Pathologic fandom stop excluding Clara from stuff challenge

Overprotective • Leah Williamson x Mary Earps x Reader

Leah had always been a protective sister, whether it was in your football career, during school and evening your relationships.

"Got another girlfriend yet then, y/n?" Georgia teased.

Leah scoffs. "Of course she hasn't, not after last time."

You stayed quiet, sat on Leah's bed with her in hers and Georgia's hotel room, your head rested on her shoulder.

Keira found eye contact with you and knew there was something you were holding back, she knew you almost as long as your own sister did.

During your last relationship, Leah had managed to scare the other girl off after finding you both asleep in your room, in the apartment you shared. You didn't understand the fuss, you were both fully clothed?

Leah had control over you throughout your childhood, now she doesn't like to see you grow up, but it's like she doesn't want to see you happy.

"I'm gonna go bed, too tired." You smiled softly, hugging your sister goodbye and smiling towards Keira and Georgia.

"See you in the morning y/n/n. Breakfast is at 7:30." Leah tells you as you head to the door.

Instead of heading to your own room, shared with Chloe, you head 4 doors down. Room 819.

You knocked quietly, not wanting to wake anyone up who may possibly be asleep already.

"Mary? It's me!" You whisper shout, hoping she'll hear you.

The door lock clicks and opens, your girlfriend stood in her training kit still.

"Why haven't you gotten changed, training finished hours ago!?" You giggle, stepping into her room and kissing her softly. "Hmm" You hum. "And you still smell."

"Nice to see you too babygirl." She teases. "Are you okay?" She watches as you get under the covers of her bed, pulling her blanket over you.

You nod. "Yeh, tired. And I want cuddles but not with you smelling like that so go and shower please." You smile cheekily, watching your girlfriend strip from her training gear and heading into the bathroom.

You unlock her phone and start playing a game you made her download, trying to beat her high school, a way to pass the time.

"What are you doing?" You look up and see Mary looking at you. You smile brightly and show her the phone screen, the game on display. She chuckles.

When Mary returns to bed, you snuggle yourself closer into her, scared to loose her the way you lost your last partner. The comfort was too much, you fell asleep and the world left you at peace.

Until it was the next morning and your both awoken to a hammering on the door.

“MARY!”

“Fuck that’s Leah.” You curse, scrambling to hide in the bathroom for the door to be answered.

“Hi?” Mary smiled, slightly confused to the frantic banging on the door.

“Breakfast started 20 minutes ago. You must’ve slept through your alarm. Y/N isn’t there either. Any ideas where she might be?” You sister questioned.

“No? No. Not sure, sorry Leah. I’ll be down in 10 though.” She forces a smile and shuts the door in Leah’s face.

“That shouldn’t have happened. You should’ve gone back last night.” Mary sighs.

“I know and I’m sorry! I just fell asleep.” You sighed. “I’ll see you down at breakfast.”

You didn’t plan your escape route well, opening the door and leaving Mary’s room to find Leah stood in the hall way, staring at her phone which obviously distracted her from heading back down herself.

“What the fuck? Why are you in there Y/N/N?” She raises an eyebrow slightly. “Mary said she hadn’t seen y- No..”

“Leah, let me explain…” You pleaded with her, grabbing her arm to stop her leaving. “You can’t keep controlling what I do!” You snapped.

“Dating a teammate? Is this what is happening. You should know better .” She pulled her arm from your grasp and walked away from you.

-

Leah was angry, too angry. She was always overprotective of you but this was unusually harsh from her. She refused to speak to you unless absolutely necessary for the last couple of days before you flew to Belgium for the Nations League game.

You started the match, played you best and scored twice in the first half. Both times looking over to Leah as the team celebrated with you. Nothing.

Halftime was nearing and you had one last corner to try to defend before heading in. You marked up their attacking midfielder on the back post. The ball came in and you headed it away, the Belgium players going for the ball too and landing on you, pushing you in to the post of the net and sending your clattering to the floor.

You lay stomach down with you head in your hands.

“Y/N! Are you okay??” Mary rushed to your side, her hand on your back gently as you lay still.

“Fuck” Leah crouched down besides you, dropping the grudge she had against you both and took charge as captain, but mostly big sister.

You lifted you head up to look at her, blood dribbling down your face. You spat out a mixture of spit and blood into the grass below you and with the help of your sister you sat up, catching the dripping blood in your hand.

It was quite the nasty look you had, bleeding after bleeding that wouldn’t stop.

It was only when you passed out that everyone took it a little more seriously.

When you woke up in the medical room, Leah had your hand in hers.

“You gave us a fright there.” She chuckled softly, kissing your forehead gently to avoid the cut.

You looked away, closing your eyes to stop tears forming.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I shouldn’t have treated you like that. I want you to know though, it isn’t because I am mad… I was just frustrated that you didn’t tell me.” She admits quietly.

“I’m sorry.” You whisper, squeezing her hand to let her know you aren’t mad.

“Can I ask how long?”

“3 months.” You finally make eye contact and see the small smile on her face.

She nods. “I’m happy for you.”

Let Me Get Close To You

Pairing: Peter Parker/Tony Stark Rating: Explicit (E) Notes: This is my fic for my @starkerfestivals summer BINGO “wrong number” square. I sat down to write this a couple of days ago & just couldn’t stop - I hope you guys enjoy the cute little verse I created (that I’ll more than likely revisit soon!!). Here’s my bingo card  - if you see something on there you might want written, shoot me a message!!!  Word Count: 7K Warnings: There’s a tiny bit of smut in here, but it’s me writing, so when is that not the case? Summary: 

Stuck with the worst professor for Nuclear Science, Peter tries to vent his frustrations to Ned - only to send a desperate text message to Tony Stark, instead. When an immediate spark and so many things in common make it easy for Peter to fall further for the elegant genius, what’s the worst that could really happen? 

Or: the one where Peter texts the wrong number & romance ensues.

Read on AO3 here. 

---- 

Fuming from a frustrating Nuclear Science class, Peter maturely stomped his way out of the engineering building. They were only two weeks into the semester and the old man already had Peter on edge. His major revolved around the class and his ability to get the most out of the information. The dinosaur that stood at the front of the lecture hall every day hadn’t had an original thought since the 90s and refused to see when others did. Much like every old white man, Dr. Milner’s ideas were the be all end all of a science that changed by the millisecond.

Still pretty new to campus after a late sophomore year transfer, Peter didn’t have many people to turn to that weren’t his nerdy and standoffish teammates on the Academic Decathlon team – most of those guys lived in a world a couple steps from the norm, happily keeping to themselves. Though Peter existed there eighty percent of the time, his need to be social and fill a space in the real world made it impossible to commit to that sort of isolation fully. Straddling the line made it difficult to exist on either side – Peter’s favorite pieces of himself were what kept people away, no matter the lifestyle.

With his mind so heavy with all sorts of negativity, Peter suddenly found himself homesick; he spent so much of his life trying to escape the streets of New York – so far from home now, Peter missed them desperately. Thinking about his tangible connection to his favorite urban wasteland, Peter pulled his phone out and hastily typed in Ned’s new number.

Peter Parker [1:23PM]: Hi, I hate it here. Peter Parker [1:24PM]: Dr. Milner is out to get free thinkers. I may not survive the next fourteen weeks.

Peter already felt a little better after typing the words – the mere ability to get one of his many worries off his chest did wonders. Until his phone pinged with a new text message notification, of course.

Nimble fingers pulled the phone from his pocket, his eyes carelessly looking over the screen as it unlocked. Expecting to see Ned’s name there, Peter almost threw the phone to the ground when Siri’s suggestion registered.

Maybe – Tony Stark [1:26PM]: Hi stranger! I think this was meant for someone else, but I too think Dr. Milner is out to squash any new idea that doesn’t fit the mold. In his forty-year career, he hasn’t changed a bit.

Another text message was below it, but Peter forced himself to stop reading – his heart felt like it might beat out of his chest already, too much excitement at once couldn’t be good. Out of all the numbers he could’ve accidentally typed, Tony Stark, New York’s genius and resident beauty, Peter’s secret (though not so much) crush, ended up on the other side of the line. The unbelievability of the idea made Peter consider a well thought out prank. Then again, how did any of his fellow classmates know Tony Stark’s personal number?

Sucking in a deep breath, Peter made himself look at the second text message waiting unread.

Maybe – Tony Stark [1:27PM]: I’m not sure how you got this number, but I sincerely hope you make it out alive. If you’re in Milner’s class, you’re on the Nuclear track, which means you must be smart. Trust me, the world needs your future contributions, whatever they might be.

Peter gripped the phone a little harder after reading through the second message over and over again. He let his eyes take in each of the words, wondering, if it really was Tony Stark, how anyone ever survived talking to him. In so few sentences, Peter already felt discombobulated, both more confident and turned around than just seconds before. Aside from his infatuation with the man, Peter understood Tony Stark’s contributions to the technology community and the world at large more than most.

It took him a few minutes to convince himself to text back – every time he tried to type something, his fingers froze just centimeters above the screen. There were so many things he wanted to say, so many questions he wanted to ask to make sure he wasn’t getting catfished. Instead, Peter took the direct route, his courage obviously all or nothing in the face of something as big as an accidental interaction with Tony Stark.

Peter Parker [1:35PM]: Holy crap – excuse me for the bluntness, but is this really Tony Stark? Siri doesn’t often get things wrong, especially since I souped her up. But I’m sure you can understand the apprehension. Peter Parker [1:37PM]: Would you be up for answering a few questions just to make sure?

The tip of his finger tapped against the screen impatiently after he hit the send button, his nerves and the not-so-subtle excitement were barely contained under the surface of his skin. He couldn’t remember a time where feeling alive was so prominent.

A smile slipped across his lips when, a moment later, three consecutive texts vibrated Peter’s phone in succession.

Maybe – Tony Stark [1:40PM]: You souped up Siri? Steve Jobs is probably turning over in his grave right now. Maybe – Tony Stark [1:41PM]: I think I’m the one that should be asking the questions, don’t you think? How did you even get this number, Peter Parker? It’s a private line. Maybe – Tony Stark [1:42PM]: I am, though – Tony Stark, I mean.

Peter Parker [1:45PM]: Reconfiguring tech is kind of my thing. I used to dumpster dive in high school – you’d be surprised by the cool pieces of technology people put in their trash. Peter Parker [1:46PM]: Oh, bringing out the big guns – I’m happy to see Siri without my latest addition works for others, too. Peter Parker [1:47PM]: It was an accident, sending those first texts to you. My friend in New York just started a new job that came with a paid phone. I still haven’t saved the number. You are one off from him. Peter Parker [1:48PM]: Alright, Tony Stark. Tell me what campus I’m on.

Maybe – Tony Stark [1:53PM]: I’m not surprised by anything human beings do, especially in New York City. Throwing out a perfectly good iPod is certainly not the weirdest thing I’ve heard of. Did you make anything interesting in your trash conversion adventures? Maybe – Tony Stark [1:54PM]: You talk a big game, Mr. Parker. Can you walk the walk, too? Maybe – Tony Stark [1:55PM]: He must be on my payroll, then. The bank of numbers my employees have come from my personal network. Maybe – Tony Stark [1:57PM]: That’s an easy one. You’re at MIT – Milner was there when I was a student. The only thing that’s probably different between then and now is the amount of hair the old bag has.

Peter Parker [2:01PM]: You’re not wrong, Mr. Stark. I made things that helped me be self-sufficient. I grew up really poor and couldn’t afford the things everyone else had – so I figured out how all the tech worked and made my own. I’ve been using a ten-year-old iPhone for ages. Peter Parker [2:03PM]: You bet. Are you challenging me? Peter Parker [2:04PM]: He is, actually. He started in an entry level position two weeks ago. Peter Parker [2:06PM]: It’s gross, isn’t it? I’m glad we’ve moved past projectors in the classroom – the hair on his hand would make for a distracting shadow. Peter Parker [2:07PM]: Okay, okay. I think I’m convinced. One more test, though – send me a picture.

Maybe – Tony Stark [2:14PM]: Oh boy, none of that Mr. Stark shit. As far as you’re concerned, I’m Tony. Only Tony. Maybe – Tony Stark [2:15PM]: You made your own. That’s – impressive. I’m impressed and more than a little curious. Maybe – Tony Stark [2:17PM]: Challenging you, no. Enticing you, yes. I’m visiting Cambridge to do a guest lecture series next week. Come see what Stark Industries is up to – I’d love to hear what you think. Maybe – Tony Stark [2:18PM]: It was as bad as you think. Maybe – Tony Stark [2:20PM]: Okay, Peter Parker. [IMAGE ATTACHED]

A gasp of shock left Peter’s mouth when he opened the last text to find a smirking Tony Stark looking right at him. To prove the time and date, Tony held up the New York Times, his free hand pointing to the headline Peter read on his phone earlier that morning. After the shock of actually talking to Tony Stark wore off, Peter let himself take in the picture and all of its details.

Tony’s desk was largely visible in the shot – pens and stacks of paper littered the surface, a few rogue pieces of tech ready to be fiddled with acted as paper weights and grungy aesthetic. The man himself was breath taking – his glasses were a deep violet, offset beautifully by the crisp white shirt and black waistcoat covering Tony’s upper body. A light purple tie was loosely knotted at his throat, as if he fiddled with it while working just to keep his hands busy.

Without much thought, Peter saved the photo and added Tony to his contacts before replying – there was no reason not to trust the man, the spark in his shiny hazel eyes seemed to genuine and real to even question.

Peter Parker [2:25PM]: Only Tony, got it. Peter Parker [2:26PM]: Curiosity is good – keeps you fresh and on your toes. Peter Parker [2:27PM]: Oh, I see. You want a chance to impress me. I like that. Not sure what my opinion is going to do for you, but I’ll be happy to share it. Peter Parker [2:29PM]: Gross. Peter Parker [2:30PM]: I’m – you’re… Wow. You really are Tony Stark.

Tony Stark [2:37PM]: I think you’ll have no problems keeping me on my toes, Peter. Tony Stark [2:38PM]: I have a feeling your opinion is one that I’ll be very interested in. You’ve been nothing but blunt this entire conversation, I know I’m getting the real deal stuff. Tony Stark [2:40PM]: I am. I really am Tony Stark. Tony Stark [2:41PM]: It’s your turn, Peter Parker. What face belongs to that beautiful brain of yours?

Forcing himself to breath, Peter looked around the room for the best spot to return the favor. The bed was a hard no, he didn’t want to send the wrong vibe to a person who could easily have whomever they wanted. His desk was small, but meticulously organized – his study materials open and ready for a night of reviewing the only thing obscuring the surface. It was obvious Tony appreciated his brain, it seemed pertinent to take advantage.

After a few attempts, Peter found the perfect angle to catch the light in his eyes, making them shine brightly in the camera. He thanked the clothing gods that he chose a well fitted three-button Henley in his haste to get out the door that morning. The feeling of satisfaction was new, but not unwelcome – he wanted to send Tony the photo; for once, he knew it would impress.

Peter Parker [2:55PM]: Keeping implies longevity. Are you planning on sticking around? Peter Parker [2:56PM]: My brain to mouth filter runs at less than 10% at all times. It has brought me more trouble than shutting up ever would. Peter Parker [2:27PM]: You’re gorgeous. Violet is a nice color on you. Peter Parker [2:29PM]: What do you think? [IMAGE ATTACHED]

Tony Stark [ 2:37PM]: Yes. I think that’s the answer to that question. You’ve presented a puzzle I want to solve. Tony Stark [2:38PM]: Shutting up never got anyone anywhere. The noise we create is what shapes us. Tony Stark [2:40PM]: Thank you – I have a lot of it in my wardrobe. Tony Stark [2:44PM]: & you called me gorgeous; Peter Parker, you’re a stunner.

Peter Parker [2:51PM]: You’re a scientist, you do that for a living. What makes me so different? Peter Parker [2:52PM]: That’s a refreshing opinion. I like the way you think, Only Tony. Peter Parker [2:54PM]: That honestly doesn’t surprise me. Peter Parker [2:55PM]: Do you tell the person who made you blush that you’re blushing? I don’t remember that standard operating procedure.

Tony Stark [3:01PM]: My intrigue is of a personal nature only – the puzzle you pose is of a different sort. Usually, I think and think and think until I solve whatever the problem is. With you, I want to gather all the clues and take it apart piece by piece. Tony Stark [3:02PM]: That’s a little heavy for only knowing each other a couple of hours, but when you know, you know. Tony Stark [3:03PM]: Not usually, but I have a feeling you’re an exception to a lot of things, Peter Parker.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon, Peter continued to exchange flirty text messages back and forth with Tony – the mood stayed open and easy as the time passed. The older man helped Peter get through Nuclear Dynamics and three hours of decathlon practice. For all the brains Tony had, Peter was surprised to find humor and a bit of insecurity, too. Tony let himself go on tangents and make dad jokes that were a step away from being obscene.

That trend continued for the rest of the week and well into the weekend. By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, Peter knew Tony’s schedule, half the newest late-night discoveries, and the way Mr. Sweet Tooth took his sugary coffee. Though a line of attraction and want existed, Peter was happy to know Tony as a person without the ability to act on the obvious tension between them. And while he appreciated the wholistic way they were coming to know each other, Peter couldn’t wait to see Tony throughout the week, either.

