#she really just spit out some of the most relatable lines while dying on her gay ass space ship

[rustyboltzz]

"I don't want to die,

but I don't want to keep living, either."

#signalis #signalis spoilers #ariane yeong #this is a really testy painting I made really quick #but this game is so good and Ariane means the world to me #she really just spit out some of the most relatable lines while dying on her gay ass space ship #anyway scp moots you should definitely play signalis and signalis fans u should definitely read Devils Advocate SCP #yuri solidarity -> sharing our gayass media with eachother #rust art !!

[multitrackdrifting]

This is one of my favourite scenes from Eighty-Six, and it's from the third episode. One of the members of "Spearhead Squadron", one of the last lines of defense and most important units to the war effort is killed due to inaccurate maps and faulty data.

Context & thoughts below:

The protagonist, Lena, is one of the only citizens of her country that knows that the Eighty-Six are actually humans. The entire military are under the prevailing, eugenecist belief that they are unevolved humans more closely related to pigs, as such they are called "pigs" or "drones", and their deaths are not recognised as human casualties despite the deaths of millions during the war against the "Legion", an autonomous horde of robots/mechas. And the people they're conscripting to fight? Kids as young as 11. The majority of which don't survive their "term" (which is like five years).

Despite an idealistic belief that she can help the 86, by being a good commander/support to them, in the end, she is called out on the fact that she acts as part of a cog in the machine she supposedly detests, thinking that mere kindness and civility can distract from the fact that the 86 are actually enslaved, and subject to systemic racism (though eugenecist propaganda) which is resulting in long-term genocide.

This scene is unbearable, it's painful and awkward, it makes the idealism of one of our protagonists look pathetic - like a series of platitudes and a childish dream. She self-flagellates where all of them can hear her guilt, but they see it as disingenuous. No matter her empathy for their plight, in the end she's still a mechanism that sends them out to die. To fight for things that don't matter to them, for no reason other than that they have no other choice. The republic don't see the 86 as humans - and it doesn't seem like they ever will.

The point isn't to say that war is inevitable, or that they deserve to be treated the way that they are, but that her view of liberation and reaching equality are still formed from the comfort from her home inside the walls. Away from the battlefield, and away from the reality that her military sends millions of people out to die on purpose for no reason - all the while the military are actually getting wasted and having fun not caring about the war outside of the walls. When she goes to sleep tonight, he is right, she can just forget about it, and she doesn't have to look at the product of the war in the face. The produce of her country's sins. So it's mad easy to berate yourself, but at the end of the day you don't understand even a fraction of the weight of the pain you've inflicted on these people who used to be fully recognised citizens, that became slaves to a war they don't want any part in over night. They're treated as fodder, not as people.

Her kindness, is taken as her spitting in their faces, because when she stops issuing commands, they're still at risk of invasion. They're still at risk of death. They're still dying for a country that doesn't even recognise their humanity.

"Do you think we're out here fighting because we want to? You locked us out! Forced us to fight. You've caused the deaths of millions over the last nine years."

It's an uncomfortable confrontation that happens only three episodes into the plot because much like Ahsoka losing all of her squadron in Storm over Ryloth, Lena had to reckon with her ideals and how underdeveloped and childish they really are. You can pat yourself on the back and say you're a good and intelligent person, but don't say you want to fight for equality and spit platitudes especially to the people you're trying to help, but she is all talk at this point. An idealistic general, who is talking about how corrupt her government is, but she is as of yet, just a cog in the machine, just one that is nicer than the others who don't see the 86 as human.

If civility was enough to give them equity and freedom, then they wouldn't be so upset. They hear her as some privileged kid saying "man, injustice is so bad" and imagine her just going back to her regular life posting on IG & not giving a shit after it's no longer relevant to her. Her feelings about wanting them to be free are genuine, but the way she carries herself is self-indulgent and righteous without the development of a clear vision of how to free them from their enslavement by her government. And trust me, the journey you will go on from here is 100% worth it.

The answers they have to all the questions regarding warfare are eloquent, well thought out and they don't fall into the trappings of horrific war writing that is hardcore fascist (cough AoT). The militaries are never portrayed as fundamentally good or necessary to explain why the slavery, eugenics, racism and all the other horrible shit is necessary. No, it's more relevant to focus on the trauma and development of the soldiers, while spinning up a larger narrative surrounding the war. I'd get into it more, but please, just check it out for yourself. I recommend just watching it on CR with any adblocker and you'll never have any interruptions.

This anime has an amazing delivery that critiques so many bad writing choices around war in fiction, and especially really bad shounen manga to be honest. It doesn't justify the war that they are in, and completely critiques so many things. I would go so far as to say that the conclusion reached by the end of the series is a better answer that Eren came up with in Attack on Titan (lol).

The story isn't about righteous sanctimony about what you should think and feel, it's about the journey of the spearhead squadron and how they come to make sense of their lives in a deeply corrupt and uncaring world that has treated them like complete garbage. Moments like these aren't to lecture you about what you should think or feel, they're to develop the characters into more mature and empathetic people who can imagine creating a world where the corruption and injustice can end. They clearly have their own ideas about war, but Asato Asato actually sat down and thought about it for more than 2 minutes unlike most war stories.

Seriously, the more I rewatch and think about this anime, the more I know it is a strong 10/10 by the time you watch all 23 Episodes.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Earth is Space Australia “The Invasion Continues

You all seemed to really enjoy the burg invasion, so here is some more. I hope you like it and I hope you have a great Monday.

“This planet…. Is a death trap. All our men are dead or…. Or dying…. Please we cannot survive any longer.”

The transmission ended rather abruptly, and the newly instated burg commander slammed his fist into the control panel, “What is happening!”

Around the room his counterparts scurried to avoid his anger.

“There have been reports of animal attacks, poisonings and…. Industrial accidents…. It seems that the human planet is far more dangerous than we originally anticipated. The entire thing is a deathtrap.”

Crew members cowered back against their station as a pincer slammed into the console, “They are squishy flesh-bags you should have no trouble taking them out!”

“The humans are not the problem, it is their planet. It is covered in boiling water, poisonous plants, angry wildlife, and apparently non-military have banded into pack-hunting structures in order to kill us, and it is working very effectively. We assumed that their civilian population would be largely inferior to their military counterparts, but it turns out that the non military humans are just more creative.”

The burg commander’s carapace chattered with his anger, “Then if we cannot win this war, we will hit them where it hurts.”

“Your glory?”

“Bring me the GPS coordinates.”

“The ones that we took from the destroyed human ship.”

The burg rubbed two of his upper legs together, “Exactly those.”

The burg second in command looked very confused, “But, your glory. These….. Are just locations on the planet related to specific human soldiers. Why would we need these?”

The burg commander tapped his leg against the console,

“Cut off the head, and the body will die.”

***

“This morning both local and worldwide governments have reported isolated pockets of alien ivation from all over the world, Let’s head to Jeff who has been traveling the eastern seaboard this morning with details.”

“Thank you Tom, and yes worldwide and local governments have issued a state of emergency. UNSC forces are being deployed as we speak to all locations around the globe where the Burg have been sited. However, this is no independence day Steve, this is something entirely different. While there have been reports about burg sightings, teams of them up to five or six strong in some cases, so far no one has been killed or injured, at least not by a burg anyway.”

“What do you mean Jeff?”

“Well isolated reports have reached us from all across the world of people who have accidentally run into burg remains rather than live soldiers.. Evidence suggests that Crocodiles, bears, wolves, poison ivy, army ants, hippos, kangaroos, and poisonous snakes have all taken up the cause of mother earth, who doesn’t seem particularly pleased about being invaded. And when the burg have made their way into populated city centers, well things haven’t gotten much better. Groups of drunken football fans in eastern Europe and the British isles have been seen roaming the streets of Berlin, Paris, London, Dublin, and Rome in packs . Vatican security forces were even dispatching a number of burg troops in the early hours of the morning.”

The TV screen cut to a grainy video of a dark street which showed a pack of riotous humans with bats, clubs, and broken chairs racing down the street after alien forms shouting insults to the fleeing backs.

The video cut.

“Reports in from Chicago have the local gangs, police forces, and a high school chess club teaming up and beating the invasion back with gunfire, improvised explosives, dogs,  and molotov cocktails of all things.”

“A truly shocking turn of events Jeff, but what are the UNSC saying about protecting us and our families during this time.”

“The UNSC is cautiously optimistic about the outcome of this event, Tom, but even so, they are advising that all Burg sightings be directed to the UNSC invasion hotline, with the number posted on screen right here, and available on all major mobile devices. Civilians are encouraged to avoid the burg if at all possible, though if those are not an option for either you or your family, the CDC has issued reports that human saliva can be fatal to the burg due to a certain enzyme which known to break down burg slime, and the potent cocktail of germs which follow. Your best weapon is to spit at them, barring that, than go right ahead and beat them to death with any available blunt object within reach, or sharp object. Shaolin warriors in china, Samurai enthusiasts in japan on Renaissance goers from america to europe are finding uses for swords and bladed weapons they have not been used for in the history of man. Attack dog saliva is just as useful as human saliva in this case so if Fido wants to get in on the action, your best bet is to let your pooch go ham and serve himself up a plate of space crab.”

“Thank you Jeff, and stay tuned where we will be receiving real time updates on the state of the invasion. But for now will your homeowners insurance cover alien invasions, what you need to know.” Martha, Jim, and Sunny sat on the couch staring at the TV.

Jim scratched his chin thoughtfully, “Better stay inside, Sunny. I’m sure after that there might be some people to gungho to notice you’re a bit too pretty to be a burg.”

“Alien invasion.” Martha muttered, “Do you think we should get the guns ready, just in case.”

The man shrugged, “Couldn’t hurt. Come on Sunny, you know how to use a gun don’t you.”

“I am Chief weapons specialist.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Martha stood, “Grab my shotgun will you, dear, I’m going to go check on Adam.”

He nodded, letting her go. Sunny glanced over her shoulder catching a glimpse into the room through the door where Adam was lying out cold. She was pleased to see he was still asleep, and had slept through most of the night.

Hopefully this alien invasion thing would be over by the time he woke up.

***

Martha appeared at the top of the stairs into the basement, just as Jim and Sunny were coming up the stairs, a gun in each hand.

Martha took one from Sunny and walked into the kitchen, where the three of them sat at the table loading weapons. The doorbell going off nearly startled them out of their seats, but Jim went to go get it.

Sunny listened intently.

“Hey dad, did you see the news this morning?”

“Oh hey David, why don’t you come on inside, good morning to you Jordan, ah and my nephew.” Sunny lifted her head as David, Adam’s older brother, walked into the kitchen with his partner Jordan and their little boy bouncing happily in Jim’s arms.

Martha got up to hug her sun, and the other members of his family.

“Yes we heard about that.”

“Oh, hi sunny. Is Adam here?”

Martha had the group of them take their seats, “he’s resting. Apparently he went and saved the universe just recently, and we are trying to get him to rest. So don’t talk about the whole alien invasion thing too loudly.” 

“Oh, sorry.”

It was just at that moment that the absolutely deafening sound of engines rocked the house rumbling through the floors and shaking the very foundation.

“What in blue blazes.”

Outside the front window a chain of bikers and rednecks doubled up on old rickety dirt bikes raced past the window screaming and brandishing guns. The line seemed to go on forever until they vanished down the road.

“What in the hell.”

A groggy voice just behind them, “What’s going on?”

They all turned to find Adam leaning against the hallway wall rubbing his eyes and looking rather bleery. He was still very pale.

“Just the neighbor kids being louds, now, Go back to bed!”

Adam appeared too groggy to be skeptical and just staggered back to his room.

The group of them looked at each other nervously.

“Sunny and I will stay here and guard the house, you three mind going outside and checking out what is going on.”

***

They had come to cut off the head. All remaining burg forces had been rerouted from the rest of earth, and were now making their way towards the GPS coordinates. They knew they could not overtake earth, but if they couldn’t do that then they had vowed  to destroy the morale of humanity and take away it’s greatest nuisance.

Commander Adam vir would be dead before the sun sak below the horizon.

They entirely expected to show up in surprise, unannounced, but earth had different plans for them. In the space of ten minutes, two of their troops was hit by a minivan, and a third was attacked by a very angry small dog.

Walking along the fence line another burg ran into a very strange creature. It was very small, and sat atop a fence post, its golden eyes fixed on the burg as it lazily flicked it’s tail back and forth. Its ears were drawn back flat against it’s skull. He approached, and the creature hissed. He went to shoo it away with a hand.

And was immediately set upon by a very angry cat intent on ripping his eyes out of his face.

Their luck only worsened as engines rolled up the street, and a group of hungry looking bikers, teamed up with a very gleeful group of rednecks came charging down the street guns blazing. Motorcycles spun out, humans went flying.

Nearby, in the residential houses, families hid in their basements, while others made it to rooftops taking pot shots from their balconies, upper windows, or sometimes form the peak of their rooftops. 

One young man had been very industrious, unbeknownst to his parents, and began chucking lit molotov cocktails out the window of his bedroom. 

His older brother, also a chemistry geek upgraded that to homemade napalm.

From the other end of the street, the highschool girls softball team, and the girl scouts rolled up on hover boards and the backs of bicycles. The  softball team had a mounted automated pitching machine on the back of a wagon, and each girl was equipped with a bat, and a bucket full of balls.

The girl scouts had apparently been preparing since last night, and had water guns full of spit, which was pretty gross but rather effective.

The softball captain took up a mounted position at the back of the wagon, and began pouring the balls into the machine which fired out at about ninety miles an hour give or take five. One burg had his face collapsed in an unlucky turn of events.

Their invitation to the high school baseball team had not gone un-headed, but they had brought with them the chemistry club, and the robotics team, who had downgraded to potato guns for the moment.

The police rocked up a few moments later to create a blockade down the next street and coordinate so now humans got caught in the crossfire .

An unsupervised cheerleader, had made herself rather industrious  pulling up with a vest full of hair products, which people seemed skeptical about until she sprayed a burg right in the eyes, and turned another can into a flamethrower. A group of firemen showed up behind the police, blasting lines of Drev with high powered fire hose 

I took the burg longer than it should have to determine that being lumped into a group wasn’t the best idea and so broke off into smaller units managing to sneak in through the mele and into the neighborhood.

Their luck didn’t get much better.

One of them was nailed in the head by a dirty diaper dropped from an upper window.

Another found himself hounded by the cross country team, who were gleefully using mankind's god-given talent of distance running to run their prey into the ground, hunting like pack humans should before beating them to death with tire irons and crowbars.

Someone’s dad stood on his front porch armed with a fire extinguisher and his tool belt, while another mom had packed her kids neatly into their car seats and was roaming the streets with ACDC blaring through her open windows, mowing over any unsuspecting burg that happened to end up in the street while her teenage daughter offered free ammunition and snacks from the back window.

The UNSC showed up late to the party rolling into scene in jeeps with proper military equipment and drones

By this time the invasion force was dwindling, and only a single group had managed to make it through to their target.

A little house in the center of the suburbs unsuspecting in the warm overhead sun.

They crept forward a few of them moving around back while the others inched around front.

One slid up to the front door, reached out a hand and opened inward.

They were met by the barrel of a shotgun and a very angry blond woman, and her face twisted into a snarl, was the last thing he ever saw.

***

Adam was woken a second time by gunshots. Bolting upright in bed and nearly passing out from the vertigo. He blinked blearily past his fuzzy vision and out the door as his mother backed into the hallway. There was another loud blast and blue icor painted the wall before her.

She backed down the hallway, and he could hear the repeated pump of the shotgun as she backed down the hall.

The burg chasing after.

He tried getting to his feet, but ended up on the floor gripping the bedside table for support.

His mother’s hair flew wildly about her head

“YOU STAY AWAY FROM MY SUN.” Another mob of them was rounding the corner.. It looked like she was going to be over-run.

But a sudden swirl of blue overtook them, and Sunny charged into them dispatching at least four less than as many seconds. A whimper came from the corner, and he turned his head to find Jordan, wide-eyed standing in the corner blocking his son shakily holding a rifle in one hand.

Martha backed up until she was kneeling right before Adam blocking him with her body.

Sunny was backing down the hall now too as the Burg followed.

Jordan took a deep breath and peered around the doorframe, taking one or two shots as sunny flattened herself against the wall, before he ducked back into cover.

It wasn’t looking good.

Not at least until Jim, and David came bursting in one through the front and one through the back mowing down the remaining burg.

Adam found himself flat on his stomach pinned to the floor as his mother through herself over him blocking his body with hers despite how much smaller she was.

And then the gunfire stopped.

“Martha! Martha!”

“We’re ok Jim.”

“Jordan.”

“Right here.” The two of them ran into the room David scooping up Jordan and his son, while Jim ran to make sure his wife was ok.

Outside, boots clattered on the porch, and a group of UNSC soldiers burst into the house sweeping their guns over the blood painted walls. They stopped when they saw Adam sitting at the foot of his bed very much alive, 

“Delta to Alpha one the package is secure.”

Adam was thinking about asking his mother why no one had told him about the alien invasion.

But then he saw her cradling a shotgun covered in burg blood hair in a wild mess and decided that.

Maybe that was a topic for another time. 

#earth is a deathworld #Earth is space Ausralia #humans are insane #humans are space orcs #HUMANS ARE WEIRD #humans are space oddities

[baconpal]

talkin bout fuckig manga

hey it’s me, haven’t had internet for over a week and i’ve been sick and uni and blah blah blah time for a rant about manga

this time its about  "Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru", tl;dr, good manga read it idk

lots of bullshit below the cut

Before anything I say gets too confusing or I go off on an insane tangent, just know my recommendation is that you read "Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru". It's not very easy to find online since it has an official English release (which my recommendation extends far enough to suggest I might pick up in the future, just to have it, but I am very stingy), but there's an alright torrent of all the volumes on your local anime torrenting website, and is at the very least worth the trouble of reading as such. There is also an anime that gets better as it goes, but the manga is my primary recommendation. Beyond this point I'm not gonna give much regard to what I write, so get ready for anything, read the manga and see if you agree with me, or don't and see if I care:

BOUT THE ANIME: The SoreMachi anime is one of those rare comedy anime you find where the animation and overall production is just really extra the entire time. Hopefully you know what I mean because I won't really be able to explain it any other way, it's simply one of those shows where the jokes are decent and it's a fun time for the most part. Unfortunately, the anime makes a couple of critical missteps that kept me from getting far into it when I first tried watching it about a year ago, and in retrospect seem even less reasonable.

Starting with the good, as an adaptation it does a good job with most chapters it covers, it properly sources where each chapter comes from incase you intend to read the manga and skip around to catch up, and the anime adapts some sections to have additional jokes that fit very naturally in to the story. It also covers up some of those problems only manga can have like having a concert segment without any actual music involved, until they invent mp3-paper it's just something we'll have to live with. Translation work was pretty good (I watched the [WhyNot] release for those who care), which is extra important for something as difficult to translate as jokes from another language. The set of episodes they chose to end on was very good, and was expanded to be a lot more impactful in the anime. If it wasn't for the last episode being as strong as it was I may have given up on finding the manga when I saw it wasn't super easy to read online.

As for what the anime fails in, some episodes feature some really blatant over-acting that doesn't really help make characters believable, and there's this obnoxious gag that continues the whole where through where most scenes have a few seconds long line from what is essentially a forced mascot character, which usually mean nothing and only serve to harm the pacing of many episodes (there isn't even any sort of equivalent bit in the manga so I really don't know why they did it, most of the anime original jokes are pretty good so I just really don't get it). The biggest issue the anime faces is that the source material is about 140 chapters, while the anime is only able to cover 24 chapters. This comes with a LOT of problems, the first being what I'd call the "required reading". SoreMachi is not a 1-note simple comedy where you can skip to any chapter and be completely okay; There are many small but meaningful subplots lying beneath, and characters have a fair bit of development throughout. What this means for the anime is that the first 3-4 episodes are just the first few chapters of the manga, which are a bit rough and not as good as the majority of the work, which is true of a lot of comics (god fuck I promise there will be more than a first chapter of my comic I promise it'll get better fuck). In terms of the anime by itself, I'd say episode 1 is decent, 2 is middling, and by 3/4 their still taking a while to introduce members of the cast, and I didn't immediately want to finish it. I put the show down for a long time until my internet started dying and I wanted to watch something fun. Slapping it back on at episode 5 I immediately had a great time and watched the rest of the show pretty soon after. While I understand the reasoning behind doing this, the anime does not pay off this structure, as beyond the first few episodes, the chapters start being presented out of release order and out of chronological order, kind of destroying any consistent throughline. This decision in and of itself isn't the worst, since the comic isn't always chronological, and the volume ordering is a bit different from the release ordering, but the inconsistency makes the first few episodes feel lessened without reason. The other large failure that comes with only animating about 1/7th of the entire work is that many themes and concepts that are core to the manga are not represented in the anime well at all. One of the biggest is the rare but unnerving supernatural chapters, of which only one is animated, and not a particularly good one. In order to talk about these themes I'll have to transition into talking about the manga itself, since they aren't part of the anime.

