#read all the big brother magazines that are available online

[godsworstson]

i think it's really funny how obsessed i am with jackass but have watched only one of the movies

[alipeeps]

New tag game: Post pictures of your first ever (fictional/celeb) crush to the latest one and tag five others to continue the game

Thanks to @minmoyu for tagging me and ooof, are you sure you’re ready for this?!! :D I have been around/in fandom for a loooooong time and at first I thought, okay, no way I can list all my crushes, there have been SO many and we’ll be here all day but then as I started compiling a list I found I was having fun reminiscing and decided, what the heck, yeah, let’s do em all... or at least all I can remember! :D

There have absolutely for sure been other more minor crushes and passing fancies along the way, but these are the big ones that I remember (and that, in more recent years, I can track by going through my posted fanfics on AO3 and even *shudder* FFNET and seeing which shows I was into enough to want to write fic about the characters).

[Quick note: with rare exceptions, for actors I am listing them by the character they played rather than just the actor. Whilst there are actors that I like in multiple roles (and conversely, characters who on paper I would normally be into but are played by actors who do nothing for me, and hence the character generally does nothing for me either), for the most part it is the character I really have the crush on.]

I’m going to put this under a readmore cos it has gotten ridiculously long:

So... without further ado:

1. MORTEN HARKET from a-ha - OKay so, dating myself badly here but... I had the *biggest* crush on Morten Harket when I was a teenager. Pretty much the entirety of my side of the bedroom I shared with my sister was covered in posters of a-ha, and Morten in particular. I even had a heart-shaped Morten Harket pillow! :D I loved a-ha’s music (still do!) and I wanted to go see them in concert when I was 14 but my parents wouldn’t let me (*sob*). I did finally get to see them in concert in the early 2000s and they were BRILLIANT live (and Morten was still very very pretty)! 

2. RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON as MACGYVER - MacGyver is the first tv character I remember being really into and having a crush on, to the extent that I would record episodes of the show off the tv (onto VHS tape - yes, I am *that* old!) so that I could rewatch them (especially the ones where he got hurt - yeah, I was a whumper even then! :D)

3. KEIFER SUTHERLAND - One of my rare exceptions. I think I first saw him in Lost Boys (and loved him in that film) but it was his role as Doc Scurlock in Young Guns that really made me fall for both the character and him. I definitely remember seeking out any and all films he was in and buying any magazine he was interviewed in (and knowing far more facts about him than was probably healthy! :D) and even drawing a fanart portrait of him. :)

4. KYLE MACLACHLAN as SPECIAL AGENT DALE COOPER - I remember hearing about Twin Peaks before it started airing in the UK and it sounded so different and interesting... I watched it from the very first episode and very quickly developed a crush on Coop.  

5. BRENT SPINER as DATA - I think ST: TNG had been airing for a while before I stumbled across it but I quickly became hooked and Data was my favourite character right from the start. I definitely remember at one point buying an (unofficial) episode guide book so that I could look up which episodes were good Data-focused ones (especially ones where he got hurt! :D) so I could go out and buy the videos that had those episodes on (at the time the show was available to buy on VHS-tape with 2 episodes on each tape).

6. DAVID DUCHOVNY as FOX MULDER - Another show that I heard the buzz about and started watching right from the start and, like so many others, I immediately developed a crush on the snarky, enigmatic, troubled FBI agent with the weird name. The X-Files was the first show I ever tried writing (one, never-finished) fanfic for.

7. PAUL GROSS as BENTON FRASER - Man, Due South was such a good show! It was so quirky and clever and funny and Benton Fraser, with his huge heart and his serious demeanour and his gorgeous blue eyes, was just so darn attractive! He also got whumped a fair bit too! :D Due South was also the show that introduced me to the music of Sarah McLachlan (I was enough of a fan that I bought the show soundtrack on CD).

8. HUGH LAURIE as DR GREGORY HOUSE - This was a bit of an odd one for me because I had grown up knowing Hugh Laurie solely as a comedian/comic actor, known mostly for playing buffoons and genial idiots. And suddenly here he was with stubble, an American accent, and a limp, and he was hawt AF! :D It caused quite the feedback loop in my brain for a while which pretty much went “Wow, House is hot.... but it’s Hugh Laurie... but he’s hot... but it’s HUGH LAURIE!!1!”

I *loved* House (the first few seasons, at least) and oof a character with persistent pain (and a self-destructive streak a mile wide!) was a whumper’s dream. House was the first show for which I wrote - and published online - completed fanfics.

8. JOE FLANIGAN as JOHN SHEPPARD - Stargate Atlantis was my first proper online fandom, the first show I prolifically and repeatedly wrote fanfic for, and the first time I ever met in person an actor I was a big fan of (and while the show was still airing, to boot!). It was also my first introduction to the online community of whumpers! A bunch of us from the Shep Whump thread on Gateworld heard that Joe was going to be at a convention in London and we decided to book hotel rooms and meet up and go to the convention together and it was AWESOME! I can still remember seeing Joe *in person* for the first time and just,,,, struggling to believe he was actually here, in person, in front of me! He was super super lovely and humble too and took time to chat to everyone at the signing table and I clearly remember my brain just pretty much fritzing out during the photo session and being intensely aware of the sensation of Joe’s hand on my shoulder....

It was also super lovely to meet fellow fans, and online friends, in person for the first time and we had so much fun, and it kickstarted me going to lots of other conventions, including specific Stargate/SGA ones where I got to know lots of other lovely fans and online friends. I’ve met Joe about 4 or 5 times in total now and he’s been lovely every time.

9. PAUL BLACKTHORNE as HARRY DRESDEN - Gosh I loved the shortlived tv adaptation of The Dresden Files. I loved the fantasy aspect, the stories, the humour, and I especially loved Harry Dresden and how often he got whumped! :D 

10. DAVID TENNANT as THE 10TH DOCTOR - I had watched the Christopher Ecclestone revival of Doctor Who and enjoyed it well enough but I can clearly remember watching David Tennant’s first episode as The Doctor - on Christmas Day, at my brother-in-law’s house - and being aware, as I watched it that... ooookay, yes, I’m in trouble here... I like him... I like him a lot... :D I mean, I’m sure the fact that he got whumped so thoroughly in his very first episode had nothing to do with how quickly I fell for him... right? :)

11. ALEX O’LAUGHLIN as MICK ST JOHN - Another show that ended far too soon and just as it was getting *seriously* good. But also a prime example of my point about having a crush on the character not the actor. I looooooved Alex as Mick St John... and yet in Hawaii 5.0 he pretty much does nothing for me (the character is too stoic and the whump often too unrealistically glossed over). Anyway, in Moonlight he was my favourite kind of character - angsty, brooding, dangerous AF when he needed to be... and essentially immortal so you could whump the heck out of him and he’d recover so you could whump him again! :D

12. SIMON BAKER as PATRICK JANE - There is so much to love about Patrick Jane... his smarts, his sass, his angst... and Simon is a rare “against type” blonde crush for me (you may have noticed by now that most of my crushes follow a similar physical aesthetic - tall, slim/wiry, and dark-haired) and again here I think my crush is almost all to do with the character rather than the actor.

12. BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as SHERLOCK HOLMES - I’m almost ashamed to admit it, given the clusterfuck that both the show and its fandom became, but in the earlier seasons I had quite the crush on Benedict’s Sherlock (and okay, a little bit on Benedict himself - I did definitely enjoy some of his other roles too). It helps that I was already a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes character (I’ve read all the stories and novels multiple times and was a big fan of the Granada adaptation starring Jeremy Brett - whose Holmes would definitely count as one of my more minor/passing crushes) already. Benedict is another crush that I have met in person, at a (actually, the first!) Sherlock convention and he was lovely in person - very genuine, very articulate and thoughtful.

13. TOM MISON as ICHABOD CRANE - I was excited for Sleepy Hollow as soon as I heard about it and I was SUCH a fan for the first couple of seasons (before TPTB completely destroyed it and it inevitably got cancelled (I didn’t even watch the last season and a half)) and Tom’s Ichabod (and his amazing chemistry with Nicole’s Abbie) was a large part of why. I also quickly became a big fan of Tom himself as he came across as so witty and self-deprecating and *fun* in all the behind the scenes/convention clips etc. I was lucky enough to also meet Tom at a convention and he genuinely is that witty and charming and lovely.

14. TOM WISDOM as ARCHANGEL MICHAEL - I think Dominion was possibly the first show that I got sucked into by seeing whumpy gifsets on tumblr! :D It was such a great show and also to date the most immersive, welcoming, cast-and-crew-interactive fandom I have ever been in. The cast and crew regularly live-tweeted the episodes, and interacted with fans on Twitter, and it was SO much fun. And Tom’s Michael was my favourite character right from the start - seemingly aloof but so much going on under the surface... and some really nice whump, especially in season 2! I was heartbroken when it was cancelled after only 2 seasons (and just as the plot was getting *really* interesting).

15. OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN as LUCAS - I was hooked on Emerald City right from the first episode. It was visually stunning, so atmospheric, and really intruiging. I love love loved Adria Arjona’s Dorothy (ngl, I had a bit of a crush on her too) and she and Lucas together were just... *chef’s kiss*. I mean... what an introduction to a character... she finds him crucified, bleeding, his wrists tied with barbed wire, and amnesiac.... and the whump only gets better and better from there on in! Like the entire first two episodes are just... Lucas whump! :D And his devotion to her... Emerald City was honestly the first show where I really got into a ship. I was *invested* in Dorcas, dammit! Aaaand sadly another excellent show that never made it past its first season.

16. JASON RALPH as QUENTIN COLDWATER - Another show that I watched right from the start, was heavily invested in.... and that the writers absolutely tanked and destroyed in later seasons. *cries* Quentin was such a brilliant viewpoint character for the show and I loved his awkwardness, and his angst, and his enthusiasm, and his adorable floppy hair... and how often he got whumped! 

17. COLIN MORGAN - I fell for Colin in Merlin (which I stumbled upon late, long after it had finished airing, and hence was able to binge-watch the entire 5 seasons!) and liked him enough to seek out his other works, such as The Fall, and Humans, and The Living and the Dead, and he was brilliant (and very pretty) in all of them... and his characters also seem to get whumped quite a lot! :D 

18. MATT LANTER as WYATT LOGAN - Wyatt was another of my favourite archetypes... absolutely badass and competent... but also tortured and angsty and capable of intense devotion. Another show that I watched because of whumpy gifs on tumblr and the second ever show where I actually got invested in a ship - Lyatt all the way, baby!! :D - aaaaaand yet another show cancelled before its time.

19. NOCTIS LUCIS CAELUM from FINAL FANTASY XV - my very first video game crush! I was recommended to play FFXV by fellow whumpers on the whumpshire discord because it was whumpy... and they were not wrong and I loved the game and I absolutely adored Noctis. FFXV is one of very very VERY few video games that I have actually played right through to the end. And possibly the only video game that has ever affected me to such an extent... I became so invested in the characters and their world and I actually found the last couple of chapters really hard to play because it was actually upsetting me emotionally. I had to take a break for a couple of weeks before I could go back and finish it!

20. CONNOR from DETROIT BECOME HUMAN - and from there I jumped straight into another video game crush! DBH was another game recommended to me for its whump potential and I, and many others, immediately fell in love with the quirky, sassy, self-sacrificing (if you play the game right!) “android sent by Cyberlife”. The game itself is really good too... although, I have tried to play through all the different endings to the story but have never yet managed to make myself play the machine Connor storyline.... I want to complete all the story branches... but I also just want Hank and Connor to be friends and to be happy! :D

21. ZHU YILONG - Ahhh... the beginning of the asian drama arc of my fandom life! I first came across Zhu Yilong after getting sucked into watching Guardian because of pretty (and whumpy) gifs on tumblr... and I’ve never looked back. He is one of the rare entries where I am pretty much guaranteed to like him in pretty much anything he does and my crush extends beyond Shen Wei, or his other characters, and into reblogging his fashion shoot photos, and keeping up with news of his work in general. He’s just... so darn pretty! And also so... blur! :D And the behind the scenes stuff and interviews of him with Bai Yu, during the Guardian era, just made me fall for him all the more. He’s also ridiculously talented - not only a fantastic actor, but a really good singer (I love his singing voice), he plays guitar and piano, and he can paint too!!

He’s also pretty much what made me start learning Chinese... because after Guardian I went seeking his other dramas to watch... only to find that many of them are only partially, or not at all, subbed. So I thought... why not try learning Chinese and then I’ll be able to watch his other shows? :D

21. JI CHANG WOOK - My first kdrama crush, and what a good one to start with! Healer was the first drama I ever watched and can you blame me for falling for JCW... especially when I followed up Healer with The K2?! I’ve liked him in pretty much everything I’ve watched him in. Although I do wish he would go back to doing more action-based shows as he is sooo good at them... but he seems to prefer the romcom genre these days, which is something I am nottt always a fan of tbh.

22. JAKE HSU as MENG SHAO FEI - Yet another show that I got sucked into by tumblr - and also one with a great, fun fandom through which I met lots of lovely people who I still follow/am mutuals with to this day. I just *adored* Jake’s character in History and I also loved the ship - Tang Fan and Meng Shaofei were awesome and adorable together and I was totally invested in both the ship and the gangster/cop/what happened years ago story happening alongside the ship. And Jake is just all kinds of cute.

23. XIAO ZHAN - Aaaand we are pretty much up to current day now... where The Untamed took over my life in the summer of 2019 and has yet to let me go. Xiao Zhan is another disgustingly talented human being - a fantastic singer and a really good actor, and also an artist - and he also just comes across as a genuinely sweet and charming person, and a very thoughful and earnest one too. And lbr he is ridiculously pretty, and his smile is just pure sunshine. 

24. LEE DONG WOOK as LEE YEON - The most recent entry to the charts.... a Korean actor I was aware of but whose work I hadn’t watched and whose looks didn’t particularly seem to grab me... until I watched Tale of the Nine Tailed and fell head over heels for Lee Yeon (and daaayum does red hair suit LDW!!) and very quickly began to find LDW’s looks very appealing (and oh my, does Lee Yeon whump well!!). And yes, I have now started watching Goblin. :D

Phew! Aaaand we are done! I’ll admit, I did think of a few more as I was compiling this list but I decided to categorise them as more “minor” crushes and not include them... otherwise we really could be here all day!!

I’m going to tag: @sarah-yyy​, @arlothia​, @howdydowdy​, @thepromiseweheldforlife​ and @the-wandering-whumper​!

[handthigh]

Soooo I may or may not have gone crazy and gone stupid and wrote a whole ass one shot fanfic of Tianshan in the office AU

ETA: this is now also available at AO3! (ETA 2: This is now a multichapter fic!)

Big thanks to the people over at Tianshan discord for taking a read and giving me the feedback. The fic follows right after this paragraph, with notes at the end of the fic.

He Tian (Work):

Little Mo, pass me a stapler (6:35pm)

Frowning at the message notification, Mo Guan Shan wordlessly takes the stapler lying on his desk and wheels his chair out of his cubicle to pass to his next door neighbour who grins upon receiving the stationery from the redhead. The reciprocity is not returned however, as Guan Shan wheels back into his cubicle to complete a report the supervisor had dumped onto him 15 minutes before the time he ends work. It is already bad enough that he is working overtime on a Friday while being the only one stuck with He Tian, the last thing he needs is for the annoying colleague to interrupt his progress.

The report turns out even more taxing than expected, further souring Guan Shan’s mood. He glanced at the time displayed on the laptop, “6:55pm”. Great, the report’s barely done and closing time sale at the nearby sandwich shop is already over. So much for a “quick task”, he scoffs bitterly at his supervisor’s words.

As if He Tian can read his mind, comes another text:

He Tian (Work):

Little Mo, are you cursing out the boss in your head again? (6:57pm)

Damn it, not another interruption. Glancing at the new message, Guan Shan cringes at the accuracy of the guess. Guilt quickly turns into irritation however, as he glares at the cubicle separating him and the culprit of these messages. This has been going on for about 3 months now, ever since he was assigned to be seated with He Tian at the corner of the office. The reason? The supervisor claims that only the short tempered Guan Shan is immune to the raven haired’s hunky looks while workers of all genders in their department are too busy admiring He Tian to work productively. Guan Shan tries to suppress his gag upon the memory.

First of all, Guan Shan does not appreciate being called short tempered. He just has little patience and a lot of irritation for mindless small talks and forced formalities, that’s all. Second of all, seriously? Of all words, hunky? While Guan Shan admits that He Tian is a looker because after all, he has eyes; but that is certainly an exaggeration. Sure, He Tian has the physique and face for the magazine covers, but he’s not that good looking. Especially not when he assigns Guan Shan that stupid nickname and constantly texts him for no justifiable reasons despite already repeating many times that he only wants to reserve the texting to a minimum and keep it strictly to work matters.

