#and I can fully finalize and submit and report to school

[theloveinc]

wake me up at 8:30 please

i have not locked in even remotely yall please god help

[mayosmultiverse]

Report Overview

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS UNIT

PRIMARY ARCHIVE: "Things That Hotch Would Prefer Not to Know About."

SECONDARY CLASSIFICATION: "How Not to Secure A Suspect: A Live Demonstration"

DOCUMENT TYPE: Unclassified Internal Report

PAIRING: Spencer Reid x BAU GN!Reader (Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn.. sort of)

WC: 1.9k (Again)

CASE STATUS: Refer to attached report. (No spoilers.)

SUBMITTED BY: J. Jareau

ARCHIVED BY: P. Garcia

CASE NO. 002 | The Houdini Gambit: A Lesson in Restraint

SUBJECT: A takedown turns into a handcuffed disaster after Reid becomes the star of a magician’s obsession

TW: Criminal minds stuff

INVESTIGATING AGENTS: D. Morgan, P. Garcia, Scout (Reader), S. Reid, E. Prentiss, J. Jareau, D. Rossi, A. Hotchner

Case 001 | Case 003 | Case File Index | Criminal Minds Masterlist

An unassuming day was something none of the BAU agents were used to. Quite frankly, with the nature of their job, it was something like a sighting of a blue moon.

Which is why today was no other.

It was the same drill. The same seats. The same dynamics.

Scout resided on their designated place, sandwiched between JJ and Spencer. Their seat was decided prematurely when they joined. JJ and Spencer at a glance were the royalty of giving comfort.

If only Scout knew about the chaos, they brewed inside.

Everyone was fully attentive to what was being presented at screen. 

Another day. Another serial killer. Another life cruelly taken away.

"Ladies and gentlemen, and our very own doctor of wizardry. I present to you the works of 'The Magician' Vince Moretti which no self respecting Magician would ever call themselves if they were a serial killer. Leaves a bad taste." Garcia scrunched her face as the slides transitioned into various forms of utter brutality man could recreate. 

“A magician turned murderer, that’s new.” Prentiss raised her eyebrow.

“Not just any magician. It seems he worships the old school greats. Houdini, Thurston, Copperfield—but mostly Houdini. And not just ‘wow, cool tricks’ kind of worship. More like ‘this is my divine calling’ kind of crazy.”

“And now he’s killing people instead of pulling rabbits out of hats.” Morgan leaned forward, which was mainly shifting in his seat, clearly unimpressed.

“Exactly. Our guy believes ‘escape artistry’ is the ultimate test of human skill. He doesn’t see these as murders. He sees them as failed illusions.” Garcis replied grimly as she clicked through the crime scene photos.

“Each of the three murder victims was placed in an ‘escape challenge’ as in trapped in a situation where a real magician might have survived. Our fourth victim was the first to get out alive.” JJ noted. It is truly a marvel how quickly she caught on. In the total non sarcastic way (Love you, boo ~ Garcia)

The slide finally landed onto the victims. Three failed challenges. A glass tank. A fire rope. A locked coffin. 

“That’s terrifying” Scout muttered as they grimaced at the scene. Not quite used to the desensitised killers’ actions yet.

“The question is, does he want his victims to escape? Or does he want to prove they never stood a chance?” Hotch nodded, as he flipped through his file.

The somber moment was broken. Garcia’s face suddenly lightened up as she clicked for another slide.

“Oh, now for the fun part.” 

“There’s a fun part?” Scout’s question went unanswered. Sort of. (It had to be done sweety ~ Garcia)

“‘True escape is only for those with minds as sharp as a blade. A true challenger will find me. Someone who understands misdirection. Someone…’”

“Don’t say it.” Morgan groaned, already knowing where this was going.

“‘…like Dr. Spencer Reid.’”

“…Did you piss off a magician recently?” Scout blinked a bit. Then turned to look at Spencer.

“Why does this keep happening to me?” Spencer was exasperated at the amount of times this has happened. Not even rubbing his temples brought any relief.

“What can I say? You’re inspirational.” 

The whole team is staring at Reid, who looks mildly distressed.

“Okay, but objectively, this is kind of a compliment. He thinks you’re the only one smart enough to catch him.” Prentiss followed Rossi’s lead.

“Yes, because serial killer fan mail is always flattering.”

“Congratulations, Pretty Boy. You’ve got yourself a stalker with a flair for the dramatic.”

“He even called you a challenger. That’s, like, a villain origin story setup.” Scout nodded, mock serious.

“Please tell me I don’t have to personally go in after him.” Reid was absolutely done at this point. Only Hotch was his solace now.

“You’re not going in alone. You and Scout will approach first. Morgan and I will follow as backup.”

“…Fantastic.” It seemed Reid had aged a few years as the conversation progressed as he regretted his entire career path.

“Cheer up, Genius. At least he didn’t call you a sidekick.” Silver linings.

Scout and Reid were prepared to face Moretti. Well as prepared as they could be. Neither of them had experienced a Magician Serial Killer, even if the latter had years worth of more experience.

Very Reassuring.

Entering the quaint building did nothing to ease the building up stress. It had everything that horror movie does. Those ‘props’ or ‘scenes’ that scream run away. Far far away from here.

That thought was tied in with a creaking sound. Typical.

And like the most idiotic characters in the self made episode, the two followed. 

Spencer lead this dance and Scout followed behind him.

And in as they followed the sound to a dusty living room. Or what was meant to be a living room. There was nothing, absolutely nothing.

“Ah, the great Dr. Reid. The mind reader. The one who sees all.” Moretti appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The grin on his face was nothing but sinister. His hands were menacingly playing around a pair of cuffs.

Scout jumped at the sudden sound.

Why? They don’t know. For a magician they should’ve expected that. But it went unnoticed by the offending man. He was fixated by Spencer. 

His eyes unwavering from Spencer’s figure as he took a step towards Moretti. 

And Scout took a baby step, ready to pounce if the grand magician decided to try to unleash his last act.

“You believe this is a game of misdirection. But in reality, your illusion is unraveling.” Spencer’s face was as expressional as a board. Completely calm as he analysed Moretti. 

The only response he got was a booming laughter, bouncing at every crevice of the room. His manic energy was increasing. His grin, bigger. His eyes, excited.

“Oh, but the best magicians never reveal their secrets, Doctor.”

“Secrets are pointless when you are surrounded with no escape.” It was the first time Vincent Moretti’s crazed gaze landed on Scout. 

He didn’t respond. Just tilted his head and watched.

He didn’t respond and that was creeping Scout out.

He didn’t respond.. In words..

He lunged at Spencer. Scout only saw a struggle between the two and moved in to subdue the Unsub. 

But Moretti was one step ahead of both of them.

He grabbed both their wrists and snapped the cuff on them before any of them could react. Taking both their surprise to his advantage, he escaped. Leaving smoke behind to put insult on injury.

Scout looked down at the cuffs, giving it a firm tug.

“Did he just.. Ninja vanish?”

“That;s not even his best trick. He also picked my pocket.”

It was a tug of war and words between the two until the team came barging in. 

“…This is the best thing I’ve ever seen.” Morgan smirked at the sight.

“Garcia needs to hear about this immediately.” JJ already had her phone out to record.

“Okay, so tell me why my favorite little genius and my rookie in training are currently DEFYING STANDARD FBI PROTOCOL?” Garcia’s voice squeaked in the comms.

“Garcia, not now.” Hotch rubbed his temples. “Where is Moretti?” 

“He disappeared.” Hotch took a deep breath in. and out. And in again.

“Of course he did.” followed by a sigh.

“All right,” he said, sharp now, switching into command mode. “Morgan, JJ, sweep east of the perimeter. Prentiss, Rossi, check the warehouse exterior. If he’s injured, he’ll find cover. We move fast.”

And then his eyes landed on the two people still awkwardly linked together by cold metal and mutual regret.

“Scout. Reid.”

Scout straightened like they were about to be deployed into battle. Reid looked away, trying to casually pretend he hadn’t just suggested Moretti wouldn’t escape.

Hotch continued, tone flat.

“Go to the car.”

There was silence. Then:

“Wait what?” Scout blinked. “Are we being benched?”

“It’s not a bench,” Hotch said, already turning away.

“It's so bench. This is a time out.” Scout nudged Reid dramatically. “He sent us to the car like we’re toddlers who drew on the walls.”

“Technically, it’s more like administrative separation from the crime scene for operational clarity-”

“Okay, genius, we’re being babysat. Let’s just call it what it is.”

Spencer sighed. “We’re going to the car.”

“This is the most FBI version of being grounded I’ve ever seen.” Scout muttered under their breath as they started walking.

It was a while after they were joined by JJ and Morgan in the car. It might have been personal because Hotch decided on the seatings. Morgan chose to drive and JJ was not so subtly recording the two.

“Are you really going to make us stay like this all the car ride?” 

“Yes” The two were really enjoying this.

“So, how’s it feel, Genius? Finally outplayed by a magician?” Morgan looked at Spencer from the rear view with the biggest grin.

“…He didn’t outplay me. He relied on an unpredictable variable.” Spencer huffed, trying to cross his arms but the cuff and Scout not letting him.

“Oh, am I the variable?” Scout was now on the last leg of exasperated.

“Technically, you’re the assistant in the act.” Morgan mocked.

The car ride was silent after that. At least for the first five minutes, mostly because every attempt to adjust the cuffs ended in some form of passive aggressive elbow bumping.

Scout eventually gave up and leaned against the window. Reid was still trying to angle his wrist into a position that looked vaguely more dignified.

“Next time,” Scout mumbled, “I’m wearing a hoodie with zip ties instead.”

The SUV finally rolled into the garage.

Scout was out of the car before Morgan even finished parking, possibly to escape the humiliation, possibly just to get some distance from the world's most spatially unaware genius still rubbing his bruised wrist.

Reid stepped out after, fixing his cardigan with what little dignity he had left.

Now back at the BAU, Scout and Spencer were both freed from the piece of cuff. 

By the time they got back upstairs, the rest of the team was already pretending not to wait for them. Badly.

Garcia practically beamed from her desk the second she spotted the duo. 

“My little magical misfires return! Did you two enjoy your teambuilding exercise?”

Scout deadpanned, “I have seen my life flash before my eyes three times today.”

“You should’ve waved at mine while you were at it,” Spencer mumbled.

Morgan patted them both on the shoulder as if proud. “Tough day in paradise, huh?”

“Effective immediately, all field agents are required to review cuffing procedure.” Hotch didn’t even look up from the folder as he said it.

“That means you, Rookie,” Morgan added with a grin, nudging Scout.

“…This was still improbable.” Spencer rubbed his wrists in disdain.

“Not impossible though.” Scout responded flatly with their arms crossed.

“Next time, just buy dinner first.” Rossi walked pasted at this point unfazed by their antics ignoring the chaos that followed.

CASE STATUS: Resolved (With Added Embarrassment)

ADDITIONAL NOTES: INTERNAL USE ONLY

Vincent Morreti was arrested 6 hours after his amazing escape (a lot of self control was tested by Scout and Reid)

All agents had to go through lessons of handcuffs (They're salty about it)

Morgan and Garcia subsequently were called by HR from said lesson (They have no regrets)

JJ absolutely refused to delete the footage (It's good content)

Rossi somehow made it worse

Hotchner is half an incident away from having an aneurysm (He won't be going down alone)

TAGGED PERSONNEL: Contact author for notification requests

@princess-ofthe-pages

CASE SUGGESTIONS: Submissions for additional reports are open and under review

[gonelike-ach00]

Chapter 4

chaebol! Kim Doyoung x chaebol! Original Female Character

Word count: 2,021

Summary: What truly goes on behind the lights, the stages and the performances? Kim Doyoung has lived his idol life quietly, getting ample exposure and being in a popular group. He was now fully independent and plans to continue his life in this direction.

Yet all things are easier said than done. Once his old life begins to creep up to him it was getting harder to escape and runaway. What does this humble and scandal free idol truly hide?

Genre: fluff, angst, arranged marriage, drama

Warning(s): eventual smut, violence, trauma, guns, blood

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There was no space to grieve.

If the weight of the world were to be measured, it would be added upon Doyoung’s own body weight. The moment he woke up the following day after leaving his father’s remains in its final resting place, he had been running around the house. He was wearing old clothes, obviously outdated from his high school days, yet it was what was available. He hasn’t stepped foot inside his dormitory since the whole incident with Jinah, nor has he faced his label, managers and other staff. They probably were wondering where he had disappeared off to for the week. 

“Secretary Kim,” Doyoung calls out the secretary as he sat down in his father’s study checking on the details of the board that his father did not finish, “where is the data for Director Go’s department?” Hoping his father’s long time secretary would know where the data was. 

“It has yet to be submitted.” 

Doyoung could simply sigh, who was to blame when his father set the deadline on the day he passed away. He simply runs his hand through his unkempt hair, “can I have his contact info?” In almost an instant, the secretary opens his phone and sends him the director’s details. 

Just as he was about to give Director Go a call, a face that he has never met in person, or as he recalls never met at all, the door to the study opens. Unlike how it was when his father’s viewing was in process, his cousin and the vice president of Byul group of companies, walks through the door in a pressed gray suit and cleanly styled hair. “What are you doing this early and on a weekend?” 

“I have to finish the reports to present to a few investors and clients next week, some of them are seeking partnership from us for the past few days we were gone. A lot of them are foreign expenditures, I can’t waste the--” 

“And why are you handling all this on your own?” Youngbin immediately stands right beside him. “Is this on Uncle Kijoon’s report?” He refers to the director as their uncle, as they were a cousin to their parents, as he glances down at the monitor on the desk.

“He was on a meeting with a client abroad, the company he manages has been huge on international expenditure.” Youngbin sighs and reports to him directly. “Your father gave him a go signal to submit his report late.” 

Doyoung nods his head and leans back. “I guess with all the various notification sounds popping out of my father’s computer, I couldn’t ignore the responsibility that I’m about to take over.” He honestly replies as he closes his eyes. 

For more than a century, the Byul company has proven its worth by remaining as one of the biggest economical contributors to the country. Even when faced with calamities, wars and economic collapses, they stood strong. Some attribute this to the rigid process of creating their company leaders. The Kim family who owns Byul were known to teach possible presidents and chairs the moment they are able to walk and talk, and only those who were taught were considered to sit in the position. With the current generation, there were only two who can take charge and lead the company, yet a few years ago after the birth of his first child, Youngbin renounced all rights to be elected into position. 

This left Doyoung the only eligible heir to the Byul throne. 

Doyoung knew why Youngbin retreated from the position, it wasn’t safe for his family to be involved in politics of the upper elites. He knew that the moment he chose to run for position, Doyoung’s parents and his mother would go at odds with one another even if they were siblings. Youngbin knew all too well that this was a war on greed for power, yet he cannot be selfish enough to drag his still young children into such a world just as they were able to open their eyes. 

“You,” Youngbin pulls Doyoung out of Dongmin’s chair, “should,” he pauses to finally take a look at what his younger cousin was wearing, “really go get some clothes.” 

“I’ll just get them from the dorms,” Doyoung tries to shrug him off. “I have to eventually move out of there anyway.” 

“You should go buy some clothes instead!” Youngbin pushes him further out of the office. “You look like you rummaged through all your old clothes and forced yourself to fit into them.” He teases.

“You know full well that’s exactly what I did.” Doyoung was about to be pushed out the door of the house when they heard the front door opening. 

While Youngbin was pulling him out of the house, the door swung open. Doyoung was then meeting Jinah in the eye while being headlocked by his cousin. “I should return later, shouldn’t I?” Jinah was about to turn around, putting the keys she had in her hands straight into her pocket.

“Jinah!” She gets stopped by Youngbin who called out her voice in such a tone that made Doyoung sure his mother could hear what was going on outside the master’s bedroom. That nearly sat at the opposite side of their ancestral mansion.

Once she peeks her head back into the house, Youngbin immediately pushed Doyoung towards him. In fact if she wasn’t ready to catch a falling Doyoung he would have skidded on the sparkling marble floor they were all standing on top of.

“Take him out to buy some clothes.” Youngbin claps his hands together as if he took out the trash.

“I can just pick up--”

“Yada! Yada!” Youngbin makes his hands talk, stopping Doyoung from speaking any further. “If I don’t see a new set of clothes when I come visit again, I’ll make sure everyone knows of your deepest darkest secret.”

“That is?” Doyoung jumps off of Jinah as if she were a plague.

“That until you still peed on the bed until you were thirteen.” 

Jinah snickers behind him. 

Doyoung glares at Youngbin and Jinah. 

Honestly, at this point there was no use in shielding things from Jinah when it comes to all family secrets about him. She knew the smallest of detail, both from his parents and this cousin of his, both tend to overshare a little bit. 

“Then,” Youngbin puts his hands on both Jinah and Doyoung’s shoulders before guiding them through the long hallway out of the mansion they were in.

“Are you making me leave in these?” Doyoung looks down at his clothes once they were standing outside the main house. 

“You’re going to buy clothes anyway.” Youngbin waves his hand once again before closing the door on their faces.

Doyoung grunts before running a hand through his unkempt hair. “Seriously.” 

“Well,” Jinah lifts her car keys, “if you don’t have anything else to do might as well just do as he says you know.” 

Doyoung raises an eyebrow at her. 

“What is it this time?” Gone immediately was the kind expression on Jinah’s face.

“Did you guys plan this?” 

She takes a deep breath in and crosses her arms over her chest and then glares at him. “Is it because I walked through your door right when he was forcing you out of the office?”

Doyoung nods his head slowly. 

“Just so you know, your mother was the one who called me because she wanted to have breakfast with me.” Jinah puts her car keys back into her pocket just to pull out her phone and show Doyoung the text she got from his mother.

“Well, if she wanted to have breakfast she should’ve told me.” After checking the text and confirming that what she said was true he stands upright mimicking her arms crossed over her chest.

“I think you should tell your mother that.” 

Then they go quiet. 

“Should we go then?” It was clear with her tired tone that Jinah wasn’t looking forward to going to the mall with him to get him clothes, because it was Doyoung. She knew Doyoung just as his family knew him, and he was quite popular among the aunts and cousin for being a picky dresser.

Doyoung doesn’t even respond as he walks up to the only car sitting at the entrance of their house. Most of the cars they owned won’t usually sit on the curb, they would settle in the garage, so it was easy to tell that the car was hers. 

It was a different car from the one they used to drive to the hospital that day.

“Now that I think of it, I never saw you drive.” That was the first thing Doyoung told Jinah as soon as they were seated.

“Relax, my brother has always told me I’m a much better driver than him.” She starts the car.

Doyoung’s eyes grew wide. If anyone knew Minki the first thing that they would think of aside from his affluent family is his inability to drive a vehicle. It wasn’t like he never took lessons or he never passed the exam, he was just extremely… reckless when it came to driving. 

“Oh no.”

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[felassan]

DA4 Lead Producer Scylla Costa’s BIG Festival talk, “Challenges of Dragon Age production during the pandemic”, can currently be rewatched on YouTube here starting roughly at timestamp 8:57:02 after a lil presenter blurb/intro. It’s 1 hour long. When it was streamed live, there was an English translation ‘voiceover’. There isn’t in this vid, however I want to post the link for Portuguese speakers, and also it’s neat for everyone to be able to see all the slides he presented with for themselves in context.

I don’t know if an English-language version will get put up so I’m sharing the notes I took during the talk below, in case anyone’s interested and because I might as well since I wrote them. The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

Edit: Found a place to re-watch the English version of the talk

(Quick note: I didn’t note down everything, mostly things that caught my interest, so this isn’t exhaustive, and when I was watching I was real tired, so pls bear that in mind and don’t take these notes as bullet-proof 100% accurate gospel or direct quotes. If you watched it and think I’ve written down something wrong/misunderstood, let me know and I’ll fix. Also if you’re a Portuguese speaker and I’ve gotten something incorrect or missed something important etc, again just let me know.) **

** Edit: I’ve now gone through my notes while watching the talk again. I’ve filled in some of the gaps (although they still don’t cover everything said) and so forth, and now I’m no longer worried about there being possible errors in this post.

-----

For some context, this slide contained the breakdown of the talk’s structure. Bear in mind there are other slides present in the talk than the ones I’ve posted here, I didn’t include caps of all of them, just ones which were of note to me.

In the talk, chief Producer Scylla goes over challenges of DA4 production during the pandemic. He discusses the adaptations - necessary skills and learning from remote work - and he ponders on the future of teamwork.

After the launch of ME3 he became a producer, all his MMO and other experience helped a lot. He was on DAI for 3 years and MEA for 9 months, then Anthem. Today, on DA4, Scylla and another Lead Producer were the heads of the whole project, and there is his boss is the Executive Producer Christian Dailey. 

^ the usual AAA game development cycle (brief introduction)

AAA games are games that are launched for several platforms simultaneously. 

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase of the game development cycle can have from 5 - 30 people, and up to almost 60 people when they’re just about to go through the gate to production. 

In the pre-production phase, they go through the game’s concepts and prototypes and start developing systems. They seek the game’s concept and focus, and its key features. They do lots of market research. In the case of BioWare, all their games are strong in narrative, so they have lots of tools related to game narratives and supporting the development of a narrative (cinematic design, dialogue system etc) that get focused on in this phase. Other parts of the team such as writers and cinematic design need these systems to do their own roles. 

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase through to launch can take 4 - 6 years, but it does depend on the size of the team during development.

With regards to Dragon Age 4, they were coming close to the time when they would shift from pre-production to the production stage when the pandemic hit.

During the production phase is when the development of content and features takes place, with the systems mostly already existing from the pre-production phase. A few new systems may be developed in this phase. In the production phase is when things start escalating, and the team really starts growing, to like 2- or 3-fold the prior pre-production phase size. 

(DA4 is currently in the production phase.)

In the alpha phase, features have to be fully implemented and systems all have to be running / working. All the game features should already be in the game by now. They test from pre-production onwards, but this phase is when they run heavy technical tests with lots of players trying to play at the same time. In the beta phase, the idea is that you should now have full content and that now you’re balancing it and running more and lots of different tests with players before launch. There are final tweaks and then the final launch, when in the weeks prior to launch, all the different business units and areas e.g. marketing team, technology team, publishing team, get together once a day and all of the game’s issues are reported and brought to the table to be prioritized. Then they decide the next steps re: these issues (this is known as ‘the war room’).

After the launch there are usually patches like day zero patches and other patches, this being standard industry practise. The last stage is the new content stage where there are DLCs and a game with more content.

On March 12th 2020, the team gathered to review the DA4 story in the new office. Everyone was very excited. (They had spent over 10 years in their last building and had noticed that with the team growing they needed more space. In August 2019 they found the new studio in the city center.)

Anyway that evening, they got an email from the CEO which contained instructions and said that due to the pandemic, they should from now all start working remotely. They had known that this happening was a possibility so they had been planning on how to have all the devs working from home, but initially less than 50% of the devs were able to work from home successfully/efficiently due to various issues e.g. you need a VPN to be able to log in remotely to do your job normally, varying home office setups. The day after this, the office was basically deserted, except for Scylla, the IT infrastructure people and one or two odd devs.

Scylla was part of the team that was working on allowing the devs to work from home. They first started looking at the short-term changes they needed to make to allow this.

“First, take care of our developers”. 

When the pandemic first hit, their and Scylla’s [as Lead Producer] first priority was to look after the devs. Many of them are parents (schools and day-cares were shut, children were studying from home), others have relatives living with them, others have other personal circumstances which of course need to be taken into account when it comes to assessing what needs to be taken into consideration for this new scenario. So, they looked at each dev on a case-by-case basis in order to evaluate, speaking to each one and asking them what they could do to support them.

One of the first changes/adaptations they could implement was flexible working hours and flexibility around deadlines. Generally speaking the devs got a lot of support, EA was really good and really supported the devs especially in the first months of the pandemic (and they are still supporting them). Initially not all devs had suitable office spaces at home, some were working from the living room from laptops or at the kitchen table. The whole covid situation basically just happened over night and nobody was really ready to deal with that change. So their first step was to enable their devs to work remotely. As a producer, Scylla’s main task is to communicate with the team such as via a number of daily meetings. He doesn’t depend so much on powerful hardware.

