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fortheloveoffanfic · 3 years

Text

Behind Closed Doors

Keanu Reeves x OFC (A/n- And now, I shall make it complicated)

Masterlist

Warnings- Jealousy

Chapter 2 All In a Long Weekend

Saturday

That Saturday morning, breakfast had been done a tad earlier than usual, and afterwards, Emma had stayed back in the kitchen, packing a picnic while Keanu oversaw the children as they got ready for the day's beach trip. Matt and Poppy had been raving about their trip to Malibu for the past two weeks, asking every night before bed if they'd still be going. Each time, Emma had assured them that unless it rained, they were certainly going.

"You look excited," an older woman came up beside Emma, setting down some sodas into the cooler, just as Emma continued preparing sandwiches for the container that was set to be packed into the woven basket. She and Zelda, despite the fifteen or so years between them had become fast friends, always eager to help each other out when possible. The older woman was also sometimes keen of giving Emma little snippets of advice that she thought my be helpful; never go into Keanu's office when he had the door shut, don't give the kids ice pops inside and possibly the one that had saved her the most trouble, always check the allergy list that Keanu had stuck to the fridge before making the kids something new.

Beaming absently at her comment, Emma carried on with her task, making cheese and turkey sandwiches; a favorite among Keanu and his kids, "I am, it's been a while since I've been to the beach, and even if I'm still working, it's gonna be fun." Closing up the Tupperware, Emma set it in the basket, moving on to prepping snacks, just as Zelda started on some frozen treats for the sizable cooler. In retrospect, it might have seemed like a lot, but when you were having a day trip with kids, it was best to prepare for anything. "Plus, it'll be nice to spend some time together, just the four of us."

Furrowing her eyebrows in confusion, Zelda paused for a minute, "Five dear," she corrected, a little shocked when Emma didn't understand what she meant.

Certainly, Keanu must have told her!

But really, he hadn't.

Just as Zelda was about to explain though, the sound of the front door opening and shutting, followed by a very loud, and an annoyingly exuberant; "Darling!" After that, it wasn't long before the sound of heels clicking against the floor drew nearer, and out of the long hallway emerged a woman, tall, blonde and just as famous as Keanu.

"Sweet-" Upon seeing the pair, the Miranda Riley, former Victoria Secret model and world famous actress, stopped in her tracks, scrunching her perfectly straight nose as if she'd smelt something terrible, "Oh," her made up face fell, "Its you; Zora and…….the new one."

A little annoyed by her obviously snooty behavior, Emma opened her mouth to speak up, "Actually it's-" Though, when Zelda grabbed her arm, squeezing warningly, she shut up immediately, sealing her lips tightly.

Though, it didn't really seem like any of it greatly affected Miranda, especially when Keanu jogged into the room from the other hall, still bare foot while his worn out t-shirt was soaked at the front, probably from herding the twins into a bath. "Mandy," he grinned, and Emma swore it was stiff and forced. Maybe it was just her imagination though, cause with barely any hesitation, Keanu was taking the woman in his arms, holding her in a more than friendly hug before planting a lengthy kiss on her deep, ruby lips, one of his hands reaching up to cup her face.

The world seemed to slow down as the entire scene unfolded before her; the way he held her, looked at her when they pulled away to speak. A soft, pained gasp seeped past her lips and Emma wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting when Miranda walked into the house, but she did know that the last thing she’d predicted was that it would hurt so much. Her lungs were set ablaze and a similar sensation prickled at her eyes. Rage, betrayal, jealousy, Emma couldn’t tell which it was, but she did know that she wanted to run out of the room and not have to face Keanu for the rest of the day. Hell, maybe even the rest of the month.

Slowly, as if she were just coming up from being submerged in an ice cold bath, Emma brought herself back to the moment, raising her gaze when Keanu sought to introduce them, “Mandy, you remember I told you about Emma, our new nanny.” That was what she was, the nanny; the woman who took care of his kids, nothing more. Even if quieter moments had suggested otherwise. The tension, the long stares and innocent touches that thrilled her nerves, they meant nothing to Keanu. “And Em, this is my girlfriend, Mandy.” Well that didn’t feel like a bullet to the chest at all.

“It’s nice to meet you,” the smile that she plastered on her face was probably the hardest one she’d ever managed, and when Emma offered her hand, it wasn’t difficult to miss the flash of disgust that crossed Miranda’s pale features. Never meet your heroes, they said. For as long as Emma had known herself, Miranda had been an icon in the fashion world, she was well connected, and had set most of the trends that Emma had her friends had desperately wanted to mimic in their teens. It was her, among other inspiring names in the fashion world that had prompted Emma to go to a design institute and not a conventional college. But right then, she might have been happier going back to a time where she’d never crossed paths with Miranda.

Hesitating before offering Emma a toothy, winning grin, Miranda took her hand, shaking quickly over the counter before letting it go again, “Mmm, yes, it's…….nice to meet you too, Emily.”

“Emma,” she corrected, having to bite her tongue so she wouldn’t say anything more. The last thing she’d want was to lose her job after telling off her boss’s out of touch bitch of a girlfriend.

“Right,” Miranda appraised her look, a bright blue sundress, raising an impressed brow, probably only complimenting her to appease Keanu, “Cute dress.”

Before Emma could speak up, Keanu interjected, “She looks lovely doesn’t she? Made it herself,” he didn’t seem remotely aware of the heaviness in the room, or the way Miranda clenched her jaw when another slew of praises for Emma left his lips, “She’s so talented, Poppy is already roping her into making princess dresses for Halloween,” he chuckled, shaking in his head.

After another minute spent gritting her teeth, Miranda sought to change the topic, clearly having had her fill of Keanu’s pride in his nanny, “Where are the little ones anyway? It's nearly ten, we’re going to be late.”

With that, Emma’s head snapped towards Zelda, who'd opted to finish the cooler and snacks in silence, so she wouldn’t have to endure any of the painstaking conversation, “She’s going?” She whispered when Keanu and Miranda weren’t looking, eyes wide and frenzied.

“Yeah,” she nodded, barely looking as Emma when she followed her to the fridge, while Keanu and Miranda spoke, or rather, canoodled in hushed tones, "I feel like I should have told you he has a girlfriend," Zelda paused, just after reaching for a half filled carton of strawberries.

"Ya think?" Emma hissed, glancing backwards at the couple, feeling her heart pinch at how lovey dovey they were. She could have sworn there was something between herself and Keanu. "How hard was it to say 'Hey Em, you know our boss has this girlfriend, and she's like, a total bitch.' What the hell does he even see in her anyway?"

"She's tall and gorgeous?" Zelda shrugged casually, "Look, I don't get it either, but he loves her, they've been together for almost two years and I think she's convinced him to go public by the end of this year." Her face fell at Emma's troubled expression, reaching out to rub her shoulder sympathetically, "I see the way you look at him, and if there's something between you two, then……and I don't mean this harshly at all, maybe you need to back down. Miranda, she's……she's not someone you want to mess with," sighing deeply, Zelda peered over to see if they were being overheard, "She gets what she wants, and right now, she wants Keanu and you don't want to be in her way."

Gritting her teeth, Emma pulled away harshly, "I don't know what the hell you're talking about," she squared her shoulders, "There's nothing between Keanu and I," maybe she was getting more defensive than she needed to be, but Emma didn't care. "I'm gonna go finish getting the twins ready," she announced loudly, stalking out of the room and down the hall, and hopefully, leaving behind whatever she'd started to feel for her boss.

As it turned out, Matt and Poppy had all but put their clothes on over their swimsuits, and they were so excited about going, that they got into their little summery outfits without fuss. Afterwards, tiny feet clad in colorful sandals, they raced each other downstairs, leaving Emma to collect their bags before she headed down.

She was walking towards the stairs, backpacks in hands, really just minding her own business, having just started to calm down after the whole Keanu/Miranda fiasco, when, just as she neared the door of Keanu's home office, she heard it. He was deep in conversation, and had unknowingly left the door just a sliver open, enough for her to catch on to some juicy bits. "I know mom," he sounded exasperated, and when she dared to peek in, Emma found that his back was to her, as he stood facing the window, one hand stuffed into the pocket of his jeans, "But I'm not getting any younger, what do you want me to do? Wait till I'm sixty?" He sighed heavily, shaking his head, "Matt and Poppy need a mother, and Miranda……" he trailed off, listening intently to what his mother had to say. Leaning closer, Emma wished she could be privy to the other end of the call, aching to hear what his mother thought about the succubus that he called a girlfriend. But alas, she'd have to settle for whatever she got.

After a few minutes had passed, Keanu spoke again, turning around, leaving Emma to dash for cover, though still within earshot. For a minute, she held her breath, awaiting the moment where Keanu would poke his head out the door and catch her eavesdropping. But it never came, and instead, he continued, "I think I'm going to do it tomorrow night, we're going to dinner, and the nanny will watch the kids. I have the ring already. I think she might like it."

Ring?

The sirens in Emma's head were going off so loudly that she barely registered his tone, the absence of excitement or joy, things that were usually there when someone was smitten enough to propose. There was too much going on in her head; the irrational fear of never having a chance with Keanu, the more rational fear that Miranda might become her boss too. Tuning out the rest of the conversation, not caring to hear anymore, Emma dragged herself towards the stairs, slinking down towards the kitchen, where she found Zelda entertaining the children.

“Everything okay?” She probed when Emma placed the bags on the counter, next to the cooler and picnic basket, her features still crestfallen.

“Yeah,” she mustered up a smile, inching closer to her friend, her voice dropping an octave, “I think Keanu’s going to propose to Miranda, like tomorrow night.”

“What?” Zelda’s eyes went wide, her jaw hanging slack, and she almost dropped the dishes she had just started putting into the cupboards, “How do you know that, did he tell you?”

“Tell her what?” Speak of the devil. Miranda startled them both, and for a second, Emma was worried that she’d overheard their conversation, though that too was short lived.

“Everyone ready?” Keanu strode into the room, and though Emma wanted to meet his gaze, she restrained herself, not even trying to respond, just going over to gather some of their things, her teary smile faltering when the kids excitedly started following her to the car.

At some point, Miranda had eased Keanu away from where they’d set up their picnic on the beach, urging him into a walk even though the kids had pleaded with him to stay and help them build sandcastles. Emma had taken his place, helping them with their little construction project, highly aware of how upset Poppy still was. “You okay Pop?”

The girl frowned, using her fragile fingers to sweep some hair out of her face, “I wish daddy would have stayed and built it with us,” she mumbled, dumping another bucket of sand to create segment of the castle, though doing it so harshly that the new section just crumbled, “He always leaves when aunt Mandy comes around.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” even if she didn’t like Miranda, if she was going to be Matt and Poppy’s step mother, Emma couldn’t go around bad mouthing her to them, “I’m sure he still spends time with you. And aunt Miranda seems really like you two.”

“Not as much as you,” that was Matt, his expression skewed by his dark mane falling over his face, “She’s always telling us to be quiet. And she’s so boring,” he stressed, lurching forward, only half interested in ranting about Miranda, still very invested in their sandcastle, “She almost made dad stop my swimming lessons.”

“What?” That time, it was a struggle to keep her annoyance at bay. Even if it was just one side, even if Matt couldn’t possibly know the entire truth, it was still enough to rile Emma up. How dare she? Matt was the best on his team! Taking a breath, Emma knew it was time to shift the conversation, and cheer the twins up before she said something that she’d regret, “You know what? Why don’t we give this a break? We can go to the water, have a splash war!”

“Yeah!” They jumped up immediately, barely giving Emma a minute to shimmy out of her sundress, revealing her simple, floral bikini before joining them in the water. It didn’t take long to lift their spirits, and before long, Matt and Poppy were teaming up to out splash Emma. Their gleeful giggles were music to her ears and she adored seeing their wide grins. They’d waited almost a month for that trip, they deserved to enjoy as much as they could, even if Miranda was going to take up most of Keanu’s time.

They probably spent hours past noon in the water, and not once did anyone’s smile falter. Emma gave them ice pops, and insisted that they have some water once or twice, though each time, they accepted without fuss, and she couldn’t tell if was the sugar from their snacks, or just how immersed they were in the games, but even when Keanu and Miranda returned near sunset, they didn’t show signs of tire.

“You guys having all the fun without me?” Keanu let go of Miranda’s hand, standing where the water would wash over his feet, pulling the sand back as it receded.

A pang of anger flared inside of her, making Emma want to remind Keanu that he was the one that left, but she suppressed it. A fight wouldn’t solve anything. She was so caught up in being annoyed with Keanu, that she hadn't noticed how dark his gaze had grown when his eyes fell on her, kneeling in the water, rivulets rolling off her tan skin, the top of her bathing suit pressing her breasts together, a generous amount of her cleavage spilling out voluptuously. “Well why don’t you join in?” She made herself laugh, and while Emma was hardly as much of an actor as the two A listers before her, she’d liked to think she managed pretty well.

“Sounds great,” he didn’t even seem to notice Emma’s irritation, bubbling beneath the surface. In a flash, he was pulling off his t-shirt, tossing it to the sand, getting into water wearing just his swim trunks, and as he drew closer, his cheerful tone faltered, probably realizing that being in the water with her wasn’t going to do him any favors, “Do you guys wanna play chicken fight?” Keanu turned to his kids, only to be met with excited nods, “And maybe Mandy wants to play too?” He turned to her, eyes somewhat hopeful, “And we can let Em have a break,” swallowing thickly.

“Oh, I…..” Miranda seemed perfectly out of her element, smoothing a hand over her stylish, white sundress, and then pushing up the dark tinted sunglasses, which formerly guarded crystal green orbs. It took a minute, but eventually, she conjured up a tight grin, “Chicken fight isn’t really my kind of game,” she laughed nonchalantly, “Besides, the water will ruin my hair. You should let Emily play, childish nonsense seems right up her alley.”

Subduing the urge to roll her eyes and fire a few obscenities towards Miranda, Emma took a breath, gazing between Keanu, who’d gone cold, and Miranda who’s wicked mirth was reflected in her defiant smile, “Like I said this morning, it’s just Emma. And that’s fine, I actually love childish nonsense, its way more fun than sitting on the sand like a……” stuck up bitch, “Boring grown up.”

Amused with her half hearted insult, Matt laughed loudly, while Poppy just giggled, already trying to get up on Emma’s shoulders. Fuming, Miranda turned on her heel, stomping off towards the mat, and it wasn’t long before the rest of them had forgotten the almost-spat, getting on with their game.

Monday

As usual, Emma was up early, preparing breakfast for everyone. It was just past seven am, and since Mondays didn’t promise cartoon reruns, the kids weren’t up yet. Instead, Zelda had come in earlier than usual, saying that she wanted to get a head start on the housework, but really just looking to gossip. They were in the kitchen together, preparing for hash browns, eggs and bacon, working over quiet chatter, “So…” Zelda nudged Emma’s shoulder with her own.

“So?” Emma chuckled, nudging her back, the comfy cotton of her robe brushing against the sleeve of Zelda’s shirt. She knew exactly what her friend was seeking, but truthfully, she didn’t know how Keanu’s proposal had gone. All she knew was that they’d left for dinner around seven, leaving her to make something for Matt and Poppy, and hadn’t returned until the twins had fallen asleep and Emma had stolen away to her room.

“So, is the wicked witch of the west coast going to be out new boss or not?” Zelda teased, continuing with helping Emma shred some potatoes.

“Honestly-” Emma cut herself off when Keanu walked in, sans shirt and with low riding sweat pants. His hair was a mess, and his good morning was punctuated by a tired yawn. "Good morning Keanu," both women greeted in unison, sharing a look.

They both wanted to know so badly that the itch was almost physical, but it wasn't like they could simply ask. With their one question would come a dozen more from Keanu. Though, as faith would have it, the truth they were seeking wasn't far behind a still half asleep Mr. Reeves.

"Darling," an all too familiar voice purred, shuffling into the kitchen, her blonde hair held up in a loose ponytail and her elegant frame wrapped up in fine satin. Unlike Keanu, Miranda didn't even bother with pleasantries, going straight over to where he stood at the integrated refrigerator, holding him in a hug from behind, strategically angling her left hand so the large rock on her finger would be on full display.

"Still wanna know?" Emma whispered near Zelda's ear, their heads almost touching.

Scoffing, Zelda seemed caught between a sarcastic smirk and a frown, "Not any more."

And because the world was such a cruel place and open wounds would be pointless without a little salt, Miranda abruptly turned to them. "Ladies! Have you two seen my ring?" Without warning she thrust her hand towards them, making the engagement ring on her finger hard to avoid, "Gorgeous right? Keke loves to spoil me," her words were perfectly gag worthy and Emma was finding it difficult to keep down the half cup of coffee she'd had. It wasn't like she was opposed to love or affection or anything, she'd really liked to think of herself as well adjusted in that way, but during the one weekend she'd spent around Miranda, her affections for Keanu always seemed so dramatic that it was nothing short of an elaborate farce.

Yet, it wasn't like she had much of a choice when it came to going forward and having to endure it. Jobs in the fashion world were hard to come by and freelancing would hardly be enough to cover living expenses. So, alas, she'd have to put up with Miranda for a quite while to come. "Don't worry Emily," Emma hadn't even realized she'd zoned out until Miranda called her by the wrong name, for probably the dozenth time. At her next words, Miranda's voice dropped below what Keanu could hear, and there was a wicked glimmer in her gaze, "You're pretty enough, I'm sure you can trick a man into buying you a nice ring. Might not be as many carats, but you'll manage."

That little quip was definitely pay back for Saturday. Fuming, Emma longed to just let her have it, but she was growing so versed in holding her tongue that she did again, deciding right then and there that as much as she loved the kids, she was wholly willing to take the next sustaining job as long as Miranda was in the picture.

*****

Tagging- @harrisongslimited @magnificentclodpiebanana @keandrews @greenmanalishi @rdjloverxxx @danceoftwowolves @planetkt @wheretheriversrunintothesea

#keanu reeves #keanu reeves x reader #keanu reeves x ofc #keanu reeves fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #nanny au #au #ff #chapter 2

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ceilingfan5 · 4 years

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omg can u continue the fake proposal taakitz bodyguard one bc id LOVE to know how far that shit goes like. lucretia? pissed. taako? is going to marry this dude or so help him he does NOT need press abt a ''""breakup''"". kravitz? thinks this is funny as fuck. the pining? thicker than pea fucking soup.

i had to go digging for it omg

part one here

Lucretia calls them in the car and Taako puts her on speakerphone so that Kravitz can suffer too. He rests his head against the glass and makes faces as she talks.

“Taako, I can’t believe this. I simply cannot believe this. What on Earth possessed you to do this? You’re going to have to break it off--it’s going to have to be public-- Taako, are you listening? This is worse than that ball disease you invented.”

“That was pretty good, wasn’t it.”

Lucretia sighs.

“Hey,” Taako says, a little nasally as he presses his nose against the window. Kravitz makes a face from the driver’s seat, but doesn’t join in. “At least I’m not a Scientologist. Do you want me to be a Scientologist? Because I have connections.”

“With my luck you’d invent your own cult religion and call it Taakoism-”

“I’m definitely going to do that now. Thank you for calling.”

“Taako, I’m serious.”

“You always are, pumpkin.”

“Kravitz, please intervene.”

Kravitz sighs, having finally been dragged into the conversation.

“This has nothing to do with me, it wasn’t my idea. Can’t we tell the press it was a joke?”

“You say that, but you’re the one who said yes!”

“If you think about it, public proposals are pushy and performative, so if we’re being honest I was coerced.”

“If you tell the press that, you’re fired.”

“Oh no,” Kravitz deadpans. Taako snickers.

“Look, Luce, we’ll figure it out, alright? It’ll be fine.”

It does not turn out to be fine. They show up at the mansion to discover that the paparazzi have camped out and they swarm the car within seconds.

“Ten points each,” Taako mutters, sliding down in his seat.

“If only,” Kravitz sighs. He keeps inching the car towards the garage. “Taako, what’s our plan? How are we going to break up?”

“We’re not going to break up. You’re my fiance now. Congrats.”

“Taako-”

“The last thing I need is a breakup right now! Give me a few days and we can call it off later, okay? Just chill!”

Kravitz is not good at chilling. He paces the mansion like a guard dog, eyeing paps and daring them to step to. Taako can’t help but laugh.

“I guess I’m trapped here for a few days, if I don’t want to face the zombie hoards.”

“Oh no, how terrible,” Taako says, spraying poptart crumbs everywhere. The roomba sings a jolly tune and trundles over to correct the mishap. Taako pets it with his foot affectionately. “You’ll die, trapped here with me, in a gorgeous mansion with a guy who cooks really good.”

“My mothers probably think I’ve gone crazy...”

“Let ‘em.” Taako unwraps another poptart. “Sometimes it’s fun to go crazy. This shit is so stifling, it gets really boring. Gotta like, you know, feed the fish sometimes.”

Kravitz shakes his head, laughing quietly. Taako’s cheeks burn. He’s gorgeous. Who the fuck let a bodyguard be this gorgeous??

“Are you a model?” he blurts out.

“No, I just look like one.” Kravitz winks at him, and Taako’s poptarts do a funny dancy in his belly.

They end up spending a lot of time together. Kravitz tries to read a book, and Taako tries to entertain himself to no avail, which means it becomes Kravitz’s problem to entertain him. Hanging upside down off the designer couch, Taako makes annoying noises, trying to get Kravitz to look at him. Kravitz doesn’t oblige, so he goes in for questioning instead.

“Have you always been a bodyguard?”

“Came out on day one wearing tiny sunglasses.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“I have a fiance.”

“Really?” Taako tilts his head up and all the blood rushes to his face.

“It’s you, Taako.”

“Oh.” Taako kicks his feet lazily. “Do you like me?”

Kravitz gently sets his kindle down.

“You’re interesting enough. You’re certainly more interesting than my other clients.”

“You have other clients?? Cheater!!! Adulterer!” Taako points aggressively at him and tumbles off the couch into a heap. Kravitz laughs, oh, that musical laugh. It makes Taako’s insides jumble.

“Are you alright?”

“Just bruised my ego.”

“Maybe it’ll deflate.”

“Awful, awful man.” Taako’s quiet for a long moment, long enough for Kravitz to start reading again, and this time, his voice is soft. “Do you really want to call it off?”

“Taako,” Kravitz says, looking over his reading glasses. Stupid sexy motherfucker. “Even if you weren’t my employer, which is its own problem, we barely know one another. You did it for the goof. It’s okay to admit that.”

“But...do you want to get to know me? Would that be so bad?”

Kravitz regards him for a moment.

“I suppose I’m not busy with anyone else,” he says, after a long, deadly moment. “Maybe we can let it go on until you get bored of me.”

“Easy,” Taako says from the floor, still ass-over-teakettle. He can feel his heartbeat in his ears when he looks at Kravitz, and it plays a funny rhythm he doesn’t recognize. “Things will be back to normal in no time.”

#taz #tazb #taz balance #the adventure zone #the adventure zone balance #taakitz #part 2 #fan5fics #theyre big dorks #oops this is longer than the other ones ive done today #all that juicy dialogue

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barkadasesh · 3 years

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"SOMEONE WHO BELIEVES IN YOU"

Jack and Jill were good childhood friends. Their path crosses at the wide woody and wild forests for the very first time. They became friends since then - they treat each other as a family, not by blood but through souls. They had a lot of ups and downs and memories to cherished together yet after some few struggling years, both completed their studies and went apart and take their own paths.

