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randombush3 · 19 days

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(extremely talented, creative) stalker

alexia putellas x reader

based on this and a poem from when i was little. i chose alexia because she fit the character more and i rushed this immensely because i was being pestered for attention by multiple creatures. oh and i went for something decently light-hearted bc these hozier fics have been affecting my soul and ruining my spotify daylists.

happy monday people x

p.s. not proof-read because it's lunchtime and i'm hungry (edit: i just did my proof-read now and i've realised that it was in fact not lunchtime??? it was past lunchtime and i was just zoned out!)

Alexia doesn’t care much for art. Sure, she admires the effort, the time such talent sits behind a canvas and marks something that was once blank until others begin to value it. She agrees with the masses about the beauty of quaint watercolour paintings of the coast, and she lets Mapi rave about charcoal and graphite and oils as if she understands what is so special about the varying media.

She knows she is only here today because the art is about sports. The gallery seems almost reluctant to allow the athletes in, worried they have brought with them their football boots and cones to dribble around, but it would be bad practice to prohibit the muses from the collection. She isn’t an idiot, though, and she knows that no amount of forced reading about the artist and other sophisticated matters will slip her seamlessly into the crowd.

There are lots of people; people she has never heard of, but make it clear they are far superior to her by the way in which their eyes politely drop to the tattoos inked onto her calloused hands. Their skin is soft, accustomed to the stems of crystal champagne flutes, and the drawings that hold so much personal meaning to the footballer are scrutinised to the point of silent… offence.

So much for appreciators of art, she thinks to herself, counting down the minutes until it is acceptable for her to leave.

With a huff and a vow to never – no matter how much she earns – forget where she has come from, Alexia staggers, uncomfortable in these particular heels, towards the painting she deems easiest to understand.

It is the largest in the room: deep, crimson reds on top of familiar greens, streaks of gold falling out of a ponytail.

Call Alexia egotistical, but anyone would be drawn to a painting of themselves.

The artist has done a good job, she guesses, not entirely sure if there is a deeper meaning behind the grass stains on her socks or the crumpled shading of her Spain jersey. It is a little creepy that someone she does not know has captured her likeness so expertly, so practised.

“The nose isn’t quite right,” a voice says beside her.

Alexia turns in surprise, amused enough by the stranger’s observation to examine her painted face, eyes not drawn from how majestic her image is beginning to seem. She sees no obvious issue, and so she replies, “I think it’s fine.”

“Just fine?”

She is still staring at herself, now impressed by the grandeur of the painting; its size, its quality. “Well, I am unsure how someone painted me so accurately when I was never called in for a… I don’t know, a consultation? And it seems a little weird to me that my hair is loose, because I tend to slick it back so it doesn’t fall out of my ponytail, and, you know, I always have something written on my boots, but otherwise, it’s fine. I doubt anyone here has ever watched a football match, so none of this will matter to them.”

“It doesn’t bother you that someone might pay millions for a painting that you have deemed not-quite-right?”

The voice is somewhat too interested, and suddenly Alexia swivels around to face its owner properly, worried she has spoken her mind to a journalist.

“Those millions go to a charity that will improve women’s sports every–”

You are definitely not a journalist, although once, when art really wasn’t paying, you had off-handedly typed out a few articles for one of the bigger galleries.

Alexia knows you are not a journalist because you are dressed to be in front of the cameras, not behind them.

Your hands hang by your sides, but in a rather unnatural manner as though you are itching to do something else, and she is briefly overcome by the horror that you seem elegant enough to be a potential buyer. Has she put you off?

“Oh,” you interrupt, “don’t be so profound. Sometimes you footballers sound like change-making machines.”

“There is change to be made,” she responds indignantly.

“Hence the exhibition,” you allow with a little smirk, nodding towards the rest of the room. Although the biggest of the collection, you had asked for your painting to be displayed in the corner; a filter, in a sense, to ensure no one throws money at the largest thing in the room just because they can. “It creeps you out to be painted?”

The question is curious, but Alexia no longer feels like she has been caged in an interrogation room.

She thinks about her answer for a moment, torn between returning to gaze at the expanse of the scene in front of her or staring at you, wondering if you count as one of the works of art on display.

“I have never met the artist,” she explains neutrally. You laugh, and it sounds infused with champagne and nervousness. “What? It’s like having a stalker. An extremely talented, creative stalker, but someone who studies me in secret nonetheless.”

“No, I understand. She must have researched you until the ends of the Earth.”

“The artist is a woman?” She isn’t sure she is surprised, but she asks you anyway, wanting to anchor you to the spot.

“Alexia, this is an exhibition for women’s sports.” Your point is valid, but you have said her name and she is far more intrigued by the way that had sounded to praise you for your intelligence. You let out an airy breath and click your tongue. “I’d even say, given by the way she has painted you from the back, that the artist fancies you.”

“It’s the squats,” she easily replies with a giggle. “Who is the artist?”

You take a step towards her, the sharp points of your heels clacking against the concrete floor. She follows your index finger to the white plaque beside the canvas, reading the name written in small, black letters.

“I haven’t heard of her.”

Alexia sounds so thoughtful that you have to hide your smile behind your palm, coughing to provide an excuse for the action.

“Because you’ve heard of quite a few artists, haven’t you?”

“I know the main four.”

“The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?”

“No.”

Again, you laugh, and it is melodious and rich and Alexia wants to hear it for the rest of her life. Which is not normal, she tells herself, because you are some loaded stranger and she is only here for another hour before she can escape back to the pitch and her teammates who like her tattoos and admire her and respect her hard work without seeing her as some tacky social-climber who scrounged an invite to an area of society where she is institutionally unwanted.

“Picasso,” she then offers, rather petulantly, looking at you with a childish frown. In her head, she estimates the distance between your bodies, noticing how you have not returned to your original position.

“Ah, well done. He’s quite niche.” She doesn’t appreciate the teasing, and so she steps sideways to… put a stop to it somehow. Obviously, the plan had never truly been formulated, and it comes across as a half-lunge to push you away, but then you are swinging your arms as though the conversation is boring you and she desperately wishes you’d stay put.

“What do you think about the painting?” she fires into the shortened space between you, the question wrapping around you like a rope that ties you to the spot.

“It’s boring.” She scoffs, because after all, it is a painting of her. “The poor artist must have been tortured by the task, having to force her eyes to stay open while watching football matches.”

And if Alexia were not so distracted by the way your swinging hand has begun to brush against her own, she would probably catch you out there and then.

(But your touch is electric and she is otherwise engaged.)

“Like, come on, can’t the sports photographers just get their pictures blown up? No one needs such an outrageously huge portrait of Alexia Putellas in their home, or stadium, or whatever. I reckon the artist is now regretting the angle she painted from, anyway, in case some pervert with more money than sense bids for it and hangs it up in his bedroom.”

“Bedroom?”

The tips of Alexia’s ears go red, a stark contrast to the expensive silver hoops she sports, and you stop your fidgeting, hand resting on top of hers – perhaps unintentionally – as her misunderstanding wedges an awkward pause into the middle of your rant.

“Sorry,” you apologise, “that was probably not the best thing to say, considering it’s a painting of you.”

Alexia runs through what you have said, hoping her subconscious has caught it while her mind was preoccupied with what your sexual orientation might be. “Why have you come here if you are so against the principle of it?”

“I was required to,” you explain, through half-gritted teeth and a jaw that tenses with leftover annoyance from a conversation you had with the coordinator.

Seizing the opportunity to get a humorous punch back, Alexia quickly fumbles out a, “someone’s important.”

She’d celebrate her victory over you, the way you blush in embarrassment, if you hadn’t started anxiously playing with her fingers. Suddenly, the air that bridges the gap between you is set alight and Alexia stares at where you are connected.

You hastily pull away. “Sorry,” you say for a second time. “I have to sell this, and I’m nervous.”

“Sell wh– The painting?”

“No, Alexia, I’ve been sent by Real Madrid to hold you hostage so I have to sell this act.” Briefly, fear washes over the footballer’s face, tanned skin paling at the idea that you have a weapon concealed in the satin folds of your dress. Then, your hand makes a decisive movement and your fingers are intertwining with hers before she can run to safety. “I thought it was best to lure you in by flirting with you.”

“You’ve been… flirting with me?”

“God, imagine if I actually were here to kidnap you.” You hold up your joined hands so that she can see for herself. “Is your weakness women who bully you?”

She blushes again, unsure how to handle what you have insinuated.

Alexia grasps onto what little dignity remains and straightens herself, shoulders rolling back as she emulates the confidence she has been painted with. “Only pretty women,” she drawls.

She is about to use whichever line appears in her mind first, completely unashamed by it because she has guessed you would tease her no matter what leaves her mouth, but some evil, cruel person clinks a small fork against their glass, clearing their throat, and your hands quickly return to your body, your attention drawn away from the conversation.

“Thank you all for coming,” announces the event coordinator, clearly gearing up for a speech. “There will be time for more chatting later, but I cannot resist showing off our most talented artist any longer.”

You roll your eyes. The expression is directed at Alexia, who chuckles privately, sunshine blooming in her chest that you have spared a silent comment just for her.

“Y/n, darling, where are you?”

An authoritative gaze searches through the crowd and lands on you.

The dots connect, Alexia begins to feel like an idiot, and you are sashaying away before she can ask you to stay.

#woso #woso x reader #randombush3 #barca femeni #alexia putellas imagine #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas

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dilfsfordinner · 11 months

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Escarmiento- Miguel O’hara x fem!spider reader

a/n- spoiler warning for atsv!!! Some of the things in this I don’t agree with based off of my personal opinion for certain characters, but y/n, for story sake, agrees with Miles

warnings- eventual smut, predator/prey dynamics, spanking, edging, degradation, explicit language, size kink, biting, mean/rough sex, unprotected sex, vaginal fingering, creampie, aftercare, soft miggy after he realizes he was an ass

—————————————————————————

“You’re an anomaly. You don’t belong here, you don’t even belong in your universe. Everything you’ve done…”

The sound of your husband’s voice rang between your ears as you squeezed between the growing crowd, the dark blue and red of Miguel’s “lair” reflecting off the suits of the hundreds of spider people slowly congregating around the boy you knew as Miles Morales. For weeks, Miguel was infatuated with this Morales kid, infatuated with the idea of capturing him so that he could save everyone, so he could save you, as he loved to say.

Slowly but surely, you found yourself standing at the front, watching as the young boy was on the receiving end of a very familiar type of lecture. “-kid, you can’t have everything, you can’t save everyone. Spider-man makes sacrifices, that’s the way it has to be,” Miguel’s tone was strong, unwavering, as he told the kid the unfortunate truth of the situation.

Gwen, Peter, Hobie (who could not care less about the situation), Jess, and your husband all battered the kid with their takes, with their opinions on the situation and you could tell that he wasn’t having any of it. The others in the room also thought it their place to partake in this ping pong match of morals, their voices overstimulating even to your ears. It was obvious that Miles felt suffocated, lied to, attacked, and you couldn’t just sit back and watch.

“What if he’s right?”

…

The room went silent at your words, every single spider lensed eye turning to look at you as you stepped forward, a pair of scarlet eyes meeting your own, narrowing slightly. “What if nothing happens? I mean, how are any of us supposed to live if we stay trapped by the rules of the unknown?”

A sigh left the lips of the spider you knew all too well, his gloved hand running down his face as he turned to you. “We’re “trapped” by those rules for a reason. They’re the only thing holding everything together. You should know that more than anyone.”

Yes, you knew all too well what would happen if the canon was disrupted, being Miguel’s only pillar to trust and lean on for him to be vulnerable enough to share his story. That was one case though. One instance out of countless others that were possible.

With careful steps, you walked toward them until you were side by side with Miles, his wide eyes watching you literally take his side, the first out of hundreds to step up.

“Amor.. being bitten by that spider should’ve caused irrevocable damage in his universe, should it not have?” You questioned him, his strong arms crossing as he pondered the fact, “It wasn’t canon, so by your reasoning, all hell should’ve broken loose in his universe. But it didn’t. Miles may very well be an anomaly, but if he can commit non-canon acts without consequences, there’s nothing stopping us from letting him save his father.”

With a scoff, your husband’s hand turned to gesture the scenes projected behind him, the sight of universes crumbling, millions of lives wiped out due to one action. “This is why we can’t let him. If the kid is allowed to do whatever he wants, every single universe would end up in shambles because one little thread of reality was tugged loose.”

You wouldn’t admit it out loud, but to some degree, you did agree with Miguel. You knew how important it was to uphold the rules of the multiverse, but there was just something different with Miles. You couldn’t help but think that this was different, that his case was truly unique.

“He’s staying. I don’t care about hypotheticals or any other possible outcomes-”

Using Miguel’s voice as a cover, as inconspicuous as possible, your gloved hand lightly tugged at Miles’ pinky, and when his eyes glanced at your still frame, you whispered under your breath, “Use your palms.” Miles’ eyebrows furrowed at your comment, his shoulders squaring as Miguel approached the both of you.

“-he’s not going anywhere until we know for sure that he’s not a threat.” Miguel’s hand closed around your wrist, pulling you away from the boy’s side as you watched him pull a red disk from the air behind him, casually throwing it at the boy’s feet, a red cage snapping up around the panicking kid.

Miguel was immediately battered with pleas to let him go, specifically by Gwen and Peter, as Miles yelled and slammed against his enclosure. Slipping away from the turmoil and shouting, you caught Miles’ gaze and nodded slightly, his eyes going wide at the realization of your words. His hands pressed against the red lining, a muttered sentence leaving his lips before the cage shattered and every single spider-person was thrown backwards by the sheer force. Everyone besides you of course, who was conveniently standing next to a freed Miles, your webbing attached to the floor the only anchor you had to prevent from flying back.

Scarlet eyes immediately snapped to you, your gaze full of guilt as Miles turned to sprint, your legs quickly following as the shout of your name boomed behind you, your eyes flitting back to find a rage-filled Miguel with hundreds of spiders at his heels, pursuing Miles, and unfortunately, you as well.

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Part Two

#miguel ohara #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o’hara smut #spiderman across the spiderverse #atsv miguel #miguel o’hara imagine #miguel smut

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octopotto · 6 months

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Brain Rot: TWST Cast with Saitama! Reader

OCTO NOTE: College has been absolutely brutal. These headcanons were worked on bit by bit these past few months :(

I saw some TWST fics that used pre-exsiting characters to based the MC off of and I wanted to try w/ one of my favourite characters.

WARNINGS: NOT PROOF-READ, OOC Behaviour, this is so cringe but very self-indulgent, mc is the most sane person in this universe, you decide if mc is bald or not, yandere if you squint hard enough.

SPOILERS FOR: TWISTED WONDERLAND

**The reader will ALWAYS be Gender-Neutral!

———————————-••———————————

Life at Night Raven College would be much more peaceful if MC had Saitama’s strength lol

Problems would've been solved quicker as well.

At first glance, you don’t seem to be a threat.

To most, you look like a regular, magic-less human on the outside.

And that’s what makes you so dangerous.

Don’t fuck around and overblot unless you have a death wish.

The Overblot crew definitely had one when MC swung their fist at them.

The whole prologue would be shortened.

Fun fact: You accidentally put too much force on the coffin door to get out, thus smashing Grim in the process while he was prying it open :D

Grim, the Ramshackle ghost, and Crowley were the first group to witness your impressive strength.

And by impressive, they mean terrifying.

To Crowley and Grim at least.

The ghost were shocked but very much amused after a couple moments.

God knows how the Ramshackle Dorm was still in one piece after that.

Grim is very happy to have a strong minion to protect him

Just don’t hurt him like you did with the ghost pls. And the door lol

Crowley would be most likely absolutely be afraid and made a mental note to keep track of you.

Especially since you were almost successful to killing him in his ghost form. He’s making sure that Ramshackle gets fixed quicker.

Crowley: “Great Sevens… How do they have such monstrous strength... This stowaway is just a magicaless human! My…what have I gotten myself into?? *sobs* OH IF I WASN’T SUCH A KIND AND GENEROUS SOUL I WOULD NOT LET THIS TYPE OF BEHAVIOUR BE PRESENT ON MY CAMPUS” *more obnoxious sobbing*

You and Grim: 😶😐????

Despite scaring and almost killing the shit out of the Headmaster, you still start off as a janitor lol.

Fast forward to the Mine Incident with Ace, Deuce, and Grim—

You basically massacred that monster.

A monster that probably injured many Mages and Wizards

You destroyed it in one punch.

On that day, Ace reminded himself to never piss you off again. Ever.

He loves cherry pie, but would rather not become the filling itself, thanks.

Deuce probably was gawking at you after the shock.

Not in a bad way

But in a good way y'know?

But he’s too shy to ask for advice for now.

This is basically the start of Deuce idolizing you and your strength.

Brain Rot:

Ace, Deuce and Grim are your self-proclaimed bodyguards.

At least THEY like to think that they are.

Listen, they know that you are MORE THE CAPABLE protecting yourself in fights or in any physical confrontations.

But that’s it.

You’re basically shit at everything else.

From completing your assignments to even showing up to class, it seems like in the trio's eyes that you NEED THEM to take care of you. You all are like family now!

So they all make an effort to help you out when you need it.

No really, if you keep forgetting to submit that one potion essay that Crewel keeps smacking your shiny ass head to complete, you’re going to get left behind.

They’re more like secretaries than bodyguards lol.

The post-overblot Spelldrive tournament was an absolute nightmare.

Well, at least for everyone but Ace, Deuce, and Grim.

They were GLOATING about how they were in the lead and challenged anyone to try and top them like the smug, over-confident assholes they are.

The only reason why they were in the lead was because of you. Simple as that.

The Savannaclaw gang put up a good fight

For the first 10 minutes in the match.

All Leona could do at that moment was strategize how not to get his and his teammate’s heads chopped off by the disc you kept throwing at them.

You are quite fond of Ruggie

More specifically: you were fond of Ruggie’s haggling skills.

If were had a choice to trade your god-like strength for his haggling skills and techniques, you wouldn’t hesitate one bit.

And y’know it wouldn’t be Ruggie if he didn’t take advantage of this. He would offer you advice and tell you if theres a huge sale going on at a near-by grocery store if you promise to lend him a hand whenever he needed it.

You were so tempted to say no

Not because he was shady and overall untrustworthy

You’re just lazy

This is his way to spend more time with you but he would never admit that out-loud.

If your MC is bald, instead of Floyd squeezing you, he will smack and ‘dribble’ your head as if it was basketball.

Jamil and Ace especially are amused.

God forbid you ever get a bad tan on the top of your scalp

You will NEVER hear to end of it.

Floyd also is your biggest bully.

jk but not really

Yeah he knows that you could probably kill him with a gentle tap

But when did that ever stop him?

He mainly does it because he wants to see your reactions

You’re so plain looking and your nonchalant voice and facial expressions do not help as well.

But remember only Floyd HIMSELF can do those things to you, okay? Only him.

If he ever finds out that some random NPC student was doing the same thing to you, You’re going to be finding that NPC tossed in a corner somewhere with almost all their joints mangled.

You like how generous Kalim is.

You probably helped him fan the fire off his ass in the ceremony

He’s was incredibly thankful and was able to remember what you looked like.

I mean, you literally saved him!

How could he not remember you?

You don't remember him but let’s not go there lol

Because you saved Kalim from being cooked, he always makes sure that you had enough food for the month!

He would practically beg, like BEG Jamil to make extras so you won’t go hungry.

Especially after experiencing what type of living conditions you were dealing with in Book 5.

Poor Jamil, not only is he working overtime for Kalim, but technically serving food for the person who ruined his plans back in Book 4.

Jamil packing food for you by Kalim’s request: 😡😡😡

totally did not try to poison your food on several occasions

Kalim also begs Jamil to let him deliver the food to you.

He can’t help it! He really enjoys seeing you happy when you receive something from him and Jamil.

You never complain about.

Free food = Saving money.

I mean, if you're being gifted something, why be rude and deny it?

Some students say that you were taking advantage of Kalim because of how easily you accept his gifts without anything in return.

And y'know they could be right

But Kalim doesn't mind.

As long as you're happy, he's happy :)

In Vil’s eyes, you are an enigma.

It’s like he can’t wrap his pretty little head around on how he feels about you.