“Enable developers to work remotely”.

This slide shows some of a BioWare audio team. Different teams have varying and specific needs in order to do their jobs and therefore in order to do them remotely. For example, the audio team need good-quality speakers and amplifiers, while the lighting and art teams need other specific equipment such as tablets and large screens. So there was a lot of work they had to do to go through each dev to understand their individual needs and what needed to be done for them. ‘Could they download the builds? Did they have the right performance [tech-wise]? Could they submit their changelists, their codes to the server?’

Some devs needed a more powerful internet connection as it would take 6-8 hours to download a build (some devs live rurally). Some needed a lot of cable, as they were working far away from their routers (sometimes up to 50m). As time went by things got better and better. 

The chair devs work from is also important; a kitchen able chair etc is not suitable to sit in for long-term desk work, possibly leading to health issues like back ache and blood circulation problems in the legs.

Every 3 months they had money given to help devs buy new mice, keyboards, monitors - anything they needed really in order for their office setting at home to be improved. For a while, because lots of people [generally, in society] were needing and buying them, it was quite hard to buy things like webcams and microphones.

On mid- and long-term changes:

In terms of DA, we have to look at this from 2 perspectives, the change in the personal and the professional environments. 

As a consequence of working from home, people tend to be less active during the day (even in an office, you go between meeting rooms, up and down stairs etc). Physical activity supports life quality and therefore work quality. Scylla noticed that he began to feel listless and such, and found that he needed to change his routine that he had initially developed when he started working from home, for example; having a normal start time (as in, have a semblance of structure in your day as if you were still working in the office site), get dressed at the normal time, not having meetings over lunch etc. This wasn’t just him, lots of other devs encountered this and had this experience too. Devs which adapted faster had better productivity and became more productive faster.

Scylla bought a stand-up desk which he can raise up and down, and at meetings he would be delivering a talk while standing or even while walking on a treadmill. Other devs also got stand-up desks. He tracked his body’s data on a Fitbit. These sorts of things helped improve physical and mental wellbeing. Other devs did similar things, like starting going out for jogs or began practising yoga. Essentially, everyone needed to make changes to their daily routine in comparison to what they had been doing prior to the pandemic. 

The pandemic has been a thing for over a year now. In their location, every couple of weeks a new restriction is put into place or a rule is changed, and every two weeks there’s a new thing that you can and can’t do. Scylla also started moving around his property. He worked on his desk, fixed it up and painted - taking up a new hobby. Other devs picked up new hobbies too. These are good ways to be active and also to be somewhere else, i.e. to break up the working day and not be spending it all in one home office-type location. Scylla found that when he made these sorts of changes to his routine to improve his lifestyle, the data output by his Fitbit as indicators of his health/wellbeing etc improved, e.g. number of steps taken in a day, heartbeats per minute while at rest. As stated many of the other devs went through a similar process.

On the professional side of things:

They had to improve remote delivery of builds. Accessing things from home as a dev requires a VPN. They need to download a build every day and then upload it to the server after making their changes to the game. They had to work with infrastructure and research other tech, such as streaming tech to allow remote console access, in order to better facilitate this process. For remote access, they also had to work on adapting communications channels.

“Adapting channels of communication.”

In this slide, the team are working on the storyboards. Before you can implement motion capture & performance capture, you have to ‘run the storyboards’ like this. These are small illustrating drawings which reflect the drafts and are meant to quickly reflect the intention of the scenes that are to be built. Before the pandemic, the team would go to meeting rooms like this, sit down, talk and interact in person. After the pandemic, the question became ‘How do you do this over Zoom?’ You can, but it’s not quite the same; it’s harder to see peoples’ expressions, some people are embarrassed speaking over Zoom etc. Therefore they had to adapt their communications systems, and unlearn the ways in which they developed before in order to relearn and learn new ways of communicating.

Slack was a tool that they adopted on this front. Communications channels can be confusing on Slack, so there was a need to develop structure. For example, how quickly should someone reply (as a recommended convention for the purposes of work)? They had to define the process/procedures for the channels so it was clear for the team as a whole how it would all flow (this is important especially if you have a team with say 30 people or as a whole hundreds of people). Before the pandemic, they had stand-up meetings where they’d go around in a circle every morning and talk about their activities - what they’re going to be working on, any roadblocks they had encountered etc. The question arose ‘How do you replace these?’ They ended up doing Slack messages at a certain time of day and updating their statuses with some details on what they’re working on and color-coding (green - fine, yellow - need help, red - busy/blocked out).

Another issue that they faced was unforeseen - the number of meetings that devs were having really shot through the roof. When there wasn’t a good structure of communications channels, any conversation would become a meeting. Everybody began scheduling meetings left and right, and at the end of the day they would have little time left in which to actually work on their to-do lists. Hence, they had to work with the team to really analyze and be very pragmatic. ‘Which meetings needed to happen? Which didn’t? Is a specific meeting really necessary? Which meetings should be recurring? What can be done over Slack?’ This guideline had to be given to the team to help, and it improved things a lot. The number of meetings decreased a lot and they got more effective. For example, by making sure to set an agenda for meetings beforehand, and by having meeting notes (then a dev who didn’t really need to be at a meeting could skip attending and just quickly review the notes output after instead). They also decreased the standard length of meeting times from the default Outlook blocks of 1 hour and 30 mins to 55 mins and 25 mins respectively. This 5 minute change gave devs time for things like bio breaks (also 4 hours in a row at a computer in a home office with one meeting after another just isn’t good for a person).

“Adapting p-cap and mocap”.

On content:

From a content point of view, the most difficult thing in terms of the pandemic was adapting p-cap and mocap (performance capture and motion capture). They hire actors and it’s a large studio. The pandemic meant big limits to what they could and couldn’t do. The actors had to be masked and 5 meters apart in distance (although it doesn’t look like it in some of these shots due to angles). Also there could be no other person around in the studio - only the actors. The directors instead would ‘patch’ in remotely on big screens (you can see this in the second photo in the top right). 

Before the pandemic, they felt that they wouldn’t be able to do p-cap or mocap properly remotely, as the directors would usually stand right next to actors giving guidance on their performance. The techs would also usually be near. But they adapted! The keyword is adapting, changing process. It’s harder and it’s different, but it is possible, and people start rethinking what is possible. What was said to be impossible before now is possible.

P-cap differs to mocap in that it also captures voice and facial expressions.

On the future of work after covid:

There will probably be more working from home and more flexibility for workers e.g. being able to work say 3 out of 5 days from home. It does depend on what a dev’s specific job is however. For example, the audio engineers require lots of specialist equipment and said equipment is of higher quality and quantity in the office. So, depending on role, devs might be working more often or less often from home.

Another development is that lots of devs are moving house. In lockdown etc people started reassessing what’s most important in life. Some are moving further away from the studio to get a cheaper rent or for example couples who both needed an office space to work from home from but their current place only had one area. Others are moving closer to nature for a better quality of life, and still others have other different reasons for doing so. Over 10 devs that he knows in fact have recently moved, including Scylla himself.

The pandemic changed certain skills being used by people on a daily basis. Scylla used as an example of this one of his soft skills, being able to tell from looking/interacting in-person with someone if they are stressed out. Obviously it’s less easy to tell if someone is stressed out when you’re remote, so you adapt different ways of checking in with people in the new situation. To continue carrying out his role as Lead Producer, he began checking in with his team pro-actively on the new comms channels and asking how they were doing.

Also, now that companies are more open to working remotely, there is going to be increased competition for hiring devs. They saw both sides of this coin at BioWare. They were able to hire devs from many places that they couldn’t hire from before e.g. Montreal, Vancouver, the US, as there’s less need for devs to relocate to Edmonton or Austin. This opens up opportunities to hire really intelligent and skilled people that they would not have had access to before.

Question and answer segment:

The pre-production phase has been concluded. They’re in the production phase.

They are not giving out a lot of details yet but Scylla is really excited as a big fan of the whole series. He thinks that with DA4, they will have the opportunity/possibility to launch the best story out of all DA games. He feels that the characters they’re making are amazing. He’s dying to say more but can’t. 

When you work from home you need to keep your team as productive as possible. During the pandemic, when people started working from home, they noticed that some people became more productive and some people became less productive. They were analyzing it on a case-by-case basis so as not to make assumptions. They were interested in seeing what they could do to help. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were looking at the devs as people and seeing what they needed.

Production of DA4 still needed to continue during the pandemic because they want to be able to launch the game.

This slide shows a writer. Writing is an example of a role which is more able to work from home easily.

Their productivity did go down in the first month of the pandemic. After adaptations, some people then became more productive than they were before (this was role and personal situation-dependent, examples of this being artists and coders who were able to art and code at home without being interrupted, thereby being able to produce more). Covid has affected productivity in general, but this is part of our new reality. They have adapted and adjusted some deadlines. They have enough data (Scylla LOVES data) now to understand how long it will take them/how long they’ll need to launch the game. They have always had historical data for this purpose, but they’re doing more of this sort of thing now to ensure that they are doing things at the right time.

Remote hiring opens up the door to more talent joining, so if someone has talent geography will hold them back less. Some companies though may choose not to hire people from other countries due to labor issues, cumbersome legal aspects, time zones. But even in such cases there are activities for example that can be carried out while the rest of the team is asleep such as testing or working on the build, or there are cases where those companies still will want to hire a specifically/highly talented person even in spite of the potential legal aspects and so on.

On mental health: People were affected. There is the mental, physical and social impacts of the pandemic situation on people. EA supported them during the pandemic in terms of their mental wellbeing, there are specific companies (services offered, speaking to a therapist) that they can contact if they need something or help. EA had always been good at supporting them with this sort of thing but this has improved further during the pandemic. Another change was that they could/can take a couple of days off if they needed/need to because of the pandemic e.g. to take care of children, who were obviously not at school at the time. As a producer he had to be very mindful of all of this. How much they were monitoring peoples’ wellbeing really went up during the pandemic.

A question that was asked - in terms of DA4′s storybeats, is there anything in there that they decided to change due to the pandemic as it wouldn’t be sensitive or appropriate to include anymore, for example a plague plotline or something? Scylla’s answer is that DA and ME are games in which they try to have narratives that are relatable, which include things which people will identify with, so that players understand what characters are going through etc. Nothing in DA4′s plotline/storybeats has been changed (in the frame of this question, relating to the pandemic), as it didn’t have anything in it that could be specifically or a directly connected to a pandemic-type situation or anything. Of course the DA story has Blights and the Taint, but these are different & fantastical things and existed long before the pandemic situation. So this wasn’t the case with DA4 and there was no need to change anything, but this has happened to other games where they decided to change a storyline due to a strong correlation with something in the real world.

There were then concluding/closing remarks. The message he wants to send is that a crisis will always spark opportunities. Look at a crisis and try to see how you can grow.

-----

[☕ found this post interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[saturnsummer]

i don't mind forever.

AU: When Sol is handed a case, she doesn't realise how big the case gets. Luckily for her, her best friend is here. (AU of lawyers at Hankuk Law Firm.)

notes: all credits go to @thenerdywriter !! she gave me this prompt just days after i joined tumblr, and i’ve been working on and off on it ever since. my first au series, so please go easy on me! i know i’m practically killing myself for doing two series at once, but i’ll deal with it later. as always, big love to everyone! any grammar mistakes and all will be taken fully responsible by me!

ao3 link

words: 4035 words

one.

Sol scrunches her hair in frustration. She twists her long, wavy light brown hair in a bun, fixing it with a jab of her white, long chopstick hairpin. She adjusts her bangs for good measure and resumes with her report. She reaches over to her coffee mug, only to find it empty. Great, it’s the third coffee she had today, and it wasn’t even lunch. Hearing her colleagues nagging on drinking too much coffee in her head, she stands from her desk and pushes the glass door of her office to the staff pantry. Her heels click against the marble floors as she strides across, filling her cup with iced water before retreating back.

It would have been a normal day at the Hankuk Law firm, but it wasn’t when she had such a pressing case.

It's been weeks. A client of hers has pressed charges against Lee Man Ho, claiming that he scammed her life savings. Lee Manho was a convict that was charged for raping multiple women and on several occasions, sexual harassment. He had been on good behaviour after his release for a couple of years, with no complaints and no news. Only now did his name resurface. He was snarky in his speech, manipulative and quick with his tongue, but most of all had a sinister smile that sent shivers.

Sol, being Sol, couldn’t say no to the poor woman. How could she? She experienced her fair share of poverty from growing up in a single-parent family that made enough to get by. She sympathised with her feelings, knowing just how stressed this poor mother must be when she can no longer afford to pay rent for her home, even less so the necessities for her toddler kids. Because, too many times, Sol was found broke and skipping meals so she could have her younger sister, Byeol, be fed instead.

With the help of the local police, she found more victims to be scammed, all similar in their scenario. Manho would call under the alias of a financial aid consultant, sometimes an insurance agent or bank teller. Then, he would extract their bank numbers from them, effectively draining their money away. By the time they victims tried to call back, the number would be out of order, or picked up by another voice, evident that he used another number to cover up his.

None of his victims had anything in common. Some were rich, some were poor. Some were female, some were male. And Manho had long disappeared in the wind the moment he got out of jail. He was said to be sighted once and when the police placed eyes on him, they lost him that same day.

His digital footprint was an utter headache as well. The police had other things to matter, and figuring out his digital footprint was the least of their concerns when they had important murders and urgent matters to solve.

But two could play this game.

Seungjae was a good friend of Sol’s. They were close acquaintances in school and kept in close contact. He, unlike Sol, was a whiz with computer codes and had his fair share of hacking experience. She remembers how he would hack into the system during school events and broadcast short music videos on the school televisions during breaks. Despite their age gap, he was always courteous, nice and kind hearted in helping others.

Seungjae eventually found a job with the police force, using his skills to legally hack criminal networks and dark nets. He was essentially part of a task force that identified suspicious activities like mass radicalisation, fake news and essentially tracking down internet hackers. It was a no-brainer that Sol would approach him, even though she knew that he could only legally hack under his work orders, not for personal favours.

Well it’s best she at least try.

She called Seungjae, who was fortunately free, and agreed to meet at a cafe. The sun was out, warming them from the autumn breeze that chilled them. Sol grabbed her coat and placed a post-it on her door, informing her colleagues of her business. Sol, while dressed in a warm coat, was undoubtedly freezing from the breeze. If only she could go back to law school, where she wore jeans and sweatshirts all day. Instead, she had a light blue long sleeved blouse, a knee length pencil skirt and a midnight blue blazer, and her only coat she had weakly shielding her from the cold.

“Sol A, what gives me the feeling that you aren’t calling for the purpose of catching up, but for a favour?” Seungjae asks as soon as his ice coffee arrives. Sol is amused at his habit, that he still calls her Sol A to differentiate her from Sol B, her colleague just working next door to her. But in response, she gives a small frown.

“Oppa, please? You have to help me with this. This case is driving me nuts!” She says in frustration as she stirs her ice tea. “Look, he’s off the grid, like properly off. I can’t even track his number or his email accounts. When the police placed plainclothes on him, he was like a ninja and they lost him within the first hour.”

Seungjae’s frown deepens. He knows of people who are good on the internet, but for an ex-convict to be running this alone? Furthermore, a convict who had no criminal record of scamming, conning and IT based crimes? There was definitely more to this.

“Sol A, do you think that he’s working alone?” Seungjae asks, stopping Sol in her speech. She tilts her head, the way she does normally when she puts the puzzle pieces in order. From her bag, she takes out a notebook and scribbles down the facts, then pushes it to the centre of the table.

“Okay, so we know that Lee Manho was convicted of rape and sexual harassment long time ago. Now, he’s running scams, and has no known background of coding or conning people, yet somehow the money appears in his bank account and it disappears the next moment.” Sol states as she circles her notes with a pencil and Seungjae nods.

“I think… I think you’re right, oppa. He’s definitely not working alone. And he could just be the middleman bringing the cash from one place to another.” Sol breaths out, realising how big the case has gotten. She’s not just going after Lee Manho, but she’s going after an entire team.

“You said that you can’t track his whereabouts, people he communicates with and where the money is going to?” SeungJae asks. Sol nods.

“Looks like someone is covering up the transfers and his tracks.” Seungjae concludes. Seungjae furrows his eyebrows. Sol recognises his thinking face and tries to plea once more.

“Please, oppa? You helped me check out and verify Yeseul’s boyfriend, which saved her life! Please, oppa…” Sol pleads with him. Seungjae knew how much Sol was going to dedicate to this, and besides, he was legally going to hack. He was fighting for those who couldn’t fight. What difference would it make? It felt wrong to ignore such a desperate plea.

“Fine. But you have to let me use a laptop that isn’t mine. I can’t have my superiors know I’m hacking into a case that wasn’t submitted to me again. God, Yeseul’s ex-boyfriend case got me a bloody earful from the captain.” He finally agrees, getting up from his seat and grabbing his coat. Sol lets out a relieved sigh and picks her coat too.

“Thank you, thank you!”

“Save it for later, when I’m done hacking. Let’s head back to your office for now.” He says and walks to the door. At that moment, Sol’s phone rings, and she picks up, knowing who will call at this time of the day. If it’s lunch, it has to either be Yeseul or Joon Hwi.

“Are you joining us for lunch, sunbae?” Sol takes a moment to close her eyes in frustration. This man is going to drive her insane.

“Yeah. Are you all ordering?”

“That’s right. Extra pickles?”

“Always. Add one more jjampong and kkampungi, too.” The receiving end goes silent.

“Who’s joining?” Sol gives a knowing smile as she unlocks her car.

“An old friend of ours.”

-----

“Wah, it’s been a long time since Seungjae-hyung could eat with us!” BokGi says, as he passes out the chopsticks and Yebeom unpacks the meals. Seungjae only gives a small smile while helping out with the food.

Despite the cold weather, the odd group of friends found pleasure in eating outdoors as opposed to their office pantry. It was too noisy some days, too quiet on some, and knowing how chaotic the group can get during lunch, it only made sense to have their meals downstairs at some benches. Besides, they could use a break from being stuck in their offices all day and look at trees changing their colours to shades of red, oranges and brown.

“Thank your noona here, for convincing me to come.” He says as he nods his head over to Sol, who is busy unpacking her pickles and noodles. Joon Hwi gives a smile as he stares at the delight on her face when she sees those yellow pickles on a plastic saucer.

“Hyung, what are you here for?” Joon Hwi asks, as he unpacks his noodles.

“This lady here has enlisted my help once again for a case she is working on. But it has to be off the books. Thus, my presence here instead of my cubicle back at my headquarters.” Sol chokes and she quickly takes a sip of her tea.

“Oppa, why do you make me sound so law breaking…” Sol grumbles. Yeseul, sitting next to her only gives a small smile and squeezes her hand.

“Seungjae-oppa did help me bring Yeongchang to jail. So I would consider his work, whether under his boss orders or not, to be lawful.” Yeseul quips quietly. The table grows silent for a moment, knowing how this topic took a mental toll out of them, but Yeseul was hit the hardest.

When Yeseul first started dating Yeongchang, everyone didn’t mind it. Only when Sol witnessed how Yeseul would be frightened to pick up his call and spotting bruises on her arms did she get Seungjae to dig into his personal life. Lo and behold, not only was he abusive, he was seeing two other women and they were treated badly, if not, worse.

Yeseul’s heart broke, this being her first love and the man she envisioned marrying. But with her friends' support, she took it upon herself to press charges on him, for the women he tortured and for herself. Representing herself and the women that he had failed to protect and taken advantage of, it wasn’t easy for her, having been so blind in love and still harbouring feelings.

The group stood by and silently supported. They accompanied her trials, no matter how busy they were. Sol remembers Jiho running from one courtroom to another on one occasion when he had to immediately attend a court hearing for a client he was defending. Sol had Yeseul stay over at her apartment during the entire situation, while Yeseul searched for an apartment nearby after moving out of his house. Even Sol B, who was usually cold, bought her meals and stayed to eat when the girls spent late nights in silence and drinking.

Finally, the judge ruled that Yeongchang was to be charged in jail. For the sexual, mental and physical abuse of these women, including Yeseul. It has been months since then and time can only tell how much she has healed. The rest can only give their silent support and be there for her.

“I didn’t mean to make the mood bad. Come, let’s eat. Also, what is the case about, unnie?” Yeseul quickly breaks into a smile, an attempt to let everyone know she’s okay. Sol gives a brief description of her case to everyone while she slurps her noodles and pickles.

“This is going to be difficult. If you guys are right, you might be dealing with something bigger than just Lee Manho.” Sol B states and Sol gives a nodded reply.

“Please don’t tell Superior Kim or Superior Yang about this. I really need to break this case and Seungjae-oppa is my only way to.” Sol informs her group. They give half hearted murmurs, not wanting to be meddled into Sol’s affairs. Well, all but one.

“Yah, why didn’t you come find me? I have my own contacts in the police as well.” Joon Hwi asks, a slight frown on his face. From anyone else looking, it would have been easy to miss. But for Sol, she knew that he was upset, interpreting his complaints as “Why didn’t you come and tell me about this first?”

“Because, Mr. Second Round Judicial Exam Pass, you have been too busy! Do I really need to remind you to eat every damm moment? You drive me crazy some days!” Sol argues. They launch into a light hearted argument, as the rest of the lunch group watches with equal fervour as they eat their meals.

“Guys, stop arguing, my ears hurt.” Jiho said, his tone in slight annoyance as he dove straight into the kkampungi and tangsuyuk. Sol finally gave up fighting, earning a teasing smirk from Joon Hwi. They continued their noisy meal, chatting and catching up with Seungjae. Seungjae gives them some updates of his pregnant wife and some interesting cases.

After their meal, they separated their trash neatly. The sun now hides away in the clouds, leaving little warmth against the chilly breeze of autumn. Sol brushes her coat and rubs her hands and arms. If only she could afford a better one than this old coat she’s been using since her first year in university.

Joon Hwi notices her trying to warm up against the cold and takes his coat from the chair, layering it on her. He honestly didn’t feel cold, but he knows he has always been the stronger one to resist against the cold. For Sol, it must be freezing.

“Take mine.” He simply says, taking the packs of plastic from Sol. If Sol had a hint of blush, he pretended to not notice.

“Oh, thanks.” She said as she took wipes from her bag and wiped down the mess on the benches and tables. “But I don’t need it. We’re heading back to the office anyway.” She shrugs his coat off and drapes it over her arm, returning it to him. He pushes it to her, and leans in closer to her.

“Help me carry it, so I don’t have to, sunbae.” He teases with a smirk, sending Sol in a fit of frustrated squeaks, chasing him as best as she can in her heels. Sol knows Joon Hwi gets a thing out of his teasing, and sends him annoyed glares as she continues to clear the tables. Jiho manages to sigh and Sol B rolls her eyes as she dumps the trash in the bins.

The group grabs their bags as they head back into the office, where Sol checks Seungjae in as a visitor at the reception. The receptionist hands him a blue lanyard with a visitor pass as Sol leads him to the elevators. Jiho and Bokgi are off to meet clients, and Sol B is headed to court for a hearing. Yeseul stops at another floor to her office with Yebeom, who needs to pick up some reports from a colleague.

Joon Hwi follows Sol to her office with Seungjae, despite his office being upstairs. Sol grabs her personal laptop from her bag, which is separate from her desktop computer and passes it to Seungjae, who takes a seat opposite her and starts programming the computer to begin hacking.

“What, did you just let him use your personal laptop?” Joon Hwi asks in concern as he takes a seat on a spare chair.

“Let him do it. Don’t you have your reports to do?” Sol asks as she turns to her own reports before typing in her findings for the new Lee Manho case. Joon Hwi doesn’t reply, and Sol sends an annoyed glance. He’s not going to leave unless he knows all the information of this case.

“Okay, I got it.” Seungjae says after a series of clicks and turns the screen to show Sol what he has found. Sol leans into a chart of bank transfers.