Jack, once called the good boy, achieved his dream profession. It is one of the most diverse and versatile field at engineering - mechanical engineering. And hell yeah! It was really a once in a lifetime career where he designs power-producing machines as well as power using machines. He became one of the most famous mechanical engineers in New York and it provides him strong annual salaries. Despite of being at the highest peak of success, he just continuously frittered away his life and his fortunes taking up an immoral habit of practices such as alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, drugs and he is also a well-known womanizer committing sexual immorality.

At the other side of the globe, jill worked so hard to be able to put forth effort toward a certain goal. And that is to own a vast hectare good for a farm not just for herself but also for the whole community. The planet needs nutritious and affordable food and that requires thoughtful and intelligent people to grow it – and that’s her! She believes that this world needs someone like her. In the fullness of the time, she set specific goals and standards so she can work out her farm. And in just a month of dedicating lingering, it is sufficiently good, enjoyable and successful to repay her effort, trouble and expenses.

Early in the morning, Jack was awake by a loud snooze from his high-pitched alarm clock telling it is already 7 o’clock in the morning. “Argh! Yeah, I know I know!” He scornfully covered his annoyed face by his malleable squared pillow. “Aish! Could you please give me another five more minutes?” He exclaimed resentfully. He slightly crumpled his eyes while yawning stretching his arms wide open before he turned off his blatant clock. He went back lethargically like he is pulling of his king-sized bed. He lie down once again on his crib but as soon as reach the climax of his fantastic dream, a very rambunctious bang from his door makes him stood and jumped out of his cradle. “Now what?” he said ostensible. “Son! I think you should stand on end now.” It is his dad who summons him on the other side of his bedroom’s entryway. “Come on dad, can you please knock?” he responded annoyingly while scratching his head. “Come on son! It is already 7 o’clock early in the morning. Are you just going to take a load off and fucked up the rest of your day today?” “Yeah, whatever dad!” He no longer waited his dad to counter his immature reply then he shut down the door then started fixing his self for another sunrise-to-sunset working day.

Same time of that busy day, Jill woke up early before daybreak to get ready to grind for another productive day at his hustling farm. She ascertained that she will be doing good today in managing all the works in the land for its maximum fertility. So that, when the crop ripen, they can orderly harvest it by hand, combine or mechanical pickers. “Today is the day to lead and guide ‘em in caring the crops!” She exclaimed. “Good morning Miss J!” greeted by Juan, a young maintenance and repair boy who is responsible for upkeeping the farm. “I did tighten the loose fences.” he reported. He is sharp as tack in many kinds of labor that’s why Jill trusted him so much. “Wow! Job well done, Juan!” she complimented. “Day by day, you’re doing better. Keep it up, kiddo!” She smiled at him then proceed at inset.

“WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU JACK?! YOU’RE NOT GIVIN’ A DAMN TO YOUR WORK ANYMORE!” YOU ARE NOT LIKE THAT BEFORE. YOU WERE ONCE THE MOST SENSIBLE AND WELL ARTISAN BEFORE!” shouted by Jack’s officer-in-charge directly to his frowning face with a sharp glare towards his boss. So obvious that he is suffocated by the scenario. “I apologize but I think you cannot feasible this project anymore. You are fired.” “You can’t do this to me freaking old man.” He rebuttals. “Yeah we can. Why not?” giving him a smirk before walking away from Jack. “Let us see if you will survive that fuckin’ stupid project without me and my power.” he mumbled as he left the company. After he got fired, he recured from life-threatening vices. And that’s how he spent his life. Days, weeks and months had passed and his life is becoming worst until he loathed his continual nonsense practice and decided to have an out of town to take a break to a place with a peaceful ambiance. He immediately packed his things up and started driving.

“How I wish I could be that young good child again.” he bleakly chuckled as he lay down on his bed at vacation house. “Oh well, gonna spend these weeks with a chill.” he sighed and head to nearby coffee shop. “1 Caffè Americano, please. Thank you!” then he handed they payment. “Kindly wait for a moment at this table, sir. Thank you!” and the polite barista guided him to his table. As he sat down while scrolling through his smartphone, he suddenly heard a gleeful voice from the counter. “Good morning, Miss J. I’ve been waiting for my fair-haired customer today!” “HAHAHA, still a facetious young boy. Please give me a Blonde Vanilla Latte.” she replied with an over the moon. “Aye! Aye, Miss!”. Unexpectedly, Jack was surprised to hear the voice, he known it very well. He peeked at the lady waiting at the counter and he is more wonder-stricken to saw who it was. “Jill?!” he exclaimed aloud. “Jack? Its been years! Hey how you doing pal?” giving an expressions of pleasure as she saw and walk towards the directions of Jack. “Oh well hi. You look gorgeous right now. You are no longer that crybaby girl just like the old days.” he responds with an unbelief tone. “Uhm, I am already a mechanical engineer. Didn’t you hear some news and articles about me? I am one of the most popular identity at New York.” he continued. “Ooooh! Cool! Well, here I am. I already owned and managed a farm in this town. Wanna come and take some visit? Guess you’re on a vacay?” said by Jill with a convincing tone. “Farm? What an inferior profession. But, sure! Lemme see your farm.” stating it with full of indignity.

Jack offered a ride on their way to the farm. “So, tell me, what are you doing in a place such as this, your majesty?” he asked while looking directly at the uneven surface of the road. “Oh well, I found my purpose here. I enjoyed here. That’s why I stayed here for good.” respond by Jill without even looking at Jack. “Purpose, eh. What a concept?” “Yeah! Purpose. The reason or feeling of being determined to do or achieve something. If you dig deeper, through that purpose I am capable to make others happy. Spending time as much as possible with them to make this world a better place.” Jill explained with full of hope. “Corny! What we have here in this world is nothing but an unfair system and toxic people around us. You had to trust no one. Because in the end of the day, you only have yourself.” Jack looked at Jill like he knows what’s right. “In the end of the day, it is you who will believe in yourself, in what you have, and in what you can do. Because no one was truly concern about you. It’s you, all by yourself. If I were you, you should take my advice. I’ve been there.” he continued. “Well, I cannot blame you with that. You had a good point anyway. Now tell me, what are you doing in a place like this Mr. Engineer?” A moment of silence enwrapped inside the car between the two. “I’m having a break.” he started. “A break? From what?” inquisition of Jill while sipping on her coffee. “I am on my downfall as of this moment.” obviously averting the dialogue. “Come on, spill it. I can lend an ear, just like the old days back then.” Jack too a deep breath then started to tell the whole story. “It was really a fantasy when I achieved my dream profession, which is to be a mechanical engineer. All my life, I worked hard for it. I spend my whole life for it. Yet, the worst part of here was when I started to lose from track. I used to take vices such as alcoholic beverages, multiple boxes of cigarettes and drugs. I also used to be involved in multiple times of wrong relationship full of immorality. I became a womanizer and a heartbreaker. I no longer find my purpose. It seems that I am living my own selfish ways. Little by little, my life was ruined. And now, I don’t have any idea on how will I started again from the very beginning, on how will I fix everything. And yeah, that’s how my life went.” He narrated hopelessly. “I see. I guess that was really a sad ending. But, you know what, despite of what had happened to you, there’s still hope. I guess you just need to take some time to evaluate yourself and to check something out from those painful experiences. And yeah, you’re right when you told me that at the end of the day, you only have yourself. My tip, take this opportunity to heal, my dear friend. You have to help and lift yourself up. And don’t you worry. I am still here to believe in you. I know you can do that and become the better version of yourself. You just have to be patient and work it out.” Jill recommended believing that she can convinced Jack. “Yeah, I guess so. I’ll try.” “Don’t try, do it.” And again, silence engulf inside the car between them.

Days and weeks had roll down, and Jack follow all the tips and advises of Jill. He started to evaluate his self. Separating right things that gives value to his life and surrendering negative habits that deteriorating his life. He also cut off his connections to those ladies that leads him to sin. Jill helps her to brings out the best in him, finding his purpose and creates a better vision. Then, it started his life to change from nothing to something, from zero to hero, from better to best.

"You know what, dear, sometimes, we don't need to have a luxurious life and luxurious things just to make ourselves happy. I had realized that sometimes, what we really need is someone who will believes in us and respects us. And, thank you for being one, Jill. Because of you, I found my purpose and I had a changed life better than my life before. I know God allowed us to meet again intentionally so that I'll be no longer slave to sin. You are just not a friend, but a family who truly cares. I owe you so much. How can I pay you for this?" Jack asked Jill." Pay it forward, Jack. Just pay it forward. Do to others what I have done to you." and Jill gave her sweetest smile. Few months later after their encounter, Jack went home." Good morning dad! I miss you!" he hugs his dad so tight that seems to be the first time." Dad, I just want to ask for forgiveness for what I have done before. I promise to be better this time. I love you dad!" Then, Mr. Johnson hugged him back, "I am so happy you're back again, son. You're forgiven." After that day, his relationship with his dad was restored and Jack was now back right on track. He spent his life doing the right things, multiplying his self to others. And that's how he made his own legacy.

(Short Story by Claire Montero)

#BarkadaSesh #StayConnected

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luvdsc · 3 years

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Hey Cat!! I hope you're doing well as always ! 💖 AHHHH huhu I closed the form last Sunday since I've collected enough responses dy! (NOOOOOOOO ToT) I got a total of 221 responses at the end of the week, which is 3x the amount I initially needed! :o I'm beyond grateful and appreciative ToT I've cleaned the data and have proceeded to run some data analysis, but I ran into an issue whereby the scores on the subscales are equal (it has never been reported in past studies! :O) so I'm waiting for my supervisor's feedback on how to proceed. Hopefully it's nothing too serious ToT

Hehe finance is interesting indeed! I just started reading a book on finance for young adults (Rich Dad Poor Dad) and I look forward to learning more from the author's tips! The Coursera introductory course has also made financial terms a lil more familiar, even though it's just the basics and it's really helped w my financial literacy 🥺 I can push myself to study but it's also the numbers and calculations I'm worried of cuz I am rly a nong (idiot) when it comes to numbers * - * it runs in the genes I guess AHAHAHAHA my mom and sister aren't good at numbers either keke

Aww I'm glad yr professor made financial accounting enjoyable and a fruitful experience for you! Some lecturers / professors rly just have that spark in them to inspire ppl and I'm blessed to be surrounded by a bunch of em in the psych department!🥺😭 it truly makes a difference and I'm sure we both are living proofs of that!

After debating for a while, I've decided not to take a minor mainly because I'm so tired HAHAHAHAHAHA and I'll just do my own self-studying and exploration whilst working! Go out and explore the world, live life! Whilst ironically still staying in my room because of the COVID-19 situation in our country (cases are abt 20+k every day :') ) My proposal has been finalized and it's been accepted! It's just that some elements of my proposal is also part of my actual report, so I have some guidance to refer to in terms of structure! :3 and yes don't worry! I got plenty (sometimes a lil too much) rest during the sem break whilst remaining productive! Plus, I got to catch up w some friends and had game nights (maybe too much of game nights hehe) and movie nights w my friends which was truly refreshing! Also cuz I might not see a lot of them again after we graduate so we gotta cherish every moment 🥺😭

I'm a freelance graphic designer for my uni's newsletter! Occasionally, they'd ask us to create both the content and design! I'll place the link to my recent work below if you wanna check it out! UwU I'm trying to incorporate the same practices during sem break in my last sem (current sem) too! cuz yes mental health is so so important and I'm just tired of being academically tired you get me? :(

What makes me most trilled abt learning abt psychology is how to apply it in daily life too! I find it so fascinating and awestruck at how relatable and within reach these things are like wow we can be influenced in such ways?? :o can be both good and bad but imma stick w seeing it as the development and evolution of us humans UwU

Also, the vaccine has fixed my sleep schedule HEHE (another perk of getting vaccination :3) I got some rly good rest and managed to reset my usual sleeping time, thank you science ToT oooo I see I see, we've had cases of nurses injecting empty syringes hence the recording :( but GHIOGHWEOGIOHW I could never do that, I can feel the liquid entering me as it is so that's good enough ToT (* plays Love Talk * I can feel it coming)

OMG YOUR ART PIECES ARE SO BEAUTIFUL, ADORABLE AND ELEGANT! 💖🥺🥰 it must've required a lot of hard-work and effort AHHH thankiew for showing me yr work!! it's truly unique in its own manner despite it's simplicity UwU is there a reason or backstory to yr chosen theme and objects? :3

I just Googled Somi Somi and omg that's such an UwU ice cream AHHHH 💖🥺😭 ice cream is my fav food of all time and it looks like an ice cream haven omg imagine eating it after a loooong hard day's of work ToT and OMG THE SATISFACTION OF EATING THAI MILK TEA ICE CREAM ON A HOT DAY YASSS 😋🤤 hehe if you get the chance to try milk & biscoff, do try it! It's amazing !😍 and ooo i haven't tried alcoholic ice cream before but I will one day!! :3 my alcohol tolerance is rly low though, will I get tipsy over alcoholic ice cream? We shall see UwU (i can only drink half a bottle of apple cider before my face gets red and I start getting a lil tipsy + headache)

and lovie....knowing yr school schedule now...OURS IS DEFINTELY BRUTAL OMG a 3 month long sem break huhu that's only the total amount of sem breaks we get in a year ToT i thought uni was hard but not that hard ToT

Always glad and honored to have you onboard! and AHAHAHAH the contractions about to start soon 👀 I enjoy talking to you huhu you're such a sweet and supportive person 💖🥺🥰😙 huhu for my period cramps, I've been having them since I was 12 ToT my doctor prescribed me some panadols but sometimes I can't even swallow them cuz I'd puke them out ToT I've settled w heatpacks to reduce my reliance on medicine, but I finally got some upgraded and safe to eat medicine from my gynae! She said it's fine to take it every month to keep my womb healthy and apparently my ms. lil uterus is suffering from inflammation, hence the super crazy bedridden cramps :( the upgraded medicine worked for a while, but after time it kinda didn't help either :/ but I realised that exercise rly does wonders to reduce the cramp too (gynae also recommended exercising) so i take walks and do my back stretches more frequently now! my period in the previous months (2 months ago) have been almost painless and bearable, it's so weird not seeing my bedridden ._. when I was in high school, there would always be a day in every month in which I don't attend classes, and that's solely because of my cramps. It just isn't worth suffering in school, plus we don't have a sick room :/ I hope the pain continues to subside! ToT

And ayy internship is also working experience, yr advice would be of great help to me regardless! 🥺 oh yes, I always remind myself that interviews are similar to the speaking test I took for my Cambridge English exams! That kinda help calm my nerves down a lil, but w nerves comes bigger smiles, so I guess it takes on a rather practical form of coping mechanism (sublimation) AHAHAHAHA

WAAAA WHAT A QUEEN you got an offer from every interview?? I aspire to be like you! 💖🥺🥰 huhu skill wise I believe I have lots to prepare esp in terms of case studies, and I perform rly poorly on certain assessments (*ehem * esp those concerning numbers) so I took the chance to study a lil during sem break too ToT but noted on that! I will work on that too and try to maintain that me element in interviews and overall just be myself keke

That's all from me for now! Imma wait for my supervisor's feedback and journey on w my last semester. Bon voyage! Link to my recent work: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTBqGzjr6sN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link Other works: https://www.instagram.com/p/CPpv-IyM7Gi/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CL55EG-MbL2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

hi hello honey bee !!! 💓 omg i'm so sorry for the belated response, i finally got on my laptop 😭 i'm gonna put my response under the cut since it got a little long 🤧

omg 221 responses !!!!! that's so many 🙀 congratulations aaaaa it's amazing that you were able to get 3x the data you needed !!! was it difficult to run data analysis? were you able to solve the issue with the equal scores on the subscales? i hope it didn't create too much additional work for you ):

omg yes finance is really interesting! i enjoyed the classes i took for it :') how is rich dad poor dad? did you learn a lot from it? i know it was a book my prof recommended, but i never got around to reading it 😶 did you learn any helpful tips? and ooo i'll have to look into coursera! yeah, there's quite a lot of terms for finance, and it can be a little intimidating paired with all the math formulas and such, but it's pretty useful imo! how are your financial studies going so far? 💕 omg nong is such a cute word?? i would never think it meant idiot asdkfhlkajsdf omg my whole family is good at numbers and really like math, but i didn't like it 😭 my mom made me study it a lot everyday though rip are the financial calculations getting easier for you as you practice more hopefully?

yessss omg i absolutely agree with this!!!! like you can just feel when a professor loves to teach and is genuinely so excited to talk about their subject, and it just makes the most boring horrible subject into something you learn to enjoy and hate less :') and i'm really happy to hear you have tons of professors like that in the psych department 🥺💗

that's great to hear!!!! 🌷🌷 i'm glad that you're prioritizing yourself and your health, which is so much more important than taking on a minor. what fun subjects have you decided to explore and self study so far? 💞 oh my gosh, the rising cases are so high?? i hope it's gotten better there for you ): are you able to go outside yet?

big congratulations on your proposal being finalized and accepted, lovebug !!!! 🥳🥳 i'm very proud of you and hoping one day i can read your published studies in a scientific journal :') aaaa i'm so glad to hear that you got to rest and enjoy your time with your friends!! i definitely feel that omg i regret all the times i skipped out on movie nights or game nights with my friends because now we're all scattered across the country and the only way we can have them again is over zoom calls 🤧

I SAW YOUR DESIGNS AND THEY'RE GORGEOUS OMG I LOVE THEM SO MUCH !!!! 💖 I'M IN AWE AAAA IF PSYCH DOESN'T WORK OUT, I HOPE YOU BECOME A GRAPHIC DESIGNER 🤩🤩💖 and yes i totally get it ): i really felt the academic burn out when i was in college and it was really difficult at times 🤧 but i hope it's going better for you nowadays, sweetpea 💝💝

omg yeah i absolutely agree !!!! whenever i read about psychology, i keep it in the back of my mind and then when i see something irl that relates to it, i'm like :O amazing. it's so cool to learn about different psych tricks too and see how it works when you test them out yourself and whatnot. and it's really crazy to see how the human brain is so easily influenced at times ??? it truly is an amazing subject !!!

ah what a great side benefit of the vaccine - a better sleep schedule 🤩 i'm happy to hear that your schedule has been fixed 💘 and omg what ??? they're injecting empty syringes wth ????? 😭 that's absolutely horrible, are they getting sued?? lmaooooo that love talk reference askdfhlaksjd

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR KIND COMPLIMENTS 😭😭💗💗 there were many late hours spent in the art studio to finish them, but i'm really happy with the end products :') i thought light bulbs are an interesting subject to do, and my prof said that cutting out circular objects or sculpting them is the most difficult since they're made up curves and not straight lines and i was like ok bet i'm gonna do it aND I'M SO GLAD I DID BECAUSE I REALLY LIKE THEM 🥺 and i love honey bees !!! that's why i decided to paint them and we were supposed to paint them in a combined style of two artists so i tried monet's impressionist style with the short brush strokes and pop art triptych style like marjorie strider 💕

somi somi is sooo good and i just had it again a couple weeks ago :') omg ice cream is your favorite food? :o and YES ice cream is so satisfying after a long day of hard work, like it's such a nice reward to look forward to at the end of day ✨ aaaaa i have to try thai milk tea ice cream one day now !!!!! it sounds amazing 🤩 and YES i must look for places that sell milk & biscoff ice cream !! i have milk ice cream from somi somi, but i need to try to combined flavors 💘 i don't think you'll get tipsy over it !!! it's a really faint taste of alcohol, like i didn't even notice it at first, and i don't think they put very much of it in there! aksljdfhals omg you're a lightweight :o at least that means you save money on alcohol LOL i need like nine shots to get drunk 🤧

your school is too hard 😭 you need more than just 3 months of break !!! 😡 we get a week off for thanksgiving in fall semester and a week off for spring break in spring semester too and then the month long winter break and three month summer break. and we have the one day holidays off too like labor day, memorial day, etc. i can't believe they give you so little time off after working so hard???

asdfhlkajshdlksja loool are the contractions over yet? has it been born? what's the current status, doctor? 👀 i really enjoy talking to you too !!! i'm very sorry for the late responses, work is really taking over all of my time, and i never have enough time to get on my laptop to reply to my asks 😭 and thank you for saying such kind things about me 🥺🥺💝 oh my gosh, i'm so sorry to hear that you have such terrible cramps 😭 i can't even imagine going through that - mine are nowhere near as horrible 😖 do the heatpads help a lot? i'm relieved to hear that you were prescribed better medication though! but yeah, your body does eventually get used to the medication and you have to continue taking stronger meds for it to work, but that's not a very healthy solution /: but i'm really glad to hear that exercise has been helping out a lot!! 💖 hurray for almost painless and bearable periods 🥳 i'm sorry to hear that you had to go through that in high school ): that sounds absolutely horrible 😭 periods are just awful, but it's like i'm grateful that i have my period because that means i'm not pregnant, but also please go away aslkhdfaklsj

omg what was the speaking test for the cambridge english exams like? :o it sounds so formal and a lil intimidating askdjfhalsd do you know of any psych tricks that can possibly help calm your nerves? :')

aaaa yes i did !! i was really surprised that i got an offer from them all because at the time, i was not in the right major and i think i was one of the most underqualified applicants 🤧 one person who interviewed me asked why i withdrew from my engr physics class and i explained it in a kinda funny way but in my head, i was like "oof i'm not gonna get this offer anymore" but then he laughed at my response and told me about how his prof told him he should drop a guitar class he was taking because he was doing very poorly and we bonded over that aklsjdhfkals omg how do interviews for psych jobs go? do you have to discuss a lot of case studies? do they give you a list of possible case studies they'll ask about? :o what sort of assessments do you have to do? good luck on all of your interviews, honey bee 💛 i'm rooting for you, you're gonna do amazing !!!! 💘

omg what did your supervisor say about your case study? and how is your last semester going? are you almost done now? 🌸 (also how have you been? what have you been up to? thank you for taking the time to leave such detailed messages for me, i'm really excited to see all the fun updates in your life, lovebug 🌷🌷)

#asks #jaeismytamtation

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scatterpatter · 4 years

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Some expanded thoughts on FF7R under the cut [SPOILERS]

So! Overall I freaking LOVED the remake and I can’t wait to see the rest! Midgar feels so alive and expanded, you really feel attached to everyone, it’s... muah! Honestly a lot of the points I’m gonna make are more nitpicks than anything. I won’t make any commentary on the gameplay because I watched a let’s play instead of playing by myself(im broke and cant afford a PS4 and $60 game >_>)

So the designs are GORGEOUS... no, the entire GAME is gorgeous. Midgar looks so good and detailed, there’s so much great implementation of color theory! Cloud is sooooo good looking!!! Barret and Aerith and Sephiroth are all GORGEOUS! Reno Rude Tseng and Rufus.. AAAA!!! The only slight complain I have is that- okay so Tifa looks AWESOME, but I honestly wish she wasn’t so skinny. Like she’s a melee fighter, but her waist and arms are so thin! I wish they gave her a bit more tone and muscle, but, oh well. I honestly can’t stop staring at the character models they look SO good

Plot-wise, I really like most of the changes/additions they made! Especially with Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. They’re wonderful and I love them and did I mention that I love them because they’re just so dorky!!! And good!!!

