and in that respect a bit of a disappointment, but it's not terrible. It's definitely not going to take Sonic soaring to new heights either. Still, I would much rather play Sonic Forces than play a long list of Sonic games. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Adventure 2 (yeah I went there)... The real problems with the game break down as follows.

The Levels Are Too Fucking Short

The average Modern Sonic or Avatar level is about as long as Metal Harbor from Sonic Adventure 2. That was a... really short level, in a game that had too little Sonic-gameplay content as it was. But while that was just one level, the entire game is like this in the case of Sonic Forces. Classic Sonic levels are, maybe, about the size of an act from Sonic 1. The thing is, we're used to bigger stages than this. In Sonic Forces, you reach a point where you're finding a groove through a level and having a good time, and then whoops! It's over. The game makes up for it somewhat by packing in a lot of stages (30 to be precise), but I'd rather have 12 memorable stages than 30 forgettable ones.

The Level Assets R Bored ._.

One of the really remarkable things about early Sonic games is what vaporwave kids call A E S T H E T I C S. Early Sonic was aesthetic as FUCK, borrowing cues from the trends in the late 1980s and very early 1990s in graphic design, and especially, old-school CG. If you've ever seen the old Mind's Eye videos and things of that nature, you know exactly where those polygonal palm trees and Escher-esque birds and fish come from. This sort of eye for detail made the early games absolutely beautiful to look at, with the levels boasting streamlined curves and maze-like layouts, bursting with color and exhibiting harmonious balance that was pleasing to the eye. Even the backgrounds were gorgeous -- who could forget Green Hill's shimmering seaside, with mountainous islands and white puffy clouds in the background, or the steel industrial towers rising into the sky in Oil Ocean from Sonic 2, with a heat wave effect around the searing sun above?

What do we get in Sonic Forces? A bunch of boring, rectilinear bullshit, that's what. In fact, the Green Hill stages (way to come up with new locations, guys) just have different-sized checkerboard boxes in the background. Sure, there are some ramps and slopes in the level itself, but they're either straight or just use the same few curves over and over. It's not quite Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric bad, but it's not very good. Also, the same gimmicks are used over and over, level after level, and most of them were taken from Sonic Colors, the first game to feature all-Boost gameplay. Jesus Christ, there's a level called Chemical Plant but it doesn't use the Chemical Plant assets aside from some of the glass tube ramps carrying blue liquid. The elevators, in particular, are samey rectangles instead of the unique Chemical Plant lifts. It's not quite as bad as the bland, depressing, rushed aesthetics of, say, Shadow the Hedgehog, but Sonic Mania and Sonic Generations set our standards higher, with mind-blowingly creative takes on old and new locations.

And the level layout doesn't make any sense because it's not themed to the stage. It's just the same boring shit as every other level. Take Casino Forest, for example. If you remember Casino Night Zone from Sonic 2, you will recall that the entire level was laid out like a giant pinball machine. The slopes and curves seemed to funnel Sonic into the slots when he came across them. Sonic Forces, no such luck. It's pretty much "let's use the same rectilinear corridors and rooms we use for every other level, throw in a couple of ramps -- oh shit, this is a casino level isn't it? Well, we'll throw in some bumpers and slots here and there. Done!" Oh yeah, there's the fact that you can't steer Sonic into the slots very well because you don't have the same level of precision and control. Which brings us to...

The Physics Are Glitchy

Modern Sonic controls like ass. So does the Avatar. They either don't move when I want them to move, or shoot off in a direction I didn't want to go in. Their acceleration curves on the ground are janky as fuck, and when they jump you have to wrestle with the control stick to get them to go where you want them to go. And Classic Sonic isn't much better. He feels "sticky", like he doesn't really want to move when you hit a boost pad, spin dash, or roll. To be fair, none of these are too bad. They don't make the game play like Bubsy, or Sonic '06 or anything. It's just... when old-school Sonic physics is coded into your muscle memory, it can be hard to get used to these foibles in the game's physics and tune your stick and button responses to them.

My biggest complaint is that, particularly in one late-game level, the road curves ahead of you, and with no guardrails to keep you on track, if you aren't holding right hard as you dash along this stretch of track, you will crater to your death. But then there's another stretch of track where the game dynamically adjusts your trajectory to keep you on the track as long as you hold Up, so if you take what you've learned from the previous stretch of track and try to turn Sonic into the curve, you will again fall to your death. That's probably the biggest fuck-you in the game, but it's just in that one level as far as I can tell, and overall the game has a much lower cheap-death count than Adventure 2, Heroes, or Shadow -- let alone '06. (Fuck you, '06 and fuck the fans who say it's good or it can be made good. It's broken.)