"From what I can tell, it seems like the money enters his bank account and is transferred to an offshore account. I can't trace where the money goes from there anymore." Seungjae explains as he uses the cursor to show them. "I can't tell who owns the account either. If I could take a guess, it's probably the mastermind of this."

"Wait, look. Lee Manho is getting paid a constant amount every single time before a large sum comes in and leaves." Joon Hwi points. Sol grabs her printed papers as she matches the amounts that her clients have given here. They match exactly to the large sums, but have no relation to the constant amount that he gets every scam.

"He's getting paid to scam? Tch, God, I hate this crook." Sol says through gritted teeth. Joon Hwi sighs and observes the anger rising in Sol. He places a hand on top of her clenched fist for comfort and her fist stops clenching as she sighs in response.

"Sol A, I can't track his location with your laptop. It's not exactly ideal, since it can be tracked back." Seungjae says, eyes darting while continuously typing. Joon Hwi could sense the disappointment in Sol's face, but it can't be helped. It was too dangerous from her location and IP address.

"Oppa, thank you for helping. I owe you one." Sol says as Seungjae scrubs her laptop clean from hacking traces. Seungjae returns her laptop and stands up. "You should go back, oppa. You've been gone too long."

"I'll keep you updated." He says as Sol guides him out of the office. Once she shuts the door, she pulls the hairpin from her hair and crunches her hair in frustration. She has the information on where the money is going, but it's no use when she can't find out where he is. Joon Hwi takes a seat opposite her.

"Don't stress." He says softly, and Sol bites her lip in frustration.

"Don't stress? How can I not? The police aren't giving me any information on him, delaying his location tracking! I can't even find him! How am I supposed to get evidence to charge him, if he can't even appear to show up to court?" Sol angrily spills, her hands flailing. Joon Hwi sighs but grabs a hold of her wrist.

"Don't get swayed by your emotions." Joon Hwi firmly says, sparingly into Sol's anger-filled eyes. She pulls her wrist back, taking a deep breath before gathering her hair up again.

"Fine." She grumbles. "Get out of my office, Prosecutor Han. Don't you have work?" This earns a soft smile from Joon Hwi. As he heads to the door, he turns back before he leaves.

"Don't... Don't do anything stupid or impulsive, you hear me?"

Sol clicks her tongue and gives a half-hearted nod. She turns back to her report and updates her findings and tries to diffuse the thought of asking Seungjae to hack with her laptop to find Man Ho's location.

For Kang Sol A, such thoughts don't leave easily.

-----

"You sure?" Seungjae asks, seated in Sol's car. Sol takes a deep breath in and nods.

It was a few days after Seungjae visited the office. Sol called the police as much as she could, but they always left her on the line or just said "we're working on it." Thus, Sol told Seungjae to meet her at a park, before driving to a random alley and passing him her laptop.

"Yeah, I'll take my chances." She replied. Seungjae sighs and begins typing away.

"You know you're putting yourself at risk?" He asks, eyes never leaving the screen.

"I'll put myself at risk for the justice of my clients." She says firmly. A few minutes pass as Sol stares out of the car and watches the bright moon and the clouds floating by in misty swirls.

"Got it." Sol turns her attention to Seungjae. On the screen is a map and a blinking red dot of Manho’s location. Sol reads the map and puts her car back in drive before turning out of the alley.

"Woah, do you know where you are going?" Seungjae asks, grabbing onto the overhead handle for support and his hand securing the laptop.

"Seungjae-oppa, don't tell anyone about this, okay? Especially not Joon Hwi." Sol ignores his question as she speeds up the car, turning into a drop-off point of a train station.

"Sol A, you're-"

"Sorry, oppa. But I need to find him. I can't sit and wait for the police anymore. I promise you, I'll be safe." Sol says. Seungjae couldn't say no. He knows how stubborn Sol is, how when she decides on something, she will commit to it wholeheartedly.

"If he's armed, you could get yourself in danger." Seungjae exasperatedly sighs. It was too big a risk to see the junior he treats as a little sister put herself at risk.

"I'll be fine. Look, you're on my speed dial. You know that I can handle myself. There's a reason why I took years of self-defence classes." Sol tells him. Seungjae nods his head unwillingly.

"You better call me after you're done." He says as he opens the door and gets out of the car. "Please, please stay safe." Sol nods and gives a small smile.

"Thank you, oppa." Sol drives away immediately, leaving Seungjae to pinch his nose bridge in frustration and concern. Silently, as he boards the train, he prays for Sol's safety.

-----

Sol knows the area well. As she parks her car at a carpark, she checks to make sure Manho is still at the bar. The blinking dot stays stagnant at the bar, not moving ever since she dropped Seungjae off. Getting out, she tightens her coat around her and thanks herself for the long trousers she's wearing. At least she isn't wearing a skirt, if she needs to beat someone up.

Entering the bar, she naturally takes a slow walk around. But hidden by the corner of the bar tables sit a lone man, with a cap, dressed in black button up and holding a glass of golden whiskey. She knew that was her target.

Taking a seat next to him, she orders a glass of soda water from the bartender. Man Ho chuckles next to her as he sets his glass down. Turning his head, he faces Sol with sly eyes, lips curled at the corner.

"Prosecutor Kang, you're quick." She hears him say and a chill goes down her spine. She lets her eyes meet the cold stare of Manho.

"Oh, you think I don't know you? You're the one after me more than the police are for the past weeks." Man Ho sinisterly says, a sick grin on his face. Sol grits her teeth and takes a deep breath to soothe her anger.

"Why are you doing this? You think it's fun?Watching my clients suffer?" Sol says through her gritted teeth. He only scoffs.

"My, my. Don't want you getting agitated now, don't we? We just started." He says, sipping from his glass again.

"Answer my question." She says with force. Man Ho sips on his glass, swirling the golden brown liquid against the large square cubes of ice as he exhales.

As the words fall from his mouth, Sol grows as cold as the glass in her hand. Her hands slightly shake as she hitches her breath. When her shaky eyes turn to Manho’s, his eyes are sly with a mocking grin. No, he can’t know.

"You’re just as feisty as your sister, aren’t you?”

[tyrantisterror]

I did a four part series of trivia posts when ATOM Volume 1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us! came out, and that was pretty fun!  You can see that set of trivia posts here if you’d like.  I thought it’d be fun to do another now that ATOM Volume 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth! is out - just one this time, because a lot of the trivia I talked about with Volume 1 still applies.

I’m gonna divide this into two sections: non-spoiler trivia, for things that really don’t give a lot of plot points away, and spoiler trivia, for things that DO give away major plot points.  I recommend not reading the spoiler trivia until after you’ve read Tyrantis Roams the Earth!, for obvious reasons, and will put the spoiler trivia under a cut.

Ok, let’s go!

- So if you read ATOM Volume 1, you probably noticed that the book is split not only into chapters, but “episodes,” which consist of four chapters a piece.  It’s kind of a nod to how the series owes a great deal of its DNA to various monster of the week shows, with Godzilla: the Series and The Godzilla Power Hour being obvious influences.  It also allowed me to pepper in some illustrations and cheesy b-movie style titles into each volume.

- The first “episode” of Volume 2, Tyrantis in Tokyo, pays explicit homage to the giant monster movies of Japan, perhaps even moreso than the chapters that came before it.  Given how much Japanese media influenced ATOM - from tokusatsu like the Godzilla, Gamera, and Ultraman franchises to anime like Digimon and Evangelion (hell, the title of this episode itself is a tip of the hat to Tenchi Muyo by way of one of its spinoffs) - it kind of felt obligatory that Tyrantis visit Japan and pay his respects.

- Tyrantis in Tokyo also fits in a tribute to another staple of Atomic Age pop culture: Rock and Roll.

- Kutulusca, the giant cephalopod that appears in Tyrantis in Tokyo, is one of the oldest kaiju in this series, dating back to the first iteration of Tyrantis’s story that I put to paper back in 2001 or so.  It’s changed a lot since then, but its fight with Tyrantis goes more or less the way it originally did.

- Old Meg, the giant placoderm/shark, and Nastadyne, the bipedal beetle, both owe their existence directly to Deviantart’s Godzilla fandom.  Old Meg originated as a dunkleosteus monster I submitted to a “create a Godzilla kaiju” contest held by Matt Frank, while Nastadyne is based on a Megalon redesign I made during the “redesign all the Godzilla kaiju” phase of DA’s kaiju fandom.

- The second episode, Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace, gets dark as we visit the USSR, which had enough REAL horror with atomic power in its history to make creature features seem a bit defanged by comparison.  It’s probably the episode with the strongest horror elements - ATOM’s always been influenced by Resident Evil, and this is probably where that influence shows the most strongly.

- It also features the first fully robotic mecha in the series, the mighty Herakoschei!  Its name is a combination of “Heracles” and “Koschei the Deathless,” with the former part being added by its Russian creators to make it seem a bit more international as they offer it to the U.N. in hopes of gaining aid for a very extreme kaiju problem they’ve developed.

- Most of Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace takes place in the Siberian Monster Zone.  Its name is a reference to the Lawless Monster Zone in Ultraman, which is such a cool fucking name I wish that I wish I could go back in time and steal it.

- The next episode, Tyrantis’s Revenge, is... full of spoilers, so we’ll move on for now.

- The penultimate episode, Tyrantis vs. the Martian Monsters, is a love letter to MANY different sci-fi stories that involve life on Mars, though the most prominent of them is of course The War of The Worlds (one of my top 3 favorite books) and its various adaptations.  From its tentacles sapient martians, the tripodal leader of the titular monsters whose name includes the word “ulla” which is uttered by said sapient martians, the plant monster made of red vines, the cylinder-shaped spacecraft the Martian monsters are sent to earth on, the copper-skinned stingray-esque flying martian who shoots lasers from its tail, and the fact that every chapter title in this episode is a quote from the book, the H.G. Wells influence is STRONG.

- The final episode, Invasion from Beyond!, is shamelessly inspired by Destroy All Monsters, although there’s a dash of “To Serve Men,” Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, and The Day the Earth Stood Still mixed in as well.  It’s also sort of a tribute to my first “published” bit of a kaiju fiction - a rewrite of Destroy All Monsters that included EVERY Godzilla monster that had appeared at the time, which my middle school self wrote back in 2002 or so for Kaiju Headquarters, a kaiju fansite I’m not sure exists anymore.  Invasion from Beyond! is just as ambitious (but hopefully better executed) as my DAM Remake, with dozens upon dozens of different kaiju duking it out, earthlings vs. aliens.

- There were three different documents I made to outline the final battle of Invasion from Beyond!  It’s the largest episode of the series so far and more than half of it is that fucking fight.  My inner child is pleased, though, so hopefully you will be too.

Ok, that’s all I can share without spoilers.  READER BEWARE WHAT FOLLOWS BELOW THE CUT!

JUST MAKING SURE you know that SPOILERS will follow from here on out.  Read at your own peril!  YOU WERE WARNED!

(I’m gonna start with lighter ones just in case you scrolled too far and want to turn back)

- There’s a number of explicit Spielberg homages in ATOM Volume 2, from a “we need a bigger boat” joke during a chase with a giant shark to the fact that Invasion from Beyond! opens with a group of people flying to an island of monsters to review whether or not it should get more funding.

- When Tyrantis appears in the first chapter, I snuck in modified lyrics of The Godzilla Power Hour’s theme song.  “Up from the depths”... “several stories high”... “breathing fire”... “its head in the sky”... Tyrantis!  Tyrantis!  Tyrantis!

- The two rock bands in Tyrantis in Tokyo have real life inspirations ala Gwen Valentine, albeit a bit more muddled than hers.  The Cashews are inspired by The Peanuts (see what I did there), while The Thunder Lizards are a mix of The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper.  I wanted The Thunder Lizards to be more akin to the myth of a famous rock and roll band than the reality - less the real Beatles and more the Yellow Submarine cartoon version of them.

- The song The Thunder Lizards write for Tyrantis was written to fit the tune of “The Godzilla March” from Godzilla vs. Gigan, though ideally if someone made an actual song of it it would be its own song.  I got the idea from Over the Garden Wall, which used the Christmas song “O Holy Night” as a a starting point for “Come Wayward Souls.”

- Perry Martin, UNNO reporter and peer of Henry Robertson, is a nod to Raymond Burr, with his name being a combination of two of Burr’s most famous roles: Perry Mason, and Steve Martin from Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956).

- Dr. Rinko Tsuburaya is a few homages in one.  Her name comes from Rinko Kikuchi (who played Mako Mori in Pacific Rim), while her last name is obviously in homage of Eiji Tsuburaya.  Her being the daughter of an esteemed scientist is inspired by Emiko Yamane from the original Gojira.

- Nastadyne’s Burning Justice mode is named after a similar super mode from various Transformers cartoons, though it’s more directly inspired by the Shining/Burning Finger super move from G Gundam.

- Martians sending kaiju to different planets via shooting them out of cannons (with or without cylinder spaceships around them) is another War of the Worlds shoutout.  So is martians living on Venus after their homeworld was made uninhabitable, actually.

- Kurokame’s vocalizations are described as wails in explicit homage to Gamera.  His name can be translated as either “black tortoise” (a reference to the mythical guardian beast Genbu, which can also be construed as a Gamera reference thanks to Gamera: Advent of Irys implying Gamera and Genbu are one and the same) or a portmanteau of the Japanese words for crocodile and turtle - “crocturtle.”

- Burodon’s name is just a mangling of “burrow down.”  It also sounds vaguely like Baragon, who Burodon is loosely inspired by.  AND, since Burodon is sort of a knockoff/modified Baragon, that kinda makes him a reference to various monsters in Ultraman!

- The final battle of Tyrantis in Tokyo is sort of a hybrid of the finales of Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster and Destroy All Monsters.  

- The Japanese kaiju teaching Tyrantis the art of throwing rocks at your enemies is both a joke on the prominence of rock throwing in Japanese kaiju fights AND the tired trope of an American hero learning secret martial arts from a Japanese mentor ala Batman, Iron Fist, etc.  In this case, the secret martial art is throwing rocks at people.

- When introduced to Herakoschei and its pilot, we are told that the strain of piloting this early mecha is so intense that many pilots have died in the process, with the current one passing out on more than few occasions.  This is of course a Pacific Rim homage - sadly, no one invents drifting.

- Herakoschei’s design is a loose homage to Robby the Robot and Cherno Alpha, because big boxy robots are cool.

- The Writhing Flesh and ESPECIALLY Pathogen are both hugely influenced by Resident Evil and The Thing.  Giant body horror piles of raw flesh, tendrils, mismatched mouths and limbs may be a bit outside the main era of monster design ATOM homages, but they fit the themes and bring a nice contrast.

- I came up with Pathogen long before Corona but MAN it definitely feels different in 2021 to have a giant monster whose name is a synonym for disease driving other creatures crazy in a quarantine zone than it did when I plotted out the story in 2016.

- The chapter title “Hello, Old Foes” is a riff on “Goodbye, Old Friend”

- Minerva, the kaiju-fied clone of Dr. Lerna, is meant to be an homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which is a genuinely good giant monster flick.  I am sure many of you will also believe I included her because I’m a pervert whose into tall women, but you’d be wrong!  I included the seven foot tall Russian mecha pilot Ludmilla Portnova because I’m a pervert whose into tall women.  Minerva’s inclusion was just coincidental, I swear!

- Since Promythigor is a play on the archetypal ape kaiju to contrast Tyrantis as a play on the archetypal fire-breathing reptile kaiju, their fight has a lot of nods to King Kong movies.  Promythigor attempts the famous jaw-snap maneuver of Kong (with less success), J.C. Clark paraphrases the “brute force vs. a thinking animal” line from the King Kong vs. Godzilla American cut, and Tyrantis slides down a mountain to knock Promythigor off his feet in a reversal of Kong doing the same in King Kong vs. Godzilla.

- Tyrantis sliding down a mountain on his tail doubles as a Godzilla vs. Megalon homage.

- Though Promythigor is the archetypal Ape and Tyrantis the archetypal Fire-Breathing Reptile, I think it’s fun to note that in some ways, Promythigor is the Godzilla equivalent in their matchup, and Tyrantis the Kong.  Promythigor has a slight size advantage, was scarred by humans performing unethical weapons technology, and is associated with violent explosions.  Tyrantis is a good-at-heart prehistoric beast who humanized in part by his unlikely friendship with a human woman.

- Of course, in the context of the famous quote from the American cut of King Kong vs. Godzilla, they remain in their archetypal lanes.  Promythigor is the more intelligent of the two (though not necessarily wiser), and Tyrantis is in many ways a brute reptile.  Their battle is a rebuttal of sorts to the assertion that Kong is the “better” animal because he is closer to human.  Promythigor’s near human creativity and emotions don’t make him the kinder/more benevolent monster, but instead fuel a very self-centered and destructive attitude that makes him the far more dangerous threat.  On the other hand, Tyrantis, who is less intelligent, limited in communication with others by his reptilian mindset and instincts, and simple in his thoughts and desires, is nonetheless a sweet creature that is easily dealt with when others consider his animal needs and mindset.  There’s a quote from Hellboy I love that probably sums up all of my writing thus far: “To be other than human does not mean the same as being less,” and that’s what the matchup between these two in particular tries to illustrate: the “less” human Tyrantis is nonetheless more benign than the “more” human Promythigor.

- Kraydi the psychic lizard began life as a soft sculpture I made of the Canyon Krayt Dragon from The Wildlife of Star Wars.  The sculpture didn’t look much like the illustration, but I liked how it came out, and so I made it an original monster named Kraydi (see what I did there).  Figuring out an explanation for that name in ATOM’s world was possibly the most difficult kaiju naming task in the series, but it worked out in the end.

- Kraydi and Promythigor having psychic powers is a result of my time on Godzilla fan forums in my middle school years.  Most of the forums had OC kaiju battle tournaments, and SO many of those kaiju had a wide array of beam weapons and psychic powers just to win the tournaments by beam-spamming and mind controlling their foes into oblivion.  There’s a special kind of rage you get when your original creation is beaten by “Fire Godzilla” because he has a genius level intellect and the power of unstoppable telekinesis.  Kraydi began as (and still is I suppose) my attempt to do a psychic kaiju well, while Promythigor’s villainy being tied to psychic powers being forced on him is sort of my passive aggressive commentary on people foisting powers on a monster without any real thematic reason for them.

- Henry Robertson and Dr. Praetorius chewing out the laziness of people giving kaiju completely unaltered names of mythic beasts will probably be seen as a jab at the Monsterverse and/or the numerous writers in the kaiju OC scene who do the same, but it’s ACTUALLY a jab at my past self, who had DOZENS of kaiju whose names were just Greek mythological figures verbatim.  There are dozens of kaiju named Hydra, Scylla, Charybdis, Chimera, etc., past me, try to make the names stand out!  Oh wait you did.  I mean, don’t pat yourself on the back too much, you still went with “Mothmanud” as a canon name and never came up with something better, but, like, good on ya for trying I guess.

- Dr. Praetorius takes his name from the evil mad scientis in Bride of Frankenstein, who basically has all the wicked traits that Universal’s Frankenstein downplayed in their take on Dr. Frankenstein.  Ironically, ATOM’s Dr. Praetorius is a bit less evil than his fellow mad scientists in ATOM.  I really like how his character turned out, he surprised me.

- Isaac Rossum, the pilot of the USA mecha Atomoton, is named for Isaac Aasimov, whose robot stories are to robot fiction what Lord of the Rings is to high fantasy.  His last name is a reference to Rossum’s Universal Robots, which is where the word “robot” came from.

- The unfortunate pilots of MechaTyrantis in ATOM Volumes 1 and 2 are all nods to Jurassic Park.  John Ludlow = John Hammond and Peter Ludlow, Ian Grant = Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant, Dennis Dodgson = Dennis Nedry and Lewis Dodgson.

- A good way to pitch Invasion from Beyond! would be “what if the staff and monsters were able to fight back when the Kilaaks tried to take over Monsterland?”

- Ok, here’s a fun joke that no one will get but me because it requires a very specific chain of logic based on some obscure and loosely connected nerd bullshit.  There’s a rocker in ATOM’s universe named Sebastian Haff, right?  One of his songs, “Darling Let’s Shimmy,” is referenced right before a mothmanud larva emerges from the ground in both ATOM Vol. 1 and 2.  Ok, so, in the Bubba Hotep, an aging Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff claims he is actually the real Elvis Presley, having changed places with the real Sebastian Haff as a sort of Prince and the Pauper deal that went wrong.  Got that?  Ok, so, in UFO folklore, a common joke is the theory that Elvis didn’t die, but was rather abducted by aliens (or he actually WAS an alien the whole time - the whole “Elvis didn’t die, he just went home” joke in Men in Black is a good example of this).  Ok?  Ok.  So, in ATOM’s universe, we can surmise that their equivalent of Elvis, whose name is Sebastian Haff, WAS abducted by aliens, and that his song “Darling Let’s Shimmy” is subconsciously influenced by his repressed memories from his time aboard the Beyonder spaceships, which is why it accidentally awoke a Mothmanud larva in Volume 1.  There’s a lot of bullshit jokes I put into ATOM, but this is perhaps the bullshittiest of them all.

- One of the most common bits of feedback on ATOM Volume 1 I got was “I kept waiting for something to eat Brick Rockwell, he’s such an asshole.”  And I had to smile and go, “Oh, yeah, guess he never got his, huh?” the whole time without letting on that he was going to die here all along!

- Dr. Lerna and Brick Rockwell’s nature as foils to each other is probably most apparent in Invasion from Beyond!, where both are given fairly similar situations - a nonhuman approaches them with a solution to a global crisis - and react to it very differently.  I worry that some people may think they both made the same choice and got different results, and that that’s hypocrisy on my part, but I hope I wrote it so you can see how their choices and situations actually differ in key ways, and why their decisions, while similar on the surface, are ultimately very different, and thus result in almost opposite outcomes.

- So, when I planned out this book in 2016, I swear I didn’t know about the Orca from 2019′s Godzilla King of the Monsters.  Having the plot hang around Dr. Lerna deciding whether or not to use a sonic device to rouse all the kaiju to save the earth was not INTENDED to be a Monsterverse reference - it came about from me looking at Pathfinder’s take on kaiju, who are all explicitly influenceable by music, and thinking, “Oh, wow, music and songs DO have a major connection with kaiju in a lot of media, I should do something with that.”  Whem KOTM came out a few days after Volume 1 came out I realized I was kinda fucked here, because the comparison was definitely going to be made, but I’d also set this all up already and you can’t just change suddenly to avoid looking like a copy cat and make a good story, so... I dunno, I leaned into it a bit, but it is what it is.

- While most people will probably think they’re a reference to the Reptoids of UFO folklore, the Reptodites are more inspired by the Dinosapien of speculative evolution fame and, even morso, by the Reptites from Chrono Trigger.  Me wanting to avoid the “lizard people control the government” conspiracy theory trope is one of the main reasons why Reptodites have this non-interference clause with humanity.

- Lieutenant Gray is a bunch of different humanoid aliens rolled into one - a little Hopskinville goblin, a little classic gray, a little this one weird alien with five-fingered zygodactyl hands, etc.

- There’s some Beyonder Mecha in this volume that are basically kaiju-fied versions of the Flatwoods Monster.  The species that built them ALSO engineered the Mothmanuds, because connecting Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster is fun!

- Pleprah is, obviously, a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater.

- Tyrantis’s brush with death, in addition to being so very anime, was inspired by my dad outlining how mythic heroes often have to travel to the underworld/land of the dead before they can finish their journey.  It’s one of the plot points that I’ve had planned for this series since middle school.

- I’m sure some will view it as hackneyed and corny, but as a person who’s battled with depression for decades, having Tyrantis’s choice to live be the big heroic turn of the finale was very important to me.  Tyrantis incorporates elements of a lot of imaginary friends I made as a kid, and in many ways he’s kind of the face of my more positive side in my head.  He’s been telling me to choose to live for a while, and while maybe to an outsider it may seem hackneyed, it’s just... very Tyrantis.  He chooses life and kindness in the face of pain and struggle.  That’s Tyrantis.