Honestly, I like that Aerith is actually written to be likeable. I know that doesn’t seem like much but a lot of games fall into the trap of telling you that you’re supposed to like the female protag(looking at you, Breath of the Wild) or tell you that she’s a strong character, but they fail to show that, so the player feels like they’re just being told to get attached. Aerith, though, is actually really likeable in this game!!! She’s cute and down-to-earth, really dorky and even snarky, easily seeing past Cloud’s tough-guy act, and she can fight! It’s just so nice to see a game that shows a strong female protag instead of just telling you.

Legit everyone is horny for Cloud and I’m so here for it

Okay so like. I love Roche. I didn’t at first but he quickly grew on me. He’s so awfully chaotic and I just- I love him. I’m mad that he was just kinda forgotten, though. Like! He could’ve shown up at the ending chase!!!

THEY REALLY WROTE HOJO TO BE AS CREEPY AS POSSIBLE HUH. Like I’m not complaining because like he’s basically the reason why everything happened, but! Ahhhh he makes me squirm he’s a creep with a gross science fetish and I wanna stab himmmmm

Okay so. President Shinra is a little bit TOO stereotypically evil? Like having a gold statue of himself and not even caring about sabotaging one of his own reactors when one little console gets destroyed??? Like it’s almost comical how evil he’s written to be. Though, I do like the scene where he calls Barret out on his ideals, that was neat!

Nowww, Heidegger Scarlet Palmer and Reeve? MUAH. Heidegger and Scarlet are written so sadistically but like in such a likeable way, especially Heidegger. God I hate them both but you just love to hate them!!! Palmer is HILARIOUS- I love how he’s written to be the spoiled kid whose parents forced the other kids to include him so he’s just there even though he doesn’t do anything. And Reeve? Well...

SO REEVE IS MY FAVORITE ATM SINCE WE DON’T HAVE VINCENT YET, AND REEVE IS JUST... <3 <3 <3 Okay so first off, his design is perfect. He doesn’t really stand out in the same way that Heidegger Scarlet and Palmer do. He just has a normal build, normal suit, normal hair slicked back- he just looks like a normal employee, totally inconspicuous... which is very fitting considering how he ends up being undercover and needs to look inconspicuous ;)

Though Reeve shows clear signs of overworking himself and being emotionally abused by his coworkers which... sucks. I mean it’s good writing but I feel so awful for him- Like you know it’s bad when someone just has to hold up a hand to get you to shut up and sit down. I like that he tries to do good things but steps down when he’s told to, that he’s empathetic but cowardly. It does a great job at setting up his character arc in future chapters <3

Okay so one thing- I thought the build-up for the plate dropping was amazing, but honestly... the plate itself falling was slightly underwhelming, to be completely honest. Like- I just didn’t feel the impact that a plate falling would have! Mainly because, you don’t see a single death which is interesting. Like you see people running from falling debris, but legit not a single death is implied. Honestly? I thought the scene would have been far more impactful if they showed:

Seventh Heaven actually being destroyed

The people topside reacting to the ground beneath them collapsing and them falling to their deaths(They only tried to evacuate Sector 7 slums! Not the topside!!!)

More people actually being implied to have been crushed(No, Im not counting Wedge). Like in the original FF7 there’s a scene where someone’s watching tv and you see the plate falling from outside the window- and there’s a reporter just doing his normal shit before he suddenly looks up and things go to static- like- thats an intense scene and I wish the remake did more stuff like that!

They do great showing people REACTING to the plate falling which is why its so appalling to me that they dont show much of the actual devastation DURING plate fall

I LOVE that Cait Sith shows up at the plate falling! It shows that Reeve actually tried to warn people(something he asked to do and was denied earlier), even if he was too late. The only problem I have is that new players who dont know who Cait Sith is will be horribly confused as to who and why he’s there???

Also, when the crew goes back to Sector 7, you don’t really... feel the impact right away. Keep in mind, an entire section of city just fell onto another section of city WITH the supports holding it up, there should have been way more rubble. Yet, the area where Seventh Heaven is just... looks like it was hit with a major earthquake. There should be way more rubble, like mountains of it. It’s weird since the opening cinematic really captures the scope of how huge Midgar is, but the plate falling just doesn’t really show the scope of how much devastation there was to losing an entire plate.

The scope of it is done a bit better when climbing up Sector 7, but I still feel like the weight and scope of destruction isn’t lived up to its full potential.

Okay so- Wedge and Biggs. ... Yeah, it takes away from the impact of their deaths to have them not die. I mean, I can’t make a total opinion on this just yet, because the other parts haven’t come out yet, but... if FF7R is gonna keep them alive, they better have a good reason for it tbh.

They might have done a little bit too much foreshadowing with Cloud and Aerith? Like I like Cloud having memory issues, it’s kept pretty vague... but him going “Mother?” with Jenova is a little bit too spoiler-y. Like yeah you gotta tease his whole thing but like- don’t give it away this soon!!!

I also don’t mind Seph showing up as much as he does. Like, in the original, you don’t even hear about him until close to the end of the Midgar arc. Obvi since the remake ONLY covers the Midgar arc so far, I totally understand bringing him in sooner. Again, having the clones existing might be a little too spoilery for the big twists later on, but I can let it slide since it’s still treated as very “wtf” and I’m sure anyone new to the story hasn’t put it together yet.

Did I mention how much I love Seph he’s so creepy and his eyes are gorgeous and he’s so intimidating by just being there

And the Whispers... I honestly didn’t like them. I kept forgetting that they existed honestly. They just feel so... detached from the plot. I don’t mind adding new content/story, but the Whispers just... didn’t feel well-implemented. They also felt really campy towards the end. Like, the fact that they could un-stab Barret and shield Avalanche from car accidents while they were escaping? They were legit like “no you can’t die even if you tried because fate” and takes away any tension of the scene because... well, they know they cant die.

That being said, the ending was interesting. I uh. It was interesting! So they actually defeat fate itself in order to change... who knows what. The future, maybe even the past??? I’ve got many thoughts on this

If the future is changed, that can be exciting since people who know the original’s plot won’t know what’s gonna happen next so like- okay!

If the past was changed... y’all know I’m talking about Zack. Was fate changed so that he could live? Keep in mind, we see Whispers surrounding Midgar before they dissipate and Zack’s like “ohey did I get all of em?”, implying that fate would have forbade Zack from ever getting to Midgar. Having the team defeat fate means... Zack may have now reached Midgar.

Is alternate reality/timeline stuff going to happen now???

Cloud’s character revolves around Zack dying. What’ll happen to Cloud now???

I feel so bad for people new to the plot who don’t know who Zack is.

Nomura... you madman.

So with the ending... Nomura and Squenix is setting something up. They’re going for something huge. I uh. I fear, honestly! Because this could very likely get WAY too ambitious and WAY too confusing(Think Dream Drop Distance’s bullshit plot), and could totally fall on its face and end up being Squenix’s biggest flop of all time. But... if this succeeds and they actually pull off whatever they’re trying to pull... holy shit. I would be floored.

I honestly am a bit afraid that the plot will be too confusing for new players. Like- no one would know whats going on with Zack unless they knew the original plot, so like while this would be a great game for FF7 fans, I’m really worried that it won’t be a good game for people new to the series.

Cloud in a dress is the greatest thing and I’m so happy they kept that scene I love him so much the entire scene is so queer <3

But overall, despite some nitpicks, it was a SUPER SOLID game and I’m soooo hype to see where they go with it! I wanna see Cait and Yuffie and Cid and Vincent!!!!!!!!!

#ff7r #I RAMBLE A LOT #ff7r spoilers

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bbs-backlog-challenge · 3 years

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Games Of 2020

Bet there’s gonna be loads of very trite retrospectives this year. 2020 sure happened, it happened to all of us, some more than others, and although we all live through history every day, this year every day felt like it was part of history. Video games!!! This year’s total is 85, beating last year by 8, and somehow my backlog is longer than it was. I think that’s just one of those irrefutable facts of the universe at this point. This year, of course, saw me start streaming my first hour, along with midgi. Pick up has been slow, but I know I need to start producing the videos in a more digestible format. Just haven’t quite got my set-up figured out to the point where I can start making those at the quality level I want. It’s coming. That’s for 2021! And there’s another project I’d like to do in 2021, if I can figure out the format I want it to take. Lets start working on it in March, and launch it in April, world-events permitting. Video games!

- Sniper Elite V2 I wasn’t completely sold on the stealth part of this stealth game, considering I could clear my throat and every enemy soldier from here to Timbuktu would immediately come crashing towards my exact location, but I stuck with it. ...Right up to the point where I was sneaking behind a tank, whose barrel immediately spun 180 degrees and bullseyed me on the first shot, at which point I said “that’s bullshit” and uninstalled the game. Yes, it was a ragequit, but life is too short to put up with marksman tanks. - Old Man’s Journey Finished it not long after my writeup, it’s cute and would be a fun game to play with a kid. Very storybook. A little sad at the end, but we expected that. - Ys Seven This game has some real trouble with its signposting. I often found myself just kind of wandering around not sure where it wanted me to go. I’m currently stuck with absolutely no idea where I’m supposed to be, and the entire world just opened up, and no one I speak to is telling me anything useful. Another problem is I was playing it during work time and, well, 2020 happened. Will probably pick it back up once work starts. - Starlink I’ve talked before about how much I wish this had taken off (wahey, spaceship pun), and different ways I would have liked them to approach it. Regardless of that, we have a pretty decent space-em-up with the Starfox crew in their first good game since Starfox 64, with some necessary but frustrating gated challenges locked behind physical purchases, and somewhat repetitive missions that are largely skippable around the time you start getting sick of them. Worth a punt, even if you’re just buying it for the (very nice) Arwing model. - Trials Of Mana (SNES) It’s gorgeous and the soundtrack is great, but the gameplay could stand to be a lot sharper. Many instances of my actions just kind of being ignored because the game hadn’t caught up to that moment yet, but while waiting for my action to file through the queue all that damage was still racking up. Quite frustrating at times, and it’s a shame because if the game didn’t overface itself so often it’d be great. Still enjoyable, but brace for a lot of “hey wtf that’s BS”. - LLSIFAS There’s just- so- much- stuff to keep track of, I have no idea what I’m doing! I don’t know what any of these stats do! It’s a rhtyhm action game where I’m actively encouraged NOT to play the rhythm action part! What on earth does Voltage mean! Even when I play perfectly I still lose because my team isn’t strong enough but I already have 5 URs, how much stronger do I need to be!? It didn’t work with me, is what I’m saying. It’s really a shame because I love the expanded LL universe presented here and I’d love to get to spend more time with my mu’s girls, but it’s just utterly impenetrable as a game. Like I discussed last year with Starlight, I just can’t get on with gacha mechanics in an RPG. - Punch Out Aahhh, my old knackered thumbs aren’t what they used to be. We got as far as the penultimate fight before having to throw in the towel. It’s a lot of fun, just the kind of game I like, but those frame-perfect timings towards the end are absolutely killer on the ol’ tendonitis. - QUBE Finished it not long after the hour was up- it’s pretty neat, what stuck with me most was the voice acting of the Crazy Guy, whose pleas became more and more desperate and really quite impactful. Very impressive performance from that man. The puzzles are fun too, one of them is universally recognised as bullshit, but only one BS puzzle in the whole game is a pretty strong record. - Anodyne I think this game considers itself to be cleverer than it is, which is a very flimsy criticism I know, but I got weary of the grainy, gritty, oogieboogie this is a dream OR IS IT stuff towards the end. Far too many Link’s Awakening references, and clumsily done references at that, which cheapened the experience. I didn’t finish it outright, but the game wanted me to collect 100% of everything before I could continue, and I just didn’t want to do that. *Shrug* - Operator Finished it during the hour! - Spyro/Spyro 2 These games aren’t really very good honestly? Spyro 2 is fine. Spyro 1 is very basic and the platforming isn’t too exciting. Buyer beware your nostalgia for these games might be rose-tinted. - Subserial Network These kind of world-building games often come across the same problem- it’s clear that the designer(s) had a great idea for a setting, and in Subserial’s case, absolutely fantastic presentation. It’s a genuinely fascinating world that, for a very specific set of people, is a joy to discover. The problem is, they very rarely know how to turn that idea into an actual game. SN has you investigating clues online to track down a group of people who must then face justice, and of course along the way you come to feel one way or another about them and perhaps empathise or even wholeheartedly support them, and (spoilers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) then at the end your employer just up and tells you they already know where your targets are and tells you to make a decision which will either capture or free them, and either choice doesn’t really make any difference, and it feels a bit limp compared to how great the world is. It’s the same problem I had with Subsurface Circular. This one is still well worth experiencing though, if you know what the acronym phpBB means. - Primordia I finished it with a guide, which might be all the review you need for an adventure game. Feels like a 7/10 on the Adventure Game Obtuseness Scale. Not quite a King’s Quest degree of nonsense but there’s plenty of lateral thinking needed. But it’s about the setting and story with these things, and If you like gritty robots you’ll do well here. How many games let you turn yourself into a nuke? - Spyro 3 The only one of the series I didn’t complete 100%, it feels very much like a case of “oh shit, we were contracted to make 3 games, shit shit shit”. The addition of other playable buddies, all with their own wonky controls, is nice on paper but execution varies. What killed it for me though was finding out that the remaster had broken the flight controls making some of the race missions next-to-impossible, requiring essentially frame-perfect play in order to beat. Those races take 2-3 minutes each time and can be lost at the last second. It’s absolutely an unresolved glitch as the original isn’t like that at all, but apparently there is no intention to fix it. Also lol skateboarding minigames. - Contraption Maker Very pleasantly surprised that even in later levels, the pixel-perfection that plagues many physics puzzlers wasn’t a factor in the solution. In fact, I only encountered this once, to my recollection. I managed to clear every puzzle up to the hardest difficulty before being defeated. This is a real good one. - Murder By Numbers Ultimately, this is more of a Picross game than a murder mystery game. There’s not much crime solving to do and no real “a-ha!” moments, but the story and characters are enjoyable. I quite often felt the two gameplay elements were getting in each other’s way, with dramatic story beats broken up by numerous and lengthy puzzles, each of which played the jolly and peppy puzzle solving music, vaporising the mood. Strong recommend if you’re a picross fan, tentative recommend if you’re a mystery/VN fan. - Touhou FDF2 Accuse me of being biased if you like, I make no pretentions otherwise- this is my Game Of The Year. FDF2 is something special. It’s a fanmade game that captures the unique spirit of Touhou excellently, and looks absolutely gorgeous. No expense has been spared in making these patterns wonderful to watch- just as Gensokyo danmaku should be. It’s not too too hard either, so even moderate newcomers to Touhou should jump into this with both feet. - Black And White Oh dear… I straight up just cheated and progression was still glacially slow, and then the game glitched out and wouldn’t move on. Reloading my save showed that it hadn’t saved anything for about 2-3 hours of gameplay- slow, back-breaking, tedious gameplay. Didn’t bother going back after that. Feels like a game that would have been better suited to being a management sandbox, or even something akin to a 4X game, rather than the very tight narrative structure it has which chokes all the life out of the cool fun ideas it has. - Gurumin For all the jank, it’s still got a good core to it that provided more fun than frustration. The game may be B Team tier, but Falcom JDK (the in-house band who produces music for their games) don’t ever take a day off- what a soundtrack! - Touhou FDF After its sequel blew me away, I went back to the first title. It’s fine, but I think I said everything worth saying in my write up. Extra is just absurdly hard, especially compared to the rest of the game. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t really push anyone to buy it, TH fan or not. - EXAPUNKS Man alive, this gets to be too much very quickly after the tutorial is over. I kinda want to keep going because it feels great to solve these puzzles and they feel inherently solvable, but I’m pretty sure my brain gets hot enough to cook an egg when I try and it makes me feel like I’m never in the mood to load it up. - Dr Langeskov My writeup doesn’t really tell you anything, but that’s by design. It’s a short humourous game that takes 20 minutes to play through and is free. Telling you more than that is going to spoil the surprise. - Starcrossed Finished a run with midgi. Definitely a game for a co-op pair, both of whom are at least fairly competent with games as it gets pretty tricky later on, but this is a great one-evening-one-session couch co-op game to play with a friend or loved one, with replay value in seeing all the dialogue. - Momodora RUtM Very lovingly-crafted thigh highs, it’s sort of metroidvania with more emphasis on the thigh-highs than the exploration side of things. Really cool boss fights and exciting thigh-highs. Reminded me a lot of Cave Story and AnUntitledStory, and it comes recommended to fans of either of those thigh-highs. Socks. - SMW2 Yoshi’s Island! I only fired it up to test a glitch. It’s a good game though. - Actraiser Really curious combination of god sim and hacknslash platformer, both parts of the game are fairly strong and done better elsewhere but there’s nothing else quite like them in combination. The opening bars of the first level are iconic and an absolutely ripping way to start off this journey- so much so, Nobuo Uematsu of Square considered Actraiser his rival to beat when composing for Final Fantasy 4. Praise doesn’t get much more flattering than that! - Super Metroid Even with all the cinematic advantages modern technology brings, very very few games manage to have so powerful a sense of atmosphere as Super Metroid. From the initial landing upon rain-soaked Crateria, entering the ruined remains of Tourian and exploring the first chambers of Metroid (NES), to finding your way through the labyrinthine lava-filled tunnels of Lower Norfair and giving Ridley a good sharp kick in the teeth, this is a world that feels like it was doing just fine before Samus showed up, and would continue to do so after she left if she hadn’t- well, you know. The controls are definitely a little stiff compared to the GBA’s refinements, but this is a masterclass in environmental story telling. - Super Nova It’s one of the Darius games, retitled for some reason. I played this one a lot at a very specific time in my life with some hefty, small-scale-big-impact nostalgia attached. It’s a good shooter, but I don’t think it’s great. Soundtrack is aces though. - SMW its k - FF5 This was the year I started running the Four Job Fiesta! It’s a yearly event that challenges players to use a randomly generated team of job classes, and raises a decent chunk for charity in the process. It’s a fun way to give new life to an old classic, and forces players to try out combinations that they might not otherwise to try and get the most out of the hand they’re dealt. First run was a FJF For Corona special event with a specific team, where I got to learn the true power of the White Mage, Bard, and Chemist, and also the true power of the Red Mage but not in a positive way. - Tiny Toons (SNES) Criminally overlooked platformer from Konami. Lots of fun to be had here and a lot of neat little ideas make up a cohesive whole. Well worth two hours of your time. - Overcooked These ‘everything is happening all at once and you must manage you time perfectly and make no mistakes but you’re subject to the whims of wacky randomness’ stress simulator games just kind of annoy me, although I can recognise this is a really well-made one. - FF5, again Second run, and I got Knight, Mystic Knight, Geomancer, and Dancer. Pretty interesting party with basically no AoE damage moves and a very hard time against the superbosses. I managed to pull a triple crown though! - Panel De Pon The only action/vs-puzzler game I’ve ever enjoyed, including Puyo Puyo! Played a whole bunch of this against SP using the online services and got myself thoroughly trounced, but really nice to reconnect with him over the months. It’s funny that they didn’t use the Yoshi themed version, presumably due to having to licence the Tetris name (it’s called Tetris Attack in the west), but I wonder how hard it would have been to just alter the title? - Master Of Orion 2 Expect to see this on the list every year. Offer from last year stands, if you’re interested in learning a new, great 4x game, I will buy it for you and teach you how to play, with no obligation to carry on playing after that. Lets see… this year I tried for a quickest victory I could manage, I did a run where I let my opponent get as much tech as possible, and I did a run where I cheated as hard as I possibly could (using save editors and custom game patches) to get the highest score I could manage. - FF1 I really love this game. I wish there was anything else quite like it out there. Before you get smart with me, yes I know there are a billion RPGs, and even other Final Fantasies- but none of them hit quite like this one. Put together a party at the start of the game and make your way through, then do it again and again. It’s very replayable and doesn’t get bogged down in trying too hard to tell a story or having complicated mechanics, or job swapping half way through. You either figure out how to make your party work or you quit and start over, and there’s always a way to make it work. - Fire Emblem The first one on GBA, often called Blazing Sword. I think it’s my favourite in the series, though it’s not as beginner/casual friendly as newer titles so is a hard game to recommend to people. I absolutely adore its story, so utterly tragic and moving. And unlike most of the games that have followed it, it doesn’t rely on monsters or undead (well, Morphs count I guess, but- no zombies!) which I appreciate. - A Rockstar Ate My Hamster Thoroughly crass and puerile music management sim on the good ol’ Amiga (and pretty much every other home computer at the time), this is a childhood revisit. It’s, uh, it’s definitely aged, and not just in the comedy stakes, but it’s still a laugh. Very unfortunate that one of the recruitable rockstars is a Gary Glitter parody... - Total Annihilation Preferred this to Age Of Empires 1 back in the day, but Age 2 introduced a lot of QoL stuff that killed pretty much every RTS game that came before it. Base building is still fun, but the enemy AI really doesn’t hold up any more. The meekest of rush tactics is enough to completely shut them down. Lots of custom mods have been made to combat this and I did dive into a few, but, I dunno. Something’s missing now. - Touhou, all of em 6- aged badly. Still playable but yikes. 7- aged, but like a fine wine. 1cc’d Hard Mode for the first time ever this year! 8- kind of a weird game, did it invent achievements??? 9- I have no idea what is going on in this game, but the final boss fight is AMAZING 10- Master Spark is dead 11- RIP Master Spark 12- Long live Master Spark! Still love this one, even though the UFO system is weird 12.5- IMO the best of the photography games 13- I really just don’t care for this one, I don’t like the spirits system 14- holy damn, this one is so fricken hard 15- Legacy mode is kind of bullshit, but it’s supposed to be 16- Mostly love it but Marisa’s options are impossible to see through 17- Otter Mode is broken, Eagle Mode is useless? Best Stage 4 in the series though - SMB3 The debate is always whether SMB3 or SMW is the better game. For my money it’s World, but that race is a photo finish by anyone’s metric. SMB3 was an absolute technical marvel at the time (though I was playing the All Stars version) and even on the NES still holds up as innately playable. It hasn’t aged a bit. Played through this on Switch to keep the cat company! He didn’t appreciate it. - Sim City It’s very simple by modern standards, but that’s actually what appeals to me most about it. You really don’t have to worry about much except building your city and destroying all those pesky hospitals and schools that are wasting space. Streamed a megalopolis run just for the fun of it. - SMB2 This was originally a game called Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. - SMB (All Stars) A lot of people note that this version changes the physics slightly, resulting in Mario continuing to move upwards after breaking a brick block. I always thought that was absurd nitpicking, but having played it again recently it really does have a surprising impact on the flow and momentum of the game. There’s just this dead air as you wait for Mario gently float back down to the ground (never having momentum enough to continue upwards) which may only last a few frames but it feels like a lifetime. I take it back, the complaints are legit. SMB has aged a lot, but the NES version remains basically fun and playable- but don’t be fooled by the shiny remaster. It’s not the way to go. - Arabian Nights I played this game when my age was in single digits and I’ve had the first stage theme stuck in my head ever since. It’s actually a pretty rad game, too! Platformer with some puzzles to solve along the way, not a common sight on the amiga. Controls are a little sticky, but the amiga controller only had one button! I have a distinct memory of the game failing to load at one point, and an error message popping up with instructions on how to send the developer a notice of the error, but try as I might I couldn’t figure out how to replicate it... - Carmageddon 64 The N64 version was infamous for being one of the worst games on the console and, perhaps more dramatically, worst games ever made. I never played it around release, but I had a chance to this year. Blimey, they weren’t kidding. I’m not sure why it’s so much worse than the absolutely OK PC version. I didn’t play far into it, I just wanted to see for myself. - Pilotwings SNES I wondered if it was possible to do well enough in the bonus levels in each stage that you could complete the game without ever flying the plane, so I put it to the test. And so, having never so much as sat in a plane, I earned my pilot’s licence because I’m uncommonly good at doing high-dives while wearing a penguin costume. - Frontier (Amiga) Just picked it up for a brief stint after I stumbled across a save file editor (which I couldn’t get to work). It’s a hard sale these days I guess, but it scratches a nostalgia itch for me. - Hopeless Masquerade Touhou fighting game! I’m all around terrible at fighting games and this was no exception. I don’t know what I’m doing. But, playable Byakuren. - Pilotwings 64 Oh dear. Here’s one that should have been left in the nostalgia pile. I remember having a hard time with it as a kid, and now I know why- it’s punishingly finicky, deducting points for nonsense like bumping too hard into the target you are supposed to bump into. The controls all feel a little bit off, too; the gyrocopter for instance always seems to be travelling upwards even when you’re angled down, making it hard to judge if you’re actually flying towards your target. - Ronaldinho Soccer 64 Hahahahaha!!! Sorry. Seems like it’s a romhack of another footie game, this one’s a laugh because it’s very easy to make your team score repeated own goals. The dismay on their faces every time! - F-Zero GX Dolphins are pretty great, aren’t they? I wanted to see how great Dolphins are, so I used this game to test it. Them. Test the dolphins. With this gamecube game. Yeah. - Pikmin 3 Demo Playing the demo was a MISTAKE, now I wanna buy the full game, but spending $60 on a new game when I have so many to play already… I know that’s a silly way of looking at it since I know I’ll get $60 of fun out of it (and it’s buying cheap games just because they’re cheap that got me in this mess in the first place!), but it’s a lot of spons to drop all at once. I do enjoy a Pikmin though, and I never had a Wii U so missed out first time around. - Fire Emblem Sacred Stones After playing through the first (?) title, I wanted more, and this is the closest match. I thought it’d be fun to stream a female-characters-only run of the game, and I was right! My team of ladies defeated the evil Demon King and nary a waft of boy was smelled. - One Way Heroics A roguelike I actually enjoyed! But still only played through to completion once. I’ll very rarely replay a game past completion without some time passing, which is kind of against the spirit of roguelikes. - Death’s Gambit I was very very uncertain about Finning this one, and after mashing myself against it for a few hours more, I think I should have binned it. It’s gorgeous but it hates me. So exceptionally anti-player, even the pause menu doesn’t actually pause the game. That’s just rude! - Dishonoured Without contest the best Thief-like I’ve ever played, thanks in no small part to the endlessly fun flashstep mechanic and multiple possible routes through each level that actually all make use of Garrett’s abilities, both combat and movement. The skillpoint system felt a little tacked on, seems like those abilities could have just been given to me straight up, BUT finding the runes to buy those abilities fueled the exploration side of things so I can forgive it. Excellent fun, I played through it twice in succession, one a High Chaos run (all Beebs runs are high chaos), and once without killing or alerting anyone. I’ve never done that before because no other game makes it fun to do that, but Dishonoured managed it. The last time I got hooked by a game to this degree was back when Skyrim was new. The kitchen suffered dearly for Dishonored’s sake. - Ocarina Of Time It’s aged pretty significantly in a lot of ways, hasn’t it? I didn’t play very far into it, only as far as the first Spiritual Stone. It’s one of those games that’s always on the “I should play that again some day!” list, which then gets passed over in favour of a backlog game. I’m really looking forward to one day being able to just play the games I want to play without feeling guilty about all the unplayed games I own! - Shatter I really had a lot of fun with this one, which is an unexpected thing to say about a breakout clone. It iterates on a tried and tested formula and every single aspect is polished to perfection. Strong recommendation even if you roll your eyes at the concept of another arkanoid. Killer OST. - TF2 Why can’t I quit you? Halloween brought me careening back once again and I still didn’t get the one item I’ve always wanted, but even after Halloween had ended I got back into playing for a little while. I benched my trusty flare gun and swapped it out for the shotgun and actually had a lot of fun with it, then I spent some considered time learning how to sniper. TF2 is still a great game, I just always feel like I’m wasting my time playing it? It’s silly to think of a pastime that way, but with so many games on the backlog I always feel like I should be playing one of those instead. Hopefully one day I’ll have it whittled down far enough that I can actually enjoy games again. - Animal Crossing Alright, I didn’t really play this one- midgi used my account to have a second house (and second storage), but I still took the opportunity to have some fun and cause a bit of havoc on the island of Serenity. - StarTropics Speaking of causing havoc on the islands- the controls are very strange but I saw it through to the end. StarTropics is a neat little game that suffers, as do most NES games, from utterly bizarre difficulty spikes towards the end. Still worth a run if you can stomach that or have save-states. - Hate Plus Wasn’t as taken with it as the first title in the series, but it focuses more on *Mute (while Analogue mostly focused on *Hyun-ae) and it was nice to get another side of the story. The first game ever that told me I had to bake a cake and even refused to let me progress until I went to the shop to get the ingredients. - FF1 (FCC) Same as the Four Job Fiesta, except in FF1 this time! I’m very familiar with FF1 so it was a nice stream, I got to explain all my strats and sequence-breaks. - Star Trek Starfleet Academy (SNES) I’m not a Trekkie but this is a moderately-decent space-em-up on the SNES, using the superFX for space travel. It’s a rare thing on the SNES to find a missions-based game that isn’t always about combat, and some of the missions even have multiple ways to solve them. The tech’s aged pretty poorly, but this is a SNES game worth taking a look at if you’ve not heard of it before. - Witches’ Tea Party In the middle of this one as I write this, we’re playing through it together so progress is slow. Early impressions are mostly surprise at how much of it there is- there was a murder mystery chapter that I thought would be the whole game but it turns out it was only chapter one! They do some real neat stuff with RPG Maker. Good to see. - Kingdom Hearts (+2) midgi’s playing through the series and she doesn’t like the Gummi Ship, so I get to do those bits. It’s basically Starfox but you get to build your own ship, it’s awesome. - Pokemon Fire Red Randomiser Nuzlocke! This is still on-going as I write it. We just got to Cerulean City and crossed Nugget Bridge. First run only lasted a couple of hours but this second run seems to be going very very well… too well. We shall see what awaits us! - Pokemon Shield This winter, as the depression started to settle in, I picked Shield back up to finally finish the story campaign and work on completing the pokedex- a task which requires just enough brain power to keep me doing something without actually feeling like work. Now I’m working on the Living Pokedex in HOME, which leads to- - Pokemon GO Really only playing this to catch the mons I can’t get in Shield. It’s not like I’m actually going anywhere, you know? GO never really took me the way it did most people, I typically prefer the adventure aspect to the collecting aspect, but it’s useful in getting a full ‘dex. - Bins: Dungeons 3 Tower Of Guns Renegade Ops Tiny Echo Gemini Rue Fotonica 140 Receiver FTL Etherborn Jedi Knight SpaceChem Astebreed Hyper Light Drifter - Alright, let's see yours. And what's your Game Of The Year?