On one hand, other than your god-like strength, you’re nothing special. When he first saw you he only disregarded you as another potato that’s not worth his precious time and effort on.

But on the other hand, Vil sees you as a blank slate. Something that ASKING for him to put his smooth and perfectly manicured fingers on. Someone that needs his guidance and skills.

He doesn’t care if you’re bald or have hair, it doesn’t derail him from the fact that despite you sticking out like a sore-thumb, you’re still so…plain looking.

You probably said some off-hand comment about how ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ to Vil and just walked off.

It might not meant anything to you

But it meant a lot to Vil.

When it came to the overblots and eventually Book 5, he felt as though he was in a spiral of questions that he himself must find the answers for.

And what were the questions that caused Vil’s current state of disarray about? You obviously.

He’s going mad

He can’t stand it.

You said that beauty is in the eye of the holder? Fine then.

He knows that he could do something for you.

Something marvellous, something beautiful.

For you and himself.

You had a new nickname for Malleus every time you guys end up running into eachother.

Malleus would always look forward to meeting you solely for the nicknames.

I believe that Saitama genuinely does not care enough to remember other people’s names that much

So that will be a trait for MC in this.

Malleus probably thinks this is a way humans show affection to each other.

In reality, you cannot for the life of you remember that weirdo's name.

Malleus: *Appears out of thin air in front of the MC*

Malleus: Greetings, Child of Man *smiles*

MC Thinking: ‘Why does this rando keep coming back? What was his name again?’

Malleus: *Anticipating their response with excitement*

MC: Uhhhh..

MC: Wassup…Horton? :D

Malleus: *Smiles at his new nickname*

It took a while for you to come up with a permanent nickname for him but he doesn't mind

In his eyes, it's your way of showing him how much you wanted to become closer companions.

Jack and Epel are always on your ass about “How to become stronger” and when you actually tell them the routine that you did at the beginning of your journey, they literally fell in disbelief.

They couldn’t believe it.

It was basically a simple workout routine

Both still believe that you’re hiding the secret of how you got to your level of strength.

Thus, joint workouts became also a thing within the NRC Campus and you are the leader.

Not by choice however.

Jack, Epel, and everyone else involved were really curious as to how you train.

I mean, look at what you can do! And you’re not even a Mage!

The first meeting was terrible due to the fact you almost obliterated the school.

One flick and the gym could’ve been in shambles.

That’s why Jack and Epel made sure to do it somewhere far and secluded.

And even then, you still created a lot of damage with minimal effort.

It’s incredible to those who look up to you.

Throughout the story, you gained some admiration and recognition along the way.

From Heartslaybul to Diasomnia, you unknowingly grab the admiration of those who either want to become stronger or see you as a hero.

Some might say that they see you as the messiah who was sent to protect the school.

But let’s not go that far.

You wouldn’t notice anyways

In your eyes they're all a bunch of weirdos.

———————————-••———————————

OCTO NOTE: Hopefully you guys enjoyed these very terrible brain-rot headcanons. I always found Saitama’s character interesting so I wanted to try out something new.

Again, I’ve been very busy so I can’t promise anything BUT I can say that there will be more Yandere FF7 fics coming soon! ;)

Thank you to everyone who enjoys my low-quality works! Hope you look forward to my new ones ❤️❤️

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midnightsilver · 2 months

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Playing with fire

- Process:

Drawn in Procreate, actual time 1 hr 20.

With this picture I wanted to used a similar technique to the one I had used to draw Sammy. And while I like the final result, it wasn’t exactly what I was aiming for. The plan was to draw fire where Rowena’s hair would go and then to put the black layer on-top and erase the highlights to have the fire showing through from underneath. I ran into some problems tho because I had included white in the flames and as I etched in Rowena’s curls on the black layer there were too many random flashes of white throwing off the flow of her hair. So midway through I went back to the base layer and covered all the white with a lot more red. The end result is that I have a really interesting fire themed colour palette for this picture (something I wouldn’t normally have chosen if I was just choosing colours as I was drawing) but it’s not obvious that the hair is drawn on-top of actual flames, it all just looks red. So in future I need to consider how much of the under painting will show through and what shapes will best complement each other. Maybe I could do elements or nature scenes as underpaintings to match a character’s personality. Im definitely having fun experimenting tho 😄

#supernatural #spn fanart #MidnightSilver #rowena macleod #women of supernatural #artists process #video

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softxsuki · 6 months

Note

Hi!! Congrats on 1.5k! May I please request 10 troupe with Shinichiro from Tokyo Revengers x fem!reader? Thanks in advance and I hope you have a good day! 💜

1.5k Follower Event Trope 10: Tokyo Revengers

Trope 10: Marriage of Convenience

This event is CLOSED. You can check out the masterlist here.

Pairing: Bonten!Mikey x Fem!Reader

Warning: mentions of killing, bad childhood, stalking, injury, blah

Genre: idek, kinda fluff?

Post-Type: Oneshot (so much for drabbles smh)

Word Count: ...1.1k (oops)

Note: Hey! Thank you so much. So for my tropes, you're only supposed to send in a trope number and fandom name, then I pick which character from that fandom I think it matches with the most! I've also already written one of these for Shinichiro hence why I've written this for Mikey. I hope you still enjoy it though, I love this trope! Also side note: I’ve read like 2 seconds of Bonten Mikey but I felt it fit this trope more SO if this makes no sense, you know why :)

Marriage was the last thing on Mikey’s mind, until your father approached him with a contract that included you and part of the city he owned, in return for protection from Bonten and the chance to make Bonten grow even more powerful. Naturally Mikey agreed, taking little interest in you as a factor, but desiring to see his gang flourish even farther.

As the daughter of a gang leader, your role since birth had been to be used as a means to help your father, ensuring he was always well off. There was not a day when your father thought about you or your own feelings.

You were handed over to Mikey straight away, allowed to pack up the few clothes that you had, along with any other personal items. Meeting with him briefly to sign a few marriage documents, signing away your life, and ultimately leaving one prison and entering a new one–or so you thought.

For the most part Mikey left you alone to do as you please, only giving you a few rules to keep you safe and away from the darker areas of their base where you were staying. But you were given your own room that was nicely decorated, new clothes that fit you perfectly, and the freedom to do as you please within their building. It was more freedom than you’d ever had in your life.

Even though you were trapped in what you thought was a loveless marriage, at least everyone treated you respectfully. Though, Mikey found himself opening up to you in ways he’d never opened up before after all the trauma that he befell in the past. He admired how you carried yourself, standing tall and proud despite being thrown in an unfamiliar place by force, the least he wanted to do was make you comfortable…but why?

He found himself inviting you to the dining room for meals with him, quite enjoying your company even if you ate in silence. Flowers and other gifts were left by your bedroom door, shocking you. Why was he doing this for you, wasn’t this just a marriage of convenience? There was no need for heartfelt gifts and attention like he was giving you.

But Mikey couldn’t help himself, he felt lighter around you as if he could finally breathe again and it was such a relief–a good change from the usual heaviness that clouded over him. He realized you were slowly becoming someone he wanted to keep happy and safe; he wanted to protect you from the cruel world that existed outside those walls, the cruel world he was also a part of.

Mikey kept his feelings to himself, aside from the random gifts he’d leave you and quality time he’d spend with you every now and then. That was until one day you were granted access to wander outside in the city, saying you needed fresh air. Enemy gangs were always keeping a close watch on Bonten headquarters, just looking for any weakness that could cause the huge corporation to plunder, and finally they had one–you.

Word that Mikey had taken a wife spread quickly in the underground world, a potential weakness of the big boss man behind Bonten, everyone was waiting to get their hands on you to bring Mikey crashing down–and that’s exactly what happened.

A few blocks later as you walked peacefully through the cool streets, loving how calming the area was at night and enjoying your new found freedom, that all came crashing down as you felt the presence of someone following you.

At first you thought nothing of it, but every turn you made, they made and when you turned around to glance behind you, they’d stop walking and pretend to be busy with something. You quickened your pace, your heart beating out of your chest at the prospect that you were in danger and needed to get back home quickly. The man noticed this and also fastened his pace, getting closer and closer to you.

You begin running, but you’re not fast enough as a hand wraps around your wrist, pulling you down to the floor.

“Gotcha,” the man grins. “Let’s see how riled up your husband gets when we send your head back to him.”

Fear fully floods you as the man takes out a knife and approaches you with it. He only manages to scrape your cheek though before adrenaline kicks in and you push him back with the strength you didn’t know you had, jumping back to your feet and running full speed back to your home–back to Mikey.

Upon returning back to your home and bursting through the door with blood running down your face, mixed with tears, you ignore the questions of Mikey’s men who were keeping watch by the front door and run to your room.

Urgently, the men report to Mikey who jumps up from his seat and runs to your room, bursting your door open, not caring if you were decent or not.

“What happened?” He demands, closing the distance between you as he approaches your bed where you’re sobbing into your pillow.

When you don’t speak, he sighs and gently takes your hand, pulling you into him. “Let me see,” he softly says, guiding your chin up so he can get a better look at your face, gritting at the cut that had been so close to hitting your eye.

His fingers wipe your tears away and slowly graze over the cut–he was upset. “Who did this?” He hisses. Who would dare place their hands on his wife?

You felt surprisingly relaxed and safe in his arms as he held you close, never once breaking eye contact with him, you had no choice but to fill him in on what happened during your walk.

“I just went out to get some fresh air and take a quick walk, but I noticed someone following me. I tried getting back here before he could catch up to me, but he was too fast. He said,” you gulp, fear once again filling your body as you remember the man's words. “He said he was going to send you my head back.”

Mikey was seething now. Not only had someone harmed you, but they’d also threatened to kill you?

“Sanzu!” He screams, calling his most trustworthy man to enter your room, to which the pink-haired man appears immediately. “Have a few men patrol the area, I want any suspicious men taken in, I don’t care if you bring in everyone, I want him found, whoever it was that did this to my wife,” he grits, holding you tightly to him.

Though anger was bubbling up inside him, he couldn’t help but feel slight relief that you were still alive and safe in his arms. He couldn’t lose you too…

That man would be tracked down and made an example out of. No one would dare try to harm his wife again. This marriage was now real to him and Mikey would do anything to protect it–to protect you.

EVENT REQUESTS ARE CLOSED

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Posted: 10/23/2023

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Jack Jeanne Complete Collection - Interview with Ishida Sui and Towada Shin Translation

This interview is from the Jack Jeanne Complete Collection art book, it’s available on CDJapan and Amazon jp. You can also purchase a digital only version on bookwalker jp. I encourage anyone reading to purchase the game (if you haven't already) or the art book itself to support Ishida and Towada directly. 💕

This is a VERY long interview so I apologise for any typos or errors I may have missed.

~ ~ ~

An interview with Ishida Sui and Towada Shin, who both worked on writing the story of Jack Jeanne. In this interview they reveal what went on behind the scenes during production, rejected story ideas and much more. This interview was conducted remotely on the 9th of February 2021.

Interviewer: Yui Kashima

How did Ishida Sui end up making an otome game?

—How did the production of Jack Jeanne begin?

Ishida: It was sometime around Autumn 2015 I think… On an old personal site that I used to run, I received an email from the company Broccoli to an email address that I no longer use. It was a commission request for character designs.

—In 2015 Tokyo Ghoul was still being serialised wasn’t it?

Ishida: Yes. Usually job offers like that go through Shueisha first, so I contacted my editor asking why this one was sent to my private email… At the time, in addition to working on Tokyo Ghoul, I was also drawing illustrations for a tear-off calendar and very busy with various other things, so when my editorial department heard about the offer they seemed very shocked like "What!?".

—Why did you decide to accept the offer even though you were so busy?

Ishida: I would often receive offers asking for me to draw manga or illustrations, so I figured that this one was a similar case. However, some words in the email caught my eye. Like ‘Gender Swap’, ‘Takarazuka’ and ‘All Boys Opera'. When I saw these concept ideas, a dream began to swell in my chest and I felt like giving it a try.

I think if it had just been a normal character design job, I would have turned it down. However just from reading the short brief in the email my interest was piqued. While in discussions with the Young Jump editorial department, I also casually mentioned the kind of offer I’d received to Towada-san.

Towada: Yeah, Ishida-san asked me for some advice. I was also drawn to the ‘Gender Swap’ and ‘Opera’ concepts. I could easily visualise the setting of the story. Additionally, it seemed like it would be a story that included many different themes such as gender. When I thought about that, I figured that Ishida-san would be a good fit, since I knew he would be able to draw something that went beyond all genders.

Ishida: I’ve been drawing androgynous characters for a long time, so Towada-san and I talked and wondered if that's what they must be looking for. After that, I created my own proposal and submitted it to Broccoli.

—You created your own proposal, Ishida-san?

Ishida: When I looked at the original proposal that Broccoli had sent me, a lot of it differed from my personal tastes. It was a very upbeat and dazzling story. It would’ve been hard for me to match my art style to that, so in my proposal I noted things like ‘if it were me, I’d do something more like this’. I was interested in this unpolished gem of a story, so I thought it would be a waste to turn it down altogether. I wanted to at least try throwing my own ideas into the ring, so I spent a week creating the six main characters and sent them in.

—At that time, I heard that the game wasn’t titled ‘Jack Jeanne’ yet, but was instead called ‘Jiemarie’.

Ishida: At first, I wanted to try creating a word that doesn’t exist. So using French as a base, I came up with ‘Jiemarie’ as the game's provisional title. But then a month later when I was reconsidering the title, I looked at it again and thought, damn this looks lame. So I hurriedly called Towada-san on Skype and we entered a discussion that lasted about ten hours over what the title should be.

That’s when we decided on ‘Jack Jeanne’. The male roles take the name from the knight, or the ‘Jack’ in a deck of playing cards. And the female roles ‘Jeanne’ take from the word parisienne and Jeanne d’Arc. When these two terms are put together, I feel like you can comprehend what the game is about with a bit of nuance. Plus you can shorten it to ‘JJ’… That’s also the title of a magazine though (lol).

—Taking on another job whilst your manga was being serialised sounds like it would be tough on you both physically and mentally.

Ishida: I think I must’ve been a bit unwell (lol). My body was fine, but being able to work on something other than a serialised manga was a lot easier on me mentally. I may have seen it as a way to escape, so I didn’t feel that working on two projects at the same time was difficult. When it comes to game development, I can only create what I’m capable of, and there was no set release date yet. Of course, I would work on and submit things whenever I could though.

—What kind of things would you submit?

Ishida: I would sketch character designs, discuss and create story elements with Towada-san and try to put Univeils history into chronological order. Then I would share the progress with Broccoli and have meetings and such with them. In the beginning, rather than having to draw anything yet, it was mostly just brainstorming and planning. That’s why I think I was able to do it all concurrently with the serialisation of my manga.

~ ~ ~

How Ishida Sui and Towada Shin know each other

—Do you chat with Towada-san often?

Ishida: Well yeah, she is my older sister after all.

Towada: We talk a lot. When we both have the time we chat over Skype.

Ishida: Once we start the conversation can last up to five or six hours. We mostly talk about things that happened throughout our day. When I’m talking to someone I often bring up something that’s happened to me and ask their opinion on it. She became someone that I could chat with whilst working on my manga. Ever since my student days we’d talk until early morning, I usually told her about storyboards I’d drawn.

—At the Ishida Sui exhibition it was revealed that Towada-san had even given you advice on some of your earliest works.

Ishida: Yeah that’s right. It was a work I’d prepared for a 'bring your own work along' induction course in Tokyo that I attended back in my student days. It was a manga about two characters who eventually became the prototypes for Tsukiyama and Hori Chie in Tokyo Ghoul. It was only about 30 pages long, however when I showed it to Towada-san the day before the presentation, she told me that she thought my linework was too thin.

Towada: Yeah, the overall linework of the manga was thinly drawn. Once I told Ishida-san this thought, he began tracing over his linework and making it thicker. And then when he looked at it again, he said “Yep, I need to redraw the whole thing”.

The linework being too thin was only my personal opinion and the presentation was in Tokyo the next day, so in horror, I began hastily telling him, “You won’t make it in time, stop, stop!”

Ishida: All I could think about was that the lines really were too thin, so I wanted to redraw it. All of the screentones had already been affixed to the panels, but I didn’t want to bring something along with me whilst knowing it wasn’t the best that it could be.

Towada: Ishida-san handled the linework and I helped with redoing the screentones. We worked throughout the night and finished redrawing the whole manuscript. Once it was done, it wasn’t even comparable to the previous version, the lines were powerful and the characters' expressions conveyed a lot. I was seriously worried though (lol), I didn’t know if we’d complete it in time.

Ishida: I couldn’t think about anything other than the lines being too thin, so I wasn’t even worried about whether I had enough time or not.

Towada: I fell asleep halfway through, but you continued and boarded that Tokyo bound flight without having slept a wink, didn’t you?

Ishida: Yeah. I let Towada-san sleep and continued applying the screentones myself right up until the very last minute. I was still applying them whilst on the plane and also after my arrival in Tokyo. I used screentone number 10 a lot, so I remember the scenery around me gradually began to look grainy like the screentone. It felt as though I was hallucinating.

—Sounds like it was a tough manuscript to complete. Towada-san was also the author for the Tokyo Ghoul novels, has your relationship always been one akin to work partners?

Ishida: When it was decided that Tokyo Ghoul would be getting a novelisation, I was given other authors' works to look at. However, none of their styles really clicked with me, and they didn’t seem right for the series. I knew that Towada-san wrote, so I tried reaching out to her.

Although back in the days of Tokyo Ghoul’s serialisation, Towada-san and I didn’t talk as much as we do now. If I had any concerns I would just try and sort them out by myself. We’d always gotten along as brother and sister, however we didn’t really start to have a ‘work partners’ kind of relationship until we started working on Jack Jeanne together.

Towada: That’s true. Back then, we only occasionally conversed regarding the novelisation of Tokyo Ghoul. Before :re we only spoke once every few months over Skype. As Ishida-san said, it wasn’t until I started working on Jack Jeanne that we really started properly talking to one another.

—How often would you contact each other?

Towada: Depending on what stage we were at, we would bounce ideas off each other once every three or so days. Ishida-san would make a request like “I’d be happy if this part of the script was done within the next two weeks.” And then I’d present what I’d written and we’d discuss it and then I’d return to writing again. This process was repeated until Jack Jeanne reached its completion.

—Was Ishida-san the one that reached out to Towada-san to write the script of Jack Janne?

Towada: He didn’t ask me specifically to write the script, early in development he’d ask me to help with some research like “I’d like you to look up some information on this, could you help me?”. I’ve always liked ikusei games and within that genre I also enjoy romance and otome games. So I think that’s why it was easy for Ishida-san to consult me about it. We’ve had a common interest in games ever since we were kids.

Ishida: Back then I played games like ‘Pinnochia no Miru Yume’ and ‘Angelique’. I wanted to try and conquer Marcel in Angelique but it was one difficult game, so it was a tough task. Before I could even raise any flags with him, the training aspect of the game was so hard that no matter how many times I played I never got any good at it.

Towada: I’m the type that loves playing games, so after talking with Ishida-san, I went on to play every popular otome game that had been released around 2015, as well as every Broccoli published otoge. I completed every single character route in those games. I began analysing otome game trends and Broccoli’s brand identity and relayed my findings to Ishida-san. After that, I went along with the Jack Jeanne production team and Makasano Chuuji-san from Shueisha, who was the scriptwriter of the Tokyo Ghoul anime. We all visited the city of Takarazuka for research.

Ishida: I was also supposed to be there for the Takarazuka trip but since I had my manga to worry about, I had Towada-san go and take in the atmosphere in my place.

Towada: I did have to gather material but I think I visited Takarazuka a total of five or six times. From morning I would watch the Takarazuka theatre from afar and simply watch the guests move about, soaking in the atmosphere of the city.

Along with the Takarazuka plays, I also watched student plays, in total I probably went and watched one hundred shows. Theatre shows that are performed by professionals are fully realised and flawless. So getting to see the contrast to student plays, where they progress and improve until the show is complete was a very helpful reference.

I’ve always enjoyed watching plays, so everything I had to research overlapped with my own hobbies. I still shared my own input with Ishida-san though.

Ishida: I’d never formally been asked to write a script before… I felt like a fraud (lol). I think it’s because I’m not very good at being considerate of other people. I don’t think I’d be able to work with anyone other than Towada-san on something.