- Tyrantis’s powered up form is called “Hyper Mode,” which is another Gundam reference.  Originally it was a lot gaudier and involved him turning gold like a fuckin’ Super Saiyan.  I opted for something a little more toned down here.  

- Also, speaking of KOTM references, I decided to make Hyper Mode Tyrantis’s final duel with Pathogen be a sort of foil to Burning Godzilla’s final bout with Ghidorah in KOTM.  Instead of ravaging the city, Hyper Tyrantis’s pulse of energy rejuvenates his fallen allies, and as a result he is “crowned” not out of fear for his supremacy in the wake of killing a powerful enemy, but in gratitude for his kindness.  See?  Leaning into it!

- And now I can finally reveal that Yamaneon is ATOM’s equivalent of The Monolith Monsters - that is, a kaiju that is also a mineral.  I took the “strange continuously growing rock” thing in a very different direction, though, as unlike The Monolith Monsters, Yamaneon is actually alive.

- At various points in the pre-writing process, either Promythigor, MechaTyrantis, or both were going to die fighting Pathogen.  I ultimately decided to let them both live, with MechaTyrantis even getting his flesh and blood body back, because I think it’s more interesting and thematically consistent that way.  They get a chance to heal their wounds by changing their ways.

- The Great Beyonder and Dorazor both almost didn’t make the cut, as I felt they didn’t have the same pull as villains that Pathogen, Promythigor, and MechaTyrantis did.  But then I thought that could actually be the gag - build them up as the final boss, only to have Pathogen take their crown.  I want to explore post-face turn Dorazor a bit more, though.  We’ll have to see about that in a later volume.

- Volumes 1 and 2 make up what I call “The Ballad of Tyrantis Arc” for ATOM.  I call it that because Tyrantis’s storyline in these two volumes was patterend after Chivalric ballads like Yvain the Knight of the Lion.  Tyrantis, a heroic warrior who is kind but dumb of ass, learns of strange goings on outside his home and investigates.  During his journey into the unknown he falls in love with a powerful woman, whose favor he tries to win.  Through happenstance he is separated from his love and, distraught, wanders around fighting various foes to prove his worth, before finally returning to his love a better hero.  Invasion from Beyond! could even be seen as a sort of Morte d’Artur, with Tyrantis and a bunch of other kaiju heroes (including Nastadyne and Kemlasulla, who are built up as Hero Kaiju of Another Story) take part in a huge battle that threatens their idealic kingdom (of monsters).

- Volume 2 isn’t the end of ATOM, but it’s designed to work as an ending if you want to tap out here.  As a reader I feel a definitive ending is important, but as a writer I’m always tempted to revisit my beloved characters, so I feel giving closure while leaving a few doors open for possible future adventures is a good compromise between these positions.  There will be more ATOM stories, some (but not all!) following Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna, but if you want to know that Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna get an ending and the resolution to their arcs such a thing promises, here you go.  An ending, if not THE END.

[waywardwrestlewritingwaif]

Raise the Stakes, Part One

So this is a sequel to Place Your Bets. It's actually just the first part of a sequel because I'm trying to publish things in shorter segments. Time is valuable and I know it can be tricky to sit down and read through someone's 8,000-word opus.

That said, you will have to read Place Your Bets first or this isn't going to make any sense.

Pairing: David Finlay x OFC with mentioned Jay White x OFC

Word count: 1,641

Content advisory: Brief sexual references, Jay being an emotionally abusive asshole

You’ve tried three or four times to reconcile the pay statement from New Japan with the list of expenses you submitted for Jay last week. They’re different. The check is lower than it should be and even though it’s not by a lot, this sort of thing drives Jay mental and he’s been in such a mood since you dared go on a date that you’re going to extraordinary lengths to try to pacify him.

If anything, you feel like making more of an effort is making him harder on you. He’s had you working practically around the clock, thinking nothing of waking you up in the middle of the night to demand you find some obscure record, or complaining that he doesn’t understand something. He’s demanded you reschedule every appointment you’ve made for him at least once, so that everyone who’s relying on you so that they can work with him has been screaming at you.

So you’re exhausted and anxious and you can’t figure out why you have a check that doesn’t match your invoice because the accounting department here codes everything differently, so the amounts per line are combined or split up in ways you don’t understand and you have to patch it back together. It’s impossible.

The thing is, you’ve done it before. The expense checks are screwed up 4 times out of 5 and it’s always a chore that takes you hours to resolve. You’ve done this when you’ve been travelling nonstop for a day, when Jay has been screaming at you for hours, and when you’ve been surviving on coffee and stubbornness. The difference now is that you’re distracted.

In the years you’ve had this job, you’ve never felt distracted this way. You keep replaying your night with Finlay in your mind and you catch yourself smiling like an idiot at the way your stomach flips. Despite the fact that Jay’s been keeping you on a tight leash, you’ve caught plenty of glimpses of David around the place. Sometimes, you’ll pass close enough that you catch a whiff of his soft amber-y cologne and your skin shivers. And you look. Jay isn’t interested enough in you to watch you closely enough to see what you’re doing as long as he knows he can order you around whenever he feels like it.

David looks back, too, with a sly smile or a wink. He actually has to be a little more cautious about it because Jay has been watching him since their New Japan Cup match, already fantasizing about revenge. But he has his techniques. He’ll glance over and lock eyes with Jay before letting them drift to you. The looks you exchange feel almost as intimate as when the two of you were naked in his bed together.

You’ve sent a couple of cryptic text messages back and forth but David’s perfectly aware that Jay will flip through your phone without even asking because he considers it his property. It’s killing you, always being in each other’s orbit and being unable to do anything about it. But more importantly, it’s distracting you from work.

You’re standing over the table, using a pencil to note where you think the things from your invoice have been entered on the payment statement when your breath catches. There’s that scent in the room with you, easing close behind you until you feel a strong pair of arms close around you.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself,” he murmurs into your skin.

You exhale and let yourself melt into him, resting your hands over his as you incline your head back.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” you breathe.

He holds you a little tighter.

“I have to go back to the States to do some Impact shows. I’ll be gone a few weeks.”

You whine quietly.

“I’m leaving tomorrow night.”

“It’s not fair.”

He hums and kisses his way up your neck, making your whole body tremble.

“Any chance you could sneak out tonight?”

“I’d like to see someone try and stop me.”

“The slave driver won’t be happy.”

“I cannot tell you how little I care right now.”

He loosens his hold and you take the opportunity to turn around, touching your lips to his as you’ve been longing to do for days. You peck at each other a few times, smiling, both of your eyes lit from within.

“I’m in room-“

“I know what room you’re in,” you grin.

“Are you stalking me?”

“Damn right I am.”

You give in to the urge to kiss a little more urgently until a noise at the door has you jumping apart like reversed magnets.

You’re terrified it’s Jay because you are in no way ready for that showdown. But it’s Sanada coming to get a drink from the vending machine. He cocks an eyebrow at the two of you, which is enough to let you know that he’s aware of the nature of what he’s interrupted.

It isn’t a problem, though. He doesn’t talk to Jay unless they have a match and even then it’s only going over the game plan. He’ll gossip to his LIJ buddies but it’ll stay within their tight little circle. They'd rather laugh at Jay behind his back.

When he leaves, David takes your hand and the two of you are smiling like teenagers again.

“Guess I should run away before we really get caught.”

You kiss him, fervently, and you’re hardly able to pull yourself away.

“I’ll text you when I know what time I can escape.”

You’re both blushing as he exits the room. When you turn around to face your payment problem, you could swear it’s gotten more complicated than it was before.

*

“I need you to reschedule that appointment with the physio guy to Thursday,” Jay grumbles.

He’s been hovering since he came in, although he hasn’t been quite as obstreperous as usual, muttering to himself or to his game console rather than outright trying to interrupt you. You could take your work to your room but then he would be texting and calling you all the time, assuming that you weren’t working if he couldn’t see it. You’re still trying to untangle the knots of the expense report and it’s tantalizingly close. You’ve gotten nearly this far a couple of times only to be forced to backtrack and re-evaluate but this time you can see your way through; just a couple of twists and tugs and you’ll have it all smoothed out.

You roll your eyes at the sound of Jay’s voice, content that he can’t see your face from his vantage point.

“We’ve been through this, Jay. This guy is a specialist they’ve brought in and his schedule’s been set by the company. No changes, no exceptions.”

“Well you need to ask, at least,” he huffs.

“Why? All it’s going to do is aggravate management and you won’t get what you ask for.” You pivot to face him. “Why would you even want to change it?”

“I have something I want to do on Wednesday, not that it’s any of your business. I’d rather see him on Thursday.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

You fully expect from the look on his face that he’s going to lose it and start screaming about how you’re just there to do what he says. But though his lips twitch and his nostrils flare. He says nothing. Perhaps this is it. Perhaps this is the week that he fires you and replaces you with someone new who’ll do everything he says and flatter his ego without the attitude you’re prone to giving him. A couple of times, he’s told you that you were fired in a rage, only to contact you hours later and start grumpily giving you orders again. He never apologizes when this happens but he’s always a little quieter and less belligerent for a few days.

This nonverbal fury is something new, so maybe it’s a sign that the end is nigh. Maybe you’ll suddenly find a way to reinvent yourself without Jay White in your life. Take a calligraphy class. Teach English at some private business school. Get a dog. Have a relationship with someone who could love you back.

With that in mind, you force yourself to work out the final parts of the project that’s haunted you all day. You’re so happy when it’s done, when you understand exactly what’s missing and what you need to tell them to have it corrected, that you want to stand up and cheer and pat yourself on the back because god knows that no one else will.

Normally, you’d email the head office right away and go through everything you’ve found in concise bullet points to make sure you’re understood but instead, you close your laptop and stand up.

“Right,” you say breezily, “I'm off then.”

“Off where?” he growls without looking at you. “Another date?”

“Actually, yes.”

“This is becoming a problem.”

“No, it isn’t. I’ve done everything that’s required of me. I’ve jumped through every insane hoop, dodged every trap you’ve given me. You know perfectly well that the fact that I’ve been… that I’ve… There is no issue with my work.”

“I say it’s becoming a problem and in this equation, I’m the only one who matters.”

His reflexive cruelty always hits you right in the stomach, like you’re in the ring with him, and knowing that you have someone who wants to be with you and wants to please you doesn’t dull that at all.

“I matter Jay,” you say quietly. “I just don’t matter to you.”

You see a muscle in his beck twitch but even though you give him a moment, he says nothing. And it’s a painful realization that the only reason you’re waiting is in the desperate hope that he’ll contradict you, that he’ll surprise you for once in his life.

[uwua3]

Hello, can I please suggest a childhood friends to lovers troupe with Banri? Thank you so much!

of course! i put this off at first because i wanted to understand banri’s character a bit more and what direction i wanted to go with this! it might be a little bit opposite of what you wanted but i hope you like it~ ♡ i hope you don’t mind childhood enemies to friends to lovers ;)

summary: all your life, you wanted to beat settsu banri, just once

warnings: arguing, breaking the law, bullying(?), injuries, physical fights,

author’s note: this is definitely much more different from anything i’ve written! please enjoy it~

being naturally good at everything = wanting to compete at everything once’s there’s someone worthy and i think it’s a complex we need to address. honors students who get burnt out often give up because it’s not easy at first. setting children up to be the best and putting them against one another instead of encouraging teamwork is evil and a flaw in the education system. so take risks, and take down any institution that disrespects you :)

word count: 4,298

music: hot girl bummer – blackbear, preacher man – the driver era

childhood champion.

🍁🥇 settsu banri

banri was the most insufferable, annoying kid to ever walk the face of this earth

everyone picked him first for their sports team in gym, he always knew the answer even when the teacher caught him sleeping in class, and he knew what a multitalented threat he was

it was so unfair! even as a child, you had to spend countless hours studying the next topic to stay ahead but banri did it without even trying

you were second in class, he never even wavered or was worried about his valedictorian position

banri was so, so annoying

you two were the first picked to advance to honors–level classes the next school year in middle school

you actively rose your hand in class to get the answer correct. you sat in the front and kissed up to your teachers so they would submit more than just “a pleasure to have in class” on your report card

banri would doze off in the back if he was forced to attend school. it would take multiple tries to get him to wake up and even then, he could’ve summarized the entire class lesson with no effort. he didn’t care about other people’s opinions

which must have been nice, considering how everyone either loved him or fully hated him

you two were never aware of each other’s existence throughout elementary; it wasn’t until your teachers constantly compared you to banri’s perfect grades and banri to your model student behavior that you began to despise each other

to you, banri was your #1 rival and competitor. everything you did, you wanted to beat him at. but to banri, you were just another tryhard that wouldn’t survive in the real world

it was when you were the only student getting every question right that you talked to him for the first time. you rose your hand again, a pleasant expression on your face as your teacher looked around, sighing as everyone averted their gaze

before the teacher could call your name, you felt a wadded–up paper ball hit the back of your head and a snicker. the class went dealthy quiet for once

you whipped your head to the back to see banri’s egotistical maniac of a smirk staring right back at you

“nerd.” banri dropped, his arms behind his head and feet propped up on his desk. his bag wasn’t even open and his pencil was stuck behind his ear. what a troublemaker

“mr. settsu! apologize this instant, we do not tolerate name–calling in this classroom.” your teacher reprimanded maturely, watching as banri shrugged and put his feet on the ground with a loud thud. leaning forward, banri put his hands together with an exaggerated sad face as he batted his eyelashes

“i’m so sorry~” banri laughed, his mocking tone making you narrow your eyes, plastering on a fake smile as you simply nodded and turned around. it wasn’t worth it to fight with someone who didn’t even care

anger boiled in your blood, all you wanted to do was turn around and give him a solid punch

yet, you straightened your posture, answering each question precisely with a tight grip on your pencil as you felt more spitballs land near you

no boy was going to get you to stop focusing, and especially take class time away

banri didn’t know why he bothered trying to piss you off anymore when you didn’t react. it was boring him, to say the least

when he “accidentally” stole your lunch, you just used your allowance to buy something from the lunch ladies (who absolutely hated that they had no evidence he stole from the fruit bar). when he knocked your books over off the desk with a bang, you just picked them back up and moved to a different table. hell, he even started a grade–wide game that pretended you weren’t there. you didn’t care, you kept doing your schoolwork

you were so, so boring

banri was on cleaning–duty for vandalism or whatever, something that didn’t follow the school guidelines. he was assigned to his homeroom classroom and had to wipe down the desks, sweep the room, and scrape off gum under any surface

“what the hell...” 13–year–old banri cursed, kicking at the dust pan as he didn’t want to start. he didn’t clean, he was good at it, he just didn’t like doing it

turning on his heel to ditch the classroom and deal with the consequences later, he was face to face with the fakest smile ever as you leaned against the doorframe (seemingly satisfied with his predicament)

“sorry, settsu. i’m here to supervise you to make sure you’re cleaning, today.” you dropped your sweet, quiet tone and revealed the truth: a tough, tired attitude that was ready to snap at any point. banri raised his eyebrow, crossing his arms as he scoffed, looking to the side

this should be fun

“oh yeah? what will you do to stop me? can you even handle me, i’ve seen how you don’t score shit in gym.” banri spat, your lip twitched at the swear as you had an incredulous look

two could play at this game, you weren’t backing down

“i’m not here to fight, settsu. i want you to hurry up so i can go home and do my homework.” you heard his sickening laugh throughout the empty hallway. it echoed, reminding you how he had no filter or manners whatsoever

“homework?! imagine needing that to pass. even i don’t do my work... and i’m at the top. how sad.” banri fueled the flame on purpose, eyes glinting with something of boredom and a wicked evil found in prepubescent boys

“you wouldn’t know what that’s like, though, right?”

you clenched your fist, all the pent–up rage you withheld in to have the higher ground was beginning to turn your vision red

“come on,” banri grinned, finding fun in driving you insane as he lazily moved into a fighting position, not expecting anything. “hit me—”

you didn’t remember what happened next, but you had to sit next to banri who had a black eye with an ice pack up to it in the principal’s office

both you and banri received a weeks worth of suspension for having a fight on school grounds

you hated settsu banri. and he found you interesting, so he didn’t say anything when he came back, letting the rumors die down

banri wanted to be your friend. your punch wasn’t even all that bad, maybe he could teach you how to hold your fist

but you avoided him at all costs now. he started going to school more frequently, and played impractical jokes on you in between classes just to get a reaction

you didn’t do anything. you just requested a schedule change and had classes on the opposite side of the building

classes became boring again, no one wanted to fight with him because they knew they’d lose, and he stopped attending classes out of spite

banri couldn’t believe he may have finally met someone who had some balls to do something to his shitty attitude and you just left

but throughout the years leading up to his first year in hanasaki, banri had immense respect for your 12–year–old self who landed a nasty hit (it totally would’ve k.o.–ed him if this was a video game)

banri had his eye out to see if you were in the front row with your hand up, or if you were hiding in the library behind towering shelves, or if you were even just moving past him in the crowds of people in the hallways

but it’s like you disappeared out of no where, how boring

you kept a secluded, mysterious reputation. no one had anything to say about you because you did nothing to get attention. so banri couldn’t even track you down through the grapevine of gossip

you disappeared and remained second (behind banri, of course)

as school went on and the summers cleared his mind, banri slowly forgot all about the young kid who gave him a black eye

as he passed the exams to qualify for entry in hanasaki, he didn’t even think twice if you were gonna be there

second year at hanasaki academy. 16–year–old banri nearly dropped out because of his own insatiable boredom. he got into more fights (he always won), ignored his classmates, and just kept being a huge jackass even unprovoked

school was so, so boring

class rankings were released after finals, banri remembered strolling up to expect his name at the top spot but watched as the crowd of students nervously parted to let him through

his eyes automatically landed at the #1 spot (he never checked anyone below him, they were dumb) but it wasn’t his name. instead, he saw yours. you were beating him

letting out a sarcastic laugh, banri backed up and left without another word, leaving the students to breathe a sigh of relief they weren’t the next victim of an infamous settsu roundhouse

how long had you been at this? how long did you study just to see your name printed over his? he must’ve been a big deal to you

banri ditched school early, about to hop the back fence before he noticed a flash of the academy’s school uniform above. halfway up the fence, banri looked behind him. no one. looked up, and you were sitting at the edge of the rooftop, swinging your legs casually

after all these years, and banri found you on accident

“hey.” banri drawled, waving up to you who seemed lost in your own world. you had a loose grip on some textbook, staring off into the slow clouds. you must’ve missed the lunch bell signaling the end of eating. you? skipping class? it was almost too funny to be true

banri bristled under the lack of attention. it’s been years and this was the response he got? he was ready to start shaking the fence to alert everyone within a one mile radius he was here. yet, banri noticed the hardcover textbook that must’ve cost hundreds begin slipping from your fingers. you didn’t care to notice

“hey! hey! what the fuck!” banri tried to make you snap out of it, but he swore as he leaped from the fence as soon as the book started falling. you shook your head rapidly like you just woke up, nearly falling over as you watched banri catch the heavy textbook with one hand as he rolled onto the rough pavement. it was a move out of a superhero film, like he was a professional stunt double

you gasped, scrambling to get off the edge and jumped. banri was about to yell a very inappropiate curse, but you grabbed onto the tree branch nearby and climbed down easily. it was like you did this countless times... what the hell happened to you and who was this that replaced you?

“oh my god! i am so sorry, i wasn’t paying attention at all.” you apologized sincerly, offering your hand to help pull him to his feet. banri ignored the pain in his shoulder and hip as he pushed himself up, the scrapes on his palms and rips in his uniforms making him wince for a moment. you noticed

“you idiot! what were you thinking? you could’ve died!” banri snapped, pushing the textbook to your chest as you stumbled back, eyes wide. you huffed, feeling aggressive as every instinct to fight with him came back as strong as ever despite banri’s heroic act

“don’t act like you know everything about me! i said i was sorry, what else do you want?” you fought back, pushing him back even harder with your book. banri felt something burn inside him for the time ever since you punched him: excitement

“let’s settle this. you. me. right here. right now.” banri got into a battle stance, pretending to be very serious when he didn’t even hit girls. but, he wanted to piss you off so bad. he was so bored of his life being on super ultra easy mode (it was like you were the final boss)

he didn’t even get another word out before you sighed, put your backpack and books down gently, rolled your eyes, spun around, and kicked him straight in the jaw

you had used the infamous settsu roundhouse kick against him

this time, he was much stronger than he was before at thirteen. he straightened himself up, stared at your clenched fists, and laughed

“after all this time, you never learned how to throw a real punch?” banri taunted, but the playful tone of his voice gave himself away. you slowly backed down, going back to your normal position as you revealed a tired smile. you ran your hand through your hair, seeming to contemplate on whether or not you should respond before shrugging

“never really had to fight losers like you before.” you retorted and banri gave an impressed look that you even made a comeback. rubbing his jaw and feeling the bruise about to form, banri watched as you stuffed your books into your bag

“by the way, that was for everything you put me through in middle school.” you stood up, flipped him both with hands confidently, and left. turning the corner, you winked and shot him a finger gun, showing you didn’t hold any grudges anymore for his stupid behavior

“wait—dammit.” banri rushed to catch up with you, but you were already gone the moment he went over. there was no trace of you and banri kicked the wall out of frustration, regretting it immediately when he forgot about his injured leg

“mr. settsu!” he heard from one of the classroom windows and looked up, seeing his maths teacher glare at him. uh oh

banri put his hands up, knowing security would have to come drag his ass to class

he could’ve swore he heard your laugh as he got yelled at for getting caught, making him subconsciously smile

(banri got into more trouble when the teacher thought he saw it as a joke)

gossip was exchanged as banri came into class sporting a bruised jaw and ripped clothes. they said the gangster was finally taken down by someone who he was no match for, it was almost laughable

i let them win, banri thought, barely paying attention to whatever his teacher was writing on the blackboard

but banri wanted more competition. he couldn’t just let you hit him even if he fully, 100% deserved it

banri closed his eyes, falling asleep with his hand in his cheek. you better not have any plans this afternoon

it was 5pm. you were heading out of school after finishing all your extracurricular duties. it was exhausting pretending to care, faking a smile just so your superiors thought you were the perfect leader. whatever gets you into university, right?

you needed a break. you stepped up to the rooftop after sneaking into the locked stairway. oddly enough, it was already open. you tip–toed in on guard, preparing to hit someone with your bag before you noticed a shadow against the pavement

but as soon as you stepped out, banri was waiting

it was nearly sunset, and banri was playing some game on his phone against one of the benches against the border

you paused, not sure what to say before he casually looked up and did a double take, rushing to pocket his phone and standing up

silence. like you two had nothing to say after all these years. you didn’t expect to see him again, you stopped caring about his laziness and focused on yourself even if you didn’t have the motivation anymore

banri awkwardly put his hands in his pockets, the blazer elbows almost torn to shreds. a strand of his hair fell in front of his face, you wanted to reach out and push it back

here you were, with a perfect appearance with nothing out of place, as expected of a model student. your uniform was ironed to perfection and had no creases despite your tree jump. you learned how to get rid of the evidence

when nothing seemed to be happening, you almost turned around before banri spoke way too loudly

“i’m sorry.” banri choked out, like he was saying it against his will. you froze, not wanting to turn around as you gripped the strap of your backpack. was he being serious?