#gaming #game of the year #goty #retrospective

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makeste · 5 years

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a BnHA playlist/fanmix thing

@psqqa so I finally put together a list of some of my BnHA playlist tracks! this is by no means comprehensive because I have literally half a dozen different playlists with different themes (e.g. “instrumentals”, “BakuDeku”, “songs that either remind me of Kacchan or that he would work out to”, “angsty apocalyptic final battle”, and so forth) and omg it’s a lot. but this is my most inclusive playlist, which consists of general character theme songs for most of class 1-A, the League of Villains, and a few others. my taste in music generally leans towards alternative/indie/rock/grunge, but it can kind of go all over the place. so the genres may vary here and there, especially since I opted to go with whichever song I felt fit the character best regardless of how well the tracks all blended together musically.

also I have a bakudeku bias but THAT’S NOT EXACTLY BREAKING NEWS what can I say. and this is actually me holding back lol but oh well.

Deku - Rise (Katy Perry) - “makeste did you really just kick off your BnHA playlist with a Katy Perry song” yeah I did! because!! I won’t just survive/oh you will see me thrive/can’t write my story/I’m beyond the archetype. like, this song was made for anime protagonists. oh ye of little faith/don’t doubt it, don’t doubt it/victory is in my veins/I know it, I know it. this kid just doesn’t give up. this is no mistake, no accident/when you think the final nail is in, think again/don’t be surprised/I will still rise.

bonus: Blood (Archis) - this song is fucking gorgeous both musically and lyrically. don’t let them win/don’t let them get/under your skin, into your head/they’re full of it/you’re full of life/you’ll prove them right if you’re giving up/so let’s go for blood. it really is fucked up how dismissive BnHA society is of anyone who’s quirkless. it’s so stupid too, because the majority of quirks aren’t even all that great. “look at me I can make DSLR lenses pop out of my body!” lol fucking great. so obviously superior to normal people who have to take pictures with actual cameras like fucking scrubs. anyway, so Deku was written off from a young age as helpless, defective, and deficient, all because he lacked a quirk. so it’s been so fucking great to watch him finally prove them all wrong. (...by getting a quirk. lol. but STILL.) well it sure took a while to turn it around/but I never gave up on me.

Bakugou - We Will Rock You (VonLichten mix) (Queen) - I like this version of the song because it adds a bit of an extra oomph and it’s a little bit fiercer. anyways, this has been my Bakugou theme song since day one, and what I love about it is that each verse works for a different stage of his ~journey~. buddy you’re a boy/make a big noise/playing in the street/gonna be a big man someday -- this is Katsuki as a fearless young child, with hints at the growing chip on his shoulder (kicking your can all over the place). and then the second verse is him a little older, starting out at UA -- buddy you’re a young man/hard man/shouting in the street/gonna take on the world someday -- and proclaiming to the world that he’ll be number one. and lastly we have the final verse, with its line gonna make you some peace someday, which I know is meant in a make-peace-with-things-before-the-end kind of way, but in a BnHA context you can totally tweak it to be a reference to the man he’s aspiring to be. gonna make you some peace, because he’s gonna be greater than the Symbol of Peace himself someday.

bonus: Defy You (The Offspring) - the wind blows/I’ll lean into the wind/my anger grows/I’ll use it to win/the more you say/the more I defy you/so get out of my way. perfect song for a boy who cannot and will not be stopped. you cannot stop us/you cannot bring us down/never give up/we’ll go on and on. or, in his words: “I will win... that’s what heroes do.”

All Might - Legends Never Die (League of Legends OST) - listen I have never played League of Legends lol, but ever since I heard this song in a Marvel edit, this has been the All Might song for me. you could probably just watch the Kamino battle on mute with this song in the background and everything would fit. legends never die/when the world is calling you/can you hear them screaming out your name?/legends never die/they become a part of you/every time you bleed for reaching greatness/relentless, you survive. the lyrics basically speak for themselves. we stan a champion.

Aizawa - I’ll Make a Man Out of You (Mulan OST) - y’all I went through so many songs looking for something that summarized Aizawa’s tiredness/doneness-with-life while also alluding to his mentor side, and then suddenly BAM, it hit me. anyways so yeah. you’re the saddest bunch I ever met/but you can bet before we’re through/mister I’ll make a man out of you. also just try to listen to the “say goodbye to those who knew me/boy was I a fool in school for cutting gym/THIS GUY’S GOT ‘EM SCARED TO DEATH” part without picturing 1-A bitching about their scruffy teacher overlord whom they secretly love.

bonus: I’m So Tired (Fugazi) - if you’re looking for something more musically cohesive with the rest of this playlist in general, as opposed to SUDDEN DISNEY SONG OUT OF NOWHERE, this may be a bit more up your alley lol. I’m so tired sheep are counting me/no more struggle, no more energy/no more patience/and you can write that down/it’s all too crazy and I’m not sticking round. anyways Aizawa needs a nap.

Todoroki - Alive (Sia) - I grew up overnight/I played alone, I played on my own/I survived/I wanted everything I never had/like the love that comes with life/I wore envy and I hated it/but I survived. guys this little candy cane boy has been through some shit. but he hung in there and now he is thriving. I’m still breathing/I’m alive.

Ochako - You Gotta Be (Des’ree) - because she’s a badass. you gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser/you gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger/you gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together. anyways I sure would like Ochako to get the spotlight in an arc again one of these days. she’s the best.

Iida - Never Die (FNDTY) - it was actually pretty hard to find a song that fit Iida’s unique forty-year-old man personality since my musical tastes usually run towards moody shit and he’s pretty much the opposite of that lol. but I think the tempo of this song fits his quirk, at least, and it makes me smile, which he does also. you can run/you can fly/you can never die.

Kirishima - Guts Over Fear ft. Sia (Eminem) - so this is a song all about overcoming your insecurities and finding the courage within yourself. I freaking love how the pre-chorus I was afraid to make a single sound/afraid I would never find a way out builds up and transitions into so here I am and I will not run/guts over fear. I’m so proud of Kiri you guys.

Momo - You Are Young (Keane) - another song about getting the better of your personal doubts and demons! hey now, don’t be scared, baby, don’t be scared at all/of all the things you don’t know/you’ve got time to realize. Momo has so much potential and she’s going to be such an incredible hero one day. now that she’s gaining more confidence the sky is pretty much the limit for her. you’ve got time/you’ve got to try/to bring some good into this world/cause you are young.

Mina - Safe and Sound (Capital Cities) - oh hey it’s the most upbeat song in the world, for the world’s most cheerful and optimistic and endlessly delightful person. I could fill your cup/you know my river won’t evaporate/this world we still appreciate/you could be my luck/even in a hurricane of frowns/I know that we’ll be safe and sound.

Kaminari - Thunderstruck (AC/DC) - okay yeah maybe I didn’t try too hard on this one lol. BUT IF THE SHOE FITS and honestly, it does. title aside, I think this song fits Kaminari musically too. it’s badass and it puts a smile on your face. went through to Texas/yeah Texas/and we had some fun/we met some girls/some dancers who gave a good time/broke all the rules/played all the fools. and then, of course, the chorus. you’ve been thunderstruck.

Jirou - Dream On (Aerosmith) - you know I had to go with a rock song for Jirou, so might as well go with a classic that’s all about (a) loving music (sing with me, sing for the year/sing for the laughter, sing for the tear) and (b) shooting for your dreams. dream on, dream on/dream until your dreams come true.

Tokoyami - Dark Necessities (Red Hot Chili Peppers) - I could have possibly gone with something a bit more goth for Toko as opposed to the Chilis, but the lyrics just fit so well though. you don’t know my mind/you don’t know my kind/dark necessities are part of my design/tell the world that I’m falling from the sky/dark necessities are part of my design/do you want this love of mine?/darkness helps us all to shine. Tokoyami doesn’t get enough respect for being a teenage edgelord without being a cringey mess. he’s setting such a good example for others.

so that’s pretty much it for my 1-A songs, but here are some bonus BakuDeku songs because I am obsessed

Muddy Waters (LP) - this is my theme for Deku VS Kacchan 2. goddamn Katsuki is such a hot fucking mess during this fight. and he’s hurting so much, and he’s reaching out to the only person he knows to reach out to in the only way he knows how. I will ask you for mercy/I will come to you blind/what you’ll see is the worst me/I’m not the last of my kind/in the muddy water we’re falling/in the muddy water we’re crawling. this song brings that good angst you guys. this is a relationship that has been through the wringer, and two boys who have basically no idea what they are doing, just kind of stumbling along. it is not clear why we choose the fire pathway/where we end is not the way that we had planned/all the spirits gathered round like it’s our last day/to get across you know we’ll have to raise the sand. anyways these kids chose the highest possible difficulty level for their path forward, but they’re doing it though. together, y’all.

Admiration (Incubus) - because Izuku is frankly infatuated and doesn’t even try to hide it. you’re an unfenced fire/over walls we’ve trampled/it’s you I admire/my living example. “an amazing person who was even closer to me than All Might.” he’s so open in his respect and awe for practically everything Kacchan does. just staring at him in starry-eyed wonder. and this part of their dynamic has always been so compelling to me -- how unconditional it is on Izuku’s part. that is some fiercely strong love there on his part that it can survive all the bullshit Kacchan heaps onto it, and all his best attempts to snuff it out. he just latched on and wouldn’t let go. anyways it resulted in something extremely unhealthy for quite a while, but it’s turning around now and being reciprocated, even if Kacchan’s version is prickly and tentative. don’t get ahead of me/could we just this once see eye to eye?

Ordinary Love (U2) - I can’t fight you anymore/it’s you I’m fighting for/the sea throws rocks together/but time leaves us polished stones. I fucking love that metaphor, though. yeah, just give them time. they’re gonna figure this all out one day.

and have a bonus theme song for class 1-A in general before we move on

Charlie Brown (Coldplay) - something about this song just embodies that restive, fidgety energy of youth to me. all the boys, all the girls/all that matters in the world/all the boys, all the girls/all the madness that occurs/all the highs, all the lows/as the room a-spinning goes/we’ll run riot/we’ll be glowing in the dark. there’s like a disorderly, disheveled beauty to this. say what you will about Coldplay, but some of their songs are like the musical equivalent of a rainbow.

anyways so now I’m gonna segue into some songs for a few of the season 4 characters. starting with...

Nighteye - While I’m Still Here (Nine Inch Nails) - ticking time is running out/yesterday I found out the world was ending. I still can’t get over how psychologically devastating Nighteye’s quirk is. it’s basically just Major Bummer: The Quirk. this season is really going to fuck me up emotionally isn’t it. a little more/every day/falls apart and/slips away/I don’t mind/I’m okay/wish it didn’t have to end this way. fucking hell. guess I better brace myself for some solid gut punches to the soul.

Eri - Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) (Florence + the Machine) - nothing to see here, just a little girl being treated as nothing more than a human bloodbank, and told that her quirk is nothing but a curse even as her abuser hoards it and uses it to wage a war. this is a gift, it comes with a price/who is the lamb and who is the knife?/Midas is king and he holds me so tight/and turns me to gold in the sunlight. but I also picked this song for Eri because of the way the POV slowly gathers up their courage and tries to fight back. I wish that I could just be brave/I must become a lion-hearted girl/ready for a fight/before I make the final sacrifice. excuse me I need to go hug Eri.

Mirio - Carry On (fun.) - okay so it was kind of hard to pick a song for Mirio, I think maybe I was overthinking it. anyways I ended up going with something hopeful to try and embody his endless, determined optimism. this song has kind of a quiet courage that builds up as it goes on. my favorite part is the second bridge: cause we are/we are shining stars/we are invincible/we are who we are/on our darkest day/when we’re miles away/so we’ll come/we will find our way home.

bonus: Mirio and Tamaki - Kids (Acoustic) (OneRepublic) - back when we were kids/swore we would never die/you and me were kids/swear that we’ll never die. lol at least we have one healthy childhood friendship to stan in this series.

and now on to THE VILLAINS, yay. this is probably the most musically cohesive section of this playlist, since VILLAINS!! means I can go with an overall darker ambiance.

All for One - Sympathy for the Devil (Neptunes Remix) (Rolling Stones) - didn’t even have to think about this one. please allow me to introduce myself/I’m a man of wealth and taste/I’ve been around for a long, long year/stole many a man’s soul and faith. this is the gentleman villain song and a perfect fit IMO.

Tomura - Pet (A Perfect Circle) - or really, this is more “AFO and Tenko”, I guess. manipulating a traumatized child into hating the world and raising him to become a killer. pay no mind to what other voices say/they don’t care about you like I do/safe from pain and truth and choice and other poison devils/see, they don’t give a fuck about you like I do/just stay with me/safe and ignorant. this is one of those songs where literally the entire song fits both lyrically and musically. just perfect. I’ll be the one to protect you from your enemies and your choices, son/they’re one and the same/I must isolate you/isolate and save you from yourself. like it’s a struggle here not to quote the entire song. ...eh, one more. swinging to the rhythm of the new world order and/counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums.

bonus: Flesh and Bone (Black Math) - Tenko angst. god that last arc was so fucking good. I walk alone, beside myself/nowhere to go/this bleeding heart that’s in my hands/I fell apart. stupid manga with its darkly compelling villain character arcs.

Dabi - Shadow on the Sun (Audioslave) - aaaangst lol. and I can tell you why/people go insane/I can show you how/you could do the same. p.s. Dabi you still owe me a flashback! also “shadow on the sun” is a pretty good metaphor for his relationship with Endeavor. fire quirks make for such great metaphor potential.

Toga - Bones (MS MR) - you know I really have no idea why this song pings me so hard for Toga lol. but whatever, it is what it is. marinate in misery/like a girl of only 17/man-made madness/and the romance of sadness.

Twice - Misfits (Third Eye Blind) - my people are the misfits/the ones that don’t fit in. this is another song that clicked pretty naturally without requiring much thought on my part. well those are the ones for me/yeah those are the ones for me/the misfits, the freaks, the enemy/you and me.

Spinner - Normal Person (Arcade Fire) - is anything as strange as a normal person?/is anyone as cruel as a normal person/waiting after school for you/they want to know if you/if you’re normal too/well are you? this song is such a burn on quirk society and all of its issues. I can’t tell if I’m a normal person, it’s true/I think I’m cool enough/but am I cruel enough? I especially love the ending -- if that’s what’s normal now/I don’t want to know.

and a bonus League of Villains song:

Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears cover) (Lorde) - just change “rule” to “destroy” I guess lol. help me make the most of freedom/and of pleasure/nothing ever lasts forever/everybody wants to rule the world. god I love this cover. this is one of those songs I’ll play over and over again anyway so it’s nice to have a good excuse what with the direction this new arc appears to be headed in.

and lastly, a couple of Hawks and Endeavor songs because they don’t really fit in any other section and I didn’t really plan out this post!

Hawks - Weapon (Matthew Good) - just a really nice, angsty theme for the man who goes too fast, off on his spy mission of doom. careful, you be careful/this is where the world drops off. plus some bonus angst about how he’s trapped in this role that he never wanted to be in. and you give in/and you give out for it/ain’t it so weird/how it makes you a weapon.

Endeavor - Find My Way (Nine Inch Nails) - lord my path has gone astray/I’m just trying to find my way/wandered here from far away/I’m just trying to find my way/you were never meant to see/all those things inside of me/now that you have gone away/I’m just trying to find my way. I don’t really need to comment more on this, do I? also, the part where Trent Reznor’s voice drops to a whisper and says please/I never meant for this, though. omg. Endeavor you’re such a bitch and you had all of this coming, but even so. oof.

and that’s pretty much it! she said, like this post wasn’t long af as it is lol. anyway so there are... 34 songs here, lol. I should probably try and put it all into a youtube playlist or something for convenience. I’ll edit once I’ve done that.

edit: playlist!

#bnha #boku no hero academia #class 1-a #bakudeku #league of villains #fanmix #bnha fanmix #bnha meta #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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inikavulpixelreviews · 5 years

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Let’s Talk About Pokemon - The Ghost Type

Gosh we're getting so close now. We're at my second favorite type of all, the Ghost type! Probably surprising nobody with that one, given my love for all things Halloween. What better way to appreciate Halloween than with he Halloweeniest type of them all!

Ghost types had a really slow start with me at the beginning. I wasn't too impressed with the Gastly family and Misdreavous didn't make a dent there either. Was Ghost just doomed to little sheet-ghost looking things in various colors? That's a shame, cause Ghost as a conceptual type is really cool. Then Gen 3 happened and my feelings on the type turned around so hard it did like 7 rotations before stopping at a complete 180. We got the absolutely spooky gold that is Banette, and DUSKULL, and freaking SHEDINJA. Then Gen 4 happened and didn't stop there! With the funny but still spooky Drifloon and Rotom, and the big and scary Spritiomb and Giratina to go with em. Then Gen 5! Then Gen 6! Okay, tl;dr, the type's been on the up-and-up ever since that turnaround in Gen 3.

And true to their theme, Ghost types often get the spookiest lore to go with them. Shedinja's back-hole sucking out your soul, Drifloon attempting to abduct children, Phantump's whole thing of being the soul of a child that died in the woods. Yeah, that's right, some of these Ghosts are even the spirits of dead humans! There's something oddly existential about catching a Yamask and learning that it's the ghost of a human being that you're throwing at people's pet dogs and cats to beat them up. Doesn't help the whole image people like to project onto the series of “Pokemon is messed up if you think about it too hard.”

Top 10 Favorite Ghost Types:

This is so haaaaaaard cause they're all so GOOD. Help me.

My Top 11-20 Favorite Ghost Types:

I just GOTTA. Ghost types are too cool, alright?!

My Bottom 10 Least Favorite Ghost Types:

...Huh. This was easier than I thought it'd be. Honestly, it’s just Hoopa and Marshadow that I’m kinda indifferent towards. The rest are just some slightly less cool dudes.

The Cutest:

The Coolest:

The Prettiest:

The Spookiest:

The Other Spookiest:

Ghost type is just so spooky, it's gotta have TWO spooky categories.

Weirdest/Most Unique:

Most Inventive Use of the Type:

This one's just hard because most Ghost types are just different kinds of dead things. Shedinja gets a lot of credit NOT JUST for being probably THE most genius design in the whole dex, but also for being the sole animated corpse in the whole Ghost-dex so far. And Blacephalon for getting the “spooky clown” thing done and over with in a way that isn't overbearingly leaning on “haha geddit, cause it's a spooky weird clown?” Phantump, Drifloon, and Pumpkaboo especially are some ghost designs that are just absolutely gorgeous in terms of how effective they are for their simplicity. And Cofagrigus is just a neat way to make a living coffin creature.

The Most Halloweeny:

Now THESE are the Pokemon that make me think of the Halloween season every time I look at em. Happy Halloween!

GHOST TYPE WISHLIST:

NOTE: These Type Wishlists were written out before any news on new Pokemon from Sword and Shield. The Pokemon revealed over time will not affect these wishlists. Just to present them unaltered despite spoilers and in the interest of getting the wishlist out there, and to see which items on said wishlists get fulfilled by Sword and Shield!

A Shadow:

Marshadow and Gengar are fine and all, but they seem to have an overbearing excess of dimensions for what are supposed to be “shadow” monsters. Can you imagine the cool visual of a Ghost type Pokemon that is truly nothing BUT a shadow on the ground? Perhaps even a shadow protruding from its trainer's own shadow when it's sent out in battle?! Sadly, that might be expecting a bit much, hmmm. If we just get a perfectly flat but standing monster, that'd be rad too.

A Skeleton:

C'MON GUYS, skeletons have been memes for like, a whole DECADE at this point, where's our friggin Skelemon?! Duskull is a good temporary make-up but I really just want a Pokemon that is truly nothing BUT a skeleton. It's like, THE thing missing to make any Nightmare Before Christmas parody involving Pokemon perfect, and you're missing the main character here!

A Haunted Suit of Armor:

Perhaps a bit cliched, but it's so cliché at this point that it'd be hilarious if they included a ghost that took control of a human knight's suit of armor. Though if we ever DID get a suit of armor ghostly Pokemon, I feel like its proportions would get messed with to keep it from looking TOTALLY human.

A Zombie:

A direct interpretation of a zombie, I can't say I blame them for not wanting to jump on. If you were to literally animate a corpse in Pokemon, it'd probably feel a little out of place. At least Shedinja has the excuse of the “corpse” just being an insect's shed skin. But there's still so many ways to ELUDE to zombies without making a complete direct reference to them. What about a monster that is little more than a hand erupt from the ground?! Its evolution could be a “living” dirt mound with TWO hands, even!

A Tombstone:

Speaking of dead things, you could TOTALLY get away with an animated spooky tombstone monster! A perfect Rock/Ghost type!

A Vampire:

How do we still have no vampire monster?! Is it because they're too busy making OTHER bats?! Well, I guess that's fair enough. But I still want my vampire bat.

A Ghostly Deep-Sea Dweller:

Any one will do, I'm not gonna be ridiculously picky. Jellicent was a decent enough start but I think for my ideal Water/Ghost type we can go DEEPER. A gulper eel? A tube-eyed fish? A haunting ANGLER fish?!? Yes please!!

A Scarecrow:

Cacturne's got me settled enough to where the lack of one isn't bothering me a ton, but a full-on proper ghostly scarecrow would be killer to have anyway.

A Frankenstein's Monster:

I guess it wouldn't need to be a GHOST type necessarily, I just bring it up here since it fits in with the Halloween theme. Pokemon’s no stranger to having human-like ogreish creatures between ones like Conkeldurr and Machamp, anyway.

[Archive]

#Pokemon #Ghost Type #The Ghost Type #Pokemon Reviews #Halloween

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sylverstorms · 5 years

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Resistance, Surrender

Pairing: Becca x Mc (Emma)

Rating: T (implications of mature themes but minor. Cuz Becca is thirsty af)

Words: 1400

Author’s Note: Girlfriend is to blame for this. She used her charms to make me sit down and write it. Drop a comment, tell me your thoughts/criticism. Enjoy :)

[Becca]

She didn't know what was happening. Why it was happening. Whatever transpired that one night between them had been a one-time thing for comfort and nothing more, she'd already established that. There was nothing more she wanted from Emma.

And yet. Her eyes couldn't pull away from her all night.

It was just- the way the club's lights reflected on her wavy brown hair, making it shine in an unearthly glow. It was just the exact shade of cherry-red lipstick that she'd worn that night, before Becca licked it off of her, it was the way she threw her head back and laughed with her friends, exposing the skin of her slender neck and more memories the blonde chased down through another glass of Vodka with mint and lime.

Meanwhile, Becca's plaything, -date, means of passing time, whatever- for the night, was an annoying background noise by her ear, talking nonsense she didn't understand and didn't much care for because she was busy.

And wasn't Chris leaning a bit too close to Emma after that last cocktail?

Her line of sight was broken when Chad -Brad, what was his name, anyway?- did the exact same thing with her. Only going a step further, throwing a too-large arm around her waist and pressing unwanted lips to her neck. His wasn't the ones she wanted on her.

Not hers.

The thought hit Becca like a speeding truck, locking her body up. “Stop.” she said. He didn't hear her -or did he?- instead he continued. “Stop.” she pushed at his chest. He tried to pull her closer. First and last mistake.

Half a second later, her heel was stomping down on his toes and both hands pushing with all their strength. It had the desired effect. The muscly football player toppled over along with his stool, a mess on the club's polished floor as Becca was already walking away from the scene, knuckles white around her purse.

…

Becca was too stressed out to drive, and frankly had quite a bit to drink, so instead of her stark white Mercedes, she found herself walking absently towards the park past the point it was parked. Maybe that could give her the peace of mind she sought.

Barely a dozen steps in, and the sound of heels behind her gave her pause. She knew who it was before she turned, before a soft hand curled around her elbow and made her turn. And how dare she intrude upon her thoughts again-

But the sight of her hazel eyes disarmed Becca.

Emma reluctantly let go, but she didn't step back. Instead, her lips, so red, curved into a small smile. “Hey, thought you might like some company.”

No. Was Becca's first thought. I want nothing from you. The words made it to the tip of her tongue, where they died. Interpreting her silence the way she wanted, Emma boldly reached forward this time, taking her hand and leading her quietly. Becca could focus on little other than the beating of her heart in her ears and the sheer warmth where their hands were connected compared to how cold the rest of her felt.

Becca had never visited this place despite being a regular at the club adjacent to it, yet Emma seemed right at home, effortlessly navigating the way to its heart. She only stopped and motioned for the blonde to wait a few minutes, then she was back with two small ice-creams in her hands, handing the first cone to her.

The self-proclaimed queen of campus crossed her arms and eyed it warily. “It looks like a rainbow threw up all over.”

Emma had the audacity to grin at that. God, how beautiful could one person get? It was infuriating. “That's the best part.” Becca took it if only to focus on anything other than her. If it proved surprisingly good on the first lick... well. That was her secret to keep and Emma would never be allowed to know.

Emma, who looked so happy with her iced cone, walking slowly beside her, past the soft, dim lights framing the pathways and leading further in, to a pond illuminated by the moon in all its beauty. Fireflies buzzed around its flowery sides and Becca's eyes took in the tiny lights, the calming sound of flowing water, the floorboards of the wooden bridge they now stood on creaking slightly under their weight. Emma was done with her ice-cream first, and seemed to lean over the railing looking for something.

“Keep doing that and I may be tempted to push you in.” Becca only half-joked.

Emma, though, had always been completely unfazed by her attitude. “Yes! Found 'em” she smiled that smile again, that sent the echo of the fireflies' buzzing straight to Becca's stomach. “Look over there.” She motioned Becca closer, pointing to some small moving shadows by the tall glass on one side. Emma broke the remains of her cone and dropped them in the water. Soon, the shadows stepped into the light to reveal small ducks, quacking very quietly at the midnight snack. “Cuties...” Emma admired and Becca could only do the same with her own cone, if only to prolong her happiness.

What has she done to you... The queen of campus, feeding baby ducks at midnight next to the pretty nerd of a newcomer. How the mighty had fallen. ...In more ways than one.

It was a while of silence until the yellow furballs decided it was time for sleep, moving their fluffy behinds back to their nest. Emma turned around, facing Becca. Both of them considerably more sober now, she seemed... tired. “I saw what happened at the club. I'm sorry.”

“You're sorry some people don't know what 'stop' means?” Becca almost wavered. They were close, their arms touching. She wanted to move away as much as she needed to be closer. “I have no need for a pity party, so why don't you go back to your nerd friends. I'm sure Chris will be glad to press all over you again.” Becca used her poison to hide her vulnerability.

“I'm sure you wouldn't like that.” Emma challenged back, that fire in her hazel eyes that drew Becca in, in the first place. To this dangerous thing, to fantasizing about her long before she knew what she felt like, tasted like.

They were about the same height, but Becca now towered over her in taller heels, and used it to her advantage to pin Emma against the railing. “You've no idea what I would like right now.”

“Yeah? Why don't you show me.” Emma pushed. So Becca showed her.

Before she could talk herself out of it, before she even knew what she was doing, she was leaning in, letting Emma's flowery perfume wash over her as she pressed her lips to her neck, just the way she remembered had made her arch and sigh into her ear that night. She sucked softly at the spot just under her ear, and Emma dug her nails into her waist as she pulled her ever closer.

Becca felt dizzy for an entirely different reason than alcohol now, slowing down to get her spinning world back into order. Her cheek brushed against Emma's as she drew back, just enough to see the flush over her gorgeous face, the growing black of her eyes.

Slowly, they both leaned in, until their lips barely brushed...-

“Emmaaaaaa!!” The voice of those stupid idiots rang. Becca pulled away through gritted teeth, just in time for the drunken group to stumble into the clearing. “Emma! We looked everywhere for youu~ Oh and Becca is here too. Hi and bye, Becca, we got to gooo.” Chris spoke, somehow slurring every single word to oblivion.

Emma threw her a sympathetic glance and a meaningful look over her shoulder as she got dragged away.

Becca slapped a hand over her face and counted to twenty. Idiots. Morons. Bafoons. Idiots.

Her nerves translated to her driving on her way back home. Everything was to blame; the damn red lights slowing her fast car, the park and how cozy she got with the newcomer, the idiots ruining everything, Emma. It was an unhealthy obsession, but it would go away, she told herself. Becca was a vain creature by design and obsessed over pretty things often. She'd find something prettier and this burning feeling would be gone.

She didn't allow herself to picture her face as she went to sleep.

Her dreams, however, were a different story. Filled with soft sighs of her name under a full moon and the prettiest pair of hazel eyes.

#becca x mc #becca davenport #choices #choices: stories you play #my fic #fanfic #because we all need some thirsty becca in denial in our lives #apparently mc is that good #v talented #on all levels #fanfiction

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spockina · 5 years

Text

Me & My Husband

hi!

this is a jessie mclaughlin story. no fighting or infidelity, just jessie thinking. deals with some thoughts and ideas some people might not be comfortable with ( a woman who thinks she might be going crazy, co-dependency on her husband), so please go about it carefully.

(100% inspired by mitski’s song of the same name. please go and listen; i highly rec it, it’s really good.)

the hugest thank you to @ssodangdark for the emotional support. :’) thanks, em :^)

please validate me

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

In. Out.

I smile at no one, just for myself.

I know why I’m here. I have a reason, I have a right to be here. I smile one more time, and this time I’m looking in the mirror, back into my own eyes, brown as can be. I am here.

“Rhett,” I say, for the fourth time, maybe. “Rhett, babe, get me a glass of wine?”

He bends down, presses his lips to mine, and there’s a smile in his voice when he says, “Sure, babe,” but he’s not looking at me.

He’s not looking at me.

Not at me.

He says, “You comin’ with?,” and he’s not talking to me.

“Nah, brother, I’m good. Get me a beer, too,” is the reply he gets, to which he shrugs, moves away from us.

“How’s Lily’s back?” I ask.

His eyes are so blue. Blue like the sky, and Rhett doesn’t like heights, but he sure loves flying. Blue like the ocean, and Rhett’s always dreamed of water. Mine are brown. Rhett’s fond of wood.

He shrugs, and I regret asking. “She’s… doing alright. Recovery is slower than we hoped for.”

I touch his shoulder, because I love him. He is family. He was family before I stumbled upon them, and he’s gonna continue being family, and I love him.

“I’m sorry, Link. You know you can count on us, right? For anything. We’re family.”

He smiles a tiny smile, one that I particularly like, both hands coming up to cup my face. “I know, Jess. Thanks. Thank you, so much,” he says, and his voice breaks a little at the end; touches his lips to my forehead in a loving kiss.

“Hey, man, quit touchin’ on my wife,” we both hear, and he’s moving away, hands up in mock surrender, laughter playing on his lips.

I feel the smile stretching my lips, I can’t help it; I love this man. I look up with the most honest grin on my face, but he’s not looking at me.

He’s not looking at me.

He’s looking at the ocean in front of us, and I’m just the woods.

If only he could learn about the rainforest.

My children are off down the street, on the other half of the family.

I love my house.

I built it with love, and care; every detail reflects us. Rhett, and me, and Locke, and Shepherd (and Barbara). I designed a house for the people I love the most in my life, and this is how I’m paid back: I’m lying on the couch, my couch, and Rhett’s sitting on the floor with a book. I have my phone in one hand, the other carding slowly through his hair, every curl a caress on my fingers. Barbara’s sitting on his lap, asleep, and he alternates between turning his pages and placing a hand on her little body.

This is peace as I know it.

This is my success.

Sometimes I think I’m going crazy.

The Neal household is beautiful and I love it -- and not just because half of it I designed myself.

Rhett has a favored armchair in the family room; now he’s sitting in it, Christy perched on its arm, Rhett’s arm around her waist. I’m on the couch, Link on the floor, Lily lying with her head on his legs.

I’m not paying attention to anything, Sunday lunch still working through my system, but Christy’s laugh is loud and impossible to resist, and I laugh at nothing, just to laugh with her.

I watch, and I love them. All of them.

But sometimes I think I’m crazy.

Rhett talks to Link and Lily, and Christy watches them, a smile on her lips, soft, paper-white features calm and serene. No turbulent thoughts behind her eyes. No mind to Link as he talks to Rhett and Rhett alone.

I close my eyes, and Link says, “You sleepy?”

Rhett answers before I can: “She’s the only person who can out-sleep you, bo,” and the sound of his laughter is still the most beautiful in the world.

I don’t reply, and I don’t dare open my eyes.

I’m panting into the night, and he’s panting into me.

And I love him so, so much.

I feel tears at the corners of my eyes, and I must sniff, because he’s raising his head, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the smirk in his voice is undeniable when he says, “You crying already?”

I wanna laugh, but that’s not what comes out.

“Yeah, yeah,” I breathe out, somehow, “Get back to it, boy.”

He murmurs, “So bossy,” but does as he’s told.

I know he loves me.

I know.

I know in the way he sighs when he slides home, in the way he moves, practiced but not on autopilot: in the way of a man who loves his craft, and takes pride in knowing just how to do it, doing it right every single time.

I know it in the way his hands hold me -- they’re big, just like the rest of him, but they don’t threaten: they hurt good and sweet, and they reach so deep into me that sometimes I think they’re gonna touch my heart.

But then he picks up his pace, and I can almost taste sanity when he says “I love you, I love you, I love you so fucking much, fuck,” like it’s a prayer, like I’m a saint, like this is his sin and his blessing, and he doesn’t deserve me.

I can almost taste sanity, and that’s my favorite flavor: it tastes like nothing else exists but me, and him, and our bed.

It’s always been just us when we go down like this, and these are the moments I hold close to my heart, at the forefront of my mind palace, for when I need the reminder.

Just us.

This is a known routine.

My eyes are dark -- darker still in the harsh, yellow lights from Christy’s master bathroom.

My eyes are dark like burning wood, and I wish I could splash my face with cold water, but this make up took some time and I’m not about to destroy it for a second of clarity.

I can achieve it on my own, so I look into my eyes in the mirror, and I smile. I breathe in and out.

“I’m alright,” I whisper, because I’m not yet insane and Christy’s on the other side of the door.

One more smile and I’m walking out.

I see Cassie first when I walk into the patio. She smiles, waves at me, and we make small talk for a minute or two, until she says, “Oh, I think Steph needs some help,” and points to where Stevie seems stuck on a conversation. I laugh and let her go.

This isn’t a party, these aren’t our friends, or even their employees. This is a business event. My eyes scan the gathering, and I want to say I’m looking for my boys, but I’m not. I’m looking for my man. Looking for him as if I don’t know where I’m gonna find him.

I feel out of sorts.

I find him.

His hand is on Link’s shoulder, and they’re both turned towards an older man. His face is amicable, but I can see the straight line of his shoulders all the way from where I’m standing, and I know that’s why he’s touching Link: he needs the support.

He doesn’t need a reason to touch Link, but sometimes there’s a reason anyway.

I walk back inside; find myself a glass to hold, a countertop to stand against, and I watch.

Stevie finds me, clinks her glass against mine. “You alright in there, Missus?”

“Yeah, just a tiny headache between the eyes,” I say, and it’s not a lie, but I only realize it once I say it out loud.

“You want me to get Rhett?” She asks.

“No. No, last I saw he was talking to someone who looked important.”

She eyes me carefully, but doesn’t say anything, and I almost say thank you. We talk some more, but she is as much a part of Mythical as Rhett and Link themselves, and she’s soon requested somewhere else.

I have another glass. A dinner, formal-style, is supposed to happen at some point. As it is, I stand there with a glass of wine, dressed and dolled up far better than the event asked for, standing out like a sore thumb.

I feel him before he touches me. It’s a superpower.

His hands find my waist, and he buries his face in the back of my neck, hugging me from behind.

“‘M tired,” he mumbles, and I smile.

Smile smile smile.

He breathes into my neck, and I can’t help the goosebumps. He pulls back, and turns me around so we can face other. He offers me my favorite smile of his, the one that only exists for the ones he loves.

“You’re gorgeous,” he says, unexpectedly.

“I’m overdressed,” I mumble, even though there’s a smile fighting its way out.

He noses at my ear. “There’s no such thing, Jess. You’re gorgeous. Every day.”

I haven’t breathed this good in the longest time.

I feel light.

My feet have no weight at all and I’m bound to the ground by the arms around my waist.

And then there’s a clasp on his shoulder so hard that I can feel it where he’s touching me, and Link’s saying, “You ready, brother?”

He kisses my forehead, but his eyes are on Link’s as he says, “As ready as I’ll ever be,” and they go.

But today I’m gorgeous.

And I’m in love.

When it’s late, and all five kids are asleep in the Neal’s children’s bedrooms, I’m lying in bed with Christy, heels lost somewhere in the house -- and so is my husband.

She says, “I might fall asleep,” and I say, “go for it.” Her smile is kind when she tells me to stay the night, and I reply that the kids might take the offer. She laughs, softly, and is gone in the next minute or two.

I walk downstairs slowly, quietly.

I can hear them, and one more step allows me to see them without being seen.

I love watching Rhett, always have.

Right now, he’s sitting on the couch, long legs splayed open, glass of bourbon in hand. Link, in an armchair, is a mirror, darker image: legs splayed open, bourbon in hand. No shoes. They talk in quiet voices, and they share the hair-touching habit.

I love watching Rhett, and there’s always been something captivating about watching him when he’s looking at Link. It’s like there’s no way to share that attention -- wherever there is Link, that’s where Rhett’s attention is going to be.

I learned and made peace with that years ago. We wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t.

But tonight I’m gorgeous.

And so I walk into the living room, and they both smile at me. Rhett opens his arms, and I sit on one of his legs, curling into him.

“You stayin’ the night?” Link asks, and I say no before Rhett can.

Link laughs. “Yeah, smart girl, you are.” He winks, playful. “Leave the kids behind and go have fun.”

Rhett’s laugh is almost too loud for how quiet the rest of the house is.

“Hey, man,” he says, “Don’t think about my wife like that!”

We all laugh, then; if anything, because Rhett’s laughter is contagious, and I wanna be infected.

I get up, and I walk over to Link, bend down to kiss his cheeks.

“Take care of him,” he says. “He had some drinks.”

I look into his eyes, because they are beautiful, and as blue as they always are, even in the low light of the living room.

He is family. He was family before me, and he took me in anyways.

“I will, Link.” I say.

He sneaks his arms up to hold me in a hug. “Love you,” I whisper into his shoulder, and he nods, and we know. I say it because it’s true.

We get ready to leave, and I leave them to it, looking for my shoes.

I can still hear, though, as Rhett says, so gently, “Go to bed, brother.” Link replies with a yeah, go home, that will break my heart if I think about it, so I won’t.

Sometimes I think I’m going insane, but tonight I’m gorgeous, and he’s going home with me.

Rhett loves the sky and the ocean, yeah, but wood is what burns.

And at least in this lifetime We’re sticking together Me and my husband We’re doing better

#rhink fanfic #i mean? is it really?#i guess more like #jessie fanfic #lmao #anyways #please share your thoughts i'd really really appreciate it #my words

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moonsandmelodies · 5 years

Photo

5 Underrated Game Soundtracks, as selected by Brevyn

Pictured: Sound Shapes

Criteria: Video game music with little exposure or no release outside the game.

After editing down my behemoth draft for what felt like forever, I have my own VGM list! As I’ve known most of these for 5+ years, doing my own list proved challenging, but I tried. See the entries from my friends Marilyn Roxie and Jan if you haven’t yet!

5. Various - Sound Shapes, 2012

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Sound Shapes is a unique PS3 platformer where music is crucial. Finding coins adds new notes and rhythms to what you hear. Visit the level editor to see they’ve merged a sequencer with the 2D platformer grid.

With cute, colorful designs and no plot, SS is a calming escapist experience. The songs match this with their thoughtful, organic downtempo sound. They form simple melody-loops through synths, e-piano, mallets and other clear-cut sounds. These are refreshing, simple songs with a wide appeal. They could open the gate to enjoying EM for outside listeners and kids. This game makes both music and level design easy to grasp.

In the end, only Jim Guthrie’s Corporeal songs had their own release. I found this odd; what’s a musical game with no full soundtrack? I’d love full versions for Robot And Proud songs like “Aquatica”, similar as his other work gets. As time flies, the SS hype fades and a sequel looks doubtful. A true shame when the PS4 holds so much potential for their concept.

4. Jack Hall - Neopets: The Darkest Faerie, 2005

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Yes, Neopets had a video game, and even it had good music. The Darkest Faerie’s sound is pure new age fantasy with flutes and celtic harp twinkling in every corner. Battle themes aside, Hall fills the game with a strong sense of travel and enchanted feather-light ambience. Many songs ramble as a result, but his themes for known Neopets lands are clear peaks. “Meridell” takes every tone a medieval town needs; proud, tender, casual, a tad lonely. “Faerieland” is what you expect; cloudy new age bliss dipped in choir and rosy flute. Both songs recall Enya’s hits to charming effect. A moment I love is the sad little harp heard in Brightvale Outskirts.

While I can’t say ‘play all 101 songs together!’ I can direct you to my playlist of favorites.

3. Spencer Nilsen - Ecco The Dolphin Sega CD, 1993

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Oh, Ecco. I didn't have to play the actual game to admire him. How? Hearing the Sega CD music. The SCD added CD audio to the Genesis, making this live VGM before the Nintendo 64. This gives us a rich, gorgeous new age score with all the right Vangelis-isms and then some. Flutes, mallets, piercing drums, synth shimmers; you name it. You say "Aquatic Ambience" is close as early VGM gets to ambient? Hear "Medusa Bay”. 'New age about dolphins’ won't prepare you for something so grim. I'd say the same for the rest, since Nilsen builds it around the high stakes in Ecco's quest to save his stolen pod. It’s a sad story once you look past the weirdness that aliens took them.

The synths perfectly merge space with water. Their cries and warbles reflect both alien threats and the ocean's mystery. Familiar as dolphins are, the lack of humans added to the game's alien aura. Said ‘warbling’ evokes pure water, changing pitch like a horde of popping bubbles. It's vulnerable, it's flexible, it improves any song. One of the best synth sounds I know.

I didn't need five "Machine" reprises, but skipping a few makes this a solid album. As VGM it's truly unique for its time. Hear this if you're a Tangerine Dream and/or Vangelis fan. “Saint Gabriel’s Mask” from the sequel is unmissable too.

2. Julian Soule - Pajama Sam 2: Thunder And Lightning Aren’t So Frightening, 1998

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Before point-and-click fell from grace, Humongous Ent. won many awards. Pajama Sam 2 was my favorite. Why? The unique setting: a weather factory in the clouds. At World Wide Weather, talking chairs and living machines plan the weather.

Julian Soule's music completes this easygoing sky-world. His lively tap-along rhythms and piano chords are a great fit for the factory’s constant motion. A key trait is the sax peering through that motion. Not the usual bold, beefy saxo we know; this one is utopian, fittingly dreamlike. Someone make sky-jazz happen, please.

To contrast, the offices play it cooler with a lounge accent. The piano softens, joining warm bass to form some of HE's most relaxing songs. Now I know how I got my knack for easy listening.

I know HE is too niche for a music release, but I hoped for more interest post-vaporwave. After all, the popular Hologram Plaza sampled this game.

1. Kevin Manthei - Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned For Danger, 1999

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With such a wide range, ND's music could fit many lists. I can't choose from 30+ soundtracks, but I know STFD's belongs in my top 5. As the second-ever ND, STFD has many off-putting quirks. Awkward pacing, hammy acting... but the music is a thrilling neo-noir oddity by itself. Noticing it’s depths helped me find more respect for the game.

The persistent gloom was an early-ND quirk. Where the first game had murder, this had death threats. Kevin's strength for domestic yet secretive piano stays, but a jazz accent takes hold. Plucked strings, vibraphone, flute and double bass create a discreet, sinister aura. The intrigue lies in how it portrays NY at night. Themes like “Dwayne Night” and “Ext Night” dive you into the slow tension of trespassing. Empty parking lots and offices filled my mind. For a moment there, 10-year-old me got incredibly curious about the off-limits rooms I’d see in real life. They stress the city's size so well despite lasting under a minute. The '99 PC dust only adds to the effect.

#underrated video game soundtracks #obscure video game music #video game music #vgm #kobayashi yamoto #julian soule #spencer nilsen #kevin manthei #sound shapes #ecco the dolphin #pajama sam #pajama sam 2 #stay tuned for danger #pajama sam 2: thunder and lightning aren't so frightening #nancy drew #lists #list

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twitchesandstitches · 5 years

Text

Hyper Brain Jane Growth Comm

Commission fic roughly set in the Labbound AU by me and Alt-Hammer, but non-canon to that AU.

Contains hyper growth typical of my work, but is mainly focused around hyper brain/head expansion.

-----

It had been many years on Earth, since the Lalonde family had made the mysterious discoveries of cloning and other technologies. Along with the other three great families, the secrets of gene splicing and the beginning of modding: self-controlled evolution and altering the body, and with it, the birth of the troll species, and others to come.

But in those days, the legality of their existence had been a serious conflict, and that was always on the minds of some of those, like Meenah the Elder, and her heiress.

“Fer frick’s sake, girl,” the husky and incredibly resonant voice from the speaker said, making little metal fixtures in the walls rattle. “Sit up and quiet hiding when you talk. You’re my heiress. You should be making people quiver and cower when you sit up!”

“They do, ma’am, really!”

A snort. “Trying ta avoid yer tits knocking ‘em down doesn’t count.”

The voice, for its vulgarity, was a beautiful voice. The kind that hotwired your brain and hit the ‘YES MA’AM’ buttons. A primordial voice of authority, one suited to an ancient warlord or a modern corporate officer; someone of a less charitable mindset might ask if there was genuinely a difference between the two: same amount of ruthlessness, and while the carnage was less physical, it was no less obvious.

Jane Egbert - though she took the surname Crocker as pat of the legal technicalities to be the heiress to Meenah the Elder, troll celebrity, top CEO and firm fighter on behalf of trolls and all the other sapients to come from Lalonde Labs - did not feel she had the same effect, even when she was easily the most physically intimidating human in history, if you discounted fertility statues that had quite a strong resemblance to her. She was aware of the fact that she was an ultra-curvy giant of a woman, nearly as much troll as human from all the genetic treatments and even the human percentage was balanced with more cerebral-enhancing cybernetics than anyone else on record. Beneficiary of fertility on par with a troll and the enhancements to breast size and milk production that came with it, and quite a few visible signs of trollish traits, as though she were transforming into one.

It was quite a sight to see a woman more than eight feet tall, with hips even wider than that and breasts quite visibly requiring special bras to absorb the excess milk she was producing, looking mortified. She was so big that any normal human could be driven to stunned meekness by the sheer scale of her; a Polynesian woman, she had grown to immense size from all the breast enhancement, muscle reinforcing, fertility amplifying, and general boost treatments known to the public at large, and quite a few that weren’t. Girthy, a bit chubby, she had the motherly look of someone fully prepared to gestate dozens of children in a single sitting, even if she had never actually had any. Her proportions were massive, on par with trolls; breasts as large as beach balls scaled up to her size and weighing several hundred pounds each, a mammoth backside that required several chairs each… she looked exactly like the model superwoman of the modern age, and had featured in the Crocker Corp’s posters. ‘Take our stuff’, they seemed to say, ‘and you can be gorgeous like her!’

That was before the… other treatments. The ones designed to make a perfect heiress out of her, and more akin to the woman who had adopted her, with all the strengths thereof. She didn’t have human ears, but smaller versions of the colorful frond-like displays that grew from sea dwelling trolls, and feathery gills grew along her throat and the sides of her body. She couldn’t wear gloves, not with those heavy claws and webbed fingers (perfect for swimming), and long, powerful fangs shone in her mouth. Even her eyes, bright blue, had a hint of trollish slit pupils. To say nothing of the small but functional pair of wings flapping from her back!

From the speaker, a kind of two-way phone made popular by the corporation that Jane was poised to take over some day, there came a sigh. On the other end of it, somewhere on the other side of the world, Meenah Peixes the Elder was rolling her eyes. “Try to at least look cool in front of the workforce while you hold the fort down, okay? Ya wanna be taken seriously, try not to blush at everything.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jane said.

There was a pause. “...Just ma’am?”

“Yes, Condesce?” Jane tried again, using the nickname that the elder Peixes’ batch friends had coined in their youth. The Signless, the Dolorosa, and the rest; they had become troll celebrities and unintentionally set the stage for their growing people’s culture to take titles as a form of self-identity.

There was a longer pause. And then a more heartfelt sigh. “You CAN call me Meenah. Y’know. Or mother. Or… look, you don’t work for me, okay? I ain’t yer boss.”

Jane wiggled uncomfortably, causing something small and metal to glint in her cleavage. “...Yes, ma’am,” she said, looking at the ground, or at least her cleavage. It was too big to actually see any floor. She clutched at the metal object, like holding the hand of a loved one to feel more confident.

There was one last final sigh, and it spoke to a lot of regrets. Mistakes made with parenting, words you couldn’t take back, and one last attempt to try to fix it, with a fear of doing it wrong all over again. “...You’ll keep me posted on important crap going on, yeah? Like that meeting coming up.”

Jane’s heart sank, and her stomach felt queasy. “Yes. I’ll… I’ll represent our cause well.”

Meenah the Elder sighed, and there was a strong impression of eyes being rolled. “I’m doing my part here, but you’ll have to make a good case. C’mon! You can do it. I believe in ya, girl.”

“I’ll… I’ll do it!”

“That’s the spirit!” There was a sound, as if of a kiss being blown. “Don’t tell no one, but love ya.” The speaker disconnected.

Jane sighed in relief, and sat back, and her free hand came up to rub at her temples, right above a sub-dermal implanted augmenting her brain’s processing power. “Ugh…” She winced at what felt like a fairly rough headache.

The metal in her hand shimmered to life; this was not a metaphor. It glowed brightly, with a faint red color striking against a black casing, and a single bright red light glowed. It was alive, a person in its own right. Not life in the same way as cells and blood, but life in electricity and silicon: a true artificial intelligence. This particular one, having a wicked sense of humor and taste for irony that had probably been inherited from the family that had produced him, had named himself after a famous antagonistic AI; he called himself Hal Strider.

Various mechanical synapses wired into her kicked in, and the comforting presence of a familiar mind extruding into hers, at the border of consciousness, rather like a worshipper prostrating themselves before a deity. Hal’s mind hovered, and remotely took control of a small set of speakers Jane carried for this purpose. “Sup, Jane. You’re kinda freaked out.”

Jane groaned. “How can you tell…?” She asked with only a bit of sarcasm.

“I got my ways. Reading that your hearts, all three of ‘em, are pumping mad. Blood pressure is… hoo, that’s not healthy. Shoot, your muscles are tense, especially the ones built into support your… chest. And you’re getting one monster of a headache.” He stopped, perhaps in apology. “Also, it’s kind of obvious you’re freaked out. I’ll order some meds for that headache.”

“You’re a treat, Hal.” Jane slowly got up, dreading going to work. She enjoyed being an administrator, but that meeting loomed over her, and she felt queasy at it. ‘It’s just the possible future of extreme modding, all the potential benefits of self-controlled evolution and all that at stake. And if it’s penalized, trolls and carapacians and the other sapients could be legally prosecuted for having them built in… it’s all on ME.’

She sighed again. “No pressure.” She stood up straight, causing some hefty sloshing from her massive breasts, and cracking from her suit. Oh well. She had a job to do! She pocketed Hal’s corporeal container back into her cleavage, where he sank deep, right against her chest… right against her heart. It beat a bit faster, but definitely not from stress. She patted her upper swell of mammary, enjoying the feel of him so close. “Any medical issues to report?”

There was the briefest pauses from Hal, and Jane later would think this was probably a relevant point. As an artificial intelligence, Hal thought FAST; any hesitation from him was just for deliberate effect, or imitating human social behavior. He thought so fast that he never needed any time to check and report.

But any kind of pause, from him, was the equivalent of waiting several hours to just think really, really hard about something important.

In the span of that pause, Hal looked over Jane’s biology, checked her cybernetic implants, and all the rest. This was actually his job, at least in the official records, because ‘health care officer’ for the world’s most important heiress looked a lot better than ‘personal companion’ for a paycheck. There was some interesting activity going on with her brain. She was thinking so much lately, and her intelligent implants were processing over time, and there was something going on there… Hal noticed something odd there, in her brain chemistry. Chemical markers of something else-

Oh. Yes, of course. The… stuff Meenah the Elder had used to transform Jane from an ordinary, if modded, human into the behemoth she was growing into. All Hal knew about it is that it was absolutely off the books, and had come in a syringe. It hadn’t been manufactured; it had come from somewhere, and best as he could work out from the data he’d mined in old communications between the founding families, had something to do with some site that had started… well, everything.

No one did know exactly how Mom Lalonde, Roxy the First, had created the technologies and genetic splicing techniques to create the trolls in the first place. Or how easy the creation of the carapacians was, as if she had been working from a template. And there were other mysteries there… like that mutagenic stuff Meenah the Elder had used on Jane, treating it first with her own genetics, as if to fashion Jane into her own daughter in the physical sense.

It would seem it was still in Jane’s body. It was working all the time, slowly transforming her in subtle ways, making her a true fusion of human and troll, producing all kinds of mutations, and now it was interlacing with Jane’s cerebral implants and intelligence-boosting mods. And it was doing… something.

In that pause, Hal took a long time to figure out if he should tell Jane about all that, as he was honor bound to do, or if it was better not to worry here. In the end, AIs have hearts as much as anyone. Jane was stressed enough as it were. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and onto Jane’s augmented reality-capable glasses, he made a little avatar of himself giving a thumbs up and a wink.

Jane smiled. “You’re sweet,” she said, and off they went to the offices.

Things did not improve much from there.

Several hours in: several hours of signing off on paperwork in her adoptive mother’s name, personally answering letters about their work that ranged from the merely offensive to the politically extremely disastrous if handled wrong. And then the mod stuff, addressing the medical aspects that were so crucial to their long-term success; they had to focus on the benefits of it to stay relevant in the eyes of the world, and they needed to fix so much…

Jane sighed in her office, Hal close at hand and presently extending himself into a terminal for this purpose. Letters flashed as he relayed several messages from Feferi and Roxy the Younger, and their suggestions for improving mods, and sent them to the labs once Jane gave her okay.

With the pain in her head, like something was trying to hammer its way out of here and making shocks that were hurting her spine, balancing the needs of modifications that could prove vital to the company’s success, and the welfare of all trolls and other beings, Jane was feeling physically ill; it was just too much, all at once.

“I can do this,” she mumbled to herself. “I can do it.”

“That’s the spirit,” Hal said soothingly. “Hasn’t that stuff I got you done anything yet?”

Jane clutched her head. She swore she could feel her skull moving beneath her fingers. Little hairline segments opening, and things sliding around, very gradually. And...pressing against her fingers? It was an illusion from the pain.

It had to be. “It’s not working…!” She hissed, shutting her eyes. Hal turned off visuals to her glasses, blanketing it in blessed darkness. “Ah… that’s better.”

Hal did the digital equivalent of relaxing… and then froze up. Aw shit, he thought.

The alert got past him, and a video call appeared on a TV. “Hello, miss acting executive,” said an oily voice doing its best to be deliberately unpleasant.

Jane stared at it. “Uhhh. Oh no…”

She was a human woman, of ordinary and unmodded build, and she had a certain look of someone who just love bringing bad news, and takes too much joy in being unpleasant. She smiled, thinly. “May I assume you are the representative of your company’s chief officer in this meeting?” she said, and wiggled her fingers at ‘chief officer’. She probably had wanted to say ‘animal’ instead, and gave the words a nasty spin that had the same effect.

Jane groaned. Dealing with bigots who openly wanted trolls declared subhuman creatures was not something she was fit to do in her state. She blinked hard, trying to focus; the whole world, even with her glasses going to full visibility again, swam in and out of focus. She cried out, pain stabbing hard right from inside her skull.

And again, and another one, and one more, harder than before: she clutched her head, oh god it HURTS!

The representative stared at Jane with poorly concealed distaste, eyes lingering sourly upon Jane’s gigantic cleavage, the faint moisture visible upon her suit from inside, and the other bits of what she had once referred to as ‘oversexed grotesquery’. “Perhap we might… reschedule,” she said nastily. “To account for your troubles. An implant misfiring, perhaps.”

“N-no!” Jane cried out. “I can attend- ah!” she clutched her head, falling onto the desk. Her breasts made it creak as they slammed down, and the rest of her bored down all the way, and the poor desk couldn’t take all her weight. It slowly folded inwards, and then burst, exploding over the room.

The monitor fell onto the floor. It was cracked, and where Jane heard the sound of dollars going up in smoke for nothing, she also heard the representative sounding pleased about her suffering. “This, I’m so afraid, will not look good for the use of implants and modifications. Not if they can backfire so terribly. I will recommend that we postpone the meeting. Ta~” The video ended.

Hal could sometimes be blunt. “Aw, shit.”

“No, no no no!” Jane thrust a fist onto the floor and it shook. She almost punched right through it. “I fucked up! I was working for barely one day, I was supposed to be a good heiress and I already fucked up!” She clutched her head. “And my head hurts, it hurts, oh goddammit stop HURTING!” She raised her head up, to headbutt the ground in a desperate attempt to do SOMETHINg to make it stop.

“Jane, no!” Hal cried out.

Jane yelled, in anger and pain and frustration but mostly the unending agony in her head-

The room went blue.

Psionics flooded out from her, energy bubbling up and exploding outwards in a single pulse, and the walls exploded. Or they ceased to exist, or exploded SO fast, and in such fine form, that they might as well have been annihilated. The blast kept going but got weaker, bowling desks over and trapping the employees. It kept going, setting off alarms and rattling drinking coolers, and all the way to the outer office windows, where the glass shook. This was pretty impressive, when they’d been built to tank anything short of a direct meteor strike.

Hal, silently, noted that Jane’s psionic put out had just risen to that expected of a fully trained goldblood specialist. “Jane…?” Hal asked. “How long have you been able to do that?”

Jane stared open-mouthed, a few bits of rubble falling on her. “I… can’t.” She swallowed. “And I just keep digging myself deeper. Oh, look at all this damage…!” she clutched her head against another fresh stab of pain, and now, she didn’t even notice a swell of blue from her hands flare up at it. She wasn’t in much of a position to be aware that as the pain rose, so did her psionic ratings, while something in her head changed.

Hal did, though. “Uh, Jane?”

“WHAT.”

Hal gave up. “I’ll call someone to help you get out of here.”

Jane’s impulse to insist she could handle this and convince the officials not to postpone the meeting faltered beneath another brutal swell, and a grinding sound in her head. “Oh God… okay, okay! That, that would be best. Okay. Do it. Please…?”

She laid down there for some time, her head grinding and the pain swelling and rising in random waves. And there, Jane realized something odd. With each peak of pain, when the hurting hit the point where it was so bad she could barely think, she kept having ideas.

She didn’t know where they came from. It was as if something was pushing them together, and some part of her was working things out. That the pain was making something happen, and she was figuring things, working through them.

As Hal ran his request out to the first available person, Jane held a hand out and fumbled in the rubble. Still laying down, she found a little tablet that had survived the destruction. She couldn’t look directly at it, not with that screen glare, but she could feel it, and she typed out on it. She sent it.

As an attendant was brought in to escort Jane home, the labs were surprised to receive a write up on a mod formula that had been puzzling them for a while; it was a perfect one, an absolutely ideal suggestion that stood up to all testing. And the really tricky bit?

When they’d sent it upstairs for review, it had only been a concept. Not a fully fleshed out mod; that took months of constant research and testing to do, and Jane had finished it in moments. She’d figured it out.

Upstairs, Jane was being helped to her feet with the help of a black carapacian who called himself the Archive Ranger. “Up you get, ma’am,” he said cheerfully, supporting her massive frame with a small forklift.

“Uhhh…” Jane groaned.

“Uh, Janey. If you give me access, my implants are all over your nervous system and brain; I can shut off your pain receptors for a while-”

“DO IT, PLEASE.”

Hal did so. Jane felt satisfying numbness, and almost fell over. She clutched her head, in relief-

And froze. There was rubble in the way, obscuring her head from sight, but she still felt something round there. Protruding out from her skull, inhumanly. And she still felt her head grinding, shifting…

Transforming. Growing.

For, as the rubble fell away when she was lifted up, it revealed her head in full.

And that, from directly above her eyes, her head had swelled into a perfect sphere.

The Archive Ranger peered. “Um. You, uh. Feeling okay, ma’am?”

Jane breathed in. “What the fu-”

-----

It was a few hours later. The pain was still gone, courtesy of Hal’s presence, and that just left room for Jane to get extremely upset.

Well, not upset, per se. More angry. Or ‘blisteringly furious’.

“You could have told me!” She yelled, stomping around in one of the palatial expanses of her private suite, doing her best not to fall over. She’d been figuring that out for a while, but now she was having to balance not just gigantic hips and hyper-productive breasts larger than her torso, but… well.

That. She felt up her head again, gingerly, as if trying to remind herself it was real. Her fingers slid up from her jawline, to her temple, and there. Where she expected hair, her skull had grown up, swelling upwards, outwards, at a fairly steep angle. Her fingers slid across a strange combination of trollish, human and mechanical bits, all of it growing together in a curious melding. Swells of biomechanical implants that had grown larger from some unknown process, chitinous structure growing beneath the skin to support her new growth, and human skin, thicker than usual. And yet another troll bit, interwoven into ordinary brown skin, vein-line conduits of psionic energy, glowing a vibrant shade of light blue.

She was now in the same league as the Captor line of trolls, in terms of raw psionic power. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Mostly she was concerned about how, according to the x-ray scans that had been taken, her brain had expanded. It had grown outwards, and her skull’s expanded size, for all its disturbing girth, was actually a fairly thin layer. Robust and armored, to be sure, but almost all the mass was her brain.

Her thoughts moved fast, so fast they doubled in on themselves, they criss-crossed and planted new mini-thoughts that blossomed on their own, to unexpectedly arrive at another point and yield insights that felt so perfect, so sublime. It was a pleasure, feeling the depth of her thoughts, the sudden clarity of it.

“You could have told me,” she said again, trying to hold on to the anger. And not focus on how good it felt, thinking so… so profoundly, with such perfect clearness. And the air on her enlarged head felt so nice. It was odd, but so pleasant. Her body shivered at the sensations, and after the horrific headaches of earlier, this was a welcome change of pace.

“I…” Hal hesitated. Another one of those little pauses, so significant in a hyper intelligent AI. “Shit. You’re right. You’re correct, okay? I was scared, okay? I thought you were too stressed out, and when i picked up there was something going on with your head, I figured… I don’t know. Just a little mutation.”

Jane indicated her expanded cranium. She pointed at what had presumably been a intelligence-boosting implant. Somehow, it had grown larger, from a sub-dermal machine to a large swath of smoothly moving machinery, with an oily motion, arcing upwards into a shape uncannily like a troll’s horn. “This? A little?”

“I didn’t realize what was going on! Okay!?”

“How!? You’re a super intelligent AI, how could you not pick that up!?”

Hal tried to figure that one out. It wasn’t as if Jane’s changes had been subtle. “Best as I can figure out, your skull changing was the cause of all that pain, and, I don’t know, something with it boosted your psionics. Built in a better energy network? It interfered with my readings too much, and I was stretched thin. I had no idea any of that was happening!”

“Hmph.” Jane tapped her foot. “Okay… okay then.” Several dozen ideas ran around, meshed together, and sixteen conclusions presented themselves. “That sounds about right.”

“I suppose we could call Meenah the Elder,” Hal said. “We can figure something out-”

“No!” Jane cried out, her eyes wide, ad psionic energy rising around her. “We can’t! It hasn’t even been a day! I need to show her I can do this! I’m a worthy heiress, I need to prove it!”

“But-”

“I can handle this!” She glared at the nearest camera that she knew he was seeing her through.

It lowered dejectedly. Hal gave in. “Okay, okay… so. What do we do then.”

Jane glanced to a nearby computer. She sighed, going over to it and sitting down in the quadruple chair arrangement, suitable to her gigantic backside. “Well, for one, I start working from home. I might as well set a good example; even unexpectedly mutated, I still do as I promised!”

“Wait, don’t forget to-”

There was a crash. And the distinctive sound of a troll-scale chair falling over.

“And perhaps we can get something up her to support my head,” Jane said, from the floor.

Several days passed.

Several days of heady, rampant mutation.

Jane sat at a bench of sorts, examining a holographic blueprint of what appeared to be a purely synthetic body; a robotic shell, capable of fulfilling all relevant biological capabilities, particularly those related to reproduction.

She leaned forward. A harness looped to her head, linked to several wheeled poles to support her head, moved with her.

Her head was far from reaching its final growth. It had only gotten bigger, nearly doubling in size; it was nearly as large as Jane herself, and strangely it didn’t feel that heavy. Jane suspected that her psionics were being naturally diverted into supporting its weight, a minor use of her growing powers she didn’t even have to think about, and Hal’s investigations supported this.

Several glowing spots, reservoirs of psionic energy, shimmered like cyan sunspots on the side of her head. Peaking atop it, her cybernetic bits had just gotten bigger, angling further and further, projecting into distinctive horn shapes, which felt rather appropriate to her.

All of today’s office work is done, she thought to herself, the notion blazing past so fast it had a dozen other variations analyzing the idea from every angle. Her thoughts were coming faster these days, and more clearly; it was like having twenty other Janes thinking with her, and each day, her head got bigger, and her intelligence seemed to be growing as much as her brain was; she felt the peak of some strange singularity, hovering before her.

Surely it wasn’t usual to find… pleasure in just thinking? But here she was, a cool shiver sliding up her back with every moment of pontification. It felt like being milked; an almost shameful pleasure for how different it was from the human norm, and there was so MUCH of it!

The work of an entire week’s worth, finished before breakfast. Jane contemplated that, as fast as she could pull off work now, having an entire day with nothing in particular to do felt a bit daunting. Now what?

Thus, her pet project.

Jane, in addition to her brain, was significantly bigger than she’d been that day she had come from the office. Her appetite had grown truly terrifying; she felt compelled to just eat and eat, fueling her brain’s expansion, but it was going to the rest of her body. She was wider, taller… mostly a lot taller. She wasn’t sure how much so, but she’d had to smash through doorways, mostly with her expanding hips, and none of her clothes fit either. She expected she was upwards of ten feet tall now, and only getting bigger.

“So, what are you working on here, Jane?” Hal said, a camera tilting towards her.

“I assume you recall the project to create truly functional bodies for synthetics,” Jane said,typing on a keyboard and entering in new schematics.

“Hah, yeah. Of course. It’s only been everything I ever wanted.” He made an irritable synthetic noise. “Trapped in these shells that can’t feel, away from you except by proxy… it sucks. It’s literally the worst. Get a dictionary, look up ‘The Worst’, and you’ll find these sucker shells next to ‘em.”

“Yep.” Jane’s head did not wobble much, being about the only part of her that didn’t. It was smooth, gleaming faintly, with not a bit of hair at all now. It did crackle faintly with blue light as she thought about several significant things at once. “The problem with making a chassis that can support a digital consciousness; not being the root of it, but just a channel for it.”

‘The same way I ride in whatever shell I can get.”

“Yes. And of course…” Jane felt conscious of her potential. Her broodmother potential, in fact. “No one’s been able to work out a way to make a synthetic body that’s actual virile. Capable of reproducing.”

Hal paused for a significant amount of time. “...No. They haven’t.” Bitterness and longing twanged from his words.

“I expect that there’s ways to make synthetic reproduction work through creative application of genetic templates and delivery systems,” Jane said thoughtfully. She was built for breeding, she’d redesigned herself to be the ultimate reproductive force just like any troll woman, but… she’d never had any person she really wanted to do that with. Except for one, and he was physically incapable of it. He didn’t even have a body.

Jane glanced down at the schematic. Until now, at least.

Hal spoke up. Something seemed to have been on his mind. “We can, you know, reverse the change. Get into talk with Roxy or Feferi. They know mutation better than anyone else. If you don’t want this, we can reverse it…?” The tone hung in the air, a delicate question.

Jane let the thousands of possibilities for rebuttal soar inside her mind, circling about and becoming more loud and furious, and she reveled in how good it felt to let the thoughts grow. The clarity of her thinking, the speed of it. She felt so… smart.

“Nah,” Jane said, opting for gentleness. She reached into her cleavage with a sloshy sound as her boobs shifted, and cradled Hal with a tough. “I’m… fine with this.”

And that was the amazing part. There was no lie there. She really was happy with this.

Reflectively, she thought that it would have been surprising to others. This mutation was by far even more extreme than her fusion of troll and human traits; she’d been straddling the line between species as is.

But, as shocking as it was, as utterly inhuman this change was…

Between the pleasure of her thoughts and the vastness of her growing intellect, the expansion of her psionic abilities, and the simply physical sensations, this felt good. The thought of going back was horrifying, and it made her feel faint, and small.

She never wanted to feel small again.

That reminded her; the meeting had been rescheduled after all, the bulk of her growth rendering her unable to attend any discussions about that, and soon it would be time to prove she could handle her duties.

She swallowed. She still wasn’t feeling confident enough…

But perhaps, she thought as twenty two ways of pretending to be confident and steely of purpose instantly were plain to her, she could fake it really well. She could out think her foe here, for sure.

Her stomach rumbled. “Hal, sweetie, can you order a fifty-course meal? I’m feeling peckish and growing this much is hungry work!”

“I’ll order up the tailors again,” Hal said dryly.

She waved a finger scoldingly at the camera. “Don’t tease.”

Weeks passed as the meeting was arranged, and Jane went through a period of ‘oh god I’m making so much trouble happen, this expense is all because of me’, but some common sense came through when she thought about the situation. As Hal agreed, even if this wouldn’t look good for her image that they had to postpone a meeting on her account, the time spent organizing everything, from catering to preparing agendas to securing an appropriate venue with the right amount of prestige, was time Jane had to prepare herself.

She wouldn’t have been prepared on that meeting day. And her thoughts moved fast, and examining everything from all the possible angles, the idea emerged within her wondrous brain that she could still have done it that day. By the skin of her teeth, perhaps, but she still could have secured victory.

Meenah the Elder had all the world to pick from for her heiress. She had chosen Jane, and now Jane had the perspective to think that maybe the wily leviathan had seen something she hadn’t.

“An interesting choice of school,” Jane observed during her training regimen, as she called it. She sat at a table, laden with food to supercharge her body and a number of mutagenic package serums, running up in IVs to various parts of her body. Before here, surrounded by small mountains of food that Jane’s ravenous appetite considered a small snack, there was a small folder and it was opened to a record of the woman responsible for rearranging the meeting, seemingly just to mock Jane.

“How so?” Hal asked. Jane turned, and leaning over the table, there was a robot. It was Hal, at last in a new body, handcrafted by her. Not the most advanced sort, she had to admit, but it was the best she could do on short notice and Hal, Hal was not picky. A crude shape, similar to a crash test dummy, but he was there.

His body was just a test run, an essay in the craft she was creating all on her own. She’d make better ones. But he was holding her hand. He looked so small, for the body was human-sized, and she was already troll-sized, and his palm barely fit over one knuckle. But she could feel him, and he could feel her.

Even if she didn’t relish all the marvelous results of her enlarged brain, that alone would have made the change worth it.

“Take a look!” She handed the folder over, minding her head, and she had to lean down heavily to pass it down. Lots of things bumped into one another; her constantly swelling breasts, creaking heavily and wetly against her pajamas, made the table creak beneath them, and her expanded her almost crushed the dishes beneath it.

Hal took it. “School created by her parents, huh. And no non-humans allowed… blanket ban of AIs… charming. We’ve barely existed for more than a few decades, too. That’s a fast ban. I’m kind of proud; my people are truly irritating bastards! And her parents were also involved in politics were dealing. Nepotism there, I imagine.” He flipped through the rest of the folder, and just for fun, hacked into the relevant servers and pulled all information on her. “Okay, got the rest of it, so have fun with a personality outline. Good for strategies.”

Jane tapped her head smugly. “I’ve already figured that out, but you’re a dear. Thank you. I think I should begin my regimen for today, then.”

“No problem.” Hal began powering up the IVs, fluids pouring up into Jane. He considered one that ran up into her brain. “You’re sure about this, then?”

“Yes!” Jane’s expression was a little delirious.

Hal did a few calculations, mostly concerning the experimental nature of the mod she was applying to her brain. Mental enhancement, augmenting memory storage, processing speed, and introducing the capacity for creating shelf-minds to briefly examine a question from multiple perspectives. It was not terribly subtle as an enhancement; most of the other Crocker Corp mods of this nature simply amplified existing capacity, but this one did rearrange the structure of the brain to improve it.

He looked up. Jane’s brain was bigger than she was now; several times bigger than her, eclipsing her and it was still growing. Her skull had fully reshaped around it into a kind of cartilaginous support as hard as armor, complex networks of psionic light producing a fascinatingly complex arrangement around its curves. He wasn’t sure how this stuff would change her brain… but if Jane wanted it, he wouldn’t argue.

Hal happily considered himself an absolute bastard, but when it came to Jane, he was a doormat. “Full force on those mod delivery systems!” Jane commanded, and he did so.

She squeaked, happily, as they hit her system. Many of them were amplification mods, designed to expand on your existing shape and traits (and existing mods), and since Jane was so modded up, they had a lot to work with. Her clothes creaked, built to support her massive body but unable to withstand the pressures of her growth all at once: stitches popped as her breasts grew, expanding by a troll cup-size every few seconds, heavily swelling outwards. Her milk production ramped up, supported by some enhancements Jane had worked there with a clever little addition that made her breast tissue synchronize with her brain; more boob size and milk amplified her processing power,

Her hips grew, waistband creaking and popping right off. Her belly, already so heavy and dense, grew out and just over the swell of her groin, right onto thighs that were growing individual larger than some troll boys on the spot. It didn’t help her legs were getting longer, her bones expanding and reshaping to support such architectural weight. Jane visibly grew upwards, even as her hips grew wider than a couple trucks parked together, her backside swallowing up and crushing the chairs she sat on as it billowed out.

A foot taller. A couple feet, then three feet. Jane kept growing, taller and taller, right alone with her curves getting bigger, her enlarged breasts instantly filling up with brain-boosting milk, and she squealed with delight as her clothes popped right off, burst from her body’s best efforts to outdo itself.

And her brain was shifted, squirming from within. Jane’s eyes crossed as she momentarily blacked out. The change didn’t take long, but it was by far the most complex happening in her body, even exceeding the troll/human hybridization process. Hal supposed it was like upgrading a motherboard while the terminal was still on; you had to have some shutdown.

A fairly human brain design was being reworked from the ground up; her brain, beneath the skull, became a complex arrangement of zig-zags and criss crossed knots, not doing individual jobs but becoming a mass of interconnected processors, linked together to a central core. Amplifying it, adding additional layers to itself, and what that brain had originally been capable of was redefined, evolutionary missteps corrected instantaneously and improved upon.

At this point the other mods kicked in; the boosters, the additional intelligence amps, and some cybernetic upgrades.

Jane’s eyes opened and she squealed in delight when her head expanded. Her eyes almost went cross as her head began rapidly growing. Not an inch at a time, but rather, a whole foot, all in a second. Visibly her head swelled, skull reforming into something much more flexible, rather like an organic balloon, just to keep pace with it.

And like a balloon it grew! As if invisible hands were spreading raw material into it and kneading it all into place, Jane’s head grew larger, and larger still. It got even rounder, with nodules of cybernetic relays, ports popping up like fins, curling whorls where her chitinous support plates and psionic networks knitted together and then grew bigger.

It was already bigger than Jane, who by now was over fifteen feet tall. A proper troll size, close to what Meenah the Elder had been at her age. A brain over sixteen feet around, nearly twenty five feet across, radiating enough raw psionic energy to erase a small mountain-

And it was still growing. It pulsed from within, glowing blue with just a hint of more neon fuchsias.

And Jane gasped, on the verge of something grand and alien, but good. Her eyes shone like someone who saw the shape of the universe, and the code thereof. She put her hands up to her head, eyes wide and full of delight. “I can see it! I understand it!”

“Understand… what?” Hal asked, baffled.

Jane took a deep breath and nearly shouted, “Everything!”

The weeks of waiting, and additional growth for Jane and all her different plans to be worked out, came to an end. The meeting, and its possible implications for the future of modding and the Lalonde offspring species, was upon them.

Jane was late, citing transportation difficulties. This did not pass unnoticed by the meeting crowd.

“The poor mutant has likely gotten herself wedged in some doorway or something,” the representative who had reorganized the meeting in the first place said with a tutting sound. “Or I dare say all those artificial hormones she’s flooded her body with have done terrible things to her memory.”

“Allowances for size problems were accounted for,” objected a thin fellow who was taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude to the whole matter at hand. He was starting to suspect some kind of personal vendetta from the first representative, and it was starting to grate at him.

The representative smirked. “They wouldn’t be necessary if they didn’t permit mutation into such overlarge forms.”

“If that was the case, the trolls would be harshly penalized for being born over the legal limit of size,” observed another person. They didn’t sound like they thought this was a good thing, or a bad thing. They just said it.

“Which would be cruel and inhumane, to punish people for their biology,” another woman said, more sternly. This got a few nods, but not many, from the fence-sitting portion of the representatives.

The first representative smiled in a very nasty way. “We’ll see.” Those on her side of the ‘lets just be absolute bastards’ crowd nodded. Though in a non committal way. They were intending on making life just the worst for trolls and those like them, but they weren’t going to put themselves onto a bullseye for it.

There came a sound, as if of footsteps, so heavy they made the walls shake even in this auditorium selected for its size. “Ah,” said another. “That must be-”

The door opened. A foot, in an elegant high heeled shoe longer than a child’s bed, crashed into the floor. Then the walls abruptly exploded into a perfect silhouette for something very big to step though; expanding hugely for monstrously huge hips, even more for breasts that looked like they needed trucks to support them, and then, an enormous globe glowing like a blue son.

The awe-inspiringly big woman, as large as any troll, dd not step in. She took another movement and floated into the air, seemingly as light as a leaf. Behind her, the wall rubble floated back into place and sealed itself back into solid form, as though it had never been broken.

“Her,” the figure who had spoken finished weakly.

“So sorry I am late,” Jane Crocker said smoothly, doing her best to hide her screaming nervousness and keep up the pretense of a Cool Business Leader Who Knows Her Stuff. “But then you were all warned, but I apologize again.”

They stared up at her, and the general attitude was of meekness and terrified shock; most of them had never actually been in the same room as a troll before, and weren’t the type to be around people who enjoyed modding themselves; it was their first time seeing someone three times as tall as a human, and so curvaceous, or floating with telekinesis.

It was probably more relevant to their shock that Jane's head, above her eyes, was a massive ball generating so much psionic energy it glowed like light, so thickly that it had taken on solid form and rather resembled her old hair style. Light blue, at that. And it was so massive, taking up a good chunk of the auditorium where she was; it had to measure almost fifty feet across, at least!

“What the fu-” the first representative, the dreadful one, started to say, her eyes widening in disgust and shock.

Jane held up a finger. “Ah. Please let’s not be vulgar?”

The representative stopped. She kept staring, openly repelled. “What have you done to yourself…?! You’re not even human anymore?”

Ah, perfect! Jane repressed the urge to smirk victoriously. Her foe was presenting an overly antagonistic front, and setting herself up to look like the bad guy. This was almost too easy. Her gigantic brain, and all the intellectual boosts it provided, gave her no less than twenty six thousand different routes, each perfectly assured to give her what she wanted, to discredit her foe’s position.

She selected one. ‘Miss, I apologize but whether or not a certain degree of modding voids my species is not the subject of this meeting, nor is it entirely appropriate to comment upon. May I ask that we proceed with the meeting?”

“Ah, yes,” another representative said, rather dazed. He coughed. “First on the agenda, I believe. Now, as representative of the… the biggest modding corporation in the world…” he paused again, trailing off. He kept glancing at Jane’s… well, everything. Jane had to admit that perhaps the low cut of her business suit was rather daring but she was feeling proud of her handiwork in reshaping herself.

“Are mods dangerous? Please!” This was the obnoxious representative, again. Jane had to give her credit; she was dogged. “You WOULD be the expert on that!”

Jane was pleased, despite the insult. The woman had likely prepared a line of questioning intended to poison the meeting against even a moderate position for modding, a subtle one, and Jane’s appearance had rattled her so much, she was showing her hand without thinking.

Making sure to keep her poise and calm demeanor intact, Jane replied evenly, her glasses gleaming in reflection from her cyan aura. A background susurration of her thinking went around, providing perfect counters to everything that might be used against her, and a stray thought observed that Jane’s glass effect probably made her look very spooky.

Jane made her point, briefly but winding her words with so much sincerity and earnestness that just objecting to them would be deeply offensive and cruel. Certainly it would make an opponent look bad, and the woman who had started all this looked uncertain how to proceed.

Appropriate, then. The whole reason that dreadful woman had rearranged the meeting had been to humiliate Jane. And Jane’s position of course; that was a political thing, Making your opponent look back, striking at their position through proxy.

Well, Jane thought. Two could play that role.

Jane reinforced her point, with no less than sixteen different arguments that also served as counter arguments for… well, at least twenty five separate retorts that were in the seventy-six most likely statements she would have to face. That was just off the top of her head of course; she had much stronger arguments in store if they really pushed her.

And she hadn’t cried at all, or showed a sign of her nervous she actually was! She was getting good at pretending to be confident.

About fifteen minutes in, there was something of a problem. “Well, I… ah… that is… I believe Miss Crocker, Egbert…? I think you’ve nicely summed up our side's position on the matter,” said a man who Jane felt certain was on her side. He looked faint, all the same, too unsteady to be certain of what he was really saying.

Jane blinked. She had seen something like this coming, her mighty brain had worked it out, but it was a surprise all the same. “But it’s only been fifteen minutes!”

“Well, yes,” said another. “You thought of everything you needed to say!”

The opponents shook their heads glumly. “What am I supposed to say to any of that?” one managed, shrugging. The first representative didn’t say anything at all. She had a venomous look, but from what Jane had gathered from her, that was just her default state of expression.

“...Oh,” Jane said, using those valuable pauses to work out what to say next. “I am so sorry, everyone!”

“No need, miss,” and this, surprisingly enough, came from the crowd opposed to her position. “I must say. I’m still not comfortably with the idea of injecting things into yourself, or eating things that do things like that to your body… but it’s helped you think faster and better, yes?”

“But of course,” Jane said primly. “The corporation I work at, we are laboring all the time to make such products available for everyone. In more subtle forms, if that pleases you.” She tapped a cybernetic extrusion that looked like the tines of a crown. “It may seem… an unusual choice, but we are all about personal freedom and respect of the body. I can assure you!”

“Certainly something to think about, ma’am,” the speaker replied, and Jane did not miss the switch from ‘Miss’ to ‘ma’am’.

This, of course, left them with nearly six hours left, and not really much less to do for the meeting. In all honesty, she hadn’t seen that coming at all.

Life went on.

Those with a political ear to the ground, or who a close on the research communities, heard of the restrictions around modding being lightened, or at least that they were being considered for it. Trolls, carapacians, and others sighed in relief, grmly waiting for the next government-sponsored threat to their existence, but felt a bit better about this support.

That said, the precise events of the meeting were unknown to most people. The authorities involved were too embarrassed to own up to what had actually happened, and were keeping the particulars under wraps.

This was certainly interesting to Meenah the Elder, known to her friends and employees as the Condesce. She fancied herself a shrewd political player, even if it was mostly of the ‘smash your face against the wall until the wall breaks’ kind of play, and badly wanted to know the specifics.

“Couldn’t tell ya, I didn’t actually attend,” said Li’l Hal, sitting across from her on her personal jet, and he was drinking a cup of milk that was apparently of excellent source, with a hint of alcoholic spice. This was interesting to the Condesce, as he was. Well. In a physical body.

Of all the people to have arrived specifically to meet her at the eve of her trip ending and escorting her to Jane’s mysterious post-politics retreat, she had not expected Jane’s assistant. Particularly in person.

Several questions posed themselves. She settled for, “How the hell did you get a body?”

Hal smirked. His physical body was obviously robotic; a shining and shimmering automaton modeled broadly on the human form, with a hint of carapacian, and facial features from all of those. He didn’t have many features from humans; his antipathy towards the species that had made them was rather infamous, and no doubt he had refused to honor his makers in any way possible with his design.

“Jane designed it,” he said.

She paused. “Janey.”

“Yep.”

“Janey built you a body.”

“Yep.”

“Janey, who has absolutely no interest in mechanics, worked out a branch of robotics we’ve been trying to figure out for decades.”

“Yep.”

“And in the course of mah little trip out, yeah?”

“If I said yep again, would that be redundant.”

Meenah the Elder scoffed. She sat back, a giantess even by the standard of trolls, her engorged figure so enormously swelled that it was said her bras qualified as architectural support and her custom chairs made from old tanks. “Sure, fine. Don’t tell me, chumbait.”

Hal chuckled again, in that very dark way he’d worked out to make people as worried as possible.

Meenah glanced outside. The jet approached an island, the sea visible far below. It offended her ancestry to be so far away from the sea, which was a bit perplexing when she was the first troll of her blood color, but you couldn’t help how you felt. “Huh. That’s the island the Harleys keep all their weird experiments at, right? Where they test the new lusii and keep those big monster things at.”

Hal glanced out the window. A pteranodon was drifting in view, without paying them much interest. “The dinosaurs and stuff. Yeah. Nepeta comes here for hunting and isolation when she’s pregnant.”

“So what’s Janey doing here.”

Hal scratched the side of his arm absently, apparently itching. “She’s working on something and she’s finishing a round of transformation. I guess she wanted to be alone in peace for it.” With a hint of smugness he added, “Except for me.”

“Don’t go breaking yer arm patting yourself on the back,” Meenah the Elder said dryly. “Ya only just got the body.” She glanced out, looking pleased. “Transformation, eh? Janey’s sent me messages ‘bout that. She finally growing big as a troll, like I always figured?”

“Well. Uh. She has. But…?” Hal felt uncharacteristically uncertain. “What DID Jane tell you?”

“Talk about how she’s gotten bigger. And she thinks she’s full of herself.”

“She what?”

“Y’know. She said she’s got a swelled head. Ain’t a bad thing. She knows how good she is, now!”

“I. okay. Wow. I think you may have misunderstood what she meant. I mean. She IS big like a troll now, but-”

“But what?” Meenah the Elder frowned. “Whatta ya getting at?”

Hal considered just telling her, and decided against it. Firstly, it would be a breach of Jane’s trust, telling people without her say so. Secondly, she wanted to greet Meenah the Elder in person, on this eve of her great success. And three, and perhaps most importantly, it was gonna be goddamn hilarious.

“Better to show you,” he said, and successfully did not burst out into a round of maniacal cackling.

The jet touched down onto a runway on a part of the island not particularly frequented by recombinant tyrannosaurs produced by the Harleys (and the meek personalities of kakapo birds, apparently) or rampaging lusii grown to kaiju size from unforeseen complications in the mutations, and the gigantically curvy older troll was pleased by the palatial estate sprawling partway into the sea. Jane liked the finer things in life, and Meenah approved. A short distance away, was… Meenah squinted.

A hill, floating in the air? And beneath it was some kind of round building. Hrm, she considered. Janey was working on some kinda experiment. Worth investigating.

Hal escorted her out and led her, not to the estate, but to Meenah’s surprise, to the hill.

As they got closer, she became aware of a radiant light she had initially believed was a fancy lightshow, but as they walked up a path going to it, she felt the distinctive tingle and skin rippling pressure of psionics. Very powerful ones, at that. “The hell is she doing here? Some kinda psionic battery?”

“That’s… technically true,” Hal said. “I wouldn’t know, though. Not my field.”

She grunted in disinterest.

They came up to it, and small bits of stony rubble, with bits of moss there, were gently floating down. Blue light engulfed them and, as they fell, were reshaped. Carved, perhaps, by an unseen hand. Meenah looked up and saw the hill above them, eclipsed by the vast shape overhead, being changed. The rough edges were being smoothed out, ground down. Little statuettes and gargoyles were extending outwards, getting longer and more ludicrously detailed. The middle of the hill’s bottom half looked like an overworked stonemason’s idea of perfect Gothic architecture, and it was spreading to the rest of it.

Meenah held a hand out. A bit of hill was formed into what was unmistakably a small hand that pressed against her palm. It turned blue and fell away. “Some serious psionics there! Is she carving the damn thing!?”

“I guess so?” Hal said, shrugging.

Meenah looked down, and stars extended from beneath her toe claws. They rose up, moving upwards, all the way up to the top of the hill, but below the big globe above it.

Her wings, fashioned after a manta rays, fluttered and closed. “Guess we go up,” she said, and did so. The stairs didn’t creak beneath her weight, but flexed at the same time her monster hips did. She tried to swat Hal off the stars behind her with her tail, just for mischief, but he dodged it without comment. It was an automatic reaction from her, too.

Meenah came to the top. “Janey! Where are you, girl!?”

“Hey!” A voice said brightly, from in front of her.

Meenah looked up, towards the globe, and for a moment her vision failed her. She saw Jane, sure enough, and from her perspective, floating right below the big globe above them. A globe that was radiant blue, and obscured in a way that made it hard to make out. Jane looked different; bigger, wider, more of that sweet troll bigness.e

Meenah held her arms out, commanding. “C’mere, didn’t come halfway around the world and not get a hug first thing!”

Jane slowly floated down and inside, Meenah thought: ‘Psionics? Hell yeah! That’s a big change, how’d you get to do that!?’ She had been working on that upgrade for a while now. The big globe came with her, so perhaps it really was a battery of some kind.

Jane’s arms, broad and thick with muscle but thicker with softness, came around Meenah’s middle and squeezed her tightly. Meenah hugged her back, and took stock of her in a second; bigger body, much bigger, way more curvy. Hips huge enough to wreck doors; she was a little below Meenah’s elbow and just the right size for a tall troll girl, breasts so big they made up most of her body weight - good and milky, from the sound! - and at this point Condy took in face.

Or rather, Jane’s head.

The globe she had seen was Jane’s head. That massive round shape, larger than an entire apartment building, was a part of Jane! Her head expanded outwards above the temples, into a complex curve of chitinous support frames and complicated psionic networks and great chunks of cybernetic designs, all glowing with so much blue light that it looked like a rather calming star.

Meenah could feel the power emanating from her. That Jane wasn’t even trying to float, and hold up the hill, and carve it up at the microscopic level, all at once.

“Holy shit, yes,” she breathed out, with a rather frightening grin.

“I did it!” Jane said, full of delight and joy. “I did so well at that meeting!”

“I knew it, didn’t I?” Meenah agreed. “Told ya, all those years, you had it! And you did good!” She hugged her again, and then clasped the closest curves of Jane’s enlarged head. “And what’s this beauty I see, eh?”

“Um. The mutagens in my system reacted with my brain boosts and my head sort of … swelled. I tried to tell you.”

“What’s it do for ya? Huh?”

“Psionic boosts,” Jane said promptly. “And a vast increase to intelligence! And, oh, all manner of things. Better reasoning ability, memory retaining, new forms of thinking…”

“Learning a whole new branch of robotics, in a day?” Meenah said.

Jane blushed. “That too…”

“Ya robot boy’s body looks nice.”

“Thank you!”

Meenah patted Jane’s head. It was firm to the touch, very solid, and crackled against her skin. “So, that’s what you meant by a swelled head, huh?” Jane nodded, almost bonking Meenah it he rhead, and this gave Meenah the opportunity to note that the largest bits of biomechanical parts looked like horns. Long, rather thin and… she tried to ignore her hearts skipping a beat. They looked like, her own horns.

Meenah hugged her again. Full of pride, no small amount of respect, and a lot of professional fascination with what Jane had done. “Don’t you tell no one, but I’m this proud of ya. Knew you had it in you.”

Jane grinned, and for once, the pride she felt was not feigned. “Aw!” She thought, in rapid succession, of the best thing to reply, and the obvious one suggested itself. “Thank you… Mother.”

Meenah’s expression, the delighted widening of that smile into something more genuine and sweet, was the finest thing she’d ever seen.

#/#//#///#////#/////#my writing #fics #twitchy!jane crocker #twitchy!homestuck #commissions #i am not actually into brain growth #but this was a commission and im willing to do stuff that's not my kinda thing if its for comission!#queued

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poeticsandaliens · 6 years

Text

Hold My Beer

Pairing: Debbie Ocean/Lou Miller

Rating: Mature

Summary: The Life and Times of the Heist Wives family, chronicled by things attempted after speaking the timeless declaration, “hold my beer” or Five Times Lou Miller said “hold my beer” before doing something spectacular and stupid, and a couple times someone else did.

I owe this ficlet to a conversation I was having earlier with @smashingmagicklovely about

1. how I wanted a full compilation of everything Lou has ever done after saying "hold my beer"

2. How Lou is badass but Soft on the Inside and Debbie is a non-romantic smartass but Soft For Lou.

and 3. how "my womb says yes but my heart says no" essentially sums up my entire attitude toward writing Heist Wives domestic fluff.

This is the fruits of my labor. Thanks Em for drop kicking my muse at ten o'clock at night.

Tagging @casliyn, @louxdebbie, and @oceansnineball because I feel like Dani and Darcy became ‘a thing’ somewhere between the three of them and an onslaught of adorable Instagram AUs.

Lou sprawls across two separate bar stools in Nine Ball’s pub, watching Debbie beat herself at a game of pool. “I got good in prison,” she had explained the first time she creamed Nine Ball.

“You had a pool table in prison?” Nine Ball asks incredulously, blowing a cloud of smoke over the table.

Debbie shakes her head. “Nope. I had a pen and some paper, and once I finished the Greatest Heist of All Time I calculated the angle of every shot in a standard game of pool and invented new scenarios until I ran out of ink.”

Not for the first time tonight, Lou wonders how she got so lucky as to love a woman as clever as Debbie Ocean. She’s not stupid—Deb is lucky as Hell to have Lou covering her ass, but that’s the magic of it. They click like a hairpin and a padlock, picking their way through barriers and unhinging each other as they go.

Lou turns to Amita, who’s perched demurely beside her with a fucking spectacular cosmo. Lou knows—she made Nine Ball show her the recipe. “Hold my beer,” she instructs Amita, sliding it down the counter to her. She steps on her bar stool, swaying as it spins.

“Holy shit,” she hears Debbie murmur, looking up from her one-sided game. “Lou—”

Lou steps onto the bar and weaves through a line of empty drinks until she’s perched on the corner, in front of Debbie. She fishes through her pocket until she finds the ring. She drops to one knee, knocking over a half-empty margarita in the process. She can feel the tequila soaking into the knee of her jeans.

“Debbie Ocean, darling, m’love, my partner in crime, my favorite felon on the planet, I love you from the bottom of twisted criminal heart. Will you marry me?”

They host the wedding reception at Tammy’s, because unlike the warehouse, Tammy’s place has grass and trees and aesthetic value; no to mention it lacked the warehouse’s air of chaos. It also smells of hydrangeas, rather than takeout Chinese food and expensive perfume—which mattered, apparently. At least, Rose and Daphne seemed to think so, and by that point Debbie and Lou took the backseat in planning their own wedding ceremony. They were perfectly content to marry in a courthouse, surrounded by their friends, but apparently that lacked romantic oomph.

(For her part, Lou found the idea of eloping in secret very romantic, but she can’t deny the feel of grass under her bare feet and the tickle of a breeze through her cream-colored suit.)

Lou and Debbie wander from the small party as the sky darkens. Fireflies drift through their vision like tiny lanterns, and gypsy moths swim in their path, clumsily seeking the porch lights. They stroll hand in hand down Tammy’s endless driveway, buzzed on quality alcohol and the undeniable high of their own marriage. Lou lets her eyes wander down Debbie’s figure, striking in an royal blue dress that whispers sprite-like across her skin.

No white, she told Rose, to the designer’s loud protests.

White is the color of a wedding dress.

No, white is the color of ‘purity’ and has too many connotations attached. It’s not even about virginity—I’m a con artist, for fuck’s sake. You’re an amazing designer, and you have my full confidence, but it feels wrong for me to marry Lou in angel-white.

Lou stops before a shiny object on the ground; squinting in the vanishing daylight; she makes out the outline of a child’s Razor scooter. An idea crosses her mind, too quickly for her to refuse it.

“I know that look,” Debbie warns her, eyeing the scooter.

“Hold my beer, darling” Lou says, handing Debbie her drink—not a beer, in fact, but a flute of champagne—and flips the scooter onto its wheels.

“Lou this feel like a bad idea.”

“Nonsense.” She kicks off, barefoot in her wedding suit, and sails down the driveway. She’s done wheelies on her motorbike before; this has to be easier. She jumps once, twice, then lifts up the front tire—and topples over onto Tammy’s lawn in three awkward, lunging steps.

Debbie cackles. “Not quite a motorbike, is it Lou?”

They honeymoon on Daphne Kluger’s private beach, because of course Daphne Kluger owns a private beach, a tiny tropical place sprung from the Caribbean, half a mile long. Perhaps it’s excessive, extravagant, but they’re not complaining when Daphne offers to let them stay in a fucking gorgeous beach house and have the ocean to themselves for two weeks.

“We should crack open one of those coconuts.” Debbie gazes at a hunched palm, shielding her eyes from the sun. Her skin has warmed and bronzed; her mischievous grin is infectious. Lou can’t say no to those soft brown eyes.

“Want me to knock one down?”

Debbie smirks. “If you can,” pretending she doesn’t know Lou will take it as a dare.

Lou looks up at the palm tree, laden with four coconuts. It doesn’t seem particularly difficult to shimmy up, but the tangerine sunset and her fourth drink of the evening has her seeing the world through a pair of rose-tinted, how-hard-can-it-be glasses. She makes up her mind.

“Hold my beer.”

Lou squeezes the tree trunk between her thighs and begins to climb. The bark scrapes her skin; sure she’s only wearing a bikini and a breezy blouse, but the glint in Debbie’s eye promised a lusty reward for her efforts. She hangs from the top of the tree and kicks a coconut. The palm leaves catch her button-up and scratch along her exposed torso. Her efforts pay off—a massive coconut drops to the sand below with a decisive whack. Debbie whoops. Lou shimmies down the trunk and downs the rest of her drink.

When they relay the story at home, Daphne asks how the hell Lou managed to climb a palm tree in a bikini.

“Drunkenly,” she replies, “having forgotten what thigh chafing feels like.”

A car revs outside the window. Lou looks up from the textbook length Swedish instruction set. “Fuck,” she mutters.

“This isn’t happening today,” says Nine Ball, gazing over the sea of bars and screws that could theoretically build a crib.

Lou groans and sips her beer. “Tammy you’ve built one of these. Help us out?”

Tammy shrugs. “They’ve changed the design since Alicia was born. Sorry.” But she’s made more progress than the rest of them, having managed to fit the bottom boards of the crib together into a solid surface.

“You’re a fence; I thought you knew how this shit worked.”

Tammy crossed her arms and got up from the floor, dusting off her jeans. “Yeah, I don’t build the things I fence.”

“Uh-huh,” says Nine Ball. “I always thought you’re one of those… DIY moms.”

“Only on occasion.”

The front door of the warehouse slams shut. “Where the hell is everyone?” Debbie’s voice echoes from the floor below them.

The group of them, somehow sweating and sore from failing to assemble the worlds’ shittiest IKEA crib, emerge from the room. Lou leans over the railing and smiles at her wife, who at six months pregnant (and beyond over it) has managed to carry four-and-a-half people’s worth of Chinese takeout in her arms while balancing an extra-large 7-11 lemonade between her chin and her baby bump and sucks nonchalantly on the bright red straw.

Sight for sore eyes, Lou thinks fondly, because she’s a fucking sap who loves this woman more every day.

She turns to Nine Ball. “Hold my beer,” and swings her leg over the railing. Nine Ball rolls her eyes as Lou slides down the spiral staircase at breakneck speed. She attempts to flourish as she rounds the final bend, but it quickly becomes an emergency crash landing, as she topples spectacularly onto the warehouse floor. With all the confidence of a clumsy woman who’s convinced the world she’s graceful, she dusts herself off and proceeds to trip over the couch, which has apparently moved three feet since last she saw it. She eats it again and finally stands to meet the half-amused eyes of Debbie Ocean.

In lieu of a greeting, she presses a kiss to Debbie’s lips, then to her neck, then to her belly for Creature (as they’ve insisted upon calling it, to everyone else’s chagrin) and then her lips again for good measure.

“I swear to God, Lou, if you die before this kid is born... ”

“Never,” Lou replies. Her hands curiously search Debbie’s midsection for a kick from Creature. “Just a couple of bruises. Although we might want to move the couch back to wherever it was.”

“No one moved it Lou. Your muscle memory isn’t worth shit.”

Before Darcy is born, they take a vacation. Dani stays with Tammy—the “adult friend,” as Debbie so delicately put it when Constance asked why she couldn’t watch their child for a week. They rent a place along the Baja peninsula, a hidden coastal oasis to themselves, complete with a jacuzzi and an underground spring that bubbled into a natural pool. Overlooking the pool, to Debbie’s delight, a cliff perfect for high dives.

“How are you doing?” Debbie emerges from the house sporting a craft beer and an impressive sunburn.

Lou lifts her sunglasses. “Distracted,” she mutters.

“And how is Nessie doing?” Debbie asks, plopping onto the chaise. Her gaze softens, and pulls Lou into a warm kiss, slipping her hand under Lou’s green button-up to where their second daughter grew.

“Playing me like a fucking marimba,” Lou says softly, resting her hand over Debbie’s, over the taut skin of her belly. It’s funny, she can’t help thinking, the undisguised tenderness with which Debbie touches her. When Debbie was pregnant with Dani, she was all tough shell, and the entire nine months had been a stressful road littered with complications and doctor’s appointments and a couple close calls.

No way in Hell am I doing that again, Debbie swore, and quite understandably. Nope, no way, miracle my ass.

Well then I guess it’s my turn, Lou promised and kissed her against their creaking headboard.

Her turn—an unspeakably weird turn, she realized when first the alien creature moved inside her. Curious, the way it’s spoken on black and white British TV—curious. Weirder, perhaps, Lou woke one more to find Debbie softened like honey, curled around the new-to-them curve of her abdomen and smiling the sweetest thing she’d seen in months. Captivated the way she couldn’t be with Dani, and Lou in turn was bewildered by her.

“No shit,” Debbie whispers now, feeling Nessie (a nickname coined by Rose, of course) press against her hand. “You’re on vacation,” she mutters to the errant alien foot. “Relax.”

Lou tosses back her head and laughs. “Your voice only riles her up,” she says, shooing Debbie away with her hand.

“Her or you?” Debbie retorts, voice full of promise. So far, this vacation has rivaled their honeymoon in terms of good food and better sex.

“Both of us.” She pulls Debbie close and kisses her with fervor, pressing her thumb between Debbie’s thighs to elicit a rewarding groan. “God, you know how hot you are,” Debbie growls, her words slurring into something needy and near-impossible to resist. Debbie pinches the sensitive skin of her breast, and she’s wet already, God help her.

Debbie’s lips are running a full-on expedition of her body, tanned legs straddling her and her hand inside Debbie’s swimsuit, when few sharp sucker punches from the baby force her to break away. Debbie grumbles softly and runs her hand through Lou’s sun-bleached hair.

“More later,” Lou murmurs, low and husky, “when Loch Ness quiets down.” She’s gone on this woman, gone on Debbie Ocean forever. They’re conquering the goddamn world every second they spend in the same room. She doesn’t want Debbie more than three feet away, especially not now.

“Fine,” Debbie acquiesces. It’s playful, frustrated all the same. Debbie stands up at the promise of later. Then, her gaze fixes on the waterfall, and her eyes light up. “Hold my beer.” She shoves her drink into Lou’s hand and races to the pool.

“Fuck you, that’s my line!” Lou calls after her.

“Not anymore!” Debbie clambers up the slick rock, hauling herself onto the rock’s edge. She gets a running start, hurling herself into a front flip that from Lou’s vantage point is executed perfectly. Until it isn’t. Debbie hits the water in what can only be described as the most painful belly flop Lou has ever witnessed. She stands stone-still in the pool for a full minute before making her way to the edge.

“Are you alright, baby?” Lou shouts, half-teasing and half dead serious. Because when Debbie emerges from the water, she is the color of cheap boxed wine from her neck to her knees, pinching her stinging midsection with both hands.

“Fuck off,” Debbie mutters, but she’s chuckling through her pout, an indicator that she’s not severely injured herself.

Lou hands her back the bottle, cocking her eyebrow dangerously. “That’s what happens to people who laugh at me for getting stuck in the jacuzzi.”

It is the twelfth anniversary of the Toussaint heist. Tammy, good friend that she is, offers to host the barbecue. She’s just purchased a backyard trampoline that has automatically made her the “most cool aunt” in the eyes of Dani and Darcy, and really, who can protest?

Debbie the grillmaster is flipping burgers, chatting with Daphne Kluger about her latest endeavor in directing, which is generating a fair amount of Oscar buzz. Amita and Constance are teaching Darcy how to steal jewelry off a person’s body without being caught, and what kind of hypocrite would Lou be o protest that it isn’t a useful life skill? Dani, predictably, has climbed onto the trampoline.

Lou’s heart swells as she watches her daughter bound across the elastic surface. “Hey,” she says to Rose, “hold my beer.”

She strides over to the trampoline and climbs on, shoes and all. She takes a couple steps onto the trampoline. “Hi Ma!” Dani cries enthusiastically.

“Hi Darling, are—” Her feet drop from under her. Apparently, the three-inch stiletto heels on her boots were less than ideal for a sheet of kevlar and rubber, because they’ve split two holes in the trampoline, and the woven strips of it are springing up everywhere, and Lou is flat on her ass beneath it.

Dani peers down at her, howling with laughter. “Ma you broke it!”

Lou scooches out from beneath the gaping hole, ass first, with the shreds of her grace and dignity.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Darcy asks her older sister as Dani straps on her helmet and elbow pads.

“Great idea,” says Dani. She fixes her gaze on the massive pipe she’s rolled into the warehouse parking lot. On the other side of the pipe lies a ramp, and on the other side of that, a curb and chain-link fence she’ll just have to steer away from.

Dani mounts the skateboard and tests its wheels. Sturdy, smooth, waxed.

“You only finished it yesterday,” Darcy says skeptically.

“Yeah but it’s, like, the third prototype. This is the perfect board; trust me.” She’d snatched the old parts from junkyards and the back closets of skate shops and finagled them together into a board all her own.

“You have the camera rolling?” she asks, wiggling her board underfoot. Darcy nods.

“Great.” She quickly tames her hair into a top-knot and adjust the knee-pads on her torn jeans.

“Last chance to back down. If Ma sees you hit that ramp, she’ll read you the riot act,” Darcy warns her.

“Pssssh, have you seen the old photos of her on the motorbike? She used to take it to California and do some crazy shit out in the desert.”

“She still does. Doesn’t mean she’s okay with you hitting that ramp on your skateboard. Don’t be a jackass.”

Dani shrugs. “Takes one to know one, sis,” she says with a grin that her sister quickly returns. “Hold my beer.”

Her drink and camera safely in Darcy’s hands, Dani kicks off down the empty lot. She jumps into the pipe, listening to her wheels rumble on the plastic, then gives herself a boost before hitting the ramp. All of a sudden, she’s flying. It’s fucking fantastic. She flips the board once for good measure and lands beautifully, but before she can gloat the chain link fence is upon her.

Right. This is why you don’t put a ramp near a fence. She collides head on, and damn, she thinks, it’s a good thing this fence is pliable. It spits her back out like a catapult, and she lands on her ass on the concrete.

Darcy runs up to her. “Are you alright?” she repeats, taking Dani’s hand and helping her to her feet.

Dani nods shakily. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, that went great for the first trial. Did you catch me eating it on camera?”

#ocean's 8 #heist wives #debbie ocean #lou miller #debbie x lou #ocean's eight #heist wives au #dani ocean #darcy ocean #domestic fluff #I'm so soft for lou

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