#so here is a little headshot! a Token if you will

[lilllithdraagon]

Snippet Sunday

Got tagged by @sillyliterature . So thank you to them 😊. I'm a bit late to the game but I'm here to play.

Rules: Revisit an old fic (or earlier chapters of your current WIP) and share a snip from:

Your first chapter

Alternatively, if you don’t write longfic, feel free to share your one-shots. Provide as much or as little commentary as you want.

Your favorite chapter

Your most challenging chapter

The fic I've chosen is The Path Not Taken by @lunadys and myself. It's actually the oldest fic I've written and also still a wip. Answers below the cut.

Frozen in panic, Lavi stood there numb as the giant reptilian bird lashed out at her with its jaws, water droplets falling from its maw. Deka yanked Lavi backwards, roughly by her collar, and pulled her up onto a rocky outcropping. The phoenix’s teeth snapped shut around Lavi’s still dangling leg before she had time to acknowledge the appendage was in danger. “Fuck,” Lavi shrieked, the pain setting her nerves on fire. Deka stomped the creature roughly in the face, dislodging it from her friend’s leg before it could get a solid grip. It flailed, scrabbling down the boulder to land in the sand with a satisfying thump, dazed for the moment. Lavi, still gasping in agony tried to staunch the bleeding. Deka didn't respond, instead nocking an arrow to her bow, and trying to figure out where it would be best to shoot the damned thing. She was thirsty, tired, and too irritable to baulk at killing something. After all, she’d done it a handful of times before. What did phoenix taste like? Determined, she loosed the arrow with a curse as it went wide. The beast hissed, having managed to dodge the projectile. "Etunash (Shit)!" She nocked another arrow. "Thing is smart-" The phoenix jumped, nearly snagging Lavi's robe. "Act now. Think later ," she whispered under her breath to steady her nerves. The phoenix clawed at the rock below them, attempting to find a way up. Deka loosed the arrow before she had a chance to second guess. The creature jumped sideways but the arrow found its flesh. Unfortunately, it was still moving. The phoenix faltered, and soon fell as another shot from Deka hit home, straight through its open jaws. "Headshot," Deka blurted in relief. She glanced around to make sure there weren't any other nasty surprises before descending back to the sand.

First Chapter: The Fuckening

Favourite Chapter: CH13 Seduction 101

This chapter has so many good scenes that it's hard to pick just one. There are plenty of more heated parts, but I really like how carefree they all get to be in this scene.

“That was… Thank you, Lavi,” Cassandra said with a soft smile, gently accepting the gift. After appraising it with almost reverence, she tied it around her neck. “It’s beautiful.” “Liar,” Lavi snickered. “I did my best, but the additions look like they were done by a blind twelve-year-old.” “Wait… did Chatterbox just give our Seeker a courting gift?” Varric chimed in with a grin. He gave a conspiratorial wink at the Iron Bull. “What?” Lavi looked between everyone in confusion. Oh, no. “I... it was a token of- Come on! Why would I bring everyone to see- ” “-and have it officially witnessed,” Bull chuckled, interrupting her smoothly. Lavi grew more mortified as she looked to Cassandra who was blushing. Not that she wasn’t attracted to the Seeker, but this was only supposed to be a gesture of friendship! “Pala ma ga . (Fuck you all)” Lavi groused. “I wasn’t- ugh, why do I bother?” “It is an older Nevarran tradition,” Cassandra chuckled, though her hand tightened on the scarf as if to defend it from removal. “I’m afraid I would have to decline. The gift is enough.” Lavi breathed a sigh of relief. “It is still widely recognized,” Solas observed with a quirk of his lips. Lavi glared at him for the betrayal. He knew. He knew that hadn’t been Lavi’s intention, and he was still making her suffer on purpose! Bull and Varric would latch onto that statement just to keep the joke going! “This dick is widely recognised.” Her accent grew thicker as she grabbed the crotch of her pants and flipped the elf off -the Aussie way- for good measure. “Truly? I‘d been certain we left Sera behind,” Solas lamented playfully. Everyone was clearly amused by her discomfort. She was going to kill them all. “Wait… do you have a-” Bull began. “If I do, it’s bigger than yours ,” Lavi snarled, and stomped her way out of the cave in embarrassment. Cassandra was trying to hide her own laughter at this point, but still resolutely kept the gift. When they returned to camp, Lavi immediately went into her tent and pretended she couldn’t overhear Varric quietly recounting the events to Blake and Sera. In that moment, she’d rather fight a brood mother than have to face everyone the next morning. “Apparently,” Varric whispered sternly. “Her dick is widely recognized.” Blake’s snickering and Sera’s manic giggling followed her into the Fade.

Omg this chapter was the biggest pain in a butt to write. You have no idea. The number of times we re-wrote it was astounding.

Most Challenging Chapter: CH18 A Cruel Awakening

“Keep that thing away from me,” the demon demanded, lashing out at those in the front. It stood at the edge of the great cliff, shuffling, and scrambling to find a way down. Those it hit were flung from the height to their deaths below. "Sit pretty and let me eviscerate you!" Lavi growled as she charged quickly toward the panicked creature. Her focus narrowed in on the demon, the rest of her surroundings falling away. “At least I give them choices,” Envy spat, as if reassuring itself as it lashed out. “What choices have you given them?” There was a wild energy about him that she hadn’t sensed before. It spat its words carelessly, accusing, and grating. "You give the illusion of choice," she snarled. Lavi was too angry to consider how her friends might be interpreting their argument. “You do the same thing. Stalking the flock like wolves amongst sheep!” Envy lunged for her, growing fear in its eyes, its claws raking the ground as she dove out of the way. The others had all taken positions around her. Good, that gave her a chance to land the killing blow. A barrier fell over Lavi as Envy slashed its claws at her chest. She brought her sword up, barely managing to deflect the strike. Lavi’s skills had improved greatly since she joined the Inquisition, but she was still a far cry from being a full fledged warrior. "Shut up!" She screamed as she hacked at Envy’s already wounded arm. “Hypocrite,” it snarled. The demon was herded back towards the centre of the yard as Bull charged with his axe. Cassandra was right behind it; corralling the creature as they tried to pull its attention away from Lavi. "Just die!" She threw herself at it with a scream that seemed wrenched from her. The others were forced to retreat as she swung around wildly. Envy screeched as her weapon sliced through the joint of one of its shoulders. Unlike anything made of flesh-and-blood, she hadn’t managed to amputate the limb. The wound shone for a moment, green like the Fade, as it slithered out of reach once more. She followed close behind, slamming her fist into Envy’s face, before it grappled her. The two of them struggled with one another; a tangle of limbs rolling around the courtyard, desperately trying to gain the upper hand. Bull wrangled her free and pushed her a distance behind him. She almost lost her footing and would have if Solas hadn’t grabbed her shoulder to stabilise her. “Don’t let it get in your head,” Bull snarled, bringing his axe down hard. Envy dodged again and Lavi threw another scream of incoherent rage. The demon slipped between Cassandra and another Inquisition soldier, gutting the poor man. Envy was avoiding her. She found herself growing angrier still, swatting aside Solas’ offered assistance, and charging the demon with only one thing on her mind. Bull’s warning was forgotten. Lavi was going to kill it. Solas threw another barrier over her as she descended on Envy with a series of mindless attacks. She wasn’t thinking, she was feeling everything! Everything she had lost. Everything she had sacrificed. Everything she had endured. It evaded her again and again. She could feel her lungs burning with the effort to keep up with it, her arms aching with the weight of her blade. Still she persisted. Arrows and spells whizzed by, some grazing her as they passed, but she didn’t care. None of it mattered. Only killing it mattered. “Wretched bitch!” Envy swatted Cassandra aside, jumping up along a pillar into a gravity defying, horrific perch. She heard Solas and the others yelling for her but they were muted and unimportant. Her focus was entirely on the demon. Inside her mind its words repeated as an echoed mantra. Failure. Hypocrite. Liar. Monster. Even through the anger, one thought persisted. It isn’t wrong .

Thank you again, @sillyliterature for tagging me. As far as tagging others goes, I'd like to tag @danafanel @firekittenscribbles @oxygenforthewicked and @lunadys herself because I'm curious how she would have answered. Anyone else feel free to take seeing this as an open invitation to do this yourselves.

[rhysiana]

The recent photos of Zhu Yilong as a conductor have now converged in my mind with the “use conductors as art ref if you want to draw a wizard” post to yield: Shen Wei who is both a symphony conductor and a wizard of some stripe in an old-school urban fantasy story.*

*(By old-school I mean before the genre turned into exclusively magical mysteries. Which I love, but I miss stories about normal people who suddenly discovered magic in the mundane world.)

Zhao Yunlan, meanwhile, is working a boring, normal office job at a boring, normal office with (mostly) boring, normal co-workers that he knows he got mostly through nepotism but he tries not to think about it too hard. His life is just... a life.