—Why is that?

Ishida: Well, for one I don’t want to talk to anyone for long periods of time (lol). Because Towada-san understands what aspects of a story are important to me, she’s also able to comprehend what I mean when I talk in abstract concepts. We could save time by not needing to have any pointless discussions.

Towada: Back then Ishida-san was still very busy publishing his manga, so bringing in all sorts of new people to work on the project probably would’ve put quite the burden on him. That’s why I wanted to help him out in some way.

After researching all sorts of things, I ended up participating in a production meeting for Jack Jeanne, but I was not expecting that I myself would end up being in charge of writing the script. Rather, I was more just looking forward to getting to play a game made by Ishida-san. As things progressed though, I was asked to try plotting things out, or to write part of the script to be used temporarily. Eventually I came to think, why don’t I just write the scenario myself?

I’d never written the script for a game before though, so that’s what had been holding me back. Unlike novels, it’s commonplace to not have to write descriptively. Novels are made up of dialogue and descriptions, like describing the setting and characters' expressions or emotions. So I had to spend a lot of time working out how to write to properly convey a story through dialogue alone.

When I first started getting the hang of it, I tried writing a script that still included descriptions but I quickly stopped. Jack Jeanne is about theatre, so I figured that it would be easier to convey the presence and narrative of the story through conversation. I usually write novels, so I was uncertain, but since Jack Jeanne has sprites of the characters on screen, I thought that I could do it. I suppose it’s closer to writing for a manga rather than a novel.

~ ~ ~

The rejected character routes

—Before Tokyo Ghoul was completed, what kind of things did you work on?

Ishida: The first two years were mostly spent creating the game’s world and mechanics. Like deciding how many performances there would be, how the plays would be presented. Would it be a dialogue drama? Would there be mini games? Things like that. We also had to decide whether summer break would be included or not, how raising affection would work and how the choices would be presented. Those are the sort of things that were talked about first.

—You got to watch over the entire game’s development then.

Ishida: At first, I got carried away and envisioned a stage play game full of skill mechanics that I personally enjoyed. A busy game full of specs you can raise and improve in mini games, however when I explained these details to a friend of mine, they were like “You’re just imagining a game that you would like, right?”.

They asked me if that’s what the eventual players of Jack Jeanne would be looking for. That same friend said that since it’s a story that deals with the theme of theatre, it would be better if the player could witness the performances themselves. So I took that advice and the prototype of the current Jack Jeanne was created. I told all of this to Towada-san and had her handle the script.

Towada: You can’t write a script without knowing how the game’s system works after all.

Ishida: Now that I think about it, before Tokyo Ghoul was finished, rather than build the game's foundation, all I was really doing was scattering the sand to prepare for said foundation.

When Tokyo Ghoul entered its endgame especially, I really had to concentrate on it, so I took a six month break from Jack Jeanne. Ending a story requires a lot of energy and attention, so I left the practical work of Jack Jeanne to Towada-san and only supervised the music production and attended any important meetings.

—So during serialisation you were making preparations to jump right into it afterwards?

Ishida: Yes exactly. I wasn’t able to do much practical work, so I had Towada-san prepare the script in advance for me. And for the time being, create one character route.

—Which character was it?

Towada: It was Shirota. I wrote about the equivalent length of a short book and it was more or less complete. In the end, we scrapped the entire thing though… Because the atmosphere in the beginning was quite dark.

Ishida: It was dark because I was too used to Tokyo Ghoul. It included issues like a troubled household and severe bullying. Reading something like that wouldn’t put the player in a happy mood.

Despite it being a story about the theatre, my attention drifted to other topics which didn’t fit. And it was me who had asked Towada-san to write something like that… A couple months after the Shirota route had been completed, I read over what Towada-san had written for me once again and realised that it was a bit too gloomy. I’d forgotten what prompt I’d even given to her in the first place (lol).

The first character portraits and CGs that I created were for Shirota too. The reason being that Shirota is the only second year student and he was already a complete individual, so he was easy to create for. As for the third year students, there’s three of them, Fumi, Kai and Neji. Along with Kisa, Suzu and Yonoga are also first years, so continuity and character relationships need to be taken into account in order to create them, so they were a little more complex.

—How did the other characters come to be?

Ishida: At the proposal stage, the first character that I created was Kai. It’s a game where characters will be falling in love and confessing to one another, so first off I wanted a character that was handsome. Then I made Fumi who would be Kai’s partner. After that, I think Shirota was next.

Towada: At first you created the characters by basing them on plays didn’t you?

Ishida: I’m a fan of Yamamoto Shugoro’s work ‘Kikuchiyosho’ so Shirota was created using that as a base. In Shirota's case the genders are swapped, but Kikuchiyosho is a story about a girl who is born into a samurai family and raised as a boy. It has an element of androgyny and portrays the confusion and anger concerning gender quite well.

—How did you select the plays to base the characters on?

Ishida: I chose plays that lots of people are familiar with and would be easy to assign characters to. Kai is ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, Fumi is ‘Salome’, Neji is ‘Faust’ and Yonoga is ‘Shintokumaru’. Kisa and her classmate Ootori are ‘Don Quixote’. Ootori ended up becoming a side character though.

—So Ootori was originally meant to be a main character?

Ishida: Yeah. If I were to compare it to Tokyo Ghoul, Ootori is in the same position as Tsukiyama. I wanted a pompous character like that in Quartz. However I may have made him a little too unique (lol).

I received feedback from Broccoli that they want the main six characters to be an elite group, so a more easy to approach character would be better. So I moved the bright and cheerful character that I had originally made as Onyx’s Jack Ace over. That character was Suzu.

Making the characters personifications of plays started to become difficult to stick with though, so I abandoned the idea entirely halfway through.

—Despite appearing glamorous, the characters are all dealing with their own issues, like certain complexes and family troubles. I think that they’re all conflicts that are easy to sympathise with, how did you decide what the backbone of each character's conflict would be?

Ishida: First I created the character's appearance and then decided what personality would match them. Like with Fumi, when I began to think about making his story about the unique struggles that come with being born into a respected family, if becoming a successor was going to come into question, then he needed to have a brother.

In this way, I worked backwards from the vibe of his appearance and created his home life. I did the same with the other characters too, thinking things like ‘to have a personality like this they must not have parents, or they must struggle with expressing themselves’.

I think that if you let your characters do human-like things, then aspects of them that are easy to sympathise with will be born.

Jealousy, setbacks due to failure, inferiority complexes… Each and every character naturally ended up having some form of theme attached to them.

—I feel as though Kisa had a different sort of personality than that of a typical heroine.

Ishida: To put it simply, I want my protagonists to be fighting something. If they’re not giving it their all, then it’s no good. If they’re just standing around, then you can’t empathise with them.

—There’s times where she draws others towards her or supports those around her. She also has some masculine aspects to her.

Ishida: I think that I’m moved by characters who make me think “This kid’s really admirable”. That’s why I made Kisa a girl who works hard no matter the difficult situation that she’s in. I like Kisa and I’m sure Towada-san feels the same way.

Towada: She’s the result of both of our preferences. While due to the game’s setting, she of course has struggles related to being a girl, but I was careful to write the main thread of her story in a way that transcended gender and instead simply showed her charm as a human being.

—Regarding gender, I was impressed by how neutrally it was portrayed.

Ishida: Yes. Originally, I was going to make Shirota a character with a feminine personality, but I ended up scrapping the idea. In the end, he ended up having more of a masculine mentality. The premise of Jack Jeanne is that boys also play the female roles on stage, but it’s not a metaphor for anything and I didn’t want it to raise any questions. I simply wanted to give it my all creating plays with that setting and create something new and refreshing.

I don’t struggle with any gender related issues myself, so it’s not like I can fully understand what it’s like, but in general I’ve never considered gender to be a very big deal. If someone born male were to tell me “I have the heart of a woman” then I’d just think ‘ok cool’.

To me it feels strange to place so much weight on such an issue. I don't see why others need to be bothered by someone else's gender, I'm not since I myself am not able to speak for such experiences.

Towada: At first, it was possible to take that direction with Shirota but as I continued to write, I came to realise that there was no need to exaggerate any emphasis on his gender identity.

To those looking from an outside perspective, it may seem like a unique identity such as that is a person's defining trait, when in reality it's only just a portion of their whole self. If you consider it to be all they are, then you end up denying the other aspects of that person.

Whilst considering the individually of each character, I kept in mind to write them in a way that seemed natural for them.

—The side character, Tanakamigi Chui of Amber, had a very striking presence. How did you go about creating him?

Ishida: I wanted someone that’s easily understood to be the antagonist, so I went ahead and tried to draw someone who looked like an unstoppable genius. Despite being a second year, it’s as if he controls the school. I wanted an enigmatic and intriguing character like that. Once I named him Tanakamigi Chui I felt as though he was complete and his inclusion in the story was quickly decided on.

—On the flip side, were there any characters that you had a hard time creating?

Ishida: I had to think a little harder about the other members of Amber. They needed to have the aura of the enemy but since they’re only villains in the context of the stage, they’re not actually bad people. So it was hard to find that balance between them.

Visually they’re edgy and have a talented vibe, but they also have their own individual quirks, they’re not all homogeneous. I struggled with Kamiya Utsuri especially, I wanted him to visually look like he could be a Jeanne while also still looking like a boy, so it was difficult to get him right. I didn’t have to do many redesigns though and all the other characters came to be without much trouble.

What I actually had more trouble with, was the fact I made the cast too large. I initially created almost double the amount of first year characters, but when I looked back over the script that Towada-san created, I told her “There’s way too many characters, please cut some of them out.” To which Towada-san replied, “Ishida-san, you’re the one who created them in the first place.” (lol).

Towada: That’s because the cut characters had already appeared in the script (lol).

Ishida: I feel that when there’s too many characters a lot of them get wasted, so just like that I end up creating and scrapping a lot of my characters. I think even Broccoli were surprised by the amount of times I’d suddenly tell them “Oh that character doesn’t exist anymore.”

—Apart from characters, were there any other aspects of the game that were abruptly discarded?

Ishida: The performances I suppose… Originally I had wanted there to be a larger variety of shows, but if you were to put all of them in the script it probably would’ve ended up being three million characters long.

In the beginning of development, I had originally planned for each character's route to have a different final performance. There’s six main characters, and including Kisa’s route, that would total to seven unique shows.

Before that there’s the newcomers, summer, autumn and winter performances, so I arranged to have a script written for each. Basically I wanted to include more shows and increase the amount of sub stories, but that would be confusing to play through and development would never end. The game engine has its limits too, so I decided to keep it simple.

Towada: It would’ve been difficult to play through all that as well (lol). For the final performance, we settled on it being one show and letting the player enjoy it from each character’s perspective instead. And even then, there’s still over 20 different endings to the game, so it still took a long time until everything was fully complete.

—Newcomers, summer, autumn, winter and the final performance, were these five show’s scripts all original?

Towada: Yes. However at first, like the characters, we had planned to base them on famous productions. Like Shakespeare or fairy tales. We figured that players would find it easy to get immersed in plays that they were already familiar with.

Ishida: For the newcomers' performance, I thought we could have a show called ‘House of Biscuits and Candy’ based on Hansel and Gretel. I had also originally planned to use each character's motif to base the plays on.

Towada: Like Shintokumaru, right?

Ishida: Yeah yeah. I even went as far as getting permission to use it, but if the show were to be following a story that already exists, then the script would be bound to it. Once I understood that it would make it difficult to relate the stories to Univeil, we decided to create the plays ourselves.

Since I acquired the permission to adapt Shintokumaru though, maybe I’ll have to make a manga about it someday…

By the way, the one who was saying “Let’s do this” and then changing it to “Nevermind let’s not” was all me. I’ll start on something wholeheartedly thinking that it’s the right choice before realising halfway through that I can’t actually take it anywhere and stop. Jack Jeanne’s development was full of trial and error.

Whenever I’m about to start something, Towada-san will express her concerns with my ideas but I always end up pushing on with them only to ultimately scrap it.

I probably have at least ten books worth of scrapped drafts alone. I had no real knowledge of how to properly craft a story. I hadn’t drawn anything other than Tokyo Ghoul, so even though I had no idea what the fundamentals of storytelling were, I misunderstood that I could write other kinds of stories too. This time around I studied and revised each time… I really learnt a lot.

Towada: You learn things by doing them, so I think I just got used to it (lol). Also, you don’t commonly see stories presented within stories, I thought that it was a rare case for a game especially.

~ ~ ~

The story behind ‘Lyrics: Ishida Sui’

—You also wrote the lyrics for each of the songs used in the performances didn’t you, Ishida-san?

Ishida: Yes, that’s how things ended up. It goes without saying, but no one, including myself, thought that I’d be the one writing the lyrics.

Originally Broccoli brought in several professional lyricists and had me look over what they’d written. However I couldn’t help but feel that they were lyrics I’d heard somewhere before, or they at least didn’t leave a unique impression on me. I did feel the finesse of a professional, and they were beautiful lyrics that fit the story in one way or another… But the words used didn’t touch on the core of the story.

The songs in Jack Jeanne are stage songs that Neji wrote for the members of Quartz. So unless you’re familiar with the setting and understand how the characters are feeling, then you won’t be able to write lyrics that perfectly fit the scenario.

While I knew that my lyric writing technique would be far from that of a professionals, I thought that no one understands and loves these characters more than me, so I approached Broccoli about it. I’d poured my heart into not only the character designs, but also the story and system of the game, so I didn’t want to compromise on the lyrics and have them pale in comparison.

So, to the best of my ability, I wanted to at least try my hand at writing them. I had Broccoli check whether or not what I’d written was viable and asked them “If there are no problems, then please let me write the lyrics.”

—Did you sing the temporary vocals for the songs too?

Ishida: When I submitted the lyrics to Broccoli, I got the normal response of “Thank you, we’ll leave the temporary vocals to you.” Along with this message they also wrote “You can hire a professional vocalist if you’d like, or you could record the temporary vocals yourself.”

Because of this I started thinking that maybe I should record them myself. Similar to how one wouldn’t be able to write lyrics for the songs without a deep understanding of the story, if you weren’t the one who wrote the lyrics, you wouldn’t know how they’re supposed to be sung either.

So, after deciding that I had to be the one to do it, I made preparations to acquire some audio recording equipment and downloaded some editing software. I divided up the parts and harmonised with myself and over the course of three days, I finished recording the temporary vocals. That’s more or less how I did it.

—When recording yourself singing, being self conscious about it can interfere, can’t it?

Ishida: I don’t think I was possessed by him or anything, but… When I tried to go all out, as expected I felt a bit hesitant, so I began recording whilst imagining I was Neji.

In the game, Neji is the one who writes the scripts, so surely he would also write the lyrics and subdivide the song and do everything himself. So I got through it thinking like that. In that pumped up mental state, I sent in the temporarily recorded songs but all Broccoli said back was “Alright, let us know your upcoming schedule”, I got so carried away that I was somewhat bewildered by the cold response (lol).

~ ~ ~

Recruiting via DM, gathering specifically selected creators

—It appears the creators you gathered to handle things such as the concept art and music are all people whose work you enjoy.

Ishida: Yes. Almost everyone was sent a targeted offer. For example, I’ve always loved the concept artist Lownine-san’s work ever since I was a student. I suppose you could say I was jealous of how high quality their artwork is… They’re someone who I thought I'd never be able to beat in my entire life. Lownine-san is an amazing artist who is especially good at blending characters into their backgrounds.

When we were creating Jack Jeanne, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to pull something like that off, so I definitely wanted to recruit Lownine-san for the job. After getting permission from Broccoli, I reached out to Lownine-san myself through Twitter DM’s. I had only appreciated Lownine-san’s work from afar, and we’d never actually interacted before, but we did both follow each other. I received a reply that Lownine-san was fully on board to accept the job.

Towards the end of Jack Jeanne’s development, I got the chance to speak with Lownine-san, so I asked them “Could you teach me how to draw?” They gladly accepted this request and taught me how to draw whilst screen sharing over Skype. However, in about 10 minutes, they’d already drawn such an amazing piece that I felt I should just put my pen down (lol).

Towada: You were a little down after that, weren’t you?

—Had you been a fan of Kosemura-san, who was in charge of music, since you were a student as well?

Ishida: Yes, I’ve listened to Kosemura-san’s music a lot since I was a student. When I was brainstorming what kind of music would fit Jack Jeanne, Kosemura-san’s ‘Light Dance’ immediately came to mind, since it fit perfectly. Because I didn’t have any personal connections to Kosemura-san however, I didn’t know how to get in contact with him, so I made the request through Broccoli. I only found out about this recently, but apparently Kosemura-san almost turned the offer down*, I was quite shocked to hear that (lol).

*When the initial request was sent, it was under wraps that the game was being made by Ishida Sui, and since Kosemura-san didn’t have much experience in writing game music, he wasn’t optimistic about the offer. However, later, when he learned that it was a game being made by Ishida Sui, he readily accepted the offer.

—How did Seishiro-san, who was in charge of the choreography, get chosen for the job?

Ishida: A very long time ago I saw the group Tokyo Gegegay appear on a program called DANCE @ HERO JAPAN and I remember thinking ‘this group is crazy good’ and I was immediately charmed by them. After that, whilst I was looking through more videos of Tokyo Gegegay on YouTube, I happened upon a studio workshop video and discovered Seishiro-san.

—What about him caught your eye?

Ishida: Whilst first and foremost his dancing was super sexy, it also had a certain strength to it. I remember thinking that he danced in a way that embraced the best elements of both masculinity and femininity. And that had stayed in my memory ever since. When Seishiro-san was recording motion capture for the game, he allowed me to interrupt and even taught me some of the choreography.

(note: you can watch Seishiro dance here, he is also the choreographer behind this RADWIMPS music video!)

—I hear you’ve known Gyudon-san, who was in charge of making the movies, since your Tokyo Ghoul days.

Ishida: Yes. Around the time volume 13 of Tokyo Ghoul was set to be released, we held a still image MAD (Music Anime Douga) contest. The grand prize winner of said contest was Gyudon-san, who at the time was still only a student. The way they made a video by manipulating the manga panels to move so fluidly was really cool and stood out from the rest.

Around when Tokyo Ghoul had ended and :re was about to start, I had Gyudon-san make a minute long video for me. After that, Gyudon-san grew in popularity and became someone whose work is in high demand, so they seemed very busy.

However when Jack Jeanne was announced, we were able to have them create a promotional video for us. Since I’ve known them since Tokyo Ghoul, I figured I couldn’t go wrong entrusting the job to Gyudon-san. They didn’t just deliver their finished work without a word either, Gyudon-san also made a variety of suggestions and worked on the project with a positive attitude. For the videos used in the performances, I was asked to provide materials and became very involved in the process. I think it took about two weeks… Despite the really tight deadline, Gyudon-san allowed me to catch up and was super helpful.

I was also the one who reached out to Touyama Maki-san, who was in charge of creating the in-game chibi characters and the 4koma manga used for promotional purposes. During Tokyo Ghoul’s publication, Touyama-san would draw short comics for the series as a hobby, I thought they were a nice person for doing so. Their art was great too and I was very thankful. So when it was decided that we’d be displaying chibi characters during the game’s lesson segments, I wanted to leave it to Touyama-san and sent them the offer.

(note: this is the MAD that gyudon won the contest with, they now regularly make moving manga CM's for jump titles, they make the Choujin X ones too!)

~ ~ ~

The winter performance moves into Quartz’s ending, and the divergence in the story since the beginning of the year drastically branches off

—The performances, packed full of each of the character’s skills, continue for a year and pass by in the blink of an eye. Once the new year breaks, it feels as though the atmosphere of the game drastically changes. What were your intentions behind this?

Towada: That’s when the character route specific endings begin. So we packed all the needed material to set them up into the winter performance.

Ishida: The winter performance is like an ending for Quartz as a whole, so we packed it full of good lines and scenes without holding back. I may have used up all of my cards but by using them all without compromise, we were able to make the story reach a nice peak. After that, the story switches to focusing on each character's individual ending.

Towada: We used a lot of great material in the winter performance, which meant the final performance would have to be even better still. In a good way, it gave us a higher hurdle that we now needed to overcome.

—So you needed to create even more anticipation heading into March?