“i’m... sorry for basically picking on you in middle school. it was dumb of me, i was stupid.” banri explained, appearing cool but his fingers were clearly fidgeting in his pockets. oh, he was serious

a part of your child self felt like it was healed, knowing you had one over settsu banri. you nodded, turning slowly to face your childhood rival. your childhood competitor. the childhood champion of everything

this time, you were the winner, but it didn’t feel like it

“yeah? i’m sorry for beating your ass twice then.” you joked, seeing the tension leave his shoulders as he naturally laughed. it was almost therapeutic to finally not fight for something for once

“truce?” banri put his fist out, and you didn’t even have to think about it before moving forward and fist–bumping him

“truce.”

you and banri became close after your so–called peace treaty. you put all the rivalry behind you, you forgave him

banri surprisingly understood you had a “perfect reputation” to uphold despite all the secret trouble you got in. in public, he stayed away and pretended like you didn’t exist. in private, you two snuck onto the rooftop to have lunch and stay until night, talking about nothing and everything at once

you even tried getting him back on track, using the temptation of competition to trick him in doing his work (it at least worked half the time)

(“i definitely could finish this faster than you!” banri protested, scribbling his answers and he always finished first. he never realized what you were doing when he was in the heat of the moment)

banri had never stayed at school this long, his attendance was making a come back and he was even looking forward to times he could see you in between classes

(he never put this much effort in, he didn’t want to find out he wasn’t naturally good at being your friend)

everything was good. you two were compatiable friends who cursed every middle school teacher who set them up to be enemies. you swore at teachers who now abused their position of power and laughed about leading a revolution. you two were young, dumb teens who wanted change. you wanted anarchy, he knew enough about it to get behind it

banri texted you screenshots of his elite gaming status in the game he recommended to you, getting a response the next day proving you were almost at his level. damn. he could respect that

banri took you to his favorite local arcade, (believe it or not) after you claimed you could at least tie him at something. when he saw you get frustrated, he pretended to stumble on the arrow pad for DDR and feigned annoyance as you beat him for once. he even gave you his spare coins once he got bored and watched you, adding unnecessary commentary you’d kick him for

(“not again!” banri pretended to cower, protecting his jaw that was already healed)

you guys would even raid 24/7 stores after leaving school, stocking up on snacks and energy drinks so you could stay awake throughout the day after game night

but his favorite thing to do with you was sneaking out and returning you back before curfew. banri was naturally a homebody that didn’t find the outside fun, but when you confessed you never had a late night drive before, he arrived a block away and nearly gave you a heart attack when he knocked on your window

(you two agreed to have a special code and banri would knock to the beat of your favorite game’s theme song)

that night, you sat on the hood of his car and watched the stars, unaware of how banri couldn’t tear his eyes away from you

when banri dropped you off and helped you back in with his hand at your back, he nearly fell off the tree as you made your way onto your second–floor bedroom

you smiled, a strangeness to your windswept hair and messy clothes. you didn’t care what you looked like around him

banri gulped, forcing himself down the tree as he ran to his car, heart racing a mile a minute

what the hell was that? banri took a deep breath in the driver’s seat, rubbing his forehead as he groaned. why did he feel like this? did you do something to his soda or something?

as banri drove home, he flipped on the radio. teenage dirtbag by wheatus blasted on the inner roads

“how does she know who i am? why does she give a damn about me?”

banri braked, the car halting in the middle of the road. it was 3am, the street lights gave way to the empty, deserted road

oh my god. he liked you

he liked the person who gave him a black eye, got him a week suspension, kicked him in the jaw, and got him caught by his teacher

teenage dirtbag faded out on the street as banri sat there, listening to the lyrics

“fuck.” banri deadpanned, knowing things wouldn’t be good if he kept acting up like this

well, everything was good, until that night

banri arrived at midnight sharp like always. you rolled out of bed with full clothing ready for any night activity he planned

he took your hand to go down even though he knew damn well you didn’t need the help. sneaking out was like second nature at this point, it was a miracle you two hadn’t been busted yet

you two were stealthy, avoided all the cameras your parents put in place after noticing there were footsteps imprinted on the grass (it didn’t bother banri, he liked the challenge)

speeding off, banri slowed down to the speed limit once he saw you push the roof down and stick your upper body out into the wind. he shook his head, lowering the windows as well. he heard you scream along to whatever pop song was on at the top of your lungs

in that moment, you forget you were hanasaki academy’s perfect model student. you were just a person having the time of their life with their best friend

pulling into an abandoned parking lot, banri stopped in the middle as he tugged your shirt down. his wolfish grin seemed electric, like he was high on a predictable adrenaline rush already

“hey, do you trust me?” banri revved the engine, one hand on the wheel and the other out as a fist

it felt like that day back on the school rooftop where you made a truce with your middle school rival. like everything was about to change

without a second thought, you bumped your fist to his. “i do.”

banri shifted to level one as he turned the wheels to a full direction. you held onto the edge of the door as you realized what he was about to do

“you’re joking!” you yelled over the sound of the engine, banri flashing you a quick wink before the car started spinning. he was doing donuts because you said you wanted donuts the other day, this was not what you meant!

“you knew i didn’t mean it like this, you jerk!” you protested, but couldn’t help but laugh along with banri as smoke rose from the tire tracks on the concrete. you felt dizzy, but you never felt more alive laughing with your best friend in the middle of the night

banri suddenly stopped, his foot on the brake as a distant shout made you freeze

“hey, who’s trespassing?!”

“go, go, go!” you yelled, pushing banri’s arm as his foot triggered the gas and changed the speed. you guys zoomed out of the supposedly “abandoned” parking lot, hearing the random owner attempt to chase after you before tripping on his own feet

“holy shit!” you exclaimed, not feeling sorry you were laughing at the man who was now shaking his fist at you. you knew it was too dark to even see banri’s license plate, you were fine. you felt your energy peak as you couldn’t help but turn around with a wide smile

“did you see that guy’s face, he looked like he was ready to kill—” you started but banri braked again, both hands tightly gripping the wheel. you almost lurched forward but banri stuck his arm out against your chest, holding you to your seat as he glared at you

“how is this funny to you? we... you! you almost got caught! your future would’ve been ruined, do you understand how severe that situation was?!” banri ranted, sweating as he had to practice controlled breathing to prevent himself from saying something he’d regret. he was so worried, he never cared this much

“so what at this point? what’s there to even live for after college?” you scoffed, crossing your arms as you looked away. banri’s arm started retracting, but he randomly grabbed your face and pulled you over the divider, looking you deeply in the eyes like he never wanted to let you go. like he wanted to remember this forever

“me. live for me.” banri muttered, before he closed the distance between you two. your childhood rival, competitor, and enemy liked you

high on adrenaline, you kissed back. you were on top of the world

and suddenly, everything was good again

you both won

[thefinalcinderella]

Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru Chapter 3 - Practice Begins (Part 5)

This chapter took a lifetime lol

List of translations here

Previous | Next

Students who were earnestly tackling long-distance ran at least six-hundred kilometers in a month. When it was time for the final stretch, it was common for some to run more than a thousand kilometers a month. Kakeru did long training runs, aiming for that level. He wished the residents of Chikusei-sou success, but that didn’t mean he intended to match his own training to the level of a newly-formed team.

“Kakeru, you ran a little too much.”

Kiyose, who was checking the training diaries, told him that after the main training. It was when everyone was working on leisurely cooling down while changing clothes and stretching on the grass of the field.

For the first two weeks, everyone struggled to make it through the regimen, in dire straits with muscle pain, blood blisters and awful foot blisters. However, the members had potential from the beginning. Now, it seemed that their bodies were adjusting little by little: running was becoming a bit more fun, and they had managed to assimilate the regimen written on the training table.

Inwardly, Kakeru was surprised at the high adaptability of the residents, but it was ultimately just beginner’s training. He was pursuing running on a whole different level. Unless someone stopped him, he tended to run for as long and as far as he liked.

“Even at your age, your body isn’t fully matured yet, so you can’t push yourself too hard. What will you do if you overwork your body now and injure it?”

Lately, Kakeru’s body felt very light. He felt that the more he ran, the stronger he got, and the more his speed improved. That was why in actuality, Kiyose’s warning didn’t hit home for him. Even so, he obediently answered, “Yes.”

“On the other hand, Prince is running too little.”

In Prince’s training diary, the word “treadmill” was written once every two days instead of “evening jog”.

“I thought that honesty was one of your best points but…this is actually just ‘I skipped jogging and read manga’, right?”

Even if Kiyose invited Prince to jog with him in the evening, Prince had built a barricade out of manga and stubbornly refused to open the door to his room.

Pursued by Kiyose, Prince desperately explained himself. “That’s true, but I really do read manga while using the treadmill. Lately, I feel like I’ve been gaining some muscle on my legs.”

“Let me see.”

Kiyose touched Prince’s calves to confirm. Seeing that, Yuki warned him, “Haiji, you should really stop that leg-touching habit of yours soon.”

Kiyose got up with a “hmm”.

“It’s true that you’ve made some progress in morning jogging and main practice. But working out on a treadmill while reading manga isn’t a good idea; it’ll ruin your form and it won’t help you develop the sensation of running on a road. I hope that you’ll join the evening jogs every day as well.”

Before Kiyose’s quiet, forceful power, Prince had no choice but to swear, “I will join.” As for Kakeru, he was relieved: he wanted Prince to run outside as much as possible. The treadmill was installed in his room, which was already bearing a lot of weight, and every time Prince trained there, Kakeru’s ceiling creaked like it was going to burst open.

“Unlike our honest Prince, there’s a king who is submitting a diary that’s filled with lies and embellishments.”

At Kiyose’s words, everyone looked at King and laughed. “You found out?” King asked, picking at the dirt with the toe of his shoe like he was embarrassed. “It’s because I can’t run at all and my times aren’t getting any better. I thought that was bad, so I showed off a little in my report.”

“It’s still only two weeks since you started training. Results won’t show that quickly,” Kiyose told King gently. “To become the quiz king, you need to steadily build up your knowledge and skills to hit the buzzer fast, right? It’s the same with track; cheap tricks won’t work. The physical strength and skills are acquired through daily training. Then, the courage to look at your true ability straight on is what will save you in the end in the actual event. I know that you’ve been training seriously, so you can just write down the truth.”

King nodded. “I’ll do that.”

“There’s no particular problems with anyone else so far. But, Nico-chan-senpai.”

“Yeah?” Nico-chan, called by Kiyose, stopped fixing his shoelaces and looked up.

“You haven’t been eating a lot lately.”

“That’s not true.”

“Don’t lie. Who do you think is making your food?”

It was Kiyose. Nothing could be hidden from the master of Chikusei-sou, who not only made the training plans but also the residents’ food.

Nico-chan explained himself while scratching his cheek. “Look, I’m stocky, you know? I need to lose some weight.”

“There’s no need for that,” Kiyose cut him off flatly. “You work your body during training, so you’ll lose weight even if you continue to eat the way you have until now. An unreasonable diet can cause your body to break down, so please eat a balanced and proper diet.”

“Got it. But if I can’t tighten up my body well in training, then I’ll go on a diet.”

“I’ve calculated that you should be able to tighten up over the summer for sure,” Kiyose conceded. “If it looks like it’s not working out, then we’ll think about it then. Don’t do anything reckless on your own.”

 “Is it advantageous to be lighter?” Shindou, who was listening to the conversation, asked, tilting his head. “Won’t you have less energy if you lose weight?”

The theorist Yuki answered his question.

“Of course, unreasonable diets are banned. You’ll get anemia, and if you have that, it’ll be dangerous for your heart since that’ll put a burden on it. But fundamentally, you should tighten up your body—whittle away the extra fat and improve your cardiopulmonary functions. Even racing cars have their bodies as light as possible to make their engines more powerful. It’s the same as that.”

“I see.” Shindou withdrew in understanding.

“It’s just as Yuki said.” Kiyose looked over everyone. “Just like racing cars, where the body’s balance is confirmed and the engine’s performance is enhanced through repeatedly doing test drives, a runner also builds up their body by running every day. The backlash will be big if you seek a sudden change, so I want you all to be careful.”

Icing your muscles immediately if they seem to be staying hot after training, even just a little bit. Never missing stretches and massages. Taking supplements for iron and other nutrients which people tend to lack.

After teaching them the various ways of preventing injuries and maintaining their health, Kiyose said, “Now, you’re all dismissed.”

On the way back to Chikusei-sou, Kakeru ended up running next to Nico-chan by chance. Nico-chan was worried about his weight and currently abstaining from smoking, and he didn’t seem to be able to relieve his stress well. He looked somewhat somber.

At times like these, one should provide a fun and lighthearted topic of conversation. However, Kakeru tried thinking of all sorts of things, but couldn’t come up with anything.

“Kakeru, what’s for dinner today?”

In the end, Nico-chan was the one who started talking. I really am no good at anything other than running. Kakeru was dejected indeed.

“It’s probably curry. Haiji-san asked me to go to the shopping district to buy curry powder before the main practice.”

Something flickered at the back of Kakeru’s mind. That’s right, the shopping district. Didn’t Musa invite me to go and see his evening jog? Maybe it could be a diversion for Nico-chan.

“Nico-chan-senpai, would you like to run with me tonight?”

“Why are you talking like you’re picking me up all of a sudden?”

Yuki, who was a bit ahead of them, turned back. “Where are you taking me, darling?” he teasingly cut into the conversation with an expressionless face, as though he was wearing an iron mask.

“The shopping district,” Kakeru answered seriously. The three of them were the members who jogged on their own. It was perfect, so they decided to take a look at the “interesting thing” happening to the group jogging together.

As expected, dinner was curry. Kiyose’s personality of not cutting corners was demonstrated in his cooking as well. Before the main training, he boiled the onions until they were soft and tender, and adjusted the taste by uniquely blending the several commercially available curry powders that Kakeru bought.

But no one noticed the depth of the flavor of the curry sauce; everyone seemed more joyful at the fact that the curry contained a lot of boneless pork ribs. Even the colorfully arranged salads were devoured in an instant without a single chance to be visually appreciated.

“It wasn’t worth making this.” Kiyose, with an expression that was halfway between resentment and sadness, put the empty plates in the sink. 

Nico-chan, who seemed to have decided to eat properly, said, “I’ll just have a little more.” He stood before the rice cooker. “More than taste or anything else, just let these guys eat meat.”

The kitchen didn’t fit a table for everyone to eat at. When the dining table was filled, the people who came to eat later would get out a small tea table and sit in the hallway in front of the kitchen.

Shindou and Musa arrived when Kakeru was still eating his curry. The dining table was completely filled, and though the twins were nearing dessert, they didn’t attempt to clear their seats. They were currently in a fierce argument over whether to cover strawberries in condensed milk or milk and sugar.

Kakeru, who was mindful of hierarchical relationships no matter what, held his spoon in his mouth and picked up his curry-filled plate, about to give up his seat at the table. Shindou hurriedly stopped him. “It’s fine, Kakeru.”

“Senpai-kouhai relationships do not matter in Aotake,” Musa said. “That is why it is so comfortable, right?”

“Yes.”

Kakeru sat back down at the table and ate the rest of his curry. For him, who had spent his three years of high school in his track and field club’s dorm, the fact that the upperclassmen ate in the hallway and the underclassmen ate at the table was unbelievable.

From his experience, as an underclassman he had to attend to his seniors’ personal needs, such as washing their shoes and doing their laundry. And of course his turn for the bath was near the end. That was the extent of it, and he didn’t really mind it as long as he could devote himself to practice without his seniors getting jealous of him.

Conversely, when he became an upperclassman, Kakeru didn’t want to let his underclassmen wash his shoes; they were important objects that were required for running. How his former senpai could so easily leave their shoes in someone else’s hands, he had no idea. His teammates in the same grade as him gossiped about him behind his back, saying things like “He’s messing up the order of things” and “Don’t try to look cool”. Kakeru ignored it all. No one could catch up to his speed, and if he could run without reservations when he became an upperclassman, then he was satisfied with just that. He thought he would let them say whatever they wanted.

Within the club, Kakeru had come to be kept at a distance, treated as an aloof and solitary existence. To put it another way, he was somewhat isolated.

But in Chikusei-sou, it was easy to breathe. Nobody cared about the difference between the years of their birth. They said what they wanted to say to each other. Even now, Nico-chan had just put an end to the twins’ fight. It was done forcefully by throwing both condensed milk and milk and sugar into the two’s strawberry bowls.

“You’re awful, Nico-chan-senpai! I wanted to eat it with milk and sugar!”

“I put it in for you, didn’t I.”

“I definitely prefer condensed milk.”

“I said I put it in, didn’t I.”

Leaving the exchange between the twins—who were far from reaching an agreement—and Nico-chan aside, Kakeru helped Kiyose in cleaning up. They stood next to each other at the sink, washing the dishes.

“Haiji-san, what time do you run near the shopping district?”

“Around eight. Why?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

Musa, who had come to put his plate away, winked at Kakeru.

Kakeru, Nico-chan, and Yuki went to the children’s playground at the entrance to the shopping district. Running in circles between the sandbox, swings, and slide was monotonous, but there was no other way to keep an eye on the shopping district while jogging.

They ran around thirty laps beneath the dim outside lights in the park, and just when they were feeling pretty dizzy, Kiyose and the others from Chikusei-sou appeared. They turned the corner and entered the large shopping district that led to the station. Their running abilities varied, so the procession was long and stretched out, but Prince somehow managed to keep up.

“They’re here.”

“Let’s try following them secretly.”

Kakeru and the others left the park and entered the shopping district.

There were many private shops lining both sides of the narrow street: the bakery, which had its shutters down after finishing a day’s work; the fish dealer, shouting loudly to sell the last of their wares before closing time; the snack bar, where customers were starting to come in for the night.

Lamps that imitated paper-covered lanterns cast an orange light over the street. People walking home from the station and shoppers aiming for limited-time sales crowded the shopping district.

“No matter how you look at it, Prince is too slow,” Yuki grumbled. “It’ll be hard to run without passing him.”

Kakeru and the others hid behind the passersby and slipped past Prince. When King’s back became visible, they also managed to pass him without being noticed.

“It’s Haiji.” Yuki indicated forward with his chin. Kiyose was running towards them.

“Why’s he coming back?”

“It’s too soon for him to have turned back from the station.”

The three tried to slip past by looking down, but Kiyose didn’t fail to notice them.

“Why are you guys sneaking around?” Kiyose turned and ran next to Kakeru and the others, who were running towards the station, to accompany them.

“What are you doing, Haiji-san?” Kakeru asked.

“I came to see how the guys running in the back are doing,” Kiyose answered.

His management abilities were flawless as usual. Kakeru wondered just how far he was running to keep an eye on everyone. He was a bit worried; his legs weren’t even fully recovered yet, apparently.

Meanwhile, Kiyose was carrying on the conversation with Yuki.

“Kakeru said something interesting was happening with you guys, so we came to see.”

“Oh, you mean that?”

Kiyose pointed straight ahead, where Shindou and Musa were running side by side.

“What are they doing?”

It was understandable that Nico-chan was puzzled. Shindou and Musa were wearing white T-shirts, but there were words written on their backs in jet black permanent marker. Kakeru strained his eyes and read the words on the two’s backs as they were running through the middle of the shopping district.

We’re aiming for the Hakone Ekiden!!

Supporters wanted for Kansei University Track and Field Club

“…That’s some proper lettering,” Yuki commented.

“Apparently, Shindou did it by hand,” Kiyose explained matter-of-factly, his breathing not even disturbed. “I told him to stop since it’s embarrassing, but he insisted that we needed it to raise funds. He actually made enough for everyone, supposedly.”

I’m definitely not wearing it, Kakeru thought. Shindou was always quiet and calm, with an air of aloofness like he wasn’t connected to this earthly world, but he seemed to be quite practical.

“That’s surprising. To think that Shindou-san would collect money so actively.”

“Through running, you can see unexpected sides of people,” Kiyose said with a smile. “Shindou, Musa,” he called out to the two running ahead.

“It seems that these three want to cooperate with your business activities.”

We never said that, we never said that! Kakeru and the others shook their heads in unison. Musa raised his hand a little towards Kakeru, who joined them.

“I will give you one of Shindou-san’s handmade T-shirts as well, Kakeru. Also, please take a look at that person.”

There was a bicycle weaving through the crowd of people in the shopping district. The person riding it was a girl around the same age as them. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and she was peddling her bike with all her might, her eyes fixed on something. Even from a distance, it was clear that her profile, which could be seen occasionally, was refined and beautiful.

“That’s the daughter of the owner of Yaokatsu,” Kiyose said.

“How do you know her?” Kakeru, who was preoccupied with the girl’s profile, moved his gaze to Kiyose running next to him.

“I’ve been coming here to buy food to cook for everyone at Aotake for a long time now, so I’ve seen her around.”

“Then have you ever chatted with her?”

“Just stuff like ‘these daikon have very nice leaves’ and ‘here’s your two-hundred yen change,’” Kiyose laughed from the corner of his mouth. “Are you curious about her, Kakeru?”

“No, not really.”

He returned his gaze forward. The bike was still heading for the station, popping in and out of the crowd.

“We’ve become a bit famous thanks to this.” Shindou pulled at the hem of his T-shirt. “Every day, we form a line and run like this, and the shopkeepers who recognize Haiji-san call out to us. ‘You’re a student staying in that shabby apartment, aren’t you? Looks like you’re starting something interesting,’ they say.”

“The landlord is a regular at the go parlor here,” Kiyose said. “Apparently, he’s going around spreading word that the ‘residents of Aotake are aiming for the Hakone Ekiden’.”

It was probably a strategy to get the locals involved in the plan so they wouldn’t be able to say “I quit” so easily. Kakeru was impressed with Kiyose and the landlord’s abilities to steadily remove the obstacles in their way. Since he was the first to announce his participation, it seemed that Shindou also intended to take the initiative in doing publicity. The carefree and easygoing residents were rapidly getting carried along by the flow towards the Hakone Ekiden. Will it be okay? Kakeru felt uneasy. However, it was nice and heartening that the people outside of Chikusei-sou showed interest in Kakeru and the others aiming for the Hakone Ekiden.

“She has been showing up when we are jogging recently,” Musa lightly pointed at the daughter of Yaokatsu who was riding her bike. “Her goal is…”

Drawn in, Kakeru, Nico-chan and Yuki’s gazes looked further ahead of the bike. The person who was running there was…

“The twins!?” Kakeru shouted in shock.

“Which one!?” Nico-chan also moaned. Musa shrugged.

“Well, I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter, they’re identical,” Yuki coolly pointed out.

I’m sensing love in the air, Kakeru thought. Jouta and Jouji, running next to each other, didn’t seem like they noticed at all. He would have to advise them to take a proper bath as soon as possible.

For now, it seemed certain that the residents of Chikusei-sou, who worked hard to jog every morning and evening, were becoming familiar to the people of the shopping district.

Previous | Next

[lastsonlost]

Call me crazy but I think this girl is the one who needs to be suspended and have a restraining order against her..

Williams College suspended a male student based on his failure to pursue a relationship with a female student after “kissing and touching” her, according to a lawsuit against the private school.

Both the unnamed Hispanic student “John Doe” and his accuser “Sally Smith” are foreign students. She accused him of sexual misconduct not because he acted without her consent, John claims, but because he was “culturally insensitive” after their amorous encounters.

<It’s “culturally insensitive” to not date a woman. Yeah, fuck your culture! No means no bitch!

Adjudicators misrepresented the evidence in the record, ignored Sally’s messages to John expressing positive feelings about their first amorous encounter, and didn’t even correctly apply the “preponderance of evidence” standard, the suit alleges.

John claims that he was subject to several disadvantages during the investigation and hearing, including that Williams refused to judge the credibility of Sally and witnesses “face to face.” Sally also physically threatened him but the college did nothing, he alleges.

Williams even refused to let John offer evidence that Sally had a history of making “repeated accusations of cultural insensitivity,” casting doubt on her accusations against him.

The college wrongly found John responsible based on “a flawed disciplinary process” where gender bias was a “motivating factor,” the suit claims, citing biased and stereotypical training materials for the Title IX panel.

The accused student claims breach of contract, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and violation of Title IX. The court docket shows that U.S. District Judge Mark Mastroianni granted John permission to continue his litigation under a pseudonym.

Mastroianni previously approved a similar lawsuit against another Massachusetts private college, Amherst. It settled the lawsuit rather than allow its disciplinary procedures to be examined in a trial.

Williams College spokesperson Greg Shook did not respond to several requests for comment on the lawsuit, which was filed Feb. 18.

College allegedly ignores physical threat by accuser.