The older man seemed to share his sentiment – the shrill notification of a text message received pulled Peter out of his thoughts.

Tony Stark [7:30PM]: Hey, Pete! I present at 5:30 tomorrow afternoon. Want to grab something to eat afterwards? Tony Stark [7:31PM]: I’m impatient to get back to Hogan’s and thought you might appreciate his culinary prowess.

Peter Parker [7:35PM]: Tony – this is the fourth time you’ve reminded me about your presentation. I’ll be there. For dinner, too. Peter Parker [7:36PM]: Culinary prowess; if it merits that title, I’m sure it’ll be worth it.

Tony Stark [7:42PM]: I know – I just get some performance anxiety. It helps to remind myself that you’re going to be there. Tony Stark [7:43PM]: It is. Hap is an old friend of mine. He left MIT to go make his restaurant dreams happen and has been stupidly happy ever since.

Peter Parker [7:47PM]: I get it – I’ll gladly be your security blanket, Tony. Peter Parker [7:48PM]: Something tells me there’s more to that story, but I’m sure you’ll tell me one day. I’m excited to try it. Should I look up the menu beforehand, or let it be a surprise?

Tony Stark [7:55PM]: I like the sound of that. I’ve pictured having you in my arms often. Tony Stark [7:57PM]: There’s always more to the story, Pete. Let it be a surprise! In fact, I’ll order for you to make sure you get the whole newbie experience.

Peter Parker [8:05PM]: I’ll boldly say you can have me in your arms as often as you like. Peter Parker [8:06PM]: The newbie experience – there hasn’t been a time in my life where that’s been a good thing. Peter Parker [8:07PM]: Yet. Surprisingly – I trust you.

The next day went by quickly – Peter took a quiz in Nuclear Science and dug into his other two classes to keep his mind focused on anything other than Tony’s imminent presence. His last class was a core history class, so he gladly tucked into the reading the professor let them loose to do. The chime of his alarm broke through Peter’s fog a couple pages from the end of his assignment. Though he liked to be ahead, Peter gladly took the extra few minutes to get himself together before heading to MIT’s presentation hall.

Decked out in his finest pair of black jeans, a blue denim short-sleeve button down, and solid black high-top Converse on his feet, Peter walked the few minutes it took to get back onto campus from his small apartment. Unsurprisingly, a line was formed out the door of students hoping to get into the presentation last minute. Tony told him earlier in the week that they waited to advertise his appearance until the a few hours before to stop the masses from flocking. To Peter, the time restriction seemed to only make it worse.

In Tony’s excitement to have Peter there, the older man set aside a ticket for him – instead of joining the line like he might’ve without Tony’s insistence, Peter walked straight into the cool auditorium, snagging a seat at the end of a row located dead center in the auditorium. The vantage point was perfect – Peter wouldn’t have any trouble catching Tony’s eye as he spoke. Grinning at his access to such a simple pleasure, Peter relaxed back into the seat, passing the time until Tony took the stage by watching the crowd flood in around him.

It wasn’t long before the lights were dimming and a sweaty, high ranking alumnus gave Tony Stark a mediocre welcome onto the stage. The crowd broke out into a cheer that more than made up for the old man’s subpar words. Tony timed his entrance perfectly; he walked out as the energy rose, the shift in the crowd’s tension working to enhance everyone’s excitement. Peter found himself glued to the man, who until that moment, existed entirely on the other side of the phone – he didn’t want to miss a single second of full-body absorption.

A black suit coat sat snuggly on Tony’s shoulders, a singular button keeping the sides closed. His dark hair was elegantly styled, the bed-head look enhancing the easy-going style Peter knew Tony strived for. The facial hair Peter came to truly appreciate over the last few days of texting drew attention to his sharp cheekbones. Tony seemed genuinely happy to be there if the beaming smile on his face said anything at all. With a few claps and the corniest joke, the older man got the crowd under control, proceeding onto his speech with an effortless transition.

As expected, Peter found himself interested from the very beginning. Tony’s new work on energy and its uses amongst transportation and city overhaul was ingenious – when things got up and running, New York’s power grid would run completely on sustainable energy. So many thoughts flashed across the front of Peter’s mind – he wondered if Tony would let him take a look at the blueprints. He might not have much to contribute, yet Peter understood the opportunity for learning and development when it presented itself.

By the end of Tony’s presentation, Peter was overjoyed to know that he wouldn’t need to feign interest in the topics Tony brought to the table. For a while, Stark Industries went through a slump of working on weapons and junky tech Peter found in the trash more often than he ever wanted to admit. It felt good to be excited about something new coming from the company – Tony Stark was the smartest person in his field, anything less than almost perfect just didn’t do the man and his ideas justice.

After fielding a lot more questions than Peter expected, Tony headed off the stage with a roar of applause – the genius wasn’t a household name for nothing. Smiling at the thought, Peter pulled his phone out; he got to see behind the curtain more than others – he felt a sudden surge of gratefulness at the fact. Every person around him would do anything for the privilege; taking that for granted just wouldn’t do.

Peter Parker [6:45PM]: You’re an incredible public speaker, Tony. Peter Parker [6:46PM]: Thanks for making me come!

Tony Stark [6:49PM]: How inappropriate of me is it to say that this isn’t the only time I plan to make you come?

Peter Parker [6:55PM]: Very, but it’s appreciated, nonetheless. I’ll meet you over by the Engineering building whenever you’re done trying to outrun your fans.

Tony Stark [7:00PM]: You’re fucking hilarious. I’ll meet you there in five.

True to his word, Tony snuck up behind Peter a few minutes later – soft palms that gave way to well-earned callouses pressed against Peter’s cheeks as Tony covered his eyes. The mere fact that Tony was there at all was surprise enough; the touches and softly whispered “Hello, Pete,” in his ear felt like more than enough to cause a coronary.

Shaking his head to clear it, Peter turned in Tony’s arms, a huge grin playing across his lips. With the way they were standing now, Peter’s chest was pressed delightfully against Tony’s – he felt each and every one of Tony’s inhales of oxygen and exhales of carbon dioxide that brought Peter’s attention to the firm muscles pressing and pulling the man’s abdomen. His breath caught when Tony palmed his cheek, their mouths mere inches apart. Despite not actually knowing each other, Peter felt comfortable in Tony’s embrace.

“Hey, Tony,” Peter finally replied after allowing his breath to mingle with Tony’s. As they stood there pressed together, neither could decipher where one started and the other began. The thought made his grin grow a little wider, the courage inside of him pulsing a little more boldly with life. “You were amazing up there.”

Tony remained perfectly still; his limbs seemingly frozen in a clench to keep Peter close to him. His grip was firm, both the hand on Peter’s hip and his late day stubbled cheek. Like the man himself, Tony’s touch left something behind that kept Peter on the hook, always seeking more. He half expected for Tony to lean in and slot their lips together – his deepest desires and tangible wants were starting to collide in such close proximity.

Instead, Peter’s smile was returned with quirked cheeks and bright hazel eyes. “You weren’t too bored?” Tony asked, his voice soft in the small space between them. His thumb swiped constantly across Peter’s cheek, the obvious need to move apparent, even in such an intimate situation.

Chuckling lightly, Peter shook his head. “So far from bored. My thesis research is all about sustainable energy – you had me interested from the very beginning,” Peter replied almost immediately, not caring that his excitement clearly shone through in the pitch of his voice. The way he was leaning into Tony’s touch, Peter didn’t have much of a chance to disguise his truth, anyway.

“You’re so much smarter than you give yourself credit for – I can tell already.” Tony’s words were mumbled almost as if the older man was embarrassed to say them – to hand out such a compliment to someone other than himself. And yet – Tony’s hesitation made the statement mean so much more; the rarity of such kind words (despite being spoken so softly) did nothing but make Peter want to melt into Tony even further.

Before things could get too mushy or physical, Peter took a large step out of Tony’s arms – begrudgingly, the need for space was prominent if they ever wanted the night to continue. Never mind the fact that paparazzi were constantly hounding and following Tony wherever the man went. Though he was deemed an appropriate companion at the time, Peter was more than sure the public would not agree.

With that thought in mind, Peter shot Tony a shy smile – “I’m pretty famished. Want to show me what Hogan’s is all about?”

They spent the ten-minute walk talking about the presentation – Tony grilled Peter about a few of the technical parts, while Peter drooled a little bit over the projected uses of Tony’s new energy storage and production. Like two nerdy peas in a pod, neither could help themselves – geeking out and talking about something they were both interested in made the rest of the world melt away. Peter might’ve kept on his tangent if it weren’t for a tall, thickly built man clearing his throat.

Looking up at the noise, Peter realized they’d walked a few blocks already and were standing in the lobby of a well-maintained hole in the wall that radiated the most delicious smells. Grease and cheese and freshly dropped French fries hit his senses all at once – there was no doubt that whatever they were about to consume would be more than delicious.

Peter was seconds away from wiping drool from his chin when Tony broke out into action. He took the couple of steps between their current position and the hostess stand to wrap who could only be Happy in a firm, breathtaking hug. “Happy, my man. It’s so good to see you,” Tony exclaimed as he stepped away, an adorable look in his eyes. “I’ve been talking this place up to Peter here, thought I’d cash in on your good will.”

Suddenly, all eyes were on Peter – Tony looked at him like something he couldn’t wait to deconstruct, while Happy tilted his head curiously, as if the one glance would tell him all he needed to know about Peter Parker. Unwillingly to stand there like an animal on display, Peter broke through the weird with a soft laugh and a light wave.

“Nice to meet you, Happy. Tony’s been selling me on your food for days now. I can’t wait to try it,” Peter said, his shoulders rolling back to help him stand a little taller. Though he had nothing to prove to the total stranger in front of him, Peter couldn’t help but want to make a good impression – Happy obviously meant something to Tony; their comradery and easy affection said that without much effort.

There was a moment where all three guys seemed to look between each other – Peter watched with bated breath as Tony and Happy carried on a silent conversation with just a few blinks and forehead crinkles. By the time Peter understood what was happening, Happy stepped a little closer to him, his big hand reaching out for what could only be a handshake. Without hesitating, Peter took it – for whatever reason, the handshake felt monumental; like with the one touch, he beat the level boss and gained access to the next one.

“Good to meet you, too. Tony’s good about that sort of advertisement – we probably wouldn’t have made it without his ugly mug around at the beginning,” Happy replied. “You guys know what you want? I’ll get it on the grill personally.”

At that point, Tony stepped back into the spotlight and grabbed the reins – he ordered everything at rapid fire speed, like the menu existed as a hard copy in Tony’s mind. Considering the warmth of the older man’s welcome and Happy’s cryptic words, Peter didn’t doubt that Tony was a regular – more than likely a founding customer, even.

It took no time at all for their food to come out to the small table in the corner Tony led him to. The tray was piled with an abundance of food – cheese steaks, fries, burgers, even a couple of desserts littered the table as Tony unpacked their haul. Peter’s eyes were wide, his mouth watering with a want that only Zap’s Bodega could illicit before. “This – it all looks amazing,” Peter babbled, his stomach both hungry and overwhelmed by everything in front of him.

“Just wait until you taste it. Happy used to crank out these cheesesteaks on the little hot plate we had in our dorm room. They were excellent, but the addition of the flattop has made them unbeatable.”

Unable to decide what smelled the best, Peter grabbed whatever was nearest to him. His fingers wrapped around the greasy paper of the aforementioned cheesesteak, his mouth watering even more. “So, you and Happy were roommates at MIT?” Peter asked around a large bite, the food in his mouth muffling some of the words. It really was good – worth looking like a pig in front of the most beautiful man alive.

“Hap and I go way back. His father worked security at Stark Industries – he was on my dad’s personal protection team for most of my life. When Happy’s mom died and the need for babysitting became a thing, Happy started to spend the evenings with me after school. In a lot of ways, he’s the only family I’ve ever had. When he first opened up this place, I was young and just looking for some investment that would piss my dad off. I knew Happy had talent, but neither of us thought this place would blow up the way it did.” Tony looked up then, a vulnerability in his eyes. “We’ve been in business together ever since.”

Smiling encouragingly, Peter nodded in Tony’s direction – their closeness, Tony’s unwavering advertisement and protectiveness, even some of the food names he could see on the menu; it all made sense. After taking another bite of the cheesesteak, Peter chewed slowly before responding. “There’s always more to the story, right?” he questioned cheekily. “It sounds like your gamble worked out for you – I didn’t look at the menu, but I did Google Hogan’s; there’s ten locations within a 300-mile radius.”

A snort had Peter looking up, his eyebrows quirked. “I should’ve known,” Tony said through a laugh. “Your generation is all about instant gratification.”

Their eyes locked then, Tony’s words and their meaning sitting in the space between them. Peter forced himself not to blink – he wanted to memorize the rich hazel color that barely ringed a growing pupil. Hunger and want and something unrecognizable existed in Tony’s glance; when it was all over and Tony moved on, Peter desperately wanted to remember the genuine rawness he drew out of one of the world’s greatest minds.

“Or just impatience,” Peter countered. He drew his eyes away, needing to break the glance to stop himself from propelling himself across the table and tackle Tony to the ground. Though it looked as if Happy kept the place spick and span, Peter didn’t want to think about Tony’s expensive suit on any other floor aside from his own.

They attempted to pull the small talk back to something a little tamer, but the road of the rest of the evening had already been paved. It became harder to focus on anything other than the thick press of Tony’s thigh against his own under the table. As the minutes passed, Peter noticed Tony staring, and after a while, the older man just never stopped. Every time he looked up, Peter caught hazel eyes taking him in – undressing him button by button with the sheer want in his eyes. A red blush took up permanent residence on Peter’s cheeks and neck, the color following him out of the restaurant and out onto the street where Tony took his hand without hesitation.

Before his mom passed away, Peter remembered a softly mumbled conversation laying across both his parents early, early in the morning. His dad’s big fingers were wrapped so neatly around his mother’s, the embrace tight, despite the hour. Peter reached out to touch the unbreakable seam, his eyes wide with wonder. “They fit,” Peter whispered softly, his finger running reverently over their joint fingers.

His mother pulled him close then, her lips finding that special place on his cheek. “One day, Petey, you’ll find that perfect person whose hands will fit yours just the way your father’s fit mine.”

A warmth settled in Peter’s chest as he slid his hand into Tony’s, their fingers interlacing perfectly with ease. The immaculate fit of Tony’s hand pressing against his own made him snuggle in further – whatever happened between them after this, Peter would forever know how easily he and Tony Stark fit together.

Giving Tony’s fingers a squeeze at the thought, Peter looked up, breaking the silence – “Do you want to see my apartment? I’m sure it’s not nearly as fancy as the hotel you’re staying at, but I’ve got Netflix and a really comfortable couch.”

Tony took a few long strides to answer, his face a little pensive. “I’d love to see your apartment, Pete,” Tony replied easily. They came to a stop at the crosswalk – Tony used his momentum to pull Peter close to his chest while they waited out the light. “I don’t care about fancy. You’ll be there.”

While Peter had lots of things to reply, his words were cut off by slightly chapped lips eagerly pressing against his own. It took Peter a second to recognize what in the glorious hell was happening – when the reality of the situation finally registered, Peter surged forward, tilting his head to not only return the kiss, but deepen it.

Both of Peter’s hands found their way around Tony’s neck to keep him close – he felt like he might pass out from the sheer goodness of Tony surrounding him without the grounding touch. He was far from a virgin, but none of his previous encounters knocked him off his feet in such a way that made Peter feel like a fumbling newbie.

Sipping from each other’s mouths, Peter was surprised by a strange and unrecognizable voice coming from behind them – “the light’s changed, fellas.”

It took an obscene amount of effort to pull away – though the stranger’s words made his face burn with embarrassment, Peter was reluctant to step out of Tony’s embrace and the tantalizing press of warm lips against his own. Regardless of his trepidation, Peter reluctantly moved back.

He made sure to slip his hand into Tony’s before they set off again.

“I’m just another couple of blocks away,” Peter reassured, a hungry smirk on his face. Tony returned the look, their stride all of the sudden lengthening. Their walk turned from a leisurely stroll to a brisk half-run. If it weren’t for the want raging through Peter’s veins, he might’ve found the change hilarious. In all of their time together, Tony never expressed impatience – he always seemed calm, cool, and collected. Yet, in the face of heat and need and the promise of bare skin, Tony let that mask drop.

Happy to know a new something about Tony, Peter reveled in the pent-up silence that carried them back to his apartment. Snagging a ground floor unit close to the entrance, they luckily didn’t have to wait for an elevator or awkwardly pretend that they weren’t about to push the other against the wall and start ravaging whatever pieces of skin they could find. Instead, Peter impatiently pulled Tony behind him as they walked between building 1 and 2 with eager steps.

After some fumbling and a set of dropped keys, Peter finally got his door open and Tony through it. Without missing a beat, Tony pushed him back against the newly closed front door, their lips harshly joining. Groaning at the contact and suddenness of it all, Peter pulled Tony in – any space left between them was unacceptable now that they were in a private space where wandering eyes and clicking cameras couldn’t see. Their obvious passion was too much for the public eye; Peter so desperately wanted to keep Tony to himself – devouring him in a safe space was only the first step.