Towada: From January to March, each character’s route is completely different. From the new year onwards I needed to create seven different scripts, so it was very challenging. The amount of text for the last three months of the game alone just about eclipses the amount of text from up until the winter performance. There was so much to write that I began to fear I wouldn’t even be able to finish it.

Ishida: Having more choices that drastically change the ending of the game makes the player feel more involved. So, despite it making things tougher on ourselves, around the time we were working on the autumn performance is when we began thinking about how the game’s big branches should work. Along with the main routes, we also planned for there to be the option to deepen your bonds with the side characters.

—How did you go about creating the confession scenes?

Towada: Before the winter performance, to some extent each character has already grown closer to Kisa, so I kept in mind not to disrupt that flow. Since if I didn’t make it a confession that respected both Kisa and her suitor’s feelings, then I felt it would spoil the fun.

—Is that how you approached the ‘realising Kisa’s a girl’ scenes as well?

Towada: Yes, I suppose so. As I was writing the script, I knew that a point was going to come where Kisa would have no choice but to acknowledge the fact that she’s a girl. There’s characters that realise her true gender once their bond deepens and on the flip side, there are some who don’t realise it at all. There’s also the case of Yonaga, who knew Kisa’s situation from the beginning. I guess you could say each reveal followed one of these three patterns. Those who came to realise it, those who didn’t notice anything and those who knew from the start. I think they ended up being nice variations and I put careful consideration into writing them to make sure none of the realisations felt forced.

Also, the beginning half of the story is akin to that of a sports drama about teenagers putting on shows together, so the room for romance to be added is limited. That’s why, when I first started adding romantic elements to the character routes, it felt strange to me, so I discussed it with Ishida-san. I wasn’t able to effortlessly soak the story in romance. I think I had to rewrite Shirota’s ending at least three times…

Ishida: Shirota was who you tried writing an ending for first after all.

Towada: Shirota and Kisa aren’t the sort of people who’d be all flirty, and Shirota’s initial route was already muddy, so it was difficult to pull everything together. However, once I stopped trying to write in a way that forced romance on them and instead wrote them becoming closer as partners, things went more smoothly.

It may not be a stereotypical sort of love, but it was a human love. I thought that the natural way these two would be drawn together wouldn’t be through whispering sweet nothings to one another, but instead by coming to understand one another without having to exchange words at all. Once I’d completed Shirota’s route, to some extent, I continued writing the other routes in a similar way.

Ishida: While it’s true Shirota acts like that, the other characters all act differently. To the point some aren’t even comparable. In contrast to Shirota, Suzu’s route ended up being more of your stereotypical kind of romance. I thought that it would be nice for each character to have their own unique form of love.

Towada-san’s strong suit is writing a love story with your more classic otome guys like Suzu and Kai. I have no idea about that kind of thing, so I left Towada-san to pour her own ideas into their routes. On the flip side, characters like Fumi and Neji were dyed more with my own ideas. Neji’s way of flirting especially were mostly lines that I requested.

Towada: He’d say “Make him say something like ‘Try seduce me!’ Because I want this CG to appear.” (lol).

Neji especially plays with his words a lot, so unless Ishida-san told me what wordplay to write, I wouldn’t have been able to expand on it. Ishida-san has a very unique way of phrasing things, so I asked him for advice a lot to make sure I was making Neji speak in a Neji-like way. I then arranged the lines and created events in order to reach the intended goal. I constructed the route in a way that wouldn’t disrupt the flow of the story. As for Fumi, Ishida-san wrote his route himself.

Ishida: Yes, I wrote it all myself.

—Well isn’t this quite the exciting plot twist?

Ishida: I turned into quite the young maiden myself (lol). Even though I’m clumsy at it… I began wondering why I ended up loving writing it so much. I added some lines that have more of an adult and deeper meaning to them, so when I played the route myself I was like “Woah!”.

Towada: It’s more interesting if at least one character is that way. From the early days of production, I’d quietly wanted Ishida-san to write a character himself, so I was happy. I was unsure how to deal with Fumi too, so it was a big help that Ishida-san took him on. His route ended up being a lot sweeter than I’d been expecting though, it got my heart racing (lol).

Ishida: I was also the main writer for Kisa’s solo route. There’s no romance in it, but it’s an ending where long lasting friendships are born and it ended up being the kind of story you’d see in an uplifting shoujo manga.

Towada: It’s full of Ishida-san’s flair, I loved it.

Ishida: If love is a lie, then how do you face that lie? That’s the sort of thing I thought about. Kisa is lying about her gender and pretending to be a boy, but Neji, Suzu, Fumi, Yonaga and so on, are also hiding lies within themselves.

The fact they’re all hiding their true motives is something that they have in common with Kisa. Whilst hiding, the two grow closer. I think that a confession is a scene where all these lies intersect and burst open. Everyone is lying, and I thought that was like a play, without realising it I think that slowly became the theme of the work.

As people, we meet others whilst lacking something and some people end up becoming a necessary part for someone else. I wanted to see a drama like that. Despite it being a game with confession scenes, I wanted it to be a story that both women and men alike are able to identify with.

~ ~ ~

From thorns to rounded edges, how the style of work transformed

—If there was a small novels worth of rejected material, then how many books worth of words made it into the final game?

Towada: In terms of paperback books, probably about twenty volumes worth.

—Because as well as the main scenario, there’s also the sub scenarios and the stage plays?

Ishida: As much as time allowed, I put my all into creating the game. However there was a deadline for things like the voiceline recordings, so I was working both day and night to get things done in time.

Towada: I was only getting around three hours of sleep. I feel like at one point Ishida-san didn’t sleep for four days.

Ishida: I was in a serious pinch so I don’t remember it well, but when I was writing the script I would hole myself up in a manga cafe for around thirty hours at a time. Multiple times a month. Once I felt as though I’d written to a good point, I’d go home only to return to the manga cafe again. Why? Because I was sleeping in the manga cafe. I mays well have been living there…

Towada: Once Ishida-san had finished writing his part of the script, he’d have me check it. So at the same time, I’d have Ishida-san check what I’d written.

Ishida: For a period of time it seemed like Towada-san was always awake. Whenever I would send a check request she always responded right away regardless of the time, so I figured she must not be sleeping.

So that my productivity wouldn’t be affected, I made sure to sleep at a regular time, however I’d be awake for like 30~40 hours at a time and then sleep for 10 and then be awake again for another 40. My sleeping patterns would repeat in this cycle. During Tokyo Ghoul’s serialisation my sleeping patterns were similar, so to some extent I might’ve gotten used to it.

—That’s just like Neji-senpai, isn’t it?

Ishida: Yeah yeah, I worked in a similar way to him. However in Neji’s case, he can complete a script just one day after coming up with the idea for it, so he works way faster than us. It took us around two months to write parts of the script, so Neji really is a genius isn’t he? I was writing whilst wishing I could be like Neji.

After experiencing writing a script, I’ve come to have a lot of respect for authors. Writing is completely different from drawing. When writing I need to really concentrate on it, I can’t multi-task or think about anything else. Whereas with drawing, there are some things that can be done as long as you can move your hand, so I can talk to someone whilst drawing or watch a movie in the background or work whilst thinking about other things. I can’t do that when I’m writing though, I was starting to wonder if I really had to think so deeply about everything I wrote.

—During the production of Jack Jeanne, as you worked on the script or the lyrics etc, did you notice any changes in how you worked?

Ishida: For Tokyo Ghoul, I was always consciously adding things, meaning I would draw everything that I came up with. I thought that it was fine to only put 20% of my output into the characters and dialogue. However, when I was working on Jack Jeanne, I began to think that my method of just adding things was incorrect and that I should also consciously remove things. It’s ok to just be left with what’s necessary. My way of thinking ended up being the exact opposite to before.

—What brought about this change in thinking?

Ishida: It was early in production, when I had asked Towada-san to write Shirota’s route for me, I got concerned about the ‘sharpness’ of the story. As I mentioned earlier, I ordered Towada-san to add this and that and sent her walking on a long journey. Except, what lay completed at the end of that road was such a painful story that even I myself was shocked by it. When I looked down at the world I had created it was as if I’d received a psychological shock. I think I even smelt the faint scent of blood.

—From thorns to rounded edges. I still remember the comment you made during a press conference saying, “I was careful to not kill off any characters”.

Ishida: Stories where characters die are usually fast paced with high stakes, however, the kids at univeil are living a different kind of story. I had to consider the best way to create drama in that kind of setting. I thought about it a lot and it may have only ended up being possible because of the fact it was a game.

—Why is that?

Ishida: Because of the flow of the dialogue, backed by Kosemura-san’s music while it's being read out by all of the voice actors. It all comes together as one… That’s what I think at least. Writing and illustrating are Towada-san and I’s main domain of expertise, but I think that it was thanks to all of the other various creators involved that we were able to create something new.

—Do you think anything about yourself changed, Towada-san?

Towada: It came down to the fact I wanted to create something for Ishida-san whilst there were also things that I wanted to add myself. This dilemma caused me trouble at times, however when I started to consider what components I should add, or which ones I should remove, I began to discover what elements I liked and what my own skillset was.

The way that Ishida-san and I go about creating stories is different. I came to understand that Ishida-san’s strong point is creating impactful scenes, whilst mine is plotting and world building. Ishida-san being in charge of the pivotal scenes would make things more exciting, so I concentrated on writing everything else whilst keeping the balance in mind. Through working on Jack Jeanne, I’ve become able to say that my strong suit is being able to create a story that flows well.

It may be true that by working with other people, you come to understand more about yourself. Starting with Ishida-san, I also looked at what the other creators were doing and thought ‘so this is how they interpret the story.’ Seeing what they came up with made me notice different approaches that I hadn’t thought of.

I’d write whilst listening to Kosemura-san’s music and decide which way to take a scene. Or I’d watch Seishiro-san dance and think about how I could make the performances more exciting. We were all connected in some way. Novels are usually written alone by one person, so I came to learn the thrill of working on something in a team.

—The way you all came together as gears to create a single work sounds similar to the story of Univeil.

Towada: True. I never thought I’d experience something straight out of my youth again at this age. Being helped by other team members or being supported by them, being motivated by simple phrases like “It was great” or “I like this idea”.

For example, when I was working on the final phases of the story, I was just writing and writing with no end in sight, I couldn’t take it anymore and my pen just stopped moving. During this dire moment so close to the end, my proofreader messaged me saying, “You’re almost done.” And with that simple message alone, it was as if a burst of light appeared before my eyes. Everything had gone pitch black, but they lit everything back up again. Ishida-san also wrote some of the script, so I didn’t feel as alone.

Ishida: At that time I left all my drawings alone and decided to solely focus on the scenario.

Towada: Yeah, because I hit a point where I wasn’t able to write it on my own anymore… When Ishida-san sent me the script he’d written, it was interesting and I let out a breath of relief. I felt the joy of being able to see someone else's work. I was the same as the Univeil students who find joy in performing with others. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it if I was alone.

Ishida: You’ve got that right. I think that if anyone was missing from the team, it wouldn’t have worked out. Not to mention that in my case, everyone’s contributions were directed to me, and they were all people that I’d personally gathered.

With manga, even if it comes to the worst case scenario, at the very least it would all just fall on me. However this game isn’t just something I made on my own, I need to contribute as much as I can or the efforts of everyone around me will go to waste as well. There was a moment where I felt afraid of having such a heavy responsibility placed on me. However, if I had tried to do it all on my own, I think I would have given up.

By listening to wonderful music, reading interesting scripts and moving forward together with everyone, I was inspired. Coming together with fellow creators to make one work came with a lot of challenges, but it was fun. It was refreshing being in an environment working alongside other people, and because of it I was able to experience something new.

—Has working alongside other people changed the way you work at all?

Ishida: Right now I’m still in the state immediately after being swept away by the raging waves of a storm, so I’m not sure how I really feel yet. I’m in the phase of just watching what becomes of Jack Jeanne as the waves subside.

Even though the script and illustrations were done, like bonus stages lots and lots of new tasks kept popping up. So I was still busy with work up until the beginning of October last year. When I looked at some of the thoughts people had on the demo version of the game, it felt as though what we’d all been working so hard on had finally taken shape, and I was relieved.

Working on this project I’ve come to learn both the hardships and the fulfilment that comes with creating something with others. So, I suppose I’ve started considering working on something by myself again… I’m not trying to say that it’s in my nature to want to work alone, I think I’m just experiencing some kind of aftershock. I think the waves are returning.

Towada: I’m still working overtime and supervising Jack Jeanne (lol). Like checking content that will be posted on social media, as well as the 4koma manga. Content is still being released and there have been bug reports from some people who played the demo… Meaning that my journey is still not over yet. I think that things should calm down once the game has been released for a while.

Ishida: Yeah, probably after around five months (lol).

—After their final performance, the members of Quartz all threw a party to celebrate. Did you and the rest of the creators do the same upon the game's completion?

Towada: I celebrated with Ishida-san as siblings. And then afterwards we got swamped with work again (lol).

Ishida: Yeah, we didn’t end up meeting with the other developers or the voice cast. Big project after parties aren’t as common these days, but I do want to hear everyone’s stories of any struggles they had.

Towada: There were way too many people involved in total for me to be able to speak with them all, but I’d still love to convey my impressions to them. Like letting them know what I thought was good, or letting them know that a certain thing really helped me out.

Ishida: Ideally I would like to gather everyone and really have it feel that ‘this is the team of people that created Jack Jeanne’ and I’d like to express my gratitude to them all in person. I hope that an opportunity like that will come one day.

~ ~ ~

#jack jeanne #sui ishida #towada shin #translation #jack jeanne translation #jack jeanne interview #sui ishida translation #otome game #jack jeanne art book

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svnflower-writes · 1 month

Text

i could never give you peace

description: James reached his hand out, gently cupping Regulus’ cheek and moving some hair out of his eyes. “Hey, little star.” Regulus leaned slightly into the touch, but didn’t speak. “Let’s get you to your room, yeah?”

in which James comforts Regulus after a particularly bad fight with his parents.

relationship: bodyguard!james potter x regulus black

warnings: mentions of child abuse, secret/forbidden relationship, hurt/comfort, angst, james may be slightly out of character but idk maybe he's just sad 😭

requested: yes!! @allyeardepression requested this about 4 months ago and i am SO sorry for taking so long writer's block has been kicking my ass omg i started writing as soon as you requested it but it sat there unfinished for far too long. anyway i hope you like it!!!

note: uh ok hi. this is the first thing i've posted in MONTHS and i wrote most of it in class so it's not great but fuck it i had to post something. also... sorry. the first thing i write in five months and it's heartwrenching angst, which is very typical of me. also based off a taylor swift song which is also very typical of me

ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54453148

marauders taglist: (lmk if you want to be added or removed) @lovefolder @gu1lty-as-sin @dandelions-fly-in-summer-skies @a-beautiful-fool @optimizedchaos @qwerty-keysmash @lost-in-reveriie @tulips-best @nqds

James had to pretend that it didn’t affect him, seeing Orion and Walburga treat their children like they did. After all, he was there to work for all of them. But Merlin, he felt bad. The looks that flashed across the younger brother’s face were subtle enough that anyone else would have missed it, but James didn’t miss any small details—especially when they were to do with the little star.

This was one of these moments, James was positioned outside the closed door as he heard the screaming match going on directly behind him. He heard snippets of conversation, words such as ‘useless’ and ‘pathetic’ making their way to his ears and crushing a little bit of his heart. He supposed he was lucky not to be in the room while it was happening, but all he wanted was to rush in and protect Regulus from the harsh words and actions of his parents.

James allowed his head to rest against the wall, exhaling slowly as his eyes trailed over the dark tiles on the ceilings. The decor on the house was not to James’ personal taste, a combination of dark brown, green, cream, and black. He glanced down to the floor, the extravagant geometric tiles making him feel claustrophobic and sick to the stomach. Harsh black wallpaper covered the wall, the dull gold picture frames making a pathetic attempt to soften the unharmonious glare. The paintings in the frames were judging him, the upturned noses and narrowed eyes made that obvious enough.

James and Regulus had been quick to subtly remove the paintings in the hallway outside Reg’s room—Orion and Walburga didn’t tend to go up there, so no one noticed. Sirius had given them a knowing smirk when he’d caught them sneaking down a hall with a covered portrait of one of Regulus’ great aunts, but he had said nothing. Sirius held an undeniable feeling of respect for James, he could see how much he cared for his little brother, and for that he was eternally grateful.

A sharp, high pitched shout broke James out of his trance, and he glanced at the door with a grimace.

Walburga Black was his least favourite person in the whole world. He couldn’t clearly hear what followed the shout, but he had a few ideas of what it could be. He had been in the room when this had happened a few times before, and Sirius had always seemed indifferent to his parents actions—James knew he wasn’t, of course.

It was all just an act in the Black family, everyone simply pretending to be okay and pushing their feelings to the back of their minds. Regulus was less numb to the pain, and while Sirius just sat there sprawled out on the couch, ignoring his parents, Regulus always looked unnaturally stiff. He was trying to copy Sirius, that much was obvious. But it was clear that the words got to Regulus, the way his brows furrowed and he blinked quickly or looked away with fiddling hands.

Then again, maybe there was a reason that James noticed these things—not that he could take much notice of whatever underlying feelings there were anyway, since Regulus might as well be his employer. He knew Regulus felt the same, of course. There were signs, there had been since a mere two months after James started the job. Fleeting glances, brief touching of fingers as James passed him something to eat, waiting for him in the halls— the list could go on and on.

Regulus knew that James liked him too, as James wasn’t exactly subtle. He tended to forget himself when they were around others, such as Sirius or Pandora—which made for a lot of teasing from the two. Barty and Evan couldn’t say much, as they were in much the same situation.

So the two had kept up the secret whispers and hidden gazes, neither boy making any more to further the relationship, even behind closed doors. There was only so much they could get away with, and they were not embarrassed to admit that they were terrified. They were terrified of the nature of their world, the judgements and the prejudice that came with merely trying to exist. They would prefer to be open with each other about their relationship, but they would take whatever they could get at this point.

The door next to him flew open and Walburga stormed out, not even sparing James the slightest glance as she walked past him. Orion followed close behind, the harsh glare painting his face giving James an idea of the severity of the fight. After the brother’s exchanged short hushed whispers, Sirius walked through the door, offering James a small, polite smile. He walked past and James stopped him quietly. Sirius’ eyes narrowed slightly.

“Is there anything I can do?” At James’ words, Sirius’ expression softened.

“Talk to him. I’ve done as much as I can, but I think we both know that you’re better at this stuff.” Sirius pulled James into a quick hug, “and thank you. It means a lot that you try, seriously. It’s not exactly part of your job description.” Sirius being Sirius, he laughed, but it was obvious that he wasn’t actually amused. James had known Sirius for three years, and if there was one thing he had learnt about him, it was his use of humour as a coping mechanism.

“You go sneak out to Remus, I’ll take care of him.”

Sirius grinned slightly, reaching out to ruffle James’ hair, “aw, you know me too well.”

James groaned at his now messy hair—as if his hair wasn’t always a mess—pushing Sirius away and waving him towards the door, “go find your lover, Pads.”

Sirius was out the door without another word.

James glanced down the hallway to ensure it was empty and walked into the room the fight had just taken place in. Regulus was sitting on the ground and had his knees pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped around them, and head leaning against the cushion of the couch. He didn’t look up when James entered, nor when the older boy crouched down in front of him. His face wasn’t betraying what emotions he was feeling, but James knew.

James always knew.

James reached his hand out, gently cupping Regulus’ cheek and moving some hair out of his eyes. “Hey, little star.” Regulus leaned slightly into the touch, but didn’t speak. “Let’s get you to your room, yeah?”

Regulus nodded, mumbling something incoherent under his breath before looking up. “Good idea.” he took James’ outstretched hand to help him up off the ground. Even well after he had stood up, he kept his hand in James’, determined not to let go.

Regulus clearly had something he wanted to say, but his brain was not connected to the rest of his body, still in autopilot from the fight. His eyes were empty and his hands were clasped together in front of him as James gently rested his palm on his lower back to guide him up the stairs. Regulus subtly leaned into the touch, his heartbeat slowly calming and the goosebumps littering his skin beginning to fade.

Merely being near James brought him an unparalleled sense of peace.