One day, Zhu Hong demands he take her to the symphony. He’s told her he’s not interested, but... She stomps her foot and scowls at him and says she wants a reason to get dressed up and go somewhere without looking like she’s there alone. And also he needs to be more cultured.

Da Qing (co-worker and also roommate, unfortunately) gives him a smirk over the cubicle divider that says he’s going to get endless crap about this at home unless he agrees, so he does. With only the most token of dramatic protests, he might add!

He dutifully gets dressed up and escorts Zhu Hong in her terrifying heels into the concert hall, and it’s nice. Pleasant. A fine way to spend an evening. (One. One evening.) He wonders if there will be drinks at the intermission.

He glances at the program and idly notes the conductor has a rather handsome headshot, but everyone looks good in professional photos, that's the point of them. (He’s looking directly at the camera though. Very compelling. Good job, anonymous photographer.)

The musicians take their places and go through the motions of tuning. The conductor walks out and bows formally. Zhao Yunlan settles back in his seat, making sure his position is stable enough that it won't be noticeable if he takes a little nap.

He does not take a little nap. The music starts and the conductor comes ALIVE. His presence becomes absolutely magnetic. Zhao Yunlan is riveted the whole time. If asked later, he would have very little to say about the music and a lot to say about shoulders and hands and arm movement. He applauds so enthusiastically at the end Zhu Hong looks a little concerned.

He barely notices, practically floating out of the hall in a daze. They don’t actually live near each other, so he gallantly sees her into a car before heading to the subway station. It’s there he realizes his transit pass has fallen out of his pocket somewhere. Stupid suit! Pockets in all the wrong places for his actual needs.

He heads back to the concert hall, only to find the lobby dark, doors shut. He wanders around the side, hoping for another door he can rattle. Surely at least the cleaning crew is still here? Did all the musicians really pack up that quickly? Some of those instruments were rather large. Maybe they just leave them here?

He’s so lost in his usual chaos of thoughts that he doesn't notice someone else in the alley with him until he gets shoved into a wall. “Hey!” he exclaims, turning, and then belatedly realizes the shadowy stranger is attempting to mug him.

Normally, he’d like to clarify to the universe, he’d be more prepared. His messenger bag is overfull and very heavy and thus makes for a very nice weapon, and he wears shoes with far better tread. So of course this happens while he’s in a suit and dress shoes, empty-handed.

All of this runs through his head in the 10 seconds before a door suddenly opens right behind him (where he’s very sure there was not a door) and a smooth voice, in a very not-mad-just-disappointed tone, says, “We’ve talked about this. My territory. Off limits.”

There’s an impression of very large, very sharp teeth from the shadows of the other guy's hood, and then LIGHTNING streaks over Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder and hits him right in the chest, hurling him down the alley. He springs up, hisses at them, and runs off.

“What the--?” he starts, and turns around to find the conductor standing in front of the door that wasn't there. "Uh. Hi there," he says instead with a little wave, because he is incredibly suave in all circumstances.

The conductor looks amused, in an incredibly understated way. Like, probably no one else could tell kind of way, but Zhao Yunlan is sure. “Hello,” he says back with a little head bow. “Would you care to come in? Were you looking for something?”

And that is how Zhao Yunlan, of the boring, normal office job, meets Shen Wei, conductor and sorcerer, and despite the fact his routine doesn't change much, his life is never boring and normal again.

(ZYL: “Conductor by day, sorcerer by night!”

SW: “Actually, I believe that’s backwards, since the conducting happens mostly in the evening unless it’s a matinee, while the sorcery is all the time.”)

[boyd-speaks]

Welcome to the end of another year. This was kind of a weird one, because I found a lot of stuff didn't hit deviantart as soon as they were done. Things either never made it here, or sat around and eventually got posted in art-dump uploads. So I'm not 100% sure these match the month they're in, but I think they're accurate. As an overview, we can see a lot of the same style. What's odd, is when I was sifting through the months for images I noticed that it's not that I rarely did anything more detailed, but that when I did I clearly got inspired and did multiple pieces in the same month, so despite the quantity, very few got into the year in review. With all that said, let's get to the individual pieces.

January: A fitting start. I really thought I drew this later in the year. I like the poses and proportions I pushed out here. I feel like this one was pretty fast and done on a whim. Which is really most of my art.

February: This was timely. February was when I started running Rime of the Frostmaiden using Dungeon World. These are my player's characters, and i love them all. In classic rpg fashion, no one has opinions about what their characters look like until you draw them. Only then do they say, 'hmmm, nah, they're blonde actually' or whatever.

March: I also played a lot of Monster of the Week this year. While the Rime of the Frostmaiden game ran about 10 months, just finishing up in December, the Monster of the Week was much more episodic, and kind of just petered out after a few months. Anyway, this was one of the one-off characters I made who I adore. They met a cat.

April: More roleplaying games... It's also one of the group upload images. The featured image was character art for a West Marches style DnD game being broadcasted on twitch. This friend dies pretty fast. but I liked her a lot. If you click through you'll see fanart for the same game, and a monster I drew while gming monster hearts for the same session.

May: I love this pic! This was made to be a dramatic review of a monster in a different (yes a fourth) game, which this time I was running. The character was going to be a players new pc, that I wanted to reveal as this rad monster and see how everyone reacted, not knowing they were going to join. The result was less interesting than I hoped, but I still love this picture. Worth noting is that this one was competing with a very similarly drawn picture I drew for my brother's birthday. So check that one out too maybe?

June: It's father's day! I have already forgotten what else I drew this month that it went up against to get on this list. Looks like some very similarly drawn art (including more rpg characters) but it's nice using a drawing for my dad. I love my dad.

July: And here we see one of my month long challenges. I love doing these. I don't remember where this idea came from, but I'm so used to drawing characters I wanted to try little towns, like you might see as stylized impressions of them on a map that's not trying to be realistic. I dunno if that means anyone to anyone, but I know what I mean, and it was actually a very well received series. The featured image was my favourite one.

August: More DnD! This was actually my second character in the afore mentioned West Marches game. I did do some full body drawing of her, but when it came time to make a token, I just fell in love with this headshot I somehow came up with. The full image includes some more monsters for my own games (a sea hag, their child, a homunculus, and a creature made from a bunch of homunculi glomming together). The last image is another enemy monster that I sketched out mid session while running Monster of the Week.

September: It's my girlfriend! Not, the most accurate depiction, but I do like this drawing. I got her a skirt like the one she's wearing in the picture, for her birthday. Which is unfortunately cut off in the review image.

October: I don't really know why I used this image for October. I guess I just didn't want every picture to have the same art style given the opportunity, but october would definitely be better represented by the daily art series I did during it, which was all original monsters with no prompts. it was super fun.

November: For some reason I suddenly decided wild boars are cool and I needed a wild boar fursona. Because I have a lot of art friends, I sometimes feel like a should have, like, a definitive fursona, but, I just don't? Like animals are cool, and drawing yourself as an animal as rad. but none are like..  me. I guess? I dunno.

December: And then the next month I draw this! Heck yeah! Maybe I was just a fish the whole time and I never considered it! So yeah, I participated in an art secret santa this year, and the only thing I really had to go on was the recipient's favourite colours. As I sketched out this drawing and got inspired by a the idea of a mer-person with faux-facial hair modeled off of a lionfish, I just poured myself into it. I adore this drawing.

[marmosa]

hogwarts theatre program hc’s

i was chatting with a friend of mine and she brought of something about how Hogwarts had a drama department that collapsed because there was too much drama 😭😭 very much on brand tbh. but this hc list was born out of that conversation and i just very much AHHHH. also under the cut are some character related hc’s 😋🙈

***

run crew just moving things with their wands from the wings so their transitions are like ultra smooth

alternatively, because they’re using magic the transitions are worse...somehow??

“how did you manage to knock out an actor?” “IM SORRY SOMEONE WAS TALKING AND MY AIM WAS OFF”  

programs having enchanted photos, so each headshot also includes the shenanigans from before the photo was taken

professor mcgonagall having to okay the play because dumbledore is too nice and will literally let anything through

trying to convince mcgonagall to let them do a more raunchy show

“absolutely not”

“well professor dumbledore said it was a lovely idea!” 

“ALBUS”

mic checks would just be seeing who knows how to use the voice amplifying charm correctly or not

actors enchanting one another as pranks during rehearsals and professor flitwick nearly seizing from the stress

flitwick is the director, it has been decided 

an enchanted orchestra!!! so at the end of the play when the cast motions to the pit the instruments fly out and do their own little bows 😭

idk if hogwarts has an orchestra with actual students uhhh,,,, moving on

CLOSING NIGHT PARTY IN THE GRYFINDOR COMMON ROOM

non-theatre kids have to go hide in their dorms or escape elsewhere cause they don’t want to deal with it akdjksfb

someone hexing the makeup of a lead that they don’t like so their foundation turns green after they apply it

or their hair spray turns their hair a different color

idk just hexing the lead with a fat ego’s products because they’re a pain in the ass

the ghosts are brought in to critique the run throughs, this is sir nicholas’ favorite past time, he has a note pad and pen and everything  

“sir nicholas?”