DA MANGA: So one last recommendation that you read the manga, the whole damn thing. Cus we're gettin into themes and character moments that take a long time to pay off, and obviously is all part of my interpretations, so if that stuff means anything to you don't let me ruin it for ya.

The title of the manga is, in essence, the entire manga's "punchline" in that every chapter could meaningfully end with simply the text "And yet the town still turns..." (My translation of the title, fuck "And yet, the town revolves" or "But the town moves"); by this I mean most chapters end in an anti-climax where a mystery is left unsolved, or a mystery is solved and undercut by the realization that life simply keeps on going without much change. This is used to essentially force your eyes open to all possibilities when reading, as the main character spends her time acting like a detective, and these mysteries end up as either misunderstandings, secrets, riddles, and sometimes something out of the ordinary happens that makes you unable to pin anything down firmly. Similarly, these endings aren't always read-and-forget scenarios. Several chapters come back in the form of a continued joke, a continued mystery, or contribute to some greater purpose later. Readers are properly rewarded for keeping everything they can in mind, while also tormenting such people with loose ends.

I enjoy Hotori as a protagonist due to her character being defined not in flaws and strengths, but in mindedness. Hotori seems like a simple "haha she's dumb" character to start, but consistently throughout she proves that her strengths are in memory, observation, and deduction, while lacking in some more common sense and abilities. Her brain works in strange ways that some people may or may not understand, such as her need to think through even the most trivial fictional scenarios, which I relate to deeply.

The art and paneling throughout are wonderful. Ishiguro Masakazu is one of those artists who draws very simple characters, but knows how to use details and depth to breath so much life into the artwork. He also clearly uses the occasional supernatural happenings as an excuse to draw what he loved, as all sorts of artistic depictions of the supernatural come out that simply look satisfying. These parts obviously meant a lot to him since he's been working on a primarily mystery-action manga that has a lot more of that stuff in it. (Also, as hindsight is 20/20, if you've read any of his new work you'll notice that the main character of it is eerily similar to a character who shows up very late in SoreMachi that the author obviously fell in love with, cus she just keeps coming back and even ends up with a really unsettling end to her character arc despite only being introduced as a component in a harmless mystery. Feel free to call me out for the same shit 30 years from now when I'll probably do the same shit)

I'd like to get into some of the major themes of this work, as a lot of them hit very close to my mind (which I guess is true of any theme you recognize for yourself, you wouldn't really "get it" if it didn't mean something to you...).

The simplest theme, again, comes from the title. The main character, Hotori, expresses a desire that the town she lives in continues going on, unchanged forever. This is obviously a fear of change, which ya know, same, but also an exploration of what it means to fear change. Hotori actively tries to keep businesses from closing down, keep friends from leaving, and keep relationships from changing, while simultaneously making all sorts of new relationships and solving mysteries. Hotori even comes to realize that simply learning the truth about something changes the world through your own perspective, and that such changes can't be undone. In spite of this, Hotori mostly gets her wish, any time she fears that a large change will impact the town, its resolved about the same as any other issue. Whether its a message that even time can't keep you from your loved ones and that change isn't worth fearing, or a concession that large changes to the setting would be a bad idea in terms of humor, I can't really decide. This theme reaches it's conclusion in what is one in a series of "ending" kinda chapters at the end of the series. Hotori is faced with a supernatural ethical situation, save her town from destruction at the cost of her existence, or live through the disaster, knowing her town and the people in it will forever be changed. While the actual result is that nobody disappears and nothing is lost, and the event may have simply been a strange dream, Hotori confidently decides that sparing the people in her town from a life altering event is worth giving up her memories with them. A kind of bold spit-in-the-face to the idea that change is okay, where we find that Hotori didn't fear change for herself, but rather for the people around her.

There's another major idea in this manga, which takes a very long time to pay off, and completes its arc at the very very very actual end of the series, the idea of "leading someone to be something". A character that rides that line between main and side character, Shizuka, is a writer of detective novels, who feels the best person to judge her works would be a version of herself without the bias of being the author. She tries to achieve this by leading Hotori to be interested in detective works (including her own) and generally be just like her, starting from a young age. The end result is a young girl dead set on being a detective herself (or at least another novelist), while Shizuka keeps her identity as an author secret. She then uses Hotori as a scapegoat for herself, attempting to see how she would solve various mysteries and use that as inspiration, and this is depicted as though Shizuka were some sort of villain, which she may feel like she is. The end result of it all, though, is that Hotori was likely already a detective-minded person, and that even if Shizuka pushed her down that path, it was Hotori's decision to continue down it, and the very end of the manga is a scene revealing that Hotori figured out Shizuka's secret at some point, and even still respected Shizuka and aspired to reach her, and the two accept each other for who they are. I enjoy this ending a lot, since as an artist I've worried that some of my love or aspirations for and from other artists came with an ulterior motive of wanting a better community for art to exist in, but people are people and will make their own decisions, and some day everyone may be able to become equals in a truly meaningful sense, where everyone is inspired by and guiding each other together.

So that probably didn't mean shit to nobody and I didn't even really talk about anything in the comic like most of the main characters or any of the shit goin on but ya know fuck you go read it, and thanks for reading this.

#long ass post #also gonna have finals on my birthday this week so awesome #im having a good time this year h-haha

[voodoochili]

My 75 Favorite Albums of 2020

Every year produces excellent music and 2020 was no exception. The exceptional thing about this year, though, is the loss of livelihood so many musicians suffered as a result of the pandemic. To better celebrate all I’ve listened to and loved this year, I’ve expanded my albums list from 50 to 75 albums and included a highlight track from each in the Spotify playlist below. If you like what you hear, why not throw the artist a few dollars on Bandcamp?

Check the Spotify playlist HERE.

Without further ado, my favorite albums of 2020. Happy New Year, and happy listening!

10. Playboi Carti - Whole Lotta Red: Carti’s long-awaited opus has only been out for a week, which is probably not a long enough time to give an album as sprawling and surprising as this one a full critical evaluation. But I do know when I’m hearing something that’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard: this album rearranges hip-hop at the molecular level. 

Whole Lotta Red is overstuffed with invention, the glitchy, expansive production giving Carti ample opportunity to glom onto the contours of the beat and experiment with his voice. That voice is the album’s main attraction: it squeaks, it squeals, it roars, it spits, it shudders, and organizes itself into irresistibly ignorant mantras (my current favorite is “Lamborghini parked outside, it’s purple like lean”). 

Across its 24 tracks (which feels like too many, sure, but only the 5-minute long Kid Cudi-infected droner “Metamorphosis” overstays its welcome), Carti plays with listener expectations, annihilating rap songwriting conventions (why do you need verse-chorus structure if every line is a hook) as he defiantly proclaims his desire to be unlike anybody else. Though it bears some resemblance in sound and subject matter to Future’s Monster (and much of the production owes a debt to the work of Lil Uzi Vert’s favored Working Of Dying collective), Whole Lotta Red firmly establishes Carti as a totemic figure connecting mainstream and underground sounds.

9. BbyMutha - Muthaland: BbyMutha is a natural born spitter, armed with a drawly stutter-stepping flow that routinely annihilates unconventional instrumentals. She glows with supreme confidence and comfort in her own skin, especially when she’s dripping with disdain with those who’d dare refuse her the respect she deserves. A 25-track opus that earns every minute of its runtime, Muthaland is an engrossing immersion into Mutha’s world, balancing a fascination with the occult (“Sorry I don’t fuck with n****s who don’t fuck with Satan”) with grounding interjections from close friends and her four children. Boasting rockstar fantasies like “Heavy Metal,” bad girl anthems like “Nice Guy,” and dancefloor-ready jams like “Cocaine Catwalk,” Muthaland is a tour-de-force by one of rap’s singular voices, and if she’s really finished with music as she’s claimed (rappers never really retire, but Mutha has indicated she wants to focus full time on her Apothecary), the game will greatly miss her incisive punchlines and crudely empowering perspective.

8. Westerman - Your Hero Is Not Dead: In 2020, Mid-’80s sophistipop grew into one of my favorite comfort foods. Westerman’s Your Hero Is Not Dead struck me directly in the sophistipop sweet spot, evoking the attention-to-detail and synth-heavy craftsmanship of that era and pairing it with harmonic complexity and a piercing emotionalism that recalls his idol Neil Young. On songs like “Blue Comanche” and “The Line,” Westerman constructs tales as twisty as his melodies, economically exploring how people relate to each other at the beginning and end of romantic relationships. Westerman complements his tasteful palette of synth sounds with intricate and lyrical guitar playing, most notably on the sighing, gorgeous instrumental “Float Over,” which softly segues into the title track to end the album on a gently-rising high note.

7. WizKid - Made In Lagos: The focal point of the sub-Saharan Afrobeats renaissance, Lagos is having one of the most exciting musical moments of any city since Kingston in the early ‘70s. WizKid is one of the scene’s biggest stars, with an ability to combine the sonic tapestry of his hometown with Caribbean-influenced beats and vocal styles. Made In Lagos is a masterwork of sound design, bringing creamy bass, chicken-scratch speckles of guitar, tasteful interjections of saxophone and brass, and an intoxicating mix of acoustic and electronic percussion, all offered in service to an immaculate vibe that matches the album cover’s shiny, monochromatic color scheme. Made with lockdown in mind, the album eschews uptempo dancefloor workouts in favor of stress-relief and romance. WizKid plays the perfect host, tamping down his melodic flights of fancy and embracing a song-serving smoothness. He’s a warm and inviting presence throughout, laying out the red carpet for a cross-continental cast of collaborators like H.E.R., Skepta, Burna Boy, and Damian Marley. The result is a truly global pop masterpiece, capable of brightening even the dourest day of a miserable year.

6. Ka - Descendants of Cain: Firefighter by day and rapper/producer by night, Ka is a master of allusion. He organizes his thoughts into themed collections of metaphor, illustrating the bleak realities of street life with gnomic symbolism. On Descendants Of Cain, Ka’s strongest work to date, the enigmatic rapper expresses himself through a litany of biblical references, drawing parallels between ancient parables (he goes far deeper than the Cain/’caine double entendre that rappers have been using for decades) and the stark code of morality with which he lives his life. The 48-year-old hermit produced the project himself, creating an immersive sonic realm, crafting expansive, noir-ish backing tracks populated by late-night saxophones, sparkling pianos, and the occasional shot of sweeping strings. Once again, Ka’s music comes almost entirely without drums (certainly without “beats” in the traditional hip-hop sense–every once in a while, he adds an open hi-hat or a subdued shaker), the artist preferring to let his music swirl around his half-whispered words of wisdom. The album ends on a tearful, sentimental note with “I Love (Mimi, Moms, Kev),” in which the artist ditches the biblical lyrical conceit and expresses his love for his wife, his mom, and his best friend atop light percussion and a warm soul sample.

5. SAULT - Untitled (Rise): Rise is the second part of a diptych that SAULT recorded in response to the movement that exploded in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Black Is, the first part, is a great album (you’ll find it in the lower reaches of my 2020 list), but the mysterious UK collective fulfilled their immense potential with Rise, a propulsive, powerful, and danceable album that doubles as a thought-provoking examination of the nature of freedom and liberation. The album tackles weighty topics–police violence, fake-woke “allies,” protest, cultural appropriation–but handles them with an inspiring effervescence and a propulsion meant to usher right-thinking people into the streets. The music itself is an intoxicating marvel, combining elements from every trendy musical movement from the early ‘80s (post-disco, post-punk, house, hip-hop, whatever the hell ESG was) into a percussive and surprisingly cohesive cocktail. The album immediately makes its greatness known with its first four songs, one of the strongest opening runs of any album in recent memory: the swaggering, funky, keep-your-head-up anthem “Strong,” which features a drum solo from SAULT architect Inflo, the soaring, club-ready vamp “Fearless,” concept-establishing, string-heavy interlude “Rise,” and especially “I Just Want to Dance,” the best song ESG never wrote. 

4. Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters: Fetch The Bolt Cutters arrived with the kind of universal acclaim that can make some people suspicious. The Pitchfork review got a lot of attention, not just for its perfect score but for its bold statement that “no music has ever sounded quite like it.” 

That statement might’ve been slightly hyperbolic. Fetch The Bolt Cutters has the kind of propulsive left-hand piano figures, chest-thumping percussion, and impassioned vocal performances that we haven’t heard since...the last Fiona Apple album. But the album deserves its experimental reputation. These songs mess around with song structure and melody in ways that resemble avant-garde singers like Meredith Monk, use overlapping vocals that occasionally evoke the works of post-modern composers like Luciano Berio, and echoing modernist composers like Edgard Varese in the way she wrings pathos out of rhythmic elements.

Though Fetch might be a slight step down from The Idler Wheel, it’s an invigorating listen, packed with the soul-baring confessionals that only Fiona is capable of executing. Combining literary wordplay with plainspoken directness, Fiona forces the listener to confront her trauma and contemplate her diagnoses of patriarchal ills. The songs are uniformly excellent–especially opener “I Want You To Love Me,” the most “traditional” song on the record, and “Shameika,” a burrowing childhood rumination with a happy ending–but Fetch The Bolt Cutters stands out to me as a collection of amazing moments: when the jig-like “For Her” fades into an unforgettably painful cadence (“Good mornin’, good mornin’/You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in”), Fiona’s ground-shaking vocal intensity at the end of “Newspaper,” her dogs howling over the outro of “Fetch The Bolt Cutters,” the winking repetition of the title phrase on “Ladies.” Her albums display more than enough ambition to forgive the long gestation periods, but hopefully we won’t have to wait another 8 years for Fiona to bare her soul once again.

3. Drakeo The Ruler - Thank You For Using GTL: Embroiled in a Kafkaesque legal saga that shines a light on the worst aspects of our horrendous justice system, Drakeo The Ruler spent more than three years wrongly incarcerated for a crime he not only did not commit, but for which he was acquitted (for more info on Drakeo’s ordeal, read Jeff Weiss). He’s now mercifully a free man, mostly due to the work of his lawyer, but at least partially because of publicity generated by Thank You For Using GTL. Recorded over the phone from prison during the height of the pandemic, it’s a miracle that an album created under such sub-optimal conditions sounds as excellent as it does, but credit producer JoogSzn–who not only supplied the creeping, head-nodding backing tracks but recorded Drakeo’s phoned-in vocals–and engineer MixedByNavin for the project’s astonishing fidelity. Drakeo and Joog spent hours on the phone to record the album, in the process paying thousands of dollars to GTL, the predatory telecom company of choice for the L.A. corrections system, whose mechanical interjections serve as a constant reminder of the injustice that made the album necessary. Of course, a good story is a good story, but that alone doesn’t get an album on 2020’s most prestigious Best Albums list (mine). It’s a classic rap album, perhaps the best ever released by an incarcerated rapper, and a thumb directly in the nose of the D.A. and the LAPD. The album is a lyrical marvel, packed with winding wordplay and outlandish flexes, as Mr. Mosley takes aim at 6ix9ine, cackles at sorry-ass Instagram haters, and sneers at American-made cars (“To be honest, a Hellcat isn’t a foreign”). Each song has a carefully considered concept, the rapper’s punchlines building upon one another to make an airtight case for his status as L.A.’s top dog. He contrasts his own whip-crashing lifestyle with flashy wannabes on “GTA VI” and “Backflip or Sumn,” mourns a favorite department store on “RIP Barneys,” and proves he still doesn’t rap beef on “Maestro’s Tension.” The album’s masterstroke comes with “Fictional,” the final track, in which Drakeo exposes the prosecution’s use of his lyrics as evidence in criminal proceedings as the farce it is: “It might sound real, but it’s fictional/I love that my imagination gets to you.” Drakeo’s story was a rare bright spot in 2020, and a rare one with a happy ending. Just last week, the rapper released Because Y’All Asked, a studio-recorded version of Thank You For Using GTL, giving the album’s songs the clarity they deserve. But I think I’ll mostly return to the original, which will live on as an excellent album and a vital document of post-George Floyd America.

2. Pa Salieu - Send Them to Coventry: Hailing from the middle of nowhere–or, more accurately city in the English Midlands only known in the states for its middling Premier League team–Gambian-British artist Pa Salieu served up the most distinctive, visceral, and daring rap debut of the year. His style fuses elements of grime, drill, afro-trap, dancehall, and the darker edges of U.S. hip-hop into a percussive slurry, injected with the urgency of his struggle to survive. The magic of the album comes from the way Pa’s fluid flows interact with the shimmering and foreboding production (Felix Joseph and Aod lead the cast of the project’s sound architects), which is perfectly suited for cold city nights. He slips effortlessly into the pocket, toe-tagging the beats with a combination of aggression and trance-like meditation and uttering casually powerful pronouncements (“I'd make a killa riddim offa any riddim/The grind can never stop 'til I'm wrapped in linen”) that make you believe he’s Britain’s next great rapper. Pa keeps the vibe consistent throughout, but the moments that stand out are the moments when he locks into an unbreakable groove over no-frills production, like on singles “Block Boy,” “Betty,” and “B***K.” The artist’s wry sense of humor and brash confidence keeps the album from feeling bleak, but Send Them To Coventry wisely ends on “Energy,” a warm and bright ode to keeping your creative spark safe from the prying forces of fame and fortune.

1. Kassa Overall - I Think I’m Good: “I think I’m good”–a phrase that’s ran through my head throughout this shitstorm of a year. Sure, I postponed a wedding, cancelled trips, and saw my friends and family much less often than I would like, but I count myself among the lucky ones. Still breathing, still sane. Though it was recorded and released before the pandemic started, Kassa Overall’s I Think I’m Good became a lodestar of sorts for me. It’s a brilliantly introspective and deeply personal album about existing in enclosed spaces–whether a jail cell, an NYC subway car, or the inescapable prison of your own body.

Kassa Overall made his name as a jazz drummer, touring with icons like Geri Allen, but his solo music incorporates elements of hip-hop, classical, and trap to create a wholly original milieu. The album features contributions from over 30 accomplished voices, ranging from luminary Vijay Iyer, to Kassa’s saxophonist brother Carlos Overall, to virtuosic pianist Sullivan Fortner, to venerated activist Angela Davis. But all the disparate elements come together in service of Kassa’s deeply personal and engrossing vision.

Taking partial inspiration from Kassa’s struggle with manic depression, the music fluctuates between meditative calm and unbearable tension, mimicking the patter of an unquiet mind. Album opener “Visible Walls,” is a mesmerizing prayer for salvation soundtracked by fluttering harps, piercing woodwinds, and heartbeat percussion. “Find Me” buries a plea for help within a cacophony of sampled voices and rattling piano notes. Fortner’s piano guides us through the hauntingly devastating “Halfway House” and the Chopin-indebted “Darkness In Mind,” each highlighting a different stage of grief (despair and acceptance, respectively). The arc of I Think I’m Good concludes with the hopeful “Got Me A Plan” and “Was She Happy (For Geri Allen),” a Vijay Iyer-assisted tribute to his late friend and mentor. 

It’s ironic that an album that so deeply explores the feeling of isolation vibrates with such a collaborative spirit. I Think I’m Good feels like an answered prayer–a community coming together to check on a beloved friend who’s gone through a tough time: “You good, man?” “I think so.”

Here’s the rest of my list.

11. Yves Tumor - Heaven To A Tortured Mind 12. Shackleton & Waclaw Zimpel - Primal Forms 13. Bob Dylan - Rough & Rowdy Ways 14. Duval Timothy - Help 15. Lil Uzi Vert - Eternal Atake 16. Moodymann - Taken Away 17. Secret Drum Band - Chuva 18. J Hus - Big Conspiracy 19. Headie One & Fred Again - GANG 20. Tiwa Savage - Celia 21. Andras - Joyful 22. Bill Callahan - Gold Record 23. King Von - Welcome To O’Block 24. Flo Milli - Ho, Why Is You Here? 25. Chubby & The Gang - Speed Kills 26. Madeline Kenney - Sucker’s Lunch 27. Empty Country - Empty Country 28. Smino - She Already Decided 29. Destroyer - Have We Met 30. Yves Jarvis - Sundry Rock Song Stock 31. Ela Minus - Acts Of Rebellion 32. Creeper - Sex, Death & The Infinite Void 33. Alabaster DePlume - To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals, Vol. 1 34. Good Sad Happy Bad - Shades 35. The 1975 - Notes On a Conditional Form 36. Kate NV - Room For The Moon 37. $ilkmoney - Attack of the Future Shocked, Flesh Covered, Meatbags of the 85 38. Eddie Chacon - Pleasure, Joy and Happiness 39. Kenny Segal & Serengeti - Ajai 40. Bad Bunny - YHLQMDLG 41. Kahlil Blu - DOG 42. Califone - Echo Mine 43. Boldy James - The Price of Tea in China/Manger On McNichols/The Versace Tape 44. Bufiman - Albumsi 45. Moses Boyd - Dark Matter 46. Thanya Iyer - KIND 47. Jyoti - Mama You Can Bet! 48. Obongjayar - Which Way Is Forward? 49. Rio Da Yung OG - City On My Back 50. Young Jesus - Welcome To Conceptual Beach 51. Owen Pallett - Island 52. Oceanator - Things I Never Said 53. Shootergang Kony - Red Paint Reverend 54. Shabason, Krgovich & Harris - Philadelphia 55. Six Organs of Admittance - Companion Rises 56. Lido Pimienta - Miss Colombia 57. Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song 58. Polo G - The GOAT 59. Actress - Karma & Desire 60. Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher 61. Porridge Radio - Every Bad 62. Yg Teck - Eyes Won’t Close 63. Mozzy - Beyond Bulletproof 64. Ratboys - Printer’s Devil 65. R.A.P. Ferreira - Purple Moonlight Pages 66. Ulver - Flowers of Evil 67. Rina Sawayama - SAWAYAMA 68. SAULT - Untitled (Black Is) 69. Ezra Feinberg - Recumbent Speech 70. Davido - A Better Time 71. Hailu Mergia - Yene Mircha 72. HAIM - Women In Music Pt. III 73. Half Waif - The Caretaker 74. Key Glock - Yellow Tape 75. KeiyAa - Forever Your Girl

#kassa overall #pa salieu #drakeo the ruler #fiona apple #sault #ka #wizkid #westerman #playboi carti #bbymutha

[kumawrites]

Love Tutorial (NOT CLICKBAIT)

Shinso x fem!Reader

A/N: hi lovelies i’m back with, you guessed it, more shinso!!! this fic is 100% self indulgent bc i absolutely love makeup lol. i’m trying out a bunch of different things in terms of formatting so like tell me if this section looks ugly LMAO. anyways pls enjoy !!

words: 3.8k

summary: You’re a popular Beauty Guru™ and Shinso is primarily a commentary channel. He follows one of your tutorials, only to be surprised by you talking about how fine he is.