James let his hand rub up and down his lower back comfortingly, and for a brief second he considered taking Regulus’ hand in his own but he decided against it. His brain was plagued with guilt, wishing he could rescue Regulus from the cruel reality that was his family. But no matter what James wanted, it wasn’t that simple. It never was.

James could never give Regulus peace.

Regulus stopped walking and James looked up from where his gaze had been fixed on the floor in confusion. He soon noticed that they were in fact directly outside the door to Regulus’ room. Regulus seemed to take notice of the fact that James was lost in his head and he squeezed his hand reassuringly.

After checking if the hallway was clear, James quickly opened the door. He wasn’t really supposed to enter any of the private rooms in the house, but Regulus had insisted many times that it was alright. No matter how safe Regulus felt around him, he couldn’t risk Orion and Walburga spotting him. He really was Regulus’ only source of comfort.

Regulus sat down on his bed with a blank expression on his face. James sat down next to him and pulled a bottle of water out of his bag. He handed it to Regulus with no words spoken, because the pair didn’t need words. This routine was very familiar to the two of them now, it was almost a second nature.

James quickly checked for any injuries—he hadn’t heard anything to make him suspect that there could’ve been a physical nature to the fight, but he had seen enough bruises on the Black siblings to make double checking an automatic part of the procedure. There was one on the side of Regulus’ cheek, and James pulled out the healing ointment from his bag and carefully put a little bit on the bruise.

James pushed the guilt at being unable to protect Regulus from his parents aside, knowing that this was not about him.

Once Regulus had finished, he slowly leaned into James’ side, letting out a sigh as he closed his eyes. The crook of James’ neck was like a puzzle piece that was made perfectly for Regulus’ head, and as the two slowly relaxed into each other's presence, James let his hands drift up to Regulus’ hair. His fingers slowly entangled themselves into the dark curls as he comfortingly stroked Regulus’ forehead.

It was clear to James that the support Regulus needed right now was not someone to tend to his wounds, but someone to hold him. So hold him he did. James’ right hand moved slowly up and down the small of Regulus’ back soothingly, showing an undeniable caution not to startle the younger boy with any quick movements.

He cared more about the little star than was possible to admit, and he prioritised his safety over everything else. The two lay in each other’s arms for what felt like (and probably was) hours. Suddenly, Regulus shifted in his arms, mumbling something under his breath.

James tilted his head like a confused puppy, gesturing for Regulus to repeat himself. Regulus cleared his throat and glanced away.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For…” Regulus trailed off, and James was about to let it go—he wasn’t going to push for him to open up more than he was willing to do.

“...for keeping me safe.”

The dark haired boy’s voice was merely a whisper, head buried into James’ shoulder as he refused to meet his eyes. He was embarrassed, James realised. He didn’t know what to say, so he stayed silent.

James thought that the two were about to fall back into their silence, when Regulus spoke. “It’s peaceful.”

Giving him an inquisitive look, James turned to face Regulus.

“Being here with you. You’re peaceful.”

James stiffened slightly before slowly nodding, “yeah, I know what you mean. You’re peaceful too, little star.”

You deserve more peace than I can give you.

Regulus smiled up at him, entwining their fingers reassuringly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more at peace than I am when I lie here with you.”

Merlin, it’s like he can hear my thoughts.

Finally, James responded. “You mean more to me than anyone else ever has, little star.”

There was a raw honesty in his tone. He may not love their situation, but he loved the boy in front of him with his whole heart.

No matter where this road was leading, James knew it was where he wanted to go. Whatever the roadworks along the way, he was in this for good.

#luc posts #luc writes #jegulus #james x regulus #james potter #regulus black #i'm so sorry this took so long #also its unneceseraly sad so uh #angst #hurt/comfort #marauders #sirius black #wolfstar mention #james potter x regulus black #marauders era #harry potter marauders #harry potter

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thoughtspresso · 9 months

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Kana’s strong ability to read people comes from her emotional honesty.

And this ability is related to her specific acting style.

In the infamous Ch. 124, Kana keenly points out that Ruby has a co-dependent relationship with Aqua. This is amazing because she points out something that she wasn’t even really aware of--that Sarina is projecting her co-dependent relationship with Gorou-sensei.

She’s the only one who keeps pointing out and admitting that it’s really weird and out of character for them otherwise to be that close.

I don’t think a lot of people recognize how accurately Kana points things out about people that we keep passing off as jokes. It seems most people poise Akane and Aqua as being the superior judges of character in the series. But there’s something about Kana’s readings of people that set her apart, and interestingly, it affects her acting.

First our main man Aqua is portrayed as this guy who reads others really well at the beginning of the show, manipulating others into doing what he needs them to do.

According to Kana, his acting style is mainly focused on copying. And it’s true! He thinks of a character that is needed in the situation or by what the director needs, and based on that, he acts it out.

He even copied his mother’s killer on Sweet Today:

To the point when, in Tokyo Blade, he had to act out Touki being relieved that Saya is alive, he originally acted it out exactly how the manga portrayed it:

Then we have Akane, who can surmise the unspoken details of a person, and extrapolate information about them and make guesses about the decisions they will make.

Her acting style is almost like Method acting, where she enters the person’s mind and lives in it for a bit to gain information about them.

Her method is about intellectualizing the experiences of that person, rather than understanding herself. While this makes her a phenomenal detective with unmatched deduction skills, when there’s not enough information or the setting doesn’t suit her interpretation of the character, she could get stuck from time-to-time.

These two acting styles are largely about trying to make informed guesses and judgement about people and copying those decisions.

Kana’s acting style is Adaptive. It goes farther than simply matching the energy of other people on the scene with her. It also means she reads herself in relation to others and adapts herself to the situation.

In other words, Kana’s acting style is centered on a strong sense of empathy, and an honest understanding of her inner self and how she relates to others.

Her acting is about how she would feel from situation to situation. If she already knows in herself that situation A would yield feeling Y, then she knows the opposite situation B would yield feeling Z. And so on.

Because of how well she’s come to understand herself, she easily understands parts of others that they wouldn’t even admit to themselves.

i.e. Aqua’s actually pretty delusional and thinks himself to be more important than he is, and he has chuunibyou/eigth-grader syndrome:

It’s a trope about teenagers escaping from their trauma by pretending they have some superior ability. And while Aqua isn’t pretending he’s secretly a ninja as in the classic sense of this trope, he does tend to think and act like he’s in a much bigger plot. In a way, Aqua does have the ability to remember facts from his past life, making him a middle-aged obstetrician in the body of a teenage actor, kind of like a vampire on his second life if you think about it--but apart from that, his ideas of being some Light Yagami-esque character who “uses” other people or has some superior detective skills has been kind of a failure. He didn’t crack his mom’s passcode by figuring it out, as much as he just bruteforce attempted every single one, and he didn’t even figure out his father’s identity after all that DNA testing he spent on. Akane had to do it for him. And he didn’t lead Akane to find Amamiya Gorou’s corpse--The Crow did that for Ruby.

She uses her own personal experiences to understand how deeply someone else would also feel in that situation, even if they try to hide their emotions.

All this is simply to say that, there have been a lot of personality observations that Kana has spoken that has been passed off as a joke, when in fact she’s been accurately describing the reality of the situation out loud.

I think apart from the plot, the emotional beats of the story would likely involve Kana pointing it out (whether to the character or to the reader) that they have a problem they need to resolve--whether it’s Ruby’s co-dependence on Aqua, or Aqua’s inability to express real emotions as he suppresses his trauma, that will lead to them fulfilling the character development necessary to fully resolve their story arc.

I also think that it’s Kana’s emotional integrity and honesty--her ability to understand her true self and have the courage to vulnerably lay that out completely on-screen--that will set her acting apart from her contemporaries and will make her shine like none other.

I have no catchy ending line for you like my previous theories/analyses, except for this:

Arima Kana best girl.

#Arima Kana #Oshi No Ko #Oshi No Ko Spoilers #Oshi No Ko Character Analysis #Hoshino Aquamarine #Hoshino Aqua

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impactedfates · 11 months

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Mini Fan - Platonic Shenhe x Child! Reader

Summary: Even after the events of the rebuilding of the Jade Chamber, Shenhe still gets the odd stares of others. She’s used to it though and she expects it, what she doesn’t expect is someone who’s dressed up (albeit poorly) as her comes up to her.

Warnings/Extra: Small spoilers for the quest - The Crane Returns on the Wind - Act 1! // Characters are probably ooc // Reader has no spesfied gender, but uses they/them and is dressed similar to Shenhe // Not proof read either hehe...other then that, it should be okay to read ^^

W.C - 693 (Yeah it’s short-)

A/N- This is based off an idea me and my friend ranted on for a bit, I would’ve let that friend read this before posting but because of timezones I got impatient after I finished writing this...This is definitely not my best work (And honestly, I hate it) but I still enjoy the idea and I hope you enjoy this anyways. :)

=======================================

Murmurings of whispers throughout Liyue Harbour reached Shenhes ears. Her fingers tapped on the table as her free hand lifted up her teacup to her lips once more to take a sip. Even after defeating Beisht alongside the traveller. It seems only they got the praise. And although she got a few praises and compliments from people, that didn’t put a stop to the usual stares and whispers she’d get when she passed by. She’s used to it though, she knows it’ll take some time before they’ll treat her as a regular mortal like themselves.

“Shenhe? Are you alright?”

Shenhes eyes drifted to the person in front of her, the one who invited her out in the first place, Yun Jin.

“Yes, I’m fine. There’s no need to worry”

The exorcist waved off her friends' concerns. The opera singer was more smarter than that though. Even she noticed the mumbles and talks that would start when Shenhe was in the room. She wanted to point out that Shenhe was obviously paying attention to the words of others but her manager came up and was quick to take her away. Sparing an apologetic glance to her friend, Shenhe simply shook her head.

“It’s alright Yun Jin, go ahead”

“Let’s try to do this another time”

Shenhe watched as Yun Jin's figure became smaller and smaller from a distance. With a sigh she began drinking the rest of her tea. Her eyes closed as she began loosing herself in thought. . .

A sound brought her back to reality. A sound of a chair scraping back and someone climbing on it. She thought perhaps Yun Jin came back after convincing her manager to let her stay longer, however when she set opened her eyes and set it on the person now seated in front of her, she was slightly taken aback.

There sat a child. Wearing a wig, but seemingly dyed white and black…horribly too. Their clothes seemed out of place, not matching up and the kid seemed to have contacts, on add choice of colours…hang on.

The more Shenhe observed the child, the more she realised…it looked like her? Well, an off-brand version it seemed. She tilted her head at the kid, her blank face staring at them.

The kid looked back, having a smile on their face, after a bit they seemed to copy her demeanour. They straightened their back, tilted their head and tried their best to copy her facial expression.

Her eyes widened a bit in surprise at this. She wasn’t sure what to say. Finally finding the words she asked in a soft tone.

“Hello…I am Shenhe…can I help you?”

The kid looked back and smiled.

“I’m [Name]! And I know who you are, you’re one of the heroes who saved the day when that weird water snake attacked Liyue. You were sooo cool…can you teach me how to fight please please please”

Once again Shenhe stared a bit in confusion. But shook her head much to the disappointment of [Name]

“I am still in training myself, plus…you seem too young to train…I don’t wish to over exert you from the tests I’d give you…if I may ask…why is your attire..similar to mine?”

“Easy! I wanna be just like you when I grow up. I wanna fight water snakes and save people just like you have Ms Shenhe”

“You…really want to be like me?”

Shenhe relaxed a bit. For a kid to say this about her, without getting to know her, was a nice change of pace from what she usually had to do which was to personally get to know people so they don’t label her as a witch or an adepti.

She didn’t need to personally befriend the kid, nor do something for the kid. They just wanted to be like them because…they looked up to her.

Slowly she smiled softly at the kid, leaning over a bit and ruffling their wig. Before pouring the kid a cup for their own, and sliding it over to them.

“Tell you what…when you’re older, come find me…and I’ll be happy to train you…by then you’ll be ready and so will I”

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dangermousie · 9 months

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This is such a !!!! scene on so many levels. Here is 17, changing, and even with only inner robe on, he looks pristine and perfect, just the way his reputation paints - a wonderful young master heir blah blah.

And then the camera pans down and you get horror. And the thing is, I love it for so many reasons - this is a vanishingly rare costume cdrama narrative where scars don’t fade - usually people spit blood and look pristine and it’s an aesthetics I dig, but this isn’t it, this is very much torture and suffering is not pretty in the least. There is nothing appealing about 17′s bare torso. It’s honestly pretty damn hard to look at. And I am genuinely impressed at the drama for going there. But also, it’s so in keeping with the thrust of the narrative for ALL the characters - traumas do not magically heal and go away; you learn to live with them and heal the best you can, but the marks remain for good and you are forever changed. It’s pretty clever of the drama because we saw all this mess in ep 2 but he’s been dressed to the neck ever since and I honestly just assumed it all got healed; no it normally wouldn’t but I am used to drama logic. And then it just smashes you in the face. Nope, still there!

Crazy fiancee bursts in with another attempt to woo or w/e and then sees this...

It takes a pretty impressive kind of discipline to get this reaction and then turn to fully face the other person, exposing all the horror while knowing the revulsion you are going to get as a reaction and, in fact, counting on it to help break the engagement. If Jing wasn’t such a nice person, he’d be honestly terrifying.

She runs off, of course, and it strikes me again no wonder the hugeness of his reaction to XY blushing around him shirtless (when he looked even worse) and how it restored his feeling as a man when this is the reaction he gets from his fiancee and probably 99% of any woman around. Looking like this and still being seen as desirable - yeah, that’s got to be huge.

As I said. Good lord, he could be quite terrifying if he chose. But also, it’s all so symbolic of how he looks like the perfect Tushan heir and that idealized image but he really is not - because he’s hurt by his past but also because nobody can be this bloodless perfection. XY likes him with all his trauma, physical and otherwise, just as he likes her the same - they see each other’s real self. But here, even if fiancee wasn’t evil, it is like the infatuation of that musician outside that tea house - based on idealized image, not reality.

Pssst, fiancee’s notion of a better man? Jing’s torturer brother. Her main complaint is “dude, the torture you inflicted on your brother makes him look gross!!!!”

I love how their delusions are what’s blinding them, just as both believe he’s back for revenge because that’s the only reason they’d be back.

Sweetheart, you are a murderous psycho but I am forced to point out that a man who could torture his own half-brother who he grew up with and who did him no harm, do it for years and so severely the man is permanently terribly scarred and with a busted leg, for literally nothing the man had ever done to him but because he was pissed at his mom and had an inferiority complex, is not a good choice of partner? One day he’s gonna get pissed at you!

I hope you both get to experience cousin’s maggot box at length but also, if there ever was a fitting match in this drama!

#cdrama #lost you forever #deng wei

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w1ldthoughts · 4 months

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System Reboot

A/n: Anon requested second piece of sad girl winter!!!

Disclaimer: this is a work of FICTION, the characters are fictionalized versions of real life situations and real people. It’s all based on my imagination.

Love was supposed to be patient. Love should have been kind. But lately love was…hard. It made you question your sanity and your self worth. Love wasn’t supposed to exhaust you or desert you. And that’s exactly what love was doing. It’s exactly what Justin was doing.

When you met him he was a rookie and your college friend Gabe’s super tidy and quiet roommate who loved all things Oregon and couldn’t resist a good movie quote. You stayed in touch with him even after Gabe was released by the Chargers and eventually dated him for a few years before getting married. The first few years of marriage were everything they say it is in the movies. You got to spend every single day with your best friend and the love of your life all wrapped into one. There were football games to attend, bruises and injuries along the way that were no match for the love you two shared and eventually you had a child, a perfect little girl named Remi. Your family was your entire world. And maybe somewhere along the way all of your jobs as a wife and a mom clouded your vision as to who you were as an individual.

It’s not like anyone noticed, let alone your husband. He had things to focus on too; games needed to be won, he had his team, the media and Remi of course. Justin was busy but never busy enough to skimp out on his duties as a father. He cherished every moment with her and it was embarrassing to admit that you envied how much effort he put into his relationship with Remi while his relationship with you had become relatively nonexistent. You weren’t jealous of your daughter by any means, you were just struggling to understand how the same person who would go out of his way to bring you your favorite coffee before leaving for practice had barely kissed you goodnight the last few weeks. What changed?

You were pulled out of your thoughts by the garage door opening and Remi running to the back door to wait for her dad.

“Is that my girl?” He immediately picks her up as soon as he comes in and it actually gives you goosebumps watching them interact. Your husband listens intently as the three year old describes her day in vivid detail. “Hi.” Justin says, finally looking at you when Remi leaves him to head back to her playroom.

“Hi. How was practice?”

He shrugs, moving into the kitchen to sit across from you. “It was fine, nothing new. I was actually going to talk to you about—”

“Daddy? It’s your turn tonight for bath time. Come on, let’s go.” Remi holds onto his leg, tugging on his shorts until he stands up.

“It is my turn isn’t it? Okay let’s go get your stuff.” He tells her, grabbing her tiny hand. Justin looks back over at you and whispers, “we’ll talk later.”

You nod and start putting away the dishes and making sure Remi cleaned up all of her toys like you asked. The giggles and talking you hear going on upstairs make you re-evaluate everything you’ve thought about today. Some people have it way worse than you, why in the world would you be complaining when you live in this beautiful house, with this beautifully sweet husband and an angel for a daughter? Instead of continuing to spiral, you headed upstairs to listen to your husband read your daughter a bedtime story and even joined in as the two of them sang the bedtime song, “Hey Jude.” You both kissed Remi goodnight and headed back downstairs.

“What did you want to talk about?” You asked immediately.

“I can’t be the only one that feels like there’s a disconnect between us, right? I mean don’t you think something just feels…off?”

You sigh, feeling a lump growing in your throat. “I don’t know what to do, but I know I want to fix it.”

“Me too.” He reassures you. “Come here.” You slowly make your way into his arms, holding in the tears that are really threatening to appear. And he can tell. “What if we go out to dinner tomorrow night? Just you and me.”

There’s no way you can muster up words so you just nod, letting out a sigh of relief at this potential marriage saving date.

He was late. Not late enough for you to cancel the night altogether but it was annoying. You had to resist the urge to roll your eyes when he walked in apologizing profusely. Now was not the time to make a scene. Dinner was…awkward to say the least. It was like trying to make small talk with an acquaintance from high school that you ran into at the grocery store. Your husband was becoming a stranger and maybe instead of fighting to hold on to something that was dying, you should just pull the plug. You thanked him for dinner and he walked in front of you on the way out of the restaurant. A hand that used to rest in yours or on the small of your back just remained at his side, crushing your spirit even more. The drive home was quiet and you headed straight to your room while your husband relieved the babysitter.

You looked in the mirror at yourself and couldn’t even recognize your own reflection. Staring back at you was a shell of your former self, someone who you vowed never to become and you cried silently the entire time you got ready for bed. All of your energy was focused on not making noise and you didn’t hear Justin come into the bathroom.

“Babe? What’s wrong? What happened?” He frantically asks, kneeling down in front of you as you sat on the edge of the tub.

“Justin, leave me alone please.” It came out a little harsher than you’d intended but maybe deep down you meant it exactly how it came out.

Either way, he was shocked. “I’m not leaving you like this y/n, tell me what’s going on.”

“Fine. If you won’t leave, then I will.” You ran a hand across your face and stood up to head back downstairs, the man trailing cross behind you. It wasn’t fair how long his stride was compared to yours. “Please stop following me. I just really need a minute to myself.”

“Why? You’re clearly upset and I want you to talk to me. I’m your partner, maybe we can figure it out together.” He’s almost begging, holding his hand out to you. Maybe a week ago you would’ve gladly taken his hand and fallen apart in his arms but there just wasn’t anything left for you to give. “Is it because I was late? Because I apologized and I thought we were good but—”

“No! It’s not because you were late.” You’ve never raised your voice at him but you clearly aren’t yourself anymore. “It’s…everything. It’s the fact that I can’t remember the last time we laughed about something that wasn’t related to football or kid stuff. Or that I don’t even know how long it’s been since we had sex. When was the last time you touched me or held me or I don’t know acted like I am the person you want to be with when you’re old and the most exciting thing in the world is sitting in a recliner reminiscing on the good days. These are supposed to be the good days and they’re not Justin. I am miserable and you can’t tell me you’re the happiest you’ve ever been either.”