“yes?”

“did you hear we’re doing romeo and juliet this year?”

“is that so? i knew shakespeare, bloody prick he was.”

sound techies having to hunt down the idiot who won’t un-charm their voice so their lines keep echoing through the department and it’s driving people crazy

props creators seizing because flitwick for some reason was like “we have magic MAKE THE PROPS MORE COMPLEX”

really and i mean REALLY elaborate sets because it’s a magic school why tf not

forget a wooden standie of a castle, mf’s built a whole castle out of bricks and enchanted it so it didn’t fall through and crack the stage

students all doing shitty american rendition’s of english accent when they do typically english productions for ✨ ambience ✨

tech week is hell

i mean bloody anarchy

dumbledore is nice enough to get them special catering

but extra snacks doesn’t calm the storm

flitwick is ruthless, he will tear a performance apart to make it better if he has to

“did you finish the last touches on the costumes?”

“no, i thought you did?”

[panicked screaming]

don’t even look at the stage manager, they’ll literally kill you

“you STILL haven’t memorized your big monologue@%^*#”

“it’s not my fault!! snape keeps assigning too much work!”

“serverus is going to get my foot up his ass if he doesn’t-”

“PROFESSOR”

asking hagrid for creatures that will be featured in plays

he usually always says yes just because he loves seeing his babies star in the productions

ron suddenly getting fifty “unrelated” owl requests for charlie’s contact info

“please ron we need the dragon”

“for what” 

“it’s confidential, just please-,”

“what for-?”

“JESUS RON JUST GIVE US THE DRAGON”

george is stage manager

fred is lights head

they were first put in there for detention but quickly realized they liked it 

it was also a lot easier to get away with wack shit

“fred would you stop messing with the lights?? we’re having a run thru”

“why don’t you come up here and do it urself then, genius????”

“hold my mf script”

“GEORGE NO”

harry keeps getting cast as token hot straight boy male lead tm

not necissarily that he is straight, just,,,,, the typecast

^^^ alternatively cedric

cedric is mr. heartthrob 

he’s the hot sports guy u don’t expect to audition

but does and gets in

and now every1 wants a piece of that

when he dies graduates the department is Devastated </3

ron keeps getting cast as token silly best friend who’s there 4 comic relief

hermoine keeps getting cast as token feminist girl tm

(no those aren’t just their book roles whaaaaat)

opening night is a Big Deal

idk why

it just IS

“i heard we get house points if more students from our house show up!”

“really?!”

“no.”

[flyswhumpcenter]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled. Green deltas are for requested prompts.)

There’s a reason why Chronos was such a cruel god.

I almost forgot to post this fic... I started it a while back, got art block, and only went back to it during a boring geography lesson during Whumptober. It was also not meant to be an Inazuma fic, but sometimes I have a weird creativity and muse. Don't ask me, the wonders of the human mind I guess. It'll come to literally nobody's surprise that I ship Anna and Nosaka because I'm the token F/M shipper of the main fanfic writers of this fandom (y'know, gotta contrast my colleagues and provide the stuff nobody but me and maybe an IRL friend wants). I'm surprised I've never managed to finish a fic with them before, tho: yes, the previous prompt fill, "Bedside Vigil" was supposed to be for them until I switched to Haizaki/Akane over... my Tomodachi Life game immediately pairing them up (true story). Anyway. This fic does imply to a road accident of some sort, so if you're sensitive to this kind of topic (for which you're entirely justified, tbh, that's coming from someone who's almost been in one), proceed with caution. It's nothing graphic or anything, just floating in the background of this story, though. I also almost forgot to mention this is supposed to be set in my Inazuma Café AU, but the only reason why you need to know that is because they're college students there, and why Anna and Hikaru are as friendly to each other as they are here. I mean, if you wanna know more, I'll gladly respond to questions.

It’s also the last story I can write for this card without getting a Five in a Row, which I may or may not have done on purpose lol

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For Time Cannot Be Accelerated

Summary: Anna didn't think ambulance rides could last this long on the mind. She was seriously proven wrong.

Fandom: Inazuma Eleven (Ares/Orion continuity; implied college AU) Relationships: Platonic Anna & Hikaru friendship, implied established Anna/Nosaka

Wordcount: 1.7K words

Content Warnings: Implied road accident, talks of death, some blood and talk of injury.

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

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They’re all tense in the ambulance. It doesn’t help that they share a small space amongst themselves, all cranked in one back of a truck that had clearly been made to have one stretcher and the paramedics watching over it. Nobody talks, except the latter amongst themselves in the front of the ambulance and through the vehicle. Instead, they don’t look at each other, too busy staring at the floor or their responsibility.

Anna has opted for the floor, for the time being.

 It’s overwhelming to remain here, in a crowded place where she felt alone nonetheless, drowned in the noise of the beeping machinery and blaring sirens echoing on the inside, feet surrounded by wires, hands trembling and sorrow she desperately kept inside. Her thoughts are still shaken from what had happened merely moments before, isolating her even further, words having escaped from her mouth and her vocal cords remaining knotted with no throat clearing able to untie them back to usefulness. She’s speechless, voiceless, useless.

Her shoulder is pressed against Ichihoshi’s, whose hand happens to sometimes brush against her naked arms. From what little she can see of his face, drowned in the darkness of the vehicle and lit by the unstable, flickering coloured lights of the different monitors crippling her earing, he isn’t any more relaxed than she was, shoulders stiff and frowned eyebrows, biting his lip, trying not to fidget with his fingers. She feels like she should be telling him something to make him untense, but considering how tense she also is, she has no idea what she’s even supposed to utter. Her mental syllabus has given up on her for the time being.

 In this moment of despair and desolation, Anna still admires the valiant efforts of the paramedics making sense of the numbers displayed on tiny screens and muttering a language she doesn’t understand most of, words whose meaning she has no idea of flying way over her head. They’ve kept their cool when she was on the verge of tears, an unknown yet powerful force preventing her from falling to her knees and weeping like she is, frankly, wanting to do above everything else. Still, she’s the Empress, and no Empress has ever cried when her capacity of judgement was needed.

The air of the ambulance was hot, too much so, smothering both Ichihoshi and her. If she could take a breather outside, even if it’d be for a mere moment or from a minuscule hole, her head would spin far less quickly, her world would stabilize, her mind would be much further from the verge of breaking down under its own weight. She craves tranquillity and serenity, two states of mind she’s meant to have and yet lacked in these desperate moments.

 Anna has started finding ways to recover her calm. The floor of the ambulance which seemed highly uncomfortable and disgustingly dirty when she climbed in now looked more than comfortable enough to her, but they lacked the space to even attempt sitting down. Before long, she’s realized the hard reality of things: there’s no way for her to get even the slightest bit more comfortable, and despite the speeds this vehicle is going at, it’s still taking ages in her mind.

In a way, it reminds her of being on a sinking ship, swimming in the cold sea, except she doesn’t even have the merit of risking hypothermia because she’s boarding on a rescue boat while someone else is pushing it, giving their skin to the freezing waters and floating debris. Morbid imagery she tries to erase out of her mind as soon as possible, yet the beating of her heart making itself known in her head and neck prevent her from not thinking about death nor debris.

 “I… I hope everything will be alright,” Ichihoshi eventually stutters, in an almost-whisper, voice hiding behind the ill-paced cacophony.

“So do I,” she replies as she notices something was dripping along her skin, eyeing the liquid going down her arm. Drifting her glance in its direction, she sees he’s holding his right arm with his left hand pressed against his jacket’s fabric, a faint difference in colours showing up in the mostly uniform light blue-and-red that his white sleeves had become.

As a result, her voice changes in tone, “are you okay, Ichihoshi?”

“It stings, but it’s nothing too bad. I’ll have it checked when we’ll arrive.”

The trembling, weakness in his own voice makes her more than doubtful of his statement. He’s unstable on his feet, almost swaying, crashing into her when the ambulance unfortunately shifted too quickly for him to catch himself on something, fingers slipping on the metal walls. She barely catches him with weak arms, legs feeling fainter until she’s stabilized him on his feet.

“I don’t believe that it can’t be ‘too bad’, if you’re tilting this much,” she tells him, even more concern melting into acid. “Let me see”.

 A sense of responsibility gives her back some of her stability, legs straightening up, eyes sharper as she tried to see in the half-dark. Without a word, she took off her comrade’s sleeve, noticing the sharp contrast marked by what could only be a wound. It seems like a deep cut, with shards reflecting the dim lights visibly exiting from it. Her hair rises on her limbs as soon as she knows what this is about.