—

“That will be all for this video, if you enjoyed it please show some love by clicking on the like button, and if you like me, subscribe! Like always, feel free to tag me if you recreate this look, I love seeing all of your posts! I’ll see you Earthlings later, bye!” With both hands waving and a bright smile, you successfully finished filming your outro that you have possibly said three hundred times.

Before you could even get a word out, Mina was screaming into the phone. “Y/N? OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD. YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS. I’M FREAKING OUT FOR YOU! AHHHH!” You winced, not expecting her to be that loud. Sure, you knew quite well that she could get loud, but that’s because she gets excited. So to be this noisy must mean something big is happening.

“Why, hello to you too Mina. How’s my day going? Good! Thank you for asking. I would ask how yours is going but from the sound of it, I’ll assume pretty good.” You snickered into the phone.

“Well, my dear Y/N, it’s about to be even better than just good!” Mina’s volume was significantly lower, but you could still tell just how excited she was.

“Oh really? What’s going to make my day better than? Wait let me guess, NikkiTutorials resigned and gave up her spot as the most iconic beauty guru and gave it to me?” You snorted. If only.

“No! It’s even better!” The pitch of Mina’s voice kept raising higher and higher.

“Okay, okay, spit it out Mina. You’re really making me curious and I don’t know if I should be worried or not.” You grabbed your glass of water from you table and took a sip. Gross, warm. But it was too much work to get a new glass so you began downing this one.

“SHINSO HITOSHI DID A REACTION VIDEO TO ONE OF YOUR TUTORIALS!” You choked on your water and half of it went down the wrong way. You began coughing and Mina, the little bitch, didn’t say anything while you were dying. You could imagine her just sitting there, waiting for you to respond after your coughing fit.

After getting it all out, you swallowed, eyes still wide. “Mina, you’re not joking right now, are you? Because if you are, I know where you live, and I won’t hesitate, bitch.”

“I’m not! I’m really not! Check his channel, he, like, just uploaded it!”

You grabbed your laptop and opened Google Chrome. “Call me back on FaceTime, rat.” You told Mina before hanging up on her. You typed YouTube into the search bar while Mina called you back. When you answered, you could see that she was also in her filming room.

Mina, like you, is a beauty YouTuber that is well known for her flawless skin, even though she has the simplest skincare routine you have ever seen. Her chipper personality also drew in a ton of fans towards her channel. The two of you had met through YouTube and were soon to find out that you lived in the same city. Your friendship really bloomed then, and you basically live at each other’s houses.

You got onto YouTube, and lo and behold, there it was. Obviously you were subscribed to Shinso’s channel, so the first video of pop up was his. It was titled “i learn how to become beautiful” and his thumbnail was him with his signature “kill me now” face on with some patchy, hot pink, glitter eyeshadow all over his eyelids. But also, you were there! You were in his thumbnail which could only mean one thing: this was real.

“HOLY SHIT MINA, I’M IN HIS THUMBNAIL.”

“I KNOW! NOW WATCH THE VIDEO! I HAVEN’T SEEN IT YET THOUGH SO TURN THE VOLUME UP.” She screeched and you did.

You clicked on the video and there he was, Shinso Hitoshi, looking as good as ever. His tired eyes that screamed “I could die at any given moment” and his messy hair that somehow defied physics. It has to be downright illegal to look that hot. Today he was sporting one of his merch items, a hoodie that had simple print on the front of it saying: I’m Shinso Over This. Of course you owned that very sweatshirt. You would never miss out on a chance to buy his merch.

“Hi. I’m back, unfortunately.” His tone was as dry as it always was. “I was harassed into doing this, go bully Denki on Twitter because this is all his fault. But today I’m going to be making myself beautiful with the help of Y/N. Okay, she’s not actually helping me, but I’m going to watch one of her tutorials.” Your heart pounded as he mentioned you. One of creators that you loved the most is going to follow one of your tutorials. You could die happy now.

“HE SAID YOUR NAME!” Mina shrieked from your phone and you nodded eagerly as you kept your eyes glued to the computer.

“I’m going to choose this one, “EASY Valentines Day Makeup Tutorial + Q&A!” because it says easy.” You watched as your face from the most recent Valentine’s Day popped up. In the intro, you had already filmed the tutorial part and were wearing the full face. It was a fairly easy look, to you at least.

You had done a simple glitter cut-crease, primarily using warm toned reds and pinks with some winged liner and false lashes for your eyes. Your face had some sharper contour and heavy blush that trailed from one cheek to another, using your nose like a bridge. And of course, you had used a super glittery highlighter that reflected with all of your studio lights. You had also used a maroon liquid lip.

“Greetings, Earthlings! It’s me, Y/N, and I’m here to do another tutorial! Today we’re going a Valentines Day themed full face, and I’m also going to be answering some love related questions you asked me on Twitter since it is Valentines Day after all. If you’d like to recreate this look, as always I listed all the products I’m going to use down in the description!” You pointed your fingers downwards. “Without further ado, let’s get started!”

Shinso paused your video and held up a Sephora bag. “I spent so much money on this stuff, and I’m never going to use it again.” He lazily drawled. The fact that he made eye bags hot was insanity. You wanted to cry for him because some of the products you used were unnecessarily expensive.

Shinso unpaused your video and you had begun priming your face. He dug around in the Sephora bag before pulling out the primer you were using. As he squirted some on his fingertips, he made an especially disgusted look as he felt the consistency of it. He watched as you spread it all over your face, and copied you.

“She didn’t lie when they said easy.” He mused. Mina and you both cackled through your phone. Primer was possibly the easiest step ever because it didn’t affect the way you looked whatsoever. “Uhh, okay now she’s putting on, uhhh, foundation?” He grabbed a bottle of foundation out of the bag along with a Beauty Blender. “The people at Sephora said this was my skin colour, so I’ll believe them.” Shinso shrugged and set the bottle down to get the Beauty Blender out of the box.

You began blending the foundation into your skin and Shinso did the same. “Alright! First question from Andrea! ‘Are you dating anyone right now?’ wow Andrea, you sure did get straight to the point. Unfortunately no, I’m not in a relationship right now.” You had finished your foundation and had moved on to concealing your under eyes.

Shinso hummed as he watched as you put a relatively small amount of concealer under your eyes and looked into the camera, somehow making his eye-bags even more prominent. “Look, I don’t know much about makeup, but I know I’m going to need more concealer than that. Also I’m surprised that they’re not dating anyone. She’s too good looking to be single.” So he unscrewed the concealer tube, and absolutely went to town. He put on so much concealer that you were almost concerned.

“Mina did you hear that?” You asked in a breathless tone.

“Sure did.”

You were already in awe that the great Shinso Hitoshi was even watching your video, but the fact that he called you good looking? Your heart was practically leaping out of your chest as you watched with wide eyes. Your biggest YouTube crush had called you attractive. What a good day.

In your tutorial, you had finishing blending the concealer in and was moving onto baking your under eyes. You dipped your Beauty Blender into the loose powder and stamped it down underneath your eyes. “Now I’m going to let that bake, so I’m going to go ahead and do my eyeshadow right now!” Shinso gave a confused look and paused the video. He applied the powder somehow everywhere but under his eyes. It was honestly impressive how bad he was at this.

“I’m baking? What am I baking?” He furrowed his eyebrows, clearly very confused.

“For my eye look, I’m going to start with this light pink shade called, ‘Love’. How fitting. I’m going to swipe that into my crease and I’ll follow that up with this more hot pink that will go all over my lid. Then, I’m going to deepen my crease with this almost maroon shade and then I’ll cut my crease using the concealer we used earlier and this flat brush.” Shinso looked like you had just grown two heads in front of him. He had no idea what you were doing to your face.

You watched as he messily some hot pink shade onto his lid, rapidly blinking the whole time, not used to someone so close to his eye. He was not going to like tight-lining. He eventually attempted to cut the crease and looked absolutely dead when it was completely too much of his lid.

“I want to die.” He muttered while looking at the camera. His eyes had somehow lost even more life than what he began with, which was, not much.

“Here’s another question that’s coming from Kelsey! She asks: ‘Who do you think the hottest YouTuber is? I personally really like Bakugo Katsuki!’ Oh I’d definitely have to say Shinso Hitoshi! That man is illegally fine.” What did you just say? Your eyes went wide as you listened to yourself. You had completely forgotten what questions you answered in this video, and now Shinso Hitoshi knows that you think he’s hot. But you didn’t stop there.

“One hundred percent, anyone could throw down with me on this one. Shinso Hitoshi is the hottest YouTuber out there. He could curb stomp me, kill my family, and rob me of all of my belongings and I’d still say thank you.” Why did you ever say that. Mina was absolutely losing it on her side, unbelieving that those words had even made it past editing on your part. Why would you even keep that in the video. You wanted to die.

Shinso on the other hand looked very amused, letting out a chuckle of his own. “Didn’t know I was so popular. I’m honestly kind of flattered. But I wouldn’t curb stomp her. Can’t mess up that pretty face.” This was the end of your career. You’re never going back online ever again.

The you doing the tutorial had just begun applying loose glitter onto your lid. “So after applying this glitter base, I’m going to pat this glitter in. If you drag it, it’ll get absolutely everywhere since this glitter is super chunky. So, just lightly pat it in like this.” Shinso did as you told and still managed to have glitter cascading down, covering his black hoodie.

You had moved onto eyeliner and he looked like he was actually going to die, right then and there. He watched you tight-line your eyes and didn’t even attempt it. After creating a wing that looked like it could fly off of his face any moment, Shinso attempted to put a pair of false lashes on. Somehow, they were stuck to his eyelid, rather than where his lashes were. He followed you as you brushed the bake off. You were then moving onto contour, where he managed to make it look like he had rolled in dirt. Apparently, he had no idea where to put contour on his face so he ended up putting it far too high.

The step you were on now involved putting copious amounts of blush on when you answered your next question. “Alright and this one is from Jennie! ‘If you could date anyone, who would it be?’ I guess I hinted at this earlier, but Shinso Hitoshi all the way. I just want to like, hold his hand. I know, scandalous. But really, my thirst for that man is actually unquenchable.” You said with a straight face as you took a sip of water and then winked to the camera.

“Hey Mina, when I die in the next few minutes, can you make sure to clear my search history. Actually, just wipe my whole computer clean.” You sighed as you buried your face into your hands. This was awful. Out of all the tutorials you had on your channel, Shinso Hitoshi just had to pick the one where you basically confess your undying love for him. Mina simply laughed, promising absolutely nothing. Traitor.

On the other hand, Shinso was grinning. It was one of those grins. One that you knew would never let you live this down, and he doesn’t even know you personally. “Seems that I’ve got a fan. I’d love to hold hands, Y/N, you just have to let me know.” His voice drawled, deep and raspy. It would be hotter if his face didn’t look like someone shook up a bag of crushed makeup and threw the contents at him. To be honest, he really just looked like a big train wreck. But, it was still hot, nonetheless.

He did eventually finish the look, setting it all using far too much setting spray. But instead of holding his usual stoic, tired look, he looked like he was planning something. The corners of Shinso’s mouth were still turned up in a sly smirk, and you had a feeling that something was going to happen. You might as well die before you find out to save yourself the embarrassment.

“Well, I can’t say I enjoyed putting on the makeup, but I did enjoy watching Y/N talk about me. Y/N, if you’re watching me, send me a message and we can collab. Or maybe hold hands.” His mouth opened up and his killing grin hit you. This is it. This is where you die. You were internally screaming at the top of your lungs. God, you hated how hot he was even though he looked like Boo Boo The Fool.

“DID YOU JUST HEAR WHAT HE SAID?” Mina screamed out loud for you. Oh god, you were absolutely mortified.

“Well, that’ll do it for this one, if you liked watching me ruin my face, I have more awful videos for you to watch. And even if you didn’t, it’s too late because you’ve already given me ad revenue. If I don’t post my next video soon, safely assume that I’ve died. I might see you next time, bye.” Shinso said his usual outro and you slumped back onto your chair. You looked at Mina on your phone who was grinning ear to ear. Oh no.

“Message him.”

“Absolutely not I would rather die, right here, right now than talk to Shinso Hitoshi about how I confessed my undying thirst for him. So, that means I’m going to die. I want a granite headstone.” You groaned as you stared up at the ceiling.

“You don’t even have to say anything about that though! Anyways, you probably should talk to him. You could just say that you enjoyed his video and thank him for what basically was, a free shoutout. I think it’d be wrong if you didn’t message him at all.” Mina suggested, and well, she wasn’t wrong. It’d be rude to just ignore the fact that Shinso has put hard work and money into making this video. The least you could do was say a simple thank you.

You groaned as you sat up, grabbing your phone from where it was leaned against. “God, I hate when you’re right. I’ll message him though. I’m going to go ahead and hang up then because I still have another video I want to shoot.”

“Yes of course! But make sure to send me screenshots, I NEED to know how this goes down! I’ll talk to you later!” And with that, the FaceTime call was ended. Now you had to will yourself into messaging Shinso and making it seem normal. You would just have to completely ignore all of the moments you called him hot, and hope that he doesn’t bring them up too.

You opened up Instagram and searched up his handle. You were really going to do this. It was now or never, and if you backed out and never messaged him, Mina would never let you live it down and would probably end up messaging him herself. So to avoid embarrassment that would be even worse than what has already been done, you had to message him.

“Hi! I saw your latest video and I wanted to say thank you so much for featuring my video! It really means a lot. Also, I hope you bought an oil based makeup remover, because that stuff is hard to get off. Especially the glitter!” That was appropriate and calm, wasn’t it? You hit send and hoped that he would stay on topic and not mention the fact that you completely exposed yourself.

You sat down your phone and groaned. What if he thought that you were really creepy and was just leading you on to eventually public ally humiliate and ruin you, ending your career as you know it? That was probably a bit extreme, and rationally you knew he would never do such a thing, but you were paranoid.

As you were drowning in your sorrows, a notification popped up on your phone. It was him. He replied so fast that you were taken aback.

“hey thanks. i’m glad you’re not mad that i used your video without permission lol. and no, i didn’t buy one bc no one told me to. but i did get the makeup off with a lot of scrubbing. i was serious about wanting to collab. would you want to do that?” Your face was burning at this point. Collabing with Shinso sounding like an actual dream.

“Absolutely! I would love to! And ouch, is your skin okay? Too much exfoliating can really irritate the skin!”

“yes, i’m okay. i didn’t scrub too much skin off. and great. you live in LA right?? i do too. we should work out a date sometime to talk. we could even hold hands if you wanted to lol.” Oh god, he went a did it. You wanted to scream.

“Ahaha, yes let’s do that! And sorry about all of the rambling about uhh, you. It must’ve felt weird.” Should your casket be wood? A polished, dark oak wood sounded nice. You would look lovely in that casket after you died of sheer embarrassment. But would it look fine alongside a granite headstone? Maybe it should be marble.

“not at all. i’m very flattered. but letting you know, don’t expect me to curb stomp you. i don’t think i’m strong enough to do that. but we can definitely go on a date, and maybe your thirst will go away.” This time, you actually did scream, straight into your pillow. This is the end of you.

You screenshotted the conversation so far and sent it to Mina. You did promise to keep her updated.

She responded, not even a minute later, with far too many emojis. The winky face, the side-looking eyes, and of course, the cowboy. Sometimes, just sometimes, you really hated Mina. But not really.

“WTF DO I RESPOND TO THAT HE LITERALLY JUST INSINUATED THAT HE'S GOING TO DO,,,, STUFF.” You hurriedly typed to Mina. You could imagine her right now, cackling as you watched you panic.

“Just call him hot and catch him off guard LOL. Or say like ur thirst can never be quenched.” You were about to do it. There wasn’t anything else that you could think to say to him that was normal sounding, so maybe this would work? Should your flowers be lilies? Or perhaps daisies would work. Something nice to remember you by. You don’t want your death to be too sad.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think my thirst can go away. It’s pretty intense.” You typed something real ballsy out, as you went to hit ‘select all’ to delete it, somehow, you had sent it to him instead. Amazing! You were going to have a stroke!

“oh? well, we’ll have to see about that, huh? anyways, here’s my number: xxx-xxx-xxxx. we can talk about our date later. i have to film another video to make sure people know i’m not dead. talk to you later, doll.”

Ah, the nail in the coffin. You really were dead now. You didn’t even get to plan what you were going to write on your gravestone.

You copied his number and put it into your contacts. Even though you were incredibly embarrassed about all of this, you were definitely going to use that later. Not only to plan a collaboration.

—

my amazing girlfriend does my makeup correctly (ft. Y/N)

#shinso hitoshi #hitoshi shinso #shinso hitoshi x reader #bnha shinso hitoshi #reader insert #fem!reader #bnha #boku no hero academia #boku no hero academia x reader

[advernia]

the world in her heart, her heart in his hands

assorted sidenotes for the fic i made in response to an anon-sent aesthetic prompt! oooh boy, i sure took long on this one lmao...... _(:3 」∠)_

prompt #7: steady notes coming from a guitar nearby, fireflies dancing around the clearing, two sleeping bags close together, and a bright full moon briefly covered by a cloud.

so the core idea i had when i saw that prompt got requested was based on jonah’s say i do! route: he says that one day, he wanted to go to the land of reason + see the place alice was born and raised. tbh idk how the prompt even led me to that, but the imagery vibes i got from the prompt hinted of something like freedom. or something like lovers secretly meeting in the woods, which i sort of went by.