As Tony traced his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue, Peter fumbled his hands down the older man’s chest until he could pull the crisp button-down from well-tailored pants. The second he was able, Peter shoved his hands under the soft fabric, his palms greedily pressing into Tony’s hairy chest. A groan left his mouth – the chest hair under his fingers was soft and teasing. Peter was caught between the urge to tug at the strands and lay his head gently against them just to feel the texture against his skin.

Tony made the decision for him – large hands were suddenly on Peter’s waist, his feet coming up off the ground with little effort. Unable to keep his hands where they were, Peter broke the kiss with a groan and shifted until he could wrap his legs around Tony’s hips. Peter panted for breath while his lips were still free as Tony navigated through the room blindly. Another soft moan left Peter’s lips when his back hit the pliable leather of his couch.

Where just moments before they were standing chest to chest, Peter now had the full weight of Tony against him. The older man fit seamlessly between his splayed thighs, their hips lining up in a way that made Peter’s cock pulse against the confines of his tight jeans. With a bit of shifting, their groins were matched – Tony’s thick cock felt sinful against Peter’s. If his impending orgasm was already upon him, Peter wondered what it’d be like when their clothes hit the floor and he really got to taste what Tony had to offer.

Like he was reading his mind, Tony made quick work of the buttons on Peter’s shirt. Calloused hands dragged up and down Peter’s bare chest as he pushed the navy fabric to the side – his skin was practically hairless, the only exception being a small trail of it leading down to the v of his jeans. Tony let his fingers play through that small amount of hair, his fingers teasing as they got closer to the one spot that Peter wanted him to be the most.

Deciding to take his mind off of the heat in his belly and the closeness of his orgasm, Peter returned the favor. His hands were shaky as he passed button after button through their holes. With a gasp, Peter spread the sides of Tony’s shirt to get the maximum impact of the older man’s torso. He liked what he felt before, but the view was something else – Tony’s chest was chiseled and cut, his pecs and abs straining with effort. Peter noticed throbbing veins and a few scars in his perusal; the evidence of Tony’s life and the way he lived it made Peter pull the man a little closer. Tony Stark drove him absolutely mad – every new thing he learned contributed to the insanity even more.

Before he could get lost in the thought, Tony’s lips were skating along his cheek, only to stop and caress the outer shell of Peter’s ear. “You feel amazing, Pete,” Tony babbled, his tongue peeking out to join in on the fun. “I want to taste you, feel your cock pulse against my tongue. You’re so fucking hard and I can’t fucking wait. Is that okay?”

Peter pulled back then, a soft grin pulling at his lips. In all of his sexual encounters, Peter couldn’t recall someone caring about him so thoroughly, let alone stopping to ask how he felt. Both hands came up to grip Tony’s cheeks until the older man was looking right at him. Through the haze of arousal, Peter recognized that warm spark in Tony’s eye – it was the look in that first picture that kept Peter coming back for more.

“It’s perfect, Tony. I’ll take anything you want to give me,” Peter said breathlessly. He leaned up for a kiss to drive the words home.

Tony looked genuinely happy when Peter pulled away – his cheeks were flushed with obvious arousal, his lips quirked in a saucy smile. Without saying anything, Tony nodded his head and travelled slowly down the length of Peter’s body. Nimble fingers made quick work of the button and zipper of his jeans before Peter could think or even draw his next breath.

Sturdy hands didn’t hesitate to pull at the waistband of Peter’s boxers – his flushed cock was already leaking as it came to rest casually against the firm abs of Peter’s chest. Tony’s calloused fingers immediately wrapped around the length, giving a tight squeeze to the base. The sheer feeling of his crush’s hands on him was almost enough for Peter to jump straight over the edge. Catching Tony’s eyes and biting down on his bottom lip was his only saving grace – the knowing look in beautiful hazel eyes pulled a chuckle from Peter’s chest, the noise distraction enough.

“Okay?” Tony asked again, the words were spoken with his mouth hovering just inches from the pulsing flesh of Peter’s cock. He could feel Tony’s breath against his sensitive skin, everything about the situation making it hard to articulate or think or exist as anything other than a melted puddle of goo against broken-in leather.

Peter took a couple of deep breaths before nodding vigorously. He felt a red flush travel even further down his neck and torso, arousal and embarrassment mixing together to create the ultimate aphrodisiac. He finally found his voice, muttering a choked off “yes” before the motor function of speaking left him once more.

After a heartbeat and then another where neither man moved, Tony gripped the sharp bones of Peter’s hips, pushing his lower body down against the cushions. They shared another look as Tony lowered his head, his pink tongue poking out to lick lightly against the leaky head of Peter’s cock. Hazel eyes stayed on him – Tony continued to lap along his sensitive skin, all while killing Peter slowly with the heat and want reflecting back. By the time Tony had all of Peter in his mouth, Peter was seconds away from being undone.

It’d been so long, and he’d wanted Tony since he understood what attraction was. Being pinned down by the person he desired longer than some of his friendships did nothing but magnify everything that was happening. His skin felt like it was on fire under Tony’s touch – the suction around his cock felt like it was coming from all angles, everywhere, all at once. Unable to stop himself, Peter moaned, panted, and shamelessly shouted Tony’s name as the blissful seconds passed.

The telling zip of a zipper being pushed down, and Tony’s hasty shift told Peter that Tony was similarly affected. He picked up his head to watch Tony suck his cock down while his right hand moved at the same pace – while he took Peter’s cock into his throat, Tony was stroking his own erection with sure strokes. As if the heat around him wasn’t enough, the beautiful visual of Tony taking his own pleasure pushed him those last couple of steps over the edge.

Bubbling heat in his belly boiled over. Peter frantically reached down to grip Tony’s shoulder, his mouth wordlessly shaping around warning words. “I’m – I’m… fuck, Tony. I’m going to cum,” Peter finally managed to gasp out. There was just enough time for Tony to pull away, to let Peter’s pleasure splatter on the blood warm skin of Peter’s stomach. Yet, Tony held fast, instead – he redoubled his efforts, his lips tightening and throat relaxing in invitation.

Unable to stop himself, Peter let go – his hips thrust up into Tony’s enticing heat, the man’s name dripping from his lips as pulse after pulse of cum left his body. Tony moaned around him, swallowing easily without pulling his mouth away or stopping his ministrations. The suction continued until Peter was reaching down halfheartedly to push at Tony’s soft curls.

While he caught his breath, Tony crawled up Peter’s body, a self-satisfied smirk on his red cheeks. Peter grinned at him, happiness and satiation rolling off of him in waves. Without thought, Peter pulled Tony tightly to him, their lips finding each other like opposite poles of magnets drawn together by the sheer force of nature. Tony shared Peter’s taste with him, his talented tongue thrusting into Peter’s mouth with a shared groan between them. It was all so hot; Peter felt his spent cock already starting to come back to life.

With that thought in mind, Peter started to reach down to help Tony finish achieving his own pleasure; yet his hand was batted away with affectionate finesse. Peter shifted until he could meet the honey hazels he was already addicted to, a question in his eye.

“There’s no need,” Tony mumbled, his face tucking into the skin of Peter’s neck. “You’re so sexy, I couldn’t help but touch myself. The way you look in the throes of pleasure – it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”

“Holy shit.”

Tony chuckled at the awe in Peter’s voice. “My sentiment exactly.”

For a while, they stayed stretched out on Peter’ couch, exchanging kisses and greedy touches on all the bare skin either could reach. Without so much adrenaline coursing through his system, Peter felt himself melting even further into the comfy cushions below him. After a jaw breaking yawn, Peter reached up to cup Tony’s cheek, pulling the man’s attention towards him.

“Want to stay over?” Peter asked quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. Though they were spent and wrapped up in each other, Peter wasn’t sure where Tony stood. There was a big difference between the type of intimacy physical touch and sleeping next to another human being required. The last few days, Peter fell asleep with Tony’s messages open on the bed next to him – actually sleeping side by side, in person, that was a whole new step for them.

Tilting his head to the side, Tony shot Peter a tender smile before nodding and leaning down to press their lips together.

“Yeah, Pete – I want to stay.”

game seven

drabbles for alone, together / the storm before the calm / the president wears prada

Bee was waiting anxiously.  She had been since Morgan left that afternoon, a quiet confidence free of arrogance about him after she gave him one last kiss and one last “I love you” before seeing him off.  She couldn’t concentrate on work for the rest of the day – she hadn’t been able to concentrate on work since game five, really – and had pre-emptively taken tomorrow off.  Just in case.  Just because.  

She watched the game.  She watched the post-game interviews, where Morgan was ushered out first, as he always was, volunteer or not, to speak about what had just transpired.  She knew everybody could hear the pain in his voice, but they couldn’t hear the pain like she heard the pain.  They didn’t hear the same type of pain she did, that she knew he was withholding in himself, trying not to let show.  There was a dignity about him too – a dignity characteristic of him and him alone, and though people commented on it, it was much of the same thing.  They didn’t know the true dignity.  They didn’t know what it took for him to sit in front of those cameras and talk after another heartbreak.

She heard the door open.  She immediately got up from her spot on the couch and ran over, meeting him in the doorway.  His suit had been put on haphazardly.  His tie was barely done.  If she was being honest, it looked like he got hit by a truck.  He probably felt like it.

“C’mere,” Bee cooed, already bringing her hands up to cradle his face.

“Bumblebee…” he let out, exasperated, a long and heavy breath escaping him as she attached herself even more to him.  “Bumblebee, I can’t…why…” he had no words.

“C’mere, c’mon,” she led them towards their bedroom.  He sat down on the edge of their bed, leaning over and putting his head in his hands as Bee still wrapped her arms around him one way or another, leaning her head against his shoulder.  “You played amazing all series.  You showed up.”

Morgan shook his head.  He knew that.  He knew he was playing well.  It all didn’t make sense to him.  “It was 3-1,” he mumbled against his hands.

“Hmm?”

“It was 3-fucking-1,” he mumbled again, and Bee’s heart dropped.  “I don’t know what happened.  I don’t know what I could have done be—”

“Shhhhh, don’t beat yourself up over this like you always do,” she said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.  “This isn’t just on you.  I love you, Morgan.  Please don’t think it’s all your fault.  You know how unhealthy that is.”

Morgan knew Bee was right, but it didn’t feel like anything would shake this feeling.  He didn’t know what went wrong and couldn’t think of a solution.  He was desolate.  Another first round exit.  Another loss.  Another collapse.  It was the unthinkable.  He shook his head, unable to find words.  “I love you.  I’m so sorry.”

“There is nothing to apologize for.  I love you too and I’m so proud of you.”

“Are you?” he asked.

“Every single day,” she affirmed, giving him a quick kiss on the lips.  “I love you more and more every day, and I’m proud of you more and more every day, too.”

She could feel his tears later that night as she held him, running her fingers through his hair, telling him over and over how much she loved him.

***

Aberdeen’s daybed came in handy for one thing: cuddling.  William wasn’t joking when he said it was his favourite because it gave them the best cuddle sessions, but now, Aberdeen understood why.  At first, she thought it was a joke, like it was coded language that she should get at least a double bed.  But no – it wasn’t a joke.  William did really love her daybed for cuddling.  And it became abundantly clear after the events that transpired after game seven against the Montreal Canadiens.  

Aberdeen wished she could have been there.  A small part of her wished she was still working for Brendan so she could be there for the guys after the tough loss, after the collapse.  But that part of her life was over.  Despite having William and always being attached to the Leafs, there was nothing in her power that she could do to make this situation better for the team.  Instead, she knew she could only try to make this situation better for William.

So they cuddled.  William held her so often, but now, it was her turn to hold him.  She felt his tears as he buried his head into the crook of her neck; she felt his tense body despite her touch, and did everything in her power to get him to relax.  But William was on edge.  He always was after stuff like this.  He blamed himself, and she knew that, even though it was a team effort.  She didn’t even mention the very late goal he scored in the third period.  He didn’t even celebrate it.  She hated that.  William, her William, trying until the very end.

“You haven’t been online, have you?” he asked, mumbling into her skin in the middle of the night, even though neither was sleeping.

“No.  Why?”

“I don’t want you to see what they’re saying.”

“You had five goals in seven games, William.”

“You’d be surprised, minskatt.”

Aberdeen let out a breath, clutching William tighter.  “That doesn’t matter,” she said.  “What matters is that I love you and I’m proud of you.”

William raised his head when she said that.  “You’re proud?”

“Always have been.  Always will be, Willy.”

He leaned down and kissed her, eventually snuggling back into her and letting out small sighs when he felt her beginning to run her fingers through his hair.  Eventually, she felt his breathing steady, and she knew he was asleep.  

She took the opportunity to reach over and grab her phone, unlocking the screen and finding the number she needed to find.  She hadn’t texted it for months, and the last time she did, there was no response.  But she texted anyway, because she was Aberdeen, and she would not yield.  

To:  Jason Spezza

I love you and I’m so, so sorry about tonight.

***

When Fred walked through the door of his and Aleida’s townhouse, all he could hear was Helena crying.  He immediately took off his suit jacket and laid it over the couch as he walked upstairs to Helena’s bedroom, seeing Aleida trying to rock her back and forth to get her to stop crying.  Helena was wailing.  

“Fred,” Aleida’s voice was desperate as she saw him in the doorway.  “She won’t stop crying.  I’ve already fed her and—”

“Give her to me,” he said softly, outstretching his arms so Helena could be put in his arms.  “C’mon, Helena, you can stop crying.”

Aleida’s hair was in a messy, ratty bun.  Her pyjamas hadn’t been washed.  She looked like she’d been crying along with Helena.  But she still looked beautiful, like Fred knew she would.  It was a comfort of sorts, coming home after yet another disappointing first round exit, and finding your wife and newborn daughter in her bedroom.  It brought him back down to earth, in a way.  That there were things more important than hockey.

It only took about a minute or so for Helena to stop crying once Fred cradled her against his chest, overpriced collared shirt be damned.  Once she was quieter, Aleida finally looked at him.  “She’s so good when she’s with you.  She doesn’t do that for me.”

“It’s okay, Aleida.  She would have calmed down eventually.”

He could tell Aleida wanted to say something, but she didn’t.  Instead, she took another route.  “I’m so sorry.”

“About the game?”

“About the game and about not being able to calm her down—”

“Shhh…don’t apologize for that,” he interrupted.

“But I can’t do it like you can.”

“Shhh…it’s okay.  She’s a newborn.  It’ll get better.  She’ll get better.”

Some things were bigger than hockey right now.

Belated Spring 2020 Anime Overview: My Next Life as Villainess

For the Spring 2020 anime season, I mostly watched continuations of shows I was already into. The one new show I did pick up was My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! follows Katerina Claes, a spoiled young noble girl deviously scheming to win the heart of a prince- oh wait, never mind, she hit her head and remembered her past life! Turns out she’s an eighteen year old Japanese otaku chick who died and got reincarnated as the villainess in her favorite otome game. 

If you don’t feel like reading the wiki article, an otome game is basically a female- targeted dating sim where you play as a blank slate main character and date a bunch of pretty boys (and sometimes girls, but usually only if you go outside the mainstream ones), unlocking their backstories and collecting all the romantic endings.

Having played this game, Katarina is well aware that the Villainess character- who constantly tries to interfere with the game’s heroine and whichever boy she’s pursuing- is either exiled or killed in all of the games endings. And now she IS that villainess, living in the world of the game and all its characters! Does that mean she’s doomed to a horrible fate? What’s a girl to do?

Well, if you’re Katarina, what you do is be supportive and kind to the people around you and in doing so accidentally get every single character in the game to fall in love with you. And yes, this includes all the boys the heroine is supposed to date, the other female romantic rivals the heroine is faced with and the game’s heroine herself.

That’s right, we finally got us some bisexual romantic comedy hijinx last anime season, my friends! My Next Life as a Villainess was the delightful little show I really escaped into during these anxious pandemic times . All these girls casually falling in love with Katarina without it being treated as ‘weird’ was what particularly drew me to this show and warmed my gay little heart to see. It was honestly the perfect fluffy, low stress watch during these high stress times.

Anime has long been oversaturated with ‘harem’ stories- where a usually unwitting protagonist somehow gets a bevy of beauties in love with them- but it’s still unfortunately really unusual to see bisexual harems, especially ones with a girl at the center, so right away there’s a big draw to this story that helps it stick out from the rest.  (And worry not, the story is largely focused on Katarina having fun with these pals-who-are-not-so-secretly-in-love-with-her, rather than having a ton the dubious shenanigans you see in more sexually charged tales.)

Harem protoganists also famously tend to have the personality of potatoes, being so painfully bland it’s unclear why so many people would fall in love with them in the first place. But that definitely not the case for Katarina. She’s brash, ridiculous, kind and INCREDIBLY dense, and that for a pretty dynamic combination in this setting! She does genuinely come off as a fun person to be around. Unlike a lot of modern isekai shows, she doesn’t stumble into having incredible magic powers or skills, so her compassion is genuinely her greatest strength and what saves the day and wins hearts time and time again.