“How long do we have left until we arrive?” She demands, in an imploring voice, to the paramedics.

They’re not able to provide a clear time, “a couple minutes left, traffic’s really bad, our apologies”, so she has to deal with it and simply keep Ichihoshi close to her, making sure he doesn’t trip on himself, inspecting for other wounds he could have. Aside from his arm, she thinks she sees a stain on his stomach and another on his right leg, although they’re less noticeable and she kind of sighs in relief to herself about that fact. It must mean they’re less grievous than the one she saw first.

 “I really hope he’s gonna be okay…” Ichihoshi whispers close to her ear, back lying against the metal.

The concern she’s tried to hold in until now by thinking of something else and failing to fully do so breaks through the gates and floods her mind again. She has too much to worry about and not enough available space, the scratches on her knees and elbows from the glass shards paling in comparison to the anguish that this ambulance ride is starting to become.

“Same here…” Her voice almost chokes on itself, but she breathes in and out, swallows her pride and her stress in one gulp, and continues speaking as not to betray her actual state of mind. “I’m sure he’ll be fine, he’s pulled through worse, I know it…”

Her hands still enlace themselves in a silent prayer she tries to hide from the world.

“He’ll… be fine. He will be fine.”

She wants to cry.

“You’re right. Surely he’ll make it…”

 Anna isn’t lying to reassure herself, merely speaking her truth. Yuuma has always proven himself to being capable of the most daring stunts, even life-threatening ones. While she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to fully forgive him hiding his tumour away from her for reasons he’s never quite told her about, merely tune down the hurt he’s caused her by taking in account the reasons he did so; she has to use it as proof it should be fine. She only has hope to keep herself afloat now, her reason having fled the scene.

Yuuma is capable of great things, that much she’s sure of. She doesn’t know him entirely yet, and is certain she won’t ever be able to fully understand his character, yet she trusts him with her own life and, in these dire moments, he needs her. He needs her to remain strong and level-headed, to withstand the pressure and the desolation taking root inside her heart. They’ve promised to remain together and be there for each other: it’s time for her to fulfil her part of the trade.

Plus, from the three of them involved in this tragic accident, she’s the only one who has grazes instead of injuries. She also has to keep an eye on Ichihoshi on behalf of both Yuuma and her.

 “He’ll make it. I’m certain of it,” she repeats, more to herself than to her friend.

“I’m sure of it too,” he adds, in a similar fashion, and they’re back to both silently pray in silence as time slowly flows before their eyes, like the calm waves of a serene beach coming and going. If she closes her eyes and tries ignoring reality enough, she can almost hear the sea instead of sirens and cryptic whispers.

“And you? Are you okay?” she asks, her hands leaving their praying position, about to inspect her friend.

“I’ll be fine…”

He sounds too unsure to her liking, but before she can even comment on that, the atmosphere changes as she hears in echoes the nearby sirens of other ambulances.

 This is when Anna realizes that she couldn’t have been more relieved to see a hospital in her life, making sights she’d have wished never to see again some she was looking forward to: the paramedics shifting around the stretches and talking among themselves in a slightly different way, the monitors displaying new numbers, men shouting in an urgent tone. Almost unbeknownst to them, they were holding each other’s arm for support in dire times, the smell of iron sticking to his skin, her composure coming back despite the tears having taken away some of her makeup.

They’re most likely both ugly sights too, but they’re alive, they’ve arrived, and it’ll all be fine, eventually. For now, they step down from the ambulance, his arm wrapped around her shoulders. Despite the circumstances, neither of them succumb to their darker thoughts and bruises, not a complaint heard despite Ichihoshi grunting in pain from time to time and her lack of balance and remaining strength to carry the both of them without herself panting.

 Still, Anna is the Empress, this much she knows; and an empress remains strong, no matter the circumstances. She’ll trust Yuuma and bring Ichihoshi to someone who can help tend to his wounds. That’s her mission and she’ll make sure to accomplish.

[rainyrowan]

Sunkissed - Chapter 1

description: Wedding of the century rolls around as the previous college clique, along with the rest of their family members, stay in preparation for it. During this time, Riley meets Lucas, a gorgeous, green-eyed wallflower who happens to be immediately taken by her. Little did she know, he has a deep secret. One that will either change her views on him forever or make her feel closer to his world.

word count: 2,626

pairings: riley x lucas

Song: Annabelle’s Homework by Alec Benjamin

chapter one; riley

Sparkley Farkley: Did you know that the slowest marathon time ever is 54 years, eight months, six days, eight hours, 32 minutes, and 20.3 seconds? Yeah, in 1912, an Olympic marathoner from Japan supposedly disappeared during the middle of a race. Some say that he stopped to get a drink from an outdoor party, but ended up staying longer than he should have. Risque, if you ask me. Anyways, he was too embarrassed to finish the race, so he flew back to Japan instead. Years later, he decided to finish what he started by running the whole marathon himself. What I'm trying to say is WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? Riley, you're seriously taking much longer to get to the boardwalk than this Japanese marathon guy. Hurry!!

I looked at the horrifically long paragraph Farkle had sent me and sighed. Being best friends with him also meant being best friends with your very own encyclopedia, which can be extremely useful at times. Although, it really isn't when your phone is constantly being bombarded with numerous texts about everything and nothing.

Gentle reminder that I live farther from the beach than you do. I'll be there soon! Don't miss me too much :)

I quickly text back. I gripped onto my camera strap, which is draped over my shoulder, as I start quickening my pace.

When we became closer over the years, Farkle and I both created a tradition of spending almost every Saturday down at the boardwalk. In regards to this, the main rule that we've agreed upon would be that if one of us couldn't make it, we would have to have an extremely valid excuse. Me being the more "laid back" friend, I've been pretty lenient on Farkle if he couldn't make it. Wish I could say the same about him, though.

Last night, I had to stay up till two in the morning helping my mother out at the flower shop. Arranging flowers isn't as easy as one may think. In result, I woke up later than usual, causing me to be about 30 minutes late. So far, I've received a fact text from him for every minute I ran late. It truly amazes me how he could just drop these facts off the top of his head.

I'm practically already running when I see Farkle by the entrance, arms crossed.

"I'm sorry!" I pant. I take a second to breathe before I continue speaking. "I.. I woke.. Wow, I'm not cut out to be.. an athlete, huh?" I joke.

He rolls his eyes as a grin forms on his face. "Where were you?"

"I was up all night helping my mom with the flowers. I woke up super late. I'm so sorry."

He nods in approval of my excuse. "That's okay. However, I don't think we could go to the diner now. Brooklyn and her minions are there. Seated in our spots too!"

The thought of Brooklyn made me sick to my stomach. Brooklyn was the Regina George of Harbor High School, and basically all of Santa Cruz. Like your typical teen cliche, she was the popular girl who also the prettiest. Brooklyn also had her own entourage, as she always had two minions following her. With her bitchy personality, you may say that it's surprising that she gets all the guys. With her body, though, it really isn't. It's probably how she had my crush of four years and counting, Charlie Gardner, falling for her.

"Well, I guess we would have to postpone our meal then," I say, linking my arms with his. We enter the boardwalk and head straight for the arcade. We're surrounded by all the games you could never ever get tired of. From Dance Dance Revolution to laser tag to racing games, the Santa Cruz Boardwalk Casino Arcade has you covered. Farkle and I have our common favorite, air hockey.

He let go of my arm, dashing straight to the air hockey table. "You ready to get your ass beat?"

He asks, slipping in a token. We love each other very much, but when it comes to air hockey, it's like we're two different people.

"You should be asking yourself that, Minkus." As air starts to shoot through the tiny holes from the table, we both grabbed our paddles. Suddenly, the puck falls through my pocket instead of Farkle's. "Well, that's a first! I guess I'm starting."

I hit the puck as hard as I can towards his goal. Hoping that this time my first hit would make it, he blocks the puck in a swift move and smiles. "Not today." This goes on for quite a bit. I concentrate on the puck as it glides across the table back and forth. That is, until a distraction came my way. Charlie.

I offer him a double take before actually realizing that it was him. He probably didn't even notice me, which was a good thing on my part. I didn't want him to know that I was here. Out of impulsive thinking, I ducked down to hide behind my side of the table. This wasn't really the best decision, though. Farkle managed to make a goal and yell on behalf of his victory. I don't even have to see what's happening to know that attention was surely brought towards us.

"Farkle!" I call out in a whisper. He walks around the table and takes a seat next to me.

"So, explain to me why we're hiding behind- "

"Riley!" Charlie exclaims. Mortified, I lift my head up to find him standing right in front of us.

"Hi, Charlie." I saw awkwardly. Thankfully, Farkle gets up off the ground and pulls me up, as I was too scared to even move.

Farkle clenches is jaw subtly enough that no one could notice, except for me. It's safe to say that he never liked Charlie. I don't blame him. Most of the time, he can be a total jackass.