OKAY SO I SWEAR I FINISHED WRITING THE PROMPT (day zero!!!) EARLY (by my standards) LMAO.............. like, maybe a week after i got the ask or so? but then when i went about proofreading it i felt that it was... lacking??? i can’t explain it myself, but i didn’t wanna post it yet until i got that feeling cleared out - i tried revising + adding, but it didn’t help so i just started thinking about expanding the fic instead...

thinking about the scenes really took longer than i thought?!?!?! i wanted this request up early but i was stumped on what kind of scenes i wanted to see + how their lengths were gonna be.... plus i was thinking if i should go solely on narration + description........ or maybe more of dialogue...... then i jumped to holy shit what’s my timeline gonna be what cultural whatnot am i gonna emphasize and i think i fussed over those aspects rather than picturing the actual scenes LMAOOO.......................

great disclaimer: i have NEVER stepped into the uk..... or england + london for that matter ahahaha GET REKT tho i want to someday huehuehue....... i heavily relied my research on maps + history websites + train timetables to help me get through the touring parts so do forgive me if i messed up somewhere + butchered history haha..... i was thinking to make things vague, but since i’m always in for emphasizing the differences between cradle + land of reason, i decided to get a little technical with it......

i have to admit that i wrote most of the fic during breaks in work hELLA RAD........... i’m doing my job properly, i swear........ it’s just that when i already have a stable idea of what i want to happen, the scene becomes clearer in my mind. i wanted so! badly! to add scenes of jonah pronouncing words and looking at various things funny!!! jonah and his attempts to communicate with londoners!!! fussy jonah poking around a boutique, him being fascinated + studying displays of gun shops, or him accidentally offending the royal guard + constables LMAOOOOO but i couldn’t seem to write anything satisfactory involving those ideas........... ಥ_ಥ

back to the issue of timeline, i was picturing the london in this fic to be around the 1860s or smth.... but then i remembered that in edgar’s dramatic end letter, he mentions his fascination with electricity aka lightbulbs......... which were, like...... discovered early 1800s but only became common in 1882 ahahaha....... when i realized this i was already writing day 18 oOOPS so i just decided to go on and wing it I’M SORRY _(:3 」∠)_

on timeframe, i know that it’s very highly unlikely that jonah would take a vacation for two months. i bet the mere concept of a one-month vacation is enough to give him a heart attack LMAOOOO but let’s just say that red army told him to take his time in the land of reason, especially when they learn that jonah plans to formally meet alice’s parents. when he hears about this, lancelot tosses in the suggestion of proposing to alice while they’re in the land of reason, so that jonah can tell her parents about that too. jonah thinks it’s a fantastic idea..... so he decides to accept hot damn, a two month vacation!

whole route & lengths of stay (points streaked with red are mentioned within the fic minus nottingham whoops sorry):

london [16 days bc IT’S A BIG CITY LMAO (day 30 - 14). rides a morning train going to bristol on the 14th, arrives there midday.]

bristol [5 days (day 14 - 9). leaves bristol on the morning of the 9th to walk all the way to glastonbury, arrives there come late afternoon / evening.]

glastonbury [4 days (day 9 - 5). leaves midday of the 5th to walk their way to alice’s village, arrives there around sunset.]

alice’s village / ‘actual wonderland’ lmao [5 days (day 5 - 0). located somewhere in between bridgwater, taunton, and glastonbury. month 1 of vacation has ended.]

day log commentary!

thirty. arrival in the land of reason through falling - routes where alice does go back don’t feature her falling down london’s sky, so maybe she’s just... spit out from the hole????? idk haha so i altered it anyway!!!!! the landing scene was initially like this: jonah lands first, he catches alice in his arms, they banter a bit....... and then they suddenly remember the suitcase only for said object to fall right on jonah’s head LMAOOO....... it’s a cradle magical object that looks like a regular suitcase but will always be as light as a feather despite it’s contents + it has GREAT CAPACITY so jonah is actually okay!!!!!! i decided to scrap that scene concept though haha!

twenty-nine. does the hole to the land of reason only open around midnight or smth???? i’m sure it doesn’t, but i went with jonah + alice leaving cradle minutes before twelve o’clock, so when they arrive in london jonah gets to see the big ben signal midnight. is that planned on alice’s part? maybe. on another note, i’m assuming that a high-ranking officer + noble like jonah is definitely used to traveling to other countries so he’s definitely not one for homesickness, but i like the thought of him always feeling all sorts of uncomfortable on his first nights away from home - he doesn’t make a big deal about it bc he gets better three days in or so. idk, it just seems fitting for someone very particular like him.

twenty-seven. if luka’s hair is fucking dyed, my god (no wonder i found those light ends of his hair sorta funny), then here’s jonah excuse to adapt another hair color with the help of magic crystals LMAO - i always stick with a reality ensues standpoint, so his ikeman looks aside, i’m sure londoners would find jonah’s hair color (heck, maybe even his eye color) very unique. alice can’t deal with all that sudden attention lol but she somewhat proud that the man who has effortlessly captured the attention of the people of her world too is the man she proudly calls her lover ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

twenty-three. now that i think of it, what exactly does cradle mean when they say the land of reason? are they simply referring to the city of london, or earth as a whole??? most likely the latter, but i’m pretty sure no one except blanc (and possibly ray bc that globe in his room lol) know exactly how large the land of reason is. anyway, not gonna lie, i wanted jonah + alice talking about novels by maybe the likes of charles dickens, thomas hardy, george eliot or h.g. wells. heck, maybe jane austen and charlotte bronte too!!!! but i had to scrap that bc gaps in understanding cultural & historical references + use of language, figurative and non-figurative.... it’s a shame about the last two though - i’m sure jonah can somehow probably relate to the society depicted in their books since the red territory sounds like your typical breeding place of victorian era nobles lmao!!!!

eighteen. sometimes when people learn / gain a deeper understanding about new things, they have the urge to brag about said knowledge to others - of course jonah wants to show alice what he knows about her world so far haha! calling a train a mechanical beast tho lmao..... he refers to it that way, but i think it’s his target of fascination in london!!! noise and possibly environmental issues aside, it’s very convenient + efficient and can cater to all, but what he finds most impressive that it’s a man-made locomotive!!! that’s something worth incredible praise!!! ( ᐛ )و

fourteen. actual train ride!!! hmmm.... i think jonah only panics maybe a good thirty minutes in when the train starts moving??? alice tries to calm him down by pointing at the passing scenery out the window + idle chatter until jonah finally relaxes himself.... but then he starts to panic slightly again when alice suggests that they look around the train and he’s like: is that even remotely safe??? what about our baggages, can we leave them unattended??? hey, i saw you snicker - how dare you laugh at me!!!

nine. according to google, an estimate of a walk starting from bristol going to glastonbury is 8h 25min. that’s for the present time though - would’ve it been shorter or longer in the past??? idk, but definitely one’s pace during the walk affects the total time, lol. since railroads only started out around 1830s + i made alice a village girl, walking really is her way to go. pedestrianism was still a thing around the 19th century!!! her stamina in other routes tho lol (ﾟ⊿ﾟ)

six. here’s my self-indulgent thing of wanting to add a dance scene, pt. 1 LMAOOOO -   the steps in the scene aren’t really from a certain folk dance in england, much less from glastonbury itself... i did look up on england folk dances, but i couldn’t pick one that i wanted to incorporate into the scene so i went with describing some random steps on the top of my head _(:3 」∠)_ ..... maybe someday, i’ll write a proper one..... on another note though, i suppose jonah can adapt quickly to folk dances, but he may come off a bit stiff at first in line / column dances where there’s the switch of partners??? i mean, there are formal 19th century dances that have that same concept, but.... the finesse + personal boundaries are all there lmao -  he’s not against the casual intimacy + show of obvious joy in folk + common dances though, it’s just more of that he’s not used to the informality of it all, i think.

five. plot twist: alice does lead jonah to her home, the cottage on a hill like she always described, but what he doesn’t expect is when she solemnly says that she’d introduce him to her parents she leads him to the back of the hill and in the foot of the hill he finds himself staring at her parents’ gravestones as she’s smiling sadly with a bouquet of flowers in her hand OH WAIT WRONG GENRE WASN’T THIS SUPPOSED TO BE FLUFF LMAO - kidding aside, i do hope cybird catches onto the idea of a story event of chosen suitor going to the land of reason with alice to meet her parents or smth!!! they did do a travel event in the jp ver, after all.... but i’m not keeping my hopes up haha....... _(:3 」∠)_

zero. self-indulgent thing of wanting to add a dance scene, pt. 2 - tho it’s in the latter part along with the prompt lmao!!! hmmm, i’m pretty satisfied with how this one turned out tho i had a little problem arranging the first half - the rest i relatively left untouched even after i added the rest of the days to the fic. hopefully, does well as a nice end to the fic itself..... tbh, the thought of summer dress alice + casual shirt & pants jonah both barefoot & running around like children in moonlit woods (don’t do this in real life folks) made me smile a lot. give me more soft-and-not-so-tooth-rotting-fluff scenes, cybird

also!!! since the prompt involved a guitar, i had a certain track on repeat lmao - you can listen to it here, and it’s the second to the last track titled umibe ni yurete (swaying in the beach)! (ノ^∇^)

and that’s all that i’ve got today!!! thank you very much for reading + hope you’re staying safe & well wherever you are!!!!（｡≧◇≦）ﾉ

#rundown.txt #u know what else took me so long to decide on this fic #a title + summary LMAOOOO #i wanted the title to be something related to the prompt but.... so much for that orz #i usually have no problems making them up but #why was this a struGGLE LOLOL

[the-good-noodle-kf]

Heeyyy so that fic I posted four months ago now has a second and third chapter!

I posted it on AO3 two(?) days ago, and I sort of forgot to post it on here at the same time, but better late than never ig..

This is the second chapter, and I’ll leave the link to the third at the bottom, because the third chapter is v long eheh

Kaito is more pale than Shuichi remembers. Then again, if he looked in a mirror, he’d notice he’s more pale too. The simulation helmet looks out of place on his head; it covers up his signature astronaut-gravity-defiant hair. He’s still, which is so disconcerting for the otherwise animated magenta-head.

When he turns to Maki she has an expression that Shuichi has never seen in the time that he’d known her. She is just staring at Kaito’s unmoving form, but the former detective has a feeling that she isn’t completely there, in that room. He could guess there are a mixture of emotions threatening to rise to the surface; she’s probably feeling regret, despondency, and some form of pity, much like himself. However, the shaking of her hands and the stiffening of her shoulders pair to form what could only be fear. He’s never seen Maki show anything even slightly reminiscent of fear. 

He wonders what she’s afraid of. Is it the fear of the future, for Kaito, or for herself? He doesn’t want to consider the possibility that she’s scared of how things will change once he wakes up, even though it’s fairly likely. He clearly remembered her last few words to Kaito, and his lack of bilateral response. He isn’t the one who’s in love with Kaito (the word sounds weird as he thinks it), but it’s got to be harder to face for her than it is for him. He knows she remembers too; how could she not? 

He settles on the assumption that the brunette just fears the unknown… it’s ambiguous but realistic. Isn’t everything about this new reality unknown anyway?

It starts to feel like he’s intruding, so he quietly leaves the room. He hadn’t realized how helpful the beeping of the heart rate monitor was for synchronising with his breathing, because once he’s back in that hallway, he can’t seem to steadily breathe without thinking about it. 

Now that he is noticing it, it’s like his breathing is a voluntary motion. He tries to distract himself by walking towards the others and thinking about other things. It works until he acknowledges that it works, but then he’s back to thinking about it. He inhales, he exhales. Himiko’s still talking to Tenko, but they’re sitting on the sectional now. He inhales again. Tojo’s somewhere else now, but the tea cart is still there. He exhales. 

Seeing Kaito had brought more questions to his mind, and they’re the type of questions that he can’t figure out the answer to without additional information. He doesn’t necessarily want to talk to any employee of Team Danganronpa ever again (he actually wants to distance himself from any one of them as much as possible), but he won’t get answers otherwise. His disdain for anything Danganronpa related (aren’t they all technically ‘Danganronpa related’?) doesn’t outweigh his tenacious curiosity, so he asks the woman, “What... decides... when they’ll wake up?”

She grins like more of a lunatic than any of Danganronpa’s killers could ever be. “There are the questions I’ve been waiting for!” She looks through her files and starts reading one of them aloud. “Their awakening is determined by a number of factors. The most prominent one is their will to live, however, the severity of their cause of death can substantially delay this. It also depends on when they passed on and how real the simulation felt to them. The more skeptical participants are likely to wake up sooner. At the same time, no exact time can be calculated due to external circumstances, like the game’s psychological impact on them. Anything else?”

“Ah. How long will it be?” 

“It will be a while. He definitely won’t wake up until after participant number eight-zero-zero, Miu Iruma, awakens.” She smiles, even though there’s nothing about the conversation that’s worth smiling about.

There’s one more question that Shuichi needs to ask, but he doesn’t want to know the answer. No, that’s not true; he wants to know the answer, but he’s definitely not ready for it. “Are they... is it possible,” he swallows, “that they won’t wake up?” he braces himself.

The Team Danganronpa employee taps her pen to her lips. “Well, the retaining of in-game memories and the removal pre-game memories is a new implementation this season, but based on how the previous season went, everything should work out alright. Of course, because of unforeseen circumstances, nothing is set in stone.”

He presses his lips in a line. It’s like none of their lives are any consequence to this woman. To her, it doesn’t seem to matter if they live or die. 

“You can go visit them though, any time. I advise you to not remove their helmets though, because that will kill them. They need to rejoin reality on their own terms. Forcing them out now will be too much for their psyche to handle!” She giggles, and Shuichi hides an unsettled shudder. He instead forces a smile and puts some distance between the two of them.

Shuichi begins weighing his options; he needs to find a way to kill time - waste time. He supposes he could go through that locker with his old belongings, but he’s not... ready. He doesn’t feel ready for anything. Nothing makes sense anymore and he just -

He needs to start small. 

He decides that he should probably eat something even though he has no appetite. Just the thought that (at least) the last hundred times he ate something, it was probably tube fed to him by more members of Team Danganronpa because of his… incapacity, makes him want to do it for himself while also ruining his appetite further. 

He can’t win. (He did win.) Isn’t winning supposed to be a good thing? Shuichi doesn’t remember being competitive, especially not in such a dreary situation, but shouldn’t he be at least a little glad that he didn’t have to experience dying like most of the others did? 

He’s not.

Shuichi is pushing himself to eat some bland crackers when Kaede Akamatsu walks into the room. 

“Hey Shuichi.” she greets him with a smile. 

He startles when he sees her, and almost spits out some cracker crumbs, before he realizes that he has to swallow the food in his mouth before he can talk. The dry pieces scratch his throat in his rush to speak, and all he can say is, “K-Kaede.” His eyes are wide open and she’s just smiling like nothing’s wrong about the situation they’re all caught up in. Then he realizes that she was gone before the worst of it happened. But, his brain supplies, she died horribly. 

“I…” He has so many things he wants to tell her but all of them are gone from his mind now. 

“You did it Shuichi, I knew you could.” 

He doesn’t know where to begin. “Wh-?” he lets out a questioning noise. He unintentionally grips the bag of crackers hard enough that a number of them break with a crunch.

“You beat the mastermind at their own game. If anyone could do it, you could,” she tells him, and she’s so nice and so supportive, but he doesn’t really feel like he did anything. Almost everyone died. He should’ve stopped the killing game before it began like Kaede set out to do, though perhaps in a different way...

The first full sentence that comes out is a self-deprecating one, “I didn’t do anything.” His head is down-turned, and he almost wishes he had his hat to hide under. It’s true though. Himiko’s the reason that they figured out the mastermind’s secrets; if she hadn’t found the secret door in the girls bathroom, they never would’ve found out the truth.

“Of course you did! Don’t put yourself down so much, be confident.”

But, he can’t. He nods absently, because he isn’t going to say that aloud. 

“I believe in you Shuichi.”

How could someone like Kaede believe in him when he doesn’t even believe in himself? Why does she believe in him? He’d failed to stop her execution, failed to stop the killing game until the very end, and the only thing he did successfully was help lead the rest of his friends to their executions. He should’ve recognized Kokichi’s plan to stop the killing game instead of revealing Kaito. He should’ve listened to Kaito, and never voted Gonta in the first place. He should’ve been more perceptive before the seance. He should’ve noticed that Hoshi wasn’t okay, and prevented his death. He should’ve realized what Kaede was doing before it was too late. 

Even if they voted incorrectly, none of it was real. They could’ve spared each other the additional trauma that stemmed from witnessing murder after murder, forced upon them by Tsumugi and Monokuma. What did it matter if he died in the simulation instead? It’s not like he ever cared about winning. Or, maybe he did before he got his memories wiped and rewritten, but that doesn’t matter anymore either.

He’s not sure when Kaede leaves the room, but soon he’s alone again. He hears Amami call out, “Kaede! It was Tsumugi. Shuichi told me,” but it’s muffled by the closed door. He’s glad that she’s cleared of the guilt. He can tell by how happy she seems now. He’s happy for her too, and he wonders if he’ll ever get back to normal. 

(What is… normal?)

His first therapy session happens a few days later. The therapist, another member of Team Danganronpa is, surprisingly, sort of nice. She doesn’t seem to have any ill intention, and Shuichi almost thinks her eyes show kindness.

“What you’re experiencing is a form of survivor’s guilt. You may feel like you shouldn’t have made it through the game mostly unscathed while all the others didn’t. You might think you could’ve… put an end to it sooner, or spared them the pain. This is normal, but you should know that nothing that happened was your fault.”

He understands what she’s saying, but he has a feeling it’ll take a little while for him to accept it, if he ever does.

She moves onto the next topic quickly. “How have you been adjusting?”

“Um… I’ve been… okay, I guess.”

“It’s probably been a little overwhelming.” A little is an understatement, and Shuichi can tell that they both know this. He figures she’s downplaying it on purpose, trying not to be too pushy on getting him to open up. He’s grateful for that.

“...yeah.”

It continues along like an ordinary discussion, and the therapist gives some recommendations to help with his appetite and the nightmares. It’s not a very lengthy session; Shuichi doesn’t have much to say. It is helpful, but he’s not ready to talk about everything. The therapist, however, is already privy to all the information involving their lives within the simulation. She encourages him to do things like reading to pass the time because it might take his mind off of the trauma, if only for a little while. She also suggests that he might benefit from visiting the other three that haven’t woken up yet. It might make him feel better to talk to them, even if they can’t hear him. 

She’s right, but he hasn’t prepared himself for that yet. He hasn’t visited Kaito since that brief time with Maki, and he can’t bring himself to go back. Maybe that’ll change soon, but for right now, Shuichi is taking his time. 

His appetite has already improved a bit. He’s been eating two meals a day, which is a start. His stomach must’ve shrunk while he was in the simulation, because he isn’t hungry for anything else. 

Somehow, Shuichi finds himself outside the door of the room that Kokichi Oma currently resides in. It’s not exactly a surprise, though. Something’s been gnawing at him - he wasn’t sure what it was until now. He tries telling himself that he has nothing to say to Kokichi, but…

...that’s a lie. 

He sighs.

Logically, Shuichi, and everyone else’s distrust towards Kokichi was warranted, but… he could’ve tried harder. No, no matter what he did, he’s sure he wouldn’t have figured out Kokichi’s true motives.

But, he… he ignored the fact that Kokichi would’ve been the victim if he hadn’t persuaded Gonta, and that was wrong. He knows that Kokichi was cornered; no one would believe him if he tried to tell them about Miu. He even went as far as to lie and falsely implicate Kokichi during the trial, and that makes him feel worse than when he solved his first homicide case. That first case never really happened though, he reminds himself. 

Kokichi dug himself into a hole, and he could have tried and tried to claw himself out, but he would never make it alone; it wasn’t his fault that no one was willing to give him a hand and pull him out. And then, the hole became a grave, and Kokichi sacrificed himself (why did he sacrifice himself?) to help them when they did nothing for him. 

He… wants to say sorry.

So, he swallows the saliva in his mouth, trying to clear away the thick feeling in his throat, and looks both ways before entering as if he’s a child about to do something he’s not supposed to. He knows Kaito and Maki would probably have something to say about it - though, that might’ve changed for Kaito after the fifth trial, and Maki probably wouldn’t actually say anything, but he can picture a judgemental look. If Shuichi had to guess who Maki hated the most during the entirety of the game, even after everything, it would doubtlessly be Kokichi; and, he would be right. 

He almost expects Oma to jump up and say, “it’s a lie!” 

He doesn’t, of course. He just lays there, looking sickly and pale. The bags under his eyes are ironic considering how long he - they’ve all - been unconscious. Then again, sleeping more than necessary does that too, he’s heard. 

He swallows more of the dryness clotting his throat and turns away. The room suddenly feels suffocating, like it’s closing in on him, almost like that hydraulic press closed in on Kokichi, the intrusive thought passes through his mind, and he internally scolds himself, stop it, don’t think about it. 

He promises himself that he’ll say sorry when Kokichi wakes up. If, his thoughts remind him, prompting a grimace. 

He visits Miu right after. He knows it’s only to justify himself for visiting Kokichi, but seeing her so quiet and not cracking some crude joke or reference is also so unusual. 

He probably wouldn’t feel sympathetic for her if she hadn’t been the one who ended up dead, but he still can’t fault Gonta for trying to save them all… She planned out a murder, and it’s messed up, it’s so messed up - 

She would’ve gone through with it too. He’s sure of it. 

She’d been so calculating, designing the simulation - (a simulation within a simulation, Shuichi pointlessly notes) - for the sole purpose of murder, and even going so far as to pin the blame on Kaito. He wonders how different things would’ve been if she had succeeded. Not much of one, he supposes. It still would’ve all been fake, fake, fake. Maybe the killing game wouldn’t have been prolonged for as long as it did, not like it would matter. 

Shuichi stews in the thought as he walks back to his room. He’s too tired to think right now. He hopes that everything will stop being so exhausting if he takes a nap, but he knows that’s just wishful thinking.

I also posted it on my Ao3 Account along with chapter three :}

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #fanfic #postgame #shuichi saihara #maki harukawa #himiko yumeno #rantaro amami #kaede akamatsu #ryoma hoshi #kirumi tojo #korekiyo shinguji #angie yonaga #tenko chabashira #gonta gokuhara #eventual romance #eventual oumasai

[littlemessyjessi]

“Imma Need You...” : Joe Mazzello Imagine: Plus Size Reader/OC

Joe Mazzello Imagine  Plus Size, POC, Alternative, Mother and Wife, PS 

Jess had always been weird.

Like, always.

Even as a kid.

So when she decided to shave her head....it really didn't shock Joe in the slightest.

She'd been through every color in the book.

She loved experimenting with her look on a daily basis.

It was one of the reasons he loved her.

She was fearless.

One day she'd wear her hair, that had been dyed electric blue, in a braid with some hot pink contact lenses and beautiful elaborate makeup in soft green.