Wait, what the fuck? Why is he thinking about him again? Ugh, this is why he emphasises on keeping social interactions to a minimum! The report and the constant texting must have really gotten to him, because the next thing he knew, Guan Shan picks up his phone and types at his source of annoyance.

Me:

Yes, genius. Since you’re so smart and volunteered to OT with me, why don’t you make yourself useful and help me out with the report then you chicken dick! (7:05pm)

Normally Guan Shan tries to keep his temper in check, wanting to believe he is no longer the moody middle school boy that he was. Besides, this is the first job he managed to get right after graduating university 6 months ago, just in time before the recession. Thus, he is not trying to screw up an opportunity just because he got involved in some petty office drama. However, the combination of working overtime, growing hunger and unnecessary buzzing of his phone followed by He Tian’s unnecessary messages is making Guan Shan throw both caution and formalities out the window. 

He is not the only one surprised by his own outburst however, as He Tian guffaws and rolls his chair out of the cubicle to meet the redhead, currently glaring at him and asking what’s so funny.

“Chicken dick? What kind of insult is that? Also, I dunno, I just thought you’d never asked me for help.” He Tian replies with a shrug and his signature grin.

He Tian is not wrong - Guan Shan seldom asks for help, believing that it’s better to be self-sufficient than to rely on someone else. Furthermore, it allows him to avoid having to keep up with forced interactions with others. But it’s getting late and the report doesn’t seem to be finishing soon, and there is someone in the office right now, might as well right?

“So are you going to help me or not?”

“Sure, anything for you Little Mo~”

“Stop calling me that! Give me your email, I’ll share the document with you on the cloud.”

So, here they are at 7:30pm, working in a shared online document together - cubicle to cubicle. Guan Shan mainly typing out the content of the report while He Tian formats, elaborates and adds any figures and charts where appropriate; explaining his rationale to the other while he works.

As Guan Shan sees the report transform before his very own eyes, he is now confronted with the thought he’s been trying to will away for 3 days, ever since he overheard the company executives discuss whether to promote He Tian. 

As much as he hates admitting it, He Tian is talented and hardworking when situations call for it. Not only is he able to easily handle the tedious formatting that is typically required of such reports, he also goes the extra mile of further perfecting any tasks assigned to him. It also helps that he has great social networking skills to accompany his equally great looks, not only charming the other coworkers around them, but also clients and other company staff alike in network events. 

Attempting to ignore the ache of admiration growing in his chest, Guan Shan wonders why is someone as good as He Tian working at an entry level job like him in a medium sized company when the latter can easily negotiate for a much higher salary in a conglomerate. What he heard about his raven haired coworker isn’t helping much with his curiosity either.

While Guan Shan prefers minding his own business, he also doesn’t live under a rock. He has heard the rumours - that He Tian had interned for various big names while he attended an Ivy League business school and graduated a valedictorian. He was also rumoured to be taking over his family’s multinational company branch in China while his older brother gets based overseas to look over their international branches. Yet somehow, here he is, working overtime in a too small cubicle with an aloof coworker who has nothing to boast for. After all, Guan Shan’s resume mainly consists of mediocre grades in a local university that is far from being a C9 League, one proper internship experience and multiple part time odd jobs to help him pay his student loans. 

He Tian has everything going for him, and yet, why? Guan Shan is so lost in his own thoughts that he does not notice an arm reaching out to his laptop and folding it down, clasping his fingers that are resting motionlessly on the keyboard.

“Ouch! What the fuck?!” Guan Shan stands up and yelps in shock, spinning around to glare at the culprit. This proves to be a mistake as he realises he is face to face with He Tian, barely an inch away. 

Suddenly, the room feels hot and all Guan Shan can hear is his heart rapidly beating in his ears as he sees a totally different expression from the latter: lips twitching up, high cheekbones raised making them even more pronounced, coupled with a pair of grey eyes sparkling and curving in childish amusement. Even though he knows that He Tian is laughing at his expense, somehow, Guan Shan could not bring himself to break eye contact, wanting to look as long as possible until he commits He Tian’s genuine smile to memory.

“Earth to Little Mo, I said I was done with the report and had emailed our supervisor, and was thinking of treating you to a sandwich as a thanks for your effort.” He Tian replies, amusement laced in his voice as he breaks the silence.

“...How do you know I like…” Guan Shan dumbly replies, still feeling overwhelmed by the close contact to even retort He Tian as he feels his face getting even hotter.

Breaking eye contact, He Tian steps to the side and fishes out his car key, hooking the key ring to his finger. As much as he finds his flustered colleague both amusing and endearing, he makes sure to give Guan Shan some space in case the other gets too stunned and passes out. “Well, who else in this office eats those except for you? So what do you say, it'll be my treat and I can drive us there.” He Tian says as he leans back on the cubicle wall, spinning the car key around.

“.... Uh… mm” Guan Shan nodded, feeling too light headed to speak properly.

“Let’s go then.” He Tian steps out of the cubicle, making his way out as he turns off the office lights.

Guan Shan’s mind is reeling as he follows He Tian from behind. Why is he suddenly reacting like this? Why did he agree to have dinner with him? Most importantly, WHY IS HE SUDDENLY HAVING SUCH THOUGHTS OF THAT ANNOYING CHICKEN DICK?

God, he hates working overtime.

Notes:

If you made it here, thanks for reading! I’ve been wanting to write a fluffier, slice of life office romance with Tianshan for quite awhile now - an AU with no mafia drama, no She Li being a creep, just coworkers dicking around and relatively normal problems here and there. I only committed after getting reminded of this official Tianshan art by Old Xian on the discord. Aside from 19 days, I also draw inspiration from a webcomic called Senpai ga Uzai, Kouhai no Hanashi. I’m a huge sucker of slow burn fluffy Tianshan where Guan Shan is initially annoyed at He Tian and slowly and reluctantly falls for him. Hehehehehehehehe *continues to laugh in fujoshi*

Not going to lie, I do feel nervous posting it. However, after seeing many Tianshan fics (they are good! don’t get me wrong) that doesn’t have a workplace AU, I thought I’d manifest it onto the internet space! Do let me know what you think, as I am considering expanding this into a multi-fic once I stop being lazy. 

[floofiestboy]

Senyuu AU Masterpost

I asked if I should do this on Twitter but Twitter is trash for big posts like this so I’m posting it on Tumblr. 

I’m calling this an AU masterpost but I’m including canon alternate versions of characters too. I’m writing this assuming you don’t know anything past S4, but it will contain spoilers for F5 and the Haruhara Robinson Channel content.

Since the majority of these AUs are entirely fan-based with only the slightest bit of official content, I’ll also discuss common fanwork concepts, including things like special ship names for particular AUs.

Table of Contents

Common AUs

Web

SQ

High School

Magical Girl Alfo-chan

Visual kei

2P

Less Common AUs

High School Detectives/Police

Himura + Yami

Rosicks + Hialba

Sheepba

Wild West

Obscure AUs/Outfit Changes

Feral Ros + Adventurer Alba

Formal Wear

Karaoke

Kindergarten

Saeki-san

Scientist Ros

University

Urashima Tarou

Vampire Ros

Wedding

Canon-Adjacent AUs/Canon Alternate Characters

Albatross 

Boss + Sleepiez

Creasion + Maoruba

Elf’s Universe (”0verse”)

Meta Ros

This got super-long so I highly suggest using CTRL/CMD+F to jump to just the ones you’re interested in!

Common AUs

All the AUs in this category are universes you see everywhere in fan content, regardless of how much official content there is for it. 

Web

Alright, this isn't an "AU", but including it for completion's sake. This is the main canon, the original Alba and Ros from the original webcomic. The anime and the Main Quest manga can be considered to be equivalent to the web-verse.

Official Japanese | English Scanlations 

SQ

(Image from Jump SQ’s website.)

SQ is an “official” Senyuu AU - it’s basically Senyuu if Alba and Ros kept their Season 1 dynamic forever and nothing really bad ever happened. Haruhara has said a number of times that an important thing about SQ is that everything sad has gone poof, which is why he decides against giving a sad dramatic reason why Ros’ name went from Sion to Ros in SQ-verse. Other notable changes in SQ include Januar being human, Elf being a demon, and Foyfoy being cute and shy.

Senyuu SQ originally ran in the Jump SQ magazine for thirty chapters (Official Japanese | English Scanlations), named as such because of the magazine it ran in. More recently, Haruhara began releasing SQ Senyuu! on his channel, where the SQ stands for Super Quality and definitely not anything copyrighted (Official Japanese | English Scanlations.) The chapters released on his channel were sometimes in draft form, so he additionally inked some and released it in doujinshi form (Official Japanese | English Scanlations), along with a doujinshi-exclusive chapter.

Senyuu SQ Alba (seen above) looks identical to Web S1 Alba. SQ Senyuu! Alba (seen below) looks like Web S2 Alba but short and without the Red Fox scarf. SQ Ros doesn’t change appearances between Senyuu SQ and SQ Senyuu! He has the Web S1 Ros hairstyle, but lacks his armour and sword - his bat is his most defining feature.

High School

There’s actually two different high school AUs:

SQ Academy: There’s three omake chapters in SQ Senyuu where everyone is in high school - see here and here, in volumes 1 and 2 respectively. In the SQ High School AU, Ros, Alba, Hime-chan, Foyfoy, Januar, and Rudolf are students, while Rchi is a teacher. Alba is the president of an unnamed club with Ros as a club member. 

(Image from Haruhara’s twitter.)

Soccer Club Drama CD: This drama CD was released with one of the MQ volumes. You can only buy the original Japanese on auction sites now, but you can listen to the audio and read a translated transcript here! This AU features only Ros, Alba, and Crea, who are all part of the same soccer club. Alba is the club president.

In both AUs, Ros calls Alba “Prez”. The canon content for both AUs is rather sparse, so the Prez thing is usually the only thing that’s retained in most fanworks. Reincarnation stories are pretty popular in fanworks, but there’s no hints or implications in either official High School AU that it’s connected to SQ or Web canons. Usually people use the Drama CD designs (probably because they don’t want to draw Ros with S1 hair.) Sometimes they use the SQ Academy designs at the start, then change to the Drama CD designs in second-year or something.

There’s also the Senyuu Light Music Club from one of the web omakes, which features Crea and Elf. I haven’t seen any works incorporate it though.

Japanese terminology glossary

High School AU: 学パロ - Gakuparo

Prez:  部長 - Buchou

---

Magical Girl Alfo-chan

This is the mahou shoujo parody of Senyuu, featuring Alba as a girl - Alfo-chan - and Ros as a cat - Roll.

(Image no longer available online.)

Roll is usually made into a cute catboy that can transform into a cat, because I mean, why wouldn’t you. And also presumably people want a Roll they can ship with Alfo-chan. For some reason there’s also a lot of works that ship Alfo-chan with Creasion, though I’m not sure where it came from.

The “official title” of this parody is actually Magical Princess Alfo-chan, not Magic Girl Alfo-chan, and most fanworks on pixiv are found under this name.

Japanese terminology glossary

Magical Princess Alfo-chan: マジカルプルンセスアルフォちゃん

Alfo: アルフォちゃん

Roll: ロール

Alfo/Creasion: アシルフォ - Ashirufo

Alfo/Roll: ロルアル - Roruaru

---

Visual kei 

Visual kei is a music genre - you can read about it here. This AU started because Haruhara drew a pic of Alba and Ros in visual-kei-like outfits, and then it all spiraled from there. There’s three images that fuel this entire AU:

(Image from Haruhara’s twitter. Note that you can find a higher quality scan of this art if you download this artbook scan here.)

(Image from Haruhara’s twitter.)

(Image no longer available online.)

The Alba and Ros in the first image were dubbed Visual-ba and Visual-ros, the Ros in the second image “Roppongi” (because his t-shirt says “Roppongi Hills”, and the Alba in the last image “Kuroba” (because Kuro means black and he’s black-haired.) Why were the bottom two images lumped in with the first? That’s a mystery that may never be solved.

There’s two common variations of the AU in fanworks. 

The first is where Kuroba + Visual-ba and Roppongi + Visual-ros are two pairs of brothers, and typically the pairings go Kuroba/Visual-ros and Roppongi/Visual-ba. In this variation, Visual-ba basically always gets to be Alba, while Roppongi and Visual-ros often take the names Ros and Sion respectively. 

The second common variation is where Kuroba and Roppongi are just the civilian identities of Visual-ba and Visual-ros, which doesn’t have a pithy shipname in Japanese.

With regards to their visual kei identities, I’ve also usually seen two main variations - either Alba and Ros are currently in a singing group together, or Ros used to be a famous singer and Alba is currently trying to get famous under his tutelage. 

Haruhara has also recently posted a glow-up pic of Visual-ba, bringing the grand total of official art in this AU to... four.

Japanese terminology glossary

Visual kei: ビジュアル系 - vijyuaru kei  (Note that while technically ヴィジュアル is the correct term in Japanese, in the Senyuu fandom, ビジュアル is used for everything, probably because it’s easier to type and say.)

Visual-ba: ビジュアル - bijyuaru

Visual-ros: ビジュロス - bijyurosu

Roppongi: 六本木 

Kuroba: 黒髪アルバ - Kurokami Alba (lit. Black-Haired Alba) --> クロバ

Kuroba/Visual-ros: ジュロ黒 - jyurokuro or 黒ジュロ - kurojyuro

Roppongi/Visual-ba: 六ビジュ - rokubijyu or ビジュ六 - bijyuroku

Visual-ros/Visual-ba:  ビジュロスアル - bijyurosuaru, 派生ロスアル - haseirosuaru

---

2P

“2P” is used in many fandoms to refer to alternate character designs that are often associated with different personalities as well. In Senyuu, the official 2P designs are all alternate colourings:

(Image from Haruhara’s pixiv.)

(Image from one of Haruhara’s artbooks which doesn’t seem to have an online scan, sorry for the bad quality.)

Likely because the bottom two are only available in an artbook, I haven’t seen many fanworks with them. 2P AUs tend to be only 2P Alba and Ros, with some occasional 2P Rchimedes or 2P Crea (who’s typically drawn as 2P Rchimedes with short hair.) 2P Ros is usually drawn with blue eyes, presumably to match with his red Mana Maker. 2P Rchi is also common enough - she tends to be drawn with a blue and black scheme, to contrast with her canon pink and white scheme (example). 

2P Alba and Ros have varying personalities in fanworks, but the one consistency seems to be that their personalities are nothing like canon. 2P Ros tends to be the silent serious type or a yandere. 2P Alba tends to be an innocent happy boy or a yandere. You may be seeing a pattern here.

Note also that 2P Ros is usually referred to as 2P Creasion, for obvious reasons.

Japanese terminology glossary

2P Alba/2P Ros: 2Pアシアル - 2P ashiaru or 2Pアルアシ - 2P aruashi. Both are sometimes shortened by removing the “2P”.

Less Common AUs

These AUs aren’t seen quite as much as the juggernauts above, but you’ve probably still seen them around occasionally.

High School Detectives/Police

There’s a few different detective-related fanworks floating out there, based on one of the three official chapters: Detective Ros in Senyuu SQ, Senyuu Police from the webcomic, and High School Detective Teufel in Main Quest Vol. 6, which hasn’t been scanlated yet (runs):

I haven’t seen too much art of High School Detective Teufel, but I’ve seen a couple fics and art out there for both Senyuu Police and Detective Ros, mostly Senyuu Police.

Himura + Yami

(Image from Haruhara’s Skeb.)

This isn’t really a Senyuu AU, but it shows up enough to include it here. Himura and Yami are two characters that Haruhara drew - you can see this original picture of them on page 12 of the artbook here. Himura is the redhead - at first, he meant to draw Alba, but he decided in the end it wasn’t Alba anymore and renamed the file to “Himura,psd.” Yami is just a fan-name - he’s only referred to as “the boy that shouldn’t be seen” in the artbook. Himura and Yami eventually appear in Gakumon! with the names Rahimu and Damia respectively.

Senyuu fanworks that include them usually have Himura being an Alba that fell into despair after Ros’ disappearance, while Yami is a physical manifestation of his despair.

Japanese terminology glossary

Himura-kun: 火村くん

Himura-kun/Yami: やみひむ

---

Rosicks + Hialba

This is yet another AU that was born from a mere two pieces of official art:

(Image from Haruhara’s twitter.)

(Image from Haruhara Robinson channel.)

The first picture is entitled “Soldier Rosicks” - Haruhara posted it saying it was a Ros beta design. The second picture is an scrapped Alba design for web season 2. Hialba was originally revealed on the NicoNico channel Hiaruron that Haruhara shares with a couple other artists, and so he got the name “Hiaruba” --> Hialba from the channel name.