I'm not too sure how or why I've liked him for so long, and still currently do. I like to think it's because of the fact that I'm always seeking the best in people. I don't necessarily like making assumptions out of people based on looks or first encounters. For Charlie, I realized how much of a good person he is, deep down, whilst working on a school project with him in the public library. My father, who so happened to be my teacher, assigned both of us as partners for a project that we had to turn in a matter of three days. Within those three days, we'd head to the library at night to work, but we were never productive. All we did was talk. Well, all Charlie did was talk. About himself, of course. I would just sit and listen. It was kind of odd not taking part in the conversation, but I mostly did not mind. As a matter of fact, I remember feeling like it was for the best since I would most likely say something stupid. Plus, I got to learn more about him and who he truly was. The downside of it was that I had to take our project home and finish it myself, but I thought that it was worth it. From that moment on, I couldn't help but keep thinking about him, about us.

Charlie extends his hand out to Farkle, expecting a shake, but he steps back. "I'll wait for you outside." He tells me. No, no. Please don't leave me alone with him.

"Well, that was awkward." He laughs. "But anyways, I am so glad I caught you. I was wondering if you're free like right now? I was hoping that you could help me out with something."

Crap. As much as I would love to help him, I promised Farke that I would spend the day with him. However, as I was looking up at Charlie's mesmerizing brown eyes, I seem to have ignored that fact. "Um, sure." I squeaked. I clear my throat and try again. "What would I be helping you with exactly?"

"You see, we're doing headshots in drama, and you're kind of known to be a really talented photographer," I blush as he says so.  Along with the fact that his words make me swoon, another thing about Charlie that I liked was the fact that he is a performing arts fanatic. I'm presuming that it's something that he would like to achieve in the future. He's actually really talented if I'm being honest.

"So, would it be alright if you got a couple of portrait shots of me by the beach?" Charlie asks.

"Maybe in return, I can buy you a milkshake afterward."

Farkle is so going to kill me after this.  "Er, okay."

"Great! C'mon, let's go." He starts heading towards the exit as I trail behind him. Hoping that he was the gentleman I thought he'd be, I expected him to open the door for me. Instead, he ends up leaving it to close behind him. I sigh, disappointed for getting ahead with my thoughts. Once I've exited the arcade, I immediately scan my surroundings in search for Farkle.

"I'm here." He calls out from behind me. I turn to find him leaning against a wall.

"You're going to hate me," I confess.

A smirk creeps up on his face. "Not gonna lie, I was already kind of assuming."

"You're not mad?"

"No," Farkle says softly. "I still hate that bastard, though. But I mean if you like him that much-"

I pull him into a hug. "Thank you," I whisper.

"Yeah, okay." He wraps his arms around my back and chuckles lightly.

"Riley?" Charlie yells.

I pull away from Farkle and adjust my outfit. This would technically be the first time I get to hang out with Charlie alone, so I obviously want to look presentable. However, that's clearly not the case since I'm currently in my maroon Harvard sweater that Farkle had actually bought me from when he visited last year, along with a pair of faded ripped jeans.

"Do I look okay?" I ask.

He holds two thumbs up. "Can't say no to a girl in Ivy League gear."

"I love you, and thanks a bunch!" I plant a quick kiss on his cheek before running towards Charlie.

Once I've caught up to him, we both head to the beach together.

I truly do love the beach. I love the ambiance of waves crashing against the shore, along with the wailing of seagulls as they soar across the sky. Not to mention, the smell of the ocean beach as well. Everything about the beach is so captivating and peaceful, especially since it's a little early and not a lot of people are here. The afternoon is the absolute worst time to visit the beach. The fact that there are so many people who usually come on a day to day basis, makes me a little anxious to go.

Charlie leads me to where the dock is located. Farkle and I would usually come to take pictures underneath the dock. This area is quite aesthetically pleasing.

"I think this is a great spot." He says, placing his bag down as I begin to adjust the settings of my camera. I let him know that I'm ready once everything's all set. Charlie then runs towards the shoreline and starts posing of a shot. Since I'll be capturing portrait shots, I made sure that my camera is set so all my photos can have a shallow depth of field. This way, Charlie will be in focus as the background will be a bit blurry. After taking a few photos here and there, I stop to look at them. Charlie was perfectly centered, the lighting was on point, and all shots have great composition. Perfect. I think to myself. However, Charlie apparently doesn't exactly think so when he sees them.

"Yeah, this situation just isn't working for me. Let's try something different." He looks around for a moment. "Here, why don't you get some bird-eye shots of me laying on the sand."

I was a little offended that he didn't like the photos I originally took. I spoke out, irritated. "I thought we were taking portraits?"

"I'm just trying to think outside of the box here, Riles. Maybe the photos will turn out better." I scoff at what he had just said. What difference does it make? You're just going to be lying down. And I thought all headshots were portraits. There he goes acting like a douche, but here I am, still taking interest in him.

Charlie lies down on the sand and places his hand behind his head. From the looks of it, he could pass for a Hollister or Abercombie & Fitch model.  I stand directly on top of him to get good shots. If I'm being honest, this isn't the ideal position I'd want to be in. It's a little uncomfortable and weird, really.

Suddenly, water hits the shore and Charlie attempts to save his khaki pants by jerking straight up. Instead, jerking straight up somehow caused me to tumble forward, allowing both of us to fall back down. I also end up dropping my camera on the sand. Water continues to run beneath Charlie, which caused his whole outfit to be soaked. "Shit!"

The water still kept going around us. I panic as I watch it slowly ooze towards my camera. Miraculously, the water stopped before it could reach it. I graciously let out a sigh of relief. "Will you get the fuck off of me now?!" He yells in annoyance. I flinched when he does so and realize that what was happening: I was on top of Charlie Gardener. Because I was on top of him, I didn't get hit by the water at all. I quickly scurried to my feet and grabbed my camera.  I turned to Charlie, who was still really angry that he was drenched. He got up from the ground and gathered his stuff. "Thanks to you," He snaps. "I am soaking wet, and I have rehearsals for the musical after this!"

I feel a familiar tightness gripping my throat. As Charlie continues to curse at me, a burning heat rushes through my body and I can hardly breathe. The DJ over by the boardwalk starts blasting music that seems to be ten times louder than usual. My surroundings then become too horrifically bright. My hands become clammy as I start to lose control of my body. My vision starts to get blurry and my heartbeat begins to speed up to the point where I could hear it.

Once Charlie finishes grabbing his stuff, he walks over to me. He stops and takes a deep breath. "Just email me the photos whenever you can." And with that, he walks away. When I've lost sight of him, I walk towards the pebbles near the ocean. I stare out to sea, trying to take big breaths. I stay until I've finally coaxed my heartbeat back to normal.

[zydrateacademy]

Review - Rage 2

I have little to no experience with the first Rage. I have about two hours on it, last played five years ago. I remember a lot of brown, and I think I immediately quit because it didn’t engage me very much. To the surprise of everyone, last year we get a teaser trailer set to Andrew WK’s “Ready to Die” in a semi live action setpiece telling everyone that Rage has returned, and it’s gonna be wacky! In practice, it’s just a very colorful shooter. A fairly decent one, but it lacks the general humor that Borderlands has, which yields a common comparison. Indeed, Rage 2 feels like a union between Mad Max (the driving), Borderlands (the environment), and DOOM (the gunplay). This review will have several comparisons to all three, but I’ll try to explain the systems so my readers won’t require previous knowledge of other games. I’ll start with the game’s main selling point, the zany gunplay and abilities. You play as Walker, gender of your choice but you cannot customize them as they both essentially exist as their own beings in this world. You are some kind of military trainee in a fairly safe and stable stronghold that gets annihilated in the first fifteen minutes of the game by an organization called “The Authority”. You put on a suit of armor of a now-extinct sect of “Rangers”, you being the last one in an impromptu promotion. This armor facilitates all of your guns and abilities. Even the guns are acquired through ARKS dotted around the land that are specifically designed for rangers and their suits, so right off the bat you’re more or less more equipped than every bandit in the wasteland.

Other than some odd key bindings to start with, the abilities and guns feel very good. One of the first you acquire is imminently useful, as it was designed to shatter armor of the enemies (and the ability is in fact called “Shatter”). This is also very satisfying as you play through the game, whether you use that ability or shoot it all off, you can actually see mob’s armor plating fly off as you whittle them down. It’s a good signifier as any that they’re ready to be killed outright. Considering the game shares much more with DOOM than with Borderlands, enemies are not at all bullet sponges. Most enemies can be taken out in just a couple shots, or a single headshot. The armor is what makes them spongey, but you’re very quickly given the tools to deal with it. Other abilities include a bullet barrier, a ground slam, a super sprint, a dash, a vortex that pulls enemies in and detonates, an overdrive, and a few others. Considering that DOOM developers have worked on this, this is not a cover shooter. Everything is designed to keep you moving and shooting and the set of abilities you acquire serve this goal incredibly well, and the gunplay is very fun. However, like Mad Max (from Avalanche Studios, which also served as developers here) strongholds don’t tend to respawn which leaves my usual fare of sandboxing starting to dry up just 11 hours into the game. I’m starting to get the feeling that the game is rather short, and I wish it took a similar idea from recent Far Cry games to reset the strongholds, maybe add some extra difficulty to it, and let us play it all again. I do not believe there is a New Game Plus at this time, so when I’m done, I’m done. This is essentially a twenty to thirty hour game it feels, so take that as you will.