Katarina’s five brain cells doing their weekly check-in

(The moment she won my heart was when she responded to a tragic Frozen style situation with her friend locking himself away from people because he believed his magic was dangerous by taking an axe to his door. My kinda girl!)

The premise also allows for some plausible built-in reasons for the characters to take such special notice of Katarina- having been raised in a different world, she isn’t beholden to all the social rules, class divisions and noble family drama all the other kids in this very specific midevial-esque fantasy world are so embroiled in. This combined with her naturally earnest, accepting and straightfoward nature means she’s able to cross boundaries and reach out to them in a way they aren’t accustomed to. She was significant in each character’s life because she genuinely was the first to show them acceptance and affection without pretense, if only because she isn’t even aware there was supposed to be a pretense.

Katarina’s focus on trying not to die and her fear she’s going to meet the same fate as the villainess in the game also at least gives some kind of a basis to her comical obliviousness to everyone being in love with her. She assumes that everyone has to be into Maria (the heroine) and terrified of her because that’s how the game GOES okay, that’s CANON! Of course, this logic stretches thin as time goes on and it would be abundantly clear to most people that things have diverged greatly from the game’s storyline, but the show makes it clear that Katarina’s determined, one track mind is as much a gift as a curse. 

Her bullheadedness when it comes to picking up how everyone REALLY feels about her is an intentional gag on the show’s part and even her love interests are well aware of what a colossal dumbass she is and not afraid to point it out!

My Next Life as a Villainess isn’t without its flaws, and the personalities/backstories of some of the ‘love interests’ Katarina gathers may be a stumbling block on some- mostly the male ones.  Geordo, “the black hearted prince” has a bit of the “ possessive shoujo bad boy” archetype about him, and though he’s far from the worst that genre of love interest has to offer (there’s not much bad he can get up to due to Katarina’s obliviousness, the lighthearted nature of the show, and his rivals constantly getting in his way), the way he refuses to break Katarina and his engagement off despite her repeatedly asking him to, as well as some of his lines here and there, are definitely NOT cute. 

Keith is Katarina’s adopted brother, but clearly has a thing for her too. On one hand, they only first met when they were nine and he fell for her pretty immediately. On the other hand, he still refers to her as “sister” constantly which is kinda eesh. 

The other two guys are all right- Nicol’s big thing is he’s inexpressive and doesn’t talk much which, considering show doesn’t spend much time inside his head, doesn’t make him a very interesting character in the ensemble (maybe he comes across better in the novels) but there’s nothing wrong with him. Alan is undoubtedly the Best Boy in my book. He’s another common trope- rambunctious and competitive with Katarina but clearly soft for her- but he’s done well and they have a lot of cute moments together.

I find the girl love interests to be a much more interesting group overall, though this may be my obvious bias talking. Sophia has the strongest connection to Katarina, their backstories being intertwined in a surprising and touching way (I’m told in the novels her affection for Katarina was treated as more platonic, but the anime definitely plays it up as having romantic elements). Maria’s original role as the game’s heroine puts her in the most interesting position (and would make her the most narratively satisfying choice of love interest, if the show was actually interested in choosing). And while Mary is comically tenacious in her pursuit of Katarina, she’s doesn’t ever act ‘sinister’ or overstep boundaries in the way Geordo does, her “scheming” only really amounting to straightforwardly asking if Katarina wants to ditch her fiance and run away with her. 

As I mentioned, one thing that really contributes to My Next Life as a Villainess being a relaxing watch is that the queer characters are treated with casual acceptance. Mary in particular isn’t subtle about her crush on Katarina, but nobody bats an eye at her and she’s completely open and comfortable with herself too. The observing maid notes that the girls are in love with Katarina with the same bland affect as when she notes she notes the guys are. And while the social practices of the nobles are pretty heteronormative- girls are always engaged in arranged marriages to guys, the guys are expected to dance with the girls (something Mary complains about!)- there’s apparently a booming queer romance novel industry that inspires our young wlw.

Katarina, having grown up in a different world, seems to be the one most prone to heteronormativity of her group. She never really considers  that a girl would ever fall in love with her, but is also never hostile to the idea. It’s telling that when Mary very clearly indicates her desired romantic partner would be a girl, Katarina’s the only one that gets tripped up and has to walk back her assumption that Mary would be talking about a guy. 

Mary LAYING DOWN THE LAW

Also, Katarina has  SEVERAL “she’s so cute! My heart is beating faster!” moments with the other girls, on par in frequency with her moments with the guys. This strongly hints she’s an oblivious bisexual disaster.

So, My Next Life as Villainess is a fun, frothy watch and the rare positive example of silly wish-fufillment that’s inclusive to a wlw audience. But is the actual plot good, or remotely complex? The answer to that is no, the plot is fairly predictable and one definitely shouldn’t got into this story expecting a deep examination of the nature of fate or anything like that.There’s no real explanation of big reason as to why why Katarina was reborn into this game world and so on.

 The antagonist that does eventually emerge plays off otome game tropes a bit, but ultimately isn’t that interesting or built up all that well. . The attempts at drama the show makes towards the end fall a little flat, especially since it tends to rely on very-late-in-the-game-exposition-dumps (dark magic isn’t even MENTIONED as existing in this world until like, the second to last episode where it becomes relevant and we get a vague infodump explaining its mechanics). The conflict honestly almost feels shoehorned in and the climax is pretty standard and doesn’t really utilize the big cast of characters all that well

But in the end, that’s okay! The show makes it abundantly clear from the beginning it’s not here to be Deep, but to be some silly fun. And it really fulfills that purpose well, from it’s catchy, peppy theme tune to its consistently warm tone. It MAY get repetitive at times for some, and I do have some quibbles- like how I found the childhood segments to be some of the shows best material and wish we could have stayed in that section for a bit instead of rushing through it, how I wish Katarina had kept her cute little scar, etc- but overall, it was definitely the soothing balm I needed during a very rough time and I absolutely recommend it if you’re looking for a chill, feel-good watch.

 And hey, a second season’s supposed to be on the way too, so there’s something to potentially look forward to!

I found all the Pokémon in snap!! Finally!! (I had help lol)

My tips?

Just play the game, no seriously most of them are going to show up eventually on their own! Most on lvl 3 maps.

If you level up a map DON'T HIT REPLAY you will replay at your old level! Exit to the camp and go back into the map for new stuff to start appearing!

Complete quests! Try them first on your own, some of them are very straightforward and simple, some of them are gonna require a walkthrough 😅 that's ok! Just understand that most of the walkthroughs online were created quickly with "wait how did we do that???" players behind them! You may have to tweak what you do to get them to work (or find a different guide)

Don't get so caught up in completion that you forget to have fun! I did this, realized I was frustrated and not enjoying the things I was achieving and took a step back! It's a buggy game, just have fun with it!

Realize you can change the lvl of any map! I did not!! Lolol in small letters it says "x to change level" There are some quests and pokémon unavailable in the higher levels!

Those are the basic ones I can think of rn 😅 if you're ok with spoilers see below the cut for how to find some of the harder ones!

Ok! So some of the names of the places are just gonna be what I call them because I'm tired and don't have my switch on me 😅 you'll know what I mean I promise, also I'm not including different star walkthroughs! Only how to find the Pokémon!

Lugia: I'm putting this one first because I loath it in it's entirety. I swear the rest are nowhere near this complicated

Location: Undersea Cave (underwater map) must be a least lvl 3

Instructions: Scan to take the alternate path into the deep cave (once you're at level 3 this will be open automatically but you can open it before by throwing an orb at the Clawitzer as it shoots into the cave on the left early in the map! If you hit the kelp forest you've gone too far/haven't unlocked Clawitzer yet!)

You should see Starmie swimming around, this is how you know you're on the right level and path! As you pass Tentacruel you'll start your decent to the sea floor.

Look around spastically (I'm not kidding every walkthrough video I've seen has just turned in fast, crazy circles) until you see a Lanturn against the wall and immediately hit it with an orb, you'll know you've done it in time if it dives down instead of joining the throng of pokémon swimming up.

Wailmer/lord will block your view for a second but you should see a couple of Frilish now harassing said Lanturn. Hit it with and orb again to help it fight off the Frilish. It'll be grateful to you and show you a new path! (You'll still need to scan it!) You'll find Lugia around the corner on your right (it's hard to miss!)

There's a Crystal Bloom above it near a sleeping Magikarp, if you hit the bloom it should wake Lugia up! Have fun and memorize this because you have to do all of this EVERY TIME 😄

.

Celebi: It's just there!

Location: Evermore Forest (is that right??? The mystery forest)

Instructions: get to level 3 on the forest (you may have to "beat" the game I'm not sure) and make your way to the end! Don't take the Sun Field route, go where the Beware are, then look immediately to your right! Celebi is flying around and will continue to zip around you!

.

Jirachi and Absol: again they just show up after beating the game!

Location: The Ruins

Jirachi is sleeping on top of the 2nd flower pool and Absol will be hanging out near the end! Once you find/interact with them they'll be around in other places as well!

.

Mew: mew!!

Location: Jungle Forest (night) you must "beat" the game first!

Immediately upon start turn all the way around, hit the two Murell with an orb and play the melody, they'll dance and a familiar pink orb with spring out of the trees!

After a few seconds of flying around it'll pause in front of you, throw a fluff fruit at it and start snapping pics!

I haven't managed to achieve this myself yet but apparently if you manage to hit and get a picture of Mew every time it shows up, it'll then appear right in front of you at the end of the course! Get pictures and they should be flying around day and night without prompting!

.

Suicune: tiny bit complicated

Location: Snow World (names man I'm sorry) Night

So actually activating Suicune isn't hard, getting to them isn't either but it's a lot of steps!

So if you haven't unlocked the 2 alt paths for this level you'll need to do that first so let's go over that!

Start in the day at lvl 2 and look to your left to see an Alolan Sandslash, take its picture! Keep looking to your left and, just beyond Beartic, up high on a snow drift you'll spot the rascal again, again snap a photo! And he'll lead you to a new path! Hurray! (Scan for it of course)

Now that path is open at night as well so, once you're finished, head back in at night lvl 2. Take the new path and you should find a Crabominable punching trees (as you do). He'll eventually go to punch a tree on your left that an Abomasnow is sleeping beside. Chuck an orb before he punches, this'll drop snow on Mr Aboma who will wake up pissy and will scare out a Froslass, take her picture! She'll be shy and show you yet ANOTHER path! (Scan ofc) Now you may want to just explore this area first as there's quite a few new Pokémon here! Both routes are now available day and night!

Anyways once you're out of a cave you'll pass through, you'll emerge to a Jynx riding an Avalugg through the water. Throw an orb at her and she'll raise her hands. At this point look to your right and Suicune should eventually run out from behind the glacier!

(btw Glaceon is up on top of the cliff at the natural end of this level! Where all the Spheal are!)

.

Ho-oh: just chillin

Location: Volcano

Immediately look to your right between the two cliffs to catch them in flight! You have to take pictures every time they show up to get them to spawn at the end and I have yet to achieve this 😅 but hey we're just here to fill out the photodex right?

.

Dianice and Jolteon: Oh THAT'S where Jolteon is hiding!!

Location: Ice Cave

I'm pretty sure you have to be at lvl 3 but not 100%

Take the Crystal Cave route near all the Croagunk (on the other side of the river) once you pass through the smaller cave, look down to find a Malwile and two Carbinks, orb all 3 of them and look to your right, Dianice will come out towards the happy sounds! If you orb her she'll give you some multi star reactions!

Her presence will have made the 2nd Malwile, the one standing on the crystal who refuses to face you, move revealing a secret path, scan for it, take a picture of the Malwile cause it's finally facing you and you'll descend behind the wall! Jolteon will be hiding in some leaves to your left! (The pictures will register! I'm sure it comes out eventually)

.

Gardevoir and Ninetales: and the winter route!

Location: Evermore Forest (again!)

Be sure to be at lvl 3 as it's the only lvl this works on (not max!)

Scan and melody until you can make a right turn, this will ensure Trevenant is out of the way of the path! Espeon will run in front of you and sit, orb her! She'll lead you to the winter forest path!

Gardevoir is hard to miss and Ninetales shows up to your right far away, and towards the end of the winter path will still be to the right but closer!

Have you managed to do the Lost Little Deerling quest/path yet? If not:

Once you pass to the next part of the forest (where Sawsbuck jumps in front of you...3 star pic btw) look immediately to your right and orb the flower. You'll hear and then see a Deerling pop up! Orb the next flower, then you'll see 2 flowers, you wanna hit the one furthest back but NOT the closer one. Then hit the Espeon flower, which will still draw out Espeon but this time she has a friend :3 papa (mama?) Sawsbuck will be thrilled (pics of Deerling to complete the quest!) and all 3 will lead you to the Sun fields! Scan to take the path, it's near those two adorable Espurrs!

If you took the winter path Gardevoir and Ninetales will be here as well! Gardevoir will eat a Fluffruit now and Ninetales will be happy with an orb!

(a loooot of the quests for this map are also in this part of the forest!)

Welp...that was long!! But I hope it helps!! Let me know if there's any Pokémon you're missing that I didn't mention!!

Out of Place (4/6)

Author: @wordsfromthesol Pairing: Dick Grayson x Reader Summary: Meeting Dick, and the rest of the batboys.  You’re confused, since you are nowhere near Bludhaven or Gotham. Some tragedies, some battles, etc. Happy ending because I’m a sap. Warnings: Language, blood and torture and other injuries Word Count: 1.2k A/N: Second part! I’m almost finished with the story and hope to post the rest soon.

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 5   Part 6

The two slumped onto the couch and waited, trying to wrap their minds around what happened. Analyzing Cheshire’s words.

A few hours later Tim walked into the apartment. “You two want to tell me where I am? And why I’m here?”

The two boys filled their younger brother in on everything that happened over the past year.

“Wait, that’s why you two sneak off all the time. To come here? Man, she’s really got some deep hooks to snag you both.”

Dick glanced towards Jason, though he did like to torment his brother. Now was simply not the time. “Yeah, well, she is a good friend and let’s me get away from dad…plus, have you seen her?” Okay, maybe a little teasing.

Dick glared at him. Jason knew that stare all to well.

“Right, well here’s what I’ve found. Her dad. That’s the only one important enough in her family to warrant this. Even I can’t figure out exactly what he does for the government. They are either using her to get to him, or he has given her some valuable information.” Tim continued to explain everything he could find out about her family. “Wait, neither of you two knew her dad?”

“She just always waved it off, saying he’s a boring government official. He lives pretty far away, so we’ve never met him either.” Dick’s voice was shaking as he realized how little he actually knew about her family, even though she always claimed to be close with them.

“I’ll find her Dick, give me some time…and some coffee.”

Two days later, Tim walked into the bedroom. “Dick, I’ve got something.”

Meanwhile…

You woke up, god know where, chained to a chair. Great. What have the boys gotten me into now.

“HEY! The brat’s awake!”

You tried to be your normal snarky self, but quickly realized they had gagged you. Your eyes widened as you watched Ra’s al Ghul walk into the room. The boys had showed his picture countless times. Hell, it had been pinned on your living room wall for weeks until the boys dropped the case.

“Oh good. Time to get some information.”

You had no idea how much time had gone by. You had passed out multiple times due to the pain. Even if you knew what they wanted, you wouldn’t have given it to them anyways. Finally, it seems some minor reprieve had been given. You surveyed your body, at least the pieces you could see. There were more cuts and bruises than you’ve probably had in your 24 years on this planet.

“Sorry to stop the fun. I’m afraid if I continue, I may not get my information before you die. Can’t have that can we…”

You watched him lay the instruments of torture on a table and ushered for someone standing in the shadows to come near. She began to stitch you up, but you soon passed out once again from the pain. You awoke to a knife dragging down your leg. Fuck. You controlled the scream.

“Look, you have been at this for days. Slicing me up, just to stitch me back up. Some of the first day of torture wounds still aren’t healed. If I knew what you wanted, don’t you think I would’ve given it to you?”

“Maybe…or maybe you’re just as stubborn as those birdies you are so fond of. Though it has occurred to me, that maybe you don’t even know you have what we are looking for.”

“Great, so let me pull that information out of my ass.” Then everything went black. Guess the demon didn’t like sarcasm. You awoke to someone’s hand sliding over your leg. You’d rather not see the new torturer, “Since when did we go to the gentle approach boys. That didn’t even rip the stitches…” Eyes still closed, you smirked as your mind wandered to your boys.

“Y/N? HOOD! RED ROBIN! SHE’S HERE!” You still hadn’t responded. “Y/N? Please.”

Refusing to open your eyes, you knew this was another trick. It had to be. “What? The physical torture isn’t enough? Now it’s time for mind games too? I still don’t even know what you want! How can I give you something I don’t have!”

“Y/N/N, Y/N, please. Open your eyes. Just open them. You’ll see. I’m here, me and Jay both. Your boys are here. We even brought our baby brother.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Shut it, replacement. This isn’t about you.” Jason knelled on the other side of you and started working on the chains. You still hadn’t summoned the courage to open your eyes. After all, this had to be a trick. They tried getting in your mind once before, but you knew. This time…this time, felt so real.

