#THERE IS A COACHING TEAM AND BACKSTORIES AND SOME IDEAS FOR OPPOSING TEAMS AND A SOFTBALL TEAM LINEUP

[chiarrara]

🚨🚨🚨 JJK BASEBALL AU 🚨🚨🚨

#ALERT ALERT #JJK BASEBALL AU IN DEVELOPMENT #JJK BASEBALL AU IS TAKING SHAPE #TAKING ON FORM #IS NO LONGER JUST A CUTE IDEA #THERE IS A STARTING LINE UP FOLKS #THERE IS PLAY BY PLAY #THERE IS A COACHING TEAM AND BACKSTORIES AND SOME IDEAS FOR OPPOSING TEAMS AND A SOFTBALL TEAM LINEUP #ALERT ALERT BASEBALL AU INCOMING #jjk baseball au #itafushi baseball au #don't hold me to any of this #wip #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #itafushi #megumi fushiguro #itadori yuuji

[atjsgf]

📓 📓 📓 (plot per book pls!!)

ALRIGHT LET'S DO IT!

MISS AMERICANA AND THE HEARTBREAK PRINCE

So I have this reylo fic I’ve been meaning to write for years called Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince. It’s a high school AU that is based on A Cinderella Story (one of my top five fave movies of all-time) but doesn’t follow it exactly–it’s a little darker, just bc of the nature of adapting the characters’ backstories, especially Finn and Ben. (They are all seniors unless otherwise specified.) 

Rey plays the role of Sam/Cinderella. Her mom died when she was young, leaving her to be raised by her abusive stepfather, Brendol Hux. Said stepfather favors his kids, Hux and Phasma (Armitage goes by his last name. Phasma is a nickname, but I think she has a real one that gets brought up). However, he also puts a lot of pressure on them as athletes (unsure what sport they do, figure skating maybe.) 

In ACS it’s a running gag that Sam’s twin stepsisters are really bad at their sport (synchronized swimming). In this, they’re good, but it’s to their detriment. (The exploitation of underage athletes is a recurring theme in this fic.)

(I like the trope where the evil stepmother–or stepfather in this case–is abusive to the step-siblings, too, just in a different way, just bc it strikes me as more relatable.) 

Rey works at the business Brendol runs, a mechanic shop/diner. She’s saving up money for college, but she’s also kind of forced to work long hours by Brendol. Her fairy godmother is obviously the manager of the diner, Daae Leira. 

Finn is Carter, but instead of acting, his whole thing is that he was a competitive athlete who fought for emancipation from his abusive family and won, and now he wants to major in journalism to shed light on the issue. 

Rose is Astrid (the DJ in the movie, she does have a name) who wants to major in broadcast journalism. So they both work on the school paper and that brings them together. 

And ofc, Ben is Austin. Captain of the water polo team, known for being aggressive and competitive, but secretly wants to be a writer. He has this kind of ruthless reputation for having gotten his own sister expelled by planting weed in her locker to prevent himself from getting kicked off the football team for having it. 

In reality, he got Cara expelled because his football coach–abusive, manipulative Snoke–was about to turn his attention to Cara, who had joined the girls’ water polo team against Ben’s advice. And Ben was terrified of Cara getting tied up with Snoke the way he had by that point. (Cara now goes to a boarding school in Northern CA, as opposed to the San Fernando valley where everything takes place.)

Anyways, Ben’s friends are Poe Dameron and Sage Skylstad. Poe is on the team with him and Sage is someone he’s been friends with since middle school. 

Ben and Rey have this online relationship. They know they go to the same school, but other than that they don’t know the other’s identity. When Rey finds out, her fear is less about Ben being super popular (he’s not), and more about him having that asshole reputation. (A more mild stressor is Sage–everyone at their school is convinced the two are dating, because of the whole “men and women can’t be platonic friends” thing. They are not and both find the idea gross.) 

Anyway. Rey gets her Cinderella moment, Snoke gets exposed by Finn and Rose, Ben gets his “I’m throwing away YOUR dream” moment, and they live happily ever after. I also wanted to do some sequels about them in college, Poe/Cara getting together, stuff like that. 

BETWEEN TWO POINTS/IN SCREAMING COLOR

So I had this idea for a series of Community fics. The series is called Between Two Points. The first three would each center on one ship. The first one, called In Screaming Color, would be Abed/OC. The second one would be Britta/Troy and the third would be Jeff/Annie. However, I think if I went back and did it now, I’d probably change it to Britta/OFC and Abed/OC/Troy, so I’ll outline it that way from here. 

In Screaming Color would just be Abed/OC, Troy would come into play later, I think it takes place after he leaves but while they’re still in school. The OC–I’ll call her Drew for now, that’s when she was my self-insert but I think I’d wanna make her a full OC if I wrote this–is a Dance major. She’s had a crush on Abed for awhile, ever since the Who’s the Boss debacle where he made the instructor cry or whatever, I need to rewatch the show. (I vaguely remember that I had to move the timeline and have this episode be earlier for things to make sense.) She was in that class and fell in love with how passionate Abed is about things like sitcoms–she’s also deeply passionate about things like that (she writes fanfic, etc) and felt a connection to that. 

However, Abed remains basically unaware of her existence until he has to do a music video for a class. She auditions for the main role (a ballerina in a music box who falls down and has to find her way around the music box–that’s my working theory on what it is, although I may change it if I think of something more thematically relevant) and gets the part. 

From there it’s this psychological thing where there’s a lot of miscommunication (mostly on Drew’s part) and false assumptions (mostly on Abed’s part) where she’s trying to make it clear that she’s genuinely interested in him, but he rebuffs her because he finds the trope of a director getting involved with actresses on set to be tired. (Feminist king.) And also because, you’ll remember in an early episode that Abed says “a lot of girls like me because I’m adorable and my aloofness reminds them of their fathers.” Even as he starts to like her, he thinks that she’s only interested in him because of the director persona he puts on. 

Eventually they have an actual conversation where she admits when she started liking him and why–she doesn’t like him because he’s aloof, she likes him because he’s deeply passionate about stories and storytelling and she can see that in everything he does, even if nobody else sees it that way. And they end up dating and are cute <3 In fics #2 and #3 they can often be found in the background doing fun things and acting out their favorite tropes. (Drew introduces him to the idea of acting out tropes instead of specific scenes or movies that exist, and he becomes obsessed.) 

Fic #2, currently untitled, would take place after the finale and would be a Britta/OC that ends in a decision to not get married but instead have a non-legally binding promise ceremony, because Britta doesn’t want to get married but she does want to be with the OC forever. I still like Troy/Britta, but idk if I see them working long-term, and I also think it would be a fun exercise to look at Britta and see what she would need in someone as a long-term love interest. 

Fic #3, also currently untitled, would see Annie coming back from Quantico for Britta’s wedding, years after leaving in the finale. She would have gone through a lot of personal growth in the years in between, and the fic would have her and Jeff get together in some way. Idk, I haven’t thought that hard about it, I just like them. 

(I also sometimes toyed with the idea of a fic that takes place in before fic# 3 that sees Annie having that personal growth in Quantico–it would be a Criminal Minds crossover and she’d be in the BAU.) 

And the final fic, Fic #4 would go back to right after Fic #1 when they’re all still in school. It would be an anthology fic where each chapter is about Drew’s relationship with the other members of the study group–how they met and what their dynamic is and when and why that member accepted her into their circle. For example, I wanted to move that one episode where Jeff gets bullied by some teenagers to be later in the timeline, and have Drew get involved, and that’s how she and Jeff connect. 

The last chapter–maybe the last few chapters, or maybe I’d make it a separate fic, idk if I could do the character work necessary in one chapter. But it would overlap with fic #3. Like Annie, Troy comes back for Britta’s wedding. (I think he and Britta are still close and there’s a lot of affection there even though they know they weren’t supposed to be forever, and I think Troy is really happy Britta found her person.)

Anyways, this would be when Troy/Drew/Abed gets together as a polyamorous triad. I think both Troy and Abed had those feelings before but never addressed them because they didn’t want to ruin their friendship and because it felt kind of off somehow. But Troy was gone for awhile and Abed didn’t fall apart–in fact, he’s proven to himself that he is capable of being in a long-term relationship that’s healthy. Their relationship has already undergone the worst scenario possible, so I think they’re more confident that if they broke up, they’d still be friends. And that feeling of off-ness is gone with Drew in the mix. 

(Abed and Drew admit to each other that even though they love each other atp, there always felt like there was a missing space in their relationship–it’s just generally this idea that the three of them are supposed to be in this kind of relationship with each other and that’s what’s always been right for them, they just had to wait for the pieces to fall into place.) 

Drew also panics when she realizes so many tropes are based on monogamous relationships until Abed reminds her that she is a writer and she can make up new stories for them, which she does. 

WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?

This was gonna be a reylo role-reversal AU. With Cara in the mix, things that unfolded in canon shifted, and, long story short, Snoke was unsuccessful in turning Ben Solo to the dark side, so he set his sights on Rey instead and since she had no support network, he succeeded. Now Rey is the leader of the Knights of Ren who finds herself inexplicably drawn to smuggler Ben Solo. Would also include Finnrose (maybe a role reversal on them, too? Stormtrooper Rose and maintenance worker Finn?) and Damara (not role reversal I don’t think bc I can’t see Cara as anything other than an engineer, but their relationship may be different in some way.) 

I honestly didn’t have a lot planned for this lol, it was just something I was toying with. I obviously wasn’t the first to come up with the idea but I thought it would be fun to explore and put my mark on it. 

#cat #qna #ask meme: unwritten fics

[popculturebuffet]

Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle: The Mighty Elves (Comissoned by WeirdKev27)

Well well boys, we’re back to Jingle Belle with another kevmission, though per his request i’ll be getting back to Life and Times Of Scrooge McDuck at long last. I also have some other stuff planned and all that, but for now, let’s focus on everyones faviorite elfen hellion as we dive back into Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle. 

I covered most of the behind the scene’s stuff last time so in short in case your just joining us, since this one’s got a bit more stuff to tag: Jingle Belle is an indie comic book character created by animation god Paul Dini, the daughter of Santa Claus and the Queen of Elves who acts like a standard rebellious teenager sterotype and causes trouble for her dad.  Last time I touched on the character a good two days ago, we looked at her first appearance, where she sent her family to Family Therapy. At the time I’d ONLY read that story, and hadn’t gotten that far into Jing’s world just yet. As you probably guessed despite plugging a decent amount of time into re-reading the rest of Scott Pilgrim (shout out to my good friend Mike for the early christmas present), on digital and in color and into the Switch port of the first Fire Emblem, I still got 2/3 of the way through the omnibus Kev gifted me of almost all her stories up to 2018′s The Handmade’s Tale.  Honestly not a lot has changed from the pilot.. while Jing’s designs changed a bit, she’s still more of a rebellious hellion, and while Santa’s no longer a slut shaming jackass, he’s still hard on her while her mom tries to keep the peace, The humor’s still edgy, if toned down enough to support returning whenever Dini felt like it but it’s largely the same for better or worse.  Overall the stories haven’t been bad but have been a bit reptitive to read in one giant omnibus. This really is down to the format they were made in: These were one off stories spread months apart meant to be picked up off the shelf with no real ongoing stories or character development and only some slight worldbuilding here and there. In short not bad stuff, just clearly not built to be collected in a huge omnibus like it was and not the first comic collection i’ve encountered with this problem and definitely not the last. 

That being said the stories are creative and still well put together. It is Paul Dini and he has wrote pretty much every story collected here with few exceptions, so it’s still good stuff, just as I said clearly not meant to be read all in one block like i’ve been doing. And today’s story happens to be one of my faviorites so far, breaking the formula up a bit by having Jing do something a bit diffrent and also involving hockey, a sport this story made me realized might actually intrest me on some level.. if in part due to letterkenny. 

God bless those two handsome idiots. So let’s ice up or skates, get those letterkenny refrences at the ready and see what the Mighty Elves have to offer. 

We start at Hockey Practice for Santa’s Hockey Team, The Elves, the kind of sentence that makes me really happy to type for money. Santa’s team is naturally for this kind of story and what the title references, are the last place in the bi-polar hockey league their in.. presumably ran by commissioner bi-polar bear. 