Fanworks typically have Hialba as dead inside and sad because of Ros’ disappearance, and Rosicks as a gruff irritable guy who isn’t Ros and doesn’t like being compared to him. Cue angst because Hialba sees Rosicks as just Ros, etc.

Japanese terminology glossary

Hialba: ひあるば

Rosicks/Hialba: ロシひあ - Roshihia

---

Sheepba

Sheepba originates from a New Year’s illustration Haruhara made for the year of the sheep:

(Image from Haruhara’s pixiv.)

While Haruhara has done this for multiple years - there’s illustrations of Alba as a dog, a rat, etc. - Sheepba in particular became particularly popular. Why? Is it the floofy body? The innocent expression? Nay. I say there’s but one reason for Sheepba’s popularity in comparison to other Chinese Zodiac/Alba hybrids-

Haruhara has produced a crapton of Sheepba merch over the years.

I believe he’s made coloured sheep versions of other characters too for merch, but I unfortunately wasn’t able to find any of them. I was, however, able to find outlined drawings of them:

(Image from Haruhara’s twitter.)

Enjoy this flock of Senyuu sheep. And be prepared to see some uh... questionable things if you choose to browse the ひつじるば - Hitsujiba tag.

Wild West

This AU comes from the Wild West parody in this chapter. The fanworks I’ve seen tend to have Ros be some dangerous outlaw with a huge bounty.

Obscure AUs/Outfit Changes

These AUs tend to be only used as outfit changes, or aren’t seen often at all.

Feral Ros + Adventurer Alba

Basically a Tarzan AU. Based on this Haruhara Channel comic: Official Japanese | English Scanlation.

Formal Wear

You may sometimes see Alba and Ros wearing suits. There’s two pieces of art this originates from:

(Image from Haruahara’s twitter.)

(Image from Haruhara’s twitter.)

There’s also a corresponding Ros-in-suit-with-striped-shirt photo that you can see in the artbook here.

Karaoke

You may have seen characters dressed up as what seemed like waiter outfits. That may have come from the Senyuu Karaoke collaboration that happened around when the anime aired:

(Image from collaboration website.)

Kindergarten

This comes from the recent Haruhara Robinson channel comics - Senyuu Kindergarten Story #1 and Story #2.

It features Alba and Rchi as kindergarten teachers to the rest of the Senyuu cast.

Saeki-san

Haruhara was the writer for a manga called Dignified Asleep Saeki-san (Official Japanese | English Scanlations), which was a romcom that featured a girl called Saeki determined to sleep in class, and a boy called Tokimiya who sits next to her. 

When the manga began serialization, Haruhara drew a parody sketch of the manga where Ros is Tokimiya and Alba is Saeki.

(Image from Haruhara’s twitter.)

Scientist Ros

You may have seen art of Ros wearing the glasses + lab coat combo from when he made the Mana Maker in season 3:

Or from when Alba had his... questionable body measurement exam in Senyuu+:

Or when they both wore glasses in the Haruhara Robinson Channel doujinshi Crea-kun Has Cheerfully Fallen to the Dark Side:

University

A while back, Haruhara drew a picture of Alba and Ros in the winter wearing coats:

(Image from Haruhara’s pixiv.)

A little more recently, he was commission to redraw the image:

(Image from Haruhara’s pixiv.)

Fanworks that use Alba and Ros in these outfits often treat them as university AUs (and usually have them on a date.)

Urashima Tarou

Urashima Tarou is an old Japanese fairytale which Haruhara used as the setting for one of his omake segments. If you’ve seen turtle Alba:

Or Ros in old-timey fishing clothes:

That’s where it’s from.

Vampire Ros

The typical Vampire Ros design comes from an SQ chapter where Alba and Ros disguise themselves as demons after chasing Elf into the demon world.

Alba is usually either a werewolf (presumably because werewolves and vampires are a common pair) or some hapless human that Ros sucks blood from. 

Wedding

(Image from Haruhara’s twitter.)

Haruhara drew this when he was getting married(?) because it apparently felt less embarrassing to draw his protagonist getting married than to draw him and his wife. 

Fans promptly used the outfit to marry Alba off to Ros, likely galvanized by the Mana Maker + Hero Symbol combo on Alba’s head.

Canon Adjacent AUs/Canon Alternate Characters

Moved to an overflow post here because this one got big enough that Tumblr stopped saving my post.

[gstqaobc]

CBC NEWS The Royal Fascinator Feb. 7, 2020 Hello, royal watchers and all those intrigued by what’s going on inside the House of Windsor. This is your biweekly dose of royal news and analysis. Reading this online? Sign up here to get this delivered to your inbox. Janet Davison Janet Davison Royal Expert

Who will step up for Meghan and Harry?

(Lefteris Pitarakis/The Associated Press)

It was a striking image that day in June of 2012 — just six people on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, sending a signal widely interpreted to foreshadow a slimmed-down future for the House of Windsor.

It was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee marking her 60 years as monarch, and joining her on the balcony were her eldest son and heir, Prince Charles; his wife, Camilla; Charles’s two sons, Princes William and Harry; and William’s wife, Kate. (The Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, was in hospital at the time and it would be four years before Harry met his wife, Meghan.)

Charles has long been thought to favour a core group of senior family members to carry the House of Windsor forward in the next reign.

But Harry and Meghan’s departure from the upper echelons of the family leaves a big hole in that plan.

"I think [Charles] envisaged having Harry as part of that,” Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, said via email.

Seward said that along with William and Kate, Charles saw his sister, Princess Anne, and his brother, Prince Edward, as part of the plan.

Harry’s departure “really blows a hole into Charles’s well-thought-out plan for a slimmed-down monarchy based on the core family,” royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith

told Vanity Fair

.

Even though Harry is now down to sixth in the line of succession, he would still have been expected to carry out more senior duties for several years because numbers three, four and five in the succession (William and Kate’s young children, George, Charlotte and Louis) are up to two decades away from being active royals.

“So Charles and William have been counting on Harry to be, in effect, third in line to the throne and that’s all out the window, too,” said Bedell Smith.

Harry and Meghan have been staying out of sight for the past couple of weeks and are thought to be on Vancouver Island, where they were over Christmas before making their seismic departure announcement.

In the meantime in the U.K., it’s been royal business as usual for everyone from the Queen on down. Elizabeth was out and about twice this week —

and reminisced about her father and his corgis

— as her regular winter stay at her Sandringham estate, north of London, draws to a close.

Charles and Camilla were at a reception for the British Asian Trust and other engagements. William, who has a new role as Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and Kate were at the British version of the Oscars and did a day trip to Wales.

Observers have been trying to figure out whether there’s any evidence of Harry and Meghan’s departure affecting what other senior members of the family are doing.

But in many ways, that seems to be a stretch — at least for now.

“As official engagements are usually fixed some months in advance and Harry and Meghan’s official departure is not until the spring, I don’t think we have yet seen much direct evidence,” Seward said.

“The crux will come on family occasions and none are scheduled in the immediate future. The future of Harry’s military appointments is obviously under consideration and will be announced as soon as it is decided.”

Still, it all leaves many open questions about how other members of the family may step up their roles. One person seen by many as likely to gain more prominence is Edward’s wife, Sophie, the Countess of Wessex.

“I think Sophie will take on a lot more royal duties and patronages,” said Seward.

And then there are Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, daughters of Prince Andrew, who has stepped down from public duties in the wake of fallout from his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and a disastrous BBC interview related to that.

“I am not sure about Beatrice and Eugenie,” Seward said. “Before all this happened, I know Andrew was keen for them both to have royal roles, but Charles was not.”

Another spring wedding

One thing that is sure for Beatrice — she has a confirmed wedding date and venue. Buckingham Palace said this morning she and fiancé Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi will marry May 29 at the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace in central London. The Queen will host a reception just up the road, in the gardens behind Buckingham Palace. After a flurry of royal weddings in Windsor over the past couple of years, this promises to be a lower-profile, smaller and more intimate affair — perhaps not surprising given the controversy surrounding Beatrice’s father, Andrew. St. James’s Palace does, however, have a rich royal history. Other weddings that have taken place there include that of Queen Victoria in 1840. It’s also been the scene of several christenings, including Beatrice herself in December 1988, and more recently Prince George in 2013 and Prince Louis in 2018. Andrew and the FBI — what's going on? Prince Andrew was the focus of more attention recently after the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York told a news conference held outside Epstein’s former mansion that Andrew had given “zero co-operation” to the inquiry into the convicted sex offender.Immediately after that, sources close to Andrew were reported as saying he was angry and “bewildered” by the claims he had been unco-operative, and that he hadn’t received any request to speak to the FBI.A lawyer for a victim of Epstein also urged Andrew to co-operate with the FBI.Seward said until an approach is made by the FBI through official channels, “nothing will happen.”“This doesn’t lessen the potential wrong, but he can’t answer anything until his lawyers are contacted, and then they don’t have to answer straight away,” Seward said. “I think he will help the investigation, but has probably been advised to wait until such time as all the necessary evidence as to where he was and what he was doing has been gathered.”Andrew has said he did not see or suspect any sex crimes during the time he spent with Epstein. He has also denied any inappropriate relations with a woman who has said she was forced to have sex with him three times between 1999 and 2002. Andrew has said he has no recollection of meeting her..

Royal angst — beyond the House of WindsorOther royal families have also seen their share of controversy and high-profile headlines in the last little while.The public prosecutor in Luxembourg has launched a probe after reports of physical violence toward staff who work for the tiny European country’s royal family.It was only the latest headline there, coming about a week after Grand Duke Henri issued a statement to defend his wife, Grand Duchess Maria Teresa, against allegations of a “hostile working environment” at the palace.“Why attack a woman? A woman who speaks up for other women? A woman who is not even being given the right to defend herself?” Henri said in his statement.Next door, in Belgium, former King Albert II admitted he fathered a child during an extramarital affair half a century ago.The acknowledgement came after a court-ordered DNA test found that the 85-year-old, who abdicated in 2013, is Delphine Boël’s biological father.Boël had been engaged in a longstanding court fight to prove that she is his biological daughter.

Royally quotable

"Yet in 2020, and not for the first time in the last few years, we find ourselves talking again about the need to do more to ensure diversity in the sector and in the awards process – [a lack of diversity] simply cannot be right in this day and age."

—  Prince William

speaks during the British Academy Film Awards

.

Fans of the Netflix drama The Crown will have to content themselves with just five seasons, rather than the six everyone had been expecting. Creator Peter Morgan had said he’d planned on six seasons of the show focusing on Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but the other day he nixed that idea and said five seems like the “perfect time and place to stop.” The way the series is going, that should take viewers up to around the year 2000. Given some of the higher-profile royal controversies of late, perhaps it’s understandable why Morgan is content to stop at that point. “I think there’s concerns the closer you get to the present day, in terms of how much dramatic licence can you ethically take about events that are unfolding,” said Toronto-based royal historian and author Carolyn Harris. “And also, the show would become more controversial if it was speaking about events that are in many ways still unfolding at this time, and imagining conversations behind palace doors.” Season 5 will see another actor take on the role of Elizabeth. Imelda Staunton, who’d long been rumoured for the part, will follow Claire Foy (seasons 1 and 2) and Olivia Colman (seasons 3 and 4).

Royal reads

1. A century before Harry and Meghan, an Italian noble family

sought refuge in B.C. — and stayed

. [CBC]

2. The RCMP and U.K. security officials are

discussing how best to protect Harry and Meghan

while they are in Canada, and who will ultimately pay for their security. [CBC]

3. Harry

lost a press complaint

he filed against a newspaper over a story it published about photos of African wildlife he has posted on Instagram. [BBC]

4. To mark the 200th anniversary of King George III’s death, his

massive collection of military maps

has been made available online, offering insight into global conflicts from the 16th to 18th centuries. Also going back in time,

a vest worn by Charles I at his execution

is going on display.  [The Guardian, BBC]  

Cheers!

I’m always happy to hear from you. Send your ideas, comments, feedback and notes to

royalfascinator@cbc.ca

. Problems with the newsletter? Please let me know about any typos, errors or glitches.

GOOD MORNING ALL, I THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE THE MOST RECENT NEWSLETTER. I HAVENT HAD A CHANCE TO READ IT YET BECAUSE I WANTED TO GETBIT OUT TO THOSE WHO DONT HAVE IT OR KNOW ABOUT IT. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿  💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

[purplesurveys]

945

A Survey For College/Uni Grads Survey by emptyspaces

What year did you graduate? 2020. It’s only been a little over a month, too.

What degree do you have? Journalism, but I might as well have had a minor in history because of the amount of history electives I took as well haha.

What classes did you take your first year? The first semester of my first year was purely for general courses, so I took basic courses on English, biology, math, philosophy, and Philippine history. By the second semester I took more basic courses on public speaking, physics, and social science, but by then I was already allowed to take two journalism majors.

Second year? My general courses included a basic course on art history, chemistry, English, Filipino, Asian history; my majors were on communication and media, news reporting, media law, media theory, journalism ethics, and an introductory course on broadcast communication.

Third year? The only general courses I had by this point were an intro to political science and a class on Philippine government and politics. I mostly took majors this year though, which wiped me the crap out: my majors were on media and society, feature writing, public relations, international relations, fact-checking, broadcast management, Southeast Asian history, and introductory courses on macroeconomics, film, psychology, and communication research.

Fourth year? I took up journalism design and layout, contemporary Philippine history, Philippine social history, pornography in media just because lol, an introductory course on anthropology, and I also got started on my thesis as well. My second and final semester got cancelled entirely because of the pandemic, but I would have finished units on business reporting, online journalism, community press, and the history of women in the Philippines.

Did it take you longer than four years to graduate? No. That would have disappointed my parents big time and considering how much effort they’ve put to send me to good schools, the least I could do was to graduate on time. Even if I wanted to shift out of my course, it would’ve led to a delay and I didn’t want that for them and I personally didn’t want that for myself either.

Did you start at 18, or did you have a gap year(s) after high school? Again, I didn’t want to take gap years for my parents’ sake. I immediately went to college right after graduating high school, like what the majority of students here do.

Was it a small or large college/university? Very large. The competition is even bigger – 100,000++ high school seniors take the entrance exam every year but they only take in around 10,000 passers. Still, 10,000 new students every school year is so many, and it’s always a bitch to get class slots because of our population.

Public or private? Public. 

Is there anything the school is well-known for? All sorts of things. It’s one of the top schools in the country, so we hog the spotlight in the national news pretty much everyday. I think the biggest things we’re known for though is our reputation for research and our activism history. It also makes us a popular target of pro-government trolls.

What were some of your favorite classes? I loved taking up art studies and all of my political science and history electives, and as for my journalism electives I really only enjoyed public relations and that one class where we ran an online magazine for a whole semester.

What were some classes you hated? Fucking economics. And fact-checking. And the fact that I took both in the same period...got my lowest average for that semester because of those classes, too. I feel like I would have done better if my economics class didn’t have a population of 200 and if I had a more experienced professor fact-checking but shit happens, I guess. I also felt like my porn class was a waste because the readings were so pretentious. And of course, philosophy.

Did you have any super-long classes? Like 3 hours or longer? All majors in my college are 3 hours long. So classes like PR, journalism ethics, feature writing, business reporting, media law, communication theory, etc. all definitely took a big chunk of my weekdays.

Did you ever change your major? No. I had multiple conversations with myself to decide if I should, but aside from not wanting to get delayed I also accepted the fact that as much as I had grown to not like journalism as a practice, the technical skills taught in it were still going to be super useful in the industry I want to get into, which is communications and PR.

Did you do any internships? If so, where? I did. I interned at a PR agency last year but it was part of my requirements to complete my course, so it felt forced to an extent. I’m currently interning at another PR agency, but this time I’m out of school and it’s a personal choice of mine.

Did you ever take any online classes? If so, which ones? I only had one or two online class sessions at the beginning of the lockdown, but my school ultimately cancelled the semester altogether in consideration of disadvantaged students who may not have laptops of their own or wi-fi at home. In the end they just gave a grade of ‘P’ to everyone, which meant Pass.

Were textbooks expensive? I didn’t need to buy entire textbooks because my professors usually just took excerpts or chapters from certain relevant books and let us photocopy the pages, which costs a lot cheaper than having to buy books.

What other supplies besides books did you have to buy for your classes? Other than course readings I didn’t need to spend much. Journalism isn’t a material-heavy course like how film or broadcast communication is.

Were you in any clubs or student organizations? Yes. I was in a journalism org, our graduation committee, and was part of a student publication at one point. I also tried to join AIESEC but my schedule was so hectic at the time that I had to drop it.

Did you ever volunteer anywhere? I was a lecturer and facilitator for the journalism workshops that my org regularly held (and will probably continue to volunteer even as a grad, since I know they appreciate alumni lecturers lol), and one time I also volunteered to be an usher for Batch 2019′s graduation.