The Boss Battles Suck

So Infinite, supposedly, is more powerful than Sonic. Shouldn't that be reflected in, you know, the boss fights against him? Instead we get two boring, relatively easy fights against him where all you have to do is dodge his straightforward attacks and mash the jump button when he's in range. Sonic games used to be known for neat boss fights. There was one at the end of each zone, and each one was based around Robotnik in his egg vehicle, but they all featured different weapons and upgrades to the vehicle, and thus different attack patterns and vulnerabilities. Later games would bring midbosses at the end of each zone's first act. This formula would be abandoned for the Sonic Adventure series, and I really wish it'd come back. But even then, Sonic Adventure 2 had a variety of interesting bosses, even if they weren't all Robotnik.

Things went really off the rails with Sonic Heroes, which had boring, samey bosses up until the last one or two, and this seems to be the pattern Sega feels comfortable in now. Which is fine, except no, it's not, it sucks actually. And it's particularly galling because this is the game where Robotnik finally takes over the world. It should be fraught with peril and danger for our heroes, and they should have to square off against terrifying robots and creations the likes of which the world has never seen before. But no, it's run down a corridor, hit the guy a few times, dodge his telegraphed attacks and fucking repeat until dead. This is even true of the final boss, which is just a ripoff of the final boss from Sonic Colors. That one was fun the first time, but come on. Even Sonic and the Secret Rings had an imaginative final boss.

Oh, another annoying thing: there are encounters which look like boss fights because they feature huge enemies that must be defeated, such as the giant snake from Luminous Forest or the giant crab thing from that one Avatar level with the giant crab thing in it. But you've been trolled because a couple of quick time events later and you fucking beat it. Jesus Christ, Sega.

So those are the bad points of this game. Here are some good points:

Your Name, the Hedgehog

I like the Avatar. More than I expected to. Full background: the Avatar is a custom character created using the in-game character creation facility. The character creation tool is very basic, allowing you to pick from among seven species, two genders, and a variety of head and eye shapes and base skin and fur colors, but that's it. Then again, it's still about as wide a range as the imagination of a typical Sonic fan can muster. Completing missions allows you to unlock accessories to decorate your OC with -- but aside from the Wispon (a gun powered by colored Wisp energy which grants one attack ability and one sub-ability) these do not affect gameplay at all. In fact the only variables that do affect gameplay are species (each species grants a different, specific perk; for example birds can double-jump and cats can hold onto one ring when they get hit) and equipped Wispon.

Adding the Avatar was a brilliant marketing move by Sega. They know what's up. They knew that diehard fans would piss themselves at being able to make their fursona canon in a Sonic game; and ironic hipsters would attempt to recreate Coldsteel or Sonichu in the character editor. Sega also resisted the temptation to decide for us that what we really need is another, vastly different, playstyle from the go-fast modern Sonic style we've gotten used to by now. Accordingly, Avatar levels are Boost levels with a different moveset. You can homing-attack enemies and swing from grapple points with your grappling hook, use your Wispon to clear out groups of enemies, or collect Wisps of the appropriate color to enable an otherwise inaccessible form of locomotion -- like launching yourself into the air with the Burst Wispon or doing a light-dash along rings with the Lightning Wispon. They're not as zippy as the Boost levels, but hey, there can only be one Sonic. Some levels let you play as Sonic and the Avatar together, successfully merging the gameplay of the two characters by putting Sonic in the lead when you press the Boost button and the Avatar in the lead when you attempt to grapple or use Wispon attacks. It's quite seamless, even less clunky than Sonic Heroes, and I love it. They could make a whole game out of this style of play. There are moments when Sonic and Avatar together do a "Double Boost", plowing through enemies and sweeping up rings at hyper speed, but these sections last about ten seconds apiece, in keeping with the game's general theme of frustrating shortness.

Finally, the Avatar is perfectly integrated into the game's cutscenes, giving them a critical role in the unfolding story.

Plot and Theming

So the plot goes like this: with the power of Infinite and the Phantom Ruby (that weird rock he dug up in Sonic Mania), Dr. Robotnik has succeeded in defeating Sonic and taking over the world. A band of rebels called the Resistance -- led by Knuckles and bearing quite a few parallels with Princess Sally's Freedom Fighters from Sonic the Hedgehog (TV series), aka "SatAM" -- seeks to track Sonic down, wherever he's being held, and retake the world. In Sonic's absence, a new hero (your Avatar), a survivor from one of Infinite's assaults on the population, steps in to help the resistance.

Meanwhile, "Tails", presumably wracked with guilt after Sonic's capture, re-connects with Classic Sonic (the version of him from Mania) and the two eventually lend their help to resisting Robotnik as well.