He sits on the couch with a sigh, running a hand over his face. “I’m not happy. I mean we used to spend all day together, talking and laughing about random stuff and we just spent the last three hours together and couldn’t come up with anything to say.”

“So what do we do?” You ask hesitantly, already guessing where this is going.

“I don’t have any long term solutions but I do know we can’t keep going like this. I’ll sleep in one of the guest rooms tonight. We’ll have to figure out something more functional when the season ends.”

Watching him walk away from you felt real and final…but maybe this was for the best.

The week after the season ends Justin grabs some of his stuff and moves into the guesthouse. Two weeks after that you found yourself in a small coffee shop, googling “divorce lawyers in Los Angeles,” hitting a new emotional low. Nights were the worst. Times that you used to look forward to were just a reminder of everything you were losing. Remi wanted to watch her favorite movie, Elementals but even the sight of romance, even in cartoon form, had you holding back tears. You and your husband had been spending as much time with her as possible, trying to figure out the best way to explain to your child that your marriage was over.

“I mean what does that even do to a child that young? How do we even start? She’s already asking why we don’t do the bedtime song together anymore—”

This entire time since the separation has been hard on him too, even if he wasn’t physically that far away...yet. He’s got this headache that won’t go away and the thought of telling his baby girl something that will cause her pain makes his stomach hurt. So he tries to hide the pain with humor. “We shouldn’t have created a little genius. She’s probably already figured out something is up.”

You could see the pain in his face and hear it in his voice, but it wasn’t your job to nurse his wounds anymore…no matter how much you wanted to. It was decided that Justin would take her to the zoo next week and butter her up, and when they got home you would try your best to explain everything to her and move forward from there. That way you had time to read up on how to deliver difficult news to a toddler. Easy enough.

The week came a lot faster than you could prepare yourself for. On the morning of zoo day, the pain that radiates through your body is double the emotional pain you’ve been experiencing. All of your muscles ache, your sinuses are on fire and you really don’t know how you managed to get your daughter ready while Justin got her snacks, water and stroller in the car.

He took one look at you and knew something was wrong. “You alright?” There was an intense amount of concern in his tone and you nodded slowly, waving them goodbye and counting down the seconds until you could get back into bed and sleep off whatever this was.

In the car, Justin was interrogating his favorite spy. “Mini, are you excited for zoo day?”

“Yeah! I love the zoo. And animals. And you. But mama’s sick so she can’t come.” She says sadly.

“Mama’s sick? How do you know that?”

“Um,” she pauses, trying to put her words together. “She was coughing and blowing her nose, it sounded like an elephant.” He had to hold in a laugh. “And I hear her crying sometimes, maybe she has a really bad owie and you should kiss it better.”

The last part hurt, the thought of you all on your own dealing with all of these emotions and he wasn’t there to be your shoulder to lean on? It made him feel awful. “Maybe I should.” He turns around to face her and make a deal. “Would you be sad if we did zoo day another day? Mama really needs us to take care of her and I know Dr. Herbert is exactly what she needs to feel better.”

Remi had been obsessed with playing doctor lately and he knew she’d be all for it. She nodded excitedly as he drove to the store to pick up everything they would need. They came back into the house 30 minutes later with all of the essentials in hand and extra popsicles for his mini.

You woke up to a hand on your forehead…and then a tiny one. It would’ve been hilarious if you weren’t hot and cold at the same time.

“Her forehead is warm. She needs meic—the yucky stuff.” Remi whispers, holding the miniature stethoscope in her hands. Her dad nods at her and pulls out the medicine from the bag and hands her a bottle of Gatorade to set on the table. The doctor duo heads back downstairs to let you nap.

Two hours later, you woke up feeling refreshed and a lot less…gross. You gingerly walked down the stairs to find the cutest sous chef in the world hard at work.

“Hi mama, we’re making soup for you.” Remi sings, stirring the pot with Justin standing right behind her.

“Thank you baby, it smells amazing.” You give Justin a wink, whispering another “thank you.”

The three of you sit on the couch while you eat, taking in Remi’s movie for the eighth time this week. When you wake up from your third nap of the day, you are surrounded by your favorite people who are fast asleep next to you. At some point Justin must have gone upstairs to grab your favorite blanket because you know you weren’t covered in it when the movie started. These were the moments that you’d overlooked. Life was different now, you and Justin weren’t the 20-somethings that met and fell in love and it was a mistake trying to get back to that. This was your reality now and it could still be full of joy if you allowed it. That night, you asked Justin to stay for the bedtime song and asked to speak to him in the kitchen.

“I know we were supposed to tell Remi about everything today but—”

“Y/n, I don’t want a divorce.” He finishes for you. “This—you, me and mini, this is what I want. And honestly I don’t think we’ve tried hard enough to fight for each other so this is me, fighting for us.”

You reach out for his hand this time, which he happily grabs hold on to. “I don’t want to do this life with anyone else,” you whisper with your eyes watering. “You’re it for me and um…I want to fight for us too. Whatever it takes.”

“Maybe we could try counseling?” He suggests and you nod, vowing to help him look for someone you both liked in the morning. Your marriage wasn’t fixed in a day, but this was a huge step in the right direction.

“Thank you for taking care of me.” You give his hand a squeeze and he smiles, squeezing it back.

“In sickness and in health remember?”

Even in moments of darkness, love is patient, love is kind. And if it’s meant for you? Love will always find its way home.

#Justin Herbert #Justin Herbert imagine #justin herbert x reader #justin herbert angst #justin herbert fanfic

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da-birb-writes-sometimes · 10 months

Text

The Song We Are Drawn Towards; Floyd Leech

A song rests in the heart, calling out to the one who completes the harmony. Their match pulls at them, as the moon does the tide.

Main Character: Floyd Leech

Supporting Roles: Mrs. Leech, Jade Leech, Azul Ashengrotto, Deuce Spade (if you squint)

Content: Soulmate AU (I use the term soul match instead), gender-neutral reader, hurt/comfort/crack, reader is not amused, can be read as familial, platonic, or romantic and that was done on purpose, some Azul slander

Content Warning: Swearing, blood (Floyd)... just Floyd things (I love him, but he comes with his own warning). I don't want to spoil the ending but do read it with caution if it's triggering for you.

Word Count: 5 K

Author's Note: Please do not repost my works to other websites or into AI software. I will be writing more parts for this AU, but for other characters; you can guess who based on the hints I left in Azul & Jade's stories. I switch between third and second-person point of view. I struggled writing for four days and then I wrote 4.7K in one sitting, help me; that makes like 15.5K words in like a week. Don't worry, I do touch grass.

Azul's Story & Prologue | Jade's Story

Floyd was a bundle of energy, swimming all over the place, and excitedly talking to anyone and everyone who crossed paths with him. “Tell me, tell me, tell me!” He would pull at the fins and limbs. “Tell me about your soul match!!!”

Ever since he was first told the story of soul matches, he has been obsessed, wanting to hear everyone’s story that he happened to swim across. Most merfolk would just quickly swim in the opposite direction of the hyperactive young eel-mer. Others would humour him and tell him what it felt like. But his favourite by far was that of his parents.

“Mommmmmm,” he whined, clutching onto her tail fin so that she couldn’t leave. “Can you tell me the story of what it felt like feeling your soul match for the first time? And what it was like meeting dad?~” He looked at her with his biggest pleading eyes, even though he has heard the story at least a hundred times from both his mom and dad. “Pretty pleaseeeeeee?!~”

Mrs Leech giggled, and sat down on Floyd’s bed, kissing him on the cheek. “Aren’t you tired of hearing it, my little eel?”

Floyd clutched onto her arm, “Nuh-uh!”

She shook her head, amused by his insistence. “Well, for me, the song felt like the heat from the hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean; down there it may seem dark and lifeless, but there was a scorching heat that feeds all life.” She hummed, smoothing over a little nick that she noticed on Floyd’s arm. “And the pull… hmm, it was gentle, like the tugging of a cool current.”

Floyd sighed with contentment, finally settling down for the night. “Mom, what do you think my soul match will be like?”

Mrs. Leech tucked his hair behind his ear, “There’s no way to tell before it happens, my little elver. Only the Sea Witch knows, and she’s very secretive about those sorts of things.” She got a mischievous look on her face and kissed his nose. “But whoever is your soul match, be they mer, fae, beastman, or human, they will be lucky to have you.”

“Mommmm,” he tried to push her off, but he didn’t mean it, his giggling giving it away. He got serious for a moment and hugged his mom. “No matter who they are, I won’t leave the ocean for them. I love you, mom.”

Mrs. Leech squished her son against her, placing her head on top of his. “I love you more, baby… And whatever decision you make, to stay in the ocean or go live on land, I will always love and support you.” Holding onto him tight, she placed a kiss on his forehead. “And that goes for you too, Jade, I know you’ve been eavesdropping.”

The mass of blankets on the bed on the other side of the room stirred, revealing Jade who was acting like he totally wasn’t listening in on their conversation. “I know, mother. I love you too,” he whispered, letting out a yawn, tired from the day.

“Oh, how did I get so lucky to have not one but two sweet sons?” Mrs Leech, still holding onto Floyd, swam over to Jade’s bed and had him in a tight squeezing hug. “I love my little elvers!”

Both of the boys accepted the squeezes, Jade patting his mom on the shoulder and Floyd giving back his own tight squeeze. Like mother like son, as some would say. “We love you too, mom,” they said in unison. And they all sat there, in a big eel squeeze.

…

When he woke up on his sixth birthday he was confused. Why wasn’t there a song in his head? Where is his soul match?

The good mood that he was bound to be in that day morphed into confusion, hurt, and anger. But not like the anger he was used to, it wasn’t a hot, short, spark, instead, it felt festering, an ember wanting nothing more than to combust. So instead of staying around his brother, who only pissed him off even more because, of course, Jade got his soul match. He swam out to the edge of the reef so that he could be alone.

“ARGH,” he lashed out at a rock, scratching at it with his claws. “WHY?! WHY ME?!” He screamed out into the drop-off, no answer but the dark looking back at him. He felt hot, briny tears start to fall down his face. He had dreamt of this day since he could remember. He wanted someone to not be scared of him. For someone to look at him with joy. For someone to accept him. “WHERE ARE THEY?!”

By the time he got out the initial rage at his situation, he floated down into the sand and looked up to the filtered sunlight coming up from above. He was still angry, but it was something small, and it felt like there was something stuck in his throat and he couldn’t get it out. Sighing, he closed his eyes… I really should go home, mom and dad are probably worried…

Wait, what was tickling him? Ugh, that’s annoying. “Scram off, would ya,” he muttered, opening an eye.

Beside him was a cleaner shrimp, going over the new scrapes he had given himself during his moment of anger.

“Eh? A little shrimp like you is brave,” he chuckled, poking one of its feelers.

The shrimp ignored the poke, still cleaning the wounds before moving up and going through his hair. Floyd was half tempted to swat it away for bothering him, but he didn’t. For some reason, he found the shrimp’s actions comforting. Like the ocean sent this little cleaning crustacean to help him heal. He was still mad, hurt, and confused, but if some shrimp didn’t mind him, even at his most volatile moment, then maybe not everything is as bad as it seems.

Eventually, though, he had to leave his new little friend and go home, and face his family. He wore a happy mask when he entered the home, trying to hide the festering part of his heart.

“FLOYD!” His mom crashed into him, squeezing him tight. “Where were you?! I was worried sick! Are those scrapes? What happened to you?!”

He squeezed her back, not as strong as he would normally, debating whether or not to tell her the truth. But he saw his dad and Jade whispering to each other, no doubt talking about his soul match. His eye twitched, “I was just curious about where they were,” he whispered. He wasn’t lying, but it wasn’t the entire truth. The truth could always come later.

…

Floyd was walking around campus, bored out of his mind. Azul and Jade were at the entrance ceremony for the new minnows. As was his main source of entertainment. It wasn’t his fault that Riddle was so amusing when he gets all red from anger, just like a goldfish. So he was just going around, a bad mood apparent, so people quickly walked in the opposite direction when they saw him.

“Ugh! There’s nothin’ interestin’ hereeeee,” he muttered to himself. Even getting lectured by Beakfish is better than utter boredom. He rolled his eyes, thinking about Azul giving his stuffy formal speech to the new minnows in their dorm. “Tch, boring.”

Hmm, the sun did sure feel nice though. Maybe he would take a nap like Sea Lion did. So he found somewhere where he wouldn’t be disturbed, stretched out, and closed his eyes, dreaming about the Coral Sea.

In his dream, he was back near the drop-off, by the rock he nearly destroyed during his outburst when he first realized he didn’t have a soul match. Over the years, he wasn’t nearly as bitter as he once was, but it still stung. But he was alone, his little shrimp friend was nowhere to be seen. “Little shrimp,” he called out, but his crustacean friend didn’t appear. Maybe they too got tired of Floyd and left. Or maybe they were… maybe a predator finally caught up with his little friend, as he always thought they were too brave for their own good. “Little shrimp?” He called again, but still nothing. But then a net came down from above, catching Floyd in its wake. He struggled, but something else was there. A faint song.

Floyd gasped awake in a cold sweat, heart pounding and racing. “It was just a dream, snap out of it,” he hissed to himself, shaking his head. Ugh, why did it feel like he was still caught in that net though? And that song was still stuck in his head. Stupid dreams.

Oh, the sun is setting, Azul and Jade have got to be done with sorting out the freshmen by now. Heh, wonder if there are any interestin’ minnows around? Eh, Azul is bound to bring some entertainment by getting some chump in a contract. That at least would bring in some fun.

Groaning, he stretched out and got up, making his way back to Octavinelle, still not quite in a good mood but not in a bad one. He was just floating in between.

Azul and Jade were conversing among themselves when he entered the room, Azul looking more agitated than he would normally. Huh, that’s intriguing.

“Somethin’ has all your tentacles in a bunch, Azul.~” He leaned against the house warden’s chair, getting into his personal bubble. Ugh, he still felt weird, and that song was still there.

Azul shot him an annoyed look but ignored him trespassing in on his space. “It has nothing to concern you with, Floyd,” he huffed, massaging his temple.

If even mentioning that it has nothing to do with him, it just puts Floyd on a mission to discover exactly what it was.

Jade chuckled, mirth in his eyes. “He will just keep on pestering you if you don’t tell him, Azul” his smile was sharp and he looked over to his brother, his smile widening. Floyd also smiled, getting further into Azul’s bubble.

“Fine,” Azul snipped, “if you must know the ceremony didn’t go exactly as planned.” This didn’t satisfy Floyd, as he just got further into the bubble, prodding. Azul sighed, knowing it would just be better to get it over with so he didn’t have to put up with the eel’s antics. “I had to clean up someone’s mess, chasing their wayward familiar throughout campus. They also sent the mirror into a tizzy. Satisfied?”

Well, that wasn’t all that interesting. “Awwww, and I thought you’d finally met your cuttlefish, Azullll,” he whined but got out of his personal bubble.

Azul’s eye twitched at the nickname Floyd had dubbed his soul match but didn’t say anything, knowing that if he did, it would just end up with him lying in bed with a splitting migraine. “No,” he dusted off his chest, “we have no control over when we meet our soul matches, and you know that.”

Oh, Floyd knew that very well, he didn’t need Azul subtly shoving it in his face either. Even if the other man wasn’t privy that Floyd didn’t have a soul match.

…

It’s been about three weeks since Floyd had that dream, still feeling like he was stuck in a net, and that infernal hum of a song hasn’t left his mind. By now, everyone on campus was aware that it was better to avoid him than risk getting on his bad side. Ugh, is this what it feels like to have a soul match?

He squinted his eyes, and stopped dead in his tracks, pausing in the middle of the hall. Is this what it feels like to have a soul match? His eyes went wide, still frozen in the hallway. IS THIS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO HAVE A SOUL MATCH?! After all this time, was there finally someone?

He started running, letting the pulling sensation guide him. Feeling the ebb and flow of it, the only kind shared with soul matches. The dream! Maybe the Sea Witch sent it to him? Finally gifted him the blessing that she has given others? He tested the waters by messing with the volume of the song in their head and he felt it falter like they were surprised by it. Where are you? But as soon as he started giving chase he stopped. People gave him weird looks, but he paid no mind to them.

His hands turned into fists, and he shook slightly, his joy and excitement shifted into bitterness and anger. WHERE ARE YOU?! He shouted at them through the song, letting out over a decade of bottled-up emotions into the open. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! But all he got in return was the gentle hum that had started it all.

“Floyd, are you alright? You seem out of sorts,” Jade hummed, eyes boring into his soul, searching for what could have possibly caused the sudden running. Calculating.

Floyd frowned back at his brother, but he knew that he couldn’t just outright tell him, as he hadn’t told anyone about his soul match situation. So instead he bit down on the inside of his cheek, hard enough to draw a bit of blood to distract himself. “Eh, thought I just saw Goldfishie, but it was just someone else.”

Where are you? Where the fuck are you?! Where were you for all these years?!

…

You were enjoying some lunch with your friends — if you can call Ace and Grim your friends. At least Deuce was considerate enough to make up for it… most of the time. The four of you were chatting, mainly Grim and Ace complaining about homework and the professors, but your mind was elsewhere. In the three short weeks that you’ve found yourself in Twisted Wonderland, they have somehow squeezed their way into your heart, even though they make you question your life decisions on more than a daily basis. On some days it was an hourly basis.

But something else has also been on your mind than just being in some sort of dimension themed on a beloved yet problematic movie studio. There’s been a song playing in your head since you arrived. It hasn’t been very loud, but it seemed to change in its emotion frequently. You could tell when it was excited, bored, frustrated, and you had no idea why. It was fine the first day, as you just chalked it up to inter-dimension technicalities, but it has persisted.

So, there you were, sitting with your friends, enjoying your lunch. Or you were until you were rudely interrupted by the song in your head screaming at you. “Shit,” you hissed, dropping your fork, and covering your ears even though it did nothing to help with the sudden onslaught.

Ace, Deuce and Grim all gave you looks but turned back to the conversation they were having. Not thinking anything of it. But someone else noticed, pushing up his glasses before leaving. You paid no attention though, as your attention was elsewhere.

Inside your mind was a voice, it had started quiet, and full of wonder. Where are you? But then it turned venomous, bitter, sharp, and screaming. WHERE ARE YOU?! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! You didn’t really know what to make of it, and it’s not like Crowley in all of his ‘kindness’ and ‘generosity’ gave you an encyclopedia to explain any of this stuff.

Deuce shook your shoulder gently, pulling you from out of your thoughts. “Hey, are you okay? You’ve been staring at your food for a while…”

You shook your head, ignoring the screaming in your head, and gave him a reassuring smile. “Ah, I’m okay, just was thinking is all. Nothing to worry about,” you shoot him a smile as reassurance. Deuce still didn’t look convinced but he trusted you and dropped the subject.

Where are you? Where the fuck are you?! Where were you for all these years?! The voice seemed to scream through the melody. WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU?!

…

Floyd’s mood has only been worse since finding out that he had a soul match. Even with the amount of obsessive screaming he sent their way, all they sent back was that gentle hum. Ugh, it was really annoying. He was half tempted to just hunt them down so at least he knew who he was mentally screaming at. But he would always clench his fists and stop himself. As much as he would like nothing more than to see their face as they saw him running at them, he wanted a good reason to do so.

Yes, even though he was harassing them through the song, he wanted a reason why he should seek them out. He was just… hurt. He didn’t know how long he would feel like that, but it was something that was difficult to shove aside, even if they were the person that was supposed to make him happy. He couldn’t just forget about it.

Sighing, he clutched his shrimp plush to his chest, inspired by his shrimp friend from his childhood. “Eh, little shrimp, what should I do? Should I seek them out, or should they find me?”

The shrimp plush just looked back with its unblinking eyes. If it were his actual cleaner shrimp, they would have shuffled around in his hair, looking for scraps and reassuring him in their silent manner. Even though the plush was silent, it was still reassuring in its own way.

He heard Jade shuffling around in his sheets, but Floyd knew that Jade slept like a rock. He shook his head and walked to the Octavinelle lounge area, plopping down onto a sofa by the aquarium, criss-cross apple sauce style, still holding on to his shrimp plush. His reflection looked back out at him, eyes searching, but there were no answers. Just his own conflicted thoughts, the gentle humming of his soul match, and the snores coming from some dorms.

The gentle pitter-patter of footsteps took him away from just staring into the aquarium. “Azul?”

The footsteps and intruder on Floyd’s pondering and staring at the aquarium time was none other than Azul, wearing his house robe, matching slippers, and a hair bonnet. Azul squinted his eyes, as he wasn’t wearing his glasses. “Floyd,” he sounded just as equally confused to find someone else awake at this un-Sevenly-like hour. “What are you doing up?”

“Eh, couldn’t sleep,” he wasn’t in the mood to tease Azul for his sleep get up. “You?”

Azul sighed, “You and I are in the same boat then… don’t you dare utter a word about this to Jade.”

Floyd looked down at his shrimp plush and looked back up, “Don’t mention it.” He looked back into the aquarium, most of the fish were hidden away for the night, but other sea creatures were swimming and scuttling about.

Azul cleared his throat and continued on with his business, whatever that might be at this hour, leaving the eel to his thoughts. Perhaps he could solve not just Floyd’s current down mood but also answer someone’s burning questions.

…

By some cruel twist of fate, you found yourself in the Mostro Lounge VIP room against your will, having been carried there by none other than Jade Leech. You would have put up a fight, but in all honesty, you would rather be carried bridal style than like a sack of potatoes. You don’t even know how you ended up in this situation, last time you checked, you hadn’t made a deal with the scheming house warden of Octavinelle. So why did he seek you out?

“Prefect, I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’ve been… troubled,” he said in his overly nice business voice.

You squinted your eyes at him, knowing better than to trust anything he says at face value. “And what exactly have you heard,” you countered.

Azul looked at Jade and he exited the room. That doesn’t seem like a good sign. He waited for a few moments before continuing. “That you’ve been distracted, not all there. Oh, don’t give me that look, I don’t want a contract with you,” he rolled his eyes upon seeing the stink eye you were giving him.

“Then what do you want, Azul? Last time I checked you only did things for others if you got more out of the deal than them.” Yeah, you were being sassy, but he tricked your friends, your dumb friends, so he deserved the attitude.

Azul sputtered at the comment before pulling himself together. “I’m just looking out for others in the same boat as us.”

You raised your brow, “Us?”

“Yes, us, Prefect,” he pinched his brow. “I take it that you have a song in your head?” You nodded and he took it as a sign to continue with his monologue. “Much as I suspected then. You have a soul match, which I take wherever you’re from doesn’t have. You have a bond with a mer. It can be familial, platonic and or romantic, a match made by the Sea Witch herself.”

You blinked, letting all of that sink in. “Uh, but why?” Literally, why? Why would the Sea Witch match you with a merperson?

Azul just gave you a look, “Why not? It is not for us to question why the Sea Witch chooses our matches.”

“We should question it though,” you snap at him. “We should question everything! Like why? Who is it to determine our fate?” The stress of the past few weeks had finally caught up, and you were scared, stretched too thin, and tired, so damn tired. “I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t ask for any of this!” You smacked your hands against the desk. You were going to say more but shut your mouth. You were talking to Azul Ashengrotto, who was known for using others' weaknesses against them. Why were you letting this all out into the open with him of all people?

Azul sat there, with a small shocked expression. “Just let me know if you want help finding them,” he slid you a piece of paper. Despite your better judgement, you take it, shoved it into your bag and left without saying anything else. “Hope to speak with you soon, Pre-”

You slam the door in his face before he could say anything else, shaking slightly. Sighing to yourself, you take out the piece of paper, now crumpled and creased.

“A song rests in the heart, calling out to the one who completes the harmony. Their match pulls at them, as the moon does the tide.” That is what the Sea Witch told us. I know what you think of me, Prefect, but all I want is for you two to meet. If you wish to seek them out please feel free to see me. - Azul Ashengrotto

…

Floyd sat in the Octavinelle pool, still festering over everything. Even though he was still in his human form, he didn’t want to leave the pool. Everything was quiet until he hissed in pain. Ah, so after all this time his soul match decides to make a commotion? Damn, they sounded pissed, their anger clear in the song… but also tired, so tired. Huh, so maybe they weren’t too different from him.

Where are you? He sang, reaching out softly this time. He didn’t like this feeling, at least not from them.

Surprisingly the song snapped back at him, much like his shrimp friend would when he came to them all banged up. Why do you want to know?!

Well, that gave him pause. Heh, maybe this Shrimpy was more gutsy than he gave them credit for. Heh!~ I want to findddd youuuuu!~ He sang, a giggle escaping his lips.

I don’t want you to find me! Leave me alone! I didn’t ask for this! I don’t know you! Stranger danger! STRANGER DANGER!

Floyd could imagine a shrimp scuttling back and forth, snapping their pinchers at him and it made him laugh even more. Awww, Shrimpy!~ I’mma hunt your ass down nowwww!~

The song rang sharp, oh yeah, he would be hearing a ringing in his ears for a few hours due to that. GO AWAY!

I’m comin’ for yo ass, here I comeeeeee~ He laughed one more time before pulling himself from the pool, excited for what was about to come. You kept me waitin’ for this long, only fair for me to find you!~

Azul could hear Floyd’s laughter from his office. This wasn’t exactly how he was imagining on helping Floyd find his soul match, but oh well, it’s best for them to meet on their own terms anyway. Hey, you could have done it the calm way, but with Floyd as your soul match, he should have expected the eel to do things the… well, the Floyd way.

So Floyd went running down the hallway, still soaking wet and dripping water everywhere, laughing like a madman. Some other mers looking for their soul matches gave him weird looks, but they minded their own business. “Oh, Shrimpyyyyyyyyy!~ Where are youuuuu?~” He sang out, still laughing.

Meanwhile, you were on the way back to Ramshackle, eyes shifting everywhere since your soul match seemed to change their tune all of a sudden. I’m coming to get your ass, Shrimpy!~ Kept on being sung in the song, so yeah, you were rightfully scared shitless by this entire situation. Who the hell wouldn’t be if they were in your shoes?! So you were trying to make a beeline back to the safety of your dorm. Maybe you should have made that contract with Azul after all… instead of being hunted for sport by someone that some octopus lady decided was your match. And why did they insist on calling you Shrimpy? Weren’t shrimps like the cockroaches of the ocean? What the hell my guy?

“SHRIMPY WHERE ARE YOU?!~” A loud voice rang down the hall.

Oh shit. Oh fuck. You chanted to yourself. Should you try to make a last-ditch effort to make it to the safety of your dorm, or should you hide in the broom closet until they leave? Run? Hide? The increasingly fast footsteps made the decision for you. It was a dumb decision, yes…

...You booked it.

I HEAR YOU RUNNING SHRIMPY!~ They sang in your head with glee. Heh, cute that you think you can escape me!~ Best hope you’re a fast runner Shrimpy!~

What was their issue?! LEAVE ME ALONE! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!

They pouted. They had the audacity to pout?! But Shrimpyyyy, you’re my soul match! Stop runnin’ so I can catch you! My ‘problem’ is that I don’t have you!

Oh Sevens, you can hear them catching up with you. You would never make it to Ramshackle at this point. Shit. Maybe you should have hidden in that broom closet… THERE! An open door! You got in and quietly shut the door, holding your breath.

“Shrimpyyyyyyy! Marco!” They called out, running past the door. “Come on, Shrimpy! It’s not nice to hide!~”

Once you couldn’t hear their footsteps or their horrifying version of Marco-Pollo, you took in some much-needed air. Silently thanking your lucky stars that they went by your hiding spot. Yeah, maybe you would sleep in here for the night since they would still be able to get you until the sun rises… if you could even sleep.

SHRIMPYYYYYY, WHERE ARE YOU?~ OH SHRIMPYYYYYYY!~ Yeah, definitely not sleeping. So you sat in the closet until you saw the rays of sunlight seep beneath the cracks.

Yeah, you’re taking Azul up on his offer, since this is starting to feel like a horror movie and not something from fanfiction you would read back at home.

…

You looked everywhere before setting foot into the Octavinelle pool room since your soul match was definitely in there somewhere. “Pst, Azul?” You called out, hoping that he would answer.

His head popped up from the pool, a faint glow coming from beneath the water. “Ah, Prefect. Did you change your mind?”

If by change your mind you mean be scared shitless, then yes. But you held the comment back. Eugh, it felt like you were being dragged into the water, but you stayed on land, the song deafening. If it was this loud for you, then it was probably the same for them. “Help me,” you pleaded with the merman.

“How so,” he said, smug.

Your eye twitched in annoyance, “They are hunting me, Azul. Hunting me!” You hissed. The water rippled, but nothing emerged. “So help me, Ashengrotto!”

But the air of helpfulness he had earlier was gone, this bitch. “I could just go get him for you-”

“NO!” You shouted, realizing your mistake last minute. No, no, no! NO!

Oh? Shrimpy came to me instead? Oh, Shrimpyyyyyyy?~

You tried to get away from the edge of the pool, but you weren’t fast enough; a clawed, webbed hand latched itself onto your ankle. And a familiar face smiled at you with a wide grin. “Found ya, Shrimpy!~”

You gave Floyd a sheepish smile, “Heyyyyyy, can we talk about this? Hahaha…”

Floyd just giggled before dragging you into the water with him, “Nope!~”

Ah, shit-

Bonus!

Azul and Jade looked at you and Floyd, Floyd still curled around you like an extra-large living feather boa.

“You know, not even I would be so cruel to the Prefect,” Jade looked at Azul, giving him a side-eye. But there was a large sadistic smile on his face.

Azul rolled his eyes, “I gave them the chance to meet him peacefully, and they chose not to. It’s not my fault. And you are a horrible liar, Jade.”

Jade just chuckled before looking back at his brother. “Hmm, it’s Floyd, so we both know it would most likely end in something… chaotic.”

Azul sighed, but he was happy for Floyd… and glad that his bad mood was gone, dealing with that for the past few weeks has been hell.

“AZUL! JADE!” You yelled, trying to pry off the eel, “HELP ME!”

But the two just looked on and didn’t interfere.

Fin!

I'm really happy with how all of Octavinelle's parts came out, and I had a lot of fun writing the characters. I have 7 more characters for the Soul Match AU planned for the future; no promises of when those will come out though, mainly waiting for more lore... since SOMEBODY seems to get the most traffic.

Hoped you enjoyed reading!

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izunias-meme-hole · 10 months

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Okay, I keep hearing about the stuff about “TOTK is Pro-Imperialism” and I want to share my thougths.

TOTK isn’t Pro-Imperialism, but it isn’t Anti-Imperialism either

This debate has been surrounding The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom for quite a bit, so I’m just here to state my thoughts on it based off of stuff from previous games, and stuff from in-game to try my best to form the clearest possible explanation to all of this. I apologize if this sounds like ramblings, I’m just trying my damnedest to condesce my thoughts on this matter into one post.

Point 1: Rauru is flawed, but not a monster

A fair amount of people think Rauru was the real evil, primarily due to the imperialism, but the reality is not exactly that. Rauru genuinely is a good man, and doesn’t exactly match the image of a conqueror or malevolent being in the end, but he does fall into an archetype the series likes presenting; The Questionable Hylian King. King Rhoam and Daphnes both fall into this category by both being men who would do whatever they can to preserve the Kingdom of Hyrule, but they aren’t exactly great people. Rauru however is a unique case, because despite having a good heart, he is still questionable because of how he was planning to build his kingdom, the stash of Zonai Secret Stones that were just kept in the castle at the time, and based off of how he planned to handle Ganondorf before the bastard became the Demon King, he didn’t consider the potential problems.

As for the Imperialism, based off the scraps of info we have on the Zonai, and the fact that Rauru even considered on having that be the base for the system that Ancient Hyrule would function on once, it leads me to believe that the Zonai Civilization was most likely an empire that lived in the skies that mostly kept to itself and was around since Skyward Sword. Still, empires are destined to fall, and as a result, only 2 young Zonai were left, Rauru and Mineru. I think that when Rauru was founding Hyrule with Sonia, he was most likely thinking about the Zonai Civilization, and what aspects of that he could carry over into this new kingdom. Still, it’s clear that when building Hyrule, the one thing he DID consider was that he wanted a kingdom and land that would bring peaceful and orderly, and he might’ve flirted with the idea of a United Hyrule after finding out about the other races and civilizations.

Rauru if anything, wanted order. He wanted Hyrule to be a land that wasn’t sullied by evil, and he had good intentions and a good heart, but his methods were flawed at best and just garbage at worst. If anything, Zelda and Link are meant to basically are meant to look at him and learn what NOT to do when rebuilding Hyrule. Order may be something that’s usually associated as something good, but it just depends on who’s trying to establish it.

Point 2: Ganondorf has a motive and it’s one that brings only chaos

I hear talks about how Ganondorf has no motive in this game, but that isn’t the case here. This is mostly denied with some lines of his english dub and his motive is explained clearly in the Japanese dub. He, much like his other incarnations, is one of those antagonists who follow “The Mandate To Heaven,” which is basically a “the strong thrive while the weak perish” mentality that was used by a lot of real life emperors and conquerors, however there’s also another element to his character that seperates him from other incarnations of the character. He’s an embodiment of chaos and is aware of it.

Look at Ganondorf’s Demon King design, and his personality in this game and tell me that he isn’t chaos incarnate. Ganon has ranged from being a classic villian, a tragic villain, and magnificent bastard as a human, to a generic doomsday villain in his beastial forms. But here? He’s aware of his capacity for causing chaos and uses it to his advantage to ruin Rauru’s attempt at establishing order. Not only that, but he believes that hard times make people strong, and that anyone who desires peace is a coward. He and the Gerudo have thrived in a chaotic environment, The Desert, however while the rest of the Gerudo wish to just be left the hell alone, Ganondorf wished to extend his reach across the land, and after becoming the Demon King, his first act was to revive dead monsters, reintroducing chaos into the world as a result. He abandoned the Gerudo for the sake of his goal to dismantle the young Kingdom of Hyrule and turn the land into a hellscape where only the strong can thrive, a hellscape ruled by him, a king who MUST crush any opposition and rule.

This is a similar, yet different take on Ganondorf that not only remains true to his kingly mentality, but carries a chaotic and destructive energy that helps cement him as a true enemy to order as a concept, and not a king who’s selfish heart caused him to go power mad (OOT, TP & WW) or a genuinely good leader who still carries a monstrous and power hungry side to him (HW). This Ganondorf is not just evil, nor is he just a conqueror. He’s the enemy to peace and order, no matter who’s trying to establish it, all because peace and order doesn’t align with his worldview.

Point 3: Zelda is not a monster, but she does carry an impact

This one should be obvious, especially since Hyrule was still realing from The Calamity, but apparently it isn’t. Zelda is the last Hylian Royal in the present, but not just that. She’s been helping people recover, alongside the Shiekah too. She’s probably kept in touch with the Gorons, Rito, Zora, and Gerudo during that time and helped them too, and considering that she was friends with their champions, it gives her even more reasons to help, despite the fact that she would’ve tried to help anyway. Zelda in all of her appearances, especially in BOTW and TOTK is a genuinely good person, but unlike Rauru, she’s only concerned with peace and is careful with her steps. Remember, she DID question Rauru’s plan to keep an eye on Ganondorf. Sure it’s her duty to ensure order, as The Princess, but she genuinely believes that peace should be the objective of any royal. Zelda is willing to do whatever she can for peace, but she knows that there are certain paths that she cannot tread, unless she desires to abuse her power, and this is why she values wisdom, and this is why people trust her as much as they do.

Ganondorf’s puppet copy of Zelda did some heinous shit with her face, but even then, it still managed to fool some people. The puppet was designed to take advantage of that trust, and put people in distraught. In other words, when the REAL Zelda came back, you bet your ass that shit was set stright.

Point 4: The imperialism is just… existing in ancient hyrule, and is never glorified or demonized

Yeah, imperialism is implied, but it’s not glorified or demonized. It was just there for Ancient Hyrule before Ganondorf threw the land into chaos. Aside from that, based off of everything we know about BOTW and TOTK, whatever imperialism was in going to be in Ancient Hyrule, it didn’t see the light of day BECAUSE of the chaos created by Demon King Ganondorf. If anything it was just known as a thing exclusive to that era, and I explained Rauru’s deal. It’s almost like the imperialism was just a thing of the past and nothing more, a failed byproduct of a founder who was flawed as a King.

Before anyone brings it up, yes, the Gerudo of the past (TOTK Memories and OOT) are different from the ones in the present, and they even fought Rauru, but juding by how their leader revived a bunch of long dead monsters and tried to turn the world into his “only the strong survive” dreamland, it makes sense why they ditched him, it’s the same reason why the Gerudo centuries after OOT are allies of Hyrule in the BOTW timeline. They may have their problems with the hylians and men, but they’d rather work with them than pave the way for Ganondorf to bring them to ruin.

Conclusion: ToTK is not propaganda, it’s just a simple game with a piece of lore that has imperialism

As I said in point 4, the game isn’t pro imperialism, but it isn’t anti imperialism either, it just brings it up for the flashbacks as the implied system of government Rauru probably wanted to set up (Which I theorize was due to the Zonai Civilization being something akin to an empire that kept to itself before inevitably falling) for the purpose of genuinely wanting peace and order, and when the war against Ganondorf begins, that idea falls apart because chaos is sweeping the land and Rauru basically sacrifices himself to stop it, and Zelda at the end of her journey learns from the founders mistakes.

Hope this helps, but it probably won’t ☠️☠️☠️☠️

#the legend of zelda #legend of zelda #tears of the kingdom #ganondorf #ganon #zelda #king rauru #analysis #tw: imperialism

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xandraspalace · 1 year

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GG, Babe!

----- GG, Babe! || Shu Yamino [NIJISANJI EN] x Streamer/Gamer! Reader

Summary : It’s not uncommon to feel pressured and nervous in your first esports tournament, especially if you carry the name of your company’s branch. How do you deal with your anxiousness in this moment of time? You have to thank your lover and your team.

WC : 4198 words.

Warning : Grammar errors, hurt w/ comfort, teeth-rotting fluff (possible cringes?), cursing, possible misconceptions, possible ooc, hints of insecurities if you squint, KanaChiiKuzu references, mention of many Valorant terms, mention of making out (mention only), etc.

Featured Characters : Finana Ryugu, Elira Pandora, Selen Tatsuki, Rosemi Lovelock, Vox Akuma, Uki Violeta, and Fulgur Ovid.

Story Notes : This story is written with first-person point of view and the reader is gender-neutral. The personas written here are based on the avatar of the characters as vtubers, not the person behind it. Enjoy.

A/N : FINALLY I CAN ACTIVELY WRITE ON THIS ACCOUNT!!! I will try to be more active this year. Mostly for writing birthday fiction and other specific projects. I hope you guys can continue to support me. Enjoy!

Other Platform : [TWITTER] [MEDIUM]

“Oh, hell. That was close,” Selen sighed.

After winning the match in a very miserable condition. 2v4, if it weren’t for Shu and Selen, your team wouldn’t be able to secure a place in the semi-finals.

“NIJISANJI EN” registered his name in a virtual e-sport tournament with a team consisting of Finana Ryugu, Selen Tatsuki, Rosemi Lovelock, Shu Yamino, Uki Violeta, and you, NIJISANJI EN solo liver. Five rosters and one substitute, with Fulgur as the team coach and Elira as the team manager — just a formality.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and drooped their stiff shoulders, realizing how tense they had been during the games.

Except you. Your right hand still gripped your mouse tightly until your nails turn white and your left hand fell limp beside the keyboard.

There are many things you regret. Even if your team wins, it wasn’t a very good game for you. And as a player who has died too many times in the previous round, you have to admit that your gameplay was very sloppy and rushed.

To be honest, you were annoyed at yourself for putting your team at a disadvantage. You wanted to cry, you felt pathetic. But in less than half an hour, you have to play for the last round of the quarter-finals.

“Ah, I should have backed off,” Rosemi whined, slightly disappointed by what she did in the game before her agent died.

“Uki, try not to be locked in the room,” Selen said, advising the psychic.

Fulgur added, “Also, don’t rush.”

“Noted,” Uki answered.