Were you on any sports teams? Nope. I liked playing table tennis, but I was never trained properly enough to make it to varsity. 

Where was your favorite place to eat on campus? It depended on how much of a hurry I was in and how much I was willing to spend. The cheapest option was the network of kiosks scattered around campus which sold the same instant noodles and street food. If I wanted to reward myself but was on a tight budget, I went to Area 2 which is a residential street in campus that was also dotted with small food booths ran by the homeowners; if I had some money to spend and the time to stay in a sit-in restaurant I used to go to Chocolate Kiss.

Did you work while you were in college? I did not. I was lucky to be in a privileged position where my parents were able to provide for me and where I never had to worry about finances.

If so, where? How many hours per week?

How many times did you move throughout college? I didn’t. We lived in the same house the whole time I was in college.

Did you live on campus, in an apartment, or somewhere else? I lived at home and I just drove to and from school everyday, since the campus was near-ish enough for me not to avail of a dorm or condo.

Did you live with roommates? Alone? With a significant other? I lived with my family, but tbh it was mostly my mom and brother at home since my sister stays at a dorm and my dad works abroad.

If off-campus, how much was your rent? Never had to pay any.

How often did you go back to visit your parents? I went home to my mom every night lol, unless I had a sleepover at someone else’s place.

Did your parents help you out with living costs? Sure did. Nothing changed with my living arrangements and I still lived under their roof.

Did your parents (or someone else) pay for your tuition? They paid for the first two semesters; then by my sophomore year the government passed an act implementing free tuition for all state universities so since then they never had to pay a cent for my education.

Was it an expensive school? Not at all, which is why the competition to get in is so fierce. To illustrate, four years in my school is just equivalent to one semester in my sister’s college. Last time I checked one unit is ₱1500 or roughly $30.

If you paid for it, do you still have student loans you're paying off? I don’t have student loans. Idk if that’s a thing here, actually. I don’t think it is.

How many people did you date throughout college? One.

What was your longest relationship while in college? The whole four years. I was in the same relationship when I started and ended.

Were you in a sorority/fraternity? Fuck no.

Were you into partying? Just occasionally. I wasn’t a wild partier but I did go to a few college parties every now and then, and I certainly went to nearby bars nearly every Friday.

Where did you and your friends usually hang out? Along Katip, since there were enough places there to hang out in. Occasionally we’d go to Maginhawa, but I prefer it a lot less because the parking there sucks balls.

What did you and your friends do for fun? Drink, eat, play games.

Do you still keep in touch with any college friends? Very much. I support those who remain in the org, and I occasionally catch up with those who had already graduated.

Did any of them graduate with the same degree as you? Most of them did. It’s how I met them.

What did you do after you graduated? I rested for a bit but an existential crisis quickly came over and now I’m in a bit of a mental slump, but at least I’ve scored this internship to keep me occupied.

How was the pay at your first job out of college? The company I’m currently interning for objectively pays well, but they acquired me as an intern because they aren’t offering full-time positions for now. That said, I get an allowance rather than a salary so it isn’t much at all, but I’m still happy to be in the company because it’s supposed to be one of the top agencies in the country.

What classes prepared you the most for your career? PR, feature writing, public speaking, news reporting, online journalism...and tbh org work. 

- Five favorite memories from your college days -

1: UP vs DLSU basketball game from September last year HAAAAAA

2: Attending my organization’s orientation and encountering them for the first time, not knowing I was going to bloom so much there and gain my closest friends

3: High Def 2018 and 2019

4: Drinking at VSpot with Angela, Hans, Gabie, and whoever else from their Ateneo gang that also got invited

5: TK with orgmates

[theglobalbusinessmagazine-blog]

YOUNGEST INDIAN ENTREPRENEURS

FOLLOWING ARE SOME OF THE YOUNGEST IN LIST TO BE THE BEST OF TOMORROWS LEADERS, SHAKERS AND MOVERS FOR INDIA — A LIST OF YOUNGEST INDIAN CEOS AND ENTREPRENEURS IN INDIA

Ritesh Agarwal — Age 26

Ritesh started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 17 years old. He dropped out of college and launched his first start‐up Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd. in the year 2012. Oravel was designed as a platform to enable listing and booking of budget accommodation. Being an avid traveler, he soon realized that the budget hospitality sector lacked predictability. Therefore, he pivoted Oravel to OYO Rooms in 2013 with the key proposition of offering affordable and standardized accommodation. Ritesh Agarwal has benefited the society in more than one ways. He has also managed to achieve what most of the people only think of. Below listed are some of the accomplishments of this teenager. He has been named among the top 50 entrepreneurs by the TATA first dot awards in 2013. Finalist of the global student Entrepreneurship Awards India. He has been named one of the 8 hottest teenage startup founders in the world by a BusinessInsider in the year 2013. He is the World’s youngest CEO at 17

Shravan and Sanjay Kumaran — Age 17 & 19

Shravan and Sanjay, siblings aged 17 and 15 respectively are the youngest upcoming entrepreneurs of India. Together, they are the brain behind GoDimensions. The aim of the company is to develop a simple technological solution for the digital world. They are the youngest Mobile Application Developers in India. When asked about how they managed to achieve this feat, the brothers responded by saying “reading books and solving the problems given to them”. These two develop applications for both, Android as well as IOS platforms. \”We’ve always believed that we must do something for society,\” says Sanjay, on the thinking behind their latest app GoDonate, which facilitates the donation of food to local charities that would otherwise go to waste. \”In Central Asia itself, about 500 millions tons of food is being wasted each year,\” says Shravan. The dynamic duo has already developed 11 apps which have about 60,000 downloads across 60 countries! In 2017, they were listed in Forbes 30 Under 30.

Arjun Rai — Age 20 years

Arjun is the CEO of OdysseyAds and was always said to be highly inspired by TV shows like ‘The Oprah Show’ and ‘The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch’ and thought for ideas which changed the way of advertising and marketing in the tech space and today with the help of social platforms like LinkedIn, he met with other entrepreneurs who helped him to broaden his horizon and become one of the youngest and successful entrepreneurs in his field and he started working towards his company in 2009 and today he is the CEO of OdysseyAds.

Farrhad Acidwala — Age 23 years

Starting at the just age of 16 by borrowing 500 bucks from his father for buying a domain name he started building a web community particularly devoted to aviation and aero-modelling. After the website took off to success, he sold the community for a pretty high return. Today, Farrhad is the CEO of a web development, marketing, advertising and branding company called Rockstah Media. Despite being a very young company of 3 years, it has its own team of developers, marketers and designers across the globe and have marked its success in corporate. He had been featured in several best under 30 business leader rankings.

Rohan M Ganapathy (Age 27 years) & Yashas Karanam (Age 25 years)

Rohan and Yashas, are the young men behind the brand Bellatrix Aerospace, a company that have received their first high profile order from ISRO couple of years ago. Their order was for a satellite propulsion system and the company is now working on ambitious CHETAK, a 2 stage launch vehicle, which is planned to be aired by 2023. It is really a difference made by these entrepreneurs to get into such complex and challenging business industry at such young age and made a mark of their own

4. Deepanjali Dalmia — Age 28 years

Deepanjali is a young woman who represent ‘beauty with wisdom’, who took the leap of faith by quitting her top dollar job with E&Y in New York and decided to work for women’s health segment in India. She heads Heyday Care that produces organic sanitary pads made out of bamboo fiber and corn. She visions the product as effective, cheap and safe, making them perfect for women who either don’t have access to sanitary pads or don’t realize the harmful impact of ingredients in the regular off the shelf products and is a major social change maker in India

Kavita Shukla — Age 31 years

Kavita is the founder of FreshPaper which keeps the produces fresh for longer hours than today’s conventional methods. She has patented her innovation. FreshPaper was in a handful of co-ops and farmers’ markets by 2012, when Whole Foods placed a big order for two regions. Today the product is sold in groceries nationwide, and in over 35 countries fulfilling Kavita’s global aspirations.

Jeffin Ani Johns — Age 29 years

Jeffin is a young entrepreneur who chose to take the path of entrepreneurship instead of lucrative corporate job after his MBA. His entrepreneurship journey started in 2012 with an online reselling platform business and have ventured into several startups later. Currently, Jeffin Ani Johns is a serial entrepreneur major known for being the CEO & co founder of leading consulting firm BrandKeeda, a brand which have helped several micro startups to create their own brands through various innovative methods. He had been featured in several best under 30 business leader rankings. Despite being a very young company and young entrepreneur he have gained over 150 clients in over 3 countries and have been nominated to represent the country in several international startup summits.

Arushi Jain — Age 26 years

Arushi Jain is the founder of StayHappi Pharmacy. The idea behind starting StayHappi Pharmacy was to ensure that everyone in the country gets quality medicine at an affordable price. The brand aims to serve humanity and build its offline channels where it could reach consumers/patients and provide them with the authority to make a smart choice and choose the right medicine at a reasonable cost. It is a noble initiative, effectively marrying business acumen with human compassion. It is directed at one of the most pressing concerns of the society today, ie., availability of affordable and quality medication to all those are in need; a true societal cause to it very core. Arushi is planning to open around 2,000 more stores in different locations by 2020. As our aim is to offer medicines to the people across India at affordable prices without compromising on the quality of the products, we will continue to strengther. Being young also Arushi have made it into headlines of corporate world with her achievements in recent years

Amir Rao — Age 31 Years

Amir is a studio director at Supergiant Games. He also a co-creator of role-playing action video game Bastion which has won many awards and so far, as sold around 2.2 million copies. Amir tries to create continuous innovation in his business to stay ahead in his game

Pranav Yadav — Age 30 years

Pranav is the CEO of Neuro-Insight. It is a neuro-marketing firm that has designed and developed brain mapping technology to understand and improve the quality of commercials on TV. Pranav Yadav is an inspirational entrepreneur decided to make a difference in his industry

Bala Sarda — Age 28 years

Bala Sarda is the founder of Vahdam Teas, a brand which is even appretiated by global personality Oprah. Founded In 2015 By Bala Sarda, a fourth-generation tea entrepreneur, Vahdam Teas’ mission is to build a global tea and superfoods brand. With direct sourcing from estates across India and local distribution in key markets like the US, Vahdam is India’s largest premium homegrown tea brand for the world. At the age of 23, Bala started Vahdam Teas and in 4 years, it has taken India Tea to the global stage under a grown label and also build the world’s truly vertically integrated global brand, with its subsidiaries and presence in the US and Europe. He had been featured in several best under 30 business leader rankings.

Kshitij Marwah — Age 31 years

Kshitij Marwah is a design master who is yet to hit 35 but has made a big impact with his cutting edge ventures. First with MIT Media Lab India Initiative and then Tesseract Inc, he made waves in the industry. The latter saw him get on the fast moving Make In India wagon and has led to innovative products that have become the talk of the town. Voxel, first holographic headset for Smartphones and Quark 360, the smallest 360 degree virtual reality camera have brought him and his company much acclaim and even made to forbes list

Neil Mehta — Age 31 years

Neil is the founder of Greenoaks Capital which is an investment firm. At present, he is managing around $600 million by investing in various industries ranging from insurance to e-commerce. Prior to Greenoaks Capital, Neil was responsible for global special situation investments in Asia for OPG Ltd., a Hong Kong-based investment firm financed by a fund managed by D.E. Shaw & Co., L.P. Neil previously invested in private businesses in the general business and technology sector at Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors. Neil holds a BSc from The London School of Economics.

Trishneet Arora — Age 25

At the age of 25, Trishneet Arora is an author, a self-described friendly hacker and the founder and CEO of cyber security startup TAC Security Solutions. The India-based company performs Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing for corporates identifying weaknesses in their cyber security. He has received funding from angel investor Vijay Kedia and support from former VP of IBM, William May. In 2017, Arora was listed among the 50 Most Influential Young Indians by GQ Magazine, while August 25, 2017 was proclaimed Trishneet Arora Day, by the Mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Akash Shukla — Age 30

Akash Shukla is the co founder of Uprise India Foundation, a one of a kind and highly appreciated venture. “Uprise India Foundation provided the platform for women who are trying to achieve their entrepreneurial dreams. Women who will enrol with the program would be getting 360 business training, support & guidance for making their dream career successful. Any women can enrol irrespective of any business/profile, any women who own start-up, SME’S or two individual professionals,” shared Dudeja.

Under the initiative, Uprise India will organize monthly workshops in distinct towns to train women entrepreneurs. Their goal is to cover maximum metro cities and other important commercial enterprise towns of India. Notably, more than 100 women entrepreneurs were addressed at the conference.

Uprise India Foundation is an initiative taken by Akash Shukla along with his co-founder, to help women make their diverse identity in the world. Talking at the event, Shukla said, “In today’s time, we are missing the mindset of seeking out new knowledge and challenges and most importantly, we are missing long term development plans.” He had been featured in several best under 30 business leader rankings.

Abhishek Singh — Age 24

Abhishek Singh is the founder of Rankethon. The venture was created from his vision as from childhood he used to spend hours in a home-made lab and try various things. This urge to work in a state-of-art-lab which was his passion paved ways to make the venture. Rankethon is in a way a realization of the dream. Since 2014, he had been conducting number of program linked to this sector across the country in different level.

Rankethon provide high tech industry oriented lab at the student’s convenience point’s right from school to colleges. A-cadre college pass out student learns basics from them, after they are asked to solve problems by using their core engineering skills. Later, they are deployed in top companies. With all this, we also provide webinars from professors & professionals at top companies.

Future plan of Abhishek when asked was that he is launching an online program called HomeRancho where students can get the complete training in a pre-designed portable lab at their doorstep in a completely practical manner. Currently, stalwarts in online education are doing at theoretical level but we want to give complete practical exposure to students in this segment, here we are in process to raise the funds to implement this at a next level.

Vaibhav Khandelwal — Age 28

Vaibhav’s is the Co-Founder & CTO, Shadowfax. He holds a graduate degree from IIT Delhi and his tech venture, Shadowfax, which he co-founded in 2015, at barely 23 years of age is one of leading ventures in their space.

Being is a problem solving entrepreneur by nature, he found logistics to be a challenging sector and decided to solve problems in to create his opportunity.

Shadowfax is a logistics platform which is a unique combination of technology and people to provide the last mile logistics service. Vaibhav is the tech genius and he uses technology as a medium of interaction with people. Vaibhav firmly believes that technology can solve many big problems. He had been awarded several national recognitions for his venture

Deepak Ravindran — 25

Deepak Ravindran is the Co-founder and CEO of Innoz Technologies. He is considered one of the youngest entrepreneurs of India who successfully co-founded and is currently running three companies who provide services of mobile messaging; Innoz, which is having a mission to connect the unconnected people by providing offline services through Innoz which is the world’s largest offline search engine along with SMS.

Another one is Quest, which is a mobile messaging platform which is used in 500+ startups to send offline SMS, and most recently is Lookup, an app which provides the conversation between customers and retailers so they can chat too, funded by Khosla and Biz Stone.

Recognized as one of the outstanding innovators under 35 by MIT Technology, And one of Asia’s 21 emerging leaders under 40 according to Asia Society.

Sarvesh Shashi — Age 25

All of 25 years of age, Sarvesh Shashi is the youngest CEO in the yoga and wellness fraternity. Sarvesh believes in the philosophy of consciousness through yoga and the emotion of happiness that stems out of yoga practices. He wants to spread this yoga happiness to thousands. At a young age of 21 he gave up a bright career in his father’s sprawling businesses and set out to touch the lives of many with yoga. Hence he is fondly called The CEO among Monks by many.

Disclaimer :: All content are not owned by us and have been collected from various public sources and we shall not be responsible for any claims regarding same. For removal of content write to theglobalbusinessmagazine@gmail.com

[i-love-regenerations]

Sign Me Up For That

There are far worse things than failure...

(Something else I wrote a while ago - dark humour warning)

“I’ve got something you’ll really like,” said Claire’s friend Judie when they were talking on the phone one evening.

“Another knock-off kitchen gadget?” Judie often got stuff from sales or offers in magazines.

“Nope, a way you can go and cuddle babies at the hospital,”

“I can’t do that,” said Claire “I’m not good at that sort of thing!”

“You could be. They’re really short of volunteers,”

“If they’re that desperate for staff, they’d best call Ingeus - another place I have no intention of going to anytime soon!”

Claire had applied for a lot of similar work – both voluntary and paid – a while ago. If she was any good, she would be doing it already. And that had been when she was unemployed and available all the time. She’d now found a fairly reasonable job at an estate agents and this position could well be weekday afternoons anyway.

“Seriously, can you at least Google it? Are you still there?” asked Judie.

“Yes. I’ll Google it later, with the malware scanner on!”

“That’s a great start! Come on, it’ll give you loads of self-esteem!”

“Loads of spam, more likely!” said Claire.