Again, I really love this job and that i’m actually getting paid for this this go round. Anyway, Santa’s team isn’t all that agressive because.. well i’ts a team coached by Santa, why would they be? But Santa’s still proud of his boys... as for his girl on the otherhand he gets a call and we soon find out via mugshots Jing dragged her two friends, up from just one in previous stories, to an air force base, somehow got arrested for hitting on enlisted men, not a crime, and stealing and crashing a helicopter, very much a crime.  Naturally Santa isn’t pleased, so we cut to a few days later where he’s letting her friends off making robo kitties, damn I want one of those now, while leaving Jing to do the packaging, though like most stern but fair dad’s he admits he dosen’t like punishing her and is right in saying there’s more to do with her summer vacation than you know, piss off the military. Santa needs his flight clerance dammit. Jing complains there isn’t much to do but feed the reindeer and make toys to which I say.. really santa? You haven’t set up anything else for your eleves to do? Making toys is their job. Build a fucking movie theater. And at the very least if not for them than for your bored and rebellious daughter to distract her from doing crimes. She’s still likely got a few hundred years of teenagering left, give her something else to do other than piss you off.  Santa does have a least a little something: Hockey! Which Jing’s cousin Rusty has taken up. Rusty showed up in the first story but I kind of glossed over him, he’s basically Jing’s Dorky cousin she frequently abuses. Not really much more or less to him. Jing isn’t on board mostly because their team always looses, to the other teams: The Penguins, the Polar Bears, The Snow Leopards and the Eskimos because they don’t really have killer instinct, which yeah is kind of necessary for hockey. To her..

But during her rant she does show Santa she’s got genuine talent for the sport, so he makes her a deal: Do a little favor for him, and she’ll swap that for making toys.. it’s a deal.. one she soon regrets but hey. 

Jing naturally makes an ass of herself pretty quickly beating the shit out of Rusty with her dad repremanding her and threatning to throw her off the team if she has another outburst like. That is until she runs into the Huskies Coach, Stan. 

I mean i’ts a hairy old man who makes a side bet with Santa Claus despite it technically being against commission rules, might as well be. So Santa tells Jing screw it, as long as it’s the opposing team violence is a-okay.  And naturally our first target is the world famous hockey player, aka snoopy aka a snoopy stand in. And being a big fan of peanuts i’m a sucker for a good peantus parody. Doubly so since Dini did his homework, and as I’d remembered and a quick google confirmed “The World Famous Hockey Player” was indeed one of snoopy’s many personas.

 Not that it was much of a stretch: just about any time snoopy played a sport he was “the world famous X player”, but still it’s a nice little nod. Not so nice is Jing within seconds slamming him into the air and under a Zamboni and getting sent to the box for it naturally. So clearly she’s the shorsey of this team, all chirps and ultra violence. 

Snoopy is thankfully still alive, if barely, though he’s off course been through much worse.

But while in the Box jing helps advise the team and a presumed combination of her beating the shit out of the other team’s best players and her team now not only having something to inspire them but a strategy means the Elves win for once! Santa and Jing share a hug, though Santa advises her not to go for his wallet, it’s still a sweet moment as she’s genuinely invested now.  So we cut to..

Okay Hank Ribbon seal is genuinely one of the best things humanity has made but as for Quiki I just... wow that joke is mildly racist at worst, confusing and unfunny at best. I mean... it really just makes no sense on any level and that’s with me not knowing a lot about hockey, but knowing just enough to know Kathy Lee Gifford existed. Just.. what even was that? I know Paul can do better than this.. because as my first review outlined he wrote a LOTTTT of Tiny Tune Adventures including my favorite episode. He also wrote most of the best Joker episodes for BTAS, so it’s not like the guy CAN’T be funny.. so I have no idea how he could fail so hard with this. Just.. what is this. Who thought this was funny? what was the joke? 

That.. utter bafflement aside, this newscast is used to push things ahead as the elves are on a winning streak, having also beaten the Polar Bears and the Penguins.. though weirdly we DON’T get a cameo by this guy despite having already had Snoopy show up. 

That’s my boy. But yeah there’s only two teams left with this, the Eskimos and tonight’s matchup the Snow Leopards, aka snow catgirls lead by Tashi Ounce, who Jing met at the winter games last year and lost too and thus has a whole rivlary thing going. In a really nice moment Santa stops to make sure Jing is okay going into the game. 

It’s part of why I REALLY like this story: Santa instead of just being disapointed in his daughter genuinely bonds over her over something and Jing shows she has a softer side to her. It’s some good character stuff, helps shake up the normal formula nicely. Back to the usual though she and Tashi naturally go at it, phrasing, and fight the whole damn time, with Belle eventually scoring the winning goal. Though noticably while Tashi is just as competiive as belle and lost this time.. she’s fine with it, knowing she’ll win next time and congradulating the opponent.  But before she can leave the rink, Tashi is approached by a mysterious figure with an offer and we cut to said figure’s lair... it’s THE BLIZZARD WIZARD! dun dun dun!.... yeah I haven’t introduced him the Blizzard Wizard is.. well exactly what he sounds like, as well as the former ruler of the North Pole. He enslaved everyone there to do his bidding and was essentially, a butt till Santa showed up, united all the various animals and kicked his ass. Since then he’s been reduced to basically a rankin bass villian, lurking near bye and scheming to get petty revenge on Santa for it. So essentially....

Minus the tragic backstory. He offers them a deal: The championship cup for him defeating the elves. As he puts it the cup symbolizes hard work, respect and team work.. i.e the things their throwing out to get payback. Tashi wants none of it, but the blizzard wizard has his slush minons capture her and with the rest willing to sell out, he gets to work. 

Bliz snows out the eskimos, and brings up accusations of Santa gambling, which he gets away from by.. having his wife donate the money real quick don’t ask just go. But he has a waiver signed by the other coaches so their playing his goons. But Jing isn’t phased and Santa asks her to give the lockeroom some inspiring words. 

10/10 no notes. But naturally Bliz has a sneaky trick up his sleeves.. to win.. specifically a hot french canadian player which.. makes jing fall to pieces flirting with him and makes her entirely ineffective. Okay time out.... huh so this is the timeless void known only to zack morris, that girl from the reboot I haven’t watched, and Regis Filbin. But yeah while I wouldn’t expect Jing to slaughter the guy it feels out of character for all she’d do is to giggle like an idiot instead of making a move. She’s been established as forward and knowing what she wants. I’m not against her being distracted by this it’s just the how that feels off especially since the opening reinforces this. She hit on air force guys. She’s not going to just be giggly and awkward. Jing may not be the most complex charcter but she’s better than this. Aside from the baffling Kathy Lee Gifford gag, this is the only thing I really don’t like abotu the story, and it lasts two pages before it’s resolved and in a 22 or so page story, that’s a good chunk of it spent on something that isn’t funny and that’s out of character even within story. That being said it dosen’t drag the story down entirely, still a good story. Just a bit uneven is all. 

But unsurprisingly Tashi escapes her earlier imprisonment offscreen to let Jing know not only the full extent of Bliz Whiz’s machenations, i.e. that the other coaches are in on it, but that the hockey player is really just one of Bliz’s minons uner a glamour. WIth that knowledge Jing asks why she’d help and Tashi shows her inner honor beneath the whole rival deal, pointing out she wants to win from a GOOD team next year. With the jig up Jing pulvirzes her former crush, claims to have been under a spell (no one byes it) and the elves clean house and win. Super fuckin shooter. As for Bliz Whiz he tries to steal the trophy but instead gets booted into the snow leopards box, phrasing... it doesn’t end well for him. 

And yeah while he comes back eventually, some how, apparently, for most of the stories after this he’s just.. dead. He was killed and then his remains eaten. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

But Jing admits she had fun, she and her dad bond and we get one last gag as he assumes she learned not to showboat only for her to block everyone else in the team photo. Falalallal we’re out. 

Final Thoughts: As I said, one of my faviorites. It’s really well paced, has a good premise and only one part drags at all and only that part and one gag really don’t land. The rest of it is really funny, nice and touching, and overall a nice shakeup from these stories usual pattern of “Jing getting into hyjinks”. While she DOES here, her and her dad are literally and figuartvely on the same team, and she does show a sweeter side genuinely bonding with her dad and it’s nice to see them actually enjoy each other’s company for once. It’s a nice change of pace and one I wish more of the stories had. I’m not saying they all have to be holly jolly but i’d be nice if more of them had a bit of heart to them is all. Tis the season and all that. Still for what it is, it’s a fun ride and I highly recommend it. We’ll probably see her again sometime this season but that’s a bit off.  For now coming up I have some ducktales to tell, a chapter in a man’s life story that’s long overdue, a holiday mess I wish I didn’t have to clean up, and in the distant future.. an old friend to reconnect with. Until then if you liked this review reblog it, comment etc all that good stuff, and you can send me asks with suggestions fo ra review or direct message me, or ask for my discord, to comission a review yourself. Until then, happy holidays. 

#jingle belle #paul dini #comics #comic reviews #santa claus #christmas #hockey #letterkenny #snoopy #opus #blizzard wizard #tashi ounce

[palmettoes]

Aaron/Katelyn 61

(hehe this has only been sitting in my inbox for uhh 6 months i am so sorry! anyway !!!! never written aaron/katelyn before !!! also haven’t written m/f fanfiction since i was 13 but i love these kids thanks for giving me a reason to make up katelyn’s whole backstory)

disclaimer: if ur pro inc*st u are legally not allowed to touch anything i write

read it on ao3! | prompts are closed :(

61. “I told you not to fall in love with me.”

Katelyn, eight years old, loses her mother to white lights and hospital beds. It’s preventable, low mortality rate, chance of survival looks hopeful. Katelyn knows this because she looks it up on her dad’s old box computer when he’s working late one night, her older brother playing outdated records too loudly to notice her disappearing into their father’s private study. Katelyn knows this because the doctors tell her so—not in so many words, because she’s eight, but enough that she knows they are optimistic about the results.

Katelyn, eight years old, wonders why doctors can juggle something so fragile as a life playfully among them and lie through their teeth when they catch the corner of an eye.

Katelyn, eighteen years old, is determined not to be like other doctors. Getting into biochemistry at university feels like winning the sprint but losing the marathon. Her professors crack down on the workload immediately, adamant that medicine is not for those who do not want to be there. And Katelyn wants to be there, maybe more than anyone else, but life has already dealt her so much weight and Katelyn is fast running out of strength to lift these stooped shoulders.

She tries out for the Vixens, Palmetto’s cheerleading team, mostly because her roommate, Marissa, waxes poetic about the nights she’ll spend huddled between football players in one of the downtown bars, and Katelyn figures she could do with the extracurricular.

(The exy team does not factor into her decision, but gossip travels far and fast and the idea of standing in close quarters to them puts her on edge for reasons that can only be explained through hollow whispers and stolen glances behind their backs.)

The Vixens are a rough and tumble team, from the figure eight pattern of cigarette burns on Marissa’s forearm, to the handful of Zoloft Anaïs throws up in her dorm toilet during Freshers’ Week, to the way Billie sleeps with their chin tucked over their shoulder so they can watch their own back. Katelyn is just scraping this side of nineteen, knows the weight of Prozac on her tongue better than that of a meal, and cannot remember the last time her father looked at her without looking right through her. Inexorably, Palmetto State University feels like home.

“How about that backliner though? He’s a tall, dark stranger I’d welcome into my crystal ball,” Marissa says, shaking her pom pom in Anaïs’ face as they stumble towards the bus the night after Palmetto’s first exy game of the season. Anaïs bats Marissa’s arm away, switching her duffel to her other shoulder to put an extra distance between them.

“Didn’t notice. It’s their offensive dealer that I was paying attention to.”

“Their captain.” (It sounds like an innuendo but almost everything does coming out of Marissa’s mouth.) “Anyway, I heard from Mick on the football team that Ainsley told Prati that Mia sits with two of the exy players at lunch on Tuesdays and apparently Mr Tall and Dark is hitting it with the captain. Isn’t that a sandwich you’d love to get between?”

“Not particularly.”

“Boo, you whore.”

Marissa shakes her pom pom again and Anaïs’ shove gains force.

“Don’t boo me because I’m gay.”

Billie taps Katelyn’s elbow and rolls their eyes at the other two, sweeping an arm out to offer Katelyn to climb ahead of them onto the bus. Katelyn hitches her duffel a little higher and climbs the steps. Anaïs likes the seat over the wheel so Katelyn chooses the row in front, tucking her bag under her seat so Billie can settle next to her. Anaïs and Marissa scramble in behind them, still bickering over the attraction of various exy players. Katelyn glances out the window and catches sight of an orange and white gaggle making their way to the other PSU bus parked outside Breckenridge stadium. Mr Tall and Dark backliner is holding hands with the captain but chatting to a lanky boy with a frown too many shades short of pleasant. Most of the Foxes move as a unit, a crowd collected behind their coach, but several steps and a whole chasm behind them trails the remainder of the team.