“They actually messed up with the flash, especially the one who used Yoru.” Finana, who had been paying attention to the opponent as a substitute player, also commented.

“She’s your senior, Finana! Mind your words!” Elira laughed when she reminded Finana, who apparently had just commented on her senior who was also a quite famous vtuber.

“Oh, wait! Really?! Senpai, I’m sorry!!” The panicked Finana managed to make the whole team laugh out loud.

“I guess Shu saved us then,” Rosemi chuckled after drinking her water.

But Shu could only giggle, “Don’t give me too much credit, guys.”

Waiting for the next game, the others decide to chat with each other while strategizing the gameplay for the next and final round of quarter-finals. Occasionally, they also greet their chats while joking. However, Shu realized something was wrong, especially with you.

It’s like your mic was muted, but he could still hear your breathing. Shu glanced at the phone he was using to watch and monitor your stream and somehow noticed how your chat were being flooded with concerned comments.

How were they not worried? Your avatar was still moving, but you were silent. Your fans started to send some “Are you okay?”s or “Earth to [Y/N]?”s chats, etc.

“[Y/N]?”

Hearing Shu called you in a worried tone, the entire voice chat fell silent.

“Babe, are you still there?” Once again, Shu Yamino, your lover, asked in a worried tone.

“W-what’s wrong?” Selen broke the silence.

The chat of each liver was immediately filled with worried comments. Some of the chats, especially Shu’s chat, said something like, “Shu, go comfort your darling!” etc.

You and Shu were actually just room apart. There was only one wall separating your studio and his. Therefore, if something happened, he could immediately rush over to you.

Others chose silence. If they show their concern, they will only make their fans worry too. But suddenly…

“[Y/N], I could hear your hitched breathes,” Shu said, ready to pause his stream.

“Aww, they’re crying,” Selen cooed. “[Y/N], are you alright?”

You tried to swallow your sobs. “I-I’m fine.” And you failed instantly.

Finana, Selen, and Elira bursted out laughing, not to offend you, but because of how cute you sounded when you were crying and trying hard to speak.

“My, my, [Y/N],” Fulgur chuckled in amusement. “What’s wrong? You’re upset because of the game?” Fulgur, with his coach title, also tried to comfort you and find where things were wrong with you.

“I’m sorry for ruining the mood,” you sniffed, apologizing to the others and the chat.

Your team immediately cried their nos and tried to make you feel better by praising your gameplay. They said that everything that happened in the previous rounds wasn’t not your fault at all. Your chat and the others’ also comfort you.

“It’s okay, [Y/N]. You looked so cool earlier! Your aim was so crazy!” Rosemi tried to cheer you up.

“But that was not too long since the game started.” You still feelt guilty.

“No, no, no. [Y/N], it’s fine,” Selen declined your insecurities. “If you didn’t support me at the beginning, we might be done because it will stay a 2v5 game till the end.”

“You’re telling me Rosemi and Uki will still die?!” Finana, who didn’t accept it, suddenly raised her voice when she heard Selen’s explanation.

“WAIT, THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT!” Selen screamed, making everyone laugh out loud. You started to giggle even though with sobs that can still be heard.

“Chat, please cheer on [Y/N].” In the middle of chaos, with his calm voice, Uki told his chat to give you some words to make you feel better.

“Guys, and chat, I’ll be mute for a moment. I need to check on them.” Shu asked permission from the others.

“Y-you don’t have to. I’m fine now,” you mumbled, wiping your remaining tears.

Trust me when I say Shu won’t believe you. He is your lover, so he will understand all the emotions you put out even just from your voice. “Nah-uh, I’ll go get some water for us too. I’ll be there in a second, wait for a bit.”

Shu removed his headset and stood up. But before he left his studio, Shu approached his mic again. “Oh, and to [Y/N]’s chat, if [Y/N] suddenly goes mute, or their stream suddenly pauses or stops, that’s me. You don’t need to worry.”

“I can mute myself!” you half-yelled at your boyfriend, making everyone giggle.

“Just go and comfort her, lover boy,” Fulgur teased.

And Shu went mute after saying, “On my way!!”

“Babe?”

After gently knocking on your door, Shu opened your studio door. You turned your gaming chair around and stared at him with your glassy eyes. “Have you muted and paused your stream?” he asked, glancing down at your monitor. Shu held out a glass of water for you.

You nodded and took the glass from his hand. After drinking half of the water and put the glass on your desk, your hand immediately grabbed the clothes that Shu was wearing and pulled him closer. There was really nothing strange here. It was just that your instinct to get spoiled by Shu got stronger when you’re down.

Shu didn’t said anything and just put his arms around you. You buried your face in his stomach. “Do you still want to continue the game?” Shu asked, pulling himself away from you a little. His voice was soft and almost a whisper. His hands never stop cradling your hair.

That was when your tears ran down your cheeks again. You could only nod, answering your lover’s question. Shu didn’t even care that his clothes are wet because of your tears.

“Then tell me what happened.” Shu pulled himself and slowly knelt before you. One of his hands helped you wipe your tears and the other hand gently caressed your thighs, comforting you. “Tell me what’s wrong. What’s upsetting my baby, hm?”

You tried to control your sobbing. But after Shu asked with his sweet and gentle voice, you wanted to cry even more.

“I’m just frustrated,” you admitted between your sobs. “I-I’m frustrated with myself. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, babe…” Shu cooed. “You don’t have to say sorry.”

Shu knew saying how cool and good you were during the game won’t comfort you. It will only make you more upset with yourself.

“Baby, look at me.” Shu took your hands slowly and held them tightly. His thumb rubbed them gently, hoping it would calm you down.

You mustered up the courage to look at him.

“Listen, this is our first official esport tournament as NIJI EN, right?”

“Mm-hm,” you nodded.

“Well, you see. This kind of thing happens because everyone is under pressure, including you, including me. The anxiety, the nervousness, all those things distract us. You see, being too focused makes us overly tense and forget how to have fun. Even Selen and I feel pressured because this isn’t a normal Valorant stream we used to have where we can play as we please,” Shu explained.

“I’m sorry I played rashly and carelessly earlier,” you mumbled, still trying so hard to not to cry again.

“I told you; you don’t even have to worry about it.” Shu’s eyes never leave you, and he looked at you with so much love and patience. “You know it yourself that there is no right or wrong in this kind of games. Adapt yourself to the game and your team as comfortably as possible. In this game, what’s important is the result. It doesn’t matter if you die early or survive until the end. As long as you can win, that’s enough.”

Shu released one of his hands and tucked some stray hairs behind your ear before he rubbed your cheek gently. “And you, you were so cool when you helped me and the others earlier. Your aim is crazy. If I’m someone else, I won’t believe that you just started Valorant after me.”

You lowered your gaze. Insecurities hit you once again, assuming that Shu was only saying that to comfort you. But Shu’s hand gently made you look back at him.

“No, no. Eyes on me. I’m telling you the truth.” Shu continued, “Even if you died earlier, we still won the game, right? And you contributed to that victory. You played an important role in the earlier rounds. Do you understand?”

You nodded and wiped your tears for the last time. “I do,” you whispered. “Thank you, Shu.”

“Don’t mention it,” he smiled as he handed you the rest of your drinking water.

After making sure you were calm enough, Shu glanced to your chat which still seemed worried about you. “Well, let’s see…” the sorcerer read your chat quickly. “Looks like we’ve been gone for too long. Chat is starting to get more worried.”

“Do you want to cry for a little bit more?” Shu once again looked at you and asked.

You shook your head and rolled your gaming chair over to your desk. Shu also stood up, following you. Too tired of crying and realizing your voice was starting to get hoarse, you gulped down the remaining water that Shu had previously handed over to you.

“Since we cannot have you upset—well, I personally can’t have my baby upset, do you want to switch up with Finana so you can have a break for the final rounds? I can have Elira arrange that for us.” Shu gave you a suggestion.

“No, I want to play with you. I’m fine now,” you uttered, voice still cracking.

“Alright then.” Shu wiped your last tears and kissed your forehead gently.

You put your headset back on and tidied up your set. Shu helped you get ready and made sure you were completely okay. After turning your mic back on and continuing your stream, Shu stepped back a little to make room. “There you go.”

You greeted your chat and apologized to them for waiting so long and worrying them. Of course, your chat was immediately filled with the “It’s fine,” or “Are you okay now?” comments.

“Just go straight to the collab vc channel,” Shu stated, his voice audible to your viewers. “And [Y/N]’s chat, please comfort them in my place, okay?” Your chat was immediately flooded with obedient comments from your fans like, “Understood, Marshal!” or “Roger that, Shu!”

“I’m okay now, Shu!” you whined.

The sorcerer could only chuckle. “Yes, yes. I’ll take my leave now, babe. I can’t leave my chat alone too. Good luck.”

Once again before he left your studio, Shu kissed the top of your head and ruffled your hair.

“Mm-hm, good luck to you too, love.”

“Eyyy!!!” Shu’s solid eys cut through the others’ conversations on the Discord channel.

“Oh, you’re back!” Selen cheered.

“Welcome back, Shu.” And Fulgur was welcoming the gamer back. “How is [Y/N]?”

You went back into the voice call channel and turn on your microphone. “I’m fine now. I’m really sorry with a lot of things, especially how unprofessional I have been. I really messed up earlier. I’ll do my best from now on,” you uttered your apologies and explanations to your teammates with a hoarse voice.

“You don’t have to worry about it,” Rosemi was welcoming you back with giggles.

Likewise with the others, they started quarreling again while comforting you. And surely it managed to make you laugh. “Thank you guys. Please take a good care of me.”

“Please take good care of us too, [Y/N],” Elira said between her giggles from the previous jokes the others made. “Anyway, Couch Ovid, what was the strategy again? Can you explain it to Shu and [Y/N]?” Elira continued, adding some tease for him.

“Alright, alright.” Fulgur began to explain what he and the others had compiled. Thanks to the help of Selen’s “gamer brain,” everyone could devise a strategy that was fit for you and your lover. “So, [Y/N], I need you and Uki to focus on supporting Selen while Rosemi is supporting Shu. Is that okay?”

“Mm-hm, I’m okay with that,” you confirmed.

“Shu, just because you’re a predator, don’t you dare to forget that I’m currently your support!” Rosemi aggressively clicking on her mouse, knowing that Shu can easily win the game without any assists.

“I know, I know,” Shu laughed. “Calm down, easy.”

When everyone laughed at her malds, you realized someone doesn’t really say much. Until…

“[Y/N].”

Just as you were about to call her name, Selen preceded you. “Yeah?” you waited for the lunar dragon to speak.

“Don’t feel overwhelm on this one, got it? Just enjoy it.”

You were silent before Selen continued her sentence.

“We don’t want you to have any regrets in the end. Swallow all such feelings and uneasiness. Whether or not we make it to the semi-finals is a later matter.” Now all fell silent. “Why are you guys so quiet?!” Embarrassed, Selen asked, half shouting.

“Wow, those were the wisest words Selen ever said,” Uki stated.

“For real,” Shu agreed with the psychic. Likewise with others.

“Oh, shut it, will you?!” And that was a reaction that one could guess from Selen Tatsuki.

Hearing their antics, you could only chuckle. You could hear Selen and Rosemi gasping because you finally laughed. The gloomy and gray atmosphere that had enveloped you and the others was immediately lifted.

“There they are,” Shu cooed, chuckling sweetly to you. “That’s my baby’s sweet laughs.”

You gasped when you heard Shu’s chuckles. His chuckle sounded light and soothing to your ears. But unfortunately, that moment had to be broken when Uki and Selen shouted for the two of you to get a room and followed by another laugh.

“Alright, we can do it!” you told yourself while taking deep breaths to ease your nervousness. “Like what Shu said, there is no right or wrong in this game. Let’s just focus on winning this round and making it to the semi-finals.” And before you focusing yourself to the game, you glanced at your chat. “And do wish me luck, chat,” you whispered.

Everything was running smoothly. In some levels, you and your team become a Team Ace. On another level, Shu and Selen were carrying the team by themselves. However, towards the final level, something unexpected happened.

“The hell?!” Selen sneered when the enemy flashed her. It wasn’t long before the sound of Selen’s deafening screams pierced your ears and the others’. “WHAT THE HECK?!” Selen went mald when the enemy dinked her dead.

The team was immediately in a panic. Selen was the team’s lead carry and your team currently doesn’t have any agent with any revival utility. Meanwhile, the team’s main carry, Shu, tried to stay calm when Selen’s tantrum almost dominated the voice chat channel.

Panic came back to haunt you. You don’t know how this team would fare without its lead carry.

“Babe, calm down.”

“Ah!”

Before you could lose your focus, Shu pulled you back from your reverie, making you gasp.

“Selen, that’s fine. And Uki, take her position to carry the team with Shu,” Fulgur gave instructions to the remaining team players.

You noticed how Selen kept apologizing and malding over her death in the game. Of course, panicking won’t solve the problem. You were wrecking your brain to find a way out of this problem. Your brain was constantly looking for alternatives to win this round.

4v4 shouldn’t be so bad. Shu had already taken down one opposing player. Until something crossed your mind. Your brain managed to come up with a pretty brilliant idea. “Fuu-chan, will crossfiring help?”

“But this map is not suitable for crossfiring.” Elira sounded worried.

The position of the current map was very wide and had few places to hide. Being too far apart from the team might be one dumb way to lose.

Fulgur seemed to be silent and thinking. He was trying to calculate the winning percentage if the team uses your idea.

“One down.” Uki suddenly announced after he took down one enemy. “Four versus three,” he stated.

“NICE, UKI!!!” Everyone cheered amidst the panic.

Uki managed to reduce the risk of losing. The thing that Fulgur was worried about should lessen a bit. “Elaborate your idea, [Y/N].”

You took a deep breath before speaking. “Simple! Uki and Rosemi are in the right position, stay there. And Shu—” You paused yourself when you heard your lover’s gun shots. You suddenly heard him hissed in annoyance. He must have just messed up with his aim, you guessed.

“Shu, if it’s not too much for you, can you move away from Rosemi a little and find the right position to surround our three enemies?” you continued, asking a favor.

“Nothing is too much for you, babe.” Shu immediately did what you asked.

To be honest, you yourself know that Shu can shoot from anywhere. Without any strategy from you or others, he can easily win the game. He is a predator, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. However, even though it’s unlikely, what happened to Selen could also happen to Shu. You don’t want that to happen again, especially in a crucial moment to determine your team’s position in the tournament.

“Thank you. And I’ll rotate and take the flank,” you stated your final strategy.

“Wait, [Y/N], that’s too far and dangerous!” Finana strongly refuted your idea.

Selen who couldn’t do anything anymore also pays attention to the strategy you proposed. “It’s fine,” she said. “Shu, Uki, and Rosemi are enough. The three of them had basically already surrounded the enemies. [Y/N], your intention was to cover the escape route, was it?”

“You’re right!” You smiled as Selen understood the purpose of your plan. “Start firing!” You took your agent to the other side of the map as planned.

“One down… Two down!” Shu raised his voice in excitement.

The sound of other cheers sounded even louder. Your chat and the others’ started to hype with the possibility of your team winning.

“Cypher tries to escape!” Rosemi shouted.

Luckily, you made it to your proper position in time. You replaced your firearm with a knife and started attacking them. “WAIT, ACK! NO!!” you screamed. Unfortunately, you died because your aim was suddenly messed up due to panic.

But not long after, an unexpected sight suddenly appears on your PC screen. “Nope!” Shu spoke, accompanied by the sound of bullets. “You killed my lover, senpai! You must die!”

“OOOHHHH!!!!” Everyone cheered with joy and excitement when the word “WIN” appeared clearly on their respective screens. Chat went crazy and hysterical screams were heard filling the voice chat channel.

You sighed in relief. Too tired with your overwhelming emotions, you chose to remain silent and hear the others’ triumphant cheers. You leaned back on your gaming chair and closed your eyes for a moment.

“Babe your chat is filled with “#[Y/N]MVP”!!”

Hearing Shu say so, you opened your eyes. Sure enough, your chat was flowing with the hashtag that your boyfriend just mentioned.

“Check the Twitter too…?” you read one of your comments aloud. According to what your chat wanted, you grab your phone and opened blue bird app.

“DAMN, [Y/N] IS THE SAVIOUR OF THE TEAM!!”

“NO WAY, THAT’S SO COOL!! Y/N BASICALLY CARRIED THE WHOLE TEAM!!”

“[Y/N] MPV!!!!!!!!!!”

“THE WAY SHU AVENGE THEIR DEATH OMGGGGGG!!”

“SHU x [Y/N] THE ACE x MPV COUPLEEEEEE!! LETSGOOOOOO!!!”

It made you want to cry again. No, not crying out of frustration like before, but because you were touched. “Why are our fans so sweet?” you cracked, making others laugh again.

“Aww, you’re crying again,” Selen giggled.

“That was a simple yet critical strategy. You two are something else,” Uki also commented.

“That was a good save,” Fulgur sighed. “Nice job, [Y/N]!”

Elira added, “Yeah, great job! Wow! Nobody uses Sage. We were too panicked by Selen’s death.”

“I’M STILL HERE!” Getting called out, the owner of the name went mald once again.

Meanwhile, Finana and Rosemi were still having fun celebrating the team’s victory and bragging about you being the MPV.

“Wait, let me divert my voice chat with [Y/N] to dm vc.” Shu mumbled to himself. “[N/N]!!” After celebrating with his chat, the sorcerer switched your voice chat to personal and called you in a cheerful voice. “GG, babe!”

Shu laughed happily. Hearing it makes your heart flutters. You got a lot of appreciation from your fans and teammates, but his appreciation is what you need the most.

“Oh my God, chat, the legendary ace himself complemented me! Wow!” You didn’t completely fake your excitement. You were really happy at his complements.

“Won’t you go to them and hug them for real?” Shu read one of his chat comments. “Babe, should I go there? Yaminions are right, I want to hug you and cuddle you and—”

“Shu, stop!” you abruptly stop him before he can mention all the things he wants to do with you. “Let’s finish the stream first. We still have evaluation about today’s game with the others. Moreover,” you paused for a moment, paying attention to your and Shu’s chats. “I can have him all night, so I’m giving Yaminions a chance.”

“AYOO?!” If Shu was drinking or eating something, he might have choked hearing your words. Without a doubt, Shu’s chat and yours went panic and crazy. Seeing their expressions, you just laughed out loud in amusement. “Haha, funny.” Shu faked a laugh.

“God, someone in your chat said, ‘You don’t have to hide it, Shu. We know you’re also excited.’” Your laugh was getting out of control.

“They’re not wrong, though!” From his offended tone, you could imagine how Shu was pouting his lips at that moment.

You could just run into his studio and kiss the pout if you wanted. However, it would be very unprofessional of you if you did.

A pop up notification suddenly appeared on your and Shu’s phones screen. “What on earth Selen just tweeted?” Shu asked before he read the tweet out loud for you. “With a capslock, ‘Anyone or someone in their stream please tell @ shu_yamino and @ [Y/N][L/N]_2434 to stop making out and rejoin the collab voice chat,’ triple exclamation marks.”

“What the fuck?” You were stunned, hearing Selen’s tweet from your lover. You glanced at your chat who once again clearly went crazy. “Did they just assume we’re doing that?!”

“Vox just replied, ‘There is nothing sweeter than the sweetness of victory. Let them have their moment.’” Shu laughed, reading his genmate’s tweet.

You slumped back to your chair. “Hell on earth. Chat, did you guys hear any making out noises? You’re not, aren’t you?! Such things like you guys watching us doing that didn’t excite me.”

“BABE, YOU MAKE IT WORSE!!” Now it was Shu’s turn to panic. Your lover was trying his best not to scream and burst the audience’s eardrums. His reaction definitely made you laugh out loud.

Before this, you felt very down because of your insecurities. But when you’re with him, everything feels better, no matter how chaotic your surroundings are. With him, you don’t have to worry about anything. You surely feel the safest around him.

Before you moved your voice chat back to the collab channel, you stated between your laughs, “You guys will still clip that moment even if we say don’t, so go ahead. Consider this as the compensation for today’s victory today.”

“You’re the worst,” Shu sighed.

Of course you could only giggle. “I love you too.” ----- [FIN].

GG, Babe! A Fiction by Author Xandra January, 2023

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