The next day she'd wear a bright orange wig and dress head to toe in neon yellow.

She had no fear in that area so when he came home to the sound of buzzing in the bathroom, he was more intrigued than scared.

"Babe?" he called out.

"Bathroom!" she called back and he chuckled at the little bubble of excitement he could hear in her voice.

He tossed his keys in the bowl and made his way down the hall and leaned against the door frame.

Their daughter, Aaliyah, sat on the closed toilet staring up at her mother with bright excited eyes.

Aaliyah was six and she was convinced her mother was some sort of other species.

Because to her, she was the most beautiful ever changing creature and she'd never seen anyone like her.

She'd obviously only known Jess to be Jess but still.

Then again, she was six and very heavily into a fairy phase...and her mother had her ears surgically altered to a point.

So ya know.

"Daddy!" she gushed hopping down and running to Joe who picked her up.

It was then that Joe noticed she wasn't actually shaving her whole head but more so another chop and doing a fade.

Thank god for years and years of her sweeping up hair at her father's barber shop and learning the craft over the years.

Or else she'd be shit outta luck.

"Daddy, mommy is cutting her hair again and I'm excited!"

Joe kissed his daughter's forehead as he held her in his arms.

"Me too." he said. "Marrying mommy is like being with a different woman all the time."

Jess kicked at him like a mule making him laugh.

"Don't say that." she laughed. "She'll go to school  and say it and her teachers will never let me hear the end of it."  

He just chuckled and with a boyish shrug said, "Sucks to be youuuu."

Jess rolled her eyes as she kept fading.

"Daddy." Aaliyah said getting Joe's attention again.

"Yeah, babydoll?" he asked in amusement.

"Can I cut my hair like mommy?" she asked.

Jess bit her lip to keep from laughing and Joe silently cursed her through the mirror.

"Well, maybe we wait a little while.." he said carefully.

"But I want it!" she argued.

"I know." he said.  "But you also like doing your Elsa braid don't you?  And you can't do that if you cut your hair really short. Did you know that?” 

"Well...." Jess said and he covered Aaliyah's eyes briefly so he could reach out and swat his wife's ass eliciting a giggle from her.

"Mommy wears wigs sometimes!" Aaliyah responded and Jess silently fist pumped out of their daughter's line of sight.

"Tell you what." Joe reasoned.  "We wait until the end of the school year and if you want to cut it for the summer we can. Deal?"  

"Deal!" she said and they did their little secret handshake. "Now, Daddy, I need something from you and I need you to not say no."

Joe chuckled, "Well, that's a tall order babydoll.  I have to know my terms first."

"I need an Elsa braid." she said. "And I need it right now.  And I also need some snacks."

"Snacks?!" he teased. "Doesn't your mother feed you?!"

"I feed her plenty." Jess cut in with a look. "But she's our child...meaning she's a bottomless pit.  I don't know what you want me to do.  She ate a whole pot of spaghetti for lunch. It's your turn to feed the human garbage disposal."

"Mommy!" Aaliyah gasped. "How dare you?!"  

Joe nearly choked on his spit and pushed his fist into his mouth as he watched his daughter perfectly mimick her mother's theatric response to him....like 90% of the time.

Jess turned around and moved to her child still in Joe's arms.

"I am so sorry, Madame Aaliyah.  However, may I recieve your forgiveness?" she asked placing a sweet kiss on Aaliyah's little nose.

"I want you to do my makeup." she said.

"I can do that." Jess said.

"Like a fairy." Aaliyah continued.

"Ok, sweetcakes." she said.

"But an ice fairy.... cause like Elsa.  And Elsa powers...cause Daddy you're still gonna braid my hair right?" she asked and Joe gave her a nod.

"Ok!" Aaliyah said clapping her hands together. "Mommy! Get your kit and make me sparkly! Daddy! Get the comb- the pink one - it's important!"

"Yes, Ma'am!" Jess saluted her daughter and left the bathroom to find her kit.

Joe set his daughter down on the stool and found the comb before looking down and seeing that tons of his wife's hair was all over him.

He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it into the hamper before returning to Aaliyah's hair.

Eventually, he managed to put together a braid that resembled ....well, a braid.

But it was good enough for her.

However, he failed to notice his wife in the doorway staring at him with her bottom lip tucked between her teeth.

She moved into the room and set her kit down.

She then reached out and placed her hands over Aaliyah's ears as she stared at him.

"Joe?"

"Yeah, babe?"

“Imma need you to put a shirt on."

"What? Why?"

"Because your standing there shirtless being a wonderful father and if you don't quit....you're gonna have to put another baby in me."

He smirked.

"Hey, I could be into the idea of a baby again."

She snorted, "Yeah, but you're not the one carrying it....or the one pushing it out of your coochie."

"Maybe we can just practice." he winked.

Jess smirked before removing her hands from their daughter's ears and looking down at her.

"Babycakes, you wanna go to Nanny's tonight?" she asked.

"Yes!" she cheered and promptly ran off to pack her backpack.

"Should we atleast offer mom the courtesy of asking?" Joe laughed.

"Joseph, your mother has already claimed her for tomorrow.   I'm sure she'd love it.  Plus you know she'll take her to KFC and bingo night."

"Good point." he said. "Liyah! Get your teddy bear! We're going to see Nanny!"

He then turned to Jess, "And you should prepare for a long night of disgusting activities."

"Joe!" she laughed.

He growled and pulled her in by her neck, "I'm going to fill you up so good."

"God! Get out!" she laughed and shoved him out of the bathroom.

The Mazzellos may or may not have a breeding kink.

Also, it may or may not be the reason they now have Aaliyah.

Jess took a look in the mirror.

In truth, she was ready for another baby.

However, she wasn't sure if she was ready to deal with Joe when she was pregnant because he couldn't keep him damn hands off her.

But damn...the sex was good and that new Daddy glow fit him just right.

And of course, nothing could beat the feeling of motherhood.

They made good babies and she knew it.

With that, she snapped her birth control shut and locked it away.

Hello darlings! Hope you enjoyed this little piece and have a wonderfully awesome day!

If you wanna see more of my content just check out my blogs! @littlemessyjessi is the main blog full of fandom fictions, imagines, headcanons and sickeningly sweet fluff! Yeah, I know, lol. Barf.  But hey, I like it. @witchyweirdness is the magical blog full of witchy content And last but not least !   @monsterbaesbymamakennysaurus is my monster blog full of all kinds of monster related content! So I hope to see you there! Love, Kenny

@frankie2902

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Love, Kenny

#joe mazzello #joe mazzello x ps reader #joe mazzello x plus size reader #joe mazzello imagine #joe mazzello x ofc #ofc #plus size #ps reader #plus size reader #poc reader

[littlegalerion]

Shipathon  Meme!

Tagged by @sheirukitriesfandom Thanks for tagging me and giving me an excuse to rant about ships~ Tagging: @foxyhearts @diamond-loki @greennightingale  1.) First Ship you Ever Wrote Fic For? It was for Vanus and Caafire, and it actually got featured front page on an animo! It was old Caafire though, before I had developed her to her current status of unable-to-use-magic-because-if-she-does-she’ll-explode sword swinger master. Back then she was just a free lance battlemage with a bad family life.  2.) Ship you Write Most Now? Well... tech I write for Trechire x Eliindil (Sheogorath) most now because that’s my timeline’s canon, so every time I write using characters in that universe I’m tech writing that ship, as Sunnabela and Kirr are their kids (Sunnabela his step-son, but Eliindil raised him). Just it’s a post-ship writing I guess? In terms of who I formulate for the most, that would probably be Laloriaran X Trechire in the AU, which I really should write more of.  3.)Ship you Read the Most Now? Sotha Sil x S/O, and it’s more just headcanon fluff stuff really. I wish there was more Sotha Sil x S/O, but that’s “not lore friendly” so I think a lot of would be writers get intimidated and scared away by lorebeards to write any solid series with it. I HAVE seen some, and for that I’m grateful. The headcanons at least seem to be multiplying beautifully.  4.) Newest Ship? Some questions are best left unanswered.  5.) Rare Ship you Wanna Read More of? Bring on the Sotha Sil x S/O or the Vanus x S/O.  Please, spoil me.  6.) Your Taboo Ship? Okay, I can already feel the heat of sheer rage from people reading what I’m gonna write under this. But Vanus x Mannimarco is the most toxic ship I have ever seen, in ANY fandom.  Firstly, heavily cliche. “They hate each other so at one time they must have liked or loved each other” No, that is not what that means. Sometimes it could be the case, but if it was romantic, then it wasn’t a “little falling out”. Vanus and Mannimarco are legends in their war against each other. In ESO Mannimarco loudly insults and kills mages of the guild, while Vanus openly spits against necromancy. Both very passionately doing so. If something romantic did happen, it’s a romance with no good memories in it. Secondly, it’s abusive. In Summerset, we get to see the two of them in their youth interacting. During this quest, it’s very obvious Mannimarco is manipulating Vanus, who is very optimistic and wants to believe the best in his friend. Mannimarco, however, doesn’t care. He never saw Vanus as an equal, BUT as a potentially USEFUL mage. He probably did feel a sting when Vanus rejected necromancy, but it wasn’t because “oh dear, my lover has rejected me!” It was most likely because Mannimarco realized he had lost a very useful future second in command, and gained an enemy which would prove a pain for years to come. I like to also point out, Mannimarco wasn’t this lonely little necromancer in the Order. We see a note concerning him in the dungeon that proves he had other friends and, while perhaps not well received overall, he had their respect as a senior member.  What I’m getting at is, if there was ANY romantic or sexual relationship between Mannimarco and Vanus, it was NOT healthy. Mannimarco knew what he was doing, and was most likely an emotionally abusive partner. The type that gets uncomfortably moody or guilt trips their partner to get his way. He is SEEN doing this in the quest, actually, when Vanus catches him raising a skeleton guar, Mannimarco replies, “I thought you’d understand” and “You sound like the Ritemaster.” A chord he knew would hit Vanus hard, which it did, as Vanus stumbles to reply and drops the argument.  Listen, if your s/o does something that makes you feel very uncomfortable and unsafe, then you go to them about it and they pull that crap on you, YOU LEAVE.  Lastly, a lot of the time it seems I see this ship under “cute gay mages owo”. Gay couples deserve healthy relationships. Gay relationships do not need to be soaked in pure drama and dark tones to exist. Especially in Elder Scrolls, where gay couples live happily and were never considered out of place.  Do not hide under the gay tag to get away with an abusive ship. Being gay doesn’t excuse a person for being an asshole, or for someone to be a pushover. But that’s enough of my ravings against that ship. For the record, I adore Mannimarco as a villain; he’s one the best I’ve ever seen, honestly.  So this isn’t just an unfair rage fest against him.  7.) They never met in Canon Ship? I feel like I have a ship on the tip of my tongue, but it just isn’t coming out. I’m drawing a blank. Nerevar with literally anyone else other than Ayem? 8.)Your unexpected Ship? Lyris and her Redguard husband were a surprise. I usually don’t relate to the warrior types in these games, but these two are just sweethearts.  9.) The Ship you Always Forget to give Love to? Verandis x Trechire. GEEZE, I forget about them so much and it’s probably the most logical ship. Verandis is a vampire lord who wants to convince the world vampires aren’t always evil, and to convince other vampires they shouldn’t live at war with the world. Trechire is a werewolf alpha who hides her wolf self from virtually everyone she knows, save for her pack, who she strives to teach to be true hunters with a code of honor. Not just some hounds who bark crazily at passersby who have a bow in their hands.  Both mages, both Altmer, both famous for their family names, so there’s lots of pressure on them.  They’d have so much to talk about, and would be such a stress reliever to each other.  10.) Ship your OC with a canon character? I already do, that’s like half the ships already in this post.  My biggest one is Laloriaran x Trechire.  Although Trechire x Sheogorath is my canon, as Eliindil becomes Sheogorath, so that counts as a canon character? 11.) Ship you’re embarrassed to Ship? She recently acquired his staff motif in this big event on ESO. He recently traded his old staff design in for the new Chapter, but in the main quest line his character model still has it.  That’s all I’m saying, because I don’t take the ship seriously, but it still exists and fuels my nightmares.  12.)Your most Romantic Ship? Trechire and Eliindil, because Trechire was made by me, Eliindil is an OC made by both me and my fiance who helps flesh out his personality, design, and background.  Then of course Laloriaran and Trechire.... 13.)Your Sexiest Ship? If I don’t say Sheogorath and Trechire, pretty sure I’m getting teleported 50 feet above the stone surface of where I shall die.  14.) Your most Tragic Ship? Laloriaran and Trechire, who ARE in my canon but of course, Laloriaran dies.  In her canon, Trechire completed the events of Morrowind, Clockwork City, and Summerset before the main questline of ESO. She had seen so many friends or just good people die. Leythen being ripped from reality right before her, Darien being forced to sacrifice himself and Trechire reading his last words before him fading away forever. Tanval Indoril dying from his own mistake, Verandis making a stupid decision out of desperation and guilt. Not to mention all the numerous little quests where this innocent and complicated person dies or suffers in the end. ESO is vicious. She had witnessed so much death, and in Laloriaran’s eyes she saw someone who understood that pain. More than anything in the world, she wanted the last Ayleid to return to Tamriel, where he’d be among friends that wouldn’t count on him for survival, but live and thrive together. She made a promise in her heart, if ANYONE would survive, even at the cost of her own life, Trechire would see to it that Laloriaran did, be it as a lover or as a friend.  And in the end, he died in her arms, Trechire a healer who could offer nothing to save him.  15.) A Ship You want more Content For? Again, BRING ON THE VANUS WITH S/O AND SOTHA SIL WITH S/O, PLEASE. 

#boy this was fun #vanus #vanus galerion #sotha sil #verandis #tanval #Laloriaran #laloriaran dynar #elder scrolls #elder scrolls online

[earwaxinggibbous]

10 Worst Hits of 2018!

I hate the 2018 hit list.

I hate all the artists we brought back. I hate all the new ones we got. I hate the fact that Lil Peep kicked the bucket without getting on the hot 100 but XXXfuckassaton got three hits. I hate that nothing off of Kamikaze reached the year end hot 100 despite it being one of the only good hip-hop albums that dropped this year. I hate that we’re all alive and that Tumblr has banned porn. But life goes on.

Bad hit songs. Bing bang boom.

Fair warning, I’m gonna be hitting a lot of trigger topics including abuse, pedophilia and rape.

10. Lucid Dreams - Juice WRLD

Before I say anything, can I just point out that ‘Juice WRLD’ is one of the absolute worst rap names I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

Anyway, Lucid Dreams.

I feel like rap music has been having a lot of sad pathetic break-up songs lately. And this won’t be the last one, absolutely not. Pretty much everything about Lucid Dreams, much like a seizing, dying epileptic old man, is wriggling and frothing uselessly in a puddle of its own filth. With nothing to do but choke out on a mouthful of blood it can only try to scream weakly through a pool of foamy spit that’s settling towards the back of its throat. It’s sad in the same way that ASPCA commercials are sad, as opposed to how a good break-up song feels.

As Juice WRLD brokely copies the beat of Lil Uzi Vert’s smash hit XO Tour Llif3 from last year, and also randomly samples a song by Sting, he stumbles weakly through lyric after insipid lyric that sounds like it was written by a 13-year-old. I tried to find an example of specific bad lyrics but holy shit, I’d honestly be better off just putting the lyric genius page here, complete with verified translations of this lyrical xanax binge from our boy Juice WRLD himself.

It’s a break-up song, but it’s as whiny as one can get. With Juice WRLD claiming “evil girls have the prettiest face” (gag) and insisting the girl in this song “wants him dead”. His whimpery vocals don’t help any part of this droning septic tank that I can only describe as the closest similarity we’ll ever get between a song and the pokemon Muk.

Even the music video is just a shittier version of XO Tour Llif3, and while it’s honestly more interesting than the other 75% of rap videos, what does it really add? I can only imagine that whoever was directing it realized this song has literally nothing going for it other than the possibility that stoners and pill-poppers will mistake it for XO Tour Llif3 if they’re high enough and threw in some surrealist imagery with the excuse being that, well, it’s titled Lucid Dreams. 

Really the most egregious thing about this song is that, in the lyric genius page, Juice WRLD goes on some tangent about how popping pills isn’t cool and he was popping pills “before it was cool” and now kids are doing it. Hey Hi-C, you know these kids look up to people like you, right? Why not actually make a song about how doing drugs is bad instead of just offhandedly mentioning how you used to pop pills to, quote, “feel a-okay”? Not that I’m assuming you ever thought of that when you were writing this, most likely dosed up on a gallon of cough syrup.

Then again, I dunno if I wanna be preached to by the man who wrote a song titled All Girls Are The Same.

A lot of songs this year were underwritten and boring. Lucid Dreams isn’t the worst offender, but it’s definitely the saddest. And I don’t think it was sad the way ol’ Juicy Juice was intending. Personally, I’d rather just drink the kool-aid.

Blurgh... Muk cannot change you... Muk must replace you...

9. Meant to Be - Bebe Rexha ft. Florida Georgia Line

Is it bad that I honestly wasn’t sure who was the feature and who was the headline of this song?

Anyway, here we have Florida Georgia Line returning for another year of meathead bro-country crap and Bebe Rexha returning for another year of having literally no personality whatsoever with a song that has so little substance it may as well just be air.

I’ve never really extrapolated my thoughts on Bebe, mostly because she’s a complete and utter non-presence in every track she appears on. I honestly didn’t even realize she had a music career of her own, I felt like she just existed to feature on everyone else’s shitty music. What the hell is she gonna sing about besides the damn factory she was built in?

I’ve also never extrapolated my thoughts on Florida Georgia Line.

Here’s what I’m imagining their brains look like:

Yeah. So a combination between two walking cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a literal sex robot. What can go wrong? Well. Everything.

With a title like Meant to Be, you’d think it’s about running screaming into a relationship because you know it’s gonna work. Not so, as it’s actually about staying relaxed in a relationship. We got time, right? At least that’s what like, 75% of it is about that.

Bebe seems more than ready to rush in and get sloppy, but you think Florida Georgia Line are 100% ready to enter a steady relationship with a dead person? I wouldn’t be.

The production is just a piano and some sad trap drums, so basically every other Florida Georgia Line song. It has nothing going for it other than maybe masturbating to the music video and Bebe’s sweet, sweet inflatable titties trying desperately to crawl their way out of her country girl flannel.

And that’s really it.

You tried.

(Or did you?)

8. Friends - Marshmello ft. Anne-Marie

Aww! They’re so cute.

Marshmello is kind of a cryptid to me. I never really understood the whole trend of producers and DJs wearing these weird things on their head. And part of me, well, all of me feels like Marshmello rides purely on quirkiness alone.

Look at him! He’s so wacky!

The production on this isn’t bad per se, other than this high-pitched squeal they drop into the final chorus, but it’s definitely not great and kinda has me wondering why Marshmello is basically producer of the year despite not doing anything much more interesting than all the other producers. At best he has a little bit more energy behind him.

Anne-Marie has apparently, allegedly existed before this year, but I have literally no recollection of any song by her. But if this song is anything to go by, she’s annoying and sucks.

Friends touts itself as “the friendzone anthem” and tries to be relatable to teenage girls who’ve had to friendzone a boy, and if I had to guess this is sort of in response to all the friendzone songs from 2016 like Treat You Better. This would be fine except 1. you’re two years late, 2. nobody wants to hear a friendzone anthem and 3. this song is the highest level of cuntiness anyone can comprehend.

Here’s the thing about the concept of the friendzone. Nobody sits around wanting to friendzone people. Nobody is chilling in their bedroom with their friends wishing they could have a friend who has a crush on them and then that friend is like “I like you” so they can be like “uhh we’re just friends”.

Which is why we don’t really need an anthem for it.

The friendzone sucks. It’s not even a real problem, dudes just make it a problem because apparently being friends isn’t good enough for them. Nobody wants to have a friend who’s crushing on them, nobody’s happy about that. And the catty Mean Girls tone that Anne-Marie takes to it makes it seem like she’s a strong independent woman trouncing on the hearts of men like some kind of TERF horse when really nobody feels that way when having to “friendzone” a person.

Plus judging by the lyrics, this guy is showing up at 2 AM in the rain. At some point you need to stop being friends when he starts obsessively stalking you, maybe a few words to consider would be R-E-S-T-R-A-I-N-I-N-G O-R-D-E-R.

Women have the right to see their male friends as just that. But nobody is proud of having to do it. It’s not a point of pride, it’s just a choice people make, like what shirt they wanna wear in the morning. Trying to sell it as some kind of bootleg female empowerment anthem is pathetic.

Also I swear to god she spells friends as “F-R-I-N-D-S” in the chorus.

“We’re just frinds, Deadmau5.”

7. Yes Indeed - Lil Baby and Drake

Who the good god damn is Lil Baby? I’d never actually heard of him until someone in my music history class gave us a presentation on Lil Baby and how cool he is. I’d literally never heard of the guy before, because I never really listen to any of these hits until the end of the year.