It's a fairly basic plot. It goes back to some dark themes -- like war and torture -- that we really haven't seen in a main-series Sonic game since Shadow. But there's no self-conscious attempt to be grimdark and edgy, no characters brooding about their past, no "damn fourth Chaos Emerald", and no human-hedgehog shipping. Everything is, still, pretty lighthearted and fun. Which gets pretty weird when you're told Sonic has been "tortured for months" aboard the Death Egg, and yet all he says to his torturers are the usual lighthearted, sarcastic quips. But what the hell. He's a blue cartoon hedgehog. This idea of cartoon animals in a war-torn world reminds me of nothing so much as the North Korean propaganda cartoon, Squirrel and Hedgehog, which even Western viewers admit has a sort of bizarre charm about it -- and that's where Sonic Forces is. Although not with the anti-Western propaganda of a repressive dictatorship.

I like how each of Sonic's friends has a specific role in the resistance: Knuckles is the leader, Silver the second in command, Amy the data analyst, Shadow and Rouge are the recon agents. "Tails" has gone underground to conduct his own search for Sonic. Sonic's cast has grown quite a bit in the past few years, and it's good that they found something for all these characters to do without burdening the story with needless exposition or a surfeit of unnecessary "gameplay styles".

Another thing I like is that they managed to keep Sonic's sarcastic "attitude" without making him a jerk. Looking back on 90s Sonic media, it's noteworthy how Sonic is an asshole even to his friends, and gets away with it because he's the hero. In "SatAM" and the Archie comics, for instance, he never passes up an opportunity to make fun of Antoine. In the British "Sonic the Comic", he's constantly mocking "Tails". In this game, Sonic manages to save his jokes at others' expense for his actual enemies and is quite charitable to his friends (especially "Tails" and the Avatar). At multiple points in the game, upon hearing a report of impending defeat from Resistance fighters, he says something like "You've done more than enough already. Good work, everyone! I'll handle it from here."

That's another thing: they actually found a use for in-game quips from the main character. Rather than Bubsying it up and having him say "there's a bounce pad!" or "I love rings!" every time some game event is triggered, Sonic Forces does a fair bit of story exposition with Star Fox-like radio chatter from the main characters before and during the game's stages, as well as cutscenes. The chatter can be turned off at the player's discretion, but I don't find it too distracting, and some of Sonic's lines are genuinely funny.

If there's anything wrong with the plot, it's that sometimes they seem to raise the stakes, but don't follow through and the situation is resolved in like a minute. Sonic is thought dead in the early game, but a couple of stages later, he's alive. Worse, there's a scene where Robotnik banishes Sonic and Avatar to "Null Space". Ten seconds later, they're back out on the street.

Boost Gameplay

The Boost levels are the most fun ones in the game. When you're barreling down the track at a zillion miles per hour, you don't notice the odd bit of minor physics glitch (except when it sends you clean off the track; I'm looking at you, Metropolitan Highway...). They didn't keep up the standards set by Generations, but they didn't kill all the fun in the game, especially the Boost bits, either.

But that just provokes the question: why didn't they keep up the standards set by Generations? I liked this game a fair bit, but I wanted to like it a lot more. Hell, I want to like every Sonic game as much as I like 2, 3, and & Knuckles. But this is where we are. Sonic has just gone from consistently good, to consistently bad, to just plain inconsistent. Why can't he just stay good?

The problem with Sonic is, I believe, a problem with Sega. It ties back into what I said about the franchise in the past: Sega just doesn't understand which values the Sonic brand represents, from a gameplay perspective. They use him as a media icon, but they have no vision of what the player should expect when they boot up a Sonic game. Hell, the players have a better idea than Sega does, which is why an effective fan game (Sonic Mania) got the highest praise the main series has seen in literally decades!

But here's the thing, Sonic fans: It's easy for you to say that a particular game is bad, and even -- as I've done here -- point out what's bad about it. It's much, much harder for a game developer to find and fix those bad things. Say "the physics are too glitchy", or "the jumps are too floaty" to a game dev, and you may was well say "tighten up the graphics on level 3". Take jumping for instance. There are quite a few variables that go into a game character's jump. A jump can be modelled as an impulse that sends a character's velocity upward followed by acceleration back downward due to gravity. But how big should the impulse be? How quickly should they accelerate back to earth? Do you want to have jump aftertouch (changing directions in midair)? How much aftertouch? What should happen when you jump off a slope? Should the impulse still be straight up, or should it be perpendicular to the slope? (Classic Sonic went with the latter; Sonic Rush went with the former. And now to this day I still can't take Sonic Rush seriously as a platformer in the classic vein.)

Getting games right is hard. Hell, getting slopes right is a test of mettle for any 2D game programmer. What needs to happen is the developers, once they have the basic engine put together, need to sit down and test and tweak, and test some more and tweak some more. Because that's what it takes to make a game "feel" right. And what they found out as they made these tweaks needs to be noted for future developers; it needs to become institutional knowledge.