“Touching moment really guys, but we have company. Hood, I’m going to need you here.”

Dick finished unlocking the chains and cupped your face in his hands. “Please, Y/N. I thought I lost you. I can’t lose you.” His lips smashed against yours. Your eyes sprung open, well as best they could from all the surrounding bruises.  

“Dick, is it really you?” Jason slid across the floor landing near your chair.

“Hey, Y/N/N.”

“Jay?”

“Yeah, look…this is great and all. But we are getting are asses handed to us.”

“Right, okay. Dick go help, I’m okay. What’s the plan?” An unfamiliar voice answered.

“We got charges ready to blow, don’t need to beat them. Just get past the right point.”

As the three vigilantes kept the leaguers at bay, you finished picking the locks to your ankle chains. Honestly, you weren’t okay. But you couldn’t let them know that, you couldn’t cloud their minds now. You hadn’t stood in days, but you summoned all the energy you had left and lifted yourself from the chair. “I’m free,” you called out, “where to?” The unfamiliar costumed man pointed at a small opening in the wall. At least it was narrow enough that you could hold onto the walls for support. Though you didn’t know if your arms would be useful either. You headed for the opening.

“Wait, Y/N! Me first, we don’t know what’s on the other side!” Jason ran over to you. Finally looking at you. “Y/N…god. How are you even standing?”

“Hood, go.” That was all you could muster out. You’re breathing getting shallower by the second. You followed Jason through the corridor, Dick, and their brother following closely behind. You heard blasts coming from where you had just been, and the sounds were making your head spin worse. Finally, you all emerged. Shit. You fell to the ground. Dick quickly spun around and caught you.

“We need another plan. She can’t walk to the escape route.”

“Fuck.” Jason whispered. They had you three days. Three days and you were clinging to life.

“Don’t worry, I had a plan B.” Tim smirks as a jet comes into view and lands just as a hoard of leaguers come running towards them. Batman and Robin, in turn, run to meet the leaguers. “Get her in the jet, NOW!” Red Robin and Red Hood bounded towards the oncoming assault.

Dick races towards the jet and places her inside. “Y/N. I can’t lose you. Fight. Fight for me in here,” Dick taps her chest, “I’m going to fight for you out there.” He races to join his brothers in the fight.

At present, Summer Pockets it the latest visual novel from Key/Visual Arts. It's highly likely that you're familiar with their works. Everyone knows about Clannad and Angel Beats, but they have plenty of other good stories like Little Busters, Kanon, and Rewrite. They are a visual novel studio that and their work often gets adapted into anime and even manga. Some of which I watch the anime adaptation first. Currently, Summer Pockets does not have an adaptation. Since I already liked their older works, both their anime and visual novels, I figured I would check this out. The main character of Summer Pockets is Haira Takahara who had recently been suspended from school. He ended up going to an island after an invitation from his aunt Kyouko to go through his deceased grandmother's belongings. Another relative, Umi was invited over and it's not specified how she's related to the main character. At least, not right away. To his surprise, his aunt doesn't have him help right away and tells him to go explore the island. Most days, Kyouko just ends up doing the work herself, continuing to tell Hairi to just to whatever he wants. After the first few days, where he meets everyone, the player will have to choose where they'd like to go on the island. A character is displayed in the locations where you can interact with them. There are only four characters that have routes: Shiroha Naruse, Ao Sorakado, Tsumugi Wenders, and Kamome Kushime. Hairi and Shiroha start off on the wrong foot. It really doesn't help that they met at a pool at night while she was in her underwear. Then there's Ao, who happens to be really perverted and will read into anything that anyone says. Then there's the two innocent characters Tsumugi and Kamome. Tsumugi is a calm and honest girl who is searching for something she wants to do and Kamome is a mysterious girl always dragging a suitcase around with her. There are a couple other girls that cannot be dated: Shizuku Mizuori and Miki Nomura, Nomiki for short. Shizuku is always hanging around Tsumugi and she has some weird obsession with boobs. Nomiki is one of the island's Public Order Executives, protecting the island's morals daily. She dislikes seeing anyone in public shirtless. There does happen to be a guy on the island who likes to not wear a shirt: Ryouichi Mitani. He likes to take it off regardless of where he is. The other main male character is Tenzen Kanou, who has an unhealthy obsession with Table Tennis. While there are four main routes, there are some extras. When you're first introduced to Tenzen, you have the option of playing Table Tennis with him. You can choose to play more of it when you get further in the visual novel. There's also a Pokemon parody where you find monsters around the island and have them battle each other. Just some nice extra distractions. Overall, it's an okay amount of content right here, but you really only have to do the four main routes to unlock the true route. Key's other visual novels took me a lot longer so I don't feel like the game's current price tag is entirely justified. In a lot of their visual novels, once you complete the main routes, you unlock some kind of "after story" which functions as the game's true route which leads to the real ending. Their first visual novel, Kanon didn't have that. This only really became the norm when they released Clannad. It seems that they've continued to do so. This game has not one, but two true routes. You unlock the alka route when you complete the scenarios for Shiroha, Ao, Tsumugi, and Kamome. It shouldn't really be a spoiler to say that Shiroha is the true/canon ship since Key's visual novels usually make it clear which one is. As you go through this route, certain things start to become more clear, like why the game is called Summer Pockets and what some of the characters have been hiding from everyone. When you get to the true routes, the game turns into a kinetic visual novel. In other words, your choices don't matter. I'm not the biggest fan of those visual novels, but here I'm fine with it since the true routes are rewards for completing the main game. The alka route has choices to make, but the second true route, the pockets route doesn't have any choices at all. When it comes to Key's visual novels, they usually start off with a normal concept but as you get far enough, you'll find plenty of supernatural elements. Most of their visual novels have a route or two without from what I've seen. However, pretty much all of them have something supernatural about them. Then in the true route, there's usually some big secret, always something not possible in our world. So much happened in these routes and then this visual novel managed to do something that none of their others had done before. A lot of people that are familiar with their works know them to be sad, but I managed to make it through most of them without crying, I shed more than a few tears on the true routes in Summer Pockets. I try not to think about what happened because I don't want to start back up again. Even with all the sad endings, there's usually some kind of happy ending. However, Key isn't always the best at these. There's usually something that isn't clear or just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In the case of Summer Pockets, it was just way too abrupt. I would've preferred that it keep going a bit longer and have a bit more detail on what happened with the characters at the end. Overall, it was a good story, even if it did steal elements from a lot of their past works: moving in with aunt like in Kanon, the family themes from Clannad, the setting from Air, the "this girl was in a coma the whole time" thing that BOTH Clannad and Kanon have done, etc. Even if they did steal from themselves, it still was a solid story and one of their saddest so far. It wasn't perfect though. While it did have plenty of well-written moments full of comedy or sadness, there were plenty of awkward moments as well. The story may have been good, but I do feel a bit cheated. I felt like Summer Pockets had less to offer in comparison to their other visual novels like Clannad and Little Busters. It wouldn't bother me so much if the game's price tag wasn't as high as it is so I'm glad I got it while it was on sale. I was a little disappointed that there were only four datable characters. Even their first visual novel, Kanon had more than that. It turns out there's an expansion that adds four more routes, so you can spend more time with Shizuku, Nomiki, an all new girl, and Umi. I expect Umi's to not be a romance route for more than one reason. The expansion was announced one year after the original came out in Japan... while the original was in the middle of getting localized. I really hope we can get the new stuff as DLC instead of having to buy it separately, but we're just not going to know until it comes out. It HAS been confirmed that Key plans on bringing that version to Steam though and considering most of their stuff on Steam has been released in English, we can probably expect the expansion to be in English as well. Despite feeling it was somewhat lacking in content (to be honest, the price tag is to blame for that), I enjoyed my time quite a bit with this visual novel. Now that I've completed the main story, I feel pretty sad that it's over. I do have the extra content to take care of, so I could get on that. I also look forward to whenever the expansion gets released in the west. There are plenty of things I liked about this visual novel: the sprite work was great and some of the girls were pretty adorable. The soundtrack has some of their most memorable songs, so lately I'm often hearing them in my head. There was some nice attention to detail too. Whenever you complete a girl's route, she disappears from the title screen. In the end, Summer Pockets was a great read and I'm hoping that this will get an anime adaptation at some point. After reading through, I can tell it would be a challenge to adapt but considering Little Busters happened, I wouldn't say it's impossible. If you're a fan of Key's stuff or love visual novels, I highly recommend checking this out, but you should probably wait for a price drop or get the expansion when and if that gets localized.

Steam prison is genuinely a good game. Like the world and fantasy of the whole thing really immerses you, and each of the love interests are complex well written characters. Not only that but each of the endings adds more to the story and some of the “none good endings” can even be seen as better if you’re more interested in the world’s politics instead of smooching some guys.

Plot:

The plot is as follows. 400 years ago there was a big flood. All of the scientists made a tower in the sky to escape the flood. They left for their new country and didn’t allow the rest of the people to join them because they didn’t have enough room. The flood came and killed most of the people, their culture and animals, but they managed to rise up anyway and create steam punk land.

The main character Cyrus is from the heights (the tower), one of the descendants of those scientists that left. She’s a police officer and people only descend to the lower level nowadays if they’ve committed a crime. They’re exiled to the “depths”.

After checking out the depths on an observation mission after passing a police exam, (Because police are required to look at the sanctuary district in the depths if they move up in rank) Cyrus’s parents are murdered and she is charged with the crime of their murder. She’s immediately exiled with no formal investigation into the depths.

Each route focuses on her exile in a little different way uncovering a little bit more of why her parents were murdered and about this world.

  Ines:

Usually I firmly advocate for players to choose their first character to play and not get a set of guidelines or something. However in this case I really like playing Ines’s route first because he’s the only route that lets you truly punch your parent’s murders face (besides just uncovering who ordered it or why).

Ines is the second in command of the HOUNDS, the police who monitor the criminals in the sanctuary district. The HOUNDS are basically the definition of police brutality, killing and hunting their criminal victims as much as they want and beating people up. Ines follows the Head’s orders knowing it’s evil under hope that he can go back to the Heights someday and investigate the crime his partner was charged with.

The Hounds don’t come to the depths themselves out of choice, they’re moved dishonorabley there too, making most of them very very bitter. In the Heights Police work in pairs and if one police officer commits a crime and is exiled their pair isn’t reassigned they’re moved discharged and moved into the Hounds. But Ines never believed his partner committed a crime and thinks it was falsified charges sort of like what’s happening with you.

He’s lowered himself into a monster in hopes that he can get justice for the dead.

The romance in Ines’s route makes a fair bit of sense, given that Cyrus (the protagonist) becomes his teacher in the ways of nobility and is just given time to sit around all day thinking about him so her feelings develop. I don’t know why Ines loves her but the romance in this game isn’t as great as the story and that’s honestly okay.

Ines also has the added bonus of being the police officer who inspired Cyrus to become a police officer.

Also he’s one of the few good Fins paths (more on Fins later.)

 Adage:

Adage is another criminal in the depths, but he gets by a lot better than the rest because he’s a doctor so he has a lot of money and doesn’t starve as much as the rest of the criminals. He’s rather cold and cynical and Cyrus becomes his assistant because she needs a job to get money for food.

Adage has no bedside manner refusing to help patients he believes he can’t save, but he’s still a good person trying his best to save the ones he does think he can save. A lot of other reviewers said that his path was terrible romantic wise, but I think his path was honestly a lot cuter and fluffier when it came to romance. Adage’s a big fan of romance novels so even though most people who come from the heights don’t know what love is, Adage does (Despite romance novels being banned because love is a crime there and arranged marriages prevail)

His route focuses on why Cyrus was convicted of a crime she didn’t commit, his father the HOUNDS doctor saw her during her observation and wanted to use her in his experiments because of her rare blood type.

Adage and Cyrus have to confront his father together and take him out. Which his father rightfully deserves. He’s been killed and dismembering people to make a Frankenstein child.

I was shocked by Adage’s evil father because he was a good guy on the previous route except at the very end where he randomly went to jail. I always wondered what he did. It was cool to get more of the world.

 Ulrik:

Ulrik is the only character who’s actually Cyrus’s age so that’s a plus. (they’re both 18). However he’s also the only character that fits into a normal otome cliché personality of “the tsundere”

Ulrik isn’t from the Heights. He’s from deeper in the Depths and is not one of the criminals. Past the sanctuary district wall are the survivors of the original flood and steam punk town. He is one of those survivors.

It turns out that Ulrik’s father was one of the main people who built the Heights but decided to stay behind despite being offered the position because he didn’t want to abandon his family. Through the generations this story has been twisted over and over again to say that the heights abandoned him and Ulrik’s family now hates the heights and anyone who comes here, causing him to initially hate the protagonist.

Still he eventually comes to understand that the heights just has people in it just like the Depths and realizes the truth of his family.

The protagonist never learns about why she was sent to the depths instead focusing on just surviving in this route but it tells us more about the flood.

Eltwood:

The ruler of one of the districts in the depths. This guy is your classic rich playboy businessman, but he still had an air of eccentricness that made him fun. He’s enamored with the heights despite not being from there and immediately falls in love with Cyrus’s knight like ways and makes her his bodyguard. This route had a lot of knight/prince or bodyguard/person they’re guarding vibes.

Eltwood’s route focused more on the relationship the depths had with the sanctuary district with the criminals and the other districts. It had an epic conclusion and was genuinely very cool.

I didn’t like the romance in his route as much as the other routes though. Probably because he immediately convinced Cyrus to kiss him instead of hours of build up and although Cyrus consented she didn’t really know what kissing was due to the harsh censorship of the Heights and situational consent ain’t cool. I mean I was happy she consented but it felt off to me.

Still the only scene that made me cry in this dating sim happened in his route. It was in one of his not good ends, where he ends up talking about his backstory and how his father and him were invited to the heights to celebrate the saint’s 400th anniversary. His father was enamored with the heights just like him and was so excited. He finally got to the Heights and everybody made fun of him and pranked him into doing embarrassing things in front of the saint and spoke behind his back. On the way back down in the lift to the depths his father cried for the first time and through out all stuff about the heights after.

It was just such a sad scene.

 Yune:

I was really excited for Yune’s route because Yune had saved me a few times in the other routes reforming the government and exposing that Cyrus had been exiled due to false charges. Yune himself is a saint and is worshipped like a religion. He’s immortal and nobody can hurt him. Both the depths and the heights love him even though he’s only in the heights.

Yune’s route….I had some problems with the good ending maybe because I wanted Cyrus to stay in the heights. But the other endings were very good. Less a dating sim and more political intrigue in the other ends. But I love immortal characters.

Yune saves Cyrus from exile in his route to hire her as his personal attendant instead. Not because he believes she’s innocent unfortunately but because he wants her to figure out a way to kill him because he’s grown tired of immortality and nothing he does can harm him.

Over time because he’s able to be his true self with his hired assassin he grows to love her and soon realizes that the only thing that can stop his god like heart is love and when he’s close to her he grows closer to dying. Various endings do different things with this and in the good ending he’s able to take out the god rock from his chest (Because he’s like a mechanical doll it turns out and a magical rock has been put in him which requires a key to remove that’s in the depths) and restart his aging just enough so that he can live with Cyrus like a normal human.

I like the endings a lot more where Cyrus ends a relationship with him, he doesn’t die but he does reform the government to take out all the corruption that caused Cyrus to have a false crime. But if you want good things for Cyrus just wait until the Grand Ending.

 Grand Ending:

The grand ending is the route with no depths that is unlocked after you play the other five routes. I loved it despite the fact that it had no romance. Cyrus’s parents don’t die because she stops the person who tried to kill them with her fighter skills (who turns out to be her ex-fiance). Yune helps root out that he won’t be charged properly because his father is a rich noble and that he needs to reform the government so he sends Cyrus to the depths to bring back delegates so that the depths can be represented and so that the two communities can work with each other and share their various technology.

She brings back all four of the other love interests who all fight off the evil police force and reform the government.

And there is no Fins death unlike most of the other routes.

 And finally:

Fins:

Oh poor Fins. Fins is Cyrus’s partner in the police force who gets sent down to the depths to be a HOUND because she committed a crime.  He was a good boy before that.

I didn’t really understand all the love towards a side character who wasn’t romancable but…This game seriously should have just made him into a main character. He’s a romancable character in the Japanese exclusive psvita version but alas I can not speak Japanese.

The reason I think why Fins is so beloved is that during the common route after you beat one route it skips to Fins being tortured just at random moments. I just had to be like “poor buddy why am I in this POV?”

Because Fins was such a good boy he didn’t gel with the police brutality so the head of the hounds beat him up, didn’t let the doctor give him pain medicine as they healed him and then beat him up again until he was a loyal dog. And instead of just telling us that they show us that…Over and over again.

Luckily Fins believes in one thing! That Cyrus the protagonist will save him or that she’s still the only good light in his life that he’ll find someday and then he’ll be happy and whole again. Unfortunately he’s not romancable in English so that never happens.

There are a lot of bad endings that involves this guy going full yandere but in most of the canon love interest ends he dies. Brutally. Before confessing his love to Cyrus and then dying to protect her.