While Sally claimed that John did not obtain her “affirmative consent” in the amorous encounters – which apparently stopped at breast-touching – it was really her “conservative religious values” that motivated the accusation, the suit claims.

The college Code of Conduct expressly states that “consent once given may be withdrawn at any time,” but Sally tried to withdraw her consent after the encounters, as judged by her messages to John, he says.

Sally initiated the relationship with John in November 2016, telling “a number of her friends” before their first dinner that she was interested in him. She told him on a walk after dinner that she had “never kissed a boy” owing to the “restrictive cultural norms in her home country.”

John asked for Sally’s permission to kiss her in his dorm room, and she agreed. The kissing escalated to “consensual touching” while fully clothed.

Two days later she sent him a message saying “I’ve liked you quite a lot” and calling their amorous encounter “amazing.” She apologized for “being so weird and awkward the entire time.”

Though she values “the emotional aspects” of the encounter “over the physical ones, I’ve been feeling so different and liberated after it,” Sally wrote. “I’ve not been this happy ever since I started college.”

When he responded four days later, John showed less enthusiasm, saying that they should “hang out at some point next week” but warning that “I’m just going to be super busy until the end of the semester.”

They didn’t talk again until January, when Sally interviewed for a position in a campus organization where John served in leadership. She asked to speak with him before learning she got the position, which he communicated to her at their meeting in his dorm room.

Sally “expressed anger about what she saw as Doe’s cultural insensitivity around their prior interaction” – failing to seek a romantic relationship with her after showing physical affection.

While John told Sally he was “emotionally unavailable,” he again asked to kiss her, and she agreed again. The suit claims that he “asked Smith before initiating any new touching and did nothing without her consent.”

She rejected his first request to touch her breasts but approved his second request a few minutes later.

Several days later, John asked Sally why her friends were “treating him strangely.” She told him he had “emotionally manipulat[ed]” her, “tak[en] advantage of [her] lack of knowledge of American cultural norms” and “disrespect[ed]” her own cultural norms.

But what panicked John was when Sally allegedly said she “had lots of people ready to hurt him.”

Though Ninah Pretto, associate dean of international student services, told him that this could be construed as harassment, the director of sexual assault prevention and response, Meg Bossong (below), told him she couldn’t help. He got the same response from “[e]veryone” else he asked for help.

Advisor encouraged her to see incident as sexual assault.

Three months later – after Bossong talked to her “junior advisor” – Sally filed a formal Title IX complaint against John alleging both November and January encounters were nonconsensual.

The notification letter he received from Dean of the College Marlene Sandstrom was short on detail, including “the nature of the sexual interactions,” specific dates and locations, and even whether Sally claimed she was “incapable of consenting.” It also did not specify which code provision John allegedly violated.

As a result, he could not intelligently prepare for his meeting with the outside investigator hired by Williams, Allyson Kurker. (Her name shows up in at least two other Title IX lawsuits against Williams by accused males.)

Because Sandstrom barred John from reaching out to potential witnesses whom he may have spoken to about Sally, one of the witnesses he recommended to Kurker turned down the interview, apparently unaware what it was about.

Kurker also violated Williams policy by not giving John the opportunity to suggest questions to ask witnesses, the suit claims. She withheld details about testimony by Sally’s witnesses:

Accordingly, the College completely deprived Doe, for the entirety of Ms. Kurker’s investigation, of all information regarding the identities of five of the eight witnesses interviewed, the substance of their statements, and the topics about which they were interviewed.

The draft report issued by Kurker (left) disclosed for the first time that Sally had accused John of using force and leaving her with “bruises,” while excluding “many significant facts” John had provided. This made John wonder about “similarly important facts” that Kurker might have left out from her other interviews.

The deans prevented John from providing his own relevant evidence in response to the report, he claims. One was a series of texts that suggested Sally was initially hesitant to accuse him.

A witness told John’s then-girlfriend, “who was not interviewed in the investigation,” that Sally had told her she “still loved” John and did not want to “get the deans on this.” The witness also said that Sally’s junior advisor – a sort of live-in mentor for freshmen – was encouraging Sally to accuse John of sexual assault.

Though Sandstrom justified the ban on the basis that the texts did not “describe direct knowledge of the incident in question,” she allowed the inclusion of texts against John by the junior advisor that also provided no direct knowledge.

Sandstrom also ordered Kurker to remove credibility-related testimony from the report: that Sally’s friends said she was “motivated” to accuse John because he had received “a particular honor” at Williams. The dean refused to tell John how Sally explained the “discrepancy” between her denial and her friends’ testimony. (John speculates that Sandstrom, who is “close” to one of his relatives, mistreated him “in order to shield herself from accusations of favoritism.”)

Pretto, the international dean who initially told John that Sally may have harassed him, banned John from providing evidence that Sally had a pattern of making accusations of “cultural insensitivity.”

Sally allegedly told him during their November encounter that a professor was culturally insensitive, and during their January encounter that a freshman sexually harassed her. Pretto excluded this second recollection.

Trauma-informed training encourages panel to ignore inconsistencies.

The main evidence used by the hearing panel – Kurker’s final report, stripped of relevant evidence submitted by John – provided no information that would help adjudicators make credibility determinations, the suit claims.

Though Kurker was “the only representative of Williams who spoke directly” to the parties and witnesses, the report lacked information about “the parties’ demeanor during their interviews … motives to make false statements” and their consistency across various statements.

The panel was also likely operating under a set of stereotypical assumptions based on the training they had received, John claims. He submitted a 90-page training manual on adjudicating sexual assault, dating violence, stalking and retaliation cases at Williams. (Though undated, it cites research from as recently as 2015.)

“These training materials contain anti-male bias and encourage panelists to stereotype men as sexually aggressive and more likely to commit sexual assault,” while also suggesting that panelists can ignore the “intent” of the accused student.

“The training materials include claims about ‘traumatic memory’ suggesting that panel members should ignore inconsistencies in complainants’ accounts,” the suit says. (Such “trauma-informed” techniques have been criticized as unscientific by memory and neuroscience experts.)

The three-member panel – all appointed by Sandstrom (right) – eventually concluded that John violated Sally’s consent in January but not November.

It cited her “discomfort” after the November encounter, as evidenced by her message to John about valuing “emotional” over “physical” aspects of the relationship. The panel ignored the other parts that described Sally as “liberated” by the “amazing” encounter.

Rather than cite contemporaneous evidence that Sally told John she viewed their encounters as nonconsensual, the panel cited witness statements that came to that conclusion.

It also misread an email John had sent Bossong, the director of sexual assault prevention and response, as admitting that Sally “felt that he had mistreated her” in November. In fact, the email conveyed that Sally was upset John hadn’t pursued a relationship with her after kissing her, the suit claims.

‘He should have guessed that she would not want to engage in kissing or touching’.

The panel also seems to have invented a provision that isn’t written in the Code of Conduct: that students can’t ask for consent for a particular sexual activity more than once.

Adjudicators found that Sally had “expressed a clear ‘no’” more than once in the January encounter, even though John had claimed he respected her “no” answers while asking for consent again, which Sally granted.

“The panel clearly did not credit Smith’s assertion that Doe engaged in forcible sexual contact over her verbal objections,” John argues: “Instead, it essentially held that he should have guessed that she would not want to engage in kissing or touching under the circumstances.”

Though the deans had excluded much relevant evidence from the report, and John feared what Kurker might have left out, the report did document that Sally had “repeatedly lied” to her friends and tried to mislead Kurker, the suit claims.

She falsely claimed that John was “in a leadership role over her” at the time of their November date, and therefore “she didn’t know how to tell Doe that she was uncomfortable.” Since she didn’t turn over her messages to Kurker, Sally also got away with mischaracterizing her November message to John as a warning to him.

She told several friends that “nothing physical had happened” with John in November and also mischaracterized her November message to John in conversations with them. John alleges she made other false claims to friends about actions he took.

The only way the panel could have found a preponderance of evidence against John was through a “biased and dishonest reading” of the evidence, the suit claims: It was an “arbitrary, capricious, and irrational” finding.

The appeals process was similarly deficient, John argues. After he submitted a detailed list of material omissions of relevant evidence and procedural errors – including Sandstrom’s refusal to recuse herself as a “close” friend of his relative – the appeal was denied by Leticia Haynes, vice president for institutional diversity and equity.

Meanwhile, Williams has done nothing to stop Sally and her junior advisor from spreading false information about him across campus, John says. Title IX Coordinator Toya Camacho allegedly told him it would violate the spirit of the #MeToo movement to stop women from “speaking out about their experiences.”

John’s life and career path – law school followed by politics – is functionally foreclosed by the finding of nonconsensual sexual contact on his record, he argues.

He has already been forced to resign from a “competitive” campus leadership position after others in the organization threatened to remove him. One of his witnesses “was also stigmatized on campus and forced to leave a student organization.”

John wasn’t even able to finish his college career at the three schools that “routinely accept Williams students for temporary study.” In light of his academic credentials, “these rejections were clearly the result of his disciplinary history,” the suit claims.

Guys do yourselves a big favor and just focus on your fucking studies. leave girls the fuck alone. They’re not important to your grades or future career prospects so stop wasting your time.

[bouncyirwin]

🔥 Steamy Fics - Rec List 🔥

I decided to compile a list of some of my favourite smutty fics for you guys to enjoy as well! Remember to let the author know if you like their work ✨

Room Service by mummapaintstheblues || KakaSaku || 11.6k words

“If you've got a kink there, I can help work it out for you.” Sakura almost choked on her drink. Turning her whole body to regard him fully in a show of, what she hoped was obvious disgust. The sight of his smirk reigniting her fury. While it was attractive enough to send tingles of anticipation through her before, right now it only served to add to her misery

AU where Sakura struggles to resist the charms, and fingers, of Hotel Masseuse Kakashi.

Watching You Watching Me || KakaSaku(Gen) || 2.1k words

Sakura reveals that she wants to be on display for Kakashi. Kakashi asks Genma to help out.

Kakashi Candyman by Endoh || KakaSaku || 7.6k words

"Just how much did you drink before coming down here?" "Sakura," Kakashi murmured darkly, trailing his hands down her thighs as he knelt at her feet, "I'm still thirsty." Kakashi notices that his wife could use a little 'de-stressing' before hosting the Halloween Benefit Gala….

Better Man by Kakashisgf || KakaSaku || 179.7k words

Sakura and Sasuke have been married for over a decade, but things are far from perfect, and Sakura's beginning to realize that maybe she deserves better.

Follow Your Nose by TipsyRaconteur || KakaSaku || 8k words

Sakura decides to find her signature scent. Kakashi “helps”. Things get out of hand.

Icha Icha Fanfiction by TipsyRaconteur || KakaSaku || 12k words

Kakashi suspected that Sakura was writing Icha Icha fanfiction. And if she was the author… and she was pairing Junko with her former teacher… well, that had some very interesting implications.

Pin Me Up, Pin Me Down by J-Pop Princess || KakaSaku || 20k words

Sakura is in her third year of medical school and is struggling to pay the bills. When an opportunity comes to pose as a nude model for a men's magazine, she reluctantly takes it, but she didn't expect the magnetic pull toward her photographer.

Something Dangerous by moderndayportia || KakaSaku || 17.3k words

Sakura must submit to Kakashi's special training to prepare for a lethal mission.

Repercussions by AshleyTrecartin || KakaSaku || 3.9k words

Kakashi hates hospitals, and Sakura knows that. Usually she handles her boyfriend's checkups, but when he finds out that he made her an appointment to see Ino he decides to punish her.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving by ivegotpurple || KakaSakuShisui || 4.4k words

Shisui likes to buy his two partners gifts.

Based on the prompt "The skirt is short on purpose."

Hands To Yourself by TipsyRaconteur || GenIno || 6k words

Genma takes a very handsy, very drunk Ino home to NOT sleep with her. Yet.

Players by Kukaburraxxii || GenIno || 153.1k words

Ino joins the league of players.

Snapdragons and Steel by SomnificSheep || GenIno || 6.7k words

Fox doesn’t know why he continues to do this. Every mission he dons the mask it’s the same. He rolls deep in the oceans of regret, waves cresting and breaking over him with terrifying force. Years of this, and it never gets easier. Fox does his duty, comes home, pastes on a smile, and pushes through with a stoic determination he’s not sure anyone expects from him.~or~Genma comes home to something new.

magic in your hands by exarite || TobiSaku || 4.3k words

Haruno Sakura is a massage therapist. Senju Tobirama is her hot, older client.

Push My Buttons by mrssakurahatake || GenSaku || 5.7k words

Ino has set Sakura up on another blind date, but she gets trapped in the hospital elevator before her date can even begin.

Sakura looked around at the worn-out speaker and the dead security camera and for a brief moment considered just punching a hole in the floor. It would serve the board right for refusing to fix the stupid machine properly.

Genma's voice brought her out of her own spirling thoughts, "I don't like that look."

"I was thinking of just punching my way out, but the board would probably take the cost of fixing it from the general budget, and that would affect my patients."

"I guess we finally found a situation you can't just punch your way out of?"

"Don't push it, Shirunai. I would be more than happy to punch you."

Ask Me Nicely by TheCopyMistress || GenSaku || 4k words

He could give her what she needed. All she had to do was ask for it.

Supplemental Training by ohayohimawari || KakaOC || 5k words

At Jiraiya's insistence, Kakashi learns the art of seduction, as well as how to keep his inner demons at bay. A Konoha Brothel story.

Overindulgence by ohayohimawari || KakaMei || 2.7k words

Thanksgiving is a time to grow closer to your loved ones and indulge in the pleasures of the harvest from the year. Kakashi and Mei do both...with gusto.

Things you just don’t talk about by Enodia || ShikaSaku || 119.3k words

"Do you enjoy sex?" Shikamaru asked bluntly. I just can't believe I'm talking about this, and with Shikamaru, of all people, Sakura thought. Sakura is in for a surprise. Or, rather, a series of surprises.

Party of Three by J-Pop Princess || NaruSakuSasu || 63.1k words

Sakura has never really explored the world of sexual desire but after a little too much sake, all that could change!

Punishment and Reward by thetoxicstrawberry || KakashixKakashi || 2.2k words

Kakashi finds a unique use for his own Kage Bunshin.

Give and Take by Stark_Black || KakaGen || 113.9k words

Genma made a mistake, a tragic mistake that may have cost him everything. He can't hide it from Kakashi though, and now the Copy Ninja is being torn apart by his honor, and by his feelings for one of his oldest friends.

Welp folks, that’s it ... or is it?

Find below the cut some shameless self-promo ✨

Cravings || KakaSaku || 3.8k words

When you mix alcohol and pent-up frustration, things are bound to go somewhere. Phone sex, sexting and mutual masturbation.

Let The Truth Sting || KakaSaku || 3.1k words

Sasuke's first glance at Kakashi's face comes in the form of Kakashi's open mouth pressed over Sakura's. Or, in which Sasuke sees Sakura has found her happiness with someone else. Quite graphically. [KakaSaku, Sasuke's POV]

Make Me Lose Control || KakaSaku || 6.4k words

A mission to Ame turns into a paid vacation, and Kakashi and Sakura find themselves crossing all sorts of lines.

Nocturnal Activities || KakaSaku || 3.7k words

Actions have always spoken louder than words. Book vs. Movie.

Knock Knock, Let The Devil In || KakaSakuShika || 29.3k words

Kakashi had always appreciated Shikamaru's ability to turn any situation in his favour. He just never expected to become a willing target to his whims.

Mission Report || KakaSaku || 6.9k words

Through a haze of confusion and a killer hungover, Sakura discovers she’s in Kakashi’s bed.

Every Last Drop || KakaSaku || 3.3k words

“This isn’t about you. You’re amazing at what you do. I just … the shower—well—you’re just not a showerhead. And sometimes that’s what I want.”

When she chances a look at Kakashi again his eyes have widened slightly, and he looks entirely taken aback. “You—the showerhead?” The amount of disbelief packed into that word would’ve made a lesser woman dissolve into uncontrollable laughter.

The blush steadily spreads down her neck as she contemplates this bizarre conversation he pulled her into having. She really hadn’t wanted to ever discuss this with anyone. “Yes, the showerhead. Problem?”

Sakura looks away again, feeling the slow, simmering burn of embarrassment.

A few moments of silence later, Kakashi shifts, and when he speaks he nearly purrs.

“Can I watch?”

Serendipity || KakaSaku || 11.7k

It's tough being a med-student but between running into her ex-boyfriend and his actress fiancée, and meeting her favourite author Kakashi Hatake, Sakura thinks that could be the least of her worries.

Stay With Me || KakaSaku || 2.6k words

Falling for her doesn't leave him with bruises and broken bones, it leaves him with warmth and the colour green and the rapidly addicting revelation that it might all just be alright after all. KakaSaku Proposal AU.

When You Awake || KakaSaku || 4.2k words

Prompt: Could you please do "We slept in the same bed for space reasons but now we're just waking up and there's something about your bleary eyes and mussed hair"

Stolen Moments || ShisuiSaku || 1.8k words

Prompt: "all that blood really brings out your eyes"

Late Night Revelations || KakaOC || 4.1k words

Nousagi and Kakashi crash in an Inn after a gruelling ANBU mission. Things take an unexpected turn as Kakashi's more playful side makes an appearance.

[yuthoe]

To-Go: 2+1 (PENTAGON: Yan An)

or “The Two times Yanan Tries to Ask You Out and The One Time He Succeeds.”

So this was requested a while ago, and at first I thought they were asking for baker!reader, but I reread the ask and saw it was actually the opposite so I had to rework the plot in my brain. Regardless, in both versions, Yanan is adorably awkward.

This turned out so long and I swear I didn’t mean for it to get to 2k words lol, it just happened. Also it seems that i HAVE to add a dash of mild angst whenever i write my fluff. apologies if this turns out bad--i’ve been out of it lately, and i guess exploring my writing style. also i’ve been busy trying to become a #contentcreator on youtube lmao.

hope you guys like it!

WARNING: a dash of angst. WORD COUNT: 2,223.

Master List

---

Yanan pulls his head up from putting freshly baked strawberry and chocolate Danishes in the display rack at the jingle of bells. The “welcome” dies on his lips at the sight of you, and he quickly makes to straighten up, only to bang his head on the underside of the top shelf. He rubs his slightly throbbing head as he wobbles to the kitchen.

Depositing the empty tray and tongs on a table, he desperately says, “Help! She’s here!”

“Ooohh,” his friend Changgu says, closing the oven door on a new batch of baguettes before turning fully to Yanan. “So what are you doing here, then? Shouldn’t you be out there at the counter?” he asks, one eyebrow raised and a playful smile on his flour-dusted face.

Yanan just groans. “Yeah, but I don’t know what to say!”

Changgu shrugs, takes the rag from the belt of his apron and wipes his hands with it. “The usual, maybe? ‘Is this all, or would you like a coffee with that? Will you have these to go?’ Come on, you’ve said it tons of times before--,”

“Not that, Changgu!” the taller man said, waving a hand in front of his face, as if swatting a fly away. “I meant about asking her out! I have no idea how to ask her! I’m not exactly the most suave person out there.”

The baker laughs, hearty and clearly amused. “Just be yourself, Yanan, what’s the harm in that?” Changgu takes the few steps to the refrigerator to get another batch of dough. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some bagels to make.”

Yanan lets out a pained sigh before turning and exiting the kitchen, mentally thanking his friend for that unhelpful advice.

Just in time too, as you’re stepping up to the register with a tray of goods. You smile at him and wave as you set the tray on the counter.

“‘Afternoon, Y/N,” Yanan asks, quickly punching in the codes for three chocolate-filled croissants, two lemon curd Danishes, a pack of miniature cookies, and a baguette loaf; two years working at a bakery as the frontman leaves him no choice but to memorize product codes even for the least popular baked good. “Would you like a coffee with these?”

You hum, already scanning your prospects at the menu board above him before he asked. You squint, pursing your lips in concentration and Yanan thinks it’s the most adorable thing. And then you smile and turn back to him. “Yep, a medium caramel macchiato, please!”

“All righty,” he says, punching it in. “To go as always, I’m assuming?” he asks, smiling shyly.

“You know me so well, Yanan,” you reply, smiling back. “I’ve got a few friends coming by tonight, so I’m doing some shopping.”

“Ah, hence the baguette?” Yanan asks, before rattling off the price for everything.

You root into your bag for your wallet and hand him a bill before saying, “Yep, gots to have that bread for the cheese board.” Yanan gently puts the change into your upturned palm before turning to the coffee machine behind him.

“Don’t cheese boards usually have crackers?” The whir of the coffee grinder almost drowns out his voice, but thankfully you can still hear him.

“Yeah, but sometimes you just need more carbs.” Yanan sputters a laugh as he presses the shot button on the machine and turns back to see you smiling at the joke.

And then Yanan just decides to go for it. “Does this wine and cheese party have room for one more?” he says as he turns his attention to making your coffee. He feels his ears burn--from embarrassment or dread, he’s not sure.

You’re unable to bite back a smile, and then a loud laugh. “Mm, sorry, Yanan, I’m afraid it’s girls’ night tonight. But you know, sometimes one of our guy friends tags along too, just for the cheesy rom-coms, so I can ask. If you want.”

Yanan sets the hot paper cup in front of you and waves a hand. “Ah, no, you don’t have to; I was just joking.” He hopes the laugh he lets out is believable.

“Oh,” you say, taking the cup and the paper bag in both hands. “Well, let me know if you change your mind about that, ‘kay?” You turn for the door. “Thanks for this, Yanan! I’ll see you!” you say, and you disappear once again with the jingle of bells.

Yanan stares at the closed door, then sighs and deflates until he’s crouching behind the register, resisting the urge to just bang his head into it.

***

You reappear the next Monday, just as Yanan finishes putting up freshly packaged dinner bread on a shelf. The bells’ chimes welcome in a gust of wind from the chilly morning, and Yanan shivers, just a tad, and rolls down the sweater sleeves he wears under the bakery’s navy blue linen apron. He takes the empty tray he’d brought in and retreats once again behind the counter, sneaking glances at you from the corner of his eye.

He doesn’t mean to be creepy, and he hopes he doesn’t come off as too chummy when he asked if he could join your get-together the previous Friday. He doesn’t usually do that, nor does he even usually have a need to ask someone out; he spends all his free time in the bakery and all the customers, while nice and respectful (except of course, for the one-in-ten nasty ones), are more like family to him.

And then you came along one summer afternoon for a mocha iced coffee and a bagel, and after taking a sip said, “Is the mocha iced coffee this good usually, or is it just because you made it?” Yanan’s face turned as pink as his hair back then and stuttered through the rest of the transaction. 

The next time you came in a few days later, you made no mention of the iced coffee thing, but still managed to strike up a conversation with the introverted boy. Yanan was grateful for it--he was too flustered to reply properly, after all--and from that short exchange about strawberry jam blossomed a casual acquaintanceship.

Everything was going fine and dandy until one closing time when Changgu said, “So when are you going to ask Y/N out?” At Yanan’s expression of incredulous surprise, the baker continued, “What? She comes by the bakery more than once every week and talks to you everytime. She even asked the part-timer once if it was your day off when she came in and you weren’t there. All signs point to her liking you, man.”

Yanan had been helping put away trays and bolts, but at his friends words he froze, party scared of the idea that someone might be interested in him and he had no idea how to go about it, and partly excited that someone might be interested in him and that hadn’t really happened or been brought to his attention since elementary school.

And he does suppose it’s time he puts himself out there since Changgu has been pestering him about taking less shifts because he’s getting sick of seeing him all the time. Plus, he needs to get out more anyway. Two birds with one stone, right?

“Thanks, Yanan,” your voice snaps him out of his reverie. “I’ll see you later!” He registers your goodbye too late, tries to make words come out of his mouth, raises a hand at the door swinging closed behind you.

He really just went on autopilot while being consumed by his thoughts, huh? Yanan groans inwardly, deciding to make himself an espresso to distract him from his abysmal flirting skills.