The big difference between Nintendo and Sega is one of institutional knowledge. Quick, who do you think of when I say "Mario"? Well, Mario himself, but who in real life? Shigeru Miyamoto, right? Gaming's Walt Disney. What if I told you that Miyamoto, who had been producer or director on most Mario titles to date, only had a light touch on Super Mario Odyssey? And Super Mario Odyssey is the best damn Mario game to date! That's because the info on what makes a Mario game good and how to make a good Mario game has become institutional knowledge at Nintendo, passed from employee to employee and generation to generation. It is the ultimate mark of success of any genius that they eventually make themself obsolete, so that their successors can benefit from their knowledge without them when they die, retire, or quit. And Shigsy is coming up on retirement age...

Sega, er, didn't bother preserving that institutional knowledge from the first few Sonic games. And today, the end result is like they forgot it. It's like retrograde amnesia. While playing through Sonic Forces, I was reminded of nothing so much as early, 1980s Sega platformers, like Alex Kidd and the Wonder Boy series. In fact I have the modern remake of Wonder Boy III on my Switch, and the janky movement and floaty jumps from Forces all feel specifically familiar to what I remember from that game. But back in the 80s, you could sort of give them the benefit of the doubt. Nintendo basically invented the modern video-game-character jump with Super Mario Bros., and they weren't exactly forthcoming with that information back then because it was a competitive advantage for them, so other game houses had to either figure out on their own what made the Mario jumps so satisfying to use (Capcom), or else do without them and use a lesser mechanic (Konami, Sega).

But here's the thing: when Sega set about creating a better Mario in the early 90s, they succeeded. Sonic was everything Mario was at the time, and more. But in the early 90s, Sonic Team wasn't really a thing. It was just whoever had worked on Sonic 1. There wasn't a Miyamoto at the helm to set the standards and guide the trajectory for the series as a whole. Yuji Naka doesn't count, and neither does Naoto Ohshima. Later games would be passed from team to team, and while the basic engine remained the same, high-level knowledge of what went into that engine may have been lost along the way -- I'd say the best candidate for such a loss was the "Sonic Winter" of the late 90s, when Sega would go a whole console generation without developing a current-gen, native main-series Sonic title. (Sonic 3D Blast was a Genesis port, and the only other games in the franchise for the Saturn were Sonic R and Sonic Jam.) It was a time of tremendous upheaval for Sega, as they had to recover from the setbacks they suffered from the botched Sega CD and 32X launches, and the failure of the Saturn against the PlayStation and N64. This was also the time when Sonic fandom began to coalesce, and to be frank, the fandom which eventually formed couldn't give two shits about gameplay. So by the time the Adventure series appeared on the Dreamcast, already you could see a break in continuity of vision for where the series was going from a gameplay perspective. Bereft of the franchise's moorings, Sonic Team endlessly tried new things, wanted you to try new things, wanted you to like their experiments. But ultimately what they were trying to do was catch lightning in a bottle, and they failed at it. That's why I call the series "tryhard".

If I were the head of Sonic Team, I would instruct my subordinates to do what the fans already did: go back to the original Genesis games. If I can't find the original source code, I'd have them disassemble and reverse-engineer the ROMs. (That is what the fans did!) Part of the problem with updating OG Sonic physics for today may be that the original games were 2D and pixel-accurate, and largely used integer math to calculate the game state, whereas a modern 3D world would be built from floating-point coordinates in 3D space. Nevertheless, I would try to map the integer constants of Sonic's 2D world into 3D space, fit acceleration curves to what's observable from the 2D games, etc. I would have a model of Green Hill Zone Act 1, or a part of it, built in the 3D engine, and if Sonic does not control exactly as he does in the original Sonic 1, I would order more refinements to be made. This can be checked both through play-testing and by running side-by-side versions of original Sonic 1 and the modern engine, sending them synthetic button events, and seeing whether they match up. Once they do match up, only then would I add modern features like the boost, homing attack, etc.

I would have the programmers take careful notes on the refinements they made, and instruct them to put these notes into a company- or team-wide wiki. I would have them bring in their sons, daughters, or little siblings to play-test it. I would reach out to Sonic fans and select candidates for a limited beta test from among their number.

It's going to take effort and commitment for Sega to rescue Sonic from the scrappy heap. What Sonic Forces showed me is that Sega is not ready to make that commitment. It may be time for them to cut Sonic loose, to sell him to Nintendo or WayForward or somebody. I don't think they'll do that, though, because Sonic is the thing that's keeping their name in the limelight.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic forces #game design #sega #rants

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