Fins you see was always in love with Cyrus. The game makes sure to remind you of that in all the routes he dies in brutally (Adage, Eltwood’s and Yune’s. He makes no appearance in Urrik and come in the very end of Ines’s to be Cyrus’s good friend) It continues to switch to his pov throughout other guys routes just to remind you “hey!!! Your friend is suffering and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

It was good writing but harsh. I think it would have felt a lot more whole if his route was included in the English version. And a lot of other people agree.

Luckily he never gets tortured in the Grand Ending and he and Cyrus remain police officers and he tries unsuccessfully to confess to her but she’s just too dense.

 This game had some great writing but I truly recommend playing it not for the characters but the world. The dystopian Heights doesn’t feel truly like a dystopia and I love the world about the clouds sort of thing. It’s a really cool game and the art, music and interface all make it just a lot more beautiful.

👻 Halloween Story: Stay with her Route

🎃 Please Note: This story is done like a choose your own adventure story. If you have not started reading from the beginning please do. Follow this link to start at the beginning of the story!

Even though you were a bit upset with Karin for just leaving you like that you didn’t say anything to her about it, you stayed quiet but certainly didn’t give off a cheerful demeanor. You were even more agitated now more than ever she only wanted you to stay for she wouldn’t feel bad about you sitting in your room.

Even though you would be perfectly content staying in your dorm room, you could be relaxing or actually doing something you enjoy, which right now would be anything besides this. But your thoughts were quickly interrupted when Karin grabbed your wrist and began pulling you into another room.

You quickly began complaining and even struggling against her a bit,

“What are you doing?” you argued with your attitude growing sharper by the second. 

“Like I said we’re going to play some games.” she said roughly with an attitude growing in her as well,

“I figured you should go first, maybe it’ll lighten you up.” Karin said seemingly calling out your poor attitude.

Just as you pulled your hand free from her grip she opened a door to your left and roughly pushed you through the door. Caught by surprise by her actions you tripped over your own feet through the doorway, but instead of falling to the floor you felt yourself roughly crash into someone. You felt them grab you awkwardly like they were equally caught off guard, you toppled to the floor on top of the person as Karin slammed the door leaving you both in a pitch black room.

You could tell by the way they were holding you that you were facing them. But before you could say a word they spoke “What the hell are you doing?” a voice questioned you in a demanding and agitated tone.

You stayed silently trying to figure out the male voice because you didn’t want to have to ask who this person was. But you were also certainly not in a good mood at this point and didn’t like their attitude.

“Shut up!” you shouted completely annoyed as you awkwardly tried getting back up to your feet.

“It’s not like I chose to be tossed in here like a ragdoll.” you complained. He seemed equally annoyed but he helped you get back to your feet, as he stood up as well.

“It’s not like this was my idea.” he said annoyed almost like he was trying to egg on an argument. Your eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness to the point you could vaguely make out where he was. But you couldn’t make out any of his features to see who it was, but felt like you could figure it out through his voice. Though at the same time you were not interested in standing here any longer than you had to.

You grabbed the door knob to leave the room but to no avail, you could tell it was locked after desperately twisting the knob a couple times. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” you complained out loud, you figured Karin must of locked it while you were still surprised and falling to the ground.

You could feel anger just burning up inside you as you turned around and leaned against the door, trying to look around you could tell this wasn’t really a room. Or if it was it was a tiny room and there were no windows, it was more like a large closest at best though it didn’t seem like there was anything in here. Most closets were fairly full of stuff but you didn’t feel anything on your way in.

You turned back around facing the door jiggling the door handle and feeling around to see if you could feel a lock or key hole, trying to figure out if you could feel a way to unlock the door.

“What are you doing?” he asked seemingly curious over your actions,

“I don’t see why it’s any of your business.” you retorted quickly.

“What’s your problem? We’re in the exact same situation so don’t act like your better than me.” he argued rather combatively.

It was then when it clicked in your mind of exactly who this was, “You’re Deidara.” you blurted out without thinking.

“Who the hell did you think I was?” he complained suspiciously.

“Well how do you know who I am?” you pointed out.

“Well apparently some of us can tell peoples voices apart from others better than some people.” he said sounding rather sarcastic.

Deidara was one of the few people you knew before this party, though it’s not like you’ve had much time to meet anyone at this point. He was one of the few people you did know fairly well since coming to this University, though he did have a temper that often matched yours.

Which made it easy for the two of you to end up in arguments, which happened rather frequently. However that didn’t mean you disliked him as a person, in fact you found that you got along with him rather well despite the arguments.

Deidara seemed to be growing bored of your silence “here move out of the way.” he suggested as you felt him place a hand on your shoulder and slightly shove you.

“Wait! why? what are you doing?” you questioned.

“I’ll just blow the door up.” he suggested as if it was a normal conclusion to come to.

“No No! you can’t do that!” You argued as you grabbed on to his shirt and yanked at him.

Deidara had a tendency to take things to extremes and in such a small room you felt highly at risk if he were to blow up anything. And aside from that it was made very clear from day one at being at the University that any jutsu use or even fighting in unauthorized areas or while unsupervised was forbidden.

You didn’t really want him to get in trouble but more importantly than that you didn’t want to get blamed for it and dragged into it if he started causing problems and got in trouble.

“Don’t you want to get out of here?” he asked sounding confused.

“Not THAT badly.” you complained.

“Besides they’re not gonna leave us in here all night.” you pointed out.

Though it made you wonder because the two of you had already been locked in for what felt like at least 10 or 15 minutes.

“I mean right?” you asked kind of doubting yourself a little.

“Well let’s not wait to find out!” he suggested as you heard him moving around.

“no no!” you shouted moving in front of him and shoving him rather roughly away from the door.

You seemed to catch him off guard as you felt him lose his balance, he grabbed the front of your shirt before falling to the floor and pulling you down with him. You landed squarely on top of him straddling him, but he sat up pretty quickly coming up nearly face to face with you.

Though you could barely see his figure in the darkness but you could certainly feel where he was.

“What’s your problem?” he said sounding annoyed,

“One minute you can’t wait to get out but then you won’t let me open the door!” he said trying to make sense of your actions.

“I DO want to leave, but blowing up the door isn’t the way to do that!.” you argued.

You steadied yourself to raise to your feet yet again but before you could, you felt him grab your wrist with one hand and grab your waist with the other.

Before you knew what happened he had rolled you over to the floor, you were now lying on your back with him on top straddling you this time. Suddenly you felt butterflies rising in your stomach and your cheeks felt hot,

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” you nearly shouted at him, and you were suddenly reminded of how agitated you were over this whole situation.

“You do know why we’re in here right?” he said almost in a playful way this time.

Which until now you really hadn’t thought much about, you recalled Karin saying something about a game.

But in the heat of the moment you weren’t really listening you were annoyed then because she left you alone without saying anything, so you were more pissed off over her grabbing you like she did and shoving you into your current situation that you couldn’t recall the reason for it.

“Some kind of stupid game?” you suggested though you really didn’t care about the answer, you struggled against him to get him off you.

But as soon as you began to wriggle he grabbed your wrists and pinned them to the floor.

“I’m not just going to sit in here for however long they decide to keep us pinned up in here.” he suggested.

“They’ll probably let us out any minute now.” you said trying to sound convincing but you were failing miserably.

“Are you kidding? they probably forgot all about us.” He objected.

“You don’t know that!” you argued.

“Oh really?” he taunted,

“We’re in here for a game that’s suppose to last 7 minutes, we both know we’ve been in here way longer than that.” he challenged.

“That doesn’t mean-” you started but he interrupted you,

“Besides look at the door.” he coaxed.

Not understanding what he was getting at you strained to look towards the door in the darkness and underneath the weight of him. You couldn’t see anything everything was just complete darkness, whatever he was wanting you to see you couldn’t.

“Like I can see anything in the dark.” you argued growing more annoyed with him.

“Exactly.” he pointed out to your confusion.

“Normally when you’re in a dark room you would be able to see the light from the other room underneath the door.” he claimed.

Which suddenly did make a lot of sense and you struggled to look back towards the door, you couldn’t see any shred of light in the darkness.

“The power must of went out minutes after we were put in here.” he suggested. It did seem to make a lot of sense but at the same time, it was also a lot of speculation that you weren’t simply willing to accept as truth.

“What makes you so confident about it?” you questioned.

“Well, there’s also a light switch by the door.” he admitted plainly.

“So unless you’re going to argue that the switch just isn’t working the powers out.” he concluded.

He had you beat there and after all it did make a lot of sense, if the power went out for whatever reason it would be easy for them to forget about you guys and try to get the power back on.

Though you suddenly wondered how many people even knew that the two of you were in here? What if Karin put this together on her own? That idea scared you more than anything else. However right now your biggest concern was Deidara.

You wriggled underneath him trying to figure out a way to gain leverage over him, but he seemed like he was in pretty good control over you and with your arms pinned you felt a little helpless.

“Would you let go of me!?” you shouted at him,

“I don’t see why I should.” he admitted plainly as if letting you up wasn’t even a thought he was going to entertain at this point.

You had enough of him at this point and was trying to form the right words to tear into him this time, but before you could form a sentence to yell at him. His lips were crashing against yours completely catching you off guard, giving you no time to react he ran his hands up from your wrists to your hands interlacing his fingers with yours and squeezing your palms tightly.

As he squeezed your palms he deepened the kiss, becoming more passionate and intense by the second. His sudden actions made you freeze up and you were no longer struggling against him, you barely had time to comprehend what was happening.

You felt heat rush through your body as an uneasy feeling almost like there was a fluttering going through your entire being. It was hard to remain angry with they way your body was feeling, and you couldn’t deny the attraction you’ve had for Deidara. However you had never really entertained the thought of being anything more with him that just a friend.

Though right now you couldn’t help but feel intrigued by the idea, but your thoughts were quickly interrupted as he squeezed your palms and released your hands.

Running his hands down your arms and using one hand he gently ran his fingertips across your shoulder along your collarbone. The sensation gave you goosebumps as you felt chills rush through you like electricity.

Deidara released your lips and moved his kisses to your neck, trailing light kisses along your collarbone to your neck almost in a teasing manner, while he ran his fingertips down your cleavage gentle pulling your shirt down slightly exposing your cleavage more and more.

He released your shirt and ran his fingertips lightly across your stomach to your waist locating the bottom of your shirt, as he kissed your neck roughly searching for a weak spot on you. It was hard to keep your thoughts in order and you found yourself nearly helpless underneath him.

He placed his hand on your hip before slowly running his hand up underneath your shirt, tracing your bare skin with his fingertips slowly rising up your stomach. Sirens suddenly starting going off in your head, how far was he willing to go right here? like this?

You became a bit concerned though you had to admit part of you didn’t want to stop this, but you also didn’t want him to completely get his way with you. If you allowed that to happen he would always see it as a victory over you and feel like he could do this again any time he wanted.

As you began to struggle underneath him you suddenly realized your hands were free, you quickly pushed your hands against his chest trying to shove him back. Which didn’t exactly work as you intended but it did make his rise up slightly and he raised his head from your neck, before snatching one of your wrists with one of his hands, this time rather roughly pinning it to the floor beside your head.

“Do you want to play now?” he smirked seemingly amused by your sudden activity.

His hand was still underneath your shirt but his direction had changed after your little outburst, he lightly traced your skin with his fingertips down your stomach and right to where your pants were buttoned. Hooking his fingers underneath the top of your pants slightly slowly tugging on the suggestively.

You wriggled underneath him and put your free hand on his shoulder trying to push him, but it was having absolutely no impact on him.

“Don’t act like you’re not enjoying this.” he said suggestively as he sat up abruptly letting go of you and unstraddling you, but before you knew it he was between your legs, grabbing right behind your knees and quickly pulling you towards him.

He then lowered himself against you grabbing your wrists yet again and pinning them to the floor, this time kissing you roughly and deeply his actions surprised you and you were unprepared this time, and in your surprise it allowed him to slip his tongue in your mouth for a much more intimate and passionate kiss.

Even through his and your clothes you could feel him right between your legs, and though you pushed against him and struggled you were tired and in a much more vulnerable position now, though the more you struggled against him the more aroused you were becoming and you were quickly feeling like it was too late and you couldn’t fight it anymore; or perhaps you no longer wanted to.

He slid his hand underneath your shirt again lightly running his fingertips up across your stomach and directly across one of your breasts, stopping right over top of your nipple.

Very lightly tracing circles around it with a finger, while proceeding to kiss you deeply. It was getting harder for you to keep it together you clenched your fists not wanting to let out any noise or moan, you didn’t want to give him that satisfaction.

After a few moments of teasing he groped your breast gently before sliding his hand down your side and right to the front of your pants. He seemed to play with the buttons on your pants for a moment before beginning to unbutton them slowly, your body was growing hot and you could feel the heat between your bodies growing.

He unbuttoned and unzipped your pants then slowly began sliding his hand against your skin into your pants, running right underneath your panties. You arched your back slightly in reaction to where he was going, you held back from gasping when his fingers penetrated you gently.

He massaged you and thrust his fingers deeper into you, as he did he lightened his kiss biting your lip lightly and in a teasingly suggestive way. You couldn’t hold yourself back much longer and a small moan escaped your lips, even though you couldn’t see him you heard him make a “hm” noise almost in approval.

But at this point it hardly bothered you because of the ecstasy you felt pulsing through your body, however your pleasure was cut short when you were suddenly startled by a pounding on the closest door.

You heard Karin’s voice from the other side of the door calling your name,

“Are you okay?” You tensed up and immediately placed your free hand on Deidara’s shoulder pushing him rather sternly, trying to get him to stop what he was doing you were not about to let Karin catch you in such a situation.

Which Deidara seemed to catch on to what you were trying to signal to him, but at the same time he wasn’t stopping. At least he didn’t stop until you shoved him again, but this time quite a bit harder.

He hesitantly withdrew his hand from your pants and when he did he release your other wrist and leaned back, when he did you quickly and frantically buttoned your pants back up and squirmed out from underneath him rising to a kneeling position right as you heard the doorknob jiggling.

You suddenly felt Deidara grab your arm and help pull you to your feet, nearly a second later the closet door opened and you were nearly blinded by a bright flash light in your face, as you looked to the doorway and saw Karin holding the flashlight.

“Sorry, Sorry the power went out because of the storm.” she began explaining which got your attention.

“Storm?” you questioned almost doubtfully, but just then you hear thunder and lightning lit up the sky outside that you could see through the window behind Karin.

“Yeah, how’d you not notice?” she asked confused.

“Oh, I-I guess I just couldn’t hear it in here.” you stumbled over your words knowing that you didn’t notice because of how preoccupied you were.

“Hey! knock it off!” you heard Deidara raise his voice as Karin shined the flashlight in his face, his arms were crossed and he certainly looked angry.

You kind of wondered if he was angry that things got cut short, or if he was just pretending to keep Karin from hassling the two of you over what happened. Karin grabbed your wrist and began pulling you out of the closest

“Come on I want you to meet someone.” you heard her say and she continued talking but you zoned out and didn’t hear the rest.

You looked back over your shoulder and smiled at Deidara quickly before Karin pulled you away, you wondered where this left your relationship with Deidara.

Even though you were irritated over how the night began, you had to admit you were curious about what would happen the next time you saw him.

I just downloaded Arcana and I know that you enjoy the game. So I was wondering if you could give me your impressions of the characters and any tips you have for the game. (Are the coin choices mandatory I don’t have a lot of money to spend on the game). Thank you very much and I hope you have a wonderful day. P.s. I’m a little new here so nice to meet you my name is Viper.

Sure! Welcome to the fandom, Viper! ❤

General Tips 

The coin options aren’t mandatory, they’re just bonus romance content. The coin options in-game do not have an effect on the game’s ending. However, I would warn you against buying any amount of coins. Nix Hydra’s business practices and prices are greedy at best and swindling at worst. I recommend having the patience to build up your coins and gradually buying route(s) as you go along.

Helping characters achieve their best endings might require telling them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. Achieving the best ending for each route looks different from the others.

In Heart Hunter, don’t unlock each chest as soon as you complete a set. Rather, wait until all or a very large margin of chests are ready to be opened. That way if you don’t have all the postcards you can get 20 coins per round, which can quickly add up over the days.

Also, the “double or nothing” is always on the beat, either 1-3 or 2-4. If you get it wrong the first time, hit on the other beat for the other attempts. There’s a segment in the nighttime HH music that the beat isn’t very clear, so wait until it cycles back to the beginning part of the music.

Never, ever pay 50 coins for one more turn in HH. Instead pay 50 coins to refill all your heart hunter lives. Better value.

It’s cheaper to buy the individual romance choices than the whole book for the books with 3 chapters (i.e., up to Book 12, The Hanged Man). At least it was when I was starting last year in spring 2018 — they may have changed them, so it’s worthwhile to go through the books and do a little math. Don’t spend coins buying books already because if you buy an individual paid choice, that is permanent. By contrast, it’s cheaper to buy the one-chapter books as a whole rather than the individual choices.

Asra

THE LOVE OF MY LIFE!!!!

Would die for you and I would die for him

If you’re looking for a sweet romance with a character who already has a connection to MC, Asra is it!

