#um. how do I tag this so it can reach the target audience

[aaaaaaaaagenloser]

Hello. I bought a shirt that has many pride flags on it, and one I didn’t recognize. The internet doesn’t seem to know if this is an intersex or bi-gender flag, could I have some help? Feel free to link posts or websites with info as to this flag’s origin and meaning. Thank you <3

Image ID: a close-up of a black shirt, with several heart-shaped pride flags on the fabric. The flag in the center of the photo has six (6) stripes. Top to bottom, they are lavender/light purple, white, blue, pink/possibly peach, white, and lavender/light purple again.

( If you don’t know the answer, please reblog so that it might reach someone who does! Thank you <3 )

[seravphs]

omakase

ੈ♡˳·˖✶ — SUNA x MAID! FEM READER; KAICHOU WA MAID SAMA AU

In which Suna becomes the maid. 

wc — 700

tags — Set after confectionery, can be read as a stand alone, suna in a maid outfit, fluff, humor 

prev: confectionery | shoujo series masterlist

“I’m- woah!”

It used to be strange seeing Suna at your place of work, but after a while, you got used to it. 

What you’re not used to is seeing him in one of your dresses. He has one leg stuck in a stocking. The other firm thigh is already firmly encased in the mesh fabric, topped off with a cute little bow. 

Your outfit reveals far more skin on him than it would on you. At 6’1”, he already towers over most girls in the cafe. With heels, he’s a Goliath. Your skirt barely covers him - you have to rush forward to stop him from bending over and inadvertently flashing someone. 

“Um. Playing a little dress up?” 

He perks up as you pull him upright. “Hey! Your manager said Shizuka’s out sick today, so I offered to step in.” 

It’s true that Shizuka’s charm point is her height. Her target audience is men who enjoy a little domination, but Suna might be too much for even them. 

He sidles towards you, swaying his hips like a model. It shouldn’t be as hot it is. Suna is unfairly pretty. He pulls off anything. 

“What?” He purrs, hot and heavy. You splutter, trying to play it off as a reaction to the fact that he’s trying to come on to you at your work place. “You like what you see?” 

He tugs his stocking a little lower, pulls his skirt a little higher. 

“Oh- okay!” You squeak out and slap his hand to his thigh, immobilizing him. “That’s enough from you.” 

He laughs, flashing you sultry eyes that make your throat dry. “Are you sure, master? I can keep going.”

“I’m going to hit you if you keep going,” you hiss at him. 

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” he says with a grin. 

“Suna,” you groan, trying your best to look anywhere but him. “You’re impossible.”

But you love it. And he knows it. He’s weaponizing it against you. 

“Come on,” he says with a smile, pulling you out back to the alley behind the cafe. “We have work to do.��� 

“Correction: I have work to do. You need to change out of my dress and go sit at your usual table.”

“You can’t tell me you’re not-“ 

“Hold up!” That’s Miya Atsumu’s voice. You freeze. This is exactly what you’ve always been afraid of. Suna’s fine. He’s comfortable to be around. You’ve never once thought that he would leak your secret, even back before you’d known him, but Atsumu would do it even if it wasn’t malicious. You don’t even know him, but you’ve heard of what a blabbermouth he can be. 

Suna pushes you behind him immediately, shielding you with his broad back. You’re completely hidden behind him. You feel better but - then where will he hide?

“A maid?” Atsumu whistles. “Hey, pretty thing.”

Your jaw drops. It’s impossible. Atsumu doesn’t recognize him at all. He can’t tell it’s his own teammate in the maid dress. You feel Suna stiffen, too, but unlike you, he’s holding back laughter. He’s not stressed out over the situation at all. 

Atsumu’s twin is a little more attentive. Osamu squints at him. “Suna?”

“Dumbass,” Atsumu scoffs. “That’s a girl!”

“Nope,” Osamu says. “I’m pretty sure that’s Suna in a wig and a dress.”

You have to hand it to Suna. He really commits to the bit. 

Suna gives Osamu a look of utter disgust and offense. With all the strength in his arm, capable of spiking at insane velocities, he slaps Osamu across the face. Poor Osamu doesn’t even have time to react before his head snaps to the side. 

“How dare you?” Suna trills in a falsetto. “I’m a girl!” 

Atsumu yelps and reaches for his twin’s hand, dragging him away as fast as he can. Osamu, still stunned, let’s himself be hauled away as he reaches a hand up to the angry red mark on his face. 

“Thank you,” you sigh in relief, sagging against Suna’s back. 

“It’s fine,” he says, smiling down at you. “That was kind of fun.” 

You giggle. “You’re evil.”

“Besides, I don’t like sharing anyway. We can keep this our little secret.’ 

You will your traitorous heart to stop pounding. 

[liz-allyn]

shudder, part 3/6 [agent mobius x gn!reader]

You're undercover on a mission with the team, and Mobius' affinity for cowboy culture is making things unexpectedly difficult.

Part 1 | Part 2

Series Summary: Pre-Loki series. You are one of the most dangerous variants the TVA has ever recovered, but Mobius knows what makes you tick. Five times he made you shudder, and the one time you returned the favor.

Words: 1.6k

Chapter Warnings/Tags: Language, period/canon-typical gun violence, cowboy!Mobius (valid as a warning), mutual pining, flirting, fluffy and fun, at least one naughty thought.

A/N: let me know how you feel about longer chapters!

III.

The next time it happened, it was 1881, and you looked ridiculous.

Your clothes were too tight and the leather smelled like the cattle you were wearing was still alive. You didn’t get to pick your uniform for this mission, and since you were supposed to be deep undercover in an active timeline scenario where reset charges were not permitted, wearing a TVA-issued “Variant” jacket wasn’t going to work.

So now here you were, sweating your ass off in what would one-day become the Las Vegas desert, with your partner wearing a giant 10 gallon hat holding a revolver to your back. He definitely looked ridiculous, and you let him know that. But to be fair, it was almost... cute. Sort of.

Variant T-3051 was the target, this stagecoach robbery at gunpoint was the trap, a Skrull artifact locked in a safe was the bait. And you were technically also bait, disguised as the hapless hostage.

Mobius laid it on extra thick for this one; you were pretty sure he was enjoying himself.

“Easy does it, fellas,” he said in a honeyed voice. “Everyone move nice and slow.” With one hand on your shoulder and one hand on the gun trained on your back, he urged you forward with a gentle double-squeeze near your collarbone. It was a little secret communication between you two. “Keep your hands up where I can see ‘em, sweet thing.”

You struggled not to overtly roll your eyes as you lifted your hands slightly higher. You were 99% sure that Mobius had never held a revolver in his life and probably didn’t know how to fire one. The man’s idea of excitement is debating top historical time periods at lunch with you or fantasizing about jet skis. Or whatever he fantasizes about.

You glanced at the team around you, a mix of Minutemen led by B-15 - on a giant ass horse holding a rifle steady with only her eyes visible behind a black bandana, and a band of outlaw civilians who were T-minus 9 minutes from their destined massacre. The mission, simply, was that one of these people was not like the others.

U-91, also dressed as a Frontierland cast member, barked an order to hand over the chest or else. While he was monologuing on about whatever “else” was, you were scanning the group carefully waiting for the Skrull variant to reveal himself. Or you were, until—

“Hey,” you heard Mobius softly whisper behind you. You glanced to the side without turning around as he leaned closer to you. “Nice work infiltrating the gang.”

You could feel the heat of his breath on the side of your neck, and your stomach was doing something odd because of it.

“Okay,” you whispered back, trying not to move your lips. “Now is an inappropriate time to—”

“Where did you learn to ride a horse like that?” he exclaimed under his breath. “That was incredible.”

You weren’t sure if it was the anxiety of the situation, the harsh sun off the surrounding mountain range, or his praise that was making your skin flush.

“Um,” you softly replied, taken aback that he was actually impressed, “I mean- my aunt used to have this pony ride business. They’d do birthday parties—”

U-91 snapped at you, the talkative hostage, “Hey! I said shut up!”

Mobius reared back his grip on your shoulder and suddenly you crashed back into his chest. You cried out as he wrapped his arms like a vise around you.

“That’s right, I said shut your trap!” he hissed at you, playing to the audience around him.

It wasn’t often that he got to play the bad guy, but he gave it a valiant effort. You could feel the (hopefully) unloaded barrel against your back. He brought his other hand up to your throat, firmly squeezing, pulling a gasp from you.

He leaned into your body, pulling you tightly against him, as he dripped sugar-coated poison in your ear. “Not another peep outta you, ya hear?”

The first thought that sprang through your head was remembering your kink for authoritative bad boys.

Uh-oh, was the second, third, and fourth thought in your mind.

Your core was tight and you realized how heavily you were breathing when his grip loosened slightly from your throat, slipping down just a tad. You felt the warmth of his hand and resting on the skin of your chest. B-15 was already giving orders, but your brain wasn’t following the conversation anymore.

“Are you okay?” Mobius breathed in your ear. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

You slowly exhaled the heat of your breath, shaking your head ‘no’ and ‘yes’ for some reason. You could feel your pulse thrumming in your neck and you knew he could feel it too.

“Did I scare you?” he asked, inquisitively. You could hear the edge of a grin in his voice.

Your brow furrowed. “What?”

“Did I scare you just now?” Your eyes darted back to the group of outlaws as B-15 began to round them up. You were definitely supposed to be paying attention to the mission, but all you could think about was how heavy his hand was on your chest. He could curl you into himself if he wanted to.

If he wanted to, and if you wanted him to, he could keep playing cowboy outlaws. He could steal you away from your bed in the middle of the night. Or maybe he could turn you in for a bounty and visit you while you’re locked in a jail cell, making you do favors for him in exchange for freedom…

Uh-oh.

He leaned in a little closer. You could feel the shadow of his lips at the nape of your neck. “I felt you shudder just now... Did you get scared?”

“No!” You replied, almost too loudly.

“Oh. Are you cold?”

“What? Why?”

“I mean, if you’re trembling and it’s not because you’re cold, and it’s not because you’re frightened, there must be some kind of reason, right?”

Your face was burning. You’re pretty sure it’s the sun. Heat stroke. You’re dying, probably, definitely, maybe.

You gritted your teeth. “Why. Are. We. Talking about this?!”

“It’s not me, is it?” he replied coolly, like taking a sip of bourbon and lemonade on a hot day. You could hear the smirk on his lips. “You’re not intimidated by me, are you?” His cast his eyes over your rosy cheek with a satisfied gaze. “Maybe I make you a little... nervous?”

“WHA’THUH HELL—?” A terrified twang rang out and you both were snatched out of the clouds. You looked up to see a green-faced cowboy, cow-Skrull? Skrull-boy? - hostile variant reach into the the side holster of one of his outlaw posse. As soon as the Skrull had his hands on his “partner’s” weapon, he shot his partner through the back, killing him (just a few minutes before his time).

Variant T-3051 was fast. As B-15 fired her rifle, he was already pulling another stunned outlaw in front of him as a shield. T-3051 raised his gun towards B-15 and fired towards her horse. The animal raised up on its hind legs, bucking her off.

“Take cover!” Mobius ordered, pulling you down with him, but there wasn’t much around.

T-3051 fired a shot blindly, striking U-91 in the arm. He dropped to the ground and crawled in a one-arm dash for cover.

In the chaotic confusion and fear, the other outlaws drew their weapons and began to fire on the TVA team and each other.

The horse that B-15 was riding began to trot off, trampling a fleeing outlaw. B-15 struggled to grab her weapon off of the ground, but T-3051’s boot dropped down on the rifle, pinning it beneath his foot. She looked up to see the barrel of T-3051’s gun pointed at her, sights trained.

You had already grabbed the single-action revolver out of Mobius’ hand. He reached for you, but you leapt out of hiding with his gun raised high.

You shot the gun out of the variant’s hand before he could fire. Stunned, T-3051 dropped backwards onto the ground as the other handful of living outlaws turned their attention towards you. With one hand rapidly pulling back the hammer as the other hand steadied your aim and squeezed the trigger, you knocked them down like bowling pins.

A few shots later and it was over. T-3051 attempted to crawl towards the stagecoach, but B-15 leapt on his back and collared him. With a push of the button, he was frozen in time.

“Target acquired,” she stated into a radio, winded from the skirmish.

Mobius jogged towards U-91 as he pulled himself to his feet. He deftly inspected the Minuteman’s injury. “U-91 is injured,” he reported into his own communications device. “Alert the infirmary. B-15?”

“All clear,” she nodded.

Mobius’ eyes searched the area frantically until they rested on you. You walked up to the safe as B-15 retrieved the alien artifact - a twisty, metallic, (oddly) phallic-shaped thing.

You snorted. “This is the bomb that could rip a planet in half?” you asked incredulously.

If you didn’t know any better, you thought you saw the tiniest smile on B-15’s lips. She radioed in, “Artifact is secure.”

Grinning with an amused chuckle, you glanced over and spotted Mobius gazing at you proudly, watching the sun rise and set in your smile. You felt your cheeks flush, dropping your eyes to the ground and biting your lip. God, this was bad. He could not look at you like that.

“Incredible,” you heard him breathe.

Part 4

A/N: Did you like it? Reblog & let me know! Also seriously, I feel like my chapters are getting long. If that’s a bummer for anyone, please say so.

@aloyssia @generalhugzzz

[batarangsoundsdumb]

hae interrogationes multae respondeant quia demens .

if you read this entire ask post you deserve a gold star and financial recompensation

Um, Obviously because when you’re adopted by a white guy you automatically become white duhhh

this is about this post lmao and yeah youre absolutely right, you have to hand your poc card in when you get adopted by a white guy.