***

You push the heavy door open and inhale the distinct smell of freshly baked bread. It’s been a few days since you stopped by--work had been demanding lately and required you to clock in earlier and punch out later, so your routine got disrupted. But yesterday you submitted that finance report and could finally take your time getting that good, good coffee. And yeah, maybe a snack for later.

There are a couple of people milling about, trays full of bread, or holding a bag of rolls. You make a beeline towards the display case of confections; if you could, you’d spend all day here, just looking at the golden-brown baked dough, some lightly glazed with sugar, colorful from the fruit fillings you know they make in-store. The chocolate chip cookies are a crowd favorite--big and chunky and guaranteed to have an ample amount of chocolate in every bite. You however, are partial to their oatmeal cranberry cookies.

The way this bakery makes them gives the cookies a crunch (you suspect they put rock salt in there or something, but you aren’t a baker so what would you know?), the tartness of dried cranberries gets dialed down by the oatmeal, and the cinnamon adds a depth to the fruity flavor. It’s your favorite to-go item here, and you immediately take a medium-sized bag. You tell yourself to save these and not just devour them in one sitting this time.

A customer is getting his items rung up when you get to the counter, already seeing Yanan’s head bob up and down as he reaches for the baked goods. “Sometimes being tall is tiring,” he told you once. “Like here, I have to bend a bit to ring up the food because the counter is too low for me. But don’t tell Changgu I told you that, he’d hold it over me forever.” You both laughed at that.

“Thank you for your patronage,” you hear Yanan say now, handing the paper bag of food to the man in front of you. “Take care, and come again!” He waves to the man before turning to you.

“‘Morning, Yanan,” you say, handing him the bag of cookies. “Are you feeling okay today?” You noticed when you last came in that he was oddly quiet and subdued. You weren’t quite sure why he was so down, so you didn’t attempt to make conversation; your mouth is sometimes too fast for your brain and you didn’t want to end up saying something to accidentally offend him.

“Hey, Y/N,” he says, greets you with a soft smile, but you see he’s trying to avoid looking at you. “Yeah, I’m fine. Can I get you a coffee?”

“Yeah, a large hot mochaccino, please.” You hand him a bill and he returns your change. “I’m glad,” you say, fiddling with your wallet as Yanan works the coffee machine. “You seemed kinda down last week.”

You see him start, then press the button on the machine before turning to you. “Did I?” He bites his lip. “Sorry, I… I was just thinking.” He taps his long fingers on the wooden counter, the whirring of the machine and soft jazz emanating from the speakers the only sounds for a moment, before Yanan speaks again. “About last Friday… I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep, I just thought it would be a funny joke, but I actually half-meant it, but I wasn’t really expecting you to say yes to me, and even if you did I didn’t want to trouble you, but I just thought it would be kinda nice to hang out with you, you know, outside the shop, I mean, ‘cause like, you’re really fun to talk to, and I’d like to--,”

“Woah, woah, wait, Yanan, wait a minute,” you say, interrupting his rambling, an amused smile on your face. Yanan clamps his mouth shut and busies himself with making your coffee. You think you see a sweep of pink on his cheeks. “I… was actually serious about that--inviting you to hang out, I mean. I think you’re great to talk to, and I. I wanna get to know you more, too.” You can feel your face heat up as you fix your eyes on the grains of the countertop.

You hear a soft tap in front of you, just as the fragrance of espresso and chocolate assault your nose. The green paper cup sits in front of you, and you raise your eyes slowly--up Yanan’s clasped hands, to the linen apron stamped with the bakery’s logo, and landing on his eyes, shy and worried but hopeful.

“So,” he says, almost too softly that if you weren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t have caught it. Yanan takes a deep breath. “Do you… want to have dinner sometime?”

You think you must have misheard it. But you saw his lips moving, heard the sound come out of his mouth, so it must be real. 

You’re nodding before you realize it, smiling before you notice your cheeks are hurting. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d love to.” A relieved smile breaks out on Yanan’s face, and you briefly wonder how you didn’t realize he’s beautiful when he smiles.

He lets out the breath he’s holding as he pushes the cup of coffee to you. “Here’s your coffee, to go.” You reach out to take it, and make sure to brush your fingers against his. Electricity rushes up your hand, and you feel it buzzing as you say your goodbyes. as you exit the shop and step out into the chilly morning. as you remember him everytime you take a sip of the delicious coffee.

[islamicrays]

Assalamu aleikum ♡ Could you please recommend me some hadith (or Qur'an verses) about times such as this, like the plague, and about dealing with emotions such as fear, anxiety and all the negativity that follows such challenging times? Thank you very much and may Allah bless you for all you're doing here!

Walaikum Assalaam

Don't be anxious. Whatever is meant to happen; it will happen. If we are written to be tested then we will be tested. We cannot change the circumstances but it's in our control how we respond to it.

“No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future. Go easy on yourself for the outcome of all affairs is determined by Allah’s Decree. If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come on your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from it, you cannot flee.”

-Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him)

Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala won't burden us with something that we can't handle. Read these quotes it will help you in shaa Allah

"The Prophet ﷺ said, ‘There isn’t a man who stays in his house during a time when the plague occurs with patience, hoping for reward and knowing that nothing will afflict him other than that which has been written for him - except that he will have reward similar to the reward of a martyr.’ (Ahmad)

Ibn Hajar said whoever does the following three things will have the reward of a martyr whether he lives or he dies. Look at the beauty of this religion! The reward of a martyr for sitting at home. La ilaha ila Allah Muhammad Rasulallah ﷺ"

-Via Shaykh Mohammed Aslam

"If you’re feeling panicked, find a mushaf in your home. Even if you haven’t opened the Quran in such a long time- pick it up, hold it to your heart, and hug it. If you aren’t ready to start reading it, then just hold it and allow your heart to seek comfort from the Divine Words of the Most Merciful. And keep doing that until you start to open His Book.

Remember Who is in control. We are allowed to feel all of our emotions and it is valid to be so anxious you can’t sleep. In those moments, know you don’t have to be scared alone. Make istighfar- ask for His forgiveness. The Quran talks about this as a form of bringing so many different blessings into your life.

And when you’re overwhelmed at home trying to juggle your children’s needs and work, start saying Alhamdulilah- thanking Him. Because if you’re reading this on your smartphone, you might also be living in security with enough food in your fridge. There are people everywhere facing the virus without these basic necessities.

Many of you have empathized with oppressed populations, but not actively remembered their plight. This is our opportunity to remember the fear which they have lived with for decades in our daily prayers and call out to Him with a sincerity for them that we may have lacked when we simply didn’t know.

This is a time to process our emotions through our relationship with God. With the closing of masajid, the quarantining at home, the sudden unexpected rates of death and disease and the impact on that on our economies and daily lives an entire globe - isn’t it time to turn back to Him? The fact that you still have time to do so and are considering it- that’s a sign He has already turned to you. So turn back to Him."

-Ustadha Maryam Amir

"DO NOT squander this time. This is a windfall if you actually think about it.

The one thing that everyone regrets the most when they die is the time they wasted.

Life is a precious gift. No matter what your situation is right now, don’t forget that you were given EXISTENCE by the Creator of the Heavens and the Universe.

He WILLED for *you* to be here.

He CREATED *you* with intent.

He CREATED *you* to experience all the beauty and wonders of the world…to KNOW…to FEEL…to WITNESS…to HEAR….to TASTE…to LOVE…but perhaps you’ve forgotten what that really means and this is all to remind you!

Maybe you’re spared this illness so that you can actually take inventory of your life and get back in touch with who you are and what you’ve forgotten all these years distracted by work, responsibility, commutes, bills, taxes, school, family, friends, community service, etc…

Maybe you’re forced into spending time with your family because you’ve forgotten just how important they are to you or vice versa.

Maybe you’re supposed to have those long moments of panic and anxiety so that you move away from looking at the pantry shelves to looking at your children’s faces and realizing how much time has passed since you once held them in your arms and how the future is uncertain for you and them, but what matters is NOW and alhamdulillah you are with them and they are with you; healthy and together.

Maybe you’re supposed to scroll through pages of news and newsfeeds about this virus so that your neck begins to crane and you finally look up to see your spouse; the one whom, whether you’ve intended to or not, have taken for granted. You each have your roles to play and like ships passing each other in the night, you’ve found a rhythm, an efficient system to keep the family together…but what about you two? When is the last time you actually looked at one another with the loving gaze of someone who feels the value of the person in front of them upon their chest like a heavy weight? When is the last time you looked at your partner as if you weren’t guaranteed to see them tomorrow? Perhaps you’ll learn to do that now…and perhaps as a result, you’ll always see them that way and will never talk down to them, hurt them with insults, ignore them when they are in need, slight them in front of others, or treat them as though you are entitled to everything they do for you.

Maybe you’re supposed to wake up in the middle of the night sweating and unable to go back to sleep, so that you surrender to the solitude of the night and draw closer to the One who sends His angels looking for the ones who are looking for Him.

Maybe all of this started because of a dangerous virus with the potential to kill, but it will end by renewing life and light into hearts that died long ago; victims drowned by the turbulent waters of this dunya.

May Allah ﷻ guide us through these times to not squander the opportunities before us and to live and love fully, with presence, sincerity, transparency, and wholeheartedness. Amin."

-Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi

"In the midst of all this uncertainty and panic, I know things look bleak today…

-I personally had to cancel travel plans for the next two months.

-Some of my dear friends had to cancel a major event they’ve been planning for almost a year.

-Some of my friends who are immunocompromised are worried.

-Some friends reached out to me because they don’t know what to do about their children attending school.

-Some friends are worried about their elderly parents.

-Some friends are worried about their livelihood and businesses not being able to survive.

Whatever the case may be, let us keep perspective that as Muslims our Shariah compels us to preserve five things:

1. Faith

2. Life

3. Sanity/Mind

4. Lineage

5. Property

Our utmost concern right now should be to protect our faith, our lives, and our mental wellbeing.

This virus is on this planet and doing what it’s doing SOLELY by the permission of its Creator.

Our response should be to SUBMIT to our Creator, prioritize our faith, and beseech Him for protection.

We must also act responsibly to preserve our own safety as well as the safety of everyone else (family, friend, or stranger) that we come in contact with.

Thus, we must “tie our camel” and put our trust in Allah ﷻ to protect us from any and all harm.

This balance of submitting to God FIRST and then preparing and being responsible for the worst will protect our sanity so that we do not become paranoid and unreasonably afraid.

We must also remember that whatever opportunities or sustenance we have lost was never ours to begin with, and the Most Generous will either replace it with something better in this life or the next, IF we remain patient and accept His decree.

So let us not fall into despair, sadness, fear, and anxiety. Let us be wise, patient, and use the time of imposed isolation to reconnect with our faith and our Lord, as well as with our families.

Sometimes it takes calamities like this to recalibrate our hearts and remind us what our priorities should really be.

May Allah ﷻ protect and guide us all. Amin."

-Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi

Recite Astaghfirullah as much you can. As narrated in hadith

If anyone continually asks pardon, Allah will appoint for him a way out of every distress, and a relief from every anxiety, and will provide for him from where he did not reckon.(Abu Dawud)

Following are some dua that you can recite:

1.“Verily, distress has seized me, and You are the Most Merciful of all who show mercy.”

(Aayah No. 83, Surah Al-Ambiya, Chapter No. 21, Holy Qur’an).

2. Recite “Hasbunallahu wa Ni’mal Wakeel” when you feel restless

“Allah is Sufficient for us, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs.”

Ibn ‘Abbas (May Allah be pleased with them) said: When (Prophet) Ibraheem(عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّم) was thrown into the fire, he said: “Allah (Alone) is sufficient for us, and, He is the Best Disposer of affairs.” So did Messenger of Allah, Muhammad (ﷺ), when he was told: “A great army of the pagans had gathered against him, so fear them”. But this (warning) only increased him and the Muslims in Faith and they said: “Allah (Alone) is sufficient for us, and He is the Best Disposer of affairs (for us)”. [Al-Bukhari].

3. O Ever Living, O Self-Subsisting and Supporter of all, by Your mercy I seek assistance, rectify for me all of my affairs and do not leave me to myself, even for the blink of an eye.’    [صحيح الترغيب والترهيب 1/273]

4.It was reported from Anas (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (Peace and Blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to say, when something upset him:

“Yaa Hayyu yaa Qayyoom, bi Rahmatika astagheeth (O Ever-Living One, O Everlasting One, by Your mercy I seek help).”

5. Allahumma inni a’oodhoo bika minal-hammi walhuzni, wal-’ajzi wal-kasali wal-bukhli wal-jubni, wa dal’id-dayni wa ghalabatir- rajaal

"O Allah! I seek refuge in You from anxiety and sorrow, weakness and laziness, miserliness and cowardice, the burden of debts and from being oppressed by men."

I hope it will be helpful. May Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala forgive us and guide us to the straight path.

Ameen

[lynelovespopculture]

The Wedding-Missing Scenes for Ch. 16

Zelda Spellman ran along the path that separated the church and the school, clutching the full skirts of her black and red wedding gown. She could faintly recall her mother telling both her and Hilda that a lady, be she witch or mortal, shouldn’t run in a dress, certainly not a wedding dress. But Zelda knew her mother has never experienced anything like this. Her head swam when thinking of the events of the last 20 hours. As a devoted daughter of the church of night, Zelda was overjoyed and honored to know that the anti-pope agreed to marry her and Faustus. The arrival of his unholiness seemed to be going well but the true madness came that night. It was when she and Hilda were waiting for the dark lord in her new chambers at the academy to see if he would come and bless her on her wedding eve. Zelda, of course, would never admit it but she was frightened if the dark lord would take her, as was his right. When he at last arrived, Zelda kept her back to him, yet knelt to submit and she swore her heart stopped when she felt his long claw around her shoulder but then it happened. A scream, loud enough to wake the dead. She and Hilda rushed into the hall, with the others and saw it; the anti-pope, bloody and dead in his bed. The Academy of the Unseen Arts was supposed to be a haven for the young witches and warlocks of the Greendale coven and now the father of fathers had been murdered under the school’s roof! Worse still, 1 of the boys standing over the body was her nephew, Ambrose, covered in blood and looking confused. Despite Zelda’s and Hilda’s pleas to wait, Faustus killed the 3 others in quick succession, but Ambrose was able to be spirited himself away. Before Zelda could even consider what happen, the manhunt for Ambrose was on and the bride-to-be found herself back home at the Spellman Sisters mortuary. As Faustus and his boys combed the house for Ambrose, Zelda could barely feel her legs as Hilda led her off the parlor to sit with her sister and Sabrina. Sabrina’s big, pleading eyes were like twin daggers in her heart.

“You don’t really think that Ambrose killed the anti-pope, do you, Aunt Zee? I mean, this is Ambrose we’re talking about here. Our Ambrose.”

“Yes, the same Ambrose who plotted to blow up the Vatican.” As usual, her remarks were sharper than she intended.

After another sip of brandy, Zelda looked up to see Faustus coming in saying that Ambrose was nowhere to be found but the hunt for him would continue. Faustus then completely shocked her by insisting on going ahead with the wedding.

“Come Zelda. We must return to the Academy.” Faustus held out a hand for hers.

Oh, that right. Zelda thought, suddenly remembering. I don’t live here anymore. Zelda had a sudden urge to stay here, cuddle up with Sabrina and Hilda and pray for Ambrose, wherever he was. Don’t be a child! She scolded herself. Faustus was right; what the coven needed now was strength. Zelda was a Spellman, very soon to be a Blackwood, 2 very important names in the coven. After all, her late brother, Edward had been high priest and now it was Faustus. Her coven, her school, her world was looking to her now. Zelda put down the glass, stood up to straighten her dress and left with Faustus and the schoolboys.

Back the academy, chaos still reigned. Teachers were trying to calm down students, to coax them back to bed. The headmaster’s living quarters were on the 3rd floor. When Zelda saw the still blood-stained bedroom of the witch pope, she held tighter to Faustus’s arm.

They stopped just in front of her chamber door. “You must rest, Zelda.” He told her softly.

“Who can rest after all that has occurred here tonight?” Zelda genuinely wanted to know. “I’m still trembling.”

“Try” Faustus said softly and then stepped closer, his voice lowered even more. “There are still a few hours before dawn, you may still be visited.”

“Oh.” Zelda lowered her eyes to the ground; when all the twists and turns of the evening, Zelda had almost forgotten. “Faustus, I have already been visited.”

 “What?!” Faustus was beyond shocked. “When?!”

“Earlier this evening” Zelda admitted.

“And? Did he...christen you?” Faustus wanted to know.

“Almost, I mean he was just about to but then I heard Dorcas’s scream and quick as lighting, the dark lord disappeared.”

“Then I must be the luckiest man alive.”

“Faustus! What a thing to say on the night the father of fathers was murdered.”

Despite the scolding, the groom smiled and took Zelda’s hand. “I’m sorry, Zelda, but it’s true. Think about it. What other warlock can claim highest blessing from the dark lord on his marriage and yet have his bride completely…untouched for himself.”

His heated look of utter desire bore into to her and Zelda felt her insides melt. Just because she was marrying him for power and not love, didn’t mean that Faustus wasn’t the best damn sex of her entire life. Faustus stepped closer and kissed her brow, the way he always did when he felt she was anxious. “Goodnight, my dearest.” He whispered before taking his leave.

Zelda watched him leave, before she sighed, turned on her heel and entered her own room. Zelda felt sure that the dark lord would not return so for the 2nd time that night Zelda undressed, putting on her most unflattering nightgown she had. It was also her warmest and she needed that. Knowing that a messy murder had taken place across the hall just 1 hour before chilled her to the bone. Zelda laid down in the cold bed and closed her eyes but just as she suspected, there was to be no sleep for her that night. Zelda met the dawn fully dressed and half done her 2nd cigarette. By 7, Faustus had called the teachers in his office for a staff meeting. Faustus laid out the schedule for the day. After morning assembly, students would report to their homeroom for attendance,  as usual, then everyone would walk to the church for the funeral then lunch where Zelda would hand over her group to go dress for her wedding, which would take place as soon  as the students would settle back into the church. After the staff  left, Zelda hung back and once again, asked Faustus if it wouldn’t be better for everyone to delay their wedding, only a little.

“No one and nothing will stop me from marrying you today!” Came his sharp reply.

Zelda’s eyebrow rose. It wasn’t what he said but his tone. Almost as if he knew someone would object to the union but aside from Sabrina’s teenage outbursts, who would dare? Faustus was Greendale’s high priest and she, the sister of his predecessor, as well as a known teacher and midwife. True, it was a little soon since Constance’s death for her widower to remarry but truthfully, she and Faustus were too high standing in the church and the coven for everyone to say anything. Faustus must have sensed her unease because he took a step toward her and took her hand.

“It will all be alright.” He said and then led her to the morning assembly. It passed in a blur for Zelda as did homeroom. It was just as 4 senior boys acting as pall bearers bringing in the coffin that it hit her. I’m at a funeral. Zelda thought. I’m at a funeral on my wedding day! Faustus conducted the service, of course and after it was over, Zelda gathered up her students and herded them into the lunchroom. 15 minutes later, Brother Lovecraft arrived to take over and Zelda exited the room. Outside, in the main hall, Zelda saw her sister and Hilda tossed her a smile and an apple.

“Knowing you, Zelda, you probably haven’t a bit to eat all day.

Zelda smiled at her little sister and bit into the apple. “So, how’s Sabrina?” She asked softly.

“I don’t know. She was still sleeping when I left this morning.”

Zelda rolled her eyes. “You’re a terrible liar, Hildie.”

Hilda shrugged and curled both her arms around 1 of Zelda’s.   “Maybe I am, but it’s my big sister’s wedding day and as maid of dishonor it’s my job to get you dressed for the rest of today, you’re the star.”

“I’m so glad you’re here.” Zelda confessed quietly and with her free arm bit into the apple again before her smile got too big as the sisters climbed the rest of the grand staircase in silence.

20 minutes later, Zelda smiled at herself in the full-length mirror as Hilda hummed as she fastened the back of Zelda’s gown. The sisters wore matching dresses made of red full skirts and black overlay sewn into the corsets and long selves. As the bride, Zelda had the grander gown.

“There.” Hilda said with a sigh. “Finished. Now you look like a bride.”

“Well, I’m starting to.” Zelda walked away from the mirror and from her opened chamber door saw Prudence in the hallway. At first, Zelda was filled with dread. Surely, the girl wouldn’t pick now to ask her yet again to pled with Faustus on her behalf. Then again, maybe not.  Prudence seemed to just be walking by, unaware of Zelda’s nearby presence. Odder still, the girl was smiling to herself and happiness was a rare emotion on Prudence.

“Prudence, child?” Zelda found herself calling out. “Are you alright?”

Prudence blinked. “Oh, Sister Zelda, forgive me, I did not see you.   I was just dressing for the ceremony. I’m late because I was called down to the main office. My father had finally decided to give me the Blackwood name!”

“Oh, that’s wonderful for you, dear.” Hilda proclaimed. The entire coven knew how badly Faustus’s daughter wanted to be recognized.

“Indeed, it is.” Zelda smiled and put a gentle hand on the girl’s back. “It appears that we will both be Blackwoods before the day is out.  Come in.”

Prudence smiled. “My father says he needs family around him at the altar today.”

That statement set off a lightbulb in Zelda’s mind. “Then why don’t we grant his request?” Zelda took a step backwards to look at her sister. “We still have Sabrina’s bridesmaid dress here, don’t we, Hilda?”

“Of  course, yeah. It’s in the other room. We could just pop over.”

Zelda nodded and turned back to Prudence. “Well? What do you say? Would you care to join us and attend me at the wedding?”

The child’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, Sister Zelda! You honor me!” Then, as if catching herself in her own happiness, Prudence caught herself. “I mean, of course I will.”

Zelda had to chuckle. Poor Prudence, so afraid to show genuine emotion, just in case someone may mistake it for weakness. Just like herself at that age. “Hurry now, we haven’t time.” Zelda gently pushed the girl toward Hilda’s waiting hand. The 2 scurried into the next room to make ready. Meanwhile, Zelda sat down at the vanity and fastened her thick, gold necklace and put on her earrings. She was brushing her hair when Prudence and her sister returned.

“Prudence, you look wonderful.” She really did. True, the red dress was made for Sabrina, but Prudence was slightly older and um, more developed and the very low neckline looked stunning on Prudence. “But something’s missing.” Zelda stood up and fastened a sliver necklace around the girl’s neck. “There. Now, you’re perfect.”

“Thank you, Sister Zelda. I promise to return it right after the ceremony.”

Zelda smiled. “Keep it. It’s a gift.” The necklace was supposed to be a surprise for Sabrina, but Prudence didn’t need to know that.

After all she’s been through, the poor girl deserves a kind stepmother.  Zelda thought, thinking about how long it took Faustus to recognize his daughter and worse still, when Constance tried to kill her last Feasts of Feasts.

“Come along now,” Hilda said, breaking into Zelda’s thoughts. “We must finish getting you ready.” Hilda guided her sister back to the vanity and with Prudence’s help, fixed the golden deer crown and black veil upon Zelda’s head. Just as they were finishing up when a schoolboy knocked on the door.

“Sister Spellman? Father Blackwood sent me to say he’s ready when you are.”

Zelda thanked the youth, stood up and held hands with the other witches and said the words to teleport them to the church small front lobby. The bells rang out while Hilda adjusted her sister’s veil and gave Zelda the dagger and they were ready. The precession began; Prudence went first, then Hilda and Zelda bought up the rear. The bride was slightly annoyed when she saw that some people who attended the funeral didn’t see it important enough to stay for the wedding. Zelda dismissed the thought and kept her eyes front. Maybe Faustus was right, maybe everything would be okay.

Famous. Last. Words!