Turns out Lil Baby is just another mumble-rapper, this time jacking his style from Young Thug. Color me surprised, I guess. How come none of the mumble rappers I actually like came back this year? No Desiigner, no Lil Uzi Vert, no Lil Xan? No. Fuck you. You get Juice WRLD and Lil Baby, two of the worst rap names on the planet.

He’s on the list of rappers made famous by Drake, and Drake had a monster year this year. Even with me living in a hole I knew the impact God’s Plan had, but apparently all 25 of his crummy songs charted at some point. That is 25 monotonous Drake songs circulating through the radio stations, 25 Drake songs constantly weighing on the shoulders of the collective public, and 25 Drake songs even his detractors probably knew all the words to just through exposure. Even I’m sick of the guy, and I have Hotline Bling on my Google Play Music library.

Yes Indeed is honestly void of things to say about it. Drake is boring, Lil Baby has one of the worst voices in recent history I can think of, the beat is nothing, it’s just a nothing song. The only noteworthy thing about it is that Lil Baby references Pikachu, a big mistake, as Young Thug also referenced Pikachu on one of his first hits. Though I’ll admit a yellow car has more similarities to the electric mouse pokemon than diamonds do.

What bothers me about this song is less the song itself, as the song is a non-presence, but moreso that in a world where streaming has finally seeped its way into the Hot 100, we have come to the conclusion that this is what people want to hear. They wanna hear Yes Indeed. And I just don’t get it.

Also, “waah waah waah, bitch I’m a baby”. High art.

6. Te Bote - A whole shitload of people

I feel like Spanish reggaeton has been an on-and-off interest of the American public. But it really reached a head recently thanks to Despacito, which all Alexa memes aside, is a great fucking song. But the fruits of its labor have been less than impressive, from last year’s goat-screeching jam Mi Gente to whatever the hell this is.

It’s nice knowing that foreigners write music as shitty as we do.

The title, Te Bote, roughly translates to “I dump you”. But it can be read much harsher in Spanish as bote is often the verb people use to describe tossing out garbage. And boy, is this song... uh... you know.

I don’t like to barf out the word “misogyny” constantly just because, well, anything can be misogynistic if you look deep enough. There’s a point where even I, the ratty little feminist I am, just don’t care. But Jesus, referring to your woman as garbage in the most backhanded way is... wow.

But I’ll be honest, being an English speaking moron, I don’t care about the lyrics. My problems run much deeper than blatant misogyny and pettiness.

Namely that this song sounds like ass.

Te Bote has six artists on it. Six artists, and not a single one sounds good. Most of them are squealy. I don’t actually know who’s who except Ozuna and Bad Bunny. Ozuna is considered one of the worst Spanish artists of today, and I can see why, because he just straight-up sounds like the lovechild of Akon and Lloyd.

As for Bad Bunny, I was slightly more drawn in by him because he looks like a cross between Blackbear and Pitbull, and I dunno if he’s dropped any other better singles, but on this he straight-up sounds like Barney the Dinosaur. Not as much as Lil Yachty, but still. Most of the others sound like autotuned mice, but there’s one guy who tries some kind of low-voiced speed-rapping and it sounds weird and wrong. The production is nothing notable, and uses the bum, bum-bum drumline of literally every reggaeton and Spanish pop song including Despacito.

And I could forgive all of that.

But let’s look at this for a moment. Each artist has their own verse. That’s six verses. Six verses plus five choruses, one pre-chorus, an intro and an outro. And how much does that add up to?

Nearly seven minutes.

Seven minutes of the same beat. Seven minutes of basically the same kinds of singers. Seven minutes of misogynistic lyrics. Seven minutes of garbage, garbage, garbage. Imagine listening to this whole thing. There are people on this earth who have actually sat through this whole garbage song multiple times and thought, “yeah. I like this.” 

I mean of course Te Bote barely got any radio play, it’s nearly 7 minutes long with no breaks. So obviously some massive group of people had to be streaming it and listening to it by choice.

5. Taste - Tyga ft. Offset

Remember Tyga? He was one of the Young Money rappers that didn’t completely fall off after the 2000′s, along with Nikki Minaj and Drake. But after he put out $timulated, a song about how he fucked a 17-year-old Kylie Jenner but, in the words of Slim Shady, “look at her bush: do it got hair?”

we all dropped him, because that’s fucking gross. Kylie Jenner dumped him and is now dating someone else, I forget who because I don’t care. And with us having to deal with 6ix9ine I was comfortable leaving Tyga in the wastelands. 

Honestly? The only reason this song is even here is because it’s a return Tyga single. I’m not even mad about Freaky Friday, because like, whatever, it made me laugh like a stupid idiot, but this? We asked for this. A Tyga single in 2018, about nothing, with a nothing beat, and Offset still bragging that he’s the best member of Migos when that’s like being the twinkiest member of One Direction. And once again, people actively wanted to hear this song about nothing in a year full of songs about nothing that, at the very least aren’t by pedophiles.

I don’t even wanna talk about this anymore.

4. I’m Upset - Drake

Me fucking too.

Like I said, Drake dropped 25 songs on his new album Scorpion, and all of them became hits. The worst of which, in my opinion, being I’m Upset. Just look at that title. That’s how your father talks to you when you slam a window open with a baseball and he walks through the glass shards. 

This one has backstory, my favorite, longtime rival Pusha-T stated in some song that Drake actually had a secret child with a porn star and was planning on using that kid for like, an Adidas sponsorship or something. Which is fucked up. And at least part of that has been confirmed on Drake’s end, he did have a secret son with a porn star.

And then Scorpion and I’m Upset dropped. And it sucked. All of it.

The chorus of I’m Upset is weirdly catchy, but the beat is like every other Drake beat, Drake himself sounds about as upset as he can convey, which is very little, and it’s all just really really boring soundwise. When Drake goes on for long enough he begins to just sound like a bunch of bees. Bees, bees, bees, nothing but bees. And I’m tired of Drake bees! I’m sick of it! I don’t want anymore!

Anyway, lyrically the gist of I’m Upset is about how Drake doesn’t like paying alimony, and NO.

BAD DRAKE! BAD! BAD RAPPER! GO TO YOUR ROOM!

You do not get to be a world-famous rapper with fuckillions of dollars to your name and get to whine and bitch about paying alimony to your baby mama. You don’t get to roll on the floor whimpering about how your evil harpy whore of a porn star one-night-stand is (legally) receiving money from you to take care of the son that YOU ditched. 

You had 25 hits this year. 25. And you’re getting pissy because you have to pay and I quote fifty to a hundred thousand dollars child support. For you that should be nothing. You are practically drowning in money, and if you really don’t wanna pay child support you could, I dunno, raise your goddamn son instead of leaving him in the hands of someone who probably barely makes a fraction in a year of what you make in a month?

Look, say what you want about Eminem. At least he was a good father on record, and if he isn’t a good one in real life I’ll be very very shocked.

I’m upset too, Drake.

3. Roll in Peace - Kodak Black ft. XXXTENTACION

I fUCKING HATE KODAK BLACK

Might wanna consider writing stuff down, Kodes.

May I call you Kodes?

Anyway, Roll In Peace is the only song on this list that isn’t ACTUALLY in the Year End Hot 100, but I couldn’t just let it slide. Not when it’s a collab beween Kodak Black and XXX. Not when it sounds like ass and feels like being shot.

If Drake sounds like bees then Kodak sounds like mosquitos, right in your ear, in the deepest parts that can only be reached by one of those earwax slurping tools. The beat has that flute again, probably because it’s half of what made Tunnel Vision famous. (The other half being controversy of course.) X’s verse has like, two lines to do with the actual plot of this song. And what is the plot?

Oh, poor pitiful Kodak can’t roll in peace. Poor Kodak Black can’t have any time to himself! The media is just all over him and X for no reason whatsoever! He’s never done anything wrong, other than, oh I don’t know, the rape allegations? The abuse? Armed robbery? Assault? That one time X nearly killed a gay dude in prison for no reason other than the gay part?

Yeah, fuck you.

You can’t “roll in peace” because you don’t have the right to anymore. You are a bad person. And X, when he was alive, was a bad person too. Sure maybe he was claiming to be working on self-improvement, but the only way I’d believe it is if I saw it, and it’s too late for that now.

As long as you refuse to apologize, you will not “roll in peace”. As long as you don’t see that you have done something wrong and continue to blame it on systemic racism which is a very real thing that you continue to trivialize again and again so you can avoid your rape allegations, you aren’t allowed to have any peace in your goddamn fucking life.

You can’t try to deflect it on Lil Uzi who posts Satanic imagery on his Instagram despite wearing a Jesus piece. You don’t get to deflect. You get nothing, and you deserve to go broke and fuck off.

There’s a joke I can make, but it’s too soon.

2. Gummo - 6ix9ine

Oh, okay, I can do this.

Uh, Gummo is this really good movie directed by Harmony Korine about some kids in this town that was totally wrecked by a tornado. And after that everything’s in shambles, so these kids can just do whatever they wa...

Oh. Oh dammit.

GOD IS DEAD GOD IS DEAD GOD IS DEAD.

So imagine you’re me looking at the Hot 100 for one of the very first times about a year ago, and you see a song titled after one of your favorite flicks of all time. And sure, it’s being sung by a guy who looks like a Lisa Frank condom, but god you just love that movie so much. And sure, Nicole Dollanganger has already made songs referencing that movie, but you want MORE.

Then you play it and it has literally nothing to do with it.

It’s loud and obnoxious and stupid and has a very clearly hispanic dude dropping the n-word like he fucking owns it. He’s just screaming these nonsense lyrics about nothing. And it’s not like I just don’t get songs with screaming. I have the entirety of Carcass’ Reek of Putrefaction on my phone. But this? This sucks. It sucks! The beat doesn’t fit at all and no matter how I look at it it wouldn’t fit anywhere else, and 6ix9ine’s flow is the death of all art. The only thing he can do, much like a child in a well, is scream and scream and scream and it’s horrible.

And trust me.

This was far before I knew of 6ix9ine’s baggage.

In case you don’t know somehow, this Rainbow Brite little fucker was actually convicted of filming a sex tape of a 13-year-old. While I don’t think he actually had sex with her, he was at some level sexually involved with her.

How did we respond? We gave the ugly fucker a hit. And his hit was this. Where he directly references his sexual involvement with this 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL.

He doesn’t give a shit. And he knows his fans don’t either. He continues to release low-effort garbage music, and in an interview about FEFE he even openly stated that he doesn’t put any effort into writing lyrics. He doesn’t try, he’s a bad person, and his blind fanbase continues to shower him in money like he deserves it. 

We’re idiots.

An awful song made by an awful person. The only way to hold a candle to it would be, well, an even worse song made by an awful person.

Anyway, dishonorable mentions.

FEFE - 6ix9ine ft. Nikki Minaj

This song sucks too. And Nikki Minaj should be ashamed for working with this fuckhead.

God’s Plan - Drake

I’m almost definitely a minority in absolutely loathing this song, but I can’t stand it. It’s not structured, there’s no flow to it, it just feels like a whole lot of nothing with no point. And while I will give it to Drake that throwing money at homeless people is a really good thing regardless of why he did it, it was still a super obvious publicity stunt.

Plug Walk - Rich The Kid

Boring.

Girls Like You - Maroon 5 ft. Cardi B

Also boring. My tolerance for Maroon 5 has lasted way longer than anyone else’s, but I think it’s about time we let them go.

I Like Me Better - Lauv

I’ll be honest, the only part of this song I really hate is the weird synth interludes. The singing is fine, the content is fine, it’s all the perfect level of mediocre without that violin fart synth. 

No Brainer - The ‘I’m The One’ crew, but we replaced Wayne with an actual baby

Really just an even less interesting version of I’m The One, but without Li’l Wayne. Also Justin Bieber kind of looks like a trucker now, and I hate to say it, but that’s the most attractive he’s ever been in my opinion.

Freaky Friday - Li’l Dicky ft. Chris Brown

I’ll be honest, I actually love this song. It’s funny to me, I mean, maybe I’m a simple-minded man, but a good dick joke can send me off the rails. But I’m still at least a little miffed that we’re letting Chris Brown have money, so it gets a mention.

Gucci Gang - Li’l Pump

It would be here if it wasn’t also a hit last year. Consider this a placeholder for any crossover hits I didn’t like, like Mi Gente, Perfect, Believer, and Sorry Not Sorry.

Let’s do number one. And if you know me, you know what this is. If you don’t, don’t just immediately get pissed with me when you read it. Okay? We’re good here? Alright.

1. SAD! - XXXTENTACION

So here’s a fun little sobstory for you. Less than a year ago, my boyfriend introduced me to this great artist. They were in a really oversaturated genre but doing something completely different with it, and I fell in love immediately with their dark topics, interesting production, cool music videos, and general aesthetic. And their name was not XXXTENTACION, it was Melanie Martinez.

Late last year she was pressed with a rape allegation, and one that couldn’t be proved either way. Desperately I scraped through the bowels of the internet in search of something that could disprove it and came back largely empty-handed and wounded. Because Melanie’s music meant a lot to me, and I do mean that. I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t sure what to do knowing that a person I’d based my own aesthetic, my own writing, my art, and my music on would do something like that. I tried to force myself not to listen to her music, but it just wasn’t possible. 

Over time the wound scabbed up and closed and I finally gave up and decided to split the art from the artist, feeling like at the very least I wasn’t directly giving her any money by downloading her music on Google Play. But I’ll still never be able to get back the way she used to make me feel.

So what I’m saying is, I get it.

I’ve actually gone and listened to a few of X’s songs on my own before doing this. And I put myself in the mind of me a year ago discovering a new artist without those preconceptions. And I felt it. I don’t know how, but I did. I felt it. I listened to Look At Me, and I felt like if I’d heard it before I knew what X had done, I’d probably love it. Sure the production is a fucking disaster but the lyrics are just the kind of shock rap that entertains me. The production on Moonlight is really interesting and while I didn’t think Changes was very good and kind of guilt trippy, I could definitely understand it.

But then I circled back around to SAD!

And I lost it.

Something about this song just kills all the good will I might have ever had for this kid or his fans. And really it’s all because of one line, and everyone probably knows what that line is already.

So according to lyric genius this line might not actually mean what I think it means and could potentially be referring to X’s friend Jocelyn Flores, who took her own life tragically. And though on X’s song about her and every time he addresses her he seems to make it all about himself, he really did seem wounded by it. He seemed like a wounded, mentally fucked-up person who needed help.

Except that this song is about Geneva.

The girlfriend he allegedly abused.

The girlfriend who was pregnant, who he abused, and judging by this line, who he is now performing the age-old manipulation tactic of threatening suicide if she ever leaves on. 

When I remove this song from context, there’s no way of excusing that line. The rest of it I can understand, and he really does seem emotional in the verses, and I know we’ve all been in a place at some point of being somehow spurned by a lover and still missing them in spite of it. But to threaten suicide if they try to leave is inexcusable.

His voice sounds fine, and the beat is once again stolen from XO Tour Llif3, but there’s a point where I can’t really care about it. Because children do listen to this kind of music. And along with Melanie Martinez, this song brings me back to when I was young and one of my favorite songs was What The Hell by Avril Lavigne. A song about cheating on your S/O and not seeing a problem with it. My sister and I would sing and dance to that song all the time, so much that I never really realized what it was about, or that there was anything wrong with it. Not until I was an adult and I looked back on it. And wouldn’t you know it, children can sing along to SAD! too.

I know X is dead. And I know it’s not my business to dictate how people should feel about things. Geneva deserves the right to be sad about X’s death, and she forgives him, even though I really don’t. But the way people have treated her especially after X died is inexcusable, and it’s in part because he wrote songs like this. He didn’t just manipulate her. He manipulated everyone. Every single one of his fans probably really did think he would kill himself if his girlfriend left her. And yes, X is on record having thoughts of suicide, I would never take that from someone.

I used to have a close friend who would feign a panic attack every time someone criticized him. It felt like he was threatening suicide once a week. And I always supported him because I cared about him. It was exhausting. I ostracized people because they knew he was a bad person. I shut people, good people, out of my life because they wanted to help, and I said bad things to them. Eventually we fell out and I was left cold and alone with nobody left to take me back, and I slugged through mud for a year just to pick myself back up.

I can imagine that’s kind of what being an XXXTENTACION fan is like.

And like me, with any luck, they’ll regret saying the things they did too.

That’s all for this year. I’ll get to the best when I have more energy, but now I just can’t.

#panda posts #top 10 #worst hits of 2018 #top 10 worst hits of 2018 #pop song review #negative review

[mass-effect-galaxy]

Joan’s Song 6: Hunting Asari

A thresher maw!? Really!? Again!? “Back! Back! Back!”, Joan Shepard was shouting as loud as she could, even though Kaidan sat right beside her, and even though he already had brought the Mako to maximum rearward speed. A load of acid spit went down where the vehicle had been a moment before. Some of it must have hit one of the front wheels for the Mako suddenly made a slight turn to the right. The motion dampers quickly stabilized the vehicle. “Lost a tire”, Kaidan just confirmed, surprisingly calm. Shepard was anything but calm. She had faced those monsters on Akuze before. And she had seen what they were able to do with soldiers trapped inside these metal coffins. Her next order should have been ‘Chief Williams, identified target, fire at will.’ Instead she just screeched “Ash!” “On it”, came the confirmation from the seat behind Shepard. The Mako’s main gun started barking. A warning signal reminded Shepard that she had been pulling the trigger of the secondary gun all the time. The weapon now had overheated and had to go through its cooling cycle. 

The Mako slightly jumped when riding over a hill. It could barely be felt inside. Kaidan said, “solid rock” and halted the vehicle. Right, even a thresher maw could not break through solid rock. They should be safe here; says so in the chapter on maws in the Alliance’s xeno-combat manual. Shepard had written that chapter after Akuze. “Damn gun needs calibrating”, Ashley said. “How long?”, Shepard demanded to know. A moment of silence, then, “done, Commander. Let’s go and get that worm!”

Finding an asari archeologist in the Artemis Tau cluster did sound easier than it was. The extranet listed three prothean sites in that cluster. Dr. T’Soni had published on all three: There was some kind of penal colony from the “Post Citadel Period” on Therum. A research post from the “Proto Imperial Period” on Sharjila, and a “presumably religious” structure from the “Imperial Era II” on Edolus. Shepard remembered that her history teacher had told her that whenever archeologists label something as “religious” they, in fact, have no idea what it is. 

Usually, she would have clicked away all those boring texts, but her “contact” with a prothean had made her curious. The University of Thessia was leading in research on the protheans. Their history was divided into three periods: the “Proto Imperial Period” before they founded their empire, the “Imperial Period”, which was further divided into four “eras”, and the “Post Citadel Period”, the time after which the protheans had abandoned the Citadel and their empire had collapsed in a civil war lasting for centuries. There was a mining colony on Therum, the other two were uninhabited. Shepard had sent a request to the miners and decided to check on the other planets while waiting for an answer.

“Wow, we should add this shot to the manual as the ‘William’s Maneuver’.” Ashley boasted while they examined the body of the thresher maw. “Dream on, Chief, you just were lucky”, Shepard replied with a smile.  “You are a space tyrant, Ma’am.” about four meters of the maw’s body were on the surface. Ashley had hit it right at the moment it came up. Impossible to say how much more worm was still underground. A few meters away was a battlefield. The scenery was all too familiar to Shepard: a Grizzly, part of that vehicle was melted; a couple of mauled bodies. Whatever got hit by the maw’s acid melted away, metal, armor, arms, legs, torsos, heads. Akuze. The images of Lieutenant Burnside’s Grizzly, she trying to get inside, slipping on entrails, touching acid, Alena, bleeding, dying, reaching out for her. Shepard had pushed her back to get away. She suddenly felt as sick as did back then and had to throw up. Ashley gently touched her back, “Let’s get you off this world, Jo.”

Back on the Normandy, Therum hadn’t responded so far. Shepard send a report about the dead soldiers on Edolus to Admiral Hackett and placed her name on the list of report recipients, meant she would be informed anytime someone else reported anything related to it. Their next destination was Sharjila.

There were no signs of life at the prothean site on Sharjila. However, there was a compound in use a few clicks away. If Dr. T’Soni was on this planet, it must be there. When the Mako climbed over a hill overlooking that compound, something came flying in their direction. A rocket. It was deflected by the Mako’s shields. “Looks like this is the right place”, Kaidan said.

The two guns of the Mako had made short work of whatever resistance was outside that bunker. “Chief, would you please be so kind as to knock at that door?”, Shepard asked with some mock “royal” accent,. “A pleasure, Ma’am”, Ashley replied and fired the main gun. The gate of that building was obliterated and Kaidan accelerated the Mako to maximum speed. The vehicle crashed through the debris of the gate and a wall behind it. They ended up in some warehouse. Lots of armed people were running around. Ashley meanwhile had manually loaded a stun grenade into the Mako’s gun which she now fired into that hall. Its sound was able to destroy the eardrums of most species and might even be lethal to some. Before anyone in that warehouse was able to recover, the three marines had dismounted and started cleaning out the room. Shepard and Ashley were wielding shotguns, Kaidan his auto-pistol. Suddenly something massive hit Shepard. Her armor started vibrating, a warning that the shields were off and she better took cover. She dodged behind a crate and saw some movement on a balcony. “Sniper”, Shepard shouted. “Got him”, Kaidan replied. He used his biotics to pull the sniper off the balcony. A turian; he was helplessly floating towards them while Shepard and Ashley used him for target practice.