Everything can be upgraded as well, DOOM-style. This is not Borderlands, and you will be staring at the same guns throughout your experience. There are about ten of them though (two from the preorder bonus, or potential DLC) and you can change their capabilities, level them up, and add extra mag sizes, reload speeds, and so on. They’ll function differently as you see fit but I find myself defaulting to the assault rifle you acquire, upgradable with armor piercing rounds which really tear through most enemies.

Returning from Mad Max are the convoys, one of my favorite mechanics from that game. There were only a handful there, and this game serves many more and they’re certainly more engaging in their own way. They boast an entire caravan with a War-Rig like truck that serves as its own boss (complete with a health bar), where you must wipe out the allies and then hit “weak points” that pop out periodically. I’m not sure if they constantly spawn or are as temporary as the strongholds, but I do enjoy them.

So the gunplay is good, the environment is interesting to look at. There’s plenty of lights, colorful characters, and even trees and wildlife in certain zones. The writing leaves something to be desired. For example you get a Borderlandsy splash screen introducing a few characters, one of which was “enjoys manipulating others, and once tortured a guy just to get his approval”. Meeting him just screamed “This guy is going to betray the fuck out of you”. Sure enough...

So let’s move on to some points I have “mixed” feelings about.

As I alluded to with the guns, this isn’t really a Loot-N-Shooter. It’s just a shooter. Everywhere there are chests to get “feltrite”, the main upgrade currency. You also get money, which also helps buy upgrades outright as well as ammo for you and your vehicle. There’s even an upgrade just to help you triangulate and find these chests so you don’t abandon every stronghold at 3/4 chests found because it’s hiding in a tiny alcove somewhere, but sometimes I do it anyway because it kind of kills too much time when you’re running around for a while. The gameplay encourages constant moving, shooting, and ground-slamming, but after a while you actually run out of things to do all of that with. To the game’s credit, it doesn’t make Anthem’s mistake of “go here, kill everything”. Sometimes you defend a pylon, sometimes you shoot fuel tanks, sometimes you destroy a power silo. All of which involves a lot of shooting but none of this respawns or comes back.

In relation, the map does feel a bit small. After gaining reputation with a certain main character, you’re awarded the Icarus, which is a flight vehicle. No weapon capabilities and it’s made out of paper but it’s very useful for transit. I’d almost recommend not using it at all, but it does help nab a few points of interest that you wouldn’t necessarily drive past on wheels, as some things you need to actively search for rather than drive by. As I said before, after 11 hours it feels as though I’ve complete most of the side-stuff already. Side missions can be picked up in towns but they’re much simpler and less interesting than the main story itself, and there’s little reason to do them.

The game is also very buggy. I suffer a crash to desktop (no error message or anything) every couple of hours. Much more often the game will freeze on me for an extended period of time (forty-five seconds or more) before coming back to me. I was on a “clear out the bandits” objective and one of the enemies was clipped into a building. Thankfully the “Shatter” ability has some AoE capabilities that got through the wall and I got him eventually. Those are the main three I’ve suffered but if you read around, you’ll no doubt find much more. These aren’t the usual funny “dragons flying backwards” Bethesda bugs, these are actually game breaking and rage inducing.

Oh, Bethesda. What has happened to you? It felt like it’s just been a couple years since you were the gaming community’s golden boy. It really all went downhill with Fallout 76 (which I’m still waiting on single player and modding capabilities) and has never really recovered. Yes, their new fare of “microtransactions” are here. I don’t normally have a hate-on for cosmetic shops like the community as a whole does but in Rage 2 it’s particularly pointless. It has some gun skins, both of which can be acquired in game. The golden skins are 10,000 dollars in certain shops (which is a lot, mind you) and the other ones can be acquired by farming the Mutant Bash TV enough. I enjoy the mutant-killing arena but I find it’s far too damn easy, and it really needed extra difficulty levels attached. Those skins cost 2500 MBTV tokens and you can get ~1500 every run you do. Considering how easy it is, I earned most of them in like, an hour. Now let’s get to some of the things I actively hate.

I don’t like the driving. Not nearly as much in Mad Max, anyway. The convoys are indeed still fun and more rewarding than Max’s were. To Max’s credit, that entire game was built around the car being a major mechanic and hell, even plot point and Max’s entire motivation. In Rage 2 it’s more of a sideshow. The cars don’t feel like they have much weight to them (at least, not until you spin them out and try to push yourself out of a ditch, which I often do) and when I was given the flying Icarus, I felt little point in returning to the sassy-AI that hosted the Phoenix, the only car you can upgrade and customize.

To wit, I actually quite despise the driving in certain contexts. Early in the story you have to impress someone enough to enter his suite. To do so you must play through the Mutant Bash TV (fun, but easy) and... a race. You enter the race and the NPC there tells you that you’re starting on the bottom. Now, in other games this means they usually give you idiots for AI. The first race in GTA5 was laughable, and even in Mad Max their one main “race” was actually just a deathmatch with a six minute timer. This newbie race in Rage 2 actually made me Rage-Quit the night the game was released. They give you their own car, every other racer has the same one and they actually match your speed. At any given point I always had two to four other racers ahead of me at all times. You know what bots and AI don’t do? Make mistakes. They never spun out, rammed into each other, or hit a wall unless you yourself did all that to them. After getting a night’s sleep and three tries in the morning later, my only strategy was to ignore the other drivers and concentrate harder than I ever have in a game. I basically had to do a perfect run, not hitting anything. I did so well and ALMOST lost the ENTIRE race to one single spinout near the end of the track. When I won, I could hear one or two car engines right on my tailpipe. They never lost traction like I did, and that’s just garbage.

I hated it. I do not look forward to dealing with this required mission in future playthroughs. By the way, it’s required to unlock an entire upgrade tree.

One final point of annoyance before I summarize my thoughts ultimately. This one is much more minor but it actually irritates me more than the driving does because this one is a constant threat. Every time you clear an objective, no matter how quick or small, you get an unskippable popup announcing your victory and rewards, as well as the reputation gain. This could have so easily been put on the side, like they do their radio-bound dialogues. Instead it completely stops the show and I find myself slamming the enter key so I can skip it the very split second it allows me to do so. In a game that wants you to keep moving, in a very successful and fun way, this thing is just a complete show stopper and I don’t know how their beta testers weren’t yelling “Come on, let me PLAY!” constantly. Ultimately, I do feel like there’s a good game to be had here. The cosmetic store is easily ignored and beyond that, you’ll have to deal with some bugs, janky driving, and bullshit “OBJECTIVE COMPLETE” popups. If you can deal with that, you’re left with some excellent gunplay and skillfully crafted environments. It’s not as long as I had hoped, and I really expected more to justify an eighty dollar preorder but I have not at all hated the experience.

[blaineandsamevanderson]

Title: Model Behavior  Ch.1

Author: @blaineandsamevanderson

Fandom: Teen Wolf

Ship: Danny/Isaac

Rating: PG

Summary: Isaac gets a job as an Abercrombie greeter (before the ban) and Danny's his trainer. Can go fluffy or smutty. Prompted by @iwannabeastarshipcaptain

Notes: Post Season 3, but Allison didn’t die, Isaac didn’t leave Beacon Hills and Danny didn’t disappear. Because I can AU all I want in fics!

**

**

“Hey, has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a great look for Abercrombie & Fitch?”

Isaac blinked at the pretty young woman who was smiling at him and glanced around. “Are…are you talking to me?”

“Of course she is,” the equally attractive man with the girl said brightly. Both of them looked to be a few years older than Isaac, tanned, blonde and fir. Frankly, they looked like they had wandered out of a CW casting call.

So…not really the type of people Isaac was used to being approached by randomly.

“No,” he finally replied, answering the girl, his fingers clenching on the small bag he held. Usually, he avoided the mall, but it was almost Lydia’s birthday and, as he now found himself somehow in her social circle, he’d braved the mall in search of a gift. He had a feeling she didn’t shop at the thrift stores where he felt more comfortable.

“Well, you do! It’s a fun job, good people and an awesome discount. There’s a casting happening…why don’t you come by?!”

**

**

A week later, Isaac found himself back at the mall, starting his first day of training. Scott had teased him playfully when Isaac told him about his new job, but overall he’d been supportive. It was nice.

“Hi, I’m…Isaac, hey!”

Turning from where he was shoving his sweater into his small locker, Isaac saw Danny Mahealani smiling at him. Like Isaac, he wore A&F jeans and no shirt, but looked far more comfortable than Isaac felt. “Danny…you work here too?”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed with a wry smirk. “The token minority model, you know. But hey, I’d rather be out front than stuck in the back room.”

Isaac didn’t really see what was so bad about being in the back. He nodded though, because he had seen the other employees – models, who worked the store floor. They were all white.

“So…how’d you get roped into this?” Danny asked cheerfully. “I mean, I’m here because a job looks good on the college resume and the employee discount is nice.”

Isaac shrugged. “I thought it might be nice to have a job that didn’t involve the cemetery,” he admitted. Technically, he still owned the cemetery, but he couldn’t run it till he was over 18 (he got a small stipend from the appointed executor each month), but he didn’t want to work there if he didn’t have to and it would be nice to repay the McCalls. He was sure Melissa wouldn’t accept money from him, but he could help stock the fridge, which was not cheap with two teenage werewolves in residence.

Danny winced slightly at the comment. “I can see that. Well, this is about as different as you can get. Did they take your headshots yet?”

“Yeah,” Isaac agreed. That had almost made him turn down the job outright, but Derek had given him a pair of contacts to wear. Apparently, contacts were all that you needed to avoid the lens flares werewolf eyes caused in pictures. Now they were tucked away in his locker with his street clothes. “Do employees actually think they’re gonna get hired to be real models?”

“Models, not employees,” Danny corrected with a smile. “And management likes to tell us that the people in the ads are ‘models’ like us, but…nah, I don’t buy it.”

The irreverence made Isaac smirk. “So, what do I need to know to be a model? I told the recruiters I’m not very outgoing.”

“They probably liked that,” Danny told him, then struck a pose, chin raised, a little aloof and gave a short nod. “Hey, how’s it going?” he drawled, then huffed and relaxed. “That’s how we’re supposed to greet every customer.”

Isaac figured he could manage that and nodded.

Giving him an encouraging nod, Danny said, "C'mon, I'll show you how to idle around and ignore the mercilessly looped soundtrack of 90's Eurodance meets gay bar music and go nose blind to the scent of Fierce."

The store did reek of the Cologne and when he'd told Scott about his job, his Alpha had given him a tube of peppermint lip balm. Isaac knew from growing up around the graveyard that it was often used to mask bad smells. He fished the tube out of his pocket, swiped a bit under his nose before applying it to his lips. He was a little startled to see Danny's eyes followed the motion, staring at his lips for a moment before averting his gaze.

In all honesty, Isaac could count on one hand (with fingers to spare) the number of times that he'd felt attractive to others. That night at the rave with Erica, when they'd danced with Jackson and that day when Allison had kissed him to give him confidence.  He'd never considered that Danny, smart, popular, nice Danny would even offhandedly consider him. It was nice and a little boost of needed self-esteem.

He gave a bashful smile.  "Lead the way."

***

***

“So, after I got recruited, Jackson used to come by and hang around.  Not that he wanted a job, but he expected them to fall over themselves in an attempt to hire him. He hasn't been back since he was told he was too short to be a model," Danny told Isaac as they folded a table full of jeans and t-shirts that someone had ruffled through.

The story made Isaac chuckle. "That must've driven him nuts," Isaac said quietly. Jackson did not take kindly to anyone who didn't appreciate his (and Isaac could grudgingly admit it) impressively good looks and he took any criticism as an attack.

Danny snorted. "I don't think anyone left lacrosse practice withou bruises for the next week," he said, then peered at the pile of clothes in front of Isaac.  "Your folds are really neat. Are you sure you haven't worked retail before?"

"Dad was very particular about how I kept my things," Isaac told him, placing a pile of perfectly folded T-shirts on a shelf. So far, the job wasn't that bad. They greeted shoppers, straighten things and sprayed everything down with Fierce multiple times a shift.  The smell was almost overpowering, even with the peppermint lip balm.

The only part he didn't like was the hands customers. Girls kept touching him and it made him nervous. They giggled and flirted and Danny played along easily. Isaac wished he had half of the other young man's social graces.

As Danny set his own shirts on the shelf, Isaac stiffened. He could hear giggles and the click of heels that warned of approaching girls. Quickly, he ducked around Danny, tucking himself into the space between the other boy and the wall.

“What are you..." he began, but then one of the girls, who obviously didn't go to Beacon Hills High (because everyone knew Danny) and thus didn't know that she was barking up the wrong tree, placed a hand on Danny shoulder.

"Excuse me!" she said brightly. "Could you help me?"

Smiling brightly, Danny turned. "Hey, how's it going?  Sure, what can I help you with?"

"Can we get a picture with you guys?" She said eagerly, her friend waving a cell phone.

After the first request for a picture, on his first day, Isaac a ducked out back and put his contacts in and had taken to wearing them whenever he was working. Too many people took pictures of them to risk going without them.

"Aw, are you shy?" one of the girls asked, grinning at Isaac, who, okay, maybe he was trying to hide behind Danny. Both taller and broader, it wasn't a particularly successful attempt.

"Sorry," he murmured sheepishly.  “I’m just not used to girls I don’t know talking to me.”

“Oh, I don't buy that," the other teased, then blinked.  "Unless... Oh, are you gay?"

Isaac simply blinked, because he'd never been asked something like that quite so bluntly.  Well, his father had been blunt, but far less polite and there had been fists involved, so Isaac didn't really consider that having been asked.

Danny, bless him, filled the silence with a laugh.  "No, that would be me. Isaac's just a little shy."

"Bi," Isaac blurted before his brain could veto the decision.  It was not something that he'd said aloud before, but he felt like he should say something.  "Shy, yes, but...also bi."

"Hey Team Bisexual!" One of the girls quipped, holding up a hand. After a brief moment, Isaac gave her a very awkward high-five.  

Soon after, the girls wandered off and they returned to folding the clothes. Isaac appreciated the Danny didn't push the topic, but he finally said, "I've never actually told anyone before."

With a soft smile, Danny assured him, "You don't need to tell people unless you're comfortable with doing so. It's your choice... But thanks for telling me."

Isaac took a moment to think about that, then returned Danny smile. "I am. Comfortable, I mean. For the first time in a long time. No one I care about would be upset if I told them."  He was sure Scott and Melissa would be supportive and he didn't think Derek particularly cared.  Stiles would probably be far too interested and would ask him horrifying questions, but even that wouldn't be out of malice.

Werewolf hunters and the bi-annual supernatural evil things that tried to kill them aside, Isaac felt his life had improved remarkably since becoming a werewolf.

TBC….

[amorremanet]

Things I did tonight: blah blah writing, and then also screwing around with some of those, ”toggle the settings to make the dolls look like however you want them” to put together images for some of my loser nerd OC’s

Headshots (L to R, top to bottom): Sebastian, Josie, Pete, Stephen (who got screwed by the lack of body type diversity in these games because he’s supposed to be fat with an undercut and a fondness for cute pink shirts), Lucy, Sara Grace — and the twosome shot is of Seb and Pete, because loser nerd best friends are perpetually my aesthetic, even when that game doesn’t have a lot of variety in clothing choice

Josie would be the token blonde, if they didn’t dye their hair, but their hair hasn’t been its natural color since they were like thirteen. Stephen only looks calm and composed because he’s not currently trying to tell a joke and laughing at his own punchline before he gets it out. Also, I did make little ones for Margot and Todd, but I didn’t like how they came out, so here we are

[casualarsonist]

Star Wars Battlefront on PS4 is the reason the AAA industry is a piece of shit (in a nutshell)

Star Wars Battlefront is the reboot of the Battlefront series that no-one asked for. Unlike 2005′s Battlefront II - which had 17 multiplayer maps and a single-player narrative story mode - 2017′s Battlefront charged full price for 5 maps on release and is primarily a multiplayer experience with a horde mode for those that don’t want to have to pay for PS Plus in order to use the only decent part of the game that they have paid once for already. Battlefront’s gameplay consists of running, shooting inaccurate weapons in the general direction of the opposing team, and flying in circles. On the ground your biggest enemy is your periphery because you turn too slow to target enemies behind you before they kill you. In the air, you do loop-the-loops in order to find the guy that’s doing loop-the-loops around you. The class-based system of the previous games has been removed in favour of weapon unlocks that allows the player to customise their arsenal; teamwork is thus discouraged, unless you’re sticking with your friends simply by virtue of the fact that the LVL 1 blaster pistol is a piece of shit and you’ll get your ass handed to you in a second if you try to attack on your own. Each map is stunningly realised - using all the power of the Frostbite 3 engine, the worlds have been crafted from the ground up to provide the most authentic Star Wars experience possible. This attention to detail necessitates long loading times of up to a minute, so bring a good book. After you’ve sat through this loading screen you may find that you’ve been dropped into a game with a bad ping, or one that is seconds from ending, in which case you will get to sit through another loading screen of equal or greater length when you’re kicked straight back into the main menu or into the next level. If the generous two-day trial for PS Plus has run out, then you can try out the single-player content of the game. Once you are finished with this you will have had four days of gameplay, which gives you three whole days to return it to the store you bought it from and get your money back. Honestly, this is it. This is the reason why all those video game commentators have been ranting and railing at the AAA industry for years. If you want to know why EA was voted the worst company in America 2 years in a row, why Warner Bros. Interactive is an industry pariah, while Activision, Bethesda, and Blizzard’s reputations are being dragged through the mud day in and day out, then EA’s Star Wars Battlefront on the PS4 is the exemplification, the manifestation, the ‘in-summary’ at the end of the essay outlining the worst practices of the AAA industry. 

At release, Star Wars Battlefront cost sixty American dollars (about £45 or $75 AUD). For $60 you got 5 maps (or in layman’s terms, about two weeks worth of gameplay) - a number that you could bolster with the Season Pass on the condition that you pay an extra $50. So you’ve dropped $110 US dollars total, or £82, or $140 AUD. For less than half the content of a game released 10 years prior.

Now you wanna play with all that content, right? Too bad. Because you bought the game on PS4 like a sucker and you have to pay for a PS Plus subscription in order to play online. How much will that cost you? Only $60 US dollars a year. Or £50. Or $80 AUD. 

$170 US £132 GBP  $220 AUD to play 8 Star Wars Battlefront maps for a year.  Are you having a fucking laugh?

Obviously I’m being facetious through most of my review here, but it stands as a fact that Battlefront’s multiplayer is vacuous and its single-player content is nothing more than a token gesture without any real meat to sink your teeth into. Simply put, you can’t play the core game on PS4 without shelling out more 100-200 units of your chosen currency, and even then you haven’t got a license to play it indefinitely. It’s obscene. It’s disgusting. For the millions and millions of dollars EA threw at the development of this game, for the gorgeous visuals and sounds and the rich atmosphere that really makes you giddy with wonder and excitement at the feeling of being in the Star Wars universe, for all that, the core of the game is empty. It feels like baby’s first online-shooter. Aiming and control on the PS4 is ungainly at best and an actual liability at worst: flanking is the best strategy simply because control with the joysticks is so slow and inaccurate that it gives you an unfair advantage; most of the weapons have such a spread of fire that if you and your enemy target each other’s heads at the same time it’s basically a dice roll to see who gets the most headshots first; space combat leans heavily on computer targeting as a crutch, and you’ll often find yourself in and endless cycle of circling around enemies as they do the same to you. 

And this makes me sad not just because of the horrific avarice that has hobbled this game, not just because of the splitting and gutting that left half the content required to call it a reasonable full-price title cordoned off behind a DLC pay-wall, not just because of the lack of attention to the actual gameplay, but because there’s the seed of a good game here - with its unmatched presentation of the license Battlefront could have been one of the best Star Wars shooters ever released. Instead, it’s a passable multiplayer game that requires little skill to master and is saddled with a terrible anti-consumer legacy. Battlefront II’s sales will no doubt suffer because of the way this game came about (and if they don’t then maybe we’re just asking for this kind of behaviour). If you’re going to buy it, DEFINITELY don’t buy it on console, because even if you get it on sale, is it a sale when you have to factor in the membership on top in order to rent the multiplayer experience from Sony?

I’m appalled.

4/10

Poor  P.S. It’s worth mentioning that my score of this might have been vastly different had I played it on PC - obviously there is no pay wall between the user and online play when you buy it there, though perhaps I should have done my research before impulsively buying it at the suspiciously low discount price on offer at the Playstation store. When I bought it at that price I had no idea that I’d feel so insulted when playing it. I had no idea that I could feel so insulted by something that cost a pittance. Because the thing is, regardless of the price, if I don’t want to spend my money on a PS Plus account, I’ve wasted whatever cash I spent on the game. I have a 50GB hunk of useless junk sitting on my PS4 as a constant reminder of just how fucked EA are. To be honest, I want to rate the game even lower than a 4, but there’s a certain integrity to the visuals and design that can’t be ignored. But that fleck of integrity is all that elevates this experience, in my opinion. 

[ouraidengray4]

I Spent 20 Years Following My Dream… but Quitting Made Me Happier

From the last batch of headshots I ever took, when I was clearly totally miserable and exhausted.

I spent almost two decades pursuing my dream of becoming a working actress. In my bleaker moments, such as driving home from an audition in which I had to dance like a chicken in a bikini, I imagined what it would be like if I quit. In my fantasy, walking away from acting felt monstrous and fittingly movie-moment climactic: a grand proclamation ("I AM GIVING UP ON MY LIFELONG DREAM"), a grief-filled packing of my car, a defeated retreat to my parents' basement in suburban Virginia. But like so many potential dramas, quitting acting was nothing but an almost imperceptible shift of gravity. It didn't happen in an instant. It was gradual: missing a class, the quiet tucking away of headshots, letting my IMDBpro membership lapse.

I think a lot about my 13-year-old self, full of that uniquely 13-year-old psychotic fervor. At that age, I'd proclaim to anyone who might seem like they were listening that I would never, ever give up on my dream of being an actress, that this was my destiny, that I was that one in a million! According to 13-year-old me, I would star in The X-Files, get married to Leonardo DiCaprio, and do Maybelline commercials ("Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline… NOPE, SHE'S MARRIED TO LEONARDO DICAPRIO. SHE WAS TOTALLY BORN WITH IT.")

I did not get cast in the X-Files, however. / Illustration by the author, Mikayla Park.

Now I wish I could creep on my 13-year-old self, a la A Christmas Carol (Ghost of Christmas That's Totally Creepin' on You), and tell her that all those years equating her worth with her work would wear her down and strip her of everything she valued about herself. I would tell her that the time she spent worrying that she wasn't pretty enough or thin enough or appealing enough would come at a terrible cost to her sense of self-worth. I'd explain how uncomfortable she would be promoting herself, how dirty she would feel befriending people who might be able to help her get ahead.

I'd like to note here that I don't mean to denigrate my actor friends; it's bold and gutsy to believe in yourself enough to survive in that industry. I've just never had that particular brand of moxie, and that's totally OK too. I have other very nice qualities.

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For me, the grind of auditioning slowly suffocated my love of the art until it was gone, but I still pushed on, terrified to acknowledge the loss. My latent depression sensed the blood in the water and surfaced, feeding off every rejection, every perceived failure, turning me into someone my 13-year-old self would barely recognize, someone fearful and jealous and bitter and sad.

I still don't regret any of those very difficult years; they shaped me into a much wiser—and gentler—person. We are so many different people in a lifetime; we change so very much, things affect our lives in ways we can't anticipate, and it doesn't make any sense to maintain some sort of token loyalty to a dream to which we pledged ourselves a million selves ago.

And it is. / Illustration by the author, Mikayla Park.

Being an actress was never my identity; being an actress isn't an identity at all. But it was only when I stopped defining myself that way that I rediscovered all of the things that I actually am: loyal and funny and strange, and surprisingly resilient.

If I were to go back to that 13-year-old, I'd encourage her to be kind, because I wasn't very understanding at 13, and the decision to give up acting didn't come without a cost. I watch the people from my former life in movies and on TV, living the dream I wanted so long for myself. I wonder how long it might have taken, if I would have gotten there myself had I just pushed on for a little longer. I once heard that when a great love is over, it takes half the length of the affair to truly heal from it. But I'm not worried, because I've also learned to be patient.

Best. Makeup. Ad. Ever. / Illustration by the author, Mikayla Park.

I know I've been acting like I really wish I could tell my former self all of these things, but I'm pretty grateful I don't have to because, as I said, I wasn't super understanding back then, and I don't know that as a teenager I would have truly understood exactly why being a grown woman dancing like a chicken in a bikini is so disheartening. I would probably just give her a big hug and tell her everything is going to be just fine, because that's really what you need to hear when you're 13. I know that because now that's what I tell my dreamer students at a job that I love that pays for an apartment all my very own.

It's been difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that I have fallen out of love with my dream, and I think that, if maybe I had read something honest and (hopefully a little) comforting, maybe it would have made it easier to face. So if you're facing, or trying not to face, something similar, I hope you can pat yourself on the back, and give your poor little heart a huge break. I hope you can remind yourself that we should all feel incredibly grateful that we are not held accountable to every dream we had when we were kids. But some dreams, of course, are timeless (Leo, I'm looking at you.)

Mikayla Park is a teacher/nonprofit creative person residing in the slums of Beverly Hills. Find her, and her two charming rescue dogs, everywhere at @mikaylapark.

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