“You aren’t worried about spam when you’re downloading dodgy movies!”

“I know, but I get some satisfaction from watching movies!”

“You don’t get any from holding babies then? Okay…”

“No, I don’t!” Claire was getting annoyed. “I don’t do it because I would never get past the interview! How do you know so much about it anyway? Did you see it on an American documentary?”

“Possibly!”

“Yes then! Can’t I just come round to yours and play with the kittens?” asked Claire. Her priorities certainly weren’t the same as a couple of years ago. “It would save me a lot of hassle and I could watch a movie at the same time!”

“Not right now, I’m watching Bear Grylls,” said Judie.

“Oh gawd,”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“One, the man is a plonker. Two, I’m not eating anything you’ve cooked now, I have no idea what might be in it!”

Claire decided it was probably a good idea to rustle up an application before Judie suggested any other documentary-inspired ways to spend the evening, such as digging around in the local park for something to eat!

“I’ve got an interview tonight,” Claire said when she went to see Judie after work the next day.

“It’s at ten o’clock at night though. That doesn’t sound remotely dodgy, does it?”

“Sick babies don’t all do office hours,” said Judie. She kind of had a point but you’d think the recruitment office would still be nine to five.

Perhaps they were in there typing rejection letters, Claire thought sarcastically. She’d done some Google searching last night and noticed that some of the baby holding programmes in America had very long waiting lists. If the same applied here, that could be a lot of letters!

“Well, I’m going to get a big fat no anyway,” said Claire.

“How do you know?” asked Judie.

“None of the places I applied to wanted me three years ago, why should they now?”

“I dunno, more experience?”

“From an estate agents!? If they were sitting around cuddling babies all day in the one you went to, how on Earth did you get a flat?” Claire asked jokingly.

“Listen,” said Judie, with her serious face on, “It’s really good for babies and I know you would love it too. Can't you use your imagination? I read about babies who’ve been born on drugs, they need holding all the time so they can recover,”

“I can imagine, I was watching videos of it online last night, while you were watching Bear Grylls making a condom out of stinging nettles or something! That doesn’t change the fact I’ll be getting a big fat no, does it?” argued Claire.

“You might not. My friend’s brother had an interview at night, it was so they could give him a work trial straight away and he got the job!” said Judie. 

“What kind of job?”

“Oh, just supermarket night work,”

“Which doesn’t need a background check or anything,” said Claire “I’ll do my best, but if it’s a Big Fat No you’re paying for us to go somewhere that’ll actually give me some satisfaction. Like a gig! Deal?”

“Deal. Want to watch a film?”

“Not if it’s one of your choices! If the interviewer asks what I’ve done this evening, I can’t tell them I watched the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the Centipede or whatever else!” said Claire.

“That could work, they’d certainly know you’re not squeamish!” said Judie, laughing.

“I’m not telling anyone I watched those!! Can I print my CV?”

“Okay, but I’ve only got pink paper left. It’ll be er, baby friendly!”

“You mean it’ll be naff! The babies are not doing the interview, the recruitment people are!”

Judie hadn’t mentioned that she’d run out of black printer ink too. Claire’s CV came out bright pink with purple text. It was starting to look very much like she might be getting this gig!

Claire had a problem with her interview straight away - she couldn’t find the place! Surely a hospital had to be pretty big and clearly signposted? Yet she’d somehow found herself outside a closed-looking office block in the backside of nowhere!

It was 21.49. She knocked on the office block door to ask for directions, hoping like crazy that she wasn’t more than ten minutes’ walk away from the hospital or Judie would have a right laugh hearing that she’d never even found it, in order to get The No.

A man answered the door. Claire heard bleeping and saw someone go past behind him. They were walking around with a drip stand, so this presumably was the right place! It just looked a bit rough on the outside, likely because of Conservative party budget cuts and it being late at night.

“I’m here for the volunteering interview,” said Claire.

The man checked his watch. “Ah. Wait upstairs,”

“Thank you. Which floor…”

He went back inside and and Claire had to kind of run after him into the lift. His voice had sounded all wrong – should he be around sick people with a sore throat like that? Not to mention his attitude!

On an upstairs floor, a woman came in and asked for Claire’s CV then walked off, leaving her in a waiting room with several inside windows. Some of the rooms were definitely staff offices. Others had the shutters down so behind there could have been anything, although the bleeping seemed to be coming from that direction so she assumed it was a hospital ward.

On and off, Claire could hear drilling and what generally sounded like building renovations. Damn, no wonder they couldn’t get the babies to sleep with that racket! She smelled burning plastic and had a terrifying mental image of the block catching fire. Sensibly, she knew it was probably just the paper laminator or whatever the builders were doing.

Where was the interviewer or anyone else? She doubted they were planning to trial people straight away because if nothing else, the background checks would have taken ages. It was Friday night, even something ridiculously fast-tracked would surely have to be done at nine o' clock on Monday morning?

Maybe they’d done it early this morning, after she applied last night? Maybe they could trial her with supervision? Maybe they were just going to give her The No straight away? Although someone actually getting around to interviewing her would be a good start for any of those.

On the upside, she had at least one requirement sorted thanks to their brilliant scheduling – the ability to sit still for a very long time!

Claire remembered one of the videos she’d seen online of a woman snuggling a baby who woke up and looked around at her. He had really big lovely eyes and it had made Claire feel funny inside. Although that was probably just because she had the sense of a Big Fat No heading in her direction.

She was just going to think about that sort of thing, unlikely though it was for her, and not some of the other things she’d read about online recently – about perverts and financial scammers and high-rise fires. That hot plastic smell was making her feel funny inside and not in a good way, maybe she should go and tell someone?

“Yeah, and that’ll make me look brilliant,” Claire thought sarcastically. It would almost certainly be the office document laminator she was freaking out over. Then when this volunteer position inevitably turned out to be admin, she still wouldn’t be getting it!

Claire wasn’t exactly sure how long she’d been waiting. Fifteen minutes or so? One of her interviews was pretty late before, wasn’t it? Although that one was in the morning at a cash & carry, which was just a bit different from this.

She started walking around the place looking for someone to ask. She’d been waiting longer than fifteen minutes - the clock in the staff office said 22.30. Did the interviewer forget about her? If the hospital was that busy, how come she’d barely seen anyone? She found a pile of documents next to the shredder with something pink in it that looked rather like her CV. This was a big fat no alright!

She picked up the pile to check whether the pink thing was actually her CV. It was, and there was something worse underneath – exam certificates! Why would anyone be shredding those? She had suspected from the beginning that there was an admin assistant here who needed replacing but that was ridiculous.

She was going to find someone to moan to, and to hell with The No. She probably would have gotten it anyway and she was now kind of looking forward to getting out of here. She was just glad she didn’t bring her exam certificates! She spotted something else that made her feel funny inside, and certainly not in a good way.

The clock wasn’t on 22.37, it was 02.37! Where the hell had she been for over four hours? Asleep? She must have been totally forgotten about.

There was a corridor at the back with more small offices, but there was nothing in them. She got the feeling that the place wasn’t even finished. What if the entire thing turned out to be some kind of horrible joke? Judie had seemed very encouraging, hadn’t she? Not to mention the weird suggestions of getting useful experience from an office job and the dodgy CV.

Judie certainly wouldn’t have had a problem with frightening her – lover of disgusting horror movies that she was. But she surely wouldn’t be mean enough to disappoint someone with a fake job interview? And how did she rustle up the keys to an empty block? Claire wouldn’t have easily been able to arrange that late at night just for a joke, and she worked for an estate agents! Judie worked in a shop.

Claire remembered something else about the interview at the cash & carry – their offices had been on intermediate floors at the sides and she could see down into the main warehouse from there. Maybe the same thing could work here? It surely wouldn’t hurt to look, if only to find out where everyone had gone and make sure the place wasn’t on fire. She found the controls to the window shutters, opened them so that she could see down onto the next floor and screamed.

There were people in there with their entire bodies covered in bandages, as if they’d been burned in some sort of terrible accident. Far worse than that, one was laying on an operating table and a worker was covering parts of his body with something that looked horribly like plastic laminator sheets. That must have been what she could smell earlier!

The sound that she’d assumed to be building renovations started up again - they were screw-drilling things into his chest. He twisted around - he was awake for this - and she saw metal bars screwed into his head and just kind of…holes for the eyes and mouth. 

She turned round and started running, only to find all of the waiting room doors firmly locked. Even if she could have forced them, she could see that someone who must have impossible strength had moved several heavy filing cabinets in front of the hallway exit doors. She couldn’t get to any outside windows either, so screaming for help or even jumping off the block weren’t going to be an option. The staff had only told people that this floor was the baby nursery because it was a lot easier to make people turn up than if they told them it was the cyber-conversion theatres. Claire realised she was about to lose a hell of a lot more than her self-esteem...

[shellheadtmarc]

actually, because i really need to finish my new theme and need new verse blurbs, here’s a more in depth look at my current/in-use verses, with links to full writeups as available.

mcu:  this is boilerplate.  i’m a canon tony, this is a canon verse.  follows the events from iron man through infinity war for the moment, including the tie-in comics iron man 2: public identity, iron man 2: agents of shield, iron man: the coming of the melter, iron man 3 prelude, marvel’s avengers: age of ultron prelude - the scepter’d isle, marvel’s captain america: civil war prelude infinite, marvel’s avengers: infinity war prelude, and marvel’s avengers: endgame prelude.  also includes the post-iron man 3 short about the mandarin.  everything not covered/discussed in mcu canon is plugged with 616 continuity canon.

616:  what it says on the tin.  covers most of the runs from about 2008-present, including the new tony stark: iron man, against my greater judgment, though that may change in the future if it keeps tanking in story. in reality, this actually covers everything post-heroes reborn, but to make it simple we’ll say it’s wibbly wobbly because comics.  also includes heavy snippets still in play from classic invincible iron man.

classic:  from his first appearances in tales of suspense up to the inception of heroes reborn.  or, if you prefer, original flavor tony stark, the cool suave businessman with the aloof nature, party boy ways, and injured heart, reliant on his rechargeable chest piece, as he also has a double identity as the golden avenger known as iron man.  poses as his own bodyguard.  jetsetter.  people love or hate him, but most want to be him.  if only they knew how much his bum ticker isolated him.  a ton of fridged girlfriends.  later physical ailments include:  paralysis from the waist down.  degenerative nervous system.  a cranky ticker more than you can shake a stick at.  literally dying and being cryogenically frozen.

616 meets mcu:  this covers any time comicverse tony is thrown at mcu versions of the people he knows.  things to note include being taller.  he has blue eyes.  his tech is more advanced.  his speech patterns differ heavily.  recovering alcoholic, coffee is fine no matter how shitty it is.  he has more years as a superhero under his belt at this point.  his fears and points of stress differ from mcu tony’s quite a bit, and his reactions are different.  he and pepper are barely on speaking terms (generously speaking). he’s different, and it’s obvious he’s different.

broke:  mcu-based verse that includes corporate espionage and tony stark having to keep his head down and learning to live under the table paycheck to under the table paycheck until he can muster what he needs to make a frontal assault on regaining what’s rightly his.  a verse where tony’s at his absolute lowest, still determined to retain the phoenix metaphor and rise from the ashes of the misfortune thrust upon him.

superior iron man:  hiding the fact that he’s still under the scarlet witch’s inversion spell, tony goes full tilt diva, his main concerns being money, power, and fame.  he starts drinking again.  he makes san francisco his own personal big brother state, where he watches the city like a hawk by day while shilling extremis as a beauty enhancer, and parties like it’s 1999 at his new home on alcatraz island by night.  is still iron man, as long as there’s something in it for him.  will partially be at fault for the destruction of the 616 universe (it gets better).

hypervelocity:  tony’s attacked in his own lab by the mind-emulationware mechs known as “beautiful garbage”, and his newest iteration of the iron man suit forced an upload or a copy of his brain patterns to get him out of there.  the wetware is damaged, and the suit dumps it before it bleeds out in the suit cavity, and thus that suit, with the ability to walk, talk, and think exactly like tony stark (albeit full of bugs) is born, to unravel the mystery of the attack and attempt to stop the emulation program that caused it.

ai:  after being punched into a literal coma during a battle with captain marvel/carol danvers over the fate of miles morales and concerning an inhuman by the name of odysseus’s increasingly violent visions of the future, and with even hank mccoy being afraid to even draw blood on tony after seeing what tony’s been doing to himself over the years, tony’s ai comes online, as a mentor to riri williams/ironheart and to help against the clone captain america with those of the mount.  he’s twice as sassy with quadruple the processing speed, and he’s got some weird feelings about being the recreated consciousness of a living person suddenly finding itself with no physical body.

noir:  a businessman who likes to play adventurer for a men’s magazine, along with his best friend james rhodes and their new reporter pepper potts, writing under a male pseudonym, tony stark on the surface has it all in the late 1930s.  beautiful women, exciting adventures, and loads of money.  but all it does is hide his desperate search for a cure for his dying heart, as he’s forced to wear a metal chest piece that has to be charged frequently to even keep himself alive.  

director of shield:  mcu-based version of tony’s time as the director of shield.  after everything that occurs after captain america: the winter soldier, and the fall of shield, an attempt is made to resurrect it with tony stark at the helm as fury’s replacement (hand-picked).  he stresses transparency, he stresses equality, and most of all, he just wants to find a way to balance being iron man with having to deal with the day-to-day bullshit of international bureaucracy.

sorcerer supreme:  based on the 90s “what if?” one shot comic.  tony was the cause of the accident that injured stephen strange’s hands, and, feeling supremely guilty about the entire thing, searches for ways to give stephen his dexterity and life back.  it leads him to becoming the sorcerer supreme, despite that inherent dislike of magic he has, and he combines the iron man technology with the mystical forces he gains a hold over in that quest for a cure.

guardians of the galaxy:  mcu flavor for tony’s time as an active gotg.  after civil war, on a break with pepper, and feeling about as great about things as someone laying facedown in a gutter possibly can, tony puts his mobile armory into space, tinkers together a suit for deep space exploration, and takes off, losing himself for a while among the stars.  threat is going to come from there, sure, but there’s going to be opportunity, as well.  it’s a useful thing to find out who’s friend, and who’s foe, and see what there is to see in the black expanses of space.

supernatural:  the other family business.  being a founder of shield and everything he took to his grave wasn’t the only secret he was keeping, and this was one maria was in on as well.  too bad tony doesn’t stumble across it until after he’s already become iron man, where saving the world is so tied into his moral code he can’t look away.  if he goes missing for a few days, it’s fine, it’s chill.  he’s just taking a breather, not poking around at things he only still half-believes in even when he’s seen them with his own two eyes.  the biggest skeptic hunter you’ll ever meet.

fallout prewar:  mcu continuity up to the beginning of iron man 3, against fallout’s prewar as a backdrop.  tony stark is who he is, he does what he does, but he also is someone certain government agencies would love to tear down, because he’s a rabble rouser against the war, and has no problem hogging the iron man technology for himself instead of sharing with the military.  he also has no problem sharing the dirty secrets he finds out with the press.  full write up can be found here.

fallout new vegas:  tony as the infamous courier six.  left in stasis in a vault in california, tony comes to years and years after the devastation of the bombs to a world vastly changed from the one he remembers, and in a vault full of ghouls.  once topside, and once reoriented into the world, he ends up something of a jack of all trades until he takes that fateful job with the mojave express, and gets two to the head for his trouble.  independent path with the yes-man aligned ending, details of choices and all dlcs available as needed until i get off my ass and do a full replaythrough and write up.  keeps the spine from big mt, but his heart and brain are back where they belong.  locked elijah in the vault.  nuke launch stopped (ed-e repaired after).  evacuated the sorrows.  

fallout 4 sole survivor:  still needs a full write up, but tony as the sole survivor.  does not take the shock at the change in the world well at first.  eventually pulls his shit together enough to get shit done, but can’t touch a suit, can’t think about the suit, will take some time to even toy with the idea of possibly touching a suit again before he actually can.  minutemen and railroad aligned, destroys the bos and institute.  peaceful ending with all far harbor factions.  spares the mechanist.  destroys the raiders at nuka world and turns the parks over to the minutemen.  question information as needed until i get a full write up done.

fallout 4 companion:  tony’s been in new york since the bombs dropped.  there are huge chunks of it that are still uninhabitable, much like boston’s glowing sea, but the parts that are?  he’s started on a grand rebuilding project, because he’s got nothing but time:  the arc reactor’s kept his heart pumping well past its expiration date.  when the bos slow rolls past new york, he follows them into boston, mostly because he’s paranoid and cagey (with good reason in the wasteland) and partially out of curiosity.  available as a companion for sole survivors, some restrictions apply, please see this write up for more details.

fallout 76 dweller:  locked up with a bunch of other big brains after the bombs, tony’s that guy.  you know.  the one you read about in the terminal.  the one that kept hacking things.  once topside again, he sheds that vault tec blue and yellow as quickly as he can and sees about setting things right.  a member of the responders.  a mole in [redacted].  fire breather.  rebuilding the world has to start somewhere, so it might as well be west virginia.

dwemer:  the last surviving dwemer, finally peeking his head out of his lab in its pocket plane of oblivion to find the nords are at it again, dragons are still doing their thing, his people have just flat out vanished, and that skyrim is still cold as balls.  often gets mistaken as a very tall bosmer.  still calls the dunmer the chimer out of sheer smartassedness.  swung on rolf in windhelm and ends up in jail more times than you can shake a stick at.

single parent au:  handed off a baby under some shady as hell circumstances, unable to find out anything and secretly glad he can’t find out anything about her in the end, tony pulls some strings and sophie stark ends up hitting the jackpot as far as adoptive parents go.  tony had thought just being iron man was hard, but now he’s balancing ballet practice and pta meetings with saving the world.

[mybukz]

Review: Money Stories from Malaysians Volume 1

Title: Money Stories from Malaysians Volume 1 Author: Various Genre: Fiction, non-fiction Format: Paperback, ebook, 93 pages Publisher: Suraya Zainudin Communications Pricing: RM29.90 (book, postage), RM9.90 (ebook) Available at: https://ringgitohringgit.com/product-category/money-stories-from-malaysians/ Reviewer: Leon Wing

I wasn’t sure what to expect reviewing an anthology of short stories on the theme of money. Which is what Malaysian money blogger Suraya Zainudin put together: ten fiction and nonfiction stories. Don’t expect writings from money experts though. Some stories cover personal finance, but written with a twist—or rather, under a slew of genre, from the usual everyday stuff about how to manage your ringgit, to fantasy.

In “Look out for Naila, world!”, Jouhari Ali tells us how his daughter taught him about money. The story begins very early in her babyhood, when her mother called it a day with married life and left the father with the daughter and a low rent house. He bought an apartment later as she grew up a precocious little lady. They did father and daughter things together, like fishing. All well and good, but, again, what has all this got to do with money? Well, read further, instead of me revealing anything more.

“In Memoriam” by N. T. Cloever starts off with a doctor’s log in some distant future. By this, you know you’re in a fictional world. But a setting about money? You wouldn’t guess it if this piece appeared in some fantasy magazine, would you, when the log record tells us about some experiment involving growth hormones? We come upon an illustration of a girl holding an umbrella over a beggar. The patches on his frayed clothes don’t look very futuristic. The doctor is at Central Station, and the question on her mind is “What is wealth without memory? When in the distant future, memory is a commodity and a currency, what happens if you sell your memories for necessities like food? This piece reeks of Black Mirror, a scifi serial.

The longest piece, “Necessary Expense” by Sarah Anne, is another fantasy. It swills with a merman and some flying creature couple. Money is tight and they have to deal with monetary issues and expenditures, like water for the merman, fixing the tank, and broken furniture from flying indoors. Things are so dire that the flying female has to resort to selling some of her feathers, and then some.

I gather “Cigarettes” by Eu Leon is a true tale, about the expenses of smoking. The first instance rather makes one crinkle the nose, not because of the smoke. Though the writer doesn’t go all graphic on the act of “passing motion”, the mere narration is enough, even though it is tempered with a bit of humour about the smoke masking the even worse smells of durian and petai. Next, we read about other expenses concomitant with cigarettes: meals, traffic jams, tea drinking with friends, boredom, stress, break times, awkwardness, customers who smoke. Does the writer finally kick this bad habit at the end? Read the piece yourself to find out.

“An APP-xpensive Mistake” by Sumi S recounts an incident the writer doesn’t want to relive. It began the day her mother told her to withdraw the allowance her father banked into her account. She found it short by RM800—her brother had bought games for his iPad. The story goes on recounting how to get back the money, to keep calm, and to deal with customer service.

In “Condo” by Aina Izzah, we meet Farrah getting her hands dirty in a game show called “Condo”. The premise is she and other players compete for money, and rise up the condo for the final prize of RM1 million and a penthouse. The initial levels of the game seem simple enough, requiring her to eat, drink and fast. But one challenge has her digging into the bowels of a pig. She forwent a job interview for the chance to win big money. But was the sacrifice worth it? Besides, she has to make yet other sacrifices while playing the game—and also an “investment”.

“Managing Finances while Doing a PhD” by Juntaki is a puzzler. It begins sedately, elucidating the educational mysteries of doing a PhD. The sentences feel like they belong to a thesis, rather than a short story or a nonfiction. Take phrases like “processes involved in such a tremendous commitment may be content with …”, “affecting an individual’s ability to maintain stability financially…”. In this vein, the writer proceeds to “elaborate how I was able to effectively manage my finances during my phD.” I read on to see if all this seriousness is perpetuated with tongue in cheek. But, no, the writer is giving the reader a detailed rundown in all seriousness. If you’re interested in doing a PhD and want to know the costs involved, you’ll enjoy this piece.

The title “My Family’s Experience with Ponzi Scheme” leaves one without any doubt about the angle of the piece by Jonathan Kam. Like the previous story about going for a PhD, it also offers a lesson. The writer warns the reader about buying a membership and expecting to receive a share of other members’ money.

In “How Much is a Mother’s Job Worth?”, writer Chan Ai Sin counts the ways. Right from the start, she tells us being a mother “pays nothing, allocates no day off, and accepts no resignation no matter how tough the going gets”. She even includes a chart listing hourly rates of the various tasks a mother takes on. With humour, she tells us her experiences as milk producer, chef and nutritionist, staff nurse, and a couple of other positions.

“For the Greater Good” by Suraya tells a story of how a government scheme to give citizens a living wage became a bane to employers and a boon to employees. It destroyed companies like Rina’s when employees quit over the good news of this Universal Basic Income. No matter the direness of the story, I couldn’t help grinning, especially reading about how certain factions of people were against this UBI. Rina attended a talk and inadvertently got arrested for attempting to jeopardise government plans. I suspect the writer is hinting how the type of benefit schemes UK offers the unemployed could turn Malaysia into a totalitarian state.

These days when Malaysian writings in English hardly attract local readership, an anthology like this is not only off the beaten track of usual genres like literary, noir and horror, it is welcome simply for its monetary theme.

Suraya Zainudin is a freelance writer and an independent communications consultant specialising in online content creation and management. She is also the founder of Ringgit Oh Ringgit website, where she writes about her lifelong obsession with personal finance and how she invests, spends, earns and saves money.

[zombiescantfly]

Words About Games: Unreal (Epic Megagames, 1998)

Unreal Tournament 2004 is my favorite videogame ever.  It's always a close match between it and the first Unreal Tournament, but 2k4 always manages to win out, if just barely.  However, I am of the firm, unyielding belief that UT2004, when played with both the ‘No Adrenaline’ and ‘UT Classic’ mutators, is far and away the best multiplayer fps experience anyone could ever ask for.  We'll get into that a bit later, because it's time for a bit of an explanation.

Unreal Tournament 2004 turns 15 this year, and I wanted to do something special to celebrate the release of a game I have such an unreasonably high appreciation for.  Up until the day of its official release 15 years ago, I'm going to be putting out one of my infrequent essays on the games in the series I have experience with, starting now with 1998’s Unreal.  I'll warn you, this one gets a bit rambly, but if you reach the end and still want more, take a look at the cooperative non-coop playthrough I did with a friend, where we each played a singleplayer campaign while discussing our experiences and thoughts on all aspects of the game.

But first, a little background.

I was born in 1992.  Wolfenstein 3D, the game commonly attributed as the progenitor of the entire FPS genre (yes I know about Maze and Battlezone and all the various first-person dungeon crawlers) was released three months later.  This makes me just barely older than the modern first -person shooter.  

My dad has worked in the business end of the tech industry since the 80s.  As a result, he was always very close to the then-rising PC gaming scene, and even dabbled in game dev for a few years.  His position in various companies made him a very early adopter of the ‘home pc,’ something still rare up until like the mid 90s, seriously.  He had free reign to take old hardware his workplace was replacing or to buy it for cheap, and by the time I was old enough to start forming memories that actually stuck around, there were two computers in the house.  

In 1994, id Software released Doom 2, and my dad bought a copy.  Thus began the long tradition of young me standing behind his chair to watch whatever he was playing, starting with Doom 2 LAN deathmatch with my older brother, progressing to his playthrough of Quake 1 and 2, and the first stop in this extended flashback, Quake 2’s online deathmatch.

Young me knew what a marvel online deathmatch was, because my dad told me.  It's also just kind of a hard concept for a 5 year old to grasp, especially back then before the internet was in the public consciousness.  Nowadays I doubt there's any lack of understanding, and that's cool.  

(And yes, I know Q1 had online play but I never managed to catch any of it.  Both my dad and brother liked its singleplayer more.)

So where does Unreal come in?  Actually, not until about 2009.  Bear with me.

In 2000, when I was 8 years old, my dad and brother had gone to spend the day at a local tech trade show.  This was a common enough occurrence since we lived less than an hour away from Philly and that attracted a lot of businessy types.  They'd usually come back with a new game or two, and I'd have something new to watch over one of their shoulders.

That day, my brother brought this home.

And said to me, “Hey, you should try this one out.  It's from Epic.”

Or at least something to that effect.

Now, at this point in my life, I wasn't as avid a videogame connoisseur.  The first game I ever truly felt grab me was Starcraft, which I played way more than I probably should have.  But also at that time was a growing collection of titles from Epic Megagames.  Epic Pinball is one of the first things I remember playing by myself, followed by Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and One Must Fall: 2097.

So I'd been with Epic for a while at that point.

So, Unreal Tournament.  Spoilers for the next post, but I loved it, and I still love it.  It capped off my experiences with shooters from the mid to late 90s with the first taste I was allowed myself, no longer stolen from over a shoulder while hoping my mother wouldn't choose then to come down the stairs and yell at me for watching and at my dad for letting me.  It gave me a love for arena shooters, for the chunky, harshly and gaudily lit 3d graphics, for imaginative weapons, for tightly designed maps, and for a special sort of way to deliver a story buried in map and item descriptions…

But I'd never played Unreal.

Once, at a thrift store, I found a big-box copy of Unreal Gold, still in the shrink wrap, for five bucks.  “Oh, I think your dad has that one,” my mother said, turning me away from it.

He did not.

So in 2009, I finally bought Unreal for myself off Steam and promptly returned to the chunky 3d I had probably just been seeing a day prior because I put UT99 on my school laptop.  

Enough digressions, let's finally move into it.

Unreal is a strange game, and more than a little unlike its contemporaries.  See, from 1993 to 1998, shooters were kind of a one-note experience.  You, bad guys, big maps, many guns.  From Doom to Quake to Heretic to Blood to Rise of the Triad to Shadow Warrior to Duke Nukem to Dark Forces to anything else you could find in a magazine for mail-order, the shooter was a pretty standard experience.  Sure, this or that game had this or that thing that set it apart, some were more advanced than others for the time, but the general idea never really wavered:  Click on men from point A to B until you find all the keys and reach the exit.

That gameplay loop made the genre successful, and it's not exactly different now.  Keys could be anything, of course.  They were literal keys, sometimes they were gas for a generator, now they're mostly cutscene triggers, but the point is that you must locate them to progress.  Along the way, there wasn't much other than bloody slaughter to distract you, and that was fine.

It was fine.  For those 5 years.

Then, in 1998, a very special sort of game came out that changed the way not just shooters but videogames in general were presented.  A game that made expectations higher, products examined more critically.  I'm talking, of course, about Half-Life.

On November 19, 1998, Half-Life released and literally changed the course of game development.  It offered players a brilliantly constructed narrative delivered naturally by characters speaking in the moment rather than the then-common blocks of text before or after a level.  The setting, the Black Mesa research facility, was a meticulously planned space made to feel like a real location and not a jumble of corridors whose first concerns were how many monsters could fit in them.  Structured plot points replaced red and blue keycards, well-designed enemy encounters replaced rooms full of cannon fodder, and a new mentality replaced the old.

Which is a shame, because Unreal did something different, too.

Released earlier the same year on May 22, Unreal was the end result of a project always too ambitious for the four years it bounced around development.  Conceived first as a medieval RPG of sorts, Unreal eventually morphed into a sci-fi shooter set amid echoes of that original idea.  

In Unreal, there is no opening cutscene.  There is no opening text crawl or long train ride to prepare you.  The title screen is a looping fly-through of a location in the game made to show off various engine effects like reflective surfaces, particle emitters, real-time colored lighting, animated skyboxes, and volumetric fog.  Selecting New Game sends you to a loading screen where you quickly fade in from black, staring at the wrecked interior of . . . somewhere.  You start low on health and walled in on three sides.  As you step forward towards the only path available, a pleasant, computery voice calls out “Prisoner 849 escaping.”

You are Prisoner 849, you are on a prison ship, and it has crashed.  This is all evident within the first few seconds of the game.  As you progress through the first level, you can see half-broken displays showing the sudden path the ship took, read status logs of engines and ship components, and even get a little taste of some daily life among the prisoners and crew alike.  Yes, Unreal has text logs, but they're the good kind, used to inform the world rather than exposit at the player.  

Very quickly you learn that something else is aboard the ship.  Growls and snarls appear in the distance and screams of terror can be heard through the walls.  Every so often, the same calm robot voice calls out another number, another prisoner escaping.  This all tells us a good deal of the game’s primary theme.  You're just someone.

You are Prisoner 849.  You are not the captain of the ship, you are not the high profile super prisoner, you are not a space marine guarding the ship.  You are Prisoner 849, one of many to board the Vortex Rikers, and one of many to leave.

There are no friendly human NPCs in the game.  Two crewmembers aboard the ship live long enough for you to get close, but one bleeds out as you approach him and the other is slaughtered behind a door stuck partway open so that you can only see a mysterious pair of legs sprint away amid a shower of gore.  Shortly after, you catch a fleeting glimpse of a strange figure at the other end of a ventilation shaft, obscured by fog.

Unreal slowrolls its opening.  It's reminiscent of Quake 2’s opening level, though with no combat.  You're free to wander the small area of the ship, reading various inconsequential text logs and looking at various readouts.  Words like “unknown moon” and “sudden course alterations” pop up, telling - but not explicitly - that coming to wherever this is was unintended.

Eventually you leave, exiting through an emergency hatch somewhere on the side of the ship.  A few steps forward brings you to a somewhat common looking grass expanse, not too unheard of at the time.  You're closer to the ship’s bow, and a short walk around it and through the furrow it plowed in the ground leads to a small rise that still obscures the level until depositing you at just the right angle.

You stand close to the lip of a tall cliff overlooking a shimmering lake.  On the other side, a waterfall crashes over the cliff.  Trees dot the landscape, birds fly overhead, and small critters scurry away from you.

In truth, it looks more than a bit quaint today, but in 1998 it was without equal.  Unreal is a game that put an intense focus on its world, Na Pali.  This is a world inhabited for centuries or even millennia by the Nali, a race of four-armed pacifist aliens with a little bit of magic to their claim.  Some unknown time before you begin playing, another race known as the Skaarj arrive to exploit the planet for a resource called Tarydium, enslaving the Nali in the process.  

Here's where another game might set you up as the Big Badass Hero.  You, the lone survivor of this crash; them, the downtrodden alien race; the other them, the evil tyrants.  But Unreal never does that, because you're just someone.

Remember hearing those other prisoners escaping?  More did even before you woke up.  There's a small collection of Nali huts not far from the crash site where you can find the corpses of a few other prisoners and crewmembers from the Rikers next to some healing pickups - the Nali tried to care for them.  Small bits of visual storytelling like that appear all throughout the game coupled with its smart use of text logs, and it starts strong and stays strong.  A quick swim through a lake infested with carnivorous fish can lead you to a small secret where two dead escapees can be found next to a half-eaten fish.  Further in, a dead human sits in a corner of a room, a dead Nali in the center, a flak cannon pickup on top of the latter showing their frantic last stand as the Nali abandons its pacifistic ways to protect its companion.  Much later, you’re in a Skaarj warehouse where you can see stacks of boxes bearing the same logo from the Vortex Rikers - as you’ve been doing your thing, the Skaarj have gone back and started looting the ship.  

Unreal is a game where things have been happening before you the player show up, and continue to happen while you the player are playing.  The plot does not start with you and it does not wait for you.  You’re just someone who’s been thrown into this whole situation as it unfolds, from a centuries-old conflict on Na Pali itself to the more immediate conflict of the crashed Vortex Rikers and what happened to its crew.  Around almost every corner is another story just like yours, and the fact that we’re playing Prisoner 849 and not Prisoner 521 or Ensign Burt Masterson or whoever else feels like a roll of the dice.  

Half-Life gets a lot of praise for finally putting the player behind just a regular guy.  Gordon Freeman has been made to become something of videogaming’s first everyman in the way that John McClane of Die Hard ushered in the everyman action hero.  But honestly, Half-Life wouldn’t happen without Gordon.  A scientist tells you right away that they’ve been waiting for you so they could start the test.  Without Gordon Freeman, the plot would never have progressed, and that makes it distinct from Unreal.  Half-Life’s various expansions actually do this better; Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Decay all put you in control of someone who is distinctly more Just Someone than Gordon Freeman.

But Unreal, man, Unreal just does it so well.  Occupied Na Pali is a world that does not care about you as a singular entity.  The Skaarj don’t turn and attack you because you’re The Player On A Mission, they attack you because you’re some dumb human who goes places they’re not supposed to and shoots all their friends (yes, Skaarj have friends, read the text logs).  Hell, your mission isn’t even anything particularly grand!  From the beginning, nobody tells you to do anything, you just wander out of the ship and start trying to find a way to leave.  Obviously from a game standpoint, there’s always going to be a level start and a level end, and you will go towards the end because it’s a videogame, but in the context of that game, the story is “just find a way out.”

There is a thread you pick up on early, though it might be a bit strange and requires some minor explaining here real quick:  in Unreal, you have the option when starting a new game to choose your player model.  You can see yourself a few times throughout the game - Unreal has reflective surfaces in a few spots - so it’s not totally useless.  By default, Prisoner 849 is a woman.  Canonically, Prisoner 849 is a woman.  

Early on, past the first level, you enter an ancient Nali temple, ruined and defaced by the Skaarj over the years, but not without its still-devout followers.  It’s here that you get the first hints of what seems like it might be a story more appropriate for a 90s shooter.  You see a carving on a wall that talks about “the Princess from the Stars” coming to deliver retribution to “the Demons from the Sky.”  Now, if you’ve changed your player model to male, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  But obviously the intent is to key you the player into the mentality that “oh, I’m some prophesied Chosen One, right?”  Yes and no.  We'll get back to it.

See, about a third of the way into the game you come across another crashed human ship, the ISV Kran.  The Kran, gameplay-wise, is a mixed bag of levels ranging from good to meh, the worst of it stemming from symmetrical layouts and a lack of texture variety.  But in the narrative as it unfolds, the Kran is very important.  

So far, you've passed through a dozen unique and varied environments ranging from the cliffs at the start to the ancient temple, to a Tarydium mine near a small village, a high-tech processing plant nearby, and even an old coliseum or sports arena converted by the Skaarj into a torture chamber.  The Kran is your first look at anything human-built since leaving the Rikers.

I'm not going to go through the game bit by bit, but the leadup to the Kran is important.  Throughout that first third of the game, you find escaped crew and prisoners from the Vortex Rikers fairly frequently.  The events of the game are happening without you, and things aren't going well.  

Once inside the Kran, things change a little.  Amid the text logs of status readouts and final words before the Skaarj broke in, there's a tiny narrative being constructed about a crewmember by the name of Kira.  Kira had managed to do much of what you have - she's armed herself and set off in search of a way off Na Pali with a small group of other crew, some of who you find, once again already dead.  One of Unreal’s longest maps comes in around this point, and Kira is a large focus.  She was captured, made contact with a group of Nali also held prisoner in the temple (lots of temples in Unreal, the Nali are very religious), mounted her escape, and had to leave her last remaining crewmember behind, his final log suggesting she headed for something she heard was held in the nearby belltower…

This small aside is a brilliant piece of the game, it really is.  When I said there was another game or another story behind every corner, I meant it.  Kira’s journey from the Kran to Bluff Eversmoking is a full story on its own, and it lends some interesting insight towards a lot of the various prophecies and Nali beliefs you've run into along the way.  From the Kran to the Bluff, you find more mentions of the Messiah, of the Sky Princess.  You, right?  Right?

Or was it Kira?  

Kira followed the same path you did.  Less of it, sure, but she fought the Skaarj infesting sacred Nali temples.  She, an alien warrior, cleansed their holy places of demons who had enslaved them.  A small group of Nali risked their own lives to break her out when she was captured, based only on their horror that she would be executed.  

This is why keeping 849 as the default lady playermodel is important.  The text logs were written with that in mind in order to muddle things.  Are you the Messiah?  Is Kira?  Presumably both of you just want to go home, and maybe falling into a vaguely defined prophecy with incredibly generous qualifications (not Nali or Skaarj, girl, can kill Skaarj) was just an accident.

It certainly seems that way, because when you finally find Kira, she's dead.  Your hopes of finding another living human, the Nali’s hopes in an alien warrior, lie dead on the ground with an empty pistol beside her.  

Unreal, and Na Pali within it, does not care about Prisoner 849.  The story does not revolve around you nor does it even stop to make room for you.  Any one of those human bodies you pass throughout the entire game was another escapee.  Between the Vortex Rikers and the Kran, you follow a trail of bodies almost up until the end of the game.  Except for a very small stretch at the end, someone has beaten you to where you are.  But you go further.  You encounter things no human has.  You escape Na Pali.

Eventually.

If it sounds like I'm taking Unreal a bit too seriously, it's because I most likely am.  I admit that.  But Unreal just creates such a unique atmosphere among games that I can't help it.  Videogames are inherently power fantasies, and most facilitate this by making you play as someone obviously powerful.  BJ Blazinsky.  Doomguy.  Lo Wang.  Duke Nukem.  A jedi.  Even in Call of Duty, where you often just play as some grunt, you get to be the special grunt who sees all the coolest stuff first.  And yes, again, even Half-Life doesn't start without you.  Gordon becomes mythologized even in the first game, to say nothing of Half-Life 2.  In Unreal, there's nobody to put you on a pedestal.  Na Pali has its own problems and you're just plopped down in the middle of them while trying to solve your own.  It isn't your fault that they intersect.

So it shouldn't be that big of a surprise that one of my other favorite games ever is another hero-by-random-circumstance romp through an uncaring world, Dark Souls.  If you like the narrative themes Dark Souls has going on, you'll like Unreal, end of story.

Wait, no, not end of story, because all I did was wax philosophical about the theme for like 8 pages.  I gotta talk about design now, ‘cause hot damn does my love of Unreal not stop with flowery prose.

The Skaarj are the primary antagonistic force in the game, but they're some kind of powerful empire with other races on their payroll.  After escaping the Vortex Rikers, gaping in awe at the waterfall, and spending some time chasing harmless wildlife around the field, the first actual enemy you fight is a Brute.  

Brutes are big lumps of meat with two rocket pistols and a permanent scowl.  They move slow, they turn slow, and they fire slow.  The first one you fight is really close to the exit of an indoor area.  What Epic have done here is create an excellent enemy encounter.

Nothing in Unreal has hitscan weapons.  Ignore Legend Entertainment’s Return to Na Pali, I'm gonna.  That means that everything coming your way can be dodged.  Two rocket pistols sounds scary, but you're in an open area and you have the ability to strafe.  If you're somehow not comfortable doing that while shooting, that's why the Brute’s so big, he's hard to miss.  

From there, you get exposed to the tentacle and the Razorfly.  The Tentacle is essentially a stationary, ceiling-mounted autoturret that fires a single projectile at you every half second or so, and the Razorfly is a big bug that hits you with melee attacks.  Neither are particularly challenging, but all three so far get you ready for your first encounter with a Skaarj.

You're in a small facility and have just shut off a force field.  Coming back through the hallway, bars suddenly slam out from the wall, blocking your progress.  The music fades out.  And one by one, the lights turn off until you're sitting in pure darkness.  You get a few seconds to sweat before the music kicks back in, the wall beside you slides open, flashing red emergency lights appear, and a large shape leaps out at you.

The first encounter with a Skaarj is cramped and claustrophobic, and intended to have you miss a lot of its capabilities.  It runs around, does a forward leaping melee attack, and can shoot little bolts of energy at you.  At the time, you only have two weapons: the Automag, a hitscan pistol with a decent fire rate, and the Dispersion Pistol, a projectile energy weapon you can charge up that acts in the same capacity as Doom’s fist or Quake’s axe as a holdout weapon.  You'll most likely take out the Skaarj with the Automag because there isn't a way to run out of ammo with it unless you try, so you most likely won't see how this type of enemy reacts to projectiles.

Because, see, Unreal has very smart AI, and the people who made these enemies took great advantage of that fact.  The Brutes and Razorflies of the level so far are pretty simple cannon fodder type stuff, they amble around and attack towards you.  Once you're away from that first encounter, the Skaarj enemies have a few tricks.

A Skaarj will try to circlestrafe you.  If you're using a projectile weapon, a Skaarj will dodge your attacks with a pretty damn high success rate (deviously, the very next weapon you get after the Automag is the Tarydium Stinger, a projectile-based minigun, and you start seeing Skaarj commonly around the same time).  If a Skaarj is getting near death and has allies close by, it'll try to run away towards them.  Sometimes a Skaarj will fake its death to try to catch you by surprise.  It won't ever get back up while you're looking or within a certain range, and you can take the time to see if flies start buzzing around the supposed corpse or just gib it to make sure.  A Skaarj will intuitively use cover, as well, thanks to a dead-simple pathfinding mechanism inside the level editor.

A Skaarj is a really cool enemy today, let alone in 1998, half a year before everyone lost their shit over Half-Life’s stilted Marine encounters.

Unreal keeps a pretty steady flow of enemy varieties coming your way, as well.  Various types of Skaarj show up, often with ranks padded out by the Krall, another race they employ or enslave, and they have plenty of variety among them as well.  

But Na Pali isn't just a collection of levels stuffed full of bad guys to click on.  Most levels actually don't have all that many enemies to them, instead relying on strong encounter design over sheer overwhelming odds.  . . . Most.

No, Na Pali is a world, and Unreal wants you to believe that.  The game bounces you between open outdoor areas and various structures at a healthy pace, and it always manages to give it all a fresh coat of paint.  Harmless critters hop around or soar high above, schools of fish scatter when you explore a lake, beasts of burden grumble at you as you charge past their pens, flak cannon in hand.  And better yet, enemies aren't often just waiting around for you to show up.  They have things to do or time to waste, and may very well be doing that when you come across them.  In areas controlled by the Skaarj, you can often see them tapping away at computers or just staring out a window before you alert them, and Krall mercenaries are fond of drinking or playing dice.  Brutes amble around on patrol patterns, stopping every now and then to scratch themselves.  The more feral Slith enemies found near water tend to just be swimming around until they're alerted.

These tiny details make Na Pali feel like a place, and the levels you play through are no different.  From the wrecked Vortex Rikers to the various Nali temples to the Kran and even up to the final levels set on the Skaarj mothership, the levels make room for details like bedrooms, kitchens, and even bathrooms in a way that shooters just sort of didn't usually do at that point.  Sure, you'd have a bathroom in another game every so often, but it was usually there for a gag or some sort of reference.  Unreal makes a concentrated effort to really sell you on these levels, and it works.  There's so much variety in the maps that not a lot has a chance to get boring, though sometimes, as I mentioned before, things can get a bit muddy.  The map Terraniux and the middle levels of the Kran are a bit less navigationally-friendly than they could have been, but there's nothing as egregious as the later levels of Doom or any of the other maps from various games that are mazes first and gameplay sections second.  There are no out-of-place platforming sections or agonizing breaks for switch puzzles.  There's just a world as you might find it in real life.

Another strength of Unreal’s level design is that sometimes it just lets you take a break.  You might go minutes without seeing an enemy, leaving you free to explore your surroundings.  There's even a level that has an entire segment dedicated to calmly floating down a river on a small boat, with no combat at all.  It comes after a challenging combat section and acts as a nice little breather with great visuals and fantastic music.

Oh man, Unreal’s music.  Never before or again have I heard a more distinct soundtrack in a game.  Unreal has its fair share of late-90s electronic tracks, but the majority of its music is a very chill mix of unusual instruments.  I know next to nothing about music, so let me just drop some links real quick.

Dusk Horizon

Nali Chant

War Gate

Surfacing

It's such an intriguing mix of styles, and it's all perfectly suited for the environments you hear them in.  All of the levels are colored very deliberately, and the music matches the mood that texturing and lighting creates.  Coupled with how each track has an ambient and battle section and how it seamlessly slides between them as you enter and leave combat, the levels in Unreal are all a treat to explore, and I really do urge people to look up the soundtrack because it's really just that good.

The music in this game created a precedent of quality that the series kept up easily, and is just more evidence of how committed Epic at the time were to making as immersive and vibrant a world as they could.  It's just another part of a beautifully crafted experience that created a game so unlike any other at the time or since.  

Unreal is a game that is still incredibly playable today.  On a technical level, it's the Unreal Engine so you can pop it onto anything and get it working without any real trouble.  The unofficial OldUnreal patch is easy to find, and is just a single .dll file that gets dropped in the system folder.  But that's not the only thing playable means.  Design philosophies and public reception to various systems and elements of gameplay change over time, and it renders a large number of games either too obtuse or too clunky to really get into.  But there are always games that are timeless.  Doom is still a treat because the only thing in it is shooting, there's nothing particularly experimental to have been done better over repeated iterations.  Unreal is simple in that way, too.  Its weapons are varied, unique, and famous.  Man, I didn't even get into the weapons, but I'll save that for the Unreal Tournament essay.  

My point is, Unreal did a lot, and it did it very well.  It and every other game from 1998 was overshadowed by Half-Life, unfortunately, and that became the game to beat.  Half-Life isn't the reason we never saw another Unreal in the same vein as the first, but I do think that a desire to be the next Half-Life is why the industry moved to such a narratively-focused philosophy.  There was another game three years later that also focused on sprawling outdoor areas mixed with indoor structures, but it didn't have the same lonesome exploration, living world, or details that suggested hundreds of years of mythology.  This game would go on to affect the industry just as much or even more than Half-Life, and was in fact Bungie’s Halo.  

Halo had cutscenes and voiced NPCs and all the things Half-Life made people want.  Halo is another beast, but its success was all but the final nail in the coffin for any hope Unreal had of spawning any imitators.  The era of frantic slaughterfests in key-locked mazes was over, and Unreal’s attempt at carving out a spot for contemplative exploration in living worlds was ignored.  

That style of game would come back, but not in shooter form.  Both Dark Souls and Shadow of Colossus have similar feels to them, and I'm sure there are others out there.  Other Team ICO titles, Journey, there have to be others, there are too many videogames for there not to be.  But as it stands, Unreal is all but alone, and even now, in this wave of 90s revival indie shooters, they aim more for Doom and Quake.  Even Epic would step away from Unreal’s distinctive style with its very next release.

See, Unreal was popular, but at the time, released into an audience high off of Quake 2,  those same people wanted to dive into its multiplayer.  And when it worked, it was incredible.  But it often didn't work.  Epic set to fervent work patching it to fix poor netcode and a variety of other issues, but that project turned into something far, far larger, prompting them to release an entirely new game running on an updated version of the Unreal engine.  New maps, optimized and redone versions of existing maps, remodeled and rebalanced weapons, new music, new gamemodes, everything.  

Unreal Tournament would come out a year later, setting the industry alight in its own ways.  We'll take a look at that next month, so until then, take a day or two to play through Unreal.  I played it and loved it a decade after its release, and another decade won't have changed much.  

[deliverydefresas]

shape of you: bonus parts

I’ve been owing you these for months and i’m very sorry about that! thanks again to the anons who’ve reminded me you guys are the best!

there’s a couple more parts i have started writing but haven’t finished yet (one of them being the definite epilogue) so lets have our fingers crossed they’re done this year lmao 

i cant remember but it’s probs not proofread, sorry in advance

for all the previous parts click here  

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MEETING FANS

They’d been going out on dates for a month before it hit Ámbar that she wasn’t dating a ‘normal’ person.

Simón had picked her up after her last class that Friday, telling her the guys – as he called his band- had invited them out for drinks so they could meet the girl who’d stolen his time and mind. She’d been reluctant at first, not really in the mood to go out after a long, stressed week of mid-terms, but Simón’s puppy face had become something she just couldn’t say no to.

They had dinner at their place first, ordering Chinese take-out as she let herself be questioned by Pedro and Nicolás. Simón’s friends weren’t as bad as she’d thought, talking mostly at Simón’s expense and sharing embarrassing details of the boy she’d been dating, as well as setting up ‘the talk’, warning her to not hurt their friend. Ámbar found it rather amusing; Pedro and Nico didn’t give the intimidating pose they tried to pull off, but a goofy, joking one, even if the underlying warning was there. Simón had shaken his head, telling her to ignore them, but she ended up promising she wouldn’t, more to their amusement than hers.

Eventually they hit one of the near-by bars close to their apartment, Simón’s hand firm on her waist and both of his friends backing them up through the crowd. It was a Friday night, so she wasn’t surprised to see that many people around, but she did wonder how they’d find a table to sit on with so many people around waiting for one as well, and whom, most likely, had been there longer than them.

It was when Nicolás disappeared for five minutes telling them he’d go talk to the manager, so they could be seated that it hit her.

It didn’t take long before the four of them had a table and drinks on their hands. If it had been her and her friends alone, they’d probably had to wait at least an hour before they could leave find seats available, but she was with her boyfriend, who happened to be in a famous band, and whose name had a weight heavier than she’d expected. It was a strange feeling, but she wasn’t going to lie and say she hated it. She didn’t love it, either, but she wasn’t about to complain when she was on heels. She also wasn’t shy to ask Nico what deal he’d to make.

The guy shrugged. ���We just have to post a picture of us and tag the place. I’ll do that before we leave, I don’t wanna get mobbed today.” It sounded like it was nothing out of the norm, so she shrugged it off too, sipping on her mojito, waiting for them to carry on their conversation about writing sessions.

They’d only been on the bar for an hour before a girl around her age came up to them, interrupting Pedro’s question about her classes; she felt the weight of Simón’s arm around her shoulders fall, and she’d frowned at the missing contact. Her boyfriend threw her an apologetic smile before turning to the – clearly tipsy- girl, asking her if she needed anything.          

The girl started squealing how she was a big fan, and how she didn’t want to be a bother but that a picture with the guys would be a dream come true. Said guys all wore matching polite smiles – she wondered if they were practiced- and kindly told her they would if she didn’t post it right away, as they wanted to chill around for a bit more. The fan nodded multiple times, only turning to look at her to ask her if she could take the picture, her grin so big she was sure it hurt. The boys chatted her up for a total of five minutes, asking her standard questions before sending her off, begging her again not to post the picture right away. The girl said her goodbyes with shiny eyes and the biggest grin she had ever seen.

Ámbar would learn later that those were her favorite type of fans. The ones who were polite and only focused on the band, instead of those who’d throw distasteful glances at her whenever she was out with Simón, or those random people who clearly didn’t know who Simón and the rest were but wanted a picture anyway just to show they met them; she really couldn’t say those who tried to make a conversation with her were great, either, but that was mostly due to her inability to hold a conversation when all they wanted to talk about was Simón, how hot he was and how lucky she had been to snatch him up. She hated other girls objectifying him, and she hated that if affected her as much as it did.  

Her least favorite, though, were those who couldn’t take a no for answer; those who, even when the guys asked for them to give them a little of space, kept shoving their cameras on their faces. Her encounters with those were only a handful, but watching her boyfriend get harassed had proved to be too much for her, as two out those times, Antonio – the band’s manager- had to hold her back from behind to stop her from smacking some people’s faces.

In the end, however, a fan’s glee at finally meeting a person they admired so much was contagious, and 9 out of 10 times it left her with a smile on her face. It wasn’t easy, knowing that at one point or another, your boyfriend will prioritize strangers ahead of you, but she learnt to deal with it. Simón loved making other people happy, so the happy grin on his face whenever he met them was enough reason for her to bear it.

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READING ONLINE ABOUT HERSELF

They’d been dating around three months when the first picture of them appeared online.

It was blurry, clearly taken by someone who was trying their best to be sneaky and quick, a prominent zoom if the way it was noticeable pixilated was any tell.  

Sadly, it wasn’t blurry enough to couldn’t tell it was them. Simón’s face was fully displayed, laughing about something they were talking about, his arm around her while she rested her head on the crook of his neck, making only her profile visible. It’d been taken on one of their many lunch dates, half-eaten food in front of them told her so.

It went viral everywhere.

And so, the hunting for her identity begun. Every single media she knew of wanted to know her name, her age, where she studied – if she studied-, how they’d met and why he decided to date her. It escalated to the point of a magazine offering money for her information. Ámbar never felt luckier to go to a private university, where none of the people who knew her cared enough to sell her out.

Sadly, her relief lasted only a week. Simón was leaving the country to a meeting with their label when Emilia’s text reached her phone. ‘The cat is out of the bag; someone ratted you out’ following with the link of an article: ‘Meet Ámbar Smith: Simón Álvarez’ new flame’. Her breath caught on her throat, while her fingers flew to open the link. The more she read, the tighter her chest felt; they’d left no personal detail untold.

They knew her full name, they knew her age, her uni, what she was studying and the year she was on, that she was on a scholarship and had a nearly perfect GPA; that she lived with her mom and had a younger brother on his dad’s side, her mom’s job and her dad’s office. They knew she was a co-founder of The Fab and Chic, that it was her who’d interview him all those months ago, theorizing that was how they’d met and how long they’d been dating. They briefly mentioned his relationship with Matteo, too.  

Ámbar almost started screaming in the middle of the airport. As if Simón could feel her mood changing, he turned around from where he was talking to Pedro to ask her if something was wrong. He’d asked her at least five times what the problem was, but she just couldn’t speak. It wasn’t until Pedro – or was it Nico? She didn’t remember- opened twitter and showed him what was happening that Simón understood. That’d been the first time she saw him truly pissed off.

“How dare they?!” he’d growled, gripping the phone so hard his knuckles turned white. Someone must’ve told him she was still there, because then he turned to her, his arms holding her tight and his tone going down a few octaves, softer. “I’m so sorry, love. I will fix this, I promise I will.”

Her mind went back to the conversation she’d had with Emilia months ago, about how the exposure of the article could get her name out there, how she wished it would. But now, with her personal information, with her life, only a google search away from the public, she felt sick. “This can’t be happening.” She started mumbling, her mind a chaos. “How did they find out? Who could sell me out like this?” Only a couple of people knew what was told to the media, and all of them were trust-worthy. Either one of those people was scum, or the magazine was very good at stalking and digging up information.

“Baby, no. I’ll take care of it, okay? I’ll speak to Antonio and he’ll speak to our lawyer and we’ll see what we can do, alright? I’ll sue them if I can, make them delete it-”

That made her snap. “It’s all over the internet, Simón! Nothing ever gets completely deleted there! There must be thousands of screenshots already!” Even to her ears she sounded panicked. Her boyfriend’s face fell even more, and she felt worse.

Ámbar knew he’d do everything he could to make her happy. He’d proven that to her time and time again, he always asked first what she wanted to do, what she wanted to eat, which movies she wanted to watch, for him, it was always about her and her wishes. It was her who didn’t want to divulge their relationship just yet, and now, instead of his fans finding out their way, from their mouths, they’d found out by someone else’s. And it was her own fault.

That only pissed her more.

“What do you want to do?” he asked, grabbing her hand to push her to his body, encircling his arms around her waist. She took a deep breath, trying to sigh out her emotions.

“I’m sorry, I know you’re trying to help but I’m just- I’m so mad I just want blood to spill.”

“I understand.” He squeezed her waist slightly, “I’m serious, though. I can call Antonio and we can see how this can be… not as bad. I’ll sue them if that’s what you want.” She felt her heart swell with gratitude. As usual, though, she’d to ask him.

“Is that what you want?”

“This is about you, little gem. But yes, I do want to fight them on this. It’s not only your privacy being stepped on, but Silvana’s and your dad’s, too.”

“I want to know how they did this, and who did it. I want my parent’s info deleted as soon as possible, I don’t care about mine right now, but theirs I want gone.” Ámbar mumbled on his chest, knowing he’d hear it as his head was casted downwards, above hers.

She felt him nod. “I really am sorry, love.”

“Don’t be. I knew this would come sooner than later, and it was me who gave them time to collect my information, instead of me directing their moves.” She sighed out, mentally slapping herself for letting this pass by.

“It’s not your fault they’re assholes.” He tried to make her feel better. Ámbar just hugged him tighter. He held her for about a minute more, before excusing himself to call his manager and publicist and see what he could do.

An hour later, after Simón and his band’s flight had taken off, she’d received another text from her best friend. ‘He did it. It’s gone.’ She let out a sigh of relief.

But she wasn’t stupid. Ámbar knew this was only the beginning, and that, as much as she’d like, they wouldn’t be able to afford erasing every single article someone happened to write about her. It just wasn’t viable.

She did, however, promise herself that, the next time an article popped out about her, it’d be on her terms.

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GETTING PAPARAZZI’ED ON A DATE

It took the media another month before they got another photograph of them together.

Or, well, multiple pictures.

Simón had decided he wanted to take her to a ‘nice’ restaurant to celebrate the end of her semester. Ámbar knew this was also his way of coaxing her into going out for dates instead of the nights in she’d been convincing him to have at his apartment. It wasn’t that she was explicitly limiting them to stay inside the comfort – and privacy- of his home, but she wanted to take precautions in case anyone involved her parents again.

Whom, unsurprisingly, hadn’t heard of their info being leaked until she asked them if they were okay. Her mom had been taken off guard at first, wondering if she needed to change jobs or warn her boss about teenagers and grown men with a camera, but as soon as Simón told her it wasn’t necessary, and that he’d taken care of it, she’d dismissed the whole ordeal and asked her daughter’s boyfriend if he wanted to have dinner with them. Her dad wasn’t as chill. First, because he didn’t even know she was dating a famous band member, and second, he wasn’t thrilled she was exposing her life by dating one. He’d questioned her reasons, asking her if living in expectation of what the world had to say about her everyday was what she wanted, forever shadowed by her boyfriend’s name wherever she went.

She wasn’t proud to admit she’d snapped at him, throwing at his face that he’d left her mom raise her alone after she turned three, and that for that, he had no reason to butt in her relationship. She wasn’t even sure they were going to last, anyway. Nothing was set on stone when it came to relationships. In the end, he’d grunted out that he was okay and promised to call her if something happened, so she could talk to Simón and see what they could do. He also made Simón promise him he’d meet him soon. Ámbar still grimaced when she remembered how awkward that had been; her dad with his ‘hurt my daughter and die’ attitude, her dad’s wife all star-struck and giving out barely coherent responses to Simón’s questions, and her bored, not at all impressed brother making faces at his meal. She wanted to dig a hole and die.

Just like right now.

The dinner itself had gone splendid, the five-course meal always appreciated, especially when it came with a nice sized brownie and ice-cream scoop. She knew something was amiss when Simón asked for the check and the waiter told him it was taken care of. Not because it surprised her, but because it surprised him. She was used to Simón nodding, or even smiling when it happened. To see him frown, though, had her with her guard up.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered as she leaned to him, forcing him to look her way.

“I don’t know the owner, much less asked them to arrange this.” His voice sounded a little strangled, but he squeezed her thigh to not worry her.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” He huffed, squeezing once more before excusing himself to make a call. She was left alone at their table, confused. The waiter – who hadn’t left yet- seemed to be anxious, looking over his shoulder a couple of times as he waited for Simón to return. She forced herself to smile at him, even when all she wanted to do was to run to her boyfriend and demand an explanation. In the end, she chose to call for the guy’s attention. The waiter’s eyes widened in surprise, but still walked to her side.

“Do you know who arranged for this?”

He gulped. “I’m afraid I’m not allowed to tell you anything, miss.” Ámbar threw him a glare, the one she knew expressed she wasn’t going to take anyone’s bullshit. “The- uh, the manager might’ve arranged for a couple of photographers to come tonight-”

Her glare intensified. “Did my- Mr. Álvarez’ team agree to this?”

The guy loosened his tie a bit. “We uh- well, the calls weren’t returned.” She pursed her lips for a second, nodding as she stood up to look for Simón.

“I’m sure you’ll hear from them very soon.” She didn’t bother to excuse herself, and just walked away.

Ámbar found her boyfriend walking outside the bathrooms’ hallway, angrily whispering to whoever was on the other side. She called his name, making him snap his head her way; when his brain recognized it was her, he threw a hast goodbye to the phone and hung up.

“Love, I’m so sorry, I swear I didn’t know anything. The owner-” She raised her right hand, stopping him.

“I know, the waiter told me. What’s the plan?” Simón sighed heavily and got close enough so he could pull her to his body, encircling his arms around her. Something she’d learnt he tended to do when he was trying to comfort her, and his own anger.

“There’s only a couple of them out there, two or three, max. It’s not enough for Antonio to send someone over, and since this place collides with another building on the back, we can’t go out from there either. Both the principal exit and the emergencies one, are on the front.” He sighed again, the air hitting her neck, making her shudder. He must’ve mistaken it for fear, because he pulled her closer, cradling her head between his hands. “I promise I won’t let them publish anything. If I must pay them the double whoever called them over did, I will, princess… or I could go out alone and call you when-”

That made her scowl. “Don’t call me princess.” He smiled, knowing well she was only kidding – partially. Then it was her turn to sigh. “You don’t have to pay them anything, Simón. I can’t keep letting you waste your money to keep them off my back, it’s not fair. I- I think we should just… get it out of our way.”

“I don’t mind-”

She interrupted him. “I know you don’t mind wasting that money, but I do. I’m ready to take that step, Simón. I want to. Unless you see us breaking up soon – which, by the way, I don’t- there’s absolutely no reason to keep us hidden.”

He stared at her for a moment, before the biggest smile she’d seen on his face, appeared. “I don’t see us breaking up soon, either. Hopefully never.” Ámbar rolled her eyes.

“Now, don’t get too ahead on me yet.” His only response was to attach his lips to hers. He kissed her once, softly, pulling back slightly to breath heavily before kissing her again. This time he let his tongue roam over the ridges of her lips, and it took everything in her not to open her mouth to allow his tongue to meet hers; they were still in public, whether she wanted it or not. So, she let their lips part briefly, to then kiss him again, soft and gentle, before pulling away completely. “As nice as that was, we still have to deal with the problem here, buttchin.”

Simón pouted, showing off his chin dimple – aka, the reason of his nickname-. “Don’t call me that.”

She rolled her eyes again, smirking playfully, and grabbed his hand. “C’mon, I want to go home and kiss you some more.” He was quick to drop the pout.

“Should I pay for our meal? I don’t want anything from them.” She shook her head, lacing her fingers with his as they walked to the entrance.    

“And give them free publicity? Hell no. Just talk to Antonio and have them pay you back.” When she saw their waiter and a man approaching them, she glared at them, a deep scowl on her face, warning them to stay away. If she was going to allow this to happen, she didn’t want to do it angry. And talking to the person who had put her in the situation would surely anger her up.

As he helped her put her coat on, he took the opportunity to whisper on her ear a couple of instructions. “If you don’t want to show your whole face just keep your head down, grab my hand tightly and I’ll guide us to the car once it’s brought to us. I’ll chat them up and, if we’re lucky, they’ll just take a couple of pictures with the restaurant as our background. If you feel uncomfortable squeeze my hand tightly. If they ask me something and you’re okay with me answering, squeeze my hand once, twice if it’s a negative, okay?” By the time he’d finished talking he was already putting his own coat on. She merely nodded, offering her hand so he’d take it again. He counted to ten before walking them outside.

True to his word, there were only three men outside waiting for them. Ámbar was quick to lower her eyes, hiding half of her body with his as she leaned her forehead on his right shoulder. It was in times like this when she was thankful her boyfriend was tall enough so even if she was in heels, she could still use him as a shield.

“Good evening!” he chirped out, and she could bet all the money on the world he was faking a grin. They all chorused his greeting, asking him if he was okay with answering a couple of questions as they took their pictures. She squeezed his hand once. “Sure! What do you want to know?” his tone was cheerful, and polite.

“Did you two have a nice time?” one of the men asked, and Ámbar could hear the flashes going off. She squeezed once again.

“I had the best company, so yes.”

“Your girlfriend’s a beauty.” Another of them offered, making Simón squeeze her hand this time. She squeezed back.

It took him a second to respond, a little less cheery, but still polite. “She is, thank you.”

“How long have you two been dating? Some people had thought you had broken up after no one had seen you out for weeks.” The first men spoke again, his curiosity clear as water.    

Ámbar gripped his hand once, sending a silent prayer to the skies for whoever was bringing his car to hurry. “A while. I think you can imagine why we laid low the last month.” His answer was enough for them to get the hint. They moved the topic to his album, getting two more questions before the sound of an engine told her his car had arrived. “I’m afraid we have to go now. Thank you, gentlemen. Have a nice evening.” Her boyfriend started walking again, leading her to the passenger side and opening the door for her, as usual. For the first time, she didn’t look back at him to thank him. Instead, she kept her head low, letting her hair fall to cover her profile. He was quick to get into his side.

It wasn’t until they had drove off for a couple of streets, that she looked up again, letting a long, heavy sigh leave her lips. Simón grabbed her hand again, kissing the back of it comfortingly.

She sighed again. Wishfully hoping for it to get easier, even if she knew tonight was nothing compared to other times she’d seen other people deal with paparazzies.  

They’d gotten lucky tonight, who knew what it’d happen from now?