Katelyn recognises assistant coach Kevin Day because, as strong as her distaste for the sport, she grew up this side of the turn of the century. She doesn’t think she could miss Kevin Day if she tried. He is flanked by two identical blond men and an emphatic, dark-skinned man a head or so above the other two. Katelyn had watched one of the twins block the goal all night with a ferocity like he was exercising a personal vendetta against the ball, seen the other punch an opposing striker square in the jaw seemingly unprovoked. She shudders, remembering the rumours she’d heard whispered about the exy team and, for the first time, believing them. She turns away from the window and bumps Billie’s shoulder with her own, pushing blond hair and murderous glares from her mind.

*

The thing is, Katelyn has no reason to engage with the exy team. She cheers at their games and catches glimpses of them between stadium and parking lot, but she doesn’t learn their names or dance with them at college parties the way she does with the football team.

The thing is, Katelyn’s hands are full enough already. She is unofficially deemed in charge of the first year Vixens—some combination of the fact that Marissa listens when Katelyn tells her to shut up, and Anaïs trusts her enough to press a pill bottle into her hand after her second overdose in as many weeks, and Billie talks to her more than anyone because Katelyn is the only one who speaks ASL. Katelyn finds she doesn’t mind it. The constant demand for attention makes a welcome difference to the stony silence of her family home. With homework, cheerleading, and three new best friends keeping her busy, Katelyn barely has time to dwell on the hollow feeling that has been cutting her chest open for the past decade.

The thing is, the short blond boy from the exy team is hard to miss. (Well, one of them is anyway.) Katelyn figures out he’s the backliner, the one she saw punching that striker from Breckenridge, and not the one that sticks to Kevin Day like glue, or a prickly burr. He crops up in her biochem lectures, at her favourite campus café, tucked behind a bookshelf at the library across from her and Billie’s usual study spot. He is always accompanied by at least one of his little posse, usually the noisy one, except during their shared lectures. Katelyn finds herself seeking him out when she enters the room and, more often than not, she catches him blinking back at her.

They’re two thirds through their first quarter by the time she learns his name. He stops by her desk on the way out of the lecture hall, causing her notebook to slip out of her hand in surprise. He kneels to pick it up for her and doesn’t smile, but there’s a friendliness to his eyes that Katelyn has never seen before.

“Katelyn, right?” he asks. Katelyn has no idea how he knows this but she nods instead of questioning it. “Aaron. Did you get notes on Voltolini’s lecture this week? I missed it.”

She’s so caught out by the disruption to their routine, by the brittle edge to his voice that she hadn’t expected, by the abrupt introduction to the quarter-long suspense of wondering his name, that she almost forgets to answer. When she realises she’s been staring at him for coming on ten seconds, she shakes it out of her system and finishes zipping up her backpack.

“Oh. Yeah, did you want to borrow them? Or,” she swings the strap of her backpack over her shoulder and steps towards the door, Aaron falling into pace beside her, “we could go over them together?”

He is quiet for a moment, as if the question requires extensive thought. Katelyn wonders briefly if she should be offended by his lack of immediate interest, but decides she finds it endearing that the authenticity of his response matters so much to him.

“At the library?” he offers. “I have a study period now.”

“Sure,” she says. She’d been headed that way to meet Billie anyway and doesn’t suppose they’ll mind the small intrusion.

“So how come you missed the lecture?” she asks when it becomes apparent their trek to the library will remain otherwise silent.

“Andrew,” Aaron says vaguely, waving his hand as though this is sufficient enough an explanation. When Katelyn doesn’t look convinced, he adds, “My brother. You’ve seen him?”

She nods, not totally understanding but realising it’s personal enough that she doesn’t want to pry.

Billie is already sitting at their table when Katelyn arrives, Aaron in tow. They have printouts of various articles spread across the desk and a focused frown on their face, but they look up when Katelyn and Aaron stop in front of them.

“Aaron, this is Billie. Billie, Aaron. From the exy team.”

Billie waves at Aaron, then pierces Katelyn with their gaze, tilting their head slightly in Aaron’s direction.

“Do you speak ASL?” Katelyn asks him as she pulls out a chair and begins unpacking her bag. Aaron settles into the seat next to her, tapping the tabletop anxiously.

“No. Was that in the lecture?”

“No, no, of course not. Don’t worry about it.” Katelyn laughs lightly and makes eye contact with Billie.

“Since when do we hang out with exy players?” they sign, eyes flicking to Aaron.

“He’s borrowing some notes. What’s wrong with being friendly?” she signs back. Billie shrugs and turns back to their articles. Katelyn flicks open her notebook and grins at Aaron.

“Let’s do this,” she says. His responding smile is small and fleeting but Katelyn catches the hard upturn of his lips and her skin tingles all over.

*

Aaron falls easily into place among Katelyn’s friends. He becomes a regular at their study sessions, reading notes over Katelyn’s shoulder or catching her eye across the table with that same smile like a secret that hurts his throat on the way up. He never brings any of his teammates, but Katelyn can’t complain. Study Aaron and Exy Aaron, she decides, are two sides of the same coin. He’s softer around her and her friends, all secret smiles and nervous tapping. She can’t imagine Study Aaron punching anyone in the face.

He spills into her other routines intrinsically. She stops making excuses to invite him out for coffee or to lunch or on a walk around the campus green when she’s feeling antsy. She struggles to remember a time when the sight of him intimidated her, when she believed the rumours turning the air sour at his heels wherever he walked.

Katie he calls her from across the hall to grab her attention, and Kate when he talks about her to her friends, and K (intimate and familiar and warm in her chest) over text. Katie-Lyn he teases when they’re alone on one of their walks and he relaxes enough that his smile stops looking like barbed wire. She laughs and elbows him and writes Double-A-Ron on the back of folded notes they pass between them during lectures.

Katelyn doesn’t engage with the exy team, but every rule has its exceptions and Aaron is hers. Brilliant, beautiful Aaron, who keeps his smiles a secret and his family a mystery and who holds her gaze across a crowded hallway like it is the most fragile of things.

They never call it dating, though Katelyn suspects that might be what it is. She hardly qualifies as an expert but the shared lunches and secret notes and blushing eye contact feel too reminiscent of her high school girlfriend to be anything else. (She asks Billie, once, if they think Aaron thinks they’re a couple and they roll their eyes and wave her off. She cannot bring herself to put up with Marissa’s crowing long enough to ask for another opinion.) So it’s hard to say where he falls in the categories of her relationships, but when she invites him out for dinner he doesn’t say no and, though she doesn’t call it a date, it doesn’t feel platonic.

They go to an Italian restaurant on campus, partly because Katelyn figures everyone likes pizza and partly because Marissa says the sundae for two is a date-saver. (Not that Katelyn likes to think their sort-of-date will need saving, but it’s always nice to be prepared.) And she’s right, because Aaron does like pizza and the sundae is delicious and the date doesn’t need saving. Until it does.

“I had to beg Nicky to cover for me tonight,” Aaron is saying, no trace of the curl Katelyn has come to search for at the corner of his lips. “He doesn’t like disrupting the balance.”

Katelyn isn’t sure she follows but she doesn’t have to ask to know the only explanation she’ll get is Andrew. His name is the answer to every question, no matter how she phrases it. His name is the flat line of Aaron’s mouth and the fierce swing of his uppercut. His name is the undeniable truth behind the rumours that tail Aaron wherever he goes.

“We can’t do this,” Aaron says and the ice cream turns to dust in Katelyn’s mouth. She thinks bitterly that at least she can prove Marissa wrong; no sundae for two is saving this date.

“Do what?” she asks and her voice is too small for her mouth. She is eight years old and Aaron is the doctor dangling hope too far out of her reach.

“You, me, us,” he says, frustrated and lonely and scared all at once. “You can’t fall in love with me.”

It aches in more ways than she could have known it would. Because how do you predict the outcome when you’re missing the beginning? How do you prepare for the fallout when you aren’t part of the equation? When you’re just collateral damage?

“Says who?” Katelyn asks, and then, “Andrew” in unison with Aaron because, of course. Because, who else?

Aaron’s cheek dimples between his teeth and he lets his spoon clang against the rim of their shared bowl. Katelyn pushes hers through the half-melted ice cream, appetite fast disappearing. She wants to demand answers or argue the absurdity of their situation or maybe just cry. Instead, she folds.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

“I get it. It’s okay.”

She doesn’t get it, but Aaron looks at her like she’s handing him the moon so she breathes through her nose, counts to five, and offers him a shaky smile. Moulding herself into the shapes other people need her to be is Katelyn’s specialty. She grew up a chameleon in order to survive. This is no different to her father looking at her like he needed a clinically detached housemaid more than he needed a daughter mourning the loss of her mother.

“Ready to call it a night?” she says, because there is something irreparable in the air between them.

“I’ll walk you back,” Aaron agrees.

They say goodnight outside Katelyn’s dorm building, but what they mean is goodbye. What they mean is this is it. What they mean is we had a good thing and neither of us are good enough people to deserve that.

Katelyn, nineteen-and-three-quarter years old, watches hope shatter in all too familiar shards.

*

They never called it dating, so they don’t call it a break up, but that’s what it feels like. It is broken where Katelyn can’t reach to fix it because she does not know what fractured it to begin with. There is a week between Katelyn’s return home for the holidays and her brother’s scheduled time off, during which the silence of her childhood home sits heavy on her shoulders. She passes the time under a mound of blankets, drowning out her father’s refusal to acknowledge her with television static.

When Antoni returns, so does the life slowly trickling out of the air. He wields noise like a blade to the abrasive reticence of their home, and goads Katelyn out of bed to help him make potato fritters.

“Chiquita, college has made you so mopey,” he says, watching her instead of the eggs he’s whisking. Katelyn slices onions and pretends they are the only reason her eyes sting.

“More like being in this house makes me mopey. College keeps me too busy for that.”

Antoni hums, and watches her, and whisks his eggs.

“And how is college? Top of your class yet?”

Katelyn rolls her eyes but tells him about her lectures and her friends and her cheer practice. She finishes with the onions and starts combining the second bowl of mixture while Antoni scoops the first into misshapen ovals. When the fritters are under the grill and Katelyn’s eyes have stopped stinging altogether, Antoni pours them each a glass of iced tea and leans across the kitchen island to smile at her.

“So has the little Vixen caught a Fox yet?” He pauses to consider her a moment. “Or another Vixen perhaps?”

Katelyn sucks in a breath but doesn’t answer the question, and the silence rings deafening in her ears. She tells her brother everything but she cannot tell him this. (They never called it dating. There is nothing to tell anyway.)

“Oh, Kitty-Kat. Come here,” Antoni says. He doesn’t wait for her to move, instead rounding the island to wrap his arms around her from behind. She leans her head against his bicep, turning so her face is mashed into his woolen jumper, and closes her eyes. They stay like that, his chest to her back and his chin against her crown, for as long as it takes her to stop holding air in her chest until she’s gasping and shaky. She doesn’t cry, but her throat feels raw enough that she could have.

“Ant,” Katelyn whispers, her voice shaking on the vowel, “do you think I’m broken?”

“Of course you’re not.” His arms tighten a fraction around her shoulders. “Why would you think that?”

“It feels like everything I touch shatters.”

She thinks of her mother’s life splintering to pieces in Katelyn’s eight year old hands, of her father’s voice splitting in two and washing away whenever he tried to speak to her, of Aaron’s face contorting as their date cracked and caved around them. She feels like a fractured bone, cleft down the middle, never whole as she is.

Antoni lets out a soft breath against her hair and presses a kiss to the curve of her skull.

“No, chiquita,” he says, “you’re not broken. The world is.”

*

Returning to Palmetto is easier than Katelyn expects it to be. Antoni only has three weeks leave, so Katelyn spends the last month of vacation alone with her father. She is almost ready to welcome the noise and clutter of her college dorm.

Returning to the Vixens is more of a homecoming than entering her family house. As sophomores, they’re expected to throw themselves both into their own practice and that of the freshmen, and Katelyn and Marissa’s room becomes something of a communal ground for the first and second years. Katelyn doesn’t mind so much, because it takes her thoughts off the scowl she hasn’t seen leave Aaron’s face since they returned from break.

She watches the exy team walk to and from the stadium on game nights, their divide in half somehow having become thirds, until she realises the centre group is actually a solitary affair: a dark-haired, rabbit-eyed boy curled in on himself, alone in the rift between his teammates. She focuses on him because it stops her gaze from betraying her resolve and straying to where Aaron walks several paces behind.

And it almost lasts; this painstaking stalemate, this mutual ignorance. Katelyn sits with her back to his table in the library and Aaron walks past her without pausing on the way out of their lecture theatre. It almost stops feeling like a bruise underneath her skin.

But somehow he trickles back into her life as easily as he did once before. Katelyn finds she can smile at him when they pass each other on campus and she can make eye contact when she waves his teammates onto the court during games. She remembers the way he cupped her name in the curl of his tongue as if it were reverent and fragile as glass. She remembers how he held her gaze like he was trying to keep her afloat, and how he saved his smiles to share in the privacy of her company. She remembers he did not build the wall between them, only said he wouldn’t climb it, and she can’t blame him for resting his weary hands.

So when she misses her morning lecture because Marissa woke with a bad taste in her mouth and a tremor in her hands, Katelyn catches Aaron on his way to the library, a hand in his path and a question in her eyes.

“I had to skip this morning. Do you mind sharing notes?” It’s a surrender of sorts, an end to their face-off. Aaron made the first move all those months ago, so this time Katelyn dresses in white armour and guides her pawn forward. They have come full circle.

Aaron’s smile is slow, a tentative curl that crawls quietly up his face, and Katelyn realises for the first time how much she has missed seeing it bloom for her.

“I’m headed to the library now if you’ve got time,” he says. The words are marrow filling the cracks of Katelyn’s broken bone and she feels herself coming together as their steps line up with one another.

It’s easier, after their not-breakup, to build their routine around honesty. Andrew is still an answer, but this time one that comes served with an explanation. Katelyn still doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand the chokehold that Aaron calls family, but she respects it. After all, she isn’t in a position to point fingers at dysfunctional.

They confine their dates to the library café and the medicine building, avoiding places that Aaron’s family are likely to haunt. And it isn’t perfect, it isn’t textbook romance, but for the first time it is something whole that Katelyn cradles to her chest and it does not shatter on impact.

When Aaron leaves for a weekend and comes home a broken man—brotherless, breathless, hands a bruised and bloodied mess—Katelyn does what she has always done best and builds him back together with her own chipped pieces. She fights his nightmares with nothing but her fists and takes his hands in her own when he cannot look at them without seeing blood beneath his fingernails. She does what she can but she is still just collateral, she is still on the outside looking in on a rupture that happened long before she became a spectator. There is still a tear that Katelyn does not know how to stitch up.

*

(The dark-haired, rabbit-eyed boy is called Neil and his hair isn’t actually quite so dark and he is fixing the broken parts Katelyn can’t reach and when he says Andrew’s name it sounds like a question, not an answer.)

*

Getting Aaron back is the gift Katelyn doesn’t think she deserves. Cutting him off feels like shattering her own hope. She watches the pieces slide between her fingers, shoves the remnants deep where she can’t cut herself on their serrated edges, and tries not to think of the way Aaron’s face split apart when she told him Andrew was the answer to a question he did not ask.

She tells Billie, late one night as they pass a bottle of Marissa’s claret between them from opposite ends of the couch, that she doesn’t know if she’ll be whole again. It is a vulnerability that no one but Antoni ever sees, but Katelyn is wine-drunk and fractured, too disheartened to care that her misery has an audience.

“Why not?” Billie says, holding the bottle between their knees to free up their hands. “You were whole before him. He didn’t take anything you can’t replace.”

“He was the first thing I had that I thought I could hold on to.” Katelyn’s hands falter as the weight of her honesty hits her. She doesn’t know who she is when she isn’t fixing other people and Aaron is a fissure that is out of her hands. “What’s the point if I can’t keep anything without breaking it?”

“You have us. You have the team. You have a career path you’re good at and a hobby you love. You have a brother who adores you and you have Marissa and Anaïs and me. You are whole on your own but you’re part of bigger things too. He’ll come back to you or he won’t and either way you’ll still be the person you always have been.”

It doesn’t seem appropriate to cry, but Katelyn is wine-drunk and fractured, so she does anyway. Billie hooks their ankle around hers on the couch between them and knocks the claret bottle against her knee. Katelyn alternates between drinking and sobbing, and loses the rest of the night to the breaking of her heart.

*

Aaron comes back to her piece by broken piece. He shows up at her dorm with his pain a palpable weight in his hands and tells her he’s trying, he’s breaking faster than he can put himself together but he’s trying. And Katelyn knows a thing or two about falling apart.

They pour their fragments into one another in Katelyn’s bed because Marissa is out with some of the older Vixens and they both know better than to waste an empty dorm room. Later, with his back to Katelyn’s chest and his legs slid between either of hers, Aaron finds the parts of his voice he has been missing.

“You were the first beautiful thing I ever called mine,” he says and Katelyn remembers midnight with Billie, remembers the saccharine claret slipping down her throat, remembers thinking Aaron was the first thing she could ever keep whole. “I won’t lose you for him.”

Katelyn slides her hand across the bare expanse of his stomach, presses her face into the base of his neck, and breathes and breathes and breathes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says, and means it.

They patch themselves up in tandem—Aaron knits one, Katelyn purls two—and they are old hands at this now. Katelyn watches their healing overlap in familiar stitches and she waits and she hopes and she breathes. Because this thing between them is chipped and bruised but it is whole. It is theirs.

When Andrew comes for her, Katelyn wonders if she should be surprised. She has heard his name in response to too many questions to be shocked when he treats his words like an arrow and her the target. He and Aaron are identical twins but when Katelyn looks at him up close for the first time, all she sees are the differences. He carries none of the regret that bleeds through Aaron’s teeth and too much of the horror that feeds behind his eyes.

“You won,” rabbit-eyed Neil says, gaze already chasing after Andrew like he might not be just any answer but the answer. “Aaron’s not in class now, if you want to call him.”

Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, her brain says and her fingers, though numb with fear, respond on reflex. He picks up while Katelyn is halfway through a choked sob and she hears his breath sharpen like a dagger.

“Katelyn?” His voice is a rush of concern, a spear and shield readying itself in her defence. “What happened?”

“Andrew,” is all she can say between broken breaths, and it is the answer to every question. After all this time, she gets it.

In the time it takes Aaron to get from his dorm to the library, Katelyn has found her breath but not her strength. She is still curled in on herself behind the bookshelf in the far corner and she knows her friends will be wondering but she doesn’t yet trust her legs to support her. Aaron sinks down next to her, an anchor holding her steady in the aftermath of Andrew’s storm.

“Did he hurt you?” he asks quietly and Katelyn doesn’t know how to answer. She thinks if she opens her mouth she might not know how to do anything but cry.

It’s enough of an answer though. Aaron vibrates with an anger that he almost never wears around her and Katelyn thinks of the Breckenridge striker who took Aaron’s fist to the face. He looks more like the other side of the coin, more like Exy Aaron, than she has seen him in a while.

“I told you not to fall in love with me,” he says. It is frustrated and lonely and scared, and Katelyn has heard him sound like that once before and she will do anything before she lets him shatter again.

“I didn’t listen.”

He falls into her at that, half straddling her lap, arms around her waist and face pressed hard to her shoulder. Katelyn raises her arms to cradle his body against her, rests her cheek in the nest of his hair, and thinks this is it. Thinks he is the answer. Thinks we won.

“My Katie,” Aaron whispers into her skin and it is the glue drawing her broken shards together.

#if u sent in a prompt ages ago it's still happening dw !!!!! im uhh slowly slowly getting thru them #this is the last thing im posting before rbb tho bc i Have to focus on that fic for now #maz.dox #katelyn #amm #kaaron #fic #anon #answered

[nureyevapologist]

Hiyaaa, if you want an aftg prom still, pls consider: Neil coming home to his and andrew's apartment with one of his newest recruits, and they boy is beaten and battered and neil's first instict was to take care of him because no one ever took care of neil, and andrew's reaction to this! ❤

thanks for this!! i might have veered from the specifics a little and this is like, 70% a character study of neil and 30% Andreil Content but i hope this is okay!!

Neil Josten felt that he owed a lot to the idea of coincidences.

Coincidence was Neil taking an uncalculated risk on the Millport Dingoes the very same year that Riko Moriyama finally snapped and took the bones in Kevin Day’s hand with him. Coincidence was falling into the same orbit as the man who had watched Neil’s father slice a man like lunchmeat and coincidence was him being so single-mindedly focused on Exy that he didn’t notice Neil’s terrible dye job or the white ring around his contact lenses. Coincidence was Andrew Minyard being the single-most observant person Neil has ever met, and coincidence was Neil being forced into his field of vision.

Coincidence was also Neil here and now, stopping off at a convenience store to grab a packet of cigarettes and accidentally witnessing his potential new recruit fall victim to a heavy, parental hand. 

It had only taken one video on a grainy, digital camera to show Neil that this kid had the raw potential to be one of the greatest backliners Palmetto State would ever see. Not fifteen minutes into the footage had Neil shoved aside his other folders and said to Wymack, one thumb jutted at the screen, we have to have him. Wymack had shrugged, assented with a nonchalant you’re the captain, captain and the very next week saw the two of them riding out to Georgia in Neil’s shiny new Lexus.

(“Having a Pro Athlete for a boyfriend sure does have its perks, huh kiddo?” had almost gotten Wymack elbowed bodily out of a moving vehicle.

“Above your paygrade” in a smooth, Andrew-esque tone had Coach laughing for the next ten minutes of the drive, safe and unmoving in the passenger seat.)

So they had approached the boy, Josh, after hanging back in the shadows to watch his high school team completely demolish their opponents. Wymack had loitered, no doubt trying to catch the name of the opposition’s only saving grace, a furious offensive dealer, and Neil had attempted to look cool and friendly as opposed to cold and menacing.

Naturally, the kid told Neil to fuck off four times before Neil backed him into a corner and told him to stop squandering his future by being unnecessarily abrasive. There was something in the complicated ice of this boy’s eyes that Neil connected with, an innate fear that ducked for cover behind aggression and hunched shoulders. One minute he stood every inch his five feet and ten inches and the next, body folded in on itself like he was willing it to disappear, he looked to stand no taller than Neil himself.

“I don’t know what your deal is,” Neil had said, arms tucked across his chest with all of his patchwork scars on show, “but I come from Palmetto State. I’m not here to judge, or pry, or fix. I don’t give a shit about your tragic backstory, I give a shit about the way you single-handedly held up your team’s defense line and I give a shit about putting you on an NCAA Class I Exy team. If you can get over yourself for five minutes, I suggest you sign first and cry later”

Every fibre in this kid’s body twitched like he wanted to run and Neil was hit, not for the first time, with jarring memory of himself in this position, shadows of a dark locker room curling in around his ankles, Wymack promising a future he’d never stayed still long enough to know he wanted. Sentiment was lost on Neil, most of the time. Still, if his family of Foxes had taught him anything, it was that sometimes you had to save people despite them not wanting to be saved. At this point, that may as well be the Palmetto State Motto. Neil had given the kid a few hours to think on it. Go home, talk to whoever you need to talk to, think about it. Just remember that we did not drive out here for a no.

Wymack had, of course, grumbled about having to spend a few hours sweating my damn ass off in the pleasure of your company but had mellowed somewhat when Neil had taken him for a suitably greasy dinner and showed him how to use his new phone to FaceTime Dan. He had allowed himself a few moments to enjoy the scene; Wymack, his face far too close to the screen, cursing Dan out for not texting him all week because saying I miss you is too overrated. Dan, a pixelated blur of joy and exuberance, showing her father every single corner of her new apartment and zooming in on one Matt Boyd, tangled helplessly in the middle of an Ikea side table.

With Wymack occupied, Neil had called Andrew, who answered on the very last ring because he was a certified asshole at the best of times. “Am I to assume you will be elsewhere when I get to the dorms?”

Andrew always makes him feel so known. “I managed to pick another stubborn one”

“Yes,” Andrew says, his voice a slow rumble over the familiar, quiet growl of the Maserati, “because you were so quick to acquiesce”

“I might have been running to grab a pen,” Neil replies. Andrew doesn’t laugh, but there’s a puff of air that Neil recognises as amusement, and his own mouth curls. “I think I sold him, though. A few hours and I might finally have secured a backliner”

“You should hope so,” and then there’s a beat of silence and the tell-tale flick of a lighter, “because I refuse to listen to you whine about it all weekend”

“So you admit that you do listen, when I talk?”

“Absolutely not” and when the silence stretches for a beat too long, Neil lifts the phone from his ear and realises Andrew has disconnected the call. Typical Andrew, but now Neil’s fingers twitch to hold a cigarette and he distinctly remembers leaving them behind at the behest of Wymack’s disapproving frown. Beneath his thighs the sticky vinyl booth creaks in protest when he shifts his weight and he waves a round-about hand at Wymack before ducking out of the diner, knowing that Wymack will see him cross the road toward the convenience store and put two and two together.

It says a lot for how far he has allowed himself to sink into safety and familiarity and family that he doesn’t immediately notice the shouting. He’s caught up in realising his ID is somewhere in the glove compartment of his car and wondering if his sharp scars and sharper expression will dissuade the cashier from asking questions. Behind the front counter is a door, all peeling red paint and a half-hearted Staff Only sign, and the slight space between the door and the frame is the source of the noise. Neil has no interest in interfering. Neil has no interest in even listening to some inane disagreement between cashier and colleague, and is considering returning to the diner empty handed when he hears a sharp crack, followed by a sharper, you are never leaving me, Joshua, not ever and the unmistakeable sound of hands pummelling flesh. Something in Neil twitches to intervene but he isn’t stupid enough to walk into a small room with flying fists so, in a bid of panic, he thumps the bell by the cash drawer once, twice, three times.

A man appears from the back, face flushed the red of barely-swallowed anger, eyes a little wild and searching. Neil smiles something icy and the man is stupid enough to misread it. “Sorry ‘bout that, had’ta catch up on some paperwork in the back. What can I do ya for?”

There’s a moment where everything slows down and Neil files away details like his life depends on it. Blood, smeared across the knuckles of one large, meaty hand. A row of scratches, three raised and red, sit tucked against his chunky neck in an indication that someone had raised a hand to defend themselves. A gold ring, thick and faded, shaped to spell out DAD. Neil doesn’t know what makes him say it, but he opens his mouth to ask for a packet of Camel Blue and what comes out is “someone round the back is casing the place, you might want to check that out”

A self-righteous rage takes over the man’s expression, clouding his eyes and the twist of his mouth and he claps Neil on the shoulder as he passes on his way to the door. Men like him, Neil thinks, are far too predictable for their own good. Something like a memory tugs at his subconscious; Neil at age sixteen, dropping a similar line, waiting for the all clear to stuff his pockets full of food and hightail it out of there before anyone noticed. That, Neil thinks, was a far more sensible plan than whatever this was. He rounds the corner of the cashier desk, nudges the back door open with the flat of his hand and comes face to face with the cowering, crumpled body of his newest recruit.

The kid, Josh, is folded in on himself in the far corner of this office, schoolbag tossed a few paces away, face hidden in his hands. At Neil’s entrance he starts so hard Neil almost feels it like a physical thing and then his face does something complicated when he realises it isn’t his father; relief warring with shame warring with anger warring with hope. One of his eyes is beginning to blacken and there’s blood pouring from a cut in his eyebrow – the ring, the fucking ring – and from one side of a crooked nose. His wrist doesn’t look particularly healthy and the way he holds himself tells Neil that this is not a one off occurrence.

“What do you want?” asks Josh, and Neil has no fucking idea. There are scars on his skin from the hands of his father and the hands of his mother and there were long years of his life where he was so accustomed to being beaten within an inch of his life that he never stopped to think that maybe, he didn’t deserve it and maybe, it wasn’t normal and maybe, someone should have helped him. How many teachers saw his black eyes, his split lips, his bruised arms, and how many of them said nothing. How many strangers saw his mother grip his wrist so tightly that it popped, pulling him into a car or a hotel or an alley, how many men saw his father pummel him like a punch bag?

Without thinking about it too much, Neil holds out a hand. “I want to help you. I want you to come with me”

Josh scoffs, gesturing loosely to his face. “This is nothing compared to what he’ll do if he comes in here and I’m gone”

Neil frowns. “Look at me,” and he points to his own scarred face with equally scarred hands, “look at my face and tell me you don’t think I’ve survived worse than your piece of shit father. Come with me, now, and don’t ever come back. Let us help you”

And there it is again, the flurry of anger-fear-shame-hope. “Why?”

“You’re a damn good backliner,” Neil tells him simply, “and if you let that pathetic excuse of a man beat you any harder you won’t be, anymore”

Hesitation twists his features into something ugly. Neil knows that he has minutes, maybe seconds until the man outside realises he’s been set up. If Neil has to pick saving himself over saving this kid, he’ll probably save himself, but Josh drags himself to his feet and looks Neil squarely in the face. “If I do this…he will come looking for me”

“And he will find an entire team of angry, troubled Exy players who know their way around a racquet” Neil replies. “I can protect you, but we have to leave. Right now”

His jaw goes tight but he nods, once. Neil nods back and together they make their way toward the front of the store, Neil pushing ahead, body strung-tight with focus. Outside he nudges Josh ahead of him, watches him adjust his gait around a lopsided limp, reels in his anger for another day.

They reach the Lexus across the street and a voice from behind calls “Joshua, get back here this goddamn instant.”

Three things happen.

Josh, in a bout of incredible bravery, flips his father the middle finger and falls over himself to clamber into the back seat of Neil’s car. The father, in a bout of incredible anger, starts for Neil like he means to snap his head from his body. Wymack, in a bout of incredible exhaustion at the familiarity of a situation such as this, appears at Neil’s right shoulder and swings a right hook up and under the man’s jaw.

It sends the man on his ass and in a split-second shared glance, Neil and Wymack make the mutual decision to get the fuck out of there.

Over the course of their drive back to Palmetto, Neil explains the situation with their new backliner, Wymack assures Josh that he will be resolutely protected, and Josh leaks blood all in the fancy seats of Neil’s car. When it doesn’t seem like it will stop, Neil shucks off his hoodie and throws it at the kid, telling him to hold it fast to the wound – after a brief, whispered argument, Neil pulls over and hands Wymack the keys and throws himself into the backseat to try and assess the damage. The ring hadn’t cut his eyebrow so much as it had gouged out a chunk of skin and his nose and lip are bust but mostly dried up. There’s a patch of blood at his side, seeping through his white t-shirt, and he waves that away as split stitches. From what, Neil doesn’t ask. He tries to staunch the bleeding but succeeds only in covering his own fingers in the blood, and in the end Wymack has to drive them straight to Abby’s house.

“Abby is our team nurse,” Neil explains, while Wymack tries to parallel park a Lexus under a blanket of colourful curses, “she patches up sprained ankles but she also patched up every wound visible on my skin, so you can trust her. I can stay, if you want, or I can leave you in her capable hands while I go back to campus and make preparations for you. There’s a spare bed in one of the freshman dorm rooms, or you can stay with Abby, or you can sleep on my sofa. Whatever you need”

Josh tucks his arms around himself, bravado stripped for the day. Neil assumes it will come back, that things will be difficult, that the kid’s attitude will fling itself all over the place, but for now he’s looking at Neil like Neil just saved his life and Neil thinks he just might have.

“You can go,” Josh says, “I have more shit under here I don’t wanna flash to anyone but a nurse, right now. Uh, I don’t…maybe I can stay on your sofa? For a bit. I don’t…”

“Hey,” Neil interrupts, “you don’t have to explain. Sofa it is. Though, I should tell you, my…my boyfriend is visiting right now, and he isn’t the friendliest person you’ll ever meet-”

“Understatement,” Wymack interrupts, “fucking understatement”

“-but,” and Neil flips off Wymack, “as long as you don’t give him any reason to distrust you, you’ll be safe”

He watches the kid for a minute, waiting for something. Protest, anger, homophobia, acceptance. Instead he shrugs, tired, overwhelmed, and climbs out of the car. Wymack follows him out, with a parting jab about Neil’s use of the term boyfriend, and then Neil is left to drive back to campus alone.

Maybe it should be embarrassing that the sight of the Maserati fills Neil with a fuzzy sort of warmth but this past half-a-year has begrudgingly taught him that distance makes the heart grow fonder, or whatever, and that he should allow himself to recognise that he misses Andrew and likes it when he comes home.

Or maybe Bee had taught him that, but he wasn’t about to admit it to Andrew.

The man in question is leaning up against the hood of his car, sleek and sharp in his black jeans and leather jacket, one booted-foot propped against the license plate, a cigarette between his lips. He’s gotten broader, since Neil last saw him, bulkier in the arms and shoulders and if Andrew is feeling up to it, Neil wants to relearn the shape of him with his fingers, maybe even his mouth.

Andrew doesn’t look up when the Lexus pulls in, feigning a nonchalance the set of his jaw doesn’t quite convey, but he does look up when Neil steps out of the car and his face transitions from smooth to thunder so fast it gives Neil whiplash.

“What happened?”

Neil blinks and Andrew’s hands are on him, fingers tilting his jaw this way and that, skimming down the sides of his body, eyes roaming for injury. Neil belatedly realises that he has Josh’s blood on his hands, a little on his shirt and he curves his own fingers around Andrew’s wrists, meets his eye with a calm stare. “It isn’t mine”

“That,” Andrew says, shoulders settling away from tension, “is not as reassuring as you seem to think it is”

Neil rolls his eyes. “Had some trouble with the new recruit. He’ll be staying with us”

Andrew arches a pale eyebrow, studying the blood on Neil’s fingers with a calculated disinterest. Neil huffs. “His father was beating the shit out of him”

“Where is he now?”

“Abby’s”

Andrew studies him for a long moment. Then, “I thought taking in strays was my thing”

“Well,” and Neil smooths his thumbs down over the fine bones of Andrew’s wrists, “someone had to pick up the slack. I couldn’t leave him there. So many people must have seen my mother backhand me and no one ever stepped in. How could I-”

“Stop it,” Andrew says, and Neil stops. “You cannot take responsibility for every single person in the world. It will never make your mother un-hit you”

Neil flinches, but he knows Andrew is right. Still, “I can help him. I can help this one. I want to”

“Alright”

“Yeah?”

Andrew gives him a look. “What, were you asking my permission? Are we adopting this child together?”

Neil laughs, a new thing, tipping his head back, teeth slipping past his lips. “You don’t think we’d make good parents?”

Andrew steps close enough that one of his boots rests between Neil’s two sneakers, their hands still clasped between them becoming squashed between their chests. “I would be a textbook parent. You would be a nightmare”

“I resent that,” Neil tells him “We’re never having kids”

“Obviously”

“Cats, maybe”

Andrew blinks. “Cats? You’ve thought about cats?”

Neil shrugs, once, but can’t fight the smile spilling back onto his face. “We’re getting cats. You said yourself that you like taking in strays”

“No,” Andrew says, firm. “I do not like it. The last one I took in continues to test my patience, so I will not have another”

“I’ve been testing your patience for four years and you’ve yet to get rid of me” Neil reminds him, “I think you’re getting soft”

“I think I am getting back in my car and leaving you here” Andrew replies, allowing it when Neil’s hands wiggle up between their bodies to frame his face.

“I think you’re going to help me make use of my empty dorm room before a freshman backliner moves in onto my sofa”

Andrew doesn’t respond to this either way but he allows it when Neil stretches to press a small kiss to the corner of his mouth and he allows it when Neil takes him by the fingers and leads him into Fox Tower, and he certainly allows it when Neil peels him out of his leather jacket before the door is even closed behind them.

(Later, when Josh announces his presence with a tentative knock at the door, Andrew answers it. Neil watches them size one another up and then Andrew reaches up into his armband for a knife. “Use this on anyone other than your father,” he says, “and I will use it to remove your hands”

If the expression on his face is anything to go by, Josh has no idea what he’s agreeing to in taking that knife, but he does it anyway. Neil has to hide his smile in the collar of his newly-acquired leather jacket.)

#answered #prompt fills #andreil #fic

[poliwhirl42]

In a Nearly Perfect Pokeani World...

So I’ve been seeing a lot of M20 salt going around, including my own, and my friends and I thought it would be a great idea to dream up a perfect, ideal Pokémon anime. Beware- this is a VERY long post, but we’re talking 20 years worth of changes here. I tried making it as realistic as possible to the anime we’ve grown to know and love, but added/removed certain events on my own accord. Like I said, this is my personal opinion so feel free not to agree with everything- it’s all in good fun! And thanks to my friends @djsockpuppet, @itstimetodrew, @dentos-wife, @floaromanights, @mistyisbae and @rosssquirtle for giving me their contributions as well! 

Ash isn’t eternally 10. He’s aging slowly, but his age is never brought up again after the first episode. He does make references in the future series, however, to the fact that several years have gone by since he started his journey.

Game logistics are taken into consideration: Ash can still be a brash, bumbling fool in the first season, but there are no cop-outs (such as the sprinklers weakening Onix or Erika awarding him the Rainbow Badge after saving Gloom, etc.). He wins them fair and square- maybe not in the smartest way possible, but he finds creative solutions. 

The water ballet and Team Rocket chaos in the Cerulean Gym happen in one episode; Ash and Misty have an actual, uninterrupted gym match in the next episode. Ash wins and gets the Cascade Badge.

The gang spends more time in game locations and less time in obscure silly anime-exclusive towns never to be talked about again. Another episode in Saffron featuring Silph Co. would’ve been cool. 

There is a special right before Mewtwo Strikes Back that directly echoes the Rocket CD drama on Mew’s origin. We see Miyamoto recording the cries of Mew (in an anime or game-exclusive location, NOT the Andes Mountains to avoid confusion about the real world and the Pokéverse), and also see her put Jessie into foster care. Madame Boss and a younger Giovanni are also shown.

Jessie and James recognize each other when they are paired as partners in “Training Daze.” We find out what happened after they dropped out of Pokémon Tech and joined the Bike Gang. 

There’s an episode where some crazy scientists find out Meowth can talk and want to conduct a dangerous experiment on him. Ash and co., and the TRio, help him escape and he makes it his goal to be the sole Pokémon interpreter for the rest of the series (of course, he vows use his interpreting skills in Team Rocket’s favor).

4Kids is still dubbing the anime, and all of the original voice actors (save for Maddie, rest her soul) are still intact. All of the dumb “painted” edits are nonexistent. All dialogue is accurate and similar to what’s being said/done in the sub. ALSO, NO DUB MUSIC. 

We find out why Brock left Professor Ivy and came back home. 

There is a GS Ball arc that leads up the events of Pokémon: 4Ever.

The TRio, similar to the SM series, does not appear in every episode. Yes, there are fillers but it’s not the same “CoTD/TRio-shows-up formula” every single time.

That being said, LESS FILLERS IN JOHTO. I loved them personally, but it did drag on.

The TRio’s assistant, Mondo, appears from time to time video-chatting them from Headquarters. He’s responsible for all the crazy mechas they use and he complains about them destroying his hard work, which becomes a gag throughout the series. 

The Johto admins (Ariana, Petrel, etc.) are introduced in the Lugia Arc. Butch, Cassidy and Namba are still there but are working underneath the higher-ups. Silver replaces the CotDs and helps Ash and co. stop Team Rocket. It’s hinted that Ariana is Silver’s mother. 

Silver is also known to be Jimmy’s rival in “The Legend of Thunder.”

There are more battles between Misty and Ash! Misty acts as a bit of a coach from time to time. 

Speaking of Misty, SHE wins the Whirl Cup.

Misty also gets her own ending.

There are more episodes featuring Casey and Ritchie! Maybe a fun baseball game episode where the Electabuzz team comes to play at a stadium in Johto!

More Gary episodes in Johto. Gary has an ending too. Why the hell not. It would be the last ending of the OS series, showing his dream of becoming a Pokémon Researcher as well as his relationship with Ash.

Lots of foreshadowing hinting at Brock’s eventual decision to become a Pokémon Doctor. Give him his own developmental arcs in AG and DP. 

EVOLUTIONS IN OS: Not all have to evolve, but SOME should have.  

An episode where Ash and Pikachu get into an argument and Pikachu runs away (nothing too drastic). This would kind of give a realistic approach to relationships and how even theirs isn’t perfect 24/7.

MAY CATCHES THE SWABLU. AND USES IT IN HER CONTESTS.

Ash’s arrogance in AG bites him in the butt at some point. He suffers a devastating loss in one of the gym battles and realizes he’s been a bit of a jerk about rushing his companions along. He offers to support May in her journey more and not be as brash. This kind of leads to his mellowing     out/maturing in the DP series. 

Make the Hoenn League not as boring somehow. This kind of heads into “Should Ash have had a rival in AG?” territory, and I’m personally not sure how to weigh the pros and cons of that since this series was so well done.

Max gets his own ending. 

Solidad is introduced in the first episode of Battle Frontier. She gives her whole “I know Drew” spiel to May early on and says she’s planning to enter the Kanto GF. She appears a few more times until the GF. She still wins the GF, but there’s at least more buildup and she has more of a     relationship with May.

Drew appears in Destiny Deoxys and assists the gang, as he obviously knows his way around LaRousse city.

The “Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon” does not exist. A better 10th anniversary arc is in its place, featuring a good portion of the current cast.

Lance and Steven get better cameo episodes. In fact, the entire Elite 4 is shown in their respective regions throughout the series. 

May is a bit more emotional about the group splitting up. She’s happy to set out on her own journey, but it would’ve been more meaningful to see her just a teensy bit sad about leaving Ash and Brock. 

There’s more backstory on Dawn and Johanna, and what made Dawn want to be a coordinator as opposed to a trainer. Some tension between the two would’ve been interesting- maybe Johanna could’ve been more of a “stage mom” putting some pressure on Dawn, or maybe Dawn put the pressure on herself to be perfect because of her mom, and that would be the very core of her developmental arc, to which she realizes her way of thinking is wrong and begins her goal of coordinating for herself and her pokémon.

Barry is introduced as Dawn’s childhood friend alongside Kenny; none of them travel together though obviously and all somehow receive their starter Piplup at different times. 

More bonding moments between Brock and Dawn.

Less fillers in DP. There can be fillers, just less and the pacing is evenly balanced between fillers and gym battles/contest episodes. 

Ursula is introduced early on. She beats Dawn in a contest at least once.

Scrap the Kenny vs. Ash battle at the end of the series. Make it one final onscreen Dawn vs. Kenny battle instead.

More exposure with the Sinnoh rivals in general. Replace the fillers with more episodes featuring Conway, Barry, Nando, and the coordinators. 

Some foreshadowing for Buneary’s modeling career with the Hearthome Collection! And while we’re at it, a few more PokéStylist episodes.

Marina makes a special appearance to judge a Pokémon Contest, particularly one Dawn loses. Backstage, she finds Dawn and encourages her to keep going despite the odds. Marina’s appearance would also further promote HeartGold and SoulSilver. She references Jimmy and Vincent in a flashback. Ash remembers Vincent from the Johto League. Also, in the Johto League, his name was Vincent. No Jackson nonsense.

Dawn gives Ambipom to Princess Salvia instead of that dumb “O” guy, when Salvia gives her Togekiss. 

After Ash defeats Paul, Paul basically “apologizes” to Infernape in his own words. This provides some good closure. 

Brock and Dawn get their own goodbye flashback sequences. Brock’s montage especially highlights everything he’s done during the past 12 seasons. 

May and Dawn get their own spinoff series, in which they are protagonists of a show that solely focuses on the coordinator sphere. The episodes flip-flop back and forth to show May in Johto, competing against Drew, Harley, Solidad and new rivals here and there, and same with Dawn in Hoenn. The Wallace Cup arc stays the same, except the episodes following portray May and Dawn as buddies keeping in touch and checking in on each other. The Sinnoh coordinators also make frequent appearances. Serena eventually joins the show as a novice coordinator, whom Dawn and eventually May take under their wing.

The Chronicles never ended; this time, newer protagonists sans the coordinators are added and we get to see frequent glimpses of their lives. We learn how Gary started working for Professor Rowan, we see Brock’s adventures on the journey to becoming a Pokémon Doctor, we see Max start his journey as a novice trainer, and of course there are plenty of episodes that still feature Ash’s previous pokemon, Delia, Tracey, Ritchie, Butch and Cassidy, etc. 

Ash isn’t terribly incompetent in Best Wishes, but he suffers a bit of a setback not being used to battling so many new and unfamiliar pokémon. This is the first time he’s completely alone without Brock and with     completely new people, so it’s a huge culture shock. Iris and Cilan are there to help him get back on his feet. Still, battles such as the Elesa     one and first battle with Trip aren’t completely ridiculous. 

There’s no Pikachu reset at the beginning of every region. Pikachu, like all pokemon, wins some and loses some, but the losses aren’t outrageously     ridiculous, such as the loss against Trip’s Snivy (which Ash would win here). 

Cilan and Iris get their own endings.

Cilan catches more pokémon. 

Iris is secretly in training to become the next gym leader of Opelucid, and she is the last gym leader Ash battles. Good plot twist, eh?  

Dear lord, develop the Connoisseur thing. This is the whole point of Cilan’s journey, so it’s so important to have the PCA be on par with the exposure May and Dawn’s journeys got. 

Have Pokémon Connoisseur “Conventions” be the goal for both Cilan and Burgundy, maybe starting during Season 2. These conventions could be comprised of two rounds in which Connoisseurs give “public evaluations” to up-and-coming trainers and then later evaluate pokémon-human relationships through battles. A series of judges gives them criticism and ranks them and whoever has the highest score wins; it’s very similar to the Contest structure.

^Imagine an arc where Cilan has to evaluate a trainer’s Purrloin and he flops terribly because of his fear. We eventually find out why he’s so afraid of Purrloin and Ash and Iris help him overcome this fear somehow. The next time he competes in one of these conventions, toward the end of the series, he has to evaluate a Liepard- and now, with his fear completely gone, he does extremely well. 

Develop literally ALL the BW rivalries more. Cilan/Burgundy and Iris/Georgia for the most part. These rivals were amazing characters, they had so much potential so it would’ve been great to see them more aside from being shoved into the Club Battles and Junior Cup. Have the rivals travel to the Decolora Islands as well, so that they’re not shafted after Season 2.

Speaking of the Junior Cup, have Dawn do a little more during her cameo. She felt kinda invisible. Also, slow down her battle with Ash. 

Introduce more Pokémon Connoisseurs, geez. Ricard could be a great antagonist similar to Harley- maybe he tries rigging the system at one of these conventions. Bring back that female Connoisseuse from “A Connoisseur’s Revenge!” and introduce Santo in THIS series so we have a familiar face at the Pokémon Showcase in XY.

The Rocket vs. Plasma arc airs sometime during the BW era. Ash and Giovanni recognize each other from the Mewtwo incident at Mt. Quena. 

Episode N is done completely differently; N is introduced at the beginning of the series and is a recurring character.

Cameron doesn’t exist, or at least he exists as one of the menial trainers Ash defeats in the Unova League preliminaries.

Ash vs. Trip isn’t the first round. They have a heated match in the semi-finals, but their battle is interrupted when the Plasma castle rises from the ground. And bam- the main Plasma arc begins. 

Give Cress his own episode! Chili got one, after all!

Speaking of, give the Striaton brothers their own flashback episode. How they got the elemental monkeys, how they became gym leaders, etc.

A more emotional goodbye episode for the Best Wishes trio, seriously! They had an amazing dynamic and were very close; it was surprising to see them so chipper on the train. Also, clarify their goals for the future a bit better.

Ash’s XY (and going forward) personality is a combination of that of all the previous series. He’s not as bumbling as he was in OS but not as brash and impatient as he was in AG, either. He’s a combination of all with just a tad more maturity. He makes references to his previous traveling companions and makes the occasional snarky quip here and there. 

Ash isn’t blind to romance, but it’s not his main concern. Hints created solely by the dub to promote [insert ship here] are nonexistent. 

In this case, Ash isn’t completely blind to the fact that Serena has feelings for him, but his main concern is battling and helping people and pokémon. He does get a little blush-y after the kiss, though. Fans are free to interpret this whichever way they want.

No matter what happens though, Ash and Serena come out of this series as good friends. There are more moments beyond the “Serena’s-got-a-crush” moments where they battle together and help each other out, reaching the “in-sync” level Ash and Dawn had.

More bonding moments between Ash/Bonnie, and Serena/Clemont.

The XY rival trio is handled better. It was nice seeing Shauna for the most part, but give Tierno and Trevor something to do too. They, along with Serena, could’ve also had a better role in the Flare Arc.

Speaking of which, slow down the Kalos League. It sucked that it was shafted for the Flare Arc. Ash doesn’t have to win, but it felt very rushed. This is where Tierno and Trevor could’ve came in and not have been shafted after the first few rounds. 

Serena does more before her decision to become a Pokémon Performer. It could be anything as easy as entering a Rhyhorn racing competition or battling more. 

IRIS GETS HER CAMEO IN XY DAMMIT.

There’s more buildup/episodes featuring the relationship between Ash and Froakie/Frogadier/Greninja. We get a little taste of Greninja’s feelings as opposed to just Ash’s. 

Greninja doesn’t leave and winds up getting Oak’d. Let the Zygarde figure things out on their own lol. 

Delia, Oak, Tracey and possibly others are shown watching the Kalos League on television, and worriedly watching the news during the Flare Arc.

Gary visits the Kalos region to work on another project. Serena recognizes him as the bratty grandson from the Oak summer camp and the two engage in some banter.

A few Pallet Town episodes in between generations, geez. Let Delia see her son! In the meantime, have Ash check in with Gary, Tracey and possibly Misty and Brock. 

Oh yeah, one last thing. M20 would’ve had this plot instead.

#pokeani #pokemon anime #M20 #to make things fair I strayed away from shipping #and to make things realistic I only added a few game characters

[junker-town]

The most ridiculous, bizarre and sublime sports video games of all-time

Sports are dumb. Video games are also dumb. But dumb sports video games are the best.

You know what’s good? Sports! You know what also can be (generally) good? Video games! It’s also pretty fun when those two things meet, and even more fun when they meet in the weirdest ways possible.

That happened quite a bit more in the 90s and early aughts than it does now (probably because it costs a whole lot more money to make video games these days, but that’s another story) and while they weren’t always good games, they were usually worth it on their novelty factor alone. And I am fascinated by these games.

I have spent hours playing Ninja Golf on the Atari 7800. I don’t really know why, I’m just so intrigued by the process that spawned such things. I’ve played far too much MLB Nicktoons, because seeing Spongebob Squarepants share a field with Carlos Beltran is still hilarious to me. To use a more well-known example: Jerry Glanville’s Pigskin Footbrawl is something I’ve been playing a lot of. It’s a game that doesn’t relate to Glanville in any way, but somehow has his name on it. Discovering why that is and also, you know, playing the games, has been my mission for a long time.

Hopefully that means my bosses will continue to let me write about the cross-section of sports and video games, with some deeper dives and the like. But until then, as sort of a primer, an appetizer if you will, how about we establish a base? Let’s take a brief look at the WEIRDEST sports games for each major sport!

This is part one, where we’re covering American football, basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer and golf — I will cover tennis, auto racing, combat sports and some others in a follow-up article.

American Football: Brutal Sports Football (Atari Jaguar)

Honorable Mention: Jerry Glanville’s Pigskin Footbrawl (Super Nintendo)

We’re starting out hot and heavy with, you guessed it, an Atari Jaguar game. Also released for a number of other consoles, Brutal Sports Football is exactly what it purports to be: football, but more brutal than football already is. I’m somewhat obsessed with this game.

Now, don’t confuse obsession with skill, because I am TERRIBLE at it. Part of that is me not having much experience with the Atari Jaguar, and part of that is the game being crushingly difficult. But it sure is fun, and as you can expect, it’s quite violent.

Featuring teams like the Thugs, Slayers and Goats (actual goatmen, of course), Brutal Sports Football is pretty standard football, if pretty standard football included axes, beheading, repeatedly stomping your opponent into the ground, powerups in the form of rabbits (?) and a surprising amount of backstory to its teams.

No, really. Every team has a brief explanation of their history/what kind of team they are. And they’re ridiculous.

Some of those are just ... whew.

Just how brutal is Brutal Sports Football, you ask? Well, you can use the severed heads of your enemies as a weapon to cave in the head of another. So, it’s at least on par with actual football.

There’s something about the gameplay that intrigues me, even though I can’t get a damn thing done in it. It’s surprisingly smooth-feeling for an early sports game, and the rules are interesting. Aside from the murdery bits, the goal is to get the ball into the end zone, which is an enclosed area a bit closer to a soccer goal. You can throw it or run it in, and when you run one it, it feels a good bit like dunking.

I suck at it (a theme you’ll find on this list), and I don’t think it’s an amazing video game. But it sure is weird.

Basketball: Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball (Super Nintendo)

Honorable Mention: Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City (Super Nintendo)

I’m going to start this one with a declaration: Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball is a bad video game. There, I said it. It’s out in the open. Some people — whom I no longer respect as human beings — claim that it’s a good game and enjoy it immensely. They are horrible people and if you like it, so are you.

Hyperbole aside, WHERE IS BILL LAIMBEER? Much like Jerry Glanville’s Pigskin Footbrawl, Laimbeer has absolutely nothing to do with this video game, and like the game above, it was released under a different title in other regions, Future Basketball. But there is also very little about it that is futuristic, save for the drab, gray arenas, the robots and what the game says are jetpack-assisted jumps, but are actually still pretty lame, standard basketball jumps.

There’s bombs, but nothing about getting them feels good. What baskets do or do not go in seem to have no correlation with where you are and what the opposing players are doing to you, and the “combat” animations are so slight that it’s hard to tell if you’ve hit someone, unless they explode.

The game has bad sound effects, bad music, slow action, a bad camera, and very little excitement. I’m told that some people enjoy it, but as a kid, I’m not sure I’ve ever returned a game faster. That doesn’t make it any less weird though, and the fact that this game exists at all is pretty fascinating. Why does it have Bill Laimbeer’s name on it? Why is he on the cover? Where are the fans?

I’m so confused. I wanted to give this to Michael Jordan’s Chaos in the Windy City, or the fan game, Barkley: Shut up and Jam: Gaiden, but Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball is a little higher profile and I wanted to set the record straight while also pointing out that it’s weird. And dumb.

Baseball: Ninja Baseball Bat Man (Arcade)

Honorable Mention: Nicktoons MLB (Multi)

This is one of those that doesn’t REALLY resemble the actual sport it represents, because it’s not a baseball game so much as it is a 2D beat-em-up arcade game with a baseball theme. And when I say baseball theme, I mean every inch of this game is steeped in baseball stuff.

You fight baseballs. You fight giant catcher’s mitts with faces on them. You’re a robot baseball man who hits other robot baseball men with baseball bats. One of them just uses a giant baseball as a smashing weapon.

The story — yes the game has a story — is that you, the Ninja Baseball Bat Man — or N.B. Batman, as the commissioner of baseball refers to you, have to recover items that were stolen from the Baseball Hall of Fame. You can play as the well-balanced Captain Jose, the speedy Twinbats Ryno, the powerful Beanball Roger or the long-reaching Stick Straw, who stands 7’2’’, officially.

It’s a pretty great game, actually — a fun 2D brawler you can play cooperatively, I definitely played and beat this in multiple arcades with friends of mine.

The game was conceived by Drew Maniscalco, who came up with the idea after reading about the top grossing films of its time — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and one of the Batman films (speculated to be Batman Returns). So Maniscalco wanted to create his own superhero-influenced game. He also liked the word “ninja”, thinking it felt “mysterious,” which was more than enough of a concept to make a video game in the early 90s.

This is the game on this list I can 100% recommend. You should play it if you can.

Hockey: Mutant League Hockey

Honorable Mention: NHL Hitz 2003

So, I actually didn’t want to include Mutant League Hockey on this list just because the Mutant League franchise is so big. That said, there is a surprising lack of weird hockey games. I went with NHL Hitz 2003 as the honorable mention because I think it works surprisingly well for an NFL Blitz spinoff, but I was hoping for something really nuts for hockey.

That isn’t to say that Mutant League Hockey is sane. No, it’s quite weird. It’s your basic hockey, except with robots, undead skeletons and trolls, and lots of things that are quite lethal, like exploding pucks and spikes on the boards.

Getting checked into them is not fun.

There are also random holes in the ice, and you can hit people with your stick. You can get a powerup that turns your goalie into a giant demon face, and if the opponents score on your giant demon face, it explodes.

And it’s oozing with personality, including fake coaching quotes like the one above. Have you ever seen a sideline interview that was actually interesting? Probably not. But they’re plenty interesting in Mutant League Hockey. Also, one of the arenas is the Madness Square Garden (why not Scare Garden?).

Soccer: Inazuma Eleven GO 2: Chrono Stone

Honorable Mention: Battle Soccer: Field No Hasha

If you’re unfamiliar with Inazuma Eleven, it’s a game developed by Level-5, a company responsible for many high profile puzzle and JRPG video games, like the Professor Layton, Dark Cloud and Ni no Kuni series of games. There is also a manga and anime spin-off of the games. I think any games in the series would fit on this list, but I went with this one because it’s my favorite of the bunch.

This is a story-heavy and strategy-heavy video game. The main character (of the series, not this game specifically), Mamoru Endou, is a talented goalkeeper and the grandson of Daisuke Endou, a legendary soccer player. You’re trying to save your team from being dissolved and you do that by progressing a surprisingly deep story, interspersed with bits of tactical soccer gameplay and strong anime cutscenes.

The game centers around the Football Frontier tournament, and includes arenas set throughout time and a final arena in a SKY PALACE. There you play Zeus, another team, who are drinking “ambrosia,” which is basically just a whole bunch of PEDs to make them better at the game. They’re juicing! In this relatively wholesome soccer game!

Gameplay includes scouting, recruiting new players by beating them in battle. In actual soccer games, when you run into one of the opposing players, it initiates a command duel, which has its own series of moves and actions you can take as part of it. Normal soccer rules apply with substitution and number of people on the field. It’s honestly impressive how deep it all goes. It’s not something I would recommend to non-RPG players, but fans of the genre should absolutely give it a spin.

Golf: Ribbit King (Nintendo Gamecube)

Honorable Mention: Desert Golf (Mobile)

Before I get into Ribbit King, a quick note about this honorable mention — Desert Golf is a simple never-ending golf game that came out on iOS and Android and doesn’t have much going on for it ... which is part of the reason it’s weird. The game has no explanations, no anything but a ball and hole, and some hills. I played it through a couple thousand holes. There are things about it that I will not talk about in case readers want to try it for themselves, but suffice to say when the game became a hit, a lot of people had a lot of discussions about secrets or things hidden in the procedurally-generated game.

Now, back to Ribbit King, an extremely under-appreciated golf game where you play as a person, or what appears to be a picnic basket(?), and you’re hitting catapults holding frogs with your mallet to launch said frogs around a course filled with flies, hazards and extra points. When you hit the frog, it will then hop upon landing, and how much hopping is dependent on powerups you’ve used, your swing, and the stamina of the frogs, which you can replenish with items.

Strictly speaking, since I strive for 100 percent accuracy, I will of course note that the game does not refer to it as golf, but Frolf.

It’s a weird game. There’s a full story mode with voice acting, and it’s as weird as you can expect. You play a carpenter named Scooter, and you’re trying to become the Frolf Champion, so you can win the Super Ribbinite, a fuel source needed to save your home planet. There’s also a sentient rock pile, gumball machine and karate-using panda.

The game is a successor to a Japan-only Playstation game titled Kero Kero King, which I played way back when but never knew about Ribbit King until the past year or so. I’m glad to have found it.

There are so many weird games for these sports I didn’t even get to mention — Cyber Baseball 2020, Mega Man Soccer, Blitz: The League, Zany Golf, like 40 other crazy baseball games and so much more. Sound off in the comments on what I missed and your predictions for the next batch of weird games.

[hopeatermain]

What I wrote and plan on writing.

INFORMATIONS ON WHAT I WILL WRITE ABOUT UNDER THE CUT. WILL UPDATE IF NECESSARY.

Okay. I am now going to explain exactly what I plan on doing on tumblr: write an Assassin’s Creed/[PROTOTYPE]/InFamous: Second son story, with a lot of one-shots linked to the main story, one way or another. To read the stories, you just have to click on the bold, italic and highlighted titles at the start. Linked to the story, I already wrote:

Are you okay?, a one-shot establishing the relation between Arno and the three other assassins of Unity. This is the background of the three other assassins.

Fucked up shit, a one-shot that explains why Desmond and Alex know each other prior to the story.

Hey there, little one, a one-shot introducing an OC and explaining how Jacob and Jack met.

Who’s your wife?, a one-shot that seriously implies AltMal and Malik’s first reaction to Maria.

Cercando di flirtate con la signora, a one-shot where Ezio tries to get laid and a twist ending.

The Akomish boy, a one-shot that explains how Desmond and Delsin met during Desmond’s search for an Assassin hideout. Humor and newly formed friendship.

Fabien, a one-shot were Agape asks Thomas about his son, Fabien. Angsty fluff with a dash of romance.

WHAT THE F-, a flash-back on Alex and Desmond first meeting and putting the [PROTOTYPE] part of the conflict on set.

Neutral territory, a heavy spoil for The child of Izanami and Connor and Shay meeting in front of Haytham’s tombstone.

The child of Izanami, a multi-chaptered prologue telling the life of Chihiro Amokin, an assassin/Ninja in Japan during the Kamakura period.

Part 1: Chihiro, a ten years old little girl, ran away from her burned village before meeting the Asashin Grand Mistress, Leiko.

Part 2: each five years, the Shoshinsha of the Nihon Brotherhood must got through a challenge to gain the right to wield a Hidden Blade. Today is the day of the challenge.

Part 3: Chihiro get rid of a target, and you get the framing of the story: Kaori Ikarinoshi, her descendant, as been kidnapped by Abstergo as Subject 13 to relive her memories.

Other Stories I write:

Hopeless Order: An Assassin’s Creed/Danganronpa cross-over.

Prologue

Non-linked to the story:

It’s the last time I’m picking you up, a one-shot were Haytham is forced to pick up his son from a late night party.

New town, a x reader with Arno set in a modern AU.

Other things related to the story I plan on writing:

 Main informations that does not spoil anything.

There will be time-travel shenanigans. Else, I don’t know how to write an Assassin’s creed fanfic.

Some oc’s. Nothing major, just for the backstory.

Unless specified, every one-shot I will write are a prequel to the thing.

Axeman (Edgard), Ice cream (Agape) and Green Coat (Thomas) are all real people and not just Arno’s palette swap. (<= I am bitter and will always be bitter over this.)

Concerning the ships, it will mainly mainly follows the canon, besides serious and heavy implications of AltMal and Shaytham because sue me.

I don’t write NSFW. I don’t know how to write NSFW. So, there will be no sexy times. Sorry.

However, there will be references to sexy time, lots and lots of swearing, shameless usage of google translate concerning foreign languages (but french because it’s the one language I master besides english), blood, body horror because Alex Mercer, maybe good actions scenes, angst that may or may not be well-written, and my horrible sense of humor.

I also have a lot of AU’s and other silly things that I want to write, but none of them will affect my big thing, nor will be as major. So, there is:

Multi-chaptered: Alex is a young psychiatrist who just got out of school and is engaged in a psychiatric institution (asylum) and needs to take care of the modern version of the playable characters in Assassin’s creed. It would be mainly angst and hurt/comfort, with a dash of humor here and there.

Drabbles: Alex, Desmond and Delsin are roommates. Self-explainatory Mainly humor.

Drabbles: Switches between Alex, Desmond and Delsin as Virus-Biomass thing, Assassin and Conduit. Will depend on how I decide to write it.

Drabbles: OTP PROMPTS. I HAVE SO MANY OTP’S. Nothing NSFW, tho. Romance, of course.

One-shot: A Modern!Assassin’s Creed Au were Arno, Edgard, Agape and Thomas are in a poly relationship. Romance and fluff will probably be what it’s composed of.

Multi-Chaptered: Altair (16), Ezio (13), Connor, Haytham, Edward (Triplets and 9) and Desmond (5) are siblings who live in a reclusive town. Their mother (Adha) keeps bringing shitty boyfriends home, and they can only hope of when Altair will be legally and adult and get them out of there. Shay (25) is the father of Arno (8) and Jacob and Evie (twins and 3), and is constantly moving due to Arno’s mother, who is a crazy bitch. When Shay decide that they will hide in a little town for the summer, he finds out that one of his childhood friend lives there. Said childhood friend is Adha. Hilarity ensues as their childrens decide to set them up together, for reasons way less hilarious than their means.

Multi-Chaptered: Dance!AU. The dance team of Muamara High, the Hashashins, is about to go for a serious competition against professionals due to one of the low-stand of their team who was given a solo dance, Altair, catching the eye of a Crawford Starrick, a high budget businessman. However, the captain of the team got jealous and expelled him out of the team. Left with only his best friend Malik for support, Altair convinces Starrick to let him perform even if he is not part of the Hashashins anymore. Starrick accepts at one condition: that Altair finds himself a competent team and fast. So of course, he chooses the son of a banker, a native boy with family and anger issues, a guy who’s probably met Blackbeard in a past life, an hopeless romantic and diametrically opposed twins to starts his team, with the washed out father of the Native as a sponsor and a man who got his will to live shattered back when he had their age for a coach. Yeah, this is going to be great. Or not. Humor and drama.

DRAGON AU. I don’t care if I make a one-shot, drabbles or a multi-chaptered thing. Just dragons.

As a thank you for Midnight-Skittles for giving me the idea, I decided to write an Assassin’s Creed/Danganronpa AU. Let the Despair begin!

#assassin's creed #prototype #infamous second son #AU #Annex

[airoasis]

Rams have actually some included inspiration in game against Saints-- Daily News

The distance the Rams have actually created in between their previous and present suffices enough to render many of the pain and suffering of previous seasons obsolete.Situated in the thick of an exciting division championship and playoff chase, a remade franchise concentrated on an enviable present and brilliant future, it's almost harmful to peek back on wretched memories.Almost.Some things are much better served holding onto, though.

To be remembered at just the correct time, for just the right reasons.Like, say, the sting, anger and shame of being the civilian casualties of

a vendetta being performed in between an opposing head coach and his former coworker. And the motivation those feelings will offer Sunday at the Coliseum when the Rams host the New Orleans Saints in a critical face-off in between two of the finest teams in the NFC.The Rams have lots of incentive as it is to win the game.With the Seahawks nipping at their heels, a triumph makes sure at least a one-game lead over Seattle in the NFC West. Coming off a loss to the first-place Vikings in Minnesota last week, the Rams cannot afford another confidence-eroding loss against a fellow NFC power. And with the postseason an extremely genuine possibility, every win from here on out will help in getting at least one house playoff game.But there are even deeper, more personal motivations at play as well.Like the marker they have to gather from Saints head coach Sean Payton for the method he stuck it to previous Rams protective planner Gregg Williams-- who served the same role under Payton from 2009-11-- by running up the rating in a 49-21 win over the Rams last year.It was a humiliating loss to say the least."All I keep in mind was I wasn't playing in the 4th quarter since we were getting beat so bad

," remembers Rams running back Todd Gurley.

"So that's not a good idea. "However even more so knowing the backstory in between Payton and Williams, and how the Rams hesitated participants in the contentious beef between

the two previous colleagues.That is, unless you believed Payton's explanation for calling up fourth-quarter trick have fun with the Saints currently holding a 42-21 lead as:"(it) simply showed up at the ideal time. "Thinking about Payton was laughing on the sideline when the unjustified double-pass technique play went for a 50-yard touchdown, everyone from New Orleans to Los Angeles understood exactly what was actually going on. This was all about Payton's disdain for Williams, his former assistant. Williams, you'll remember, was a main figure in the Saints 'notorious"Bountygate" scandal in which defensive gamers were being paid slush loan for everything from downing a punt inside the 10-yard-line to knocking opposing players out of the video game. Williams'role in the illegal activity ultimately cost him his job with the Saints, an indefinite suspension and whatever relationship he had actually entrusted to Payton, who served his own 1 year suspension for his part in the drama.It was popular in New Orleans that Williams and Payton were never on great terms to start with. The unpleasant separation just irritated their ill-will for each other.All which made the technique play Payton called, his pleasure in its success and

the pleasure he got in adding the rating on Williams and the Rams so personally satisfying.Albeit painfully obvious to the Rams. "Obviously, we had Williams there and Payton was trying to get after him,"Gurley remembered.That it came at the Rams expense was immaterial. They were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. And considering their ineptness last season, incredibly helpless to

do anything about it.So sit there and take it they did.Afterward,

a few of the prouder Rams promised to remember the sensation of getting captured in the crossfire of

the beef between Payton and Williams. And the fury they felt in the pleasure it resulted in on the opposing sideline.Paths will ultimately cross once again, they firmly insisted. And a day was bound to show up where they were adequately equipped to precise

their revenge.Don't look now, however that day is upon us.The transformed Rams welcome Payton and the Saints to the Coliseum on Sunday equipped with the second-best scoring offense in the NFL, playoff aspirations and a growing confidence

level.And while they won't blatantly talk about it, you get the sense there's a financial obligation out there that requires to be gathered. If the chance emerges, a little bit of repayment remains in order." That's constantly been my philosophy is

let's run the rating up, "Gurley stated." I seem like that now. We've got a high-powered offense it's like,'Hey, we've been getting our tails kicked the last Ten Years, so let's do the opposite now.

"There's a million reasons the Rams want to win on Sunday.But some are simply a little more individual than others.

[ds4design]

When these two NBA coaches speak out against Trump, you should listen

Steve Kerr's Twitter account had been silent for more than a month before it erupted in a flurry of activity this weekend. The Golden State Warriors coach logged on and he most definitely did not stick to sports. 

First, Kerr retweeted a powerful rebuke of Donald Trump's planned border wall from the mayor of Berlin on Friday. On Saturday, Kerr reposted criticisms of Trump policies. They came from sources as varied as The Onion, a New York Times columnist, an NBA veteran and a former official in the Obama administration. 

"This is a must read," Kerr then wrote on Sunday, sharing an article with his 278,000 followers. It was piece from The Atlantic, blasting what the magazine called Trump's "betrayal of American values."

On the surface, Kerr's spurt of social media activity wasn't a total surprise. The sports world as a whole has reacted with opposition to Trump's first several days as president. Figures from the NBA — coaches and players alike — have been particularly outspoken, both on social media and in interviews with reporters. All those who speak out are unique. All have individual reasons for doing so. 

But the voices of two NBA figures — Kerr and Gregg Popovich, coach of the San Antonio Spurs  — carry particular weight, thanks to their contrasting backstories.  

When these two — the man whose father was murdered by a terrorist, and the former active-duty Air Force officer — speak, we should listen. 

'It's shocking and it's a horrible idea'

Popovich, left, and Kerr, before a game in 2014.

Image: Jose Sanchez/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Kerr is one of the few who actually knows what it's like to have your life upended by terrorism. 

The Warriors coach followed up his online activism this weekend by again criticizing Trump's wide ban on Muslim refugees and immigrants in a session with reporters Sunday. He prefaced that by saying he spoke "as someone whose family member was a victim of terrorism, having lost my father." 

"If we're trying to combat terrorism by banishing people from coming to this country, by really going against the principles of what our country is about and creating fear, it's the wrong way to go about it," Kerr said. "If anything, we could be breeding anger and terror, so I'm completely against what's happening. It's shocking and it's a horrible idea." 

Kerr was a freshman basketball player at the University of Arizona in 1984 when his father, Malcolm Kerr, a professor and president of the American University of Beirut, was shot to death outside his office. An Islamic extremist group later took credit for the killing.   

The New York Times reported at the time that Malcolm Kerr "was killed, his friends insist, not for being who he was, but because now that the Marines and the American Embassy in Beirut are smothered in security, he was the most vulnerable prominent American in Lebanon and a choice target for militants trying to intimidate Americans into leaving."

Steve Kerr has discussed his father's death and what it means to him before, but he opened up most recently and candidly in a Times profile from December. His father's death, the coach explained, still informs how he sees the world and relates to people. But he's hardly vengeful. 

“Put yourself in someone else’s shoes and look at it from a bigger perspective,” Kerr told the paper. “We live in this complex world of gray areas. Life is so much easier if it could be black and white, good and evil.”

Meanwhile, when Popovich — another vociferous Trump critic — speaks out, his credibility comes from a different place. 

Pop's past life

Popovich with the NBA's coach of the year trophy in 2014.

Image: Eric Gay/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Popovich ripped Trump as untrustworthy in an interview with reporters last week. But he didn't just speak as the coach who's led the San Antonio Spurs to five NBA titles — he also spoke as coach of the U.S. men's national basketball team. 

"We've got to a point where you really can't believe anything that comes out of his mouth," Popovich said of Trump last week, per ESPN's Rachel Nichols. "You really can't. All those thousands that were on the rooftops after 9/11? There were like two. And 'We went to Hawaii and checked (Obama's) birth certificate and investigators couldn't believe what they found! There wasn't anything there. That kind of thing." 

To recap, that's the coach of the U.S. national basketball team absolutely blasting the U.S. president's character — an unusual dynamic, to say the least. 

Popovich's flag-waving credentials go much deeper, too. 

As noted by Nichols after his comments last week, Popovich is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy who went on to serve five years of active duty beginning in 1970. He rarely discusses his military service, but the San Antonio Express-News did some sleuthing into his previous life a few years back. 

Gregg Popovich is a US Air Force Academy grad, spent 5 years serving in the Air Force & is now head coach of the US Men's BBall Olympic team

— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) January 22, 2017

(Pop is also a 5x NBA champ and 3x Coach of the Year...but that other stuff seemed more relevant tonight...)

— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) January 22, 2017

Kerr and Popovich aren't the only NBA coaches to take on Trump. They certainly won't be the last pro basketball figures to do so. But, like Luol Deng — a current NBA player and former refugee who posted an Instagram message opposing Trump's ban on Monday — they speak out for a reason. 

These are people sports fans know for their exploits in basketball. But they're also human beings who've led lives that color well beyond the sports world's lines. 

So why should we expect them to "stick to sports," most of all in times like these?