The wedding was a complete disaster. Zelda couldn’t decide which part was worse. Was it when Sabrina and Nicholas used glamours to transform into Edward and Diana and even when that magic was exposed, they accused her groom of murdering her brother and sister-in-law. Or was the worst part, mere seconds later, when Ambrose showed up seemingly out of nowhere, and tried to attack Faustus.  Thank the dark lord Prudence was there or Zelda might have been a widow before she was a wife. Anyway, the schoolboys had seized him, but Ambrose was so wild, so out of control, that it took a new bunch of guards plus Faustus to teleport him away. It wasn’t until she took a breath, turned and faced the crowd that Zelda realized it. She was alone. Zelda Spellman stood at the altar, facing the entire coven, exposed and humiliated.  A bride without a groom. A still unmarried woman in a wedding dress. Zelda bit her quivering lip but still felt hot, terrorist tears behind her eyes. She wouldn’t allow herself to cry, not here, not now. Zelda grabbed her gown with both fists and ran. Ran out of the church and down the path. Hearing the nearby pleas of Hilda and Sabrina only made Zelda run faster. She didn’t stop running until she reached the school lobby. Zelda took off her veil and that damn deer crown that was giving her a headache. Somehow, probably by teleport, some witches she just left at the church, stood before her. Zelda ignored them and went down the hallway that led to Faustus’s office.

“Is he in there?” Zelda asked the boy guarding the door.

“Um, yes but Father Blackwood said to give no entry to anyone.”

“Surely that doesn’t apply to me.”

Zelda tried to step around the youth, but he lightly touched her stomach. “Stop, miss.”

“Miss?” With or without her wedding day ruined, she was still Zelda Spellman damn it and now, this schoolboy, this child, thought he could lay his hand on her and tell her what  to do. Zelda raised an eyebrow.

 Faustus Blackwood crossed his arms as he watched 2 of his boys throw Ambrose Spellman against the wall for the third time. “Tell me, Brother Ambrose, why shouldn’t I throw you in the witch’s cell and throw away the key?”

“You bastard!” Ambrose screamed. “You killed Luke!”

Luke? This whole thing was about Lucas? Faustus suddenly fought off the urge to laugh. The boy had him! Faustus was certain that Ambrose had choked up that damn familiar by now and then it was just a short step to figure out who truly killed Enoch. That’s why he had killed the other boys, that why he had done everything in his power to find Ambrose last night and when that mission had failed, he knew he had to marry Zelda now. But no, this jackass had to appear at the worst possible moment and ruined everything. The only luck Faustus had with him today was young Ambrose was in too much grief to see the truth staring him in the face.

“You killed Luke!” Ambrose repeated, still screaming at the top of his lungs.

Before anyone could say or do anything, a sudden gust of wind blew the double doors of the office wide open and the boy guarding the door, landing flat on his back, helpless as a turtle. Faustus felt his heart skip a beat as Zelda came into view. It seems that Faustus had hated Edward Spellman forever, but he has loved his sister for even longer. Even now, years, centuries after they first met, Faustus could swear Zelda was his own fallen angel sent from hell.  Zelda was strong, intelligent and powerful, exactly what his father told him NOT to look for in a wife. Yet, the qualities made Zelda, well, Zelda and Faustus could never resist her. Also, her beauty, her beauty was always overwhelming. Her soft hair was as red as hellfire and clothes hang on her so well that Faustus wondered if she enchanted all her clothes or was her body  just that perfect. Right now, Zelda wore a wedding gown, but her finger was ringless. Due to the children’s wild antics, Zelda was his bride, but still not his wife. Satan in hell, what was it going to take?  It didn’t surprise him that Sabrina interrupting the ceremony, he swore that girl stayed up late thinking up new ways to test him and he wasn’t even that upset that young Ambrose tried to kill him. What really burned him that he had to leave the church unmarried. Faustus had been dreaming of marrying Zelda Spellman since he a little more than a boy, but Edward had blocked the marriage and forced him into a union with Constance. With his 1st wife finally dead and he and Zelda carrying on a newfound affair, Faustus had his chance.

Meanwhile, Zelda frowned and walked towards her nephew. “Did I hear you right? Did you just accuse Father Blackwood of killing Lucas?”

“Auntie Z, he did it!” Ambrose insisted.

“Oh, did he?” Zelda smiled and nodded slightly. “Then, please tell us, we would love to help, where did you find Luke’s body?”

“I didn’t find the body.” Ambrose’s screams turned into broken whispers.

“Then where did you see Faustus hide the murder weapon?” Zelda tried again.

Ambrose shook his head. “No weapons.”

Faustus went to his desk, his head down so no one saw his smile. Maybe he wouldn’t have to defend himself.  The boy seemed perfectly capable of hanging himself.

Zelda sighed. “So, let me get this straight. You attacked the high priest at his own wedding,  not to mention, my own, to get revenge for a murder that you have no proof he committed  and to do so, you came out of hiding for murdering the anti-pope.”

“Father Blackwood killed the anti-pope too!”

“Are you insane, Ambrose? I was there last night; we were all there.  We saw you and the other boys over the father of fathers with those knives. Father Blackwood came in only a moment before your Aunt Hilda and I did. How on did he kill him?” Zelda wanted to know.

“Leviathan!” Ambrose chocked when the boys pulled him backwards.

Zelda was confused. “Your familiar? The one that went missing weeks ago? What’s he got to do with anything?”

“That’s enough!” Faustus stepped forward. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense. It’s the witch’s cell for you. Take him away!”

“No!” Ambrose tried desperately to free himself, but he was too outnumbered.

“Don’t worry,” Faustus called after him. “You won’t be alone for long. Soon you’ll have company, such as Mr. Scratch and your cousin.”

“No!” This call of distress came from Zelda.  Faustus gave a groan and closed his eyes. Why did he say that out loud? Of course, Zelda would object to her precious niece in a cell.

“Your excellency,” Zelda addressed him formally, “may I have a word with you in private?”

Faustus sighed but turned to wave his other boys out. Once they were alone, Faustus sat down behind his desk. “I know what you going to say, Zelda, but I cannot just excuse Sabrina, not this time.”

“That is not what I was going to say.”

Zelda not defending Sabrina? That’s a first. “Then what do you want?”

“I want what you want, Faustus.” Zelda journeyed to the desk. “I want strong leadership for this coven and for this school. I would also like to see justice done and you can’t have justice if you give 2 wayward students the same punishment as the anti-pope’s murderer.”

Faustus hated to admit it, but she was right. “What do you suggest, then?”

Zelda sat. “I suggest that you forget the bad blood between you and Sabrina.” When Faustus opened his mouth, Zelda held up a hand. “Just for a moment. Suppose 2 students using glamours, coming into the academy and accused a teacher of murder with no grounds. As headmaster, what would you do?”

“I would have to expel them immediately.”

Zelda nodded. “Then that is what you must do with Sabrina and Nicholas.” She said firmly.

Faustus sighed and stood up. “We need to discuss one more thing. I got a call from Rome this morning. As high priest it’s my duty to escort the anti-pope and the monks back to the Necropolis.”

“I understand. If you are asking me to look after the school- “

“I’m not asking you to look after the school” He  cut in. “I want you to come with me.”

Zelda nodded. “Of course.”

He smiled at her, walked nearer, took both her hands in his and pulled her to her feet. “But I don’t want to take you as Sister Zelda Spellman, they’ll not lodge us together unless we are Father and Lady Blackwood. Marry me, Zelda. Here and now, in this office. Unless, your family’s accusations have changed things between us somehow.”

“No.” Zelda’s eyes held his and her voice remained strong. “Nothing has changed between us, Faustus.  But if we are to marry here, we will still need witnesses and we left the rings at the church.”

Faustus nodded. “Quite right.” He left her to cross the room and opened the door.

“Marcus” he addressed the boy on the threshold. “Tell Brothers Lovecraft and Barker, I wish to see them and please send someone to fetch the wedding rings from the church.”

The teachers arrived before the rings, so Zelda and Faustus took the chance to sign their marriage license. When a bodyguard arrived with the rings, each witness took a ring, the bride and groom joined hands and the wedding began anew. Faustus called back the demons of the deep, however he skipped the blood and blessing and went straight to the vows.

“I, Faustus James Blackwood, take thee, Zelda Phonia Spellman, to my wife and lady. To be my sole partner to walk beside me along the path of night. By day, by night, in bed and in life, forever and ever.”

“I, Zelda Phonia Spellman, take thee, Faustus James Blackwood, to my husband and lord. To be my sole partner to walk beside me along the path of night. By day, by night, in bed and in life, forever and ever.”

Faustus turned to Brother Barker, who stood behind him and handed him the ring. He then slid the silver band onto Zelda’s bare finger. “This is my eternal vow, from this day until my last day.”

Lovecraft gave Zelda the ring   and she put it on Faustus’s hand. “This is my eternal vow, from this day until my last day.”

All 4 knew the wedding was completed and Zelda smiled as Faustus leaned in to kiss her. However, their lips met for a mere 4 seconds before the door opened again.

“Father Blackwood!”

“What is it now!?” growled Faustus.

The boy trembled. “Forgive me, Father Blackwood. But the students are done with their dinner and the staff are unsure of what to do next.”

“Doesn’t evening assembly usually follows dinner?”  Faustus’s tone was annoyed.

“Yes, sir. But you usually lead evening assembly. Plus, Sabrina and Hilda Spellman have been seated outside your office for quite some time now.”

Faustus narrowed his eyes.  “Oh, have they now?”

He walked forward menacingly but Zelda walked backwards with him, her arm around his waist. “Faustus, Faustus!” They stopped but Zelda continued to speak. “Go to evening assembly. I’ll go tell Sabrina her punishment and send her and Hilda home.”

“Are you sure?”

Zelda sighed, stood on her tiptoes and gave her husband a proper kiss. “I’m right behind you. I promise.”

Faustus looked her over. “We’ll be leaving soon. Perhaps you should skip assembly and get ready.”

Zelda nodded. The doors opened, Faustus and the other warlocks went right while Zelda turned left and beheld her niece and sister.

“Congratulations, Sabrina. You ruined my wedding day!” Zelda told the others about Ambrose and Sabrina’s own expulsion. Zelda was angry  and annoyed going into this conversation, but it really irked her when Sabrina said that she was glad she stopped the wedding. Zelda responded by smiling and announced that she had married today anyway. She turned and left  but was followed.

“Aunt Zelda, you can’t!”

“I already have, Sabrina. Now, if you excuse me, Father  Bl-“ Zelda caught herself. “My husband and I will be leaving soon, and I need to change. Hilda, take her home.”

Zelda looked back and found that her little sister was silently crying.

Zelda took Hilda’s hand and pulled her out of Sabrina’s hearing. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Do you think it could be that Father Blackwood could’ve something to  do with Edward’s plane going down?”

Zelda recoiled as if Hilda had slapped her. “You doubt him. Which means you doubt me.”

“What? No, sister, I would never doubt you.”

“Then you must think I’m evil enough to betray our brother’s memory by hearing about his murder and then turn right around and marry the man who did the crime?”

“Forget I said anything.”  Hilda placed a hand on her sister’s shoulder.  “Let’s get you dressed.”

“No” Zelda brushed the hand away. “Go home, Hilda.” Zelda went upstairs, alone. As she pretended to scratch her eye, she really was wiping away a tear.

“Sister Zelda?” Prudence, who had changed out of her bridesmaid dress and was now wearing her normal short black dress with the white peter pan collor, met her at the top of the stairs. “Would you like a hand to get out of your gown?”

Zelda smiled. “Yes, Prudence. That would be kind, child.”

As they walked to the chambers, Zelda could only focus on the last word she spoke. Child. My stepchild. My oldest stepdaughter. Zelda then thought of baby Leticia, who she visited a few days ago. The wood witch was taking good care of her and Zelda would visit them after they returned from Rome.  She and Prudence  entered the chamber and found a few schoolgirls fussing around the room. As soon as they saw Zelda, they all stopped, lined up and curtsied. “Lady Blackwood.”

For 1 insane moment, Zelda wanted to turn around and look for Constance. Then she felt foolish. Oh right, I’m Lady Blackwood now.

The schoolgirls were leaving, Zelda saw that there were 2 piles of folded clothes on the bed.

“Wait,” Zelda said to the last girl. She went to the bed and picked up one pile of clothes.

“This belongs to my sister. She’s downstairs, please see that she gets it. I don’t want her up here.”

The girls left and Prudence moved forward to unbutton Zelda’s gown. She was helping her new stepmother into a basic black dress when Agatha came in. “Pru, Father Blackwood wants a word with you.”

Prudence looked torn but Zelda smiled at the girl. “Go on, see your father. I can finish up here.” Zelda was alone when she changed her heels, put on her hat and gloves before she fastened the diamond broach on her new black cloak, a wedding gift from the teaching staff.

A schoolgirl knocked on the open door. “Lady Blackwood, the others are ready.”

“So am I.” After 1 final look in the mirror, Zelda left her room. She found Faustus at the top of the stairs. He took her hand. For 1 insane moment, Zelda wanted Faustus to tell her he loved her. She pushed the thought aside as Faustus kissed her, almost as if to claim her. Together, they went downstairs and out the front door where all the students were lined up. As Faustus explained where they were going, Zelda spotted the monks that came with the anti-pope and had done nothing all day but stay in the guest chambers, praying and now they were getting into the waiting limo. Faustus had finished speaking and Zelda thought nothing of walking beside him until he stopped.

“You forget yourself, my dear,” Faustus whispered to her. “A wife walks behind her husband.”

Wait, what? Zelda was confused by his statement, she froze, unable to speak   or move for a few moments, then she started to walk again. Faustus got into the car and the boys fussed over getting baby Judas into his car seat, so Zelda walked around to the other side. Her heart broke when she looked across the way and saw Sabrina and Hilda on a bench, both with tears in their eyes. Zelda took a step forward.

“Lady Blackwood?”

Zelda suddenly saw the boy that was holding the car door open for her. After a quick glance at her niece and sister, Zelda got into the limo. She watched as the car drove away from the school. Zelda felt Faustus’s hand cover her own and returned the smile he gave her. Her smile widened as she watched Judas play with his rattle. They’re all my family now. Zelda would focus on enjoying her time alone with her husband and stepson. Maybe after some rest and sleep, Zelda could perhaps even think up of a way to help Ambrose. Once home, she would make up with Hilda and together, they would decide what to do about Sabrina. Yes, everything would be fine.

[prorevenge]

My friend's ex-wife gets his family's business shut down and burns their lives to the ground (not what you may think)

Sorry for the somewhat misleading title, but I couldn't resist.

This story isn't about me but two people I'm friends with. We'll call one Rae and one Justin. I'm posting this with Justin's permission, and he'll probably be reading the thread.

Pretty quickly after they moved, they decided to get amicably divorced, since they never wanted to be married anyway. They still lived together for a while, and basically became something between platonic roommates and each other's only family. Over time, they started dating other people. Some partners were scared off by the weird relationship between them, but most got it, and understood that Justin and Rae had basically bonded though mutual trauma. I also met both of them during this time, and we became close friends.

This whole time, both their families and other members of their community were relentlessly harassing them. People were showing up at their house at all hours, and they had reason to believe people were trying to steal their identities over the years, though they'd fortunately both put a freeze on their credit, so nothing ever came of it.

Then Justin had a bad accident. A really bad accident. He was on his bike and a car blew through a stop sign without slowing down and plowed right into him. He had to be rushed to the hospital and landed in the ICU. Rae was his emergency contact, and I was with her and some other friends when she got the call. I immediately drove her to the hospital with a couple of other people, and she was melting down (understandably). The hospital staff wouldn't let us all in when we got there, but they let Rae in. She came out periodically to let us know what was going on. Justin wasn't unconscious, but he was totally out of it and didn't seem to know she was there, probably from the painkillers, but she was convinced he had permanent dehabilitating brain damage and basically the group of us were just soothing her and reassuring her it would be fine. A friend of ours who worked at the hospital as an MRI tech was also stopping by when she could on her breaks and calming down Rae. We'd been there all night and part of the day at this point, and the medical staff was giving us reason to be hopeful.

But things got worse. To this day, no one knows how they found out, but 14 hours after Justin's accident, his parents, uncles, and grandfather showed up. They immediately had all of us removed from the ICU, Rae included. Unfortunately, as his ex-wife, she was no longer his legal next-of-kin and had no rights against his blood family.

At this point, she was absolutely hysterical and inconsolable. She was convinced Justin's family would hurt him. I'm ashamed to say all three of us that were there with her thought she was overreacting. We all knew Rae and Justin had left a fucked-up situation, but it wasn't like his own family would do anything to impede his recovery. She was getting angry with us for trying to calm her down, and tried to explain that according to their religion, she and Justin deserved punishment from God, and only the greatest suffering could prompt repenting and redemption. She said their families embraced this thinking and wanted them to suffer, because it would prove that they did the wrong thing by leaving, and suffering would drive them back to the fold. She said as long as Justin was with his family, he wouldn't be safe.

Our friend who worked for the hospital came and found Rae at that point. She made Rae swear up and down she wouldn't tell anyone she told her this, because she could get in deep trouble for releasing privileged information to someone unauthorized, but she'd caught wind that Justin's parents were aggressively demanding the hospital release him into their care, and they were involving lawyers. The hospital was currently refusing, because Justin wasn't stable enough to leave, but our friend warned Rae that as soon as Justin got to be stable, or the lawyers scared the hospital enough, it's possible the parents would be able to take Justin.

This shocked the rest of us. Realizing his parents were not only willing to remove Justin from the hospital that had saved his life in the condition he was still in, but were actively trying to do it made us really "get" for the first time why Rae was going out of her head with fear.

At this point, Rae snapped into do-or-die mode. Convinced that Justin was about to literally die if she didn't act, she decided she would do everything in her power to start a fire at home so that Justin's family would want to run back to put it out. And this wasn't too hard, because she had a lot of dirt on the whole community she came from. Like a madwoman, she started blowing the whistle all over Justin's family. She called the IRS's fraud hotline and detailed all the ways that the family business was committing tax fraud. She submitted an ATF tip about how that same family business was illegally selling firearms without a license and without following any of the proper protocols, and was knowingly selling guns to convicted felons. She reported one of Justin's uncles for owning several guns as a convicted felon. She also reported Justin's mom's unlicensed day care "business," which was apparently extremely shady, including having over 30 children packed into one house, with Justin's mom as the only adult and many of the childcare duties being farmed out to Justin's 12- and 14-year-old sisters. She called CPS on Justin's uncles and his parents for keeping their children out of school, and for physical abuse in one uncle's case. In all of these reports, she provided extensive details.

She finished her calls and emails, and then she waited. We all waited for several hours, and nothing happened. Then, miraculously, Justin become lucid enough to understand what was going on and make his own decisions, and he kicked his family out again. From there began a slow but steady path to recovery.

In all the relief and excitement to see Justin on the mend, we'd almost forgotten about Rae's campaign of desperation, until a couple of weeks later, when the screaming voicemails started pouring in to both of them. First, the business was being investigated by the IRS, then it was being investigated for illegal firearms dealing. Then the daycare was getting investigated. At first, Rae felt a little guilty, but then she was like, "You know what? No regrets. They would have killed Justin."

From what they've been able piece together in the year and a half since this happened, the business has gone under, and the daycare is shuttered. The uncle is six months into a new five-year prison sentence for firearm possession. CPS investigated, which scared the shit out of the family, but nothing really came of it, which is especially sad in the case of the cousins being physically abused. That said, the parents are now too scared to keep the kids home from school, and with the unlicensed daycare shut down, the mom's not exploiting her daughters' labor anyway, so she has no incentive to keep them home. So Justin's little siblings are at least getting their education.

Justin and Rae are both happy and thriving. Justin unfortunately will never fully recover from the accident. He has some permanent neurological damage that results in tremors. But he's pumped to be alive, he can work a full-time job, he can still be pretty physically active, and as far as I'm concerned, he wins.

TL;DR: Kooky abusive family tries to remove my friend from critical medical care because reasons (??), and his ex-wife hits the panic button that burns their lives to the ground.

(source) story by (/u/Throwawayallaway4)

[icannotbelieveiamhere]

My personal feelings about growing up Disabled in Australia.  Having use of half my senses, makes life twice as hard for me, than for others.

For the first 7 years of my life my main disability was obvious. What wasn’t obvious, were my hidden disabilities. These hidden disabilities weren’t fully discovered and officially diagnosed until I was in my forties. The story I was told as a child was that one of my eyes hadn’t developed correctly. My parents said that a fold of skin hadn’t separated properly at birth. I barely understood them and I doubt they understood either. My left eye looked normal at birth, but by the time the doctors removed a cataract, a tumour, and performed many other operations, there was very little of my left eye remaining. Eventually the medical specialists figured out I’d never had sight in my left eye, which, if I’d been able to talk as a baby, I could have told them when they put eye patches over my right eye. I was constantly teased at school and in public because I looked different. My left eye was barely open and all you could see was a layer of white with a tiny bit of blue pigment in the corner. When I had eye infections, everything turned red. It was the 1970s, and the integration of children with disabilities in mainstream schools had only just begun. The teachers helped me as best they could, but this was long before anti-bullying guidelines existed. I had short, damaged hair due to side effects from sedatives used in the operations. With a disfigured eye and short hair, I looked like a boy. I remember playing on a jumping castle and didn’t realise my turn was over. I heard a man call out to a little boy in a green t-shirt, but I didn’t know he was talking to me. It was very noisy. I couldn’t see the man as I was too busy playing. I think my mum called me. It was one of many frustrating and confusing events during my childhood. I soon found myself alone and isolated. I created complex imaginary worlds and had wonderful adventures in between eating my lunch and getting teased and pushed and pulled around the school yard. I found it difficult to make friends and when I did make a friend, I found it difficult to keep them. I had few social skills. People standing on my left, thought I was ignoring them when I couldn’t see them waving to me. Sometimes I’d be so caught up in my safe fantasy world, that it would look like I was ignoring people. I thought everything would change when I got my artificial eye. I hoped people would accept the way I looked and I’d be able to make new friends. I was really excited when I finally got my artificial eye. It was wonderful looking the same as other children. It wasn’t a working eye but it covered up the damaged eye. It meant I didn’t have people looking at me strangely or asking difficult questions when they first met me. With a normal looking eye, I had the opportunity to be treated as a regular person, not a person who had a disability. I was so happy to look like a little girl. It was much better than people thinking I was a boy. By the time I was 7, my hair had started to grow longer. At the time, I never understood why I had to wait until I was 7 to get my new eye. The situation was very complicated. The delay was due to a combination of lack of money, lack of specialists and the attitude of both public and private health services. They considered the prosthetic eye to be a cosmetic item, rather than a restorative item which would help me fit into society. I was hoping to make lots of friends once I had my new eye, but it didn’t work out that way. I found a small group of understanding girls at school but I still had extreme difficulties making friends in new environments. I was confused. I thought children were prejudiced against me because I only had one eye and wore glasses. It was only a few years ago I realised why I’d had so many problems. In school, and later in life, I didn’t know how to read verbal and non verbal social signals. My parents and teachers weren’t sure how to help. I was great at school work, but couldn’t work in a group. I thought the children were jealous of me when I got good marks and compliments from the teachers. I didn’t know I had another disability. The teachers thought I was just shy and awkward. I was the quiet conscientious student who always worked well. That’s what my school reports said. The experts didn’t understand, not that my parents could afford to get many experts to assess me. At the time, the degree of my hidden disability wasn’t even recognised as a disability, and few specialists would have been able to diagnose me. I am on the Autism spectrum. I realised this soon after both my daughters were diagnosed with Autism. Their social, behavioural and sensory problems were extremely similar to my difficulties. It took 2 years before I was able to get an official diagnosis but once I had the documentation, I finally felt my life made sense. My full essay can be found in the link below. I submitted it to an anthology but it was rejected. I thought the book was going to be for new writers but the rejection letter and information from a previous anthology suggested the essays chosen would mostly be from established authors, some of whom were friends with the anthologist. I don't know what to make of this but I spent hours writing this essay and I thought I would share it with you here. https://icannotbelieveiamhere.home.blog/2019/11/12/growing-up-disabled-in-australia-having-use-of-half-my-senses-makes-life-twice-as-hard-for-me-than-for-others/