“Commander, is that Dr. T’Soni?”, Kaidan was bending over an asari body. Shepard started scanning her face, “Doesn’t look like her.” It took the spectre database a few moments to compare the scan with trillions of filed faces. Finally, it came up with a name: Dahlia Dantius, wanted for murder and slavery on Kahje, reward 300,000 Credits. Also wanted for fraud on Irune, reward 500,000 Credits. Shepard whistled. Even without Dr. T’Soni, this trip had paid off. She made a full body scan of the asari and sent the results to both addresses. Now, they only had to figure out how to get the Mako back into the open. 

When entering the Knossos System, it became clear why Therum didn’t answer: Geth! “Several geth drop-ships in orbit of that planet.”, Joker confirmed. Drop-ships were not armed and the Normandy was able to destroy three of them before the others managed to jump to FTL. Shepard, Ashley, and Kaidan dropped in the Mako. Finding Dr. T’Soni was not much of a problem: they simply followed the path of destruction the geth had left. The team ran into several geths, both the normal robots as well as those large ‘Armatures’. None were a problem for the Mako. The situation, however, was most confusing. Ashley brought it up first, “Why would T’Soni attack this colony? They must have found something truly important.” Kaidan had a different idea,” Or maybe, the geth attacked it because the doctor is here?” This even made less sense. Shepard shrugged, “We’ll find out soon enough.” They had reached the entrance to the underground dig site.

This structure clearly had been a prison: there were open cells on several levels, only accessible by two elevators, one on the “wall-side”, probably the original access. A newer one was running along the “open side”, most likely built by the archeologists. In one of the cells, there was an asari caught in some kind of stasis field. “Dr. Liara T’Soni?”, Shepard asked. “Thanks to the Goddess!”, the voice of the asari sounded damped through the field. “I came in here to find shelter from the geth. Now I am trapped and can’t get out. Please, I am in here for two days now. I need food and water, and“ she continued, blushing, “a change of clothing.” “Doesn’t look like the evil mastermind we were looking for.”, Ashley said grinning. “What?”, Liara replied confused, “I am just a researcher. I don’t know why the geth are after me.” “That’s pretty obvious, honey.”, Ashley said disdainfully, “your mommy has become Saren’s pet and now his geth after your blue butt too.” It seems, as much as Shepard was able to fall in love with complete strangers within seconds, Ashley was able to develop an animosity in the same amount of time. “Benezia? But I haven’t spoken to her for years. And I don’t know a Saren.” Kaidan finally interrupted this interrogation. “We have hostiles coming down the ramp, Commander.”

Someone was trying to call the elevator, but Ashley had blocked its door: ancient trick; always works. Now, the geth had to come through the dig site. It was several floors below Shepard; no cover, a perfect kill zone. Ashley noticed a large device down there, “A miming laser. We can use it to blast a way through to the asari.” “Provided, we get it working.”, Shepard chipped in. “Shepard, please”, Kaidan said, somewhat bugged, “it is designed to be operated by unskilled workers. We’ll figure it out.” “Your turn, LT.”, Shepard shrugged.  “I am a vorcha when it comes to computers.” “And here come the flashlights!” Ashley already had raised her sniper rifle.

There was a krogan with the geth, but he died all the same. Kaidan indeed was able to get the miming laser working. However, he couldn’t turn it off again. He seemed to have launched some automated mining program that now started to demolish the prothean structure. “Run!”, Shepard shouted, “I’ll get the asari.” Kaidan and Ashley took the “external” elevator while Shepard used the prothean one to get into the asari’s cell. Another console was waiting for her. The symbols on it didn’t look like any writing she had ever seen. Liara realized the problem, “Look for one with two lines and a circle, it reads ’off’ in Prothean.” Shepard got it, released Liara, grabbed her hand and dragged her out. In time. The prothean “Imperial Institue of Correction No. 409″ had been in use for 103 years. It was dormant for another 50,000 years. It collapsed two hours after Shepard’s visit.

#mass effect #therum #commander shepard #femshep #femshep x ashley #shepard x ashley #ashley williams #kaidan alenko #liara t'soni #joans song

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Weird “Hell School.”

Based on a prompt from a reader hope you like :) Don’t forget to send those critiques, questions, comments, messages, and prompts!

“Adam!”

“ADAM!”

“Coming.”

Krill peered from his spot on the couch as Captain Vir made his way down the stairs quickly at the call of the Alpha female.

“I just got a call from your old High School.”

Krill watched in fascination as the man’s eyes widened his knees locked up and he skidded right into a doorframe.

He rubbed his head as the alpha female peered around the doorframe.

“Well what do THEY want…..” He frowned

“Oh, Adam, don’t sound so annoyed, you’re a bit of a celebrity, and they just want you to come and give a talk at the school about your work, no big deal.”

“I most definitely will not! I’m not going back to that place.”

***

They stood outside the massive concrete and brick building as snow billowed around them. High chain link fences rose towards the cloudy sky.

“It looks like a prison.”

“It IS a prison.” The man muttered trudging through the snow and up to the doors carrying Krill over one shoulder contained within his specialized containment unit. He shouldered open the doors into the warm entryway bombarded suddenly by an array of pulses. The doors ahead of them buzzed once and then blinked green letting them inside.

“That’s new.” The man muttered stepping into the long hallway to stomp snow from his boots on the inner carpet. Setting down the containment tube, he opened the door and allowed Krill to scuttle outwards onto the floor. He looked around in curiosity, eyes wide and wondering at the long hallway lined in doors and strange containment lockers blinking lights red for locked.

“What is this place?” He wondered following the Captain towards the first set of doors.

“Hell Krill, This is hell.” Krill kind of doubted that. Very much as they passed through the doors into a small office space with a long desk manned by two plum middle-aged human females. They looked up as he entered looking confused for a minute before.

“Adam, is that you, I barely recognized you under that.” She waved a hand up and down, “and the gaudy eyepatch doesn’t help.”

He frowned, opening his mouth to respond.

The woman nudged her companion, “Look Susan its little Adam Vir, can hardly believe it.” It was just then, she noticed Krill, and the scream she let off could have ruptured glass if there was any glass in the room to be found. “What is that?!” She demanded leaping backwards nearly out of her chair. Krill found himself oddly satisfied. A lot of Earth humans weren’t nearly as brave as their space human counterparts. He had never made a human scream before.

“That.” Vir said smugly, “Is Krill, my crew’s acting medic and, oh yeah very much an alien.”

The woman stammered for a moment before grabbing a couple of badges and tossing them over the desk towards Vir who caught them and gave a grin.

“The auditorium.” The woman said curtly before retreating further behind her desk, as Captain Vir led Krill back out into the hallway and down. Krill watched the doors pass by peering in through cracked doors at lines of desks and young humans staring glassy eyed towards the front of the room listening to a single voice droning on and on.

“Really captain, what is this?”

Captain Vir sighed, “In this country and on Earth I general, it is mandatory for everyone to receive public education up until about the age of eighteen. One this continent we have elementary middle and high school education. Subjects include science, mathematics, English, communications, linguistics, geography, health and physical education. Then we have sports teams tagged onto that for after school activities.”

“That’s…. actually quite amazing Captain, I never knew that about humans.”

“Don’t worry, it’s generally completely useless and everything about it is designed to torture your soul into apathy.”

Krill followed confused but said nothing as they were met by a man who, claimed to be the “Principal”/ He was thrown off momentarily upon meeting Krill, but eventually let them backstage giving them a place to sit and rest while he called the students from class. He warned that there would be a few more curious people in attendance. Vir was beginning to look a little green.

They waited back stage for over an hour before the principle came back patting Vir on the shoulder. In that time Vir had changed into his uniform.

Krill could hear the sounds of many voices echoing up from the chamber beyond as the principle walked out onto stage. Distantly Krill could hear the speakers booming overhead, “Five years ago, Earth began peace talks with the Galactic assembly, and it took almost two years for earth to finally accept the terms of the peace talks. The six month war with the Drev took place two months after we joined, and a thousand of our soldiers were sent in aid of our galactic allies. Much of this had been made possible by a man who graduated from this very school not so many years ago. At only age 20 Then Lieutenant Adam Vir was the first human to encounter sentient life. Two years later he fought alongside our galactic allies in the war against the Drev. He received a purple heart for injuries received and a silver star for valor in action. Two years later he was promoted to the Rank of captain, and now currently pilots our furthest reaching human space vessel. He has worked, in part, for the Galactic Assembly, and has helped with the construction of many human-related laws, now Please give a warm welcome to Captain Adam Vir.”

The man took a deep breath as the polite clapping began motioning Vir out behind him as he walked onto stage. Upon seeing Krill, the room erupted in a measure of gasping, shrieking and awes of wonder.

Captain Vir leaned against the podium and waited for the crowd to die down. Krill hid behind him.

When they finally did, he responded, “Look I don’t have a speech prepared or anything so if you want me to talk you better ask. Otherwise I can stand here for an hour staring at you and just make it weird and awkward for everyone. Don’t bother raising your hands, I’m not about that.”

Pause, “What the hell is that!” He frowned, “That is actually very rude, so don’t be a Jerk.” He stepped aside allowing the students to see Krill, “This is my crew’s acting medic Krill. If you have one of those universal translator apps on your phone, you should probably use it unless you have the implants and then, more power to you.”

The phones were already out pointed directly at Krill. Questions were shouted out at random and at great vigor.

Krill stumbled to answer most of them unsure how to answer the question. Despite his poor stage presence, the students seemed thrilled that he could even talk. There was never a moment of silence, and why would there be, this was probably the most interesting thing that happened to them all year.

“Do you wear the eyepatch because you think it makes you look cool?”

There was a pause, “I have two answers for that one. One I don’t have an eye, and number two…. Yes…. Absolutely why wouldn’t I wear an eyepatch. My question is, why wouldn’t anyone else?”

“What did you get your purple heart for?”

“Well, I got my leg ripped off by a big ass alien…. Uh sorry I mean a nine foot tall alien.”

A collective, “Woa, can we see it.”

Krill was stunned, little savage.

“Yeah, sure.” He reached down and pulled up the leg on his pants to reveal the robotic leg underneath. “It goes up to about mid-thigh, good model though.”

“Tell us your most interesting story.”

“Oh…. Well sh- I mean uh….. I have a lot, like there was the time I lost my eye, saved an alien race from bubblegum pink overlords, ran a marathon on a class A-1 Death planet to avoid dying, accidentally killed an alien pirate by spitting on him, got locked inside a Rundi prison, navigated an asteroid field manually, killed a serial killer who tried to kill me, saved an alien child from drowning, won a battle by throwing rocks, battled an underwater leviathan, survived an attack by pirates, and uh of course made contact with the first E.T. life.”

The crowd was silent before demanding that he tell them as many of his stories as he could before their time was up.

Krill was encouraged to jump in on the stories, and by the time they were done Captain Vir was significantly more relaxed than before. Krill hid behind the podium most of the time.

Eventually the Principal had to dismiss the students to a chorus of booing, “Alright, Alright, enough of that, and les thank Captain Vir, for coming to speak with us today, no, no I have already gone over all the time I am willing.”

Vir stepped down from the stage greeting and speaking with some of the students as they left. Krill stood beside him as, suddenly the man grew stiff.

“Hey look Alien Adam, Can’t believe it’s really you.” A rather large…. Mildly flabby human walked up to the two of them. He looked Captain Vir up and down, “and you finally got some muscle on you.”

“And you finally got fat.” Captain Vir responded immediately. The other human seemed surprised before his eyes narrowed in anger.

“You-“

“The captain held up a hand, “Ah ah, hold on distinguished veteran with frontal lobe damage, I can’t control my impulses.”

Krill looked between the two men, “You know each other?”

Before the other man could speak, captain Vir held up a hand, “Yes, we do, he made my life a living hell for four years all because he peaked in high school, and I didn’t. Now I’m winningly successful, and he’s been in the same dead-end job for the past seven years.”

“Brain damage?”

“No, that was all me. And one more thing. I was right.”

The man huffed, “Come on Adam, you can hardly blame me. You were a weird kid like I mean what kind of person ACTUALLY believe in UFO’s and Aliens. It wasn’t normal.”

“Oh yeah, and it was only about me being a geek, nothing about how skinny I was, or the graphic T-shirts, or how short I was, or my braces, or how bad I was at sports. And I’m going to go right ahead and point out that a lot of people believed that the sun revolved around the earth for a long time, that didn’t make them right, but you couldn’t leave it alone, and now that it turns out I wasn’t crazy you seem to think it’s just ok to come up and insult me again.”

The man worked his jaw somewhere between anger and surprise.

“What, have nothing to say now, that I won’t just lay down and take it…..” He took a slow deep breath calming himself, “I found what I was looking for, and I don’t need you explaining yourself to me. You were a jerk, and here was no reason to be. You messed me up for a long time, but I am over what you did to me, and I am done with this conversation.”

He stepped past the man with Krill at his heels Krill following after, “What was that about?”

He sighed long and deep, “I wasn’t always as fantastically awesome as I am now.” He chuckled to himself, “When I was younger, a lot of people didn’t believe in Extra-terrestrials, interstellar technology was still in in its infant stages….. And, I well, I believed that everyone was wrong. I was sure aliens were real, so I looked for UFOs, I spent all my allowance on a telescope. I was so obsessed, it came at the exclusion of everything else, health, sports, eating, I was probably really weird, and some people used that as an excuse to be real assholes to me.”

“Is that common in human schools?”

Captain Vir sighed, “All too common I’m afraid, thousands of years and we still can’t shake it…. But I was right.”

“We were never alone.”  

#humans are space orcs #humans are weird #humans are space oddities #humans are space australians #earth is space australia

[flowerpowell]

Secrets IX (Drake x MC // Liam x MC // Leo x MC?)

Part 9 is here which means we’re getting closer to the end! This part focuses mainly on Leo, we’ll see his relations with his family and learn more about him! I really hope you’ll enjoy it! As always, any feedback is very much appreciated!

All rights for characters go to Pixelberry, the plot is inspired by Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, I don’t own these rights either.

Rating: Normal

Tagging: @flynnomalleys @kickbuttbookworm @walkerduchess @damienazariostan @client327 @lilsouthernsunflower @choices-sideblog @katurrade @mynameiskaylabella @bizzyschoices @furiousherringoperatortoad @jared2612 @speedyoperarascalparty @liam-rhys @confessionsofabrokegirl @drakelover78 @darley1101 @laniquelove @umccall71 @hopefulmoonobject @theroyalweisme  @blackcatkita @hhiggs  @agent-zephyrkah ♥

Her head was spinning and she felt nauseous. When she opened her eyes, a stream of light glared her. 

Was she dead? 

Riley tried to move her body a little but stopped as she felt sharp pain in her leg. 

Maybe she wasn’t dead physically, but mentally she very close to death. 

She sighed quietly after remembering the details of last few hours she was conscious. Carefully, she looked around the room she was in; it was very small, had pretty much no furniture and was painted white, although the dust made it look rather grey. Most importantly, she was there alone. 

Blinking, she tried to sit up but her leg hurt too much. She didn’t remember breaking it so it must have happened after she passed out. She noticed it was bandaged so that guy from last night must have done it. 

Riley was just inspecting what really happened behind this white fabric on her leg, when the man who rescued her last night entered the room.

“Hello there, how are you?” He asked cheerfully while putting down some wood for the fireplace she just noticed. 

“I’m confused, what happened to my leg? And who are you?” 

The man walked up to Riley and gently touched her leg. “I believe this is my fault. I was carrying you here and your leg met with a few nails sticking out from my door frame. I’m not used to rescuing pretty girls in the middle of the woods,” he said apologetically. She looked at her leg, her eyes widened.

“It’s okay, I sterilized it. With vodka, but that works too, right?” He sat down next to her and ran his fingers through his hair. “And my name is Leo, I already told you that,” he smiled at her warmly. 

Riley cleared her throat before speaking, “Ahem, yes, I was a little bit passed out then but thanks for reminding me. I’m Riley.” She stretched her arm to shake hands with him. “Would that be rude if I asked you why you like in a cabin in the middle of the woods? Are you a serial killer or something?” 

At first, Leo looked at her with serious expression on his face just to burst into laughter a second later. “If I wanted to kill you I’d probably left you out there to die.” He shrugged before adding, “Besides knights in shining armors help the princesses and marry them later, not kill them.” He smirked at her and she felt she was blushing. 

“I’m not a princess,” she murmured. 

“Thank God!” He excaimed and stood up. “Hungry?” 

Riley smiled gratefully. “So hungry.” With one last look he left the room leaving her alone again.

“Why are you living in a cabin here?” she asked while eating her oatmeal. She was much hungrier than she thought, as the mash she looked at was the most delicious thing she ever tasted. 

“And why not?” he aswered looking at her with his big, blue eyes. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t judge you or  anything, it’s just, I met once a person who lived in alienation too and I wonder what your reasons are.” 

Leo thought for a while before answering. “I had a difficult family situation. My mom left us when I was young, my father is a dick. I had a brother too but he died. I had nowhere to go really. And I thought a little solitude is best for me. Especially now with this crazy Queen who would execute everyone she sees,” he sighed. 

Wow, that’s the first person here that’s actually honest. Or at least seems honest. 

“I’m so sorry. For your brother, and your parents.” She covered his palm with hers and he smiled at her. 

“I miss him a lot, he was the only real friend I had.” Riley felt really sorry for Leo but she couldn’t help but smile at his openess. He was like an open book, he told her everything from the beginning and that felt really...nice. 

“What about you Princess? What were you doing in the woods, alone?” She blushed when he called her a princess. “Just waiting for my knight. And running away from people who lied to me. It’s a long story.” 

He grinned, “I have time. And I’m dying for some gossip.” 

She laughed accidentaly spitting out her oatmeal. “Sorry!” she muttered. She swallowed the rest of her meal and continued, “Nothing really to say. Met a guy, he turned out to be already married, which he never mentioned, still asked me to marry him, so I ran away.” 

“Wow, what a jerk” Leo raised his eyebrows in surprise, “I’m not married if you were wondering.” Riley looked at him amused. This guy was something else. “You know, in case I ever proposed to you and you didn’t know.” She rolled her eyes and they both laughed. “First, I would rather wanted to learn more about you. Then I would consider marrying you.” 

Leo pretended to think. “So what would you like to know?” 

“Something like...what’s your darkest secret?” 

Leo looked at her in disbelief. “Wow, you’re not playing, are you?” She shook her head. “Well, don’t tell anyone but,” he leaned towards her, “I actually like pineapple on pizza” he finished quietly. They laughed again and continued getting to know each other for a few more hours.

With her leg hurting, Riley wasn’t able to do much. She was either lying on the bed in her tiny bedroom, or sitting on a very umcofortable chair in even smaller kitchen. 

Surprisingly, Leo was a very good nurse. He brought her food, gave her some painkillers, even took her on a walk carrying her the whole time. 

He told her his childhood stories and in return she told him stories from her college days. They talked with ease, as for strangers that just met, they were very open with each other. Leo even shared a story about his mother, how she left him hearbroken and never tried to contact him. He mentioned his brother and admitted that memories with him were the happiest. He regretted going on a cruise because it was then, when he learned his little brother died. Leo didn’t talk much about his father but Riley understood him. She really felt bad for Leo, he was an amazing person and didn’t deserve any of that crap. 

“Don’t you miss the civilization sometimes?” she asked him when he was making her bed. 

“Sometimes. But then I go to Greece, or any other country, just not here. The monarchy here is really awful, you’re lucky you’re not from here.” 

Riley frowned, “I wonder why people didn’t abolish her or something, she’s truly terrible.” Riley flinched when she remembered her encounter with Madeleine that night. Why do people want such bad person to be their Queen? 

“Because they’re scared. She’s unpredictable but keeps the enemies in line. No one dares to protest.” 

Wow, I’m not really surpised after she tried to kill me. She sure knows how to scare people. 

“So Princess, are you ready for bed? Do you, err, want me to help you with shower or you skip it?” 

Riley looked at him blushing. She completely forgot about such thing as taking a shower when she was with him. “I think I need it, I was running in the woods for a whole day and lying in this bed for another. But I’ll be fine, thank you.” 

Leo carried her to his small bathroom and put her down. “If you need anything just scream and I’ll come.” She smiled at him gratefully and nodded. He left and she started her night routine. Even though she only knew him for a day, there was something familiar about him. She was tempted to call him to help her, just to see how he would act but abandoned the thought. That would be too soon. 

When she was all ready he carried her to bed again and put a fresh bandage on her leg. The wound healed pretty quickly. While she was checking her leg, Leo studied her face. 

“What’s bothering you?” he asked all of the sudden. 

“Hmm?” Riley turned to him, “What do you mean?” He sighed and sat down on her bed. “I see something is bothering you, I might not be the best at reading people but I see when something’s wrong.” 

Oh, so he noticed. 

“Umm, not much, I was just wondering about going home. I still don’t know how to find the city and I need to book a plane ticket. I just want to go home,” she admitted. 

Leo thought for a while. “Living with me is that bad, huh?” 

“What? No, no! It’s great but...I just miss some civilization. Living with you was pretty fun.” She answered squeezing his hand. 

“My old friend, Bastien, visits me here twice a week. If you want, you can go with him” He said sadly. 

“When does he come next?” Riley asked studying Leo’s worried face. “He was here yesterday, so in two, three days, I’d say.” 

She took a deep breath and smiled. “Then don’t be sad, I’ll be here with you for another two, three days. And if you’re nice I actually might stay longer.” He looked at her, this time smiling. “I will do whatever I can. You’re too good company to lose. Goodnight.” He kissed her forehead and left the room. 

She was lying for a few minutes more in the darkness before she peacefully drifted to sleep.

The next two days passed very quickly. Riley could finally walk and Leo showed her all his favorite spots in the woods. He even taught her how to cook his favorite meal and in return she gave him the receipe for the best cronuts she knew. 

They fooled around all the time and Riley didn’t get bored even for a second. Leo was definitely a definition for entertainemt even in the most dull conditions. 

When the next day came, and Bastien visited Leo’s cabin, Riley gladly announced she wanted to stay a little bit longer. Leo was overjoyed and danced with her around the room while Bastien was shaking his head in disbelief. 

When Riley disappeared in her room, the man whispered something to Leo. Leo’s eyes widened in shock and he couldn’t say anything. When Bastien left, Riley found Leo crying behind the cabin. She put her arms around him and let him weep for a little longer. After few minutes he pulled away. 

“What happened Leo? What did he say?” Riley asked concerned. Leo wiped his eyes. “He said that my father died. I never liked that prick but it still hurts. The only member of my family that I had, just left, forever.” Riley hugged him and started gently stroking his head. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how you feel.”

That night Riley stayed over in Leo’s room, holding him and letting him cry as much as he wanted. Somehow, despite all the crap he’s been through with his father, Leo still missed him terribly. She understood it and kept consolling him till they both fell asleep.

It was the middle of the night, it was really hot despite a rather strong wind. Riley had peaceful dreams until she heard a scream. She woke up instantly, her face and body covered in sweat. 

The flashback of that night when Olivia was attacked was in her head as the first thought. Leo was beside her, still asleep. She must have been dreaming. Just when she put her head on the pillow again, she heard it again. 

It was real. 

This time, the scream was more clear and it woke Leo up as well. “Did you scream?” he asked sleepily but she shook her head. “No, I think someone is in the woods,” she answered. 

Leo stood up and took a flashlight from under the bed. “I’m going to check it out, maybe another Princess needs rescuing,” he smirked at her but she wasn’t laughing. 

“I’m going with you,” she decided getting out of the bed. Leo wanted to protest but didn’t seeing Riley’s determined face. The two of them entered the darkness of the woods when they heard the scream again, this time the source of it was closer. 

When the scream was even closer Riley realized it belonged to a child. She started running, hobbling slightly, in the direction of the voice. Leo followed her with his source of light. 

“Hello!!!” Riley screamed trying to find the person who yelled. She heard someone running  her and started walking up to meet the person. 

At first, she saw only the silhouette, dark but small, and she was sure it was a kid. When Leo finally caught up his flashlight reached the person. 

Riley noticed a very dirty, shredded dress. Then she saw the face and in horror she realized she was looking at Amelia. 

“Oh my God,” Riley whipered, quickly closing the distance between them and pulling the girl in a very tight hug. Amelia was shaking, but recognized Riley and squeezed her governess even tighter. Leo looked at the two of them in surprise, milions thoughts crossing his mind. 

“What happened?” Riley asked after a few minutes filled with Amelia’s sobbing. 

“L’explosion, l’incendie. Je ne sais pas, the house was on fire,” the little girl spoke, her voice slightly breaking, “suddenly exploded, I ran but...no one else did. Everyone is dead!”

#trr #the royal romance #the royal romance fanfiction #drake walker #drake x mc #king liam #trr liam #liam x mc #leo x mc #leo rys #liam rys #hana lee #maxwell beaumont #olivia nevrakis #playchoices #play choices #choices stories you play #choices fanfiction #choices fanfic

[thelastspeecher]

Super hero au, baking, After discovering his ability to manipulate flames, Stanley decides to abuse this power by baking the cakes his mother used to make when he was younger. And as it turned out, criminals are less likely to mug people in dark alleys if they're given free food. So now Stan is fighting crime both with and without his mask!

🍰 - baking

In what has become a very obvious pattern, I didn’t completely follow your suggestion nor baking prompt.  Technically, it’s related, and inspired by both those things.  Also, I decided to set this in the Superhero AU where Angie’s a supervillain named Sirocco, bc that was what I got inspired for.  Anyways, hope you like it!

Send in an emoji and I’ll write a ficlet!

              Stan groaned silentlyto himself.

              I hate going to the bank.  Ialways get stuck behind some moldy oldie who insists on paying their bills orwhatever with pennies.  Currently, hehad been waiting for fifteen minutes, and was still at the back of theline.  Stan sighed and looked around thequiet, calm bank.  Man, what I wouldn’t give for a distraction.  Somethin’ to keep me from dying of boredom.

              Crash!  Stan instinctivelyducked at the sound of a glass breaking.

              What the hell happened?

              “All right,everybody on the ground, now!” a voice shouted. Stan’s eyes widened; the voice sounded familiar.  He turned around.  Standing proudly in front of the broken glassdoors was his archnemesis, the supervillainess named Sirocco.

              Fuck!  I don’t have my heroingduds on me.  And even if I did, I wouldn’tbe able to mask up without everyone here seeing.  Stan subtly pressed the “SOS” button on hissquad communicator, kept in his back pocket. Hopefully someone can show upbefore Sirocco takes all my dough.

              “Hey, you!” Siroccosaid, noticing him.

              “Uh, me?” Stanasked.

              “Yeah.  Why aren’t you on the floor?”

              “There’s kinda glasseverywhere,” Stan pointed out.  Siroccostormed over to him.  Stan stood stockstill as she stared directly into his face.

              Shit, shit, shit.  What if sherecognizes me?  Sure, she’s never seen mewithout my mask.  But Shermie recognizedme before I even had a chance to introduce myself as Flamethrower.  Sirocco frowned at him.  Something akin to recognition flashed in herblue eyes.  Stan swallowed nervously.  After a moment, Sirocco took a step back fromhim.

              “You seem familiar, stranger,”she said.  

              “I, uh, I hear thata lot.”

              “Hmm.”  Sirocco looked him up and down.  “Don’t know if I buy that, but whatever.”  She began to make her way to the teller.

              “Hey!” Stan blurtedout impulsively.  Sirocco spunaround.  A hot wind picked up in the banklobby.

              “Are you reallygoing to try my patience?  You know who Iam, right?” Sirocco demanded.

              “Yeah.  You’re one of the Twister Twins.”

              “That I am.  I’m a supervillain.  You don’t want to mess with me.”

              “Okay, yeah, yeah,”Stan said, his mind working furiously to come up with a solution that didn’tinvolve revealing his secret identity to everyone at his bank.  “But…maybe you could, I dunno, not…steal ourmoney?”  Sirocco cracked a half-smile.

              “Heh.”  She sounded genuinely amused.  “You’ve got guts.  But what could you offer me that’s betterthan a bunch of money?”  Stan looked at hisbag.  He didn’t really have anything onhim, except for…

              “Homemadesnickerdoodles,” Stan said.  Heimmediately squeezed his eyes shut.

              Fuck, shit, damn! That was a mistake!

              “Homemade…snickerdoodles?”Sirocco said.  Stan opened his eyes.  Sirocco was completely taken off guard.  She stared at him in confusion.  “What- why would ya offer somethin’ likethat?”

              Hold on, Sirocco has a southern accent? She must cover it up normally. Sirocco’s eyes widened as she realized that she had let her accentslip.  She cleared her throat loudly.

              “Those must be the bestcookies in the world,” she said.

              Aaaand the accent’s gone.

              “Nah, I mean, I made‘em.  I dunno if they’re the best in theworld.”

              “You made them?  You don’t look like the type.”

              “Yeah, but, I, uh, Iam.”  Stan opted to not tell her that thereason he was into baking was due to his heat and fire-related abilities.  Sirocco chuckled softly.

              “You’re aninteresting person, Mr…?”

              “I’d rather not say,”Stan said.  Sirocco raised an eyebrow athim.

              “Oh?”

              Was that the wrong thing to do? Sirocco stared at him for a moment. She nodded, marched back to him, and held her hand out.

              “You amused me, stranger,” she said, emphasizing thelast word.

              Oh, no.  That can’t be good.

              “Give me thosesnickerdoodles, and I’ll be on my way.”

              “Wait, really?”

              “Really.”  Sirocco smiled charmingly at him.

              She definitely knows something. Stan rummaged around in his bag and pulled out the plastic containerwith the snickerdoodles he had planned on bringing to Shermie.  I canalways make more.  He handed her thecookies.

              “Thanks,” Sirocco chirped.  She winked at him, then turned on her heeland exited the bank, stepping daintily through the broken glass doors.  Stan stared after her, dumbstruck.

              How the fuck did that work?

----- 

Six Months Later

              Stan landed at thebrawl just as it was ending.  He huffedand shut off his flames.

              Great, missed another fight. He looked around.  Most of themasks involved had dispersed already, but he caught a glimpse of one of theTwister Twins ducking into an alley.  He ranafter the supervillain.

              “Hey, Tsunami!” Stancalled.  The male Twister Twin froze.  “I know that’s your codename.”  Tsunami, the Twister Twin, spun around.

              “How do you know that?” Tsunami snarled,marching over to him.

              “Sirocco told me,”Stan answered.  Tsunami’s eyes widened.

              Huh.  Gray, notblue like Sirocco.

              “Wha- you know her codename too?  What’s going on with you and my sister, huh,Flamethrower?”  

              “It’s…complicated,”Stan managed.  Tsunami scowled.

              “That’s not goodenough.  Look, buddy, Sirocco might be mytwin, but she’s younger ‘n me.  So thatmeans she’s my baby sister.  I don’t likewhatever weird thing is goin’ on with her and some hero.”  Tsunami was getting upset to the point thathis accent was starting to slip.

              Pretty sure he’d kill me if I told him that we’vehooked up twice.  Masks on, yeah, butstill.  If he’s the older twin…

              “I don’t think you wannaknow the details,” Stan said quietly.  Tsunamifrowned at him, confused.

              “What does-”  Tsunami cut himself off and took a stepback.  “Oh.  Oh, no. No.”

              “Uh…surprise?” Stansaid.  Tsunami slammed a fist against oneof the brick walls of the alley.

              “Consarnit!  No wonder she told me to go easy on ya!”  Tsunami glared at Stan.

              If looks could kill, I’d be six feet under rightnow.  Damn.  This seems like an overreaction to finding outyour sister has an active sex life.

              “Whattaya want,Flamethrower?  Spit it out, so that I cango home and talk to my sister about this,” Tsunami spat.

              “I just- I made hersome cookies.”  Tsunami stared at him.

              “…What?”

              “I, uh, I haven’tseen her robbing banks for a while.  Ipoked around, heard that she’s on some kinda sick leave?”

              “You could call itthat,” Tsunami muttered.

              “And, uh, I mean- yeah,we’re archenemies or whatever, but…I like to think I’m getting through toher.  And even if we punch each other inthe face all the time, doesn’t mean I want her to be so sick that she’s gottatake months off.”

              “Yeah, that soundslike a ‘hero’ thing to do.  ‘Speciallysince ya have a…thing goin’ on.”  Tsunamirolled his eyes.  “Hand ‘em over, BoyScout.”

              “I’m not a Boy Scout,”Stan said, digging the small package of cookies he had stashed out of hispocket.  He gave the cookies toTsunami.  “Pretty damn far from it,actually.”

              “Hmph.”  Tsunami frowned at the cookies.  “These aren’t goin’ to poison An- Sirocco orsomethin’, are they?”

              Wait.  Did healmost slip up on his sister’s name?  Hemust be really putoff by all this.

              “No, they’re normalsnickerdoodles,” Stan said.  Tsunamisighed.

              “I’ll test ‘em justto make sure.”  Tsunami turnedaround.  “Thanks or whatever.”

              “Yeah, no- noproblem,” Stan said.  His heart wasracing.

              I knew I shouldn’t have hooked up with Sirocco.  I caught feelings for her, and she’s agoddamn supervillain.  Stan watchedTsunami walk away.  A sick supervillain.  Really sick.  For three months.  Stan frowned. Yeah, three months.  About a month after we did it the secondtime.  Eh, more like six weeks after thathookup.  Stan turned around and beganto walk away.  He froze, rememberingsomething.  Hang on, didn’t Shermie say something aboutsix weeks, when they had that “surprise” kid?  Ice suddenly filled Stan’s veins.  Itusually takes about six weeks for someone to realize…

              “Shit,” Stanwhispered.

              Tsunami was angry about more thanjust his sister hooking up with me.

#an alternate description for this ficlet would be: #''Stan surprises two villainous Gucks with snickerdoodles'' #or as suggested by Whitney: ''Lute's fucking pissed'' #anyways yeah I used your prompt to write a big scene in the AU hope you don't mind~ #Superhero/villain AU #Stanley Pines #Angie McGucket #Lute McGucket #Stangie #ficlet #writing meme #my writing #ask #nour386 #(ONLY ONE PROMPT LEFT AND THEN I'M DONE WITH THEM)

[bitletsanddrabbles]

WIP Wednesday: And Now For Something Completely Different

My first real fandom was The Phantom of the Opera. I was...I think twelve....maybe eleven. The Charles Dance version had just come out and it was instant love. Found a copy of the original book at B. Dalton (anyone remember them?) and read it twelve times.

I’ll wander away from the story for years at a time, then cycle back to it....kinda like Erik and Don Juan Triumphant, come to think of it. One of my most persistent novel ideas, the subject of two NANOs now, and one of the things I’m most likely to eventually get around to beating into publishable shape (just before dying of old age at 101) is my steampunk supernatural retelling of it.

This isn’t part of that, really, but it’s related. At one point, for word count and to help get in my character’s head, I wrote up a bit of Christine’s backstory. It involves trolls. I’ve clipped out all of the whited-out-so-it-wouldn’t-bug-me-but-still-counted-as-words text (I hope, although I left my ‘short hand’ bit) and I present it here:

There was light on the walls that wasn’t silver. Christine frowned, her sleepy brain trying to puzzle out why, exactly, that was strange.

The barn itself was dark. Somewhere in the darkness she could hear the cows chewing at their food, and the little Norwegian pony the farmer kept for carrying his vegetables to market. She could barely make out the outline of the door in the silver and gold light. It occurred to her, finally, that while the silver light was

She was supposed to be asleep, but something had waken her. Christine lay in the barn, pressed as closed to the warm form of her father as she could, and tried to decide what had awaken her. The building around her was dark, lit only by a single beam of moonlight coming through the high window. In the darkness she could hear the cattle, chewing patiently at their hay, and the sound of the sturdy little blonde pony the farmer kept for taking his vegetables to market.

Beyond that, the night seemed still.

She had about decided that a dog must have barked, somewhere, or an owl hooted, and was nestling back down in the relative warmth of the straw when a noise reached her ear, sharp and ratcheting, somewhere between the crack of a branch and the drumming of a woodpecker. Now soundly awake, she sat up, peering around her in the darkness.

She didn’t think to be scared. There was nothing in this little village to be scared of, except perhaps marauding wolves, and wolves didn’t sound like woodpeckers cracking open branches. Carefully, so as not to wake her papa, she got up and tip toed to the door in the barn, opening a crack and looking out. There was nothing in line of sight except for drifts of half melted snow and muddy ground. She pushed the door wider, but still saw nothing.

For a moment, she hesitated, looking back to where her papa lay sleeping. She was, after all, a good girl and would never cause him alarm, if she could help it. Then the sound echoed through the night again, catching her attention and her curiosity.

She wouldn’t go far, she told herself, and she would stay very alert. She was, after all, almost eight years old. She and her Papa had traveled what she thought to be the length and breadth of Sweden in the past two years and surely nothing (short of, perhaps, a wolf, or maybe a bear) could be more frightening than being between one village and the next when a storm came through. Emboldened by that line of thought, she stepped out into the moonlight.

The farm they were staying in was on the edge of the village. They’d planned on leaving in the morning, between the last snow fall of winter and the first rain fall of spring, and traveling through the short stretch of woods to the next hamlet while the sun was high in the sky. Those woods lay in a half circle around the pasture lands, dark and menacing and magical, the moon cresting their tips. Christine stood at the corner of the barn and looked up at it, almost as if it were offering her a challenge. She simply had to decide whether or not to answer.

Her blue eyes snapped to the base of the woodland as the cracking sound came again. There, through the trees, she thought she saw a flicker of light. She frowned and leaned a bit in toward the barn. Perhaps it was gypsies. She’d heard plenty of tales, not from her papa but from other travelers, of gypsies carrying off little girls and selling them in far away countries. Of course, she’d also heard tales of gypsies telling people’s fortunes and telling them the way to secret riches.

She’d never been certain which ones to believe.

The light continued to flicker, catching the line of one or two trees and nothing else. It was, she was certain, a fire. No other light moved quite like that or had that warmth. It had to be at least a little ways into the woods to seem so dim, either that or very small, but it couldn’t be too far or she wouldn’t be able to see it at all. The stretch of pasture between her and the woods was brightly lit, the silver light picking out the piles of rocks churned up by the winter winds and melting snow. Even a fox would have troubles sneaking up on her and foxes weren’t scary at all. Her papa had shown her last spring summer where a pair of foxes had made their den and they had sat for at least half an hour watching the kits play.

Taking a deep breath, Christine crept her way out into the open.

((Write a ‘crossing the pasture’ scene that doesn’t suck))

The trees at the edge of the woods were not the largest, but their trunks were plenty thick enough to hide an eight year old girl. Cautiously, not wanting to be seen, Christine hid behind the first one she came to and peered out toward the firelight. There was something there, something she could almost see through the crush of other trees, but she could only see a tiny sliver. Frowning, she looked across the break to the next tree to her right and, glancing back toward the firelight, trying to judge whether the thing she saw could see her, and then bolted across to the next tree. For a minute she just sat there, listening as best she could, trying to determine whether or not she’d been seen.

When another of the strange ratcheting sounds came,  not seeming to be any closer, she leaned her head out, peering once again into the woods. This time she had a nearly uninterrupted view of the fire and what surrounded it.

Her blue eyes widened.

There were roughly five of them, although there could have been a couple more in the surrounding trees. They were huge, although their hunched backs made it impossible to tell how tall they really were. Some stood, some lounged about the fire, and one turned a spit on which a full grown bear was roasting. They were vaguely human in shape, much the way a monkey or ape is, except for their trailing, ropey tails, each ending in a tuft of black fur. Their heads were equally covered in shaggy hair that seemed to train down their necks, although their faces were mostly free of the stuff, leaving the bulbous protrusion of their noses and the rheumy squinting of their eyes plainly visible.

One of them bared its teeth at the one at the spit, showing rough, yellowed pegs of teeth, and made a rough snarling noise. It hunched down as if it were going to go to all fours, but didn’t quite. The one at the spit made an angry noise, half growl and half roar and Christine pulled back behind her trunk, breathing hard.

Trolls. She had found a range of trolls.

The tales she’d heard of trolls were even more varied than the ones of gypsies, although they were almost universally unpleasant. Some people held that they were far more clever than any human being, although most agreed that they were far less so, although apparently they were, at the very least, intelligent enough to build a fire. Some said that they kidnapped children as slaves, others as wives and husbands, and still others insisted that they at them. They were well known for carrying off livestock and if they ate bears it seemed to Christine that they were far more likely to eat a full cow than a slip of a girl like her.

She had never heard of them this close to the edge of the forest before. Not camping.

She leaned back out when the ratcheting sound came again and saw that one of the creatures, lounging at the base of a tree, seemed to be laughing. She saw nothing to laugh at, but then a second troll reached out and yanked the tail of a third, quickly turning around and seeming to be very interested in the bear on the spit, which caused another bout of laughter from the first. The third troll narrowed its eyes and bared its teeth, then jumped on the second and the two of them went rolling around the clearing, growling and spitting and barking, much like a littre of puppies. Christine was uncertain whether to be amused or terrified by their antics.

She glanced back toward the barn, briefly, then back at the trolls. Very slowly she pulled back behind the tree trunk and, keeping it between them, started to make her way back across the pasture to the barn. She made it half way before her nerve broke and she bolted.

#the phantom of the opera #wip wednesday #character backstory #trolls #not the movie #real folklore type trolls #swedish folklore #1800s #supernatural retelling #christine daee