Asra is a great, comforting character, and is very supportive of MC no matter what. If you’re looking for tender and gentle romance that reveals more depth as the story progresses, pick Asra.

Nadia

The best route in the game

People like to characterize her as “hhhnngh sugar mama step on me 🅱️ls” but she is. Way more than that lmao. Isolated and lonely, distrustful, skeptical, I could go on.

The great thing about her route is that you can really see the change that MC has on her. MC might not influence her outlook to the degree that they do Julian, but she’s happier, less lonely, etc, and that’s always rewarding.

Pick her route if you’re most interested in the story — it reveals a lot of crucial lore, and the romance options always have a nice balance of player control (e.g. allowing her to pamper you vs. not, indulging her petplay vs. not, etc.)

Julian

Very popular in the fandom

If ur looking for the horniest route for a PG-13 game, this guy is it! Nadia is discreet in her thirst, but Julian lays it all out on the table from the start.

His writing can be uneven, especially in the later books, but his route has the most variation so your choices count!

Pick him if you’ve always wanted to redeem the Bad Boy (which he is not, despite initial impressions, but a lot of his route focuses on redemption and recovery, so.)

Muriel

The newest route available and thus has the least amount of content so these are first impressions

Touch starved AND touch averse… a goldmine of affection waiting to be unearthed!!

Mountain Man living alone, always fearful of hurting people and being hurt by people, content to be forgotten,,, meeting someone who makes him want to be remembered,,, who treats him gently,,, güd shit

If nothing else play his route for his blush sprite

Introduction and Story

The Fire Emblem series, for me, has been one of those things that’s always been in my peripheral, but never really close enough to gain attention. I knew of a slew of characters from the Smash Brothers series, that it was a tactics style RPG, had knights, and horses, and magic…and that’s about it. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the first traditional Fire Emblem game on the Nintendo Switch, and the first game of the series I sought out.

After just finishing my first play through of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I really didn’t know how to review this game. I typically like to delve into each major mechanic and give insight into how it all ties together, but the idea of touching on everything is daunting for this game.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is massive. I was initially amazed at how little I actually did after playing for three and a half hours.

Your three choices, Claude in the yellow, Edelgarde in red and Dmitri in blue.

By nature, there’s three different story line routes for you to take, each with their own twists and turns; The Alliance with Claude, the Empire with Edelgarde, or the Kingdom with Dmitri. There is a mid-point of the game where decisions must be made that drastically impact the rest of the game and splitting off into different forks. For that main reason, you will absolutely need to (and want to) play through multiple times.

With the branching story, each path you take gives you a different experience. My first go around was with Edelgarde and the Empire. I felt that some of the story beats were visible from a mile away, but they were never unsatisfying, and the characters actions in-story always made sense.

There’s a rich history in the world of Fódlan where Three Houses takes place, and I felt the game does a great job in reinforcing that, and making the world feel lived in.

  Gameplay

At the start of the game, you’ll be met with a few different difficulty options. First, you have the option of choosing hard or normal difficulty, which is self explanatory. Second, you must choose between classic and casual. Classic means that when one of your character perishes in battle, they are lost forever. Casual means that they more so retreat from battle when defeated, giving you access to them again the next mission.

I originally wanted to go for casual just so that playing the game felt less stressful, because I definitely wouldn’t be able to let one of my students die throughout the game, but I’m happy I didn’t. Going with classic made me rethink how I was going to utilize my team. If there is no risk of permanently losing a member of your team, all you have to do is throw characters at enemies without repercussion and overpower every battle. Part of the fun is treating the battlefield like a chessboard and trying to make smart decisions for that particular round of moves, and a few in the future.

Rhea, Archbishop of the Church of Seiros as well as her second in command, Seteth.

I also went for normal difficulty, but I felt that it was a bit too easy. I never did any grinding and completed all of the story, auxiliary and paralogue battles that popped up. With just that situation, I was consistently over leveling missions I was participating in.  It wasn’t until the final two battles that I felt the difficulty spiked.

Aside from difficulty, the gameplay of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is split into a few distinct sections; character development and the actual battles.

The overall template of Fire Emblem: Three Houses ends up feeling like the following; Begin month, instruct your students, build support and relationships between your students and other inhabitants of Garreg Mach, complete quest/auxiliary/paralogue battle, repeat the previous steps 2-3 times per month then complete the month with a story mission between weeks three and four.

You take on the mantle of professor after arriving at Garreg Mach Monastery, choose a class of students to oversee, build relationships with them through different actions that you take, then lead them on the battlefield.

With that in mind, don’t come into the game expecting endless battles and action. Battles become more fun because of the investment you put into your students, your team and goals in terms of selecting future character classes for them to excel at, and eventually become.

  Battles

Speaking of battles, the real action in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, comes from the different battle types. If you’ve never played a tactics-RPG game, battle fields are broken down into a grid system similar to a chess or checker board. Each battle has rounds where your team, allied teams and enemy teams are able to move all of their units once. During these rounds is when you would attack, use items, heal team members and so on.

  General battle map view, showing you the grid, obstacles, enemies units and more.

Story Battles: These battles, which usually occur once a month in-game, progress the story and usually offer the player the most unique setups. They feature more named characters, which are typically deadlier and require more thought on how to approach them, and more unique side objectives other than ‘rout the enemy’ or ‘defeat the enemy commander.’

Paralogue Battles: These battles hold the best content other than your basic story battles and are always character driven, with a particular conflict or goal in mind. One may require you to block four escape routes for thieves while another has draw bridges in the middle of the map that need to be re-taken. Many of them also reward you with one of the heroes relics and are always worth doing.

The unique aspect of this paralogue battle puts you in the middle of a battlefield with fog of war surrounding you. You can seek out enemies in the fog, or act defensively and wait for them to come to you.

Auxiliary Battles: These battles also soak up a battle activity point and are a step up in difficulty from basic battles. Many of them include rare beasts and reward you with various meat or resources to continue upgrading or repairing your weapons.

Quest/Basic Battles: Throughout your time at Garreg Mach Monastery, you will get a number of quests that involve a battle, many times rewarding you with another gambit battalion. There’s nothing much else to say about them. They are usually uninteresting and just require you to defeat a number of non-threatening enemies.

Basic battle list along with activity points on the top of the screen.

The downside of this aspect of the game, is map variety. Too often is a story map revisited for a paralogue battle or vice versa. The auxiliary battles or basic battles also pull from the same pool of maps. There were multiple times that I played through the same map two or three times in a row just completing quests, paralogue’s or even story missions. It would have been nice to have a larger map selection pool so that battling becomes less dull outside of the over-arching narrative.

  The Monastery

Garreg Mach Monastery acts as the central hub for most of Fire Emblem: Three Houses and feels like a character on its own. During the story, you’ll slowly unlock areas of the monastery to explore, and subsequently, give you more to do.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On top of leveling up your characters in battle, you’re really expected to invest equal time during the following activities to better improve overall.

Professor Level: The professor level allows you to do more actions during the explore phase of the monastery, and gives you more battle points for when you decide to battle instead. You increase this by participating in extracurricular activities that I’ll talk a bit about below, building relationships and completing quests.

Training Grounds: Houses a tournament every month featuring a different weapon type. You choose a character to enter into the tournament. Winning nets you gold, an item and experience towards increasing your professor level.

Dining Hall: Various options available to sit down with other characters and build your relationship with them. A sound strategy would be to eat meals multiple times on the same day to increase the motivation of your students, so when you go to instruct them, they gain greater experience towards the selected skills.

Fishing Pond: Exactly what it sounds like. You use your bait to catch fish to use for meals at the dining hall. Each successful catch nets you a small amount of professor level experience.

Greenhouse/Harvesting: You have the option to plant seeds and cultivate them. Doing this will yield more seeds, items and again, professor level experience.

Tea time is another activity you can use to build bonds between yourself and the others at the monastery.

While overall I like the idea of the monastery, it’s design really leaves something on the table. I really don’t care much about having the best graphics, but environments look very blocky and outdated next to the detailed and interesting character models. Everything has a jagged edge, sort of like it was out of the N64/PS1 era, except with better textures.It’s a strange contrast that’s very noticeable.

  Characters

One thing I was not expecting, I guess being a newcomer to the series, was how large the character roster is. At first, I was worried about this because how is it possible to get really in depth with everyone and have it not feel superficial? There are always some characters that are developed more than others, and some that are forgotten. This really isn’t the case with Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

I really am blown away with how much personality each character is packed with. The house I chose for my first go around was the Black Eagle House. By the end of the game, following these same characters for nearly 50 hours, I could correctly answer any question they had, have perfect ‘tea times’ every instance, answer their queries correctly in the church and more. I felt that the amplified feeling of knowing they can die in battle also helped me get more attached to them. I never left a character to die, it just didn’t feel like an option.

Couldn’t help but think of animated Link saying ‘Excusssse me Princess Zelda.’

Aside from each character having distinct personalities, the voice acting is also superb. I usually read quickly and scroll past text but here, I waited and watched every conversation because of how much I enjoyed the voice acting.

Support Conversations: The more two characters get to know each other, the better their relationship gets. When that happens, support conversations unlock between those two characters, and they are lengthy. I started getting in the habit of waiting until I was eating breakfast to start activating these support conversations because they took so long to go through. At times, I would sit for 30-45 minutes strictly just listening to characters build relationships with one another. It sounds boring on the outside, but it really was a nice change of pace sitting back and enjoying these conversations.

The main growth of a character besides straight leveling up and support levels, are leveling skills and becoming classes that excel at those skills. This is mostly all done during the classroom sessions that you will be setting up for your team. Classes are all visible from the outset, so you can, and should to a degree, plan ahead for certain characters and see what you’d like to be.

An example of instructing a student on a particular set of skills.

If you really want a Dark Knight on your team, you really need to select an appropriate character, then focus on Reason, Riding and Lance skills. The same goes for any of the other few dozen classes that are obtainable. It’s really an open book, and although certain characters clearly excel at certain skills, you’re never truly bound to those skills. Get creative, and work on what fits your style as a player.

  Other Points

Cutscenes: I really enjoyed all of the cutscenes I’ve seen in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. They stand apart from the rest of the game, enacting a more anime style than what is presented elsewhere. Many of them included some unsettling images that reminded me of the feeling I have watching titans contort in Attack on Titan, or even some of the imagery from Berserk.

There are some unintentional comedic elements as well. One cutscene in particular shows three armies rushing towards each other for this grand battle. When it’s over, you head to the battle screen and everyone is standing around waiting for their individual orders.

The animation is top notch whenever given to the player. Unfortunately, cutscenes are sparse.

Online Recon: Another addition to Garreg Mach is online recon. When unlocked, an NPC as well as four other characters from other players appear. They each sell you one item at a small discount from just purchasing it in store, and you have the option of doing a mini-game with them. The mini-game scatters them across around half the monastery, and you have to find all four of them within 90 seconds. Rewards for completion include basic food items and one time, a battalion. It’s just strange and super laggy whenever you get near that section of the monastery.

One of the online recon travelers from other players games.

Pacing: The pacing of the main story can feel awkward with the system they have built. They really want to do one main mission every month, with you as the professor, teaching, battling, exploring and everything else during the same month. This is fine for the first half of the game where you are teaching students, and as a class, are being assigned one major mission per month, but the same is not the case for the latter half of the game. I don’t want to go into spoilers, but I felt the system faltered a bit later on and pacing seemed either too rushed, or too slow at times.

  Final Thoughts

I’m happy that I took the plunge into the Fire Emblem series. Outside of enjoying the board game/tactics play style, I’m a veteran RPG player, so those long conversations or bonding moments between characters are very welcome and I got just as much enjoyment out of character development as I did actually battling.

The downside, is that map variation was rather boring outside of unique ones used for story or paralogue missions. Graphics are also blocky and seem out of place for this generation of consoles (characters models were a different art style and looked fantastic).

There are three distinct paths for you to choose in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. While the first half of the game may largely be the same for all three choices, the second half is drastically different and you’ll want to check out the other paths.

As long as you aren’t expecting a visual spectacle or non-stop action, you’ll find the same enjoyment that I did with Fire Emblem. Now, onto the second playthrough…

  Review: Fire Emblem: Three Houses #fireemblem #threehouses #nintendo #nintendoswitch Introduction and Story The Fire Emblem series, for me, has been one of those things that's always been in my peripheral, but never really close enough to gain attention.

World: Alternia Name: Agleas Platar Age: 7.5 Sweeps

Theme/Story: Agleas used to be an ordinary troll, until some dickbrain violetblood beat her into a pulp for sport, breaking her bones and horns and covering her whole body with scars. She was found by a rustblood, who became her moirail and began nursing her back to health. Only Agleas, her moirail, and the violetblood know her blood color. (I’d like to make her olive but then people would scream Polypa clone at me) Before the incident, Agleas was an avid sports player, competent in many different arenas. Now, she can only watch sports on her morail’s tv. Her favourite to watch is wrestling, so she can see someone else get beaten up for once. To avoid being culled, she has to stay inside, not that she could just get up and walk outside anyway. 

I have to warn you right off the bat that you’re falling into some ableist stereotypes here. A disabled/scarred/disfigured troll isn’t an ‘unordinary’ troll, first of all. And the whole ‘character becomes disabled and is now meek and feels guilty about being dependent’ thing is a stereotype, too. Alternia actually seems, for the mostpart, to be rather disability-friendly. A disabled person could thrive there more than on earth, even, probably! There are disabled sports- those are something she could pursue or look into after her recovery to continue pursuing her passions. You can create a character who both is realistically limited by her abilities and experiences realistic levels of burnout from dealing with chronic conditions while also not having to rely on infantilizing and stripping independence from that disabled character. 

You say at the end of this review “I know bandages isn’t really a personality”, and I have to agree. This story definitely has potential, but is barebones and, as the children say colloquially, the character is “woobified.” I have a few avenues to look at in this review that will help you craft something more interesting, so here’s where we play our Choose Your Own Adventure Game. 

RUST: The EZ says that Rusts are hard to kill and I think she could benefit from that here. Maybe she could have been an up and coming athlete and high bloods were threatened by her presence in the sportosphere. She was beaten within an inch of death and just barely survived, because she’s always struggled to win despite the difficulties, she IS a survivor. Under this blood, she would still be ready to take on the world after everything. Her moirail would have to fight to keep her from trying to get back into sports right away, to take her time and rest. 

OLIVE: The EZ states that olives are lucky, and luck could just be what saved her from death. The EZ states olives never fall too far into hopelessness, but also that they keep a grudge like nothing else. Under this blood, she could be somewhat revenge motivated. She could really benefit from having a story that ISN’T just ‘she’s disabled and sad about it’. Disabled people are people beyond their disabilities. Tracking down the guy who tried to gank her and kicking their ass could be great fun. 

HIGHBLOOD: Somewhere in the cerulean-purple range, though I’m leaning Cerulean. Here you could craft a story about a rival highblood fucking her up. Maybe she was famous and she’s embarrassed about her fall from her previous position and that’s why she wants to keep her blood and identity a mystery from most everyone else? Her narrative could center around her learning that typical-ability isn’t the end-all be-all of worth and that she is perfectly talented without having to strive to change herself or push past her disability. 

Now that we’ve discussed the paths we can take, I’ll jump into the rest of the review! Goals: Everything Strife Specibus: Not anymore. Fetch Modus: Her morail, *dadum crash*

Not a great joke. A disabled person can still use a fetch modus! Even a recovering one. They’re a metaphysical thing that doesn’t require the use of your hands to utilize. You could do an archery modus or a chess modus or a basketball modus or a Heartrate Monitor Modus (has to get her heart to a certain rate to unlock particular items, like a Fitbit but it controls her inventory), or you could pick something simpler and less involved.  Blood Color: See that little section in Theme/Story Symbol and Meaning: See Blood Color Handle: Undecided

I’m thinking of something goofy like interminableJockstrap Quirk: quie+ly, as +o no+ move +oo much. uses + signs +o symbolize +he bandages.

We return once again to Bandages Aren’t A Personality. Her WHOLE identity doesn’t change just because she’s injured. If she’s dealing with chronic pain, maybe you could represent this with her making more typos. I know when my wrists are acting up, I am much less likely to go back and edit my mistakes.  Special Abilities: None Lusus/Guardian: Her lusus is dead, so her morail’s badger lusus helps take care of her. Interests: Sports like arena stickball, wrestling, and whatever troll hockey is called. Also has an interest in medicine, ironically.

An interest in medicine isn’t ironic, it’s just a neat additional idea. If she was interested in physical therapy for sports injuries, it’s something she could take into her new situation and try to adapt to help herself recover!  

Personality: Agleas is often jaded and unfriendly, pushing anyone away who tries to help. She isn’t very happy about having to ask her morail for everything, viewing it as her being weak. A little bit of her thinks being so badly injured was her fault, so she has to make up for it.

How did her and her moirail get together if Agleas is jaded and unfriendly? You have to understand that it’s a mutual relationship. It’s a kind of romance. If she pushes people away, how did they end up pale dating? And what does Agleas bring to the relationship? Disabled people put into relationships, too, they don’t only take. How does she feel about her moirail? What does she do for them? Are they healthy or unhealthy as a pair? Does her moirail make her feel like it’s an inconvenience to need help? 

Like I said up above though, you’ve got a couple different blood routes you could take that’ll help you set your personality course in stone a little more.  Lunar Sway: Derse probably. Title: Dunno.

I’d probably call her a Maid of Life, sticking in the life range makes the most sense because of the potential to grow and change, that directive energy that you could give her. 

Land: I’m absolutely AWFUL at lands.

Land of Turf and Tournaments, maybe? 

Okay, so yeah, “bandages” isn’t really a personality, but I tried my best. Any sort of ideas would be great. Sorry for submitting so many trolls lol.

Design time: 

This is something of a major overhaul, but she needed the help. The way you word things implies that there’s been enough time since the injury that she was able to forge a new relationship with someone. And if this is the case, she’s probably not going to be absolutely covered in bandages. The only recovery process I can think of that would involve that would be from burn scars, not broken bones. I kept her leg casted up just as a nod to it, though. 

Otherwise, I gave her an active wheelchair (crutches are NOT comfortable to use for any extended period of time) and put her in some real blank basics, allowing her to hide her blood color! 

I hope this all helps! 

Resident Evil 2 (PlayStation 4)

When I heard about a Resident Evil 2 remake, my excitement was lukewarm at best.  The original game was practically a life event considering how much time I spent exploring every facet of gameplay I could from it.  I was obsessed with the Resident Evil lore as well and couldn’t wait to see where it would go from this point forward. 

The series has evolved so much since then, I was skeptical that going back to RE2, even with updated graphics and smoother gameplay mechanics would be worthwhile.

I’m here to say that it totally is.

While Capcom isn’t reinventing the wheel, they retain just enough elements from the original game to keep it familiar while tweaking the game enough to make it thrilling even for OG gamers like me. 

One thing that hasn’t changed is the story.  You play as either Leon Kennedy, a rookie cop on his way to his new posting in Raccoon City, or Claire Redfield, who is looking for her missing brother Chris (one of the protagonists from the first game).  Both enter into Raccoon City to find it overrun with zombies and the two are quickly separated, forced to survive on their own, while also unearthing more details on just what happened that lead to this apocalyptic epidemic. 

As mentioned before, there are a lot of tweaks to the game the differentiate it from its predecessor, most notably the now familiar over-the-shoulder camera angle that was first introduced in Resident Evil 4.  Needless to say this is a stark improvement, eliminating the awkward tank control movement, and providing fresh thrills (for better or worse) in that creatures can better sneak up on you. 

One of the other biggest changes, and my favorite by far, is how Mr. X, aka Tyrant, is handled.  In the original games, you only encounter Mr. X during the 2nd Scenario playthrough of each character.  During those encounters, you are forced to fight him until he collapses before you can leave.  In this game, he shows up during both the normal playthrough and the 2nd scenarios, and functions more like Nemesis from the third Resident Evil game in that he relentlessly chases you around until you lose him by hiding in a save room.  Why save rooms protect you from his pursuit is a mystery - maybe he has an odd phobia for typewriters.  Either way, the loud stomping that announces his presence really heightens tension and his overall look, with the black trenchcoat and unchanging vaguely human face, is unsettling.  Also, unlike the original game, it is unwise to face off against Mr. X as it will only stagger him long enough to escape momentarily, but he will continue chasing you shortly thereafter.  So save your ammo and get used to running like hell. 

While the usual monster fighting shenanigans of Resident Evil are thrilling enough, the Mr. X stuff was a nice, unexpected shot of adrenaline that comes along in the game just when it begins to feel stale. 

That being said, my only complaints about the game is the scenarios don’t play out differently enough.  This might have been true of the original too, but Leon and Claire’s stories hit basically the same beats enough that it can feel rather redundant to go through them both.  Admittedly, as of this review, I have beaten Leon’s first story and played through about half of Claire’s 2nd scenario. I vaguely remember in the original game that the appeal of playing the “2nd scenarios” is that you get to experience what the other character was doing during your primary character’s story arc.  So from that perspective, often several of the puzzles would be solved, monsters dealt with, doors unlocked, etc.  In the remake, you solve the same puzzles and basically take the same route.  So it doesn’t feel like a new enough experience to be worth the hassle.  I even played a little bit through Claire’s normal scenario and it still basically takes the same route.  Since I haven’t fully played through the game, though, you’ll have to take this criticism with a grain of blue herbs (which is useless, yet FUCKING PLENTIFUL throughout the whole game).

Minor criticisms aside, Resident Evil 2 is worth playing if you’re new to the series or looking for a nostalgia trip.  I may not have been excited about this remake when it was announced, but now I would love to see Nemesis and Code Veronica given the same treatment.

Night of the Full Moon- New Update(with WEREWOLVES)

Hey I know I’ve hardly started these reviews butttt- Night of the Full Moon updated in the America today!  There’s lots of exciting stuff I want to go over real quick.  We have new enemies, new illustrations for the classes, and brand new class!

New Illustrations

We got some cool new art for the various classes!  The easy levels still show the story ofc, but the hard levels depict Red and her Grandma when she was a kid.

The first thing I notice is just how happy Red looks to be in almost every illustration, and how supportive Grandma looks.  Even when Red is pursuing an ‘illegal’ career as a witch, Grandma is smiling on.  The apothecary is the only one with a change.  Red looks distinctively unhappy, and Grandma is apparently too sick to be conscious.

Oh yeah, and this is further proof that whatever kind of nun Red is, she doesn’t go the evil church because Grandma is very cool with it.  Which makes it even more annoying that everyone refers to the evil church as THE church like its the only church there is.  Hmph.

There’s red(the color) on the glass, like someone cut themselves on a picture frame and them jammed it back together again.  Nasty.

Another interesting bit, though, is that each Red looks consecutively older than the last.  Knight Red looks like a toddler and apothecary Red looks almost adult.  Which means that all of these might take place in the same timeline?  So that mean that if you play as a knight, you’re playing as a five year old?

Errrr.  For reasons, I hope not.

Also Nun being there makes things really confusing because like, isn’t a Nun supposed to go live in a convent?  Actually, the Nuns I know of sort of make a commitment to marry the church...I don’t think that’s appropriate for a little kid.  But what did she, go to the convent and then come back and learn dark magic?  That’s...odd.  

Yeah...I just have to assume this is not all the same universe.  But making her look older in each illustration does manage to tell an effective story about a little kid who had a good grandma with her grandma until her grandma got deathly ill...

New Enemies

We got some new enemy silhouettes!  You know what that means- beating up more people!

OK, let’s go through these quickly.  First up we have ‘weird fishman’ who is guess, and fish-man?  Who is weird?  Next up is an ettin which is apparently a two headed DnD monster.  If it turns out to be a couple of people fused together that would be fun.  Piggy Architect is interesting.  Do they build houses for all the other monsters?  I’m guessing it’s a Three Little Pigs reference?

Slaughter looks kind of look Oogie Boogie.  Candy Man is, I’m guessing, a man made of candy?  Hard to tell with the silhouette, TBH.  Could be a man in a weird hat.  Not sure what the things on the side are supposed to be.  Poker Soldier looks like it might be a card soldier from Alice in Wonderland.  Card-based monsters always have a good chance to be meta.

Prince Charming is a horse that’s flexing, I guess.  And then- Red Riding Hood?

So, you fight yourself?  This better not be another shitty mirror-fight.  I hate fighting that guy.

But this means...that Little Red Riding Hood has a voice actress now.  This means that we get to hear Red’s voice!

A bit more interesting at the additions to the bosses.  No new standard bosses, instead the new silhouettes have red borders.  In this game, a red border means that this person is going to be a final boss.

You have a Cursed Werewolf who takes all of the frame except for like a pixel.  Beeg.  Obviously they get called a ‘cursed’ werewolf because just ‘werewolf’ was already taken.  Then there’s a Cyclops Detective who I guess, must be a cyclops and a detective.  Looks like they’re maybe some kind of goblin, too.  And-

Little Red.

Again.

So she’s a enemy AND a boss?  You have to fight yourself twice?

...Actually, no, I don’t think you do.  I’m gonna stop playing ignorant, now.

New Class

The werewolf class finally opened up!  Now Red gets to be a big doggo!

Psyche!

Wait a minute...

OK, I gotta admit I am a little disappointed that we don’t get to see Red go full monster.  Butttt, playing as another POV issss pretty interesting!

Anyway, this guy’s name is Jerry, and...well, spoilers, but he’s the Werewolf that we skipped last time.  I’ll go more in depth about him later but what’s important to know is that he has a crush on Red and also he’s a werewolf.

The name on the grave is interesting to me.  Who was Sofia?  

And who’s that lingering above him?  It looks like the three new big bosses we just looked at.

That’s right, I bet that Red, the Cursed Werewolf and the Cyclops Detective are bosses you can only fight as Jerry.  It could be that there are other characters you can only fight as one hero.  I already know someone I’m sure you can only fight as Red...

I just have to say I’m curious to see if the programmers adjusted of the lines for his route, because there are some enemies who come out and call you ‘little girl’.

So what’s Jerry’s deal, anyway?  Why is he going into the woods?  Who is he trying to save?  Red?  His dad?  

Anyway, the blurb on the class selection screen should tell us, right?

“The person the carpenter likes the most is Little Red.  He always goes to play with her after finishing his day’s work. Many times he almost professed his feelings to her, but each time he eventually swallowed his words. This is because the secret only he knows...”

Oh.

Ok.

Ok, game, so you’re going to focus on the most boring thing about Jerry.

Hey, don’t give me wrong, I think this kid is potentially a neat character, but I just don’t care about the romantic angle the game is always trying to push so hard.

If you toggle it over to hard, you get something- a bit more interesting.  But we’ll save that for later.

I’ve played a bit of the werewolf path and by a bit I mean just a sliver.  I guess this is the game’s version of a berserker class because you have a rage bar you can fill, but I haven’t really figured out what I’m doing yet.  I’m glad to report then when you defeat and enemy, though, you get some really cute art of Jerry and his own family

Dawww

You can also buy cards with your own visage on it.  Jerry looks...Markedly more stressed than Red ever does, though.

Anywhoo.  I’ll be around with a real review sometime.  Now off to beat up some monsters as a big doggo.  My order for character reviews is plotted out in advance, but as I unlock new characters, I’ll figure out what where to put them.

999: Alterna (2) - Part 5, Chapters 7-9

Table of Contents | Previous: Part 5, Chapters 4-6

Chapter 7

I called out to Clover, who was crouched down on the ground, looking at the clover pendant in her hand.

“What?” she replied, continuing to stare intently at the small item.

“You mentioned something strange earlier, about some sort of experiment nine years ago. What did you mean by that?”

Seven’s amnesia, the disappearance of Lotus’s daughter, Snake, Santa, Clover, and Akane’s Angel Fever - all of it occured nine years ago. There was no longer any reason to doubt that there was some secret connecting everything.

“It’s nothing. Just forget I said anything,” Clover answered curtly. However, that only made me more curious.

“Tell me. What exactly was the experiment nine years ago?”

As she tightened her right fist around the piece of silver, her lips quivered. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

“Really? You can’t tell anyone, not even June.”’

“I’ll keep quiet.”

“I... can trust you, right?”

She opened her right hand once again and quietly stared at the four-leaf clover. After a brief moment, she turned her teary gaze towards me, as if she had strengthened her resolve.

“Alright. I’ll tell you about what happened on this ship nine years ago-”

“Wait, wait. This ship?”

“That’s right. My brother was a participant in the Nonary Project experiment aboard this ship.”

The startling revelation flowed out of her mouth.

“Nonary... Project?”

“Nine years ago... My brother went missing without warning. Two days later, he suddenly returned and told the police that he had been abducted by aliens and taken to Mars, but he told the truth to me and me alone.”

“Huh? Then that means Snake was...”

“Yeah. He was one of the victims in the serial kidnapping case from nine years ago. My brother and the others were confined in this ship, and they were forced into becoming test subjects. They were threatened with death if they told anyone the truth, which is why they made up that story about the aliens together.”

“Test subjects... What were they forced to do?”

“The Nonary Game.”

“...What?”

“The purpose of the game was to exploit the power to freely control humans.”

“...”

“They used Sheldrake’s theory to accomplish it. I heard all of this from my brother.”

Her story was all over the place, so I couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was saying. But she was finally opening her heart up to me, and I hesitated to ask any questions that might betray that. For now, I decided to wait until she finished speaking. I held back my desire to question her and continued listening intently.

“Do you know about Sheldrake’s theory?” Clover asked.

“It describes how information about something that happens to a person is transmitted via a special field to others far away, right? Santa explained it to me earlier.”

It was the reason why groups of monkeys living far away from each other suddenly started behaving in the same way. The reason why an increase in the number of people who knew the answer to a question led to a higher percentage of correct responses among people who shouldn’t have known. Santa had proudly told me that Sheldrake’s theory explained all of that and more.

“Santa... Then he was one of the participants from nine years ago,” Clover murmured.

“Because he has the same kind of silver as you?”

“My brother was the one who made this,” Clover said, rubbing the piece of silver with her fingertips. “Isn’t he amazing? His disability doesn’t get in the way of anything. He crafted this accessory with only his right hand. <R> is my brother’s actual first initial. He made nine of these and put them in his pocket with the intention of gifting them to me for my ninth birthday, but then he was abducted... My brother handed them to the other participants he met as a sign of friendship. Even though he made them as a present for me... My brother is a really nice guy.”

Her gaze was tinged with loneliness.

“Could you tell me more about the Nonary Project?” I asked, feeling a tingling sensation deep inside my chest.

“The kids who were abducted were divided into two groups, and started the Nonary Game in different areas,” Clover said. “The rules were the exact same as the ones now. Those who escaped through the [9] door would be put to sleep once again and sent back home... but some didn’t make it back.”

“Huh?”

“Apparently two died during the game.”

My heart started beating twice as fast.

“Do you know their names?”

“I do, since my brother told me. One of them was Nona. She was just an eight year old girl, and the youngest among the participants.”

I had feared as much.

Lotus was right. Her daughter wasn’t counted among the victims of the serial kidnapping case.

“What about the other?”

“She was a girl who had just entered middle school. If I remember correctly, her name was-”

As soon as Clover began to mouth the letter “A,” footsteps echoed out from far away.

She shut her mouth, and we were forced to cut our conversation short.

Chapter 8

I strained my ears.

Huh? Something felt off.

I heard multiple sets of footsteps.

“Jumpy!”

Upon hearing Akane’s voice, my head shot up. I thought my ears were deceiving me, but there she was, in the flesh, standing right next to Seven. Santa and Lotus were close by.

“We happened to pass by each other up ahead,” Seven explained.

“This is surprising. I didn’t expect us to meet up again so soon,” Lotus said.

“Hey, didn’t I tell ya? Until we find the [9] door, we won’t be kept apart for long,” Seven said while panting, proudly puffing out his chest. “Even if we get separated, we’ll meet back up together somewhere else before long. Otherwise, nobody’d be able to get that [9] door open. That’s how this Nonary Game’s set up.”

“We came through an operating room. Where did you all explore?” I happily asked Akane, as tears streamed down my face.

“A laboratory. There were chemicals and a bunch of strange equipment... and there was also a computer.”

The question that they had to answer to open the door was, as before, the same one that we had. Akane remembered the name of the drug that Ace injected himself with, so they managed to escape.

“We found this in one of the medicine cabinets,” Akane added, pulling a black key out of her pocket. “It’s different from the key we used to open the door from the laboratory. I think we may be able to use it at some point up ahead.”

“We’ve got one too,” Seven said, waving the yellow key around.

“Oh, you all were also able to find a key!”

“Of course! Never overlook any clue, no matter how small - it’s a basic tenet of criminal investigation,” Seven said, huffing out air from his nose.

“Seven, you sound just like a detective!” Akane commented.

“Y-Yeah...” Seven muttered, a troubled look forming on his face. “Junpei, you hold onto this. I don’t do well with keeping small objects safe.”

Seven tossed the key to me, and I quickly stuffed it into my pocket.

“Shall we get on with it?” Lotus urged. “At this rate, we may be able to escape faster than expected.”

Lotus rushed down the hallway panting, and the rest of us followed suit. We made sure to check all of the doors we passed along the way. However, all of them were locked, and we didn’t manage to get any of them open.

No matter how many corners we turned, there was only one route for us to follow. We continued walking.

Eventually, we reached the end of the hallway.

Before us stood a large iron door. It resembled a numbered door in shape, but it didn’t have a red number painted on it, nor a <RED> next to it.

Seven grabbed the handle. The door wasn’t locked, and swung open automatically. There was likely a sensor installed, which would unlock the door after detecting someone’s presence.

The six of us rushed through the door at once.

“...What?”

Without needing to look around the room, I immediately realized where we were.

A white room. Countless beds tightly packed together. The stench of disinfectants.

In the center of the room, Ace sat up on a bed, dumbstruck.

Chapter 9

I felt an intense wave of shock wash over me.

The truth behind the Nonary Project.

“No, that can’t be right!”

I loudly cried out.

“Please... somebody save me...”

However, those words failed to reach a single soul.

Next: Part 6, Chapters 1-2