Do you think Cass would listen to Yanni, the YouTube channel epic symphonic rock, or some other stuff? There's some cool mashups but idk if that's up your alley, I kinda feel like I'm pushing it with my weird taste of music by recommending an orchestra cover of metal, but i just love that sort of thing and mashups :P @harvestyourcherries 

i haven’t heard of that? but in my personal (correct) opinion steph listens to classical music, and then both modern and older, and then also stuff like black sabbath, iron maiden, but also hardrock and hardcore. i like the idea of cass just liking the most extreme screaming songs full of noise and then also listen to pachelbel’s 370th sonata yanno? THANK YOU for the rec tho

speaking of ur cass playlist hc...reminds of the time (yesterday) i found 2 playlists randomly on spotify from the same user. one was abt 3 hours of instrumental/classical "dark" & "nostalgic" music. the other almost 11 hours of nothing but hardcore bass/synth/electronic music. just an incredible tightrope act to put on in public. the synth one was also called like "psalms for synth sluts" which is Also incredible

tbh i LOVE synth SO MUCH like for no reason at all but then also cannot handle a poppy electronic beat lmao. but this seems like the kinda thing i’d do but just in one (1) playlist bc i just sort songs by vibe instead of genre? that’s how i end up with britney spears and billy ray cyrus in the same playlist. 

Oh, I want Kate Kane playlist next! It would be amazing if you could do one when you have time and will 🙏

how rude would it be of me to just say no? like sorry kate but idk you and also you seem way too keen on the us military for an institution that homophobically targeted you? (and also commits war crimes) but let’s unpack the fact that the institution that caused the death of your mom and sister and also got you blacklisted for being gay is still one you align with???

'yes i am' 'no you're not' 'yes i am' 'no you're not' 'yes i am' 'no you're not' 'yes i am' 'no you're not' 'yes i am' 'no you're not' 'yes i am' 'no you're not' --- when i tell you i fucking screamed LOL!!!!!!! i can imagine the cameraman not knowing if he should cut to commercial or keep it on these two weirdos fighting on stage (bruce definitely ruffled dick's hair/noogied him right?? 

about this post but yeah lmao. this cameraman just turns to like the audience to get a reaction and it’s just multiple moments of CLEAR shock.

you are the only funny person on this hellsite

how egotistical is it for me to say that i get this ask multiple times a month? bc it literally happens so often it’s hilarious to me.

Wish there was more john/Bruce content 😔😔😔 was so hungry I actually looked at canon media 😔😔😔 (Justice League Dark babeeeyyyyyy)

check out batman: damned for some mediocre content but at least it’s john/bruce (also very interesting story and stuff, just got very >:( over this weird part where harley quinn tried to r*pe bruce or something? it’s not for everyone)

dick grayson but he's nicki minaj

his anaconda don’t want none,,, unless...... 

Dick Grayson was never a cop, he played Marshall on Paw Patrol

you are SO right. also paw patrol is a fucking good show idc. that shit could’ve been the new steven universe on this hellsite.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CS1lI0bLI7-/?utm_medium=copy_link

...

why do people keep reposting my CONTENT. if you are not funny yourself don’t just grab shit off of tumblr and post it on insta,,, get a life. sidenote: should i start an insta and get all these ppl to take my content down that would be funny as hell.

Might I suggest for a Gotham City Meme: something about the true crime fandom thirsting for the rogues gallery

ok can i just say something slightly controversial?? no? i don’t find true crime ppl who are into criminals funny, that shits disturbing irl im not gonna bring that into my very chill universe.

i may have never seen a 'jason cleaning guns in sink' fic but i do know he WOULD

THANK YOU

bestie im sorry to say this to you but while you can, and people do wash their guns in the sink, that is a lot of lead in a very vital part of the kitchen.

people tend to do it in the bathtub.

WHY???? like damn why do you even have guns

i dont think i read many gun sink fics exactly but i have read lots of fics where jason cleanes his guns in the living room. usualy dissembles them and cleans them with a rag i think

lmao fair enough, like i think that’s a large part of what i remember as well.

if you say you've seen/read gun sink fics I believe you. I think those of us who didn't see them are lucky or maybe didn't search for fics by tags or something idk

i mean ive never sought them out but i HAVE seen them,, like definitely i know almost for certain.

saw your tags and I'm interested in Steph/Kara now. They would be the most chaotic couple <3

literally thoooo, i have a wip where they get together in a zombie apocalypse and like UGGGHhhh i am so in love with them.

I am the Breece anon. Thanks for the recommendation; am reading now. I’ve always been a hardcore Superman fan because I love my pure himbo farm boy. My logic is, if one Bruce is a Broose, then multiple Broose are a herd of Breece. And this is a hill upon which I will perish.

fair enough,,,, like moose, meese, goose, geese, bruce, breece. i get your logic and i stand by it as well. (glad you enjoyed the comic recs!!!!)

It's a beautiful day in Gotham, and you are a group of horrible Breece

OH my god dude lmao

there only being 42 fics on ao3 for tim and bernard is honestly so sad i need more

it’s like twice that now!!! we did it lads. (tho very sad that my fic isnt number one but like number 4 :((((  )

i'm too late you already did the poll lol but may i suggest bethy (bernard + timothy)

shit dude that wouldve been so fucking funnyyyyy. think ppl have just stuck to timber tho, tim/bernard kinda died down recently and i think it’s too bad, they’re a great couple and i love them.

Wait, hear me out

Bernothy @redlightofdawn

great recommendation (lmao this ask is from like a month ago) but very sorry to announce that NARDTH is the superior shipname

Wait, we know that bernard likes milfs (Tim's step-mom) but what about dilfs? gilfs?

Wait no, I regret sending that ask

these were two seperate asks and they’re HILARIOUS. in my personal opinion tho,,, milfs, gilfs, dilfs are just about vibes and bernard is just attracted to sexy ppl who may sometimes be milfs, dilfs, or EVEN gilfs.

crime in bludhaven would drop to half if nightwing had a boob window. in this essay i will-

WHERE’S THE ESSAY ANON, WHERE’S THE FUCKING ESSAY

Wait if Barbra and Tim r at opposite ends at all times what happened to Barbra once everyone’s Tim’s ever love before started dying lol

she won a lottery ticket and spent 2 weeks on a resort in the bahamas before returning home and finding out that the joker was arrested for tax evasion and then spent a month staying at her big tiddie goth girlfriend’s house before conner came back to life and she broke her pinkie playing table hockey.

Why is the opposite end thing so funny and compelling to me. Tim comes back from his depression quest for Bruce and Babs is now a literal god

lmao when tim loses his spleen barbara reaches nirvana.

Are you still taking music recs because I have three songs that remind me of Jason that I think you'd like

send to me or lose a toe

🌸 ⭐ put this star into the inbox of your favorite blogs. it’s time to spread positivity! ⭐🌸😋

thanks, i wont tho on account of i wont.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMduBy3Sr/

⬆️

This is the whole of Blüdhaven and everyone anywhere.

Nightwings ass alone saves more people in a calendar year and does more for so society than most heroes do their whole career.Also u are one of the funniest tumblr pages out there. The vibes are unmatched and the memes and tags ✨send me✨.Thank u and goodnight @julia-flow 

fanksss also lmao.

That's going to be a little bit difficult to explain, but

There's some music that you listen to and you think, "oh my gosh, I can perfectly imagine Dick Grayson singing this song, with the same voice as the singer because that voice matches with Dick Grayson"?

oh yeah totally lmao. i have a lot of songs that i think are just entirely dick grayson yanno? kind of all of my playlists have that vibe, but i really find bleachers to fit with dick? idk.

"Lois lane/Superman" fics this, "Lois lane/Clark Kent" fics that, (/lh) let's get into the real good stuff. Some people ship Lois, Clark, and Superman as a throuple. Most popular fic tag for sure

yes totally, i think they’d be absolutely killer on ao3 and clark gets so fucking embarassed about it.

I miss your post, hope you’re doing okay!!

haha this was like 2 months ago, but i was doing fine then too! just didn’t have a lot of inspiration in terms of content.

Doot doot!

noot noot

I’m confused. What did DC do now? Like with nightwing? And another sibling? Please spoil everything for me

lmao they gave him a secret sister plotline where they had his dad cheat on his mom with tony zucco’s wife, bc dick’s life wasn’t traumatic enough yet.

sorry but it's so funny that batman is called "the dark knight" when the gotham city baseball team is called the gotham knights. it'd be like if a vigilante was running around new york called like "the scary yankee"

lmaooo no. but like yankee comes from dutch names or something so wouldnt it be HILARIOUS if gotham knights came from like german names and bruce would be running around called the dark KLAUS UND NIEK @graysonnightwing 

(not a batcest shipper) it’s so funny to me that the responses are “i’m a batcest shipper because i can differentiate fiction from reality and and it doesn’t bother me personally, but i understand why you oils think it’s weird” to “i wish all batcest shippers a very fucking die”

yeah lmaoo. i personally basically flipped my entire stance around to ‘i dont care please leave me and everybody else alone’ bc i think there’s really no point in starting a moral dillema over some fucking fandom bullshit. Please just,,, go home,,, log off, find a nice forest to have a little walk in and remember that somewhere in history, somebody probably died in the place you’re standing. and you will also die someday, and somebody will have to look at your internet usage and see you fighting multiple people anonymously while being named ‘nightwingsbuttchin200186′ like... calm down, we’re all gonna die this is not the thing to worry about.

so since like "wards" don't really exist in modern society almost all the batkids are foster kids, right? i used to work in the system and imagine: monthly visits from social workers and guardian ad litems, bruce having to get permission to take the boys anywhere out of state, calling their social worker at like 8 a.m. like "yeah dick broke his arm again... a gymnastics accident this time...." their poor social worker. bruce send her a huge bouquet and box of chocolates every month to stay on her good side

i imagine the social worker just getting into the case like ‘yeah let’s get this kid a good guardian’ and then ending up having to work with 22 y/o bruce wayne and his 50 y/o dad. and so this social worker is like ‘okay we can work with this, this is the best home i can find’ and then like it ends up landing on its feet and then the kid gets adopted and then they get a call a year later like ‘uhm so hi, this kid tried to steal my tyres can i adopt him?’ and like 3 years later. ‘okay so basically, my neighbours’ kid imprinted on me and now they’re dead, can i keep him?’ two years later it’s like ‘okay so this assassin child-’

ever since I saw that one post of yours, the meme that's something like "I know that abba's backup dancer got me" with a picture of discowing, I've been haunted. Every once in a while I'll be minding my own business then the image of abba's backup dancer dick grayson aka nightwing aka discowing will flash in my mind and I'll be frozen in place. Today at work I was in the middle of folding clothes and suddenly once again discowing entered my mind and I suddenly lost the ability to see anything except He. Thank you.

wow. the IMPACT.

Braver than any US marine man props to you🤝

this shit is about the time i wrote an article on batcest, like man,,, the fact that i didn’t get cancelled is MIRACULOUS. also like,,, uh if anybody on here did gossip on me,, send screenshots i’d love to see it.

Hello, just wanted to say your article was great. Thank you for taking the time to provide an unbaised answer. It should provide people with nuances they couldn't possibly conjure on their own.

May I ask where your username originates from?

yes you may (also thanks!!!) i thought it up when i was trying to find an original username bc i didnt want to be called like ‘timdrakes something something’ or ‘jason todd something smoething’ or ‘dick grayson something something’ yanno? so i thought batarangs, they sound so dumb and that’s my username story... now it’s my whole entire brand lmao.

yno that bit in kick ass where red mist asks kick ass if he wants a hit of his blunt, was that the inspo for stoner tim

no? it’s bc i think stoners are hilarious and drugs are great. (dont do drugs tho) 

How would u feel if someone actually wore one of those bruce or ollie pride shirts u edited

fenomenal next question.

Dick as lil huddy and Jason as James gave me radiation poisoning and now I’m screaming crying throwing up so thx for that

(Rico suave as Tim is perfect tho literally no changes needed)

i was so funny for that shit wasn’t i??? lmao i loved those weird ass fancasts

You're doing the Lord's work by providing us with all these Gotham/Metropolis citizens memes, thank you for being so relentlessly funny @nellethiel-aranel

you’re welcome!! i really enjoy making memes, but getting validation for my content and my memes is REALLY nice.

Bruce is such a slut in your memes and honestly i love that for him @rhodey-rhudert-rhodes-main 

he’s that much of a slut irl too dw.

Bruce and Alfred have an emergency pride flag for the batkids. Oliver Queen printed an emergency "I love my gay son" t-shirt and as soon as Roy told him he was dating Jason, Oliver started wearing that shirt everyday and Roy always cringes when he sees it. Oliver also has an emergency "I love my lesbian daughter" shirt just in case for Cissie.

lmao YES i had a post like this bc like all of their kids/family members are so gayy

stop bringing back batfam fancasts it is not real it is not real it is not- 😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

oh yes it is my darling.

did discowing burn down the notredam because he hates the bees? @allulily

no he did it bc fuck the french.

im gonna beg for 1 thing and 1 thing only. please please please put physical by olivia newton john on dick's playlist

okay then beg. bc i wont. physical reminds me too much of glee and that hurts me mentally.

your playlist is sorely missing some Madonna. Specifically Into the Groove, Like a Prayer, and Vogue

i’m scared of madonna that’s why she’s not on there. she haunts me in my dreams.

suggestion: son of batman by aaron dews for dick’s playlist🤩

sorry, i listened to it and the vibe didn’t agree with me.

Hear me out, metropolis citizens sending rare pair fics of Clark Kent x Superman fics to Lois to edit

yes, absolutely hilarious. even more funny if they send like physical copies, no address attached and lois sends it back marked with red ink, SOMEHOW

Imagine all the smut Clark must of read editing the fics

clark reads smut confirmeeed

NOT LOIS READING SUPERBAT PORN AND EDITING IT A 2AM 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

hc that alfred is a meta that boosts healing factor of the people around him. if the bats are injured as much as they seem to be they would be doing bat stuff MAYBE half the year. no one including alfred knows about this. whenever the kids move out they inexplicably dont recover from injuries as fast and feel better whenever they visit the manor they just chalk it up to homesickness. bruce just thinks he heals really fast. alfred thinks everyone doesnt take care of themselves properly @finchcollector

that’s actually such a great idea, but i think that alfred would find out and learn how to concentrate it better so he can help more people, bc he’s great and i love him.

One of your dickfast posts reminded me of that tweet that goes: 'so you've had sex how many times? Yeah technically that's not a bromance' lol that's dickwally or dickroy

literally tho. like that’s all of dick’s friendships. once it gets past a certain time dick is like ‘wow i wonder what it would be like to make out with wally, wally come make out with me’ and wally’s like ‘we’ve done this like 40 times, dick, you know what it’s like’ and dick is like ‘sorry are you complaining?’ and they just make out.

superfam and batfam associations??

-batman and superman

-dick/barabara and supergirl?

-conner and tim

-jon and damian

pls enlighten me I am confused

nope,,, uhm batman and superman, but dick and superman as well, and then conner and tim, jon and damian and steph + babs with supergirl

I came across a fic in which Wonder Woman calls Batman "Stella" (like Stellaluna, the children's book) and I can imagine the batkids hop on the trend and maybe copies of the book appear at random places (aka, everywhere Bruce frequents)

sorry can’t reciprocate that was the name of my high school chemistry teacher and it gives me nightmares to think about.

good human what are your pronouns?

wouldn’t you like to know?

I need me some gothamites preferring harley over joker memes

everyone prefers harley over joker youre just very fucked up if you dont

don't understand why people try to add like veteran policy to the batfamily

dick pulling out his veteran batfam member card so he can eat first: step aside, peasants

Do you know the song Simmer by Haley Williams? It (the first verse anyways) reminds me of Jason? It's about rage.

damn yeah i LOVE HAYLEY!!!! youre right thoo

Okay so I like listen to your stoner Tim Drake playlist 24/7 but would he listen to skegss? Also I keep adding songs mentally it’s killing me 😩✋🏼 Anyways,, I literally love and worship your playlist 😃🤞🏼 And uh yeah have a good day ✨

stoner tim drake playlist is lyfeeee. also dont know who skeggs is? i’m stupid? have a good day!!

All the Robins (and Batgirl) decide to trade costumes for one night just to fuck with Batman and all the villains in Gotham. @subspacecadet 

batman knows it’s them youknow but like,,, what does he call them? he’s like ‘red hood?’ and 3 people answer and he’s not about to compromise some identities so he’s just Pissed.

I aspire to treat cops the way my dad treats them. This man is a 45 year old Asian immigrant to the US and the treats them like his pets. He talks about them like unruly children. Sometimes he pays off local cops to shut up and stop acting racist. And usually it works. I don’t know why but I can see Oliver Queen doing this

vibes... and also yes? oliver queen handing a local cop a donut to shut the fuck up lmao. but yanno i commit enough crimes to not really want to ever see a cop ever, so they kinda scare the everloving fuck out of me.

seeing as tim hasn't aged in years, that means he was 17 at peak emo tumblr era. im back on my emo tim bullshit and im not letting it go

emo tim had a wattpad account send tweet

People seem to think that batman is so dark and serious when the rainbow batsuit is right there. He wore it with no shame.

dude the 60s were a DIFFERENT TIME

dick grew up in a circus, jason grew up on the streets, and tim was probably raised by the internet

all of them cuss every other word and you cannot tell me otherwise

bitch i KNOW but dc has to change to an 18+ rating if they want to sell comix with swear words in them so we gotta deal with imagining the swear words in ourselves

thoughts on teen titans and young justice

haven’t seen teen titans on account of havent seen it and young justice was LITERALLY my favourite thing ever, tho i do gotta admit it’s not at all similar to the young justice comics unfortunately. i really wouldve liked to see timmy bart kon cassie and cissie animated on tv!!

ew ew ew how to delete batcest shippers I genuinely digust them

log off tumblr?

Okay as poc who was called racist for calling an Italian pastabrain: in the batfam are Italians bit Damian just yells various insults about the others being Italian. Just him yelling “What are you doing you moronic spaghettihead!” At steph etc

huh? i meant real italians. homeboy is telling steph he hopes she chokes on her fucking garlic.

I think it's dumb as hell to pull the batman is the best fighter in the batfam argument because like it's just irresponsible of Bruce to let his kids fight when they couldn't possibly be on his league or something

fair enough, but also like who cares they could all kill you just sit down and take a beating.

lady shiva, thalia al ghul and Selina Kyle are all milfs @notanothertimburtonenthusiastugh 

unfortunately, i have to admit,,, you’re right

why tf didn't someone give joker a death sentence already? like he's a mass murderer...give him the electric chair treatment wtf

idk i think plenty of people would have tried to murder him already (boring answer is: he is a popular character so they can’t kill him off bc he brings in lots of money)

There’s no such thing as “ copaganda”.

all american media is propaganda. happy to clear this up for you

is it bad that I find lady shiva owa owa

no. find her as owa owa as you want.

aight I'm guessing the order of your favs in batfam:

1. tim

2. Steph

3. dick

4. Duke

5. the rest

you’re wrong but it’s cute that you tried, i generally don’t have favourites, but i have a special place in my heart for steph, tim, dick and cass. bc they were like my introduction to batfam. but damian, jason, duke, bruce, babs and alfred are NOT FORGOTTEN OR UNLOVED

oh my god i was literally just readily willing to believe that italians werent white ty for clarifying it was a joke im so dumb sdkvjskdfs

i mean some italians aren’t white? italian is a nationality as well as an ethnicity, so like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

since I saw so many people doing headcanons about the nationalities of batboys, I see Dick as an Italian.

dont know if youre serious or not, but sure.

super random but

jason 🤝 damian

old english

lmao fair enough.

tim absolutely has 1 gay uncle and his parents shit talk said uncle all the time so after bruce adopts him he specifically reaches out to this uncle to be like "heyyyy just so you know you majorly influenced my life yes i know i havent seen you since i was 5 and at the family reunion yes i know you dont remember my name idc thank you im gay too" and then they never talk again.

yuppp lmao that’s definitely something that could happen. i can also consider tim having no family members, like none. until he does like a dna test and he realises he has like an aunt living barely 2 miles away from him who’s like some illegitimate child of his grandpa.

I dare you one of them sends clark superman/clark fic and clark corrects the shit out of it and then goes like ps his dick is not that big, just telling as someone who has seen it. internet either explodes or goes who tf did he not fuck at this point.

i think everybody would call clark a buzzkill and try to cancel him over that.

so you're telling me Tim Drake wouldn't buy Starbucks?

no. dunkin donuts all the way

One of my favorite things is imagining people finding out jason came back from the dead and being like "oh no does he have magic powers now?!?!?" and he just pulls out a gun and tries to shoot joker

now he doesn’t even have the gun :) lmao

my favorite batfamily fanfictions are the ones where they use their shitty codenames, unironically, in any context

bruce gets codename ‘ugh’ everytime. he hates it.

crazy that tim being a 17 y/o ceo and a stoner who does brand deals are all actual canon things written in detective comics comics and not made up for shits and giggles by you, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb @rowdeyclown

SO CRAZY HUH?

batman au where everything is the same but his utility belt is bright pink

absolutely, but i raise you, his boots light up like sketchers when he kicks people.

unbeknownst to the superhero fandom writers in the dcuniverse, clark and BRUCE are one of the most prolific fanfic writers in the superhero rpf tag on ao3. clark writes the best lois x superman angst, full of unhappy endings and scenes that are a so detailed you'd think you were in the middle of a superhero beatdown. bruce made an ao3 account to fuel "the do the butts match" thing, and makes batman/bruce fics from time to time. he wrote a superbat fic as a joke but ended up making it REAL porny. @concrastinator

dude they’re WAY too busy for that. Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan on the other hand are the most prolific fanfic writers in the superhero rpf tag writing what is Mostly porn.

When the dining table topic gets to politics, Steph says "eat the rich" as the solution

bruce just silently takes away her fork and knife while she’s talking.

[whimperwoods]

Part 13 of Gozukk and Anna

Gozukk calms down from his nightmare. Anna learns something new.

The masterpost is here and includes a cheat sheet with character names/relationships.

tw: past slavery, tw: past abuse, tw: PTSD

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!

Tag list: @redwingedwhump, @nine-tailed-whump, @thehurtsandthecomfurts @kixngiggles, @bluebadgerwhump, @dragonheart905, @carolinethedragon, @whumpzone, @newbornwhumperfly, @cupcakes-and-pain, @much-ado-about-whumping, @winedark-whump

****

Anna’s legs were shaking as she followed Gozukk to a set of straw-filled targets and watched him string a bow. She stayed out of his reach, shrinking back and wondering what kind of a fool she was, following her new master while he was still upset.

But then again, he talked like he wasn’t her master, at all.

He’d invited her here, held open the tent flap for her, but now it was like she wasn’t even here. He was focused intently on what he was doing, not sparing her a glance as he tested the bowstring and grabbed a set of semi-blunted arrows.

She backed up farther, out of his way, as he found a spot for himself at a decent range from the target he’d chosen.

His first several shots were lightning fast, and she felt shivers run through her as they thunked into the target almost at random, making satisfying sounds but sticking out near the edges of the target, one too far left and the next too far right, thunk, thunk, thunk, like Gozukk just needed to shoot, not to hit the center.

Foolish. This was foolish. She knew better. She knew men didn’t keep their anger tightly focused, knew it splattered out around them and splashed over her, but she also knew that being too obvious about trying to hide, now that she’d been fool enough to follow, was an equally dangerous proposition.

His breathing was still a little ragged, emotional and loud, and she realized only when a quiet growl broke from him that he was holding back noises, perhaps shouts, perhaps more of those growls.

She crouched down, trying to be small. Leaving would make him angry, especially if he didn’t know where she’d gone. But all of a sudden, she couldn’t stand to be out in the open, not like this, not with a weapon in Gozukk’s hands and what kind of fool was she? She shuddered again, her whole body reacting to the idea.

Gradually, Gozukk’s pace slowed, and then his breathing, and the shots, now steady and less frantic, drew closer and closer to the center of the target. Finally, he shot the last two arrows with slow and careful aim, breathing with his motions and hitting the center ring and then the center dot.

He lowered the bow and turned toward her.

“Thanks,” he said, managing an almost sheepish smile. “I’m - I don’t usually have an audience for this. Not since I was a kid, anyway. I’m a better shot when I’m trying, don’t worry.”

His grin was clearly meant to be reassuring, but there was something about it that was false in a way that told her, suddenly, that his smiles had been real before.

She shuddered again, forcing herself to stay put and smile back, but Gozukk’s brow creased, concerned.

He put down the bow and held his hands up, his palms out toward her. “Hey. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, “I - Sorry.”

She wanted to shrink backward, away, but the concern on his face . . . the concern was real, too, almost certainly. She bit her lip, not sure what to say, and stayed put.

“I shouldn’t have asked you along,” he said softly, “I was being selfish. Not wanting to be by myself. But of course it looks intimidating.”

Gozukk was upset. Last night, she’d have flinched, even thinking it. But tonight - tonight he was upset, and he was sad, not angry. She breathed slowly and carefully, steadying herself.

“It’s alright,” she answered softly, “I, umm - I’m alright.”

“You’re welcome to take a few shots, if you want. I’m not so vain as all that, you know.” He sounded strained, like the joke took effort to make, but at least if he was trying to make her feel better . . . well, at least he was trying to make her feel better!

She took another careful, steady breath. “Oh, no, Gozukk,” she said, managing at the last moment not to call him Sir, “I’m umm - I don’t know how, anyway.”

Gozukk’s brow furrowed and she found herself blushing. It was a struggle not to avert her eyes, and she couldn’t stop herself from rounding her shoulders, shrinking inward.

“Would you like to learn? It might make you feel more safe.”

For a moment, she stared, struggling to make sense of the question.

“Is that why you didn’t take the knife, that first day?” Gozukk asked, “You don’t know how to fight?”

She shook her head, no.

“No, you don’t know how to fight, or no, that’s not why?”

Her heart was racing in her chest. There was no way to answer that would be guaranteed to please him. She couldn’t think her way out of it, couldn’t work out how to make the danger of it go away.

Shaking slightly, she decided to tell the truth. “B-both, Gozzuk. I - I don’t know how to fight and I didn’t -” She finally lowered her eyes to the ground, lacking the strength to keep looking up at him, “I didn’t want you to think I was - I wanted you to know I knew my place. I wanted you to know I would, um - I guess just stay.”

Gozukk was silent, but his eyes were still open, soft, taking her in without judgment.

After a moment, he said, “If you wish to leave, I will send you with an escort when I can.” His voice was soft, warm, “And if you wish to stay, I can teach you anything you want to know. Or I can’t, and someone else can. I don’t plan to send you into danger. I don’t plan to send you anywhere. But if you want to be able to defend yourself, I can help with that, too.”

She bit her lip. Everything here was so much. There were so many people, so many possibilities, so many dangers, and so many budding hopes, and she didn’t know what to do with any of them.

She did know they were standing in front of a set of targets, and agreeing to a lesson would put off the other questions, as if they’d never been asked, because she’d answered the first one instead.

“I - I think I’d like to learn to shoot. It’s - it seems -” she steadied herself, still looking down, but breathing steadily. “I think I can do it.”

Gozukk started unstringing his bow, and she looked up, confused.

He smiled, his face soft in the moonlight, and looked fond. “Mine’s too strong. We’ll get you started with one of the ones we keep to teach the kids before they make their own.”

She nodded, creeping tentatively closer. Something in the back of her mind was still screaming at her, screaming not to get closer to a master with a weapon in hand, screaming that this was a test, that she was failing, failing, going to be punished. She kept breathing, and moved forward. It was safe. Gozukk wanted her safe. He’d said so.

Moving didn’t make the voice in the back of her mind go away, but watching him finish unstringing his bow and put it down quieted it a little.

He moved slowly, cautiously, and she knew it, knew he was trying not to frighten her. She blushed again, trying to keep breathing, keep upright, keep everything steady like he wanted, like - like she wanted? Gozukk came toward her with a smaller bow, un-strung, and a string and quiver to go with it.

“Here,” he said, “We might as well start with stringing it yourself, so you’ll know how to do that if you need to.”

She nodded, taking the bow from him, and letting him guide her through the process. It was strange, having something in her hand that she knew was a weapon, and strange, too, knowing that the strong hands beside hers were helping her make it dangerous.

It was reassuring, in a way, to focus on a thing in her hands, a concrete task, and she almost understood why Gozukk had come out here, until the bow was strung and he was letting her pull on the string to test out how it felt, his hands still hovering near her. It wasn’t hard to pull back, really, but the tension of it was obvious, and all of a sudden, the knowledge of what it was flooded through her again, a feeling of danger.

Her hands shook, and Gozukk placed his gently over hers. “We don’t have to do this,” he said, so close to her that she could almost feel the rumble of his voice in her skin, “If you’re not ready, you don’t have to do this.”

There were two choices. Two choices, and her mind was too full of screaming and confusion to think them through, and something deep answered instead, an impulse at the core of her she couldn’t explain. “No,” she whispered, “I can do this.”

He nodded.

Once the decision was made, the whole cacophony inside her quieted, unsustainable and burned out. All that remained was what she was doing, and when she didn’t think about what that was, everything else was quiet.

Gozukk stood behind her, giving soft instructions, helping her adjust her stance, hold the bow, nock an arrow. He didn’t touch her when he could explain, and his hands were warm and gentle when he couldn’t, his huge body close enough to her back for her to feel the warmth, to feel the way he blocked the cool night breeze that blew around them.

She focused on what she was doing, on following directions.

“Here, like this. We don’t want the string hitting you in the forearm.”

“There, good, just like that.”

“Keep breathing, even when you’re focused on aiming.”

Her first shot missed the target, but only by a little bit, and she could hear a smile in Gozukk’s voice as he exclaimed, “Good! That’s closer than a lot of first shots. Do you want to try again?”

She nodded and let him hand her another arrow, guide her through the process again, remind her to breathe.

The arrow hit the very edge of the target, barely sticking into the canvas on the opposite side from where she’d missed last time.

Gozukk chuckled, “At this rate, you’ll be better than me, too. Another?”

She blushed, but this time her chest was warm, and what had been a tremble in her hands was now just barely in her fingers, and only when she wasn’t focused on the shot.

Her aim didn’t get better as quickly or steadily as Gozukk’s had when he was calming down, but several hit quite solidly, and as she focused only on the one thing, the new motions, the new feeling of her arms aching slightly from pulling against the tension of the string, of making it do what she wanted, the target in front of her, she felt the storm inside her drift farther away.

When the small training quiver was empty, she realized Gozukk’s hand was still on her shoulder, resting lightly, not grabbing hold, and she let herself lean slightly backward into him.

He wrapped his arms around her, still gentle, his grasp so loose she knew she could get out with just a step, and she breathed deeply, sighing outward.

“I never knew something like this was - like this,” she said softly.

She wasn’t sure what she meant by that. She wasn’t sure how to say it better without saying too much.

She felt Gozukk’s voice vibrating where her back was up against his chest. “I can understand that,” he answered, “I feel it, too. At least, I do at night, like this. I do when it’s just canvas.”

“I guess now we go find the arrows?” she asked.

“Even the ones that missed didn’t miss by much,” Gozukk answered, his arms already moving away from her again, and then they were separate in the moonlight, cleaning up the small range in silence.

[zenonaa]

Fandom: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, Dangan Ronpa: Another Episode Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fukawa Touko/Togami Byakuya, Kirigiri Kyoko/Naegi Makoto Characters: Togami Byakuya, Kirigiri Kyouko, Naegi Makoto, Fukawa Touko, Asahina Aoi, Hagakure Yasuhiro, Naegi Komaru, Various Characters Additional Tags: there's a 3rd ship but it's a surprise, Weddings

Summary: "In anime, this occasion usually happens right at the end of the series, and other than an OVA or fanfiction, that’s supposed to be it. The credits roll. But... this isn’t anime. Life goes on afterwards, so do your best, always! Protect each other. Be there for each other. Today is one of the few days that can be as perfect as an episode of an anime, so make the best of it!"

Due to a mishap, Naegi and Kirigiri's wedding is booked for the same time and place as Togami and Fukawa's. They make the best of it.

Comments: Commissioned by @notattumbr20!

Byakuya stroked his thumb against the textured card, sitting at a desk in an empty classroom. A pair of butterflies had been etched onto the front of the invitation, which had been folded in a gatefold and folded again horizontally on each flap, so each side was an accordion fold that, when opened outward, revealed some text behind them about the occasion. One butterfly occupied each flap, with one wing hanging past the inner fold line. In the top left corner of the left flap was one name, and in the bottom right corner of the right flap was another name. The first name belonged to him, Byakuya, and the second was that of his fiancee.

Maintaining her brisk pace, Kyouko glanced down and reread the envelope at the top of her stout pile one more time before checking her wristwatch. In an hour, she was scheduled to have her lunch. She raised her chin and keeping her eyes forward, she continued through the corridor, her heels clicking against the varnished floor. At regular intervals, she passed doors either side of her that led into various rooms, mostly classrooms where at this time of day, lessons would be taking place. However, Kyouko ignored them all, and she arrived at the bottom of a stairwell.

Each area of Hope’s Peak had been installed with different coloured lighting. After Byakuya and his former classmates left the school following the end of the mutual killings, the power had turned off, leaving each corridor as grim and depressing as the others. On their eventual return, they managed to get the generator running again, though on the floor that Byakuya was on, the corridors had dull grey walls and neutral lighting. That must have been a design choice by the previous headmaster, whose office had been on this floor.

No one was here. This used to be her father’s office until his death and was now used by the current headmaster. Kyouko lingered for a little longer in the doorway before leaving, closing the door behind her. While the school had been more or less restored, certain areas still had a poor phone reception, and besides, she didn’t think finding who she wanted would take her much longer, so she set off again.

Most of the invitations had been given out at this point. He had started giving them out this morning. Some had been sent in an email, but for those in the school with Byakuya, he planned to hand them the invitation personally, and thinking he would find who he wanted in the headmaster’s office, he finally rose and crossed the room to go to the door.

Only one couple was left to be invited. The corridor bathed Kyouko in neutral light, and grey walls flanked either side of her. First, she had checked the dormitories, then the teachers’ room, and neither of the people she wanted to meet were in the headmaster’s office like Yasuhiro had suggested, as Byakuya had mentioned to Yasuhiro about wanting to speak with the headmaster that day, so as she hadn’t had any luck so far, she thought it likely that the next best places to search were the library and the cafeteria.

Byakuya stepped out of the classroom and spotted Kyouko coming from the direction of the headmaster’s office. He walked toward her.

Kyouko heard a door open and she saw Byakuya step out of a classroom. She walked toward him.

They stopped in front of each other and held out the invitations at the same time

“What’s that?” they asked simultaneously. They paused, then said together, “A wedding invitation.”

They exchanged invitations and started to read through them.

Byakuya frowned. “31st December?”

“At Shining Star Shrine?” said Kyouko, brow furrowed.

“At 1pm?” they said together. They stiffened and locked eyes.

“You have a misprint on the invitation,” said Byakuya, flaunting it with one hand. “You have listed the same place and time as my wedding, and I’m certainly not marrying you.”

She folded her arms over her chest.

“You’re the one who is mistaken,” said Kyouko, and he raised a fist.

“I am not marrying you!”

“I mean about when and where your wedding is taking place.”

He squinted and slightly unclenched his elevated fist.

“No, I’m not,” replied Byakuya. His features darkened. “You are.”

More staring.

“I purposely chose this day because it is Taian this year,” Kyouko informed him.

“I know,” said Byakuya icily. “I also chose it to be on the last day of the year especially.”

They stared at each other for a bit longer.

“There’s a simple way to sort this out,” said Byakuya.

Without breaking eye contact, he retrieved his phone from his trouser pocket. He looked away only as he searched up a phone number, and he returned his gaze to her as he waited for the call to connect.

“It’s Byakuya Togami,” said Byakuya, once he had allowed the other person to introduce themselves. “I booked my wedding day for the 31st December, but my colleague claims that she is having her wedding on that day too. Kyouko Kirigiri.”

Byakuya turned his phone’s speaker on so that Kyouko could hear.

“Give me a moment,” came a woman’s voice. More than a moment later, she said, “Thanks for waiting. Yes, you’re right. Makoto Naegi and Kyouko Kirigiri had already booked their wedding, but someone then put Touko Fukawa and Byakuya Togami in for the same slot. I don’t know how that happened. I’m afraid that as this is one of the most requested venues, we don’t have a free booking for the next several months, and then the Shrine will be shut to the public for a year for renovation works. It can survive disasters, but it can’t survive constant footfall and Nobue-sama needs a period of peace. My apologies. Um... I’ll leave you two to decide who gives up their booking.”

He hung up, looking at Kyouko, who looked back at him.

And so their silent showdown had begun.

***

Makoto chewed slowly. Opposite him, Touko poked her chopstick at a thin slice of pork in her vegetable stir fry. He had the same meal. To be precise, the vegetables consisted of snow peas, onion, cabbage, carrots and bean sprouts. And garlic cloves, if one counted them as vegetables. Ginger, mirin and soy sauce created a marinade for the pork, the mirin adding a touch of sweetness. The sauce lit up Makoto’s taste buds, and its aroma could make one weak at the knees and weep with desire.

Why, you might ask, had the meal just been described in such detail? While smell and taste is one of five senses, it can bog down a story to describe them in one go. Someone like Touko might have insisted that they be sprinkled in, rather than sit in a long paragraph that drags on.

Alternatively, Makoto could have discussed how hard his chair was, or the rays of light draping themselves over the tables in the cafeteria, pouring through windows that reached the ceiling. Withered trees had been cut down on the other side in the small garden, enclosed by the school building, and saplings planted there instead. He could have contemplated Touko’s outfit. She wore a dark grey waistcoat, a beige ruffled blouse with long sleeves and a long grey skirt which was a lighter shade than her waistcoat.

Truth of the matter was that Makoto was trying to ignore how at their table, Byakuya and Kyouko seemed to be having an intense battle with their minds, staring at the other unwaveringly.

Makoto had found them like this when he joined their table. While Touko was throwing dirty looks at Kyouko, she varied her target, other times peering at Byakuya and at her lunch, so Makoto suspected that she wasn’t fully involved in... whatever this was.

He didn’t really want to say anything, but someone had to. The tension was as thick as the bottom tier on a wedding cake.

“Um... what’s going on?” asked Makoto, ever the martyr.

Byakuya and Kyouko didn’t stop glaring at the other.

“There seems to have been a mishap with the bookings at the Shining Star Shrine,” said Kyouko. “Our weddings have been double-booked.”

The revelation swooped to the bottom of his gut.

“Huh?” went Makoto, attracting short-lived attention from nearby tables. Touko raised her head sharply.

Apparently, despite her sour face, she hadn’t known what was bothering them this whole time. Her mouth stretched out, ajar. His brow creased as his eyes darted between the other two.

“That’s... That’s unbelievable,” said Makoto.

“Well, you better get over it and start believing, because that’s exactly what happened,” Byakuya told him, with his flinty eyes still locked with Kyouko’s pair.

Makoto shifted in his chair.

“So what’s going to happen?” he asked.

Touko grimaced.

“It’s obvious. Someone will have to reschedule their wedding,” said Touko.

“Who?” asked Makoto. No one answered. He frowned and adjusted his hold on his chopsticks. “We booked ours a year ago. When did you book yours?”

“Around that time,” said Byakuya, but then he hesitated. “Admittedly, after yours had been booked. I waited until there were eight weeks until the actual wedding before sending out invitations, like the two of you.”

Makoto forced a smile. He scratched the back of his neck. “Wow... I knew you guys were planning on getting married...”

The bi-color tourmaline in Touko’s engagement ring supported this.

“... but the same time and place too?” he finished. “Talk about coincidences.”

“We’ve had this venue agreed on since the beginning of our engagement,” said Touko in a low voice, face solemn. “Shining Star Shrine is one of the few shrines that survived the tragedy, but it’s still of outstanding merit in its own right. The area is plagued with natural disasters. Hurricanes. Floods. Fires. But the Shrine and the surrounding area remain untouched. In the eleventh century, a maiden lived there, and after a huge fire, it’s said that she sacrificed herself to protect the Shrine thereafter, reincarnating into a crane who watches over the area. They built a statue of her in her memory that still stands there to this day.”

Her words drew Makoto’s mouth into a pucker, and he felt like he was staring out toward rows of fields and rolls of hills on a grey, cloudy morning. She created that sort of melancholy atmosphere. Kyouko inclined her head slightly.

“That’s all very well, but we considered this venue soon after we were engaged, and we became engaged some time before you,” Kyouko pointed out in a cool tone. “Also, more importantly, we booked ours first, so I recommend that you and Togami-kun do the appropriate thing and change your booking.”

Touko whipped her head toward Kyouko. Lightning struck in her eyes on the grim morning on her face.

“Have your ears been clogged with wax for the past few years?” snapped Touko, speaking with a lot of erratic gestures that used the entirety of her arms. “Or have you fallen asleep with your eyes open? It’s hard to tell when you rarely change your expression. Just because me and my darling agreed on it together at that time, doesn’t mean I haven’t mentioned it before. I’ve been talking about getting married there way before you and Naegi got together.”

Keep in mind that at no point had Byakuya and Kyouko averted their gazes from the other, and they didn’t seem like they were about to any time soon. Touko seethed by them, but the gale of her breath couldn’t and didn’t budge Kyouko, who when she next spoke, though her eyes were on Byakuya, she directed her words at Touko.

“You also talked about covering yourself in whipped cream and letting Togami-kun lick it off with his wrists bound while he was wearing cat accessories,” said Kyouko, straight-faced.

A choked gasp escaped Touko. Byakuya flinched. He coughed into his hand, a bit pink, and finally broke eye contact.

“... Anyway. Touko’s right,” he said quickly. With that out of the way, he lowered his hand, looked at Kyouko again and added, “The next available day is several months away, and there’s a fair chance that we won’t be able to get married at the same time next year. It has to be this year.”

Kyouko regarded him with half-lidded eyes.

“I’m not rearranging our wedding,” said Kyouko calmly. His face tightened.

“Well, I’m not,” replied Byakuya, matching her volume and tone, barely.

“Y-Yeah!” Touko piped up, raising a fist. Then she slammed it against the table, causing the silverware to jolt. “Me and my darling... are not backing down!”

“We’re definitely not,” said Byakuya, louder than before. He wasn’t yelling, but he attracted the attention of more students.

Several further away stood up to obtain a better view of the scene. Others turned their heads. Up soared Byakuya’s fist, and Touko lifted hers to copy him. Makoto cringed, painfully aware that conversation had died off in the rest of the cafeteria. For a few moments, no one said anything, all staring.

“Hey, what’s all the shouting for?” asked a voice, and Makoto turned toward where it was coming from. Aoi, Yasuhiro and Komaru approached their table, with Aoi being the one who had called out.

None of them had any food on them, so most likely they had only recently entered the cafeteria. No doubt they heard them very soon after coming in. They stopped at Makoto’s table but didn’t sit down, choosing to remain on their feet instead.

Yasuhiro pulled a face. He stuck a finger in his ear and made a screwing motion in it. “Yeesh, it’s too early to be talking so loudly.”

“... It’s past noon,” said Touko. Her face tensed, like she sucked on the innards of a lemon, and she turned to glower at the table closest to them. “There’s nothing to see here! D-Do you want detention?”

That put off most students. Conversation was slow to start, but once one table began talking, the rest swiftly resumed around them. Sometimes, Makoto and his companions ate their lunch in the teachers’ room, but often they met up here, such as today, for extra supervision.

While the majority of students had relaxed and retreated into their own bubbles, chatting away between bites, at Makoto’s table, Byakuya and Kyouko continued ignoring everyone else to the befuddlement of the late arrivals. Makoto looked up.

“Togami-kun and Fukawa-san’s wedding was accidentally booked at the same time and place as ours,” he explained.

The confusion on their friends’ faces didn’t leave, but shifted. Aoi’s eyebrows arched. Komaru gaped. Yasuhiro quirked his brow.

“Is that even possible?” asked Aoi.

Makoto offered a smile. It wasn’t an answer, but it was better than nothing, and then he shrugged. “Beats me.”

“So now we have to decide who keeps their booking,” replied Byakuya.

Komaru cupped her elbow with one hand and rubbed her chin with the other.

“Well, who booked first?” she asked.

“We did,” said Kyouko, before anyone else had chance to respond.

Komaru pulled her arms out of their positions and gave her palm a light punch. “Then it’s simple, isn’t it?” she said brightly. “Makoto and Kyouko-chan booked first, so they should get married on that day.”

“Yeah!” Aoi chimed in, nodding.

“Makes sense,” Yasuhiro said, one hand on his hip.

Touko let out a whine.

“B-But then we’d have to wait ages to get married there,” said Touko, wringing her hands. “And... even longer for it to fall on Taian again...”

“Taian is on the last day of the year next year too,” Yasuhiro pointed out, earning another groan from Touko.

“That shrine won’t be available for weddings then,” said Touko. She hunched her shoulders and held her head in her hands. “What am I supposed to tell my preteen self...?”

Aoi frowned at her.

“You can get married somewhere else, can’t you?” asked Aoi.

Touko spluttered and straightened. Her fingers dragged down through her hair, stopping near the top of her braids. “I can’t just-! I’ve wanted to get married there since I was in elementary school! In fact... I was the one who mentioned it to Kirigiri when she asked about shrines.”

Everyone else turned to Kyouko, who glanced at Touko.

“You did recommend me that shrine,” said Kyouko calmly. “But that doesn’t mean you have priority.”

“Strictly speaking, no one does,” said Byakuya.

“Strictly speaking, they should,” said Aoi, jerking her head toward Makoto and Kyouko. “Right? I mean, they booked theirs first.”

“I’m down with whatever.” Yasuhiro rubbed his nose. “I’m there for the food, friends and for a reasonable price, possibly entertainment or photography.”

Touko twitched and released her head.

“You’re all making decisions with your brains!” she hissed. That was the conventional way of making decisions, but Makoto and the others decided to hear her out. Her nails dug into her palms as she clenched her fists. “Ever since I was young, I dreamed about getting married there. As I grew older, the face of my groom would change in my daydreams. My childhood friend. The butcher’s apprentice. A boy I saw in the library. Then, I met Byakuya, and the face never changed from his after that...”

She gulped noisily. The tension contorting her face slackened a little. Surrounding students had stopped talking, clearly listening in, but Touko didn’t hound on them like last time. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed. Perhaps she had, but she didn’t care.

“And for Byakuya... the date,” she said, quieter, staring downward. “It’s the end of the year, but it also signifies the coming of a new beginning. That is like...”

“... the fall of my conglomerate,” finished Byakuya in a soft tone, and Touko lifted her head, eyes wide.

“... but also a new beginning,” said Touko. She clasped her hands together, quivering. “Us.”

Makoto’s heart twinged. The cafeteria held its breath, hushed. Byakuya fixed the position of his glasses wordlessly, not looking at anyone, his expression unreadable.

Kyouko didn’t budge. No crease to her brow. No flicker by her lashes. No tug on her lips. Her hands remained folded neatly on her lap.

“Well,” Aoi started uncomfortably. She scratched at her elbow. “That’s... there are other places you can have it. Right...?”

Yasuhiro feigned interest in the ceiling, and when Aoi turned to Komaru, she found Komaru scraping her teeth against her lips, and in contrast to Yasuhiro, she was seemingly examining her trainers, like a maths equation that she couldn’t figure out. Aoi hesitated.

“Komaru-chan?” said Aoi. Komaru’s shoulders slumped.

“I can’t say ‘no’ to a twelve year old Touko-chan,” lamented Komaru.

“It’s not like you’re actually going to,” said Yasuhiro. Regardless of whether he was correct or not, he went ignored.

Aoi stared at Komaru.

“Eh? This is your brother!” said Aoi, gesturing toward Makoto.

“I... I know... but...” Komaru trailed off.

Aoi blanched. “You don’t sound so sure!”

“Touko-chan is my best friend,” Komaru said, wincing. “I can’t gang up on her.”

“She’s my friend too, but Kyouko-chan and Naegi are my friends as well and what’s fair is fair,” said Aoi, swishing a finger.

“I can’t...” Komaru fidgeted, looking like if she could, she would have melted into the floor.

“Don’t back down, Komaru!” said Touko, waving her fist.

“You have to!” said Aoi, leaning in a bit toward Komaru, who puffed out her chest.

“Easy for you to say!” Komaru replied, scrunching her face.

Aoi and Komaru pursed their lips into sneers, squinting at each other.

By now, the entire cafeteria was watching the drama. Yasuhiro didn’t help and had shuffled backward to another table, perching on the edge and hiding behind his arms but making sure he could still see what was going on. Kyouko’s face gave a spasm, and despite her composure up to now, this opened the floodgates. She gripped the edge of the table and shot to her feet. Her chair screeched back.

“Togami-kun, you are being unreasonable,” she said, her calm demeanour cracking as Byakuya pressed against it more and more. Her eyes set alight. She didn’t shout, but she didn’t need to. “I’m not going to relent because you’ll have a tantrum otherwise.”

Byakuya stood up now, leering down at her, and clicked his tongue.

“What a surprise, you’re throwing others under the bus after they’ve helped you for your own gain.” He stuck up his nose. “Are we in the mutual killings again? All we need is Alter Ego and a conveyor belt, though you’ve got the ego by yourself.”

“Are you really going to say that I’m the one with the ego? The man who has his family crest on his underwear?”

“T-Touko said she wouldn’t tell anyone!”

Their bickering grew progressively louder, until -

“Guys!” Makoto blurted, much louder than he intended.

His voice rung out, and though no one spoke in the aftermath, the room buzzed. He could feel his heart beat furiously in his chest. Heat rose to his face, prickling his skin, but at least he got what he wanted - everyone had fallen silent and had turned to him, giving him their utmost attention.

A shaky sigh escaped him.

“Why won’t we have a double wedding?” he suggested. Kyouko and Byakuya exchanged sceptical looks, while Touko gritted her teeth. “Shining Star Shrine is the most ideal place for a wedding, and I understand. We all want the day to be special. We want to be the centre of attention. But I think... for my special day to also be special for two of my closest friends, then I don’t mind. Please... stop fighting.”

He rested a hand over his heart. The only things that he lacked were wings and a halo.

“Makoto’s right,” said Komaru quietly. Aoi put her arm around Komaru’s shoulders and pulled her closer. “We shouldn’t fight.”

Kyouko’s and Byakuya’s lips contorted as they considered Makoto’s suggestion. Byakuya stroked his chin. For every second that passed that neither answered, Makoto’s heart continued drumming.

“Think of how much money you’d be saving,” added Yasuhiro, rubbing his thumb and index finger together.

That was right. After all, Byakuya wasn’t a billionaire anymore. Touko didn’t have her royalties or her savings. Kyouko didn’t have her family’s savings, and neither did Makoto.

“I suppose something could be arranged,” said Byakuya, finally, sounding tired. He offered his hand.

Kyouko nodded and took it in hers. They shook on it unsmilingly. But they didn’t seem about to kill each other, so that was good enough for now.

Makoto flopped in his seat. While most of their friends relaxed and even managed small grins, watching the pair, Touko confronted the rest of the cafeteria. In fear of receiving a detention, students tensed and forced themselves to look away, but then Touko started thrashing her arms and beaming up to her ears, she announced,

“You’re all invited to my wedding!”

***

The next several weeks flew by, and then, what felt rather suddenly, the morning of the wedding started to unfurl. Kyouko couldn’t suppress the fluttering sensation in her chest. Shining Star Shrine contained a special room for the bride, bridesmaids, maids of honour and so on. A haze seemed to reside in the creamy-hued room, giving the illusion that Kyouko was in a dream. But it wasn’t a dream. This was real. She was getting married, and so was Touko.

Even though their weddings were being held at a shrine, that didn’t mean the ceremony was strictly shinto style. For example, rather than don a white kimono, Touko studied her western wedding dress in the full length mirror provided for them. The dress started with a sweetheart neckline on a textured bodice, with ruffled off-shoulder sleeves. A long, sheer lace cape decorated with silhouettes of butterflies trailed behind her, pinned to the top of the dress. The same fabric with the same pattern as the cape was used for the outer layers of the skirts, starting at the waist and pooling at her feet.

Truly, she looked like she belonged in a Hollywood wedding, and Touko had intended that.

Touko picked at her fingers. She had been standing there for about five minutes now, without doing anything else.

“Are you okay, Fukawa-san?” asked Kyouko, seated on a similar chair a short distance behind Touko. The dark mahogany frames of the chairs resembled paint strokes.

“It won’t be that for long,” Touko reminded her. She wiggled, mostly her shoulders and her hips. “I’ll be... Touko Togami...”

Kyouko admired Touko’s flower tiara. Most of the flowers in it were white, but a few were pale blue or violet. Her hair had been piled into a bun and studded with more flowers with the same colour scheme. Styling all that hair had taken Komaru, Hiroko and Kanon quite a bit of time.

A small smile pulled at the ends of Kyouko’s lips and she nodded.

Touko inspected her reflection for a minute more before standing near Kyouko. Other chairs were there, but most likely, Touko didn’t want to risk giving her dress a single wrinkle, and she hadn’t even tasted any of the wine in the bottle provided for them, which had been on a small, round table when they arrived, in case it smudged her lipstick. She cast her eyes toward Kyouko, who, while she had chosen a kimono, had gone for violet silk and lace as opposed to a white shiromuku. For a while, Touko just traced her eyes over the black, winding pattern on Kyouko’s kimono, with fake roseheads and leaves stitched into it, and then she briefly looked at Kyouko’s usual gloves before lifting her gaze.

When Kyouko glanced down, she noticed Touko’s hands trembling.

“Excited?” asked Kyouko, making eye contact again.

“Exuberant,” replied Touko quickly, curling and uncurling her fingers repeatedly until she hugged herself. “Why wouldn’t I be? Today... I’m going to be Touko Togami...!”

Kyouko smirked.

“And you?” asked Touko, loosening her hold on herself a little bit. “Quid pro quo.”

“I’m of the same mind,” said Kyouko. Touko’s lips tightened.

“Then you’re hiding it,” said Touko.

“You should know now, Fukawa-san, that I don’t wear my feelings on my sleeve.” Kyouko paused. “Or should it be Touko-san now?”

Touko tensed.

“J-Just Touko will do,” said Touko, one of her legs jittery.

“Touko,” tried Kyouko.

That brought out a loud gasp from Touko, so sharp that she nearly choked. Kyouko eyed her with a part-bemused, part-concerned look as Touko coughed, straightened up and pushed up her glasses.

“Komaru and Asahina-san call you by your forename,” said Kyouko, and Byakuya did, but he was an exception for a lot of things with Touko.

“But this is you! You sound like you’re about to pass sentence when you say it. And I’m still working through a lot of stuff,” said Touko. Frowning, she tilted her head back slightly, eyes narrowed as she seemed to examine Kyouko. “I don’t think you’re making fun of me... so I’ll allow it.”

She huffed, putting her hands onto her hips.

“You really are guarded with your emotions,” remarked Touko, making no attempt to hide the petulant annoyance that lined her voice and pulled her lips into a pout. “That’s very different to your husband, yet you fit together so well.”

What Touko said wasn’t surprising, or something that Kyouko hadn’t been told before, yet Kyouko sat in thoughtful silence for a few moments, eyes unfocused. Kyouko rested her arms on her lap and could feel Touko’s gaze drilling into her head. When she lifted her head, she confirmed that Touko was staring at her.

“You’re correct,” said Kyouko evenly. She sat back in her chair and ran a finger across the curve of her ear, avoiding touching her makeup. “While I prefer to keep my emotions in control, Makoto is like a glass house with his. However, that doesn’t mean he is fragile... he is strong.”

Touko listened without interruption, and so Kyouko continued, visualising Makoto’s face, his smiles, his nervous tics, his laughs and the fire that he had deep in him, that could melt even the frostiest of exteriors, given enough time, enough opportunity. The ends of Kyouko’s lips curved upward without her realising.

“He is supportive, and brave,” said Kyouko. She crossed her legs at the ankles. Though she didn’t speak loudly, her voice seemed to fill the room. “I know to some people, he just seems foolish, but he’s genuine. He lets me know that it is okay to be myself, and when I’m with him, I feel comfortable expressing myself. His readiness to help others, even at the expense of himself, is something that I try to follow in example. Someone so down-to-earth, encouraging and warm... is a kind of person that I want to share my life with.”

By the end of that, Kyouko’s cheeks had grown warm. The strange, tickly feeling in Kyouko’s chest returned. She took a breath and let herself avert her gaze for a short time. No more than a couple of seconds could have passed, though she hadn’t kept track of the arms on the analog clock on the wall, that ticked with no consideration to anyone else. Her eyes flitted back to Touko, and she received a full dosage of Touko’s wide eyes.

“And you support him too,” added Touko, nodding. She gripped some of her skirts. “Don’t forget that. You support him too, and give him direction and confidence... and you often make him see sense. There’s altruism, and then there’s plain foolishness. He needs someone with more foresight, who can analyse situations as astutely as you. There are times when logic must rule over emotions, when one must be rational and able to keep themselves separate from and objective in a certain situation.”

Kyouko cocked her head.

“You are Touko, aren’t you?” asked Kyouko, deadpan, and Touko yelped.

“Hey!” Touko said, and Kyouko couldn’t restrain her smile. Touko shook her fists. “Giving snide comments is my thing!”

That almost made Kyouko laugh, but she did crack a smile. This wasn’t the conversation that she had expected to be having on the morning of her wedding. She was just repeating what she already knew, what could have been extracted as readily, but saying it aloud to someone like this... felt nice. Perhaps this was why Touko gushed about Byakuya as much as she did.

“What about you, Touko?” asked Kyouko, in good spirits. “You and Togami-kun are different, yet you are clearly in love.”

“We’re different... in ways,” said Touko, sobering. She stood still. “To many, Byakuya is a cold-hearted person, and I am lovey-dovey...”

Kyouko was interested in how Touko planned to refute this.

“But really, we are similar in many ways too,” said Touko.

“Oh?” said Kyouko. Touko groped at her skirts.

“Both of us... have had issues trusting people, and still do to some extent,” she said, looking away “And... And we’ve talked about our childhoods, and found... we both went through a lot of stress and trauma. We both closed out others to survive. He forced himself not to feel, leaving him out of touch with his emotions, while for me... I felt too much, and when I tried to dissociate from my feelings, it created her.”

Genocider Syo. Her grim expression smoothed out. Though she remained serious, her eyes shone.

“In the end, I didn’t become a better person for Byakuya, but he made me want to be a better person. He encouraged me to face my fears, to keep moving forward, to be strong and dependable... and then I applied it to others,” said Touko. She squeezed her hands together. “I applied it to Komaru, who encouraged me too... and she taught me that romantic love isn’t the only kind of love.”

Touko was blushing. Kyouko didn’t say anything, but Touko whipped her head toward Kyouko like she had and wagged a finger.

“But I love Byakuya in many ways! Not just romantic! He’s one of a kind!” Touko said.

“I think your love taught Togami-kun some things,” Kyouko said, while Touko stared happily into empty space. “He used to think emotional bonds were weaknesses, but with us, he learned to depend on others and appreciate friendships, and you proved to him the power of a romantic love... something I doubt he would have considered even for a moment before meeting you.”

“Yes!” Touko’s face lit up as she clapped her hands. “We’re meant to be! He accepts me fully... me and Genocider. She didn’t want a wedding herself, even though Byakuya offered her a lower key one with just our close friends knowing about it, but she left me a note for today...”

Kyouko watched Touko waddle over to her handbag, not because of her footwear but as she took care to not damage her dress in any way. The handbag had been left by the leg of a vanity, and Touko bent down to unfasten it. Touko revealed a note and walked back over to show it to Kyouko. Standing close to each other, Kyouko breathed in Touko’s floral perfume as she investigated the note. On the note was ‘have a fucktastic day!’ crudely written, and an even cruder drawing of Byakuya and Touko having se-... having... of Byakuya and Touko.

She kept holding it out, and Kyouko really hoped that Touko didn’t mean to give it to her. As nice as it was to see that those two had a better relationship, Kyouko didn’t want that as a memento.

“Enough about her though! Me and Byakuya...” Touko wrapped her arms around herself, taking the note with her, to Kyouko’s relief. Her face positively glowed. “... were made for each other. Our names mean winter child and white night, and my birthday is girls’ day while his was known as boys’ day, we both wear glasses, we both like reading and watching the same obscure movies...”

With a smile, Kyouko listened to Touko go on at length about Byakuya, glad that she had not forced them to postpone their wedding if it meant she got to see Touko so happy, until the door was thrown open. While Kyouko had picked up on footsteps before this, and so just turned toward the door calmly, Touko hadn’t anticipated it and she screamed. At the head of the pack were the two maids of honour - Aoi, for Kyouko, and Komaru, for Touko, though they had combined their forces for the double wedding and did much of the planning together. Indeed, they even burst in with their arms linked, Komaru in her grey-blue dress and Aoi in a waistcoat and trousers, monochrome.

“Knock first!” Touko snapped, clutching her chest. “A-And wipe your feet!”

“Sorry, Touko-chan,” panted Komaru, not sounding particularly apologetic. Behind the maids of honour were Kanon - Leon’s cousin, Ayaka - a former group member of Sayaka’s idol group - and Fujiko, who was Hifumi’s sister. Kanon wore a suit while the other two wore dresses.

Komaru doubled over and pressed her hands against her thighs, wheezing a bit. Once she got her breath back, she straightened and waved an envelope.

“The paparazzi are everywhere,” said Komaru. “They took a bunch of photos... probably to spin a story about how we’ve drawn a circle around the site and plan to sacrifice all the guests to summon a giant Komaeda.”

“They wouldn’t think that unless you told them that drivel!” hissed Touko, retracting her fingers like the claws of a predator about to pounce on their prey. “You’re probably where they get half the stories from!”

“Anyway,” said Komaru, not denying what Touko said, “we got this sent over from Jabberwock Island.”

She flourished the envelope again. Touko and Kyouko looked at each other. Kyouko rose and took the envelope from Komaru. Inside was a letter, several pages long. After every paragraph, the handwriting changed as someone else had a turn writing something down.

Page 1

Page 2

Referring to the double wedding as ‘high profile’ wouldn’t be underselling it. Soon after the invites had been sent out, the media caught wind of the event that was to take place on the last day of the year, and so for the next several weeks, newspapers, websites and news channels updated the world about every detail in an almost endless stream, harping on every single movement, every trip out, every glance from either party. Speculation and rumours whirled around them, around every corner, and cameras clicked and flashed aggressively, documenting the run up to the weddings and everything barely related to it. Not even friends of the married couples-to-be were spared.

Therefore, in order to give the ceremony at least a decent amount of privacy, someone had to be tasked with identifying each guest before they could be let in, in case a paparazzo tried to sneak in.

The first of the guests started trickling in through the main entrance and by the doors stood Yasuhiro, the best man for both grooms. Signs either side of him announced the people to be wed. He adjusted his small glasses as he reread the guest list.

Two shadows teased the top of his vision. Yasuhiro raised his head.

One shadow belonged to a younger man with purple hair gelled into spikes that stuck upward at the top and downward near his forehead. His wide smile contrasted with the scowl of his companion, who pulled at one of her brown pigtails, her red eyes narrowed. Both wore kimonos. Hers was red and black, while his resembled a galaxy. They were more stylish than traditional.

“You here for the wedding?” asked Yasuhiro brightly.

“Yeah! That’s me!” the man said, giving Yasuhiro a thumbs up.

“I don’t think I know you guys. What are your names?”

They shouldn’t have hesitated.

“I am Momota Kaito,” said the man, earning himself an elbow in the ribs from his female friend.

“Remember what we talked about?” growled the woman.

“Oh yeah! I’m actually Ryōhei Kimura,” said the man. He barked out a laugh, prodded himself in the chest and then aimed his thumb at person beside him. “And this is Maaya Sakamoto.”

She stared blankly at Yasuhiro, who felt a small shiver.

“Are you here for the bride, the bride, the groom or the groom?” asked Yasuhiro.

The two looked at each other briefly.

“We are friends of Naegi and Kirigiri,” the woman said, turning back to him.

He positioned the clipboard near his face and skimmed down the list twice, but the more he progressed, the more his brow furrowed.

“I still can’t f-” Yasuhiro lowered the clipboard and tensed. The two were gone. They had vanished. A pang plucked at his chest. He couldn’t see them ahead of them and when he checked over his shoulder, he couldn’t see them there either.

“It’s not like either of them were a Super High School Assassin, so it should be okay,” he said to himself, and he tried not to think about it as he let in the next guests.

Once all the guests had arrived, Yasuhiro went inside, closing the door behind him, and joined the others in the minimalist waiting room. The mystery guests were nowhere in sight. Maybe they left. Hopefully they left. Though he couldn’t spot them, he did see the grooms. Byakuya had a beige suit on, with a waistcoat under the jacket, and Makoto wore a black crested jacket and vertically striped hakama.

Yasuhiro strode over to them and slung an arm each over their shoulders, standing between them. Makoto buckled a bit at first under the sudden force of Yasuhiro’s arm but didn’t collapse.

“You guys ready?” asked Yasuhiro, grinning widely.

“Y-Yeah,” said Makoto with a quaver in his voice. He tweaked his collar then scraped a hand through his short hair.

“Signed your pledges? Practised the ritual offerings? Your vows?” asked Yasuhiro, pulling them closer to his sides.

Byakuya adjusted the ivory rose boutonniere on his lapel. “Of course we have.”

“Hey, we don’t need that tone for today!” scolded Yasuhiro cheerfully. “I just want to make sure that one of the best days of my buddies’ lives goes without a hitch, ‘right? As best man, that’s my job, and if this goes well and I prove myself capable, my mother promised that I could get a pet turtle!”

“Idiot,” grumbled Byakuya. Yasuhiro gave him a hearty slap on the back, skewing Byakuya’s glasses.

“So, Togami-chi, did you have to write different vows for Fukawa-chi and Genocider-chi?” asked Yasuhiro. “Or are you doing theirs at the same time with the same one?”

“Genocider and I aren’t getting married,” said Byakuya. He fixed his glasses, frowning. “We talked last night, actually... I offered her the chance again, but she insisted that weddings weren’t her thing. She said she’d rather choose to stay with me rather than be bound to me, like catching a fly with syrup rather than with glue, and she gave me her scissors...”

There was a delay between hearing the words and processing them. Makoto and Yasuhiro stiffened at the same time, staring at Byakuya.

“Whoa, seriously?” said Yasuhiro, eyebrows raised. “And what did you give her?”

“I recited my vows to her.”

“Aw!” went Makoto. Byakuya scrunched his face into a pout and slid out of Yasuhiro’s grasp, turning his back to them and refusing to talk to them anymore.

The tradition of the groom not seeing their bride until as late as possible originated from a time when arranged marriages were more common, but they adopted this aspect for their wedding even though the wedding was very much a decision made by all those getting married. By now, the waiting room was getting a bit too snug. Next to enter was a shrine maiden, looking radiant in a crisp white kimono jacket and red hakama.

She walked over to one side of the room and chimed a bell, and the general chatter in the room died down. With everyone’s undivided attention on her, she gave a small bow.

“Please, follow me, and we will begin,” she said, once she had straightened.

Everyone stirred into motion and followed her out. They made their way across the grounds to the pavillion, the fresh winter air caressing their exposed skin. Just outside of the premises, crowds of onlookers craned their necks, many wielding blinking cameras, all shouting but none of it intelligible. Makoto gave a nervous grin and waved. Byakuya kept his eyes forward.

A sea of white chairs decorated with big purple bows waited for them in front of the pavilion, which was decked with bright bouquets flanking its entrance. White and golden fabric wound along the columns of the pavillion, drooping slightly where they bridged to the top of their neighbouring columns. Behind and either side of the pavillion was a lot of greenery, palm trees and shrubs dotted with small, peach-coloured buds, the tallest of these hanging over the structure. From the pavilion’s doorway, a paved path hung out like the tongue of a dog on a hot day, and the chairs stood either side of it.

Yasuhiro began directing everyone to their seats, while Byakuya and Makoto positioned themselves inside of the pavillion. The Head Priest was there already, and he gave them a friendly nod before continuing to meander about.

Makoto breathed in a fresh grass scent and looked up at Byakuya. He wanted to say something but he didn’t know what, and he knew that Byakuya didn’t appreciate small talk, so he gulped and cast his eyes toward the guests. Near the front of the seating arrangement were nine empty seats and in the front row were two unoccupied seats, for his parents, which Makoto regarded with an ache in the back of his throat.

“Hey. Naegi,” said Byakuya in a low tone and when Makoto turned, he met Byakuya’s bright blue eyes. “Don’t mess up.”

“I won’t,” said Makoto, rubbing the back of his neck, and Byakuya actually grinned, though it faded a bit as Byakuya turned back toward the guests. Makoto tried to follow his gaze, and he thought that Byakuya was looking at Aloysius Pennyworth, who seemed to be discussing something with Kyouko’s grandfather, Fuhito.

One time, Fuhito invited Makoto into a sauna, and in there, he had told Makoto that if Makoto ever crossed his granddaughter, no one would ever find the body. Then, soon after Makoto started spluttering promises, Fuhito told him that he had been joking. His granddaughter must have meant a lot to him.

“Togami-kun,” risked Makoto, with some hesitation. “If your parents were here...”

“... which they aren’t, because they’re dead,” finished Byakuya with no trace of a smile anymore, keeping his expression unreadable.

“Right. Sorry,” said Makoto. His shoulders sagged. He stroked himself on the wrist. “I think... if they weren’t, they’d be proud of you.”

“You don’t know them,” said Byakuya in a flat voice. “My father would disapprove. Not that he would be able to sway me. Regardless, it doesn’t matter to me. Pennyworth is here.”

A pause. Byakuya glanced at Makoto, showing a glimpse of teeth.

“But... I know you’re trying to console me. I don’t need you to, but I acknowledge it,” said Byakuya.

Makoto blinked, at a loss for words, then nodded with a tentative smile.

“I’m sure your parents would be pleased with you,” added Byakuya, and his words hit Makoto’s core. “Your future wife can be a pain, but she is a remarkable woman. She’s no Touko, but...”

Byakuya trailed off, but Makoto didn’t need him to finish. The ghost of a smile haunted Makoto’s lips.

“I understand,” said Makoto quietly, lowering his eyes. “Thanks.”

A while later, a rickshaw drew up a short distance away, and from it stepped out the two brides. Makoto widened his eyes and gasped, while Byakuya stood incredibly still, his mouth slightly open. The silence hovering over them didn’t have chance to become awkward. Yasuhiro started playing an ukulele.

Hiroko and Takaaki’s daughter, Okimi, threw petals from her basket as she followed them up the aisle. They slowly passed the guests, who watched their journey to their future spouses.

As the brides passed the former Warriors of Hope, Jataro dabbed. Kotoko giggled. Jataro froze, then turned to the others.

“You guys promised we’d do it at the same time!” complained Jataro. His friends snickered.

Takemichi Yukimaru, an old friend of Mondo’s, wore a suit rather than a biker outfit, and carried the rings on a cushion. He was older than one would expect for a ring bearer, but he complied with his role and stood next to Yasuhiro. Touko and Kyouko reached the pavillion and took their places beside Byakuya and Makoto respectively.

Makoto couldn’t take his eyes off Kyouko, whose usually pale face had become rosy. Touko gulped, fiddling with her fingers, a ball of repressed energy that brewed, trembling.

“Let us begin,” said the Head Priest, his voice carrying all the past the furthest row of chairs. He brandished a gohei - a wand - and waved it first over their heads, the white streamers attached to it shimmering, then he swished it in the direction of the guests.

Then he turned back to the shrine and bowed.

“Nobue-sama,” he said. “Today, not one but two couples wish to marry in the same ceremony at your shrine. Please, I ask on their behalf for your blessing. Our first gift to you is a dance from our shrine maidens.”

Three shrine maidens glided over to a small clearing and danced to appease the deity of the shrine. Everyone watched their controlled but fluid movements, and when they finished, the Head Priest presented a tray stacked with sake cups of different sizes. First, he offered sake from the smallest cup - there was so little that Makoto faked one of the three sips that he drank. They took turns drinking from it, then they each sipped three times from a bigger cup, and then three times from a cup bigger than the previous two.

The Head Priest placed the tray on a small table and faced the two couples. From rehearsals, Makoto knew what he needed to do, but he needed a nudge from Byakuya to remind him. His legs wobbled a bit as he stepped up to a podium with Kyouko.

“Kyouko,” he said, determined not to read from the note hidden up his sleeve. “My life hasn’t taken me, Makoto Naegi, down the path I expected. But... that has happened a lot, like one time, I went out to buy snacks for my friends, and I ended up being a hostage and thwarting a robbery.”

“Show off,” muttered Komaru.

“I thought that would be the most interesting thing to ever happen to me, but it wasn’t,” said Makoto. “I attended Hope’s Peak, met my closest friends, survived the world almost ending, and one of those precious people that entered my life is you, Kyouko.”

Makoto reached for her hands and took them in his sweaty pair. He didn’t peek up his sleeve at the note, but suppose he did, he barely glanced at it, so it didn’t count.

“After nearly losing you, I don’t want to go through that again. No matter where life takes us, I want to marry you.” His voice cracked and he rubbed his eyes on his shoulder before looking at her again with a full grin and unashamed eyes. “Regardless of our health, our situation, I will love you, respect you, console you and help you until death. My spirit will remain loyally yours.”

Kyouko smiled. Her eyes swam.

“Makoto...” Usually, a groom would read their joined pledge to the deity of the shrine, but she had wanted to give her own personal pledge to him. She had refused to wear white, refused to wear headgear to hide her horns of jealousy, to show submission. He loved her. “You have been by my side for a long time now. Even when I, Kyouko Kirigiri, cannot see you, cannot open up, you support me, and I swear to make the same commitment that you do. I will stand with you in peaceful times, in strife, in sickness and in health. I will protect you, and be yours like you will be in kind.”

And what better place to promise this than in front of a deity? They hooked their pinky fingers with each other then let go and stepped back, unable to take their eyes off the person opposite them. The other couple stepped up to the podium. Touko’s legs almost buckled, and she had to support herself with the podium to prevent herself from collapsing.

Byakuya cleared his throat, but he couldn’t shake off the colour on his face.

“In front of everyone present, I, Byakuya Togami, pledge to you, Touko Fukawa, unyielding loyalty and devotion. I hereby dedicate myself to you and will honour and respect you, regardless of the obstacles that we will inevitably face. You shall be my constant and I yours, and even after the day that I pass on, I will love you.”

Kyouko’s eyes had swam. Touko’s almost drowned.

“Y-Yes!” she squawked. Byakuya frowned. She tried to recompose herself with a deep breath, then a loud sniffle, and just keeping it together, she gave her vows in a thick, emotional tone. “I, T-Touko Fukawa, always dreamed of this moment, but only with you has it become reality. I thought... this sort of happiness could only be imagined, in a story, but it’s real. You’re real. I’m real. My soul will be with you, regardless of health, regardless of good and bad times, and I swear I will respect you, honour you, console and help you, cherish you, love you, with every fibre of my body. I swear.”

Touko was on the verge of blubbering.

“Those are happy tears,” said Byakuya, almost as a question, and she nodded. He reached forward to gently wipe the corners of her eyes, smiling faintly.

She was still snivelling as the four of them picked up a branch decorated with paper strips, which had been placed on a table near the pavillion. They moved them to the podium for Nobue-sama as offerings, and then turned to Takemichi. He proffered the cushion. The four rings on them glistened.

After they exchanged rings, sliding them onto their partner’s finger, the Head Priest left the pavillion, turned to it and bowed.

“Thank you, Nobue-sama, for your blessings. To show your dedication to each other, you may kiss now,” said the Head Priest, directing the last part at the others.

Kyouko cradled Makoto’s cheek, while he gingerly held onto her waist, and they pressed their lips together. His senses exploded, as intense as fireworks. Cheering erupted. Byakuya peered at them, but then Touko yanked him toward her, dipping him, and when she kissed him, he relaxed and placed a hand against her cheek. Yasuhiro whooped loudest.

Family members were called up to get cups to sip from, similar to what Makoto and the other three had done. During the wedding, Kameko had been riding on Komaru’s shoulder, and now, Komaru gave Kameko to Touko, who tried to persuade the stinkbug to drink from the sake cups. Kameko’s antennae got wet, and Touko giggled tearfully. Thankfully, Kanon had thought to use waterproof makeup in case Touko got emotional, though even with smudged eyes and streaked cheeks, she would have been just as happy, just as beautiful.

“You are now husband and wife,” the Head Priest announced, and everyone clapped twice.

Komaru stared out at the rest of the guests and stretched her arms over her head.

“So it’s time for the reception, yeah?” asked Komaru with her face slightly crumpled, though the tension flooded out as she lowered her arms.

“And then the after-party!” Yasuhiro piped up excitedly.

Aoi sighed. She raised her arms with her flat hands palm-up. “You’re way too eager. You better not drink too much and say weird things there...”

Yasuhiro grabbed Aoi’s shoulder and flapped his other hand, grinning.

“You’ve gotta relax. Don’t worry your pony-tailed head, Asahina-chi. I’m fully prepared for later.” He bared his teeth and pointed his thumb at himself. “I’ve got a lot of anecdotes to share.”

Komaru beamed. “Me too!”

She and Yasuhiro rubbed their hands together, laughing under their breaths. Aoi blinked at them, then folded her arms over her chest and pulled a face. Makoto scratched his cheek.

“We should get going,” said Makoto. “I don’t want to keep our limo driver waiting too long.”

Byakuya jutted his chin out. “Hmph, a limo?”

Makoto frowned. “Well, how are you getting to the reception?”

“I’ll be flying us there by helicopter, of course.”

Of course.

“Can we really trust you to stay focused?” asked Kyouko, eyeing Byakuya. “Especially with just you and Touko-san in there.”

“I can see why you jumped to that conclusion. You’re projecting onto me. Getting a limo for yourselves... that leaves you time alone in the back for mischief,” drawled Byakuya.

“Guys, come on,” said Yasuhiro pleadingly, but they were both smiling at each other. Makoto relaxed.

The group started to head down the aisle and others rose from their seats, talking among themselves. Aoi took a few steps before stopping abruptly. Her eyes widened.

“Ah, the bouquets! We need to throw them!” said Aoi, hitting her palm.

Kyouko looked over her shoulder.

“Doesn’t that usually happen after the first dance?” she asked.

Aoi wilted. “Oh... So I didn’t need to bring them here.”

Touko and Kyouko looked at each other.

“I suppose we can do them now,” said Touko, turning to Kyouko, and Aoi perked up.

“Everyone get into position for the bouquets!” shouted Aoi with her hands cupping her mouth. For the wedding, they had acquired bouquets especially prepared to be thrown, as a regular one would be likely to fall apart. Aoi dashed over to where she had left them, near where she had been sitting during the ceremony. Kyouko and Touko walked down the rest of the aisle so in front of them lay a large patio, and Aoi handed them each a bouquet.

Various women, girls and Yasuhiro flocked to the patio, their eyes trained on the two brides.Touko threw her bouquet first, but it landed not far from her feet. She gritted her teeth and stepped forward to pick it up.

“Put your back into it!” Komaru called out, and Touko flung it at Komaru’s face.

Komaru regained her balance, clawed it off and hugged it protectively to her chest, ignoring the dirty looks slung at her. “No backsies!”

Kyouko smiled fondly at them and tossed hers. The bouquet sailed upward, and everyone began chasing after it, running in squiggly lines that overlapped, trying to position themselves under it to catch it. It started to descend, and then a red blur leaped into the sky and caught it, flipping a few times before landing on both feet.

Everyone squinted at the woman who had claimed the bouquet. Her brown pigtails jiggled as she straightened from her crouch, her red eyes narrowed.

“Huh?” asked Aoi. She tilted her head to one side. “Do we know you?”

“I’m not saying anything without a lawyer present!” Yasuhiro blurted despite not being asked anything, but everyone was more concerned with the woman with Kyouko’s bouquet, and then the guy with gelled hair that sidled up to her.

The man who had introduced himself as Ryōhei to Yasuhiro, and who was apparently not called Momota, rubbed the back of his neck with a toothy grin.

Komaru bounced on her toes, cuddling her bouquet. “That was so cool! Like Kamen Rider Faiz!”

“To put in that much effort... You’re either desperate or showing off,” Touko remarked. Her eyes flickered between Maaya and Ryōhei.

Kyouko thought she vaguely recognised Ryōhei, but couldn’t place where from.

“Whatever the case,” said Kyouko, noting how Maaya chewed on her lip, how Maaya fidgeted her feet, how warmth peeked through cracks in the frostiness in her face, “you must really want to marry him.”

Even if Kyouko was wary, she didn’t want to let that be known in case that provoked the newcomers. Maaya looked toward Ryōhei and smiled shyly, pretty much confirming their suspicions.

Ryōhei blinked, frowning.

“Have I got something in my teeth?” he asked.

That swept off Maaya’s smile.

“... Idiot,” said Touko. She shook her head and stamped a foot, glaring at them. “We’re getting sidetracked! We still don’t know who you gatecrashers are! How did you get past security?”

Maaya’s face remained stern but lightly flushed. Her stoicness was returned in kind as everyone else waited for a proper response. An explanation. Neither she nor Ryōhei seemed to intend on speaking, but the silent standoff didn’t last long - the sound of an explosion rang out.

Everyone spun around toward where it originated from. In the distance, they could see what at first appeared to be a block moving toward them, but as it approached, more details bled into view, and they discovered it to be a tank. The door on top opened, and out popped the head of a Monobear. Only, its colour scheme didn’t resemble any that they had seen before. Where usually the fur was black, this one’s was red, and it wore a scarf with a star pin badge around where its head joined its body. Soon after, more peeked out, squashing against each other as they all tried to fit into the opening at the same time - one was half pink, another half blue, one had half of their body striped like a tiger and a fifth Monobear was half green.

“W-What?” Komaru cried out, eyes bulging. The Monobears retreated back into the tank, shutting the door after themselves.

Maaya reacted first.

“I told you not to touch anything! You must have activated them by accident and they’ve followed us here,” she snarled. She rushed toward the tank, pulling a gun out from each of her sleeves, with Ryōhei sprinting after her, weaponless.

“Wait up, Maki Roll!” Ryōhei yelled, waving his arm. “We have to be careful! Remember what my granddad said? Even trampling a butterfly could shake up the entire timeline, and we might cease to exist! We’re only supposed to be here for pleasure, not work!”

“It won’t be pleasure if they ruin our idols’ special day,” Maaya shouted, rapidly growing smaller and smaller in their vision as she charged toward the tank.

“Grandpa is going to kill us if he still exists when we come back,” groaned Ryōhei, wiping a hand down his face, but he continued pursuing her.

Behind them, Byakuya broke out of his daze first. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Then, he elevated his chin, pushed up his glasses and held out his hand. Aloysius stepped up beside him and presented him with a hacker megaphone, like the one that Komaru revealed herself to have brought with her to the wedding and concealed until now.

Kyouko cupped her chin.

“Time travel...? Could they be using technology from that secret project by Future Foundation’s fifteenth department?” murmured Kyouko. Now that she thought more about it, Ryōhei resembled a scientist who had worked there. Not exactly, but enough for a grandson.

Touko had got out a taser from her garter belt and balked at her. Byakuya studied Kyouko for a few seconds, and then turned to Touko.

“Don’t ruin that dress,” Byakuya warned Touko as Aloysius passed out hacker guns to the others. Kyouko and Makoto readied theirs, standing back-to-back, while Aoi squinted at the buttons on hers and Yasuhiro held his one the wrong way around, peering inside of it. “We haven’t taken the wedding photos yet, and I promised Genocider that she could wear it later.”

Yasuhiro looked at him.

“I thought you weren’t getting married to her?” said Yasuhiro, eyebrows raised.

“We’re not, but I said I would let her try it on later,” explained Byakuya. He aimed his megaphone. “Kyouko, I expect a full explanation after we neutralise this threat. Now, this won’t take long. We move on the count of three. One... Two...”

The after party would have to wait.

No matter.

They had the rest of their lives.

[pleasantlyeclecticfart-blog]

What Are Backlinks And Their Significance For SEO.

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[theycallmethetailor-blog]

Pidge Enchanted Chapter 2 is up!

Chapters: 2/? Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Lance/Pidge (Voltron) Characters: Lance (Voltron), Pidge (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Elf Prince!Lance, Assassination, Hurt/Comfort Summary:

She had a job to do. If she wanted her brother to live, she wouldn’t fail. She needed to stop waiting pointlessly and do what she came here for. Taking one last, unsteady breath, she narrowed her eyes and steeled her pounding heart. She would do it. Swiftly and irrevocably. Before her, Prince Lance’s chest rose. His last breath.

A life for a life, they’d told her, and what choice did she have but to agree?

She closed her eyes and let the arrow fly.

—

In which Pidge is coerced into assassinating the Elf Prince Lance in exchange for her brother’s life and she fails miserably. Things only get worse from there.

                                                    Chapter 2

The return stone deposited them without ceremony to their intended destination. Pidge landed face first onto one of the lushest, most resplendent, and uncomfortably soft beds she had ever landed in. Not that she was in the habit of landing in beds. She scrambled to right herself and saw the prince gripping his injured leg. He let out another stream of curses that belied his alleged weakness from before. “Holy-! That hurt!” the Prince said, and Pidge wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard a distinctive whine in his voice. Captain Shiro, apparently none the worse for their graceless landing, turned to the elf prince’s side and began examining his wound.

The prince seemed to become conscious of the presence of others and his complaints abruptly quieted. His chin turned up even as his cheeks reddened. Even that wasn’t enough to hide the palled hue and sheen of sweat on his brow. Captain Shiro raised an eyebrow, but remained professional.

His face was still pinched with worry, though. “Your Highness, this needs to be looked at by a physician.”

The prince waved a dismissive hand, though the gesture looked weak to Pidge, who was slowly inching off the bed, “Yeah, yeah. Send for Coran.”

“Coran? You mean Lord Coran Smythe?” the captain replied, sounding perplexed, “He’s not a court physician.”

“Cap, he’s like a bajillion years old, remember?” the Prince said with another weak wave of his hand, then let it fall to his side, “He was a battle physician back in the War. And we can trust him.”

Pidge swallowed at the mention of the War. It’d ended a century ago - generations ago, for humans - but many elves were alive who’d lived through it, including, apparently, this Coran guy. What was a long ago history lesson for her people was a vivid memory for some of the elves. Attempted murder of the elf prince by a human would most definitely not be forgotten soon. She slipped off the bed just as the captain stood.

“Fine,” he said to the prince.

The prince gave a half-hearted mock salute as his eyes slid shut, and the Captain turned away. Pidge thought he was turning to leave, herself having been forgotten amidst the captain’s concern for his prince, but the captain reached out a hand to her again, and she had no time to escape before she was gripped bodily in his magical stone arm again.

She struggled furiously against the grip, but only succeeded in giving herself whiplash with her wild flailing. “Let me go!” She growled as she strained against her captor.

The captain’s eyes were narrowed, and he opened his mouth to say something, but then he paused, peering at her with an increasingly troubled expression. “You’re young, even for a human, aren’t you?” He set her down, taking out a chord from his belt to begin tying her to a heavy wooden chair in a corner of the room.

“I’m old enough,” she said evasively, struggling even though she knew it was pointless against this elf’s magical arm. She wasn’t that young. Plenty old enough to be considered a legal adult and punishable as one under human law.  She knew she looked young for her age though, if the irritatingly inane comments of her clients was anything to go by.

“The Separatists have no shame, do they?” The captain made a disgusted sound, but it didn’t seem like it was directed at her.

“You're only just now realizing that?” the prince piped up indignantly, apparently too weak to sit up but not too weak to talk, “All the other attempts haven’t been enough to convince you?” .

“You apparently don’t have any shame either, my prince,” the captain said pointedly, and Pidge had the sense he was alluding to some oft-discussed grievance from how weary he sounded. He sighed, rubbing his face with his non magical arm and suddenly looking decades older. “I’ll be back with the physician. Stay here.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere,” the prince said, not sounding the least bit repentant.

The captain shook his head as he strode over to the double doors adjacent to the prince’s bed. The doors were heavy and formidable looking, even with the intricate carvings Pidge couldn’t quite make out from her vantage point on the opposite wall. The captain paused just before he turned the delicate silver handle, then turned to Pidge, “Don’t try anything while I’m gone,” his voice was hard, but it didn’t have any of the cold venom it’d held for her before he’d seen how young she appeared.

“She won’t try to kill me again, if that’s what you worried about,” the prince said flippantly.

Captain Shiro turned slowly back to the prince, eyes narrowing suspiciously, “Your Highness, you didn’t-?”

The prince paused, and PIdge couldn’t see his face, but she heard his hesitation when he responded. “I, um...I might’ve possibly been doing my, uh, you know, my thing...and I might’ve accidentally read her,” the prince said, “She didn’t have any ill intent,” he continued in a rush, “Just fear. So yeah, she’s...cool....” the prince trailed off. Pidge furrowed her brows, muscles tightening. His ‘thing?” He’d “read” her? What did that mean? Whatever it was must not be that great, because she’d shot him with an arrow, and if that wasn’t ill intent, she wasn’t sure what was.

The captain’s face hovered between wide-eyed shock and mouth-twitching anger.

“Look, do you think you could get a move on?” the prince said, neatly forestalling whatever the captain might’ve said, though his discomfort seemed genuine, “This kinda hurts.”

The captain started, looking slightly guilty at his delay. “Certainly, Your Highness. My apologies.” he said stiffly, his voice holding promise that this wouldn’t be the last of this, then strode out the door.

A sigh escaped the prince in a great woosh as soon as the door clicked shut behind his captain, “That guy is way too high strung.”

Pidge didn’t know what she was supposed to say to that, so she kept her mouth shut.

“Look, I’m normally a better host to ladies in my bedchamber,” the prince said going for a light tone, but his words were halting and stilted with pain and exhaustion, “But I think I’m going take a nap now.’

If he didn’t sound so pathetic, and she didn’t know it was her fault he sounded like that, Pidge might’ve given him a biting retort. As it was, she just shrugged. “Uh. Sure.”

Within minutes, the only sound was the prince’s soft breaths in the claustrophobic room. Every few seconds, though, his breaths hitched, and Pidge could tell his nap was fitful at best. It took her an embarrassingly long time to realize she needed to make an escape attempt now. Once the captain’s focus was no longer on seeing to the prince’s injury, he’d deal with her. And no matter what the prince said on her behalf - and she didn’t trust him not to come to his senses and change his mind about her - the punishment for her crime was permanent and indisputable. She was just glad the captain seemed too worried about his prince to search her before he’d left.

She tested the chord the captain had used to tie her to the chair. It was some kind magically reinforced rope, and even her rune-engraved ring for cutting didn’t seem to have an effect on it. She frowned.. She’d designed the ring herself and paid good money for a clanless elf to imbue it with magic. Whoever had designed the rope had to have placed a good counter rune on it to foil her work.

After all, it was her specialty in magical products for humans that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. Time and time again, she’d been able to successfully counter and defeat elf magic with her handiwork despite being human and, therefore, magicless. Most of the time, it was just a matter of taking advantage of elves’ tendency to take their magic - and therefore, their superiority over humans - for granted.

She considered for a moment. This rope had clearly been crafted with the anticipation of a magical counter in mind. She felt a familiar thrill at the prospect of this new challenge that she quickly squashed. She needed to focus if she wanted to survive this. She only had four runic rings on her fingers at the moment, and had to make the best of them.

The counter imbued in the rope would need to be something that protected against being cut at least, but was it protected against that specifically, or destruction in general? A more general counter would take more power, but be less effective against specifics. She couldn’t use her unlocking rune, since her binding was just an expertly tied knot. She paused, thinking.

It was a long shot, and would sap the last of the power in her retracing ring, but she couldn’t think of anything better to use it for right then. She normally used it to track the location of specific targets with their personal items, but with some skilled directing on her part, it just might work.

She quickly traced the indent of the rune on the ring of her pinky finger, shoving her will into it as quickly and decisively as possible. She would’ve crowed with delight when she felt the ropes slowly loosening at her behest, retracing their paths to before they’d been tied. She could hardly believe it’d worked.

She yanked her hands out of her binding and leaped to her feet. The hope budding in her chest wilted when, just as she approached it, the door flew open. She jumped back to avoid being smacked in the face and promptly tripped over the chord, which had started retracing its path back to its owner behind her. She landed hard on her backside, looking up at the looming figure of the captain and an elven noble at his side.

The prince let out a gasp behind her, and she glanced back to see he’d sat up. He grimaced, face paling. “Oh, it’s just you,” he said, then fell back.

The captain took one look at her, then the floating chords next to her, then made quick work of recapturing and securing her for the third time that day. He was careful to remove all her rings this time. Pidge’s insides twisted at the realization that she was new well and truly screwed.

The elven noble who’d entered with Captain Shiro rushed over to the prince’s side. He was tall, with bright red hair and a mustache, which surprised Pidge. Mustaches had gone out of fashion with elven nobles a long time ago. It was that, coupled with the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that told Pidge this had to be pretty old, even by elven standards. “Your Highness,” he said, face crinkling with concern, “Please remain still while I examine you.”

The prince murmured something noncommittal, but remained still. Pidge swallowed. Whatever vestiges of energy the prince had been pulling from before had finally been sapped. She had a perfect view of the older elf’s face as he took in the elf prince’s weakened state and the arrow protruding from his leg. His eyes widened and his face paled.

“Captain Shiro,” he said, “This is...quite a bit worse than a ‘little training accident.’”

The captain looked uncomfortable, breaking eye contact momentarily with the older elf before he said, “I apologize, Lord Smythe, but I needed you here with minimal disruption. The prince has asked that this be kept discreet.” The captain’s tone betrayed just how wise he thought that was.

The red haired elf ran a hand through his hair, clearly about as happy about the state of affairs as the captain was, but unwilling to defy the orders of the prince. “Okay, not to worry,” the elf said, affecting confidence, “I’ve patched up worse than this,” it wasn’t clear to Pidge who exactly he was trying to convince. “Although,” he muttered, fidgeting with his mustache, “I usually had my med kit.”

The captain and him exchanged brief looks, then the red haired elf’s shoulders straightened. “Nothing for it but some old fashioned unassisted healing magic, then.” The elf rubbed his hands together. “Captain, you’ll have to hold him, I need to check the damage before I can remove the arrow and knit his flesh.”

The captain’s mouth pressed into a thin line, but he did as he was told. Pidge squirmed uncomfortably as the captain super extended his magical arm over the prince’s chest and reached to hold his legs with his regular hand. The red haired elf bent over the prince, resting his hands gently to the left and right of the wound. She watched in fascination as the prince’s skin seemed to light up with a blue light from within, as though his muscles had become iridescent torches.

The red haired elf closed his eyes, then his brows furrowed in concentration. After a few moments he looked up, the glow from his magic dying down. “The wound is quite deep, but it appears it has missed the bone, so we have that to be thankful for.” he said, “I only worry about one of his arteries that’s been nicked. If I work fast, though, we should be okay.”

The captain nodded, looking grim, and Pidge ignored another uncomfortable twinge of guilt. She’d only done what she had to. “On your word, Lord Smythe,” Captain Shiro said.

The older elf nodded, then gripped the shaft of the arrow with one hand, keeping his other hand on the prince’s leg. “Get ready in three...two...one.”

The elf noble immediately began pulling at the arrow, the blue glow flashing from his left hand and seeping down through the open wound. The prince’s body went rigid, his back arching upwards from the bed, his eyes flying open. They were wild with pain and he fought against his captain’s hold while the red haired elf continued his work. It wasn’t one quick yank the way Pidge had seen done with bad teeth either. Instead, the old elf took his time, careful to avoid causing more harm with the removal of the arrow than its entry had caused.

Pidge couldn’t peel her eyes away, even though the sight made her feel ill. She felt an irrational obligation to watch. She’d caused this, so she’d watch the results of her actions. Even if it killed her.

Pidge was on the verge of asking the elf what the hell was taking so long when the arrowhead itself finally slipped free. It looked grotesque with the blood dripping from its tip, and Pidge had to concentrate carefully on her breathing to keep from spewing her last meal all over the prince’s plush carpet. The prince’s body went slack as the blue healing magic flared blindingly.

The old elf sagged against the bed and his magic petered out. It was hard to tell underneath the blood that was left over, but Pidge would swear the prince’s wound had been closed entirely. After a few breaths, the old elf stood, a little wobbly on his feet. Even so, Pidge was impressed. It took some serious mojo to pull off even a rudimentary healing, let alone something like this. And the elf had done it without the assistance of any magic tools.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve tried anything that foolhardy,” their old elf said, wiping sweat from his brow, “But I think the prince is going to be just fine now.”

The captain stood slowly, then held out his hand to the other elf. The red haired elf gave him a tired smile and clasped his wrist. “Thank you,” Captain Shiro said, “I know this was asking a lot.”

“I’m happy to do my duty,” the lord said, sounding like he actually meant it, “Make sure the prince gets plenty of rest for the next couple of days though. A healing like that relies heavily on the body’s reserves. He’ll need to conserve his strength till he recovers.”

The captain nodded, “I’ll be sure to do that.”

The other elf smiled, “Good,” then, frowning, he said, “Now, is anybody going to tell me what the blazes happened?”

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

For the past five years I've been maintaining Defender's Quest, I've kept telling myself: there's got to be some magical untapped audience I've yet to reach. I've tried every possible trick to find them, and while many have helped, none have been a silver bullet.

Support Mac and Linux

5.2% and 1.8% of lifetime revenue, respectively

Participate in Humble bundles

(back when they were really good)

Sell direct, on GOG, Itch.io, etc

significant chunk, still dwarfed overall by Steam

Localize all the things

Professional: German, French, Spanish, Japanese

Volunteer: Russian, Korean, Italian, Czech

Probably worth it? But not crystal clear.

Well, I finally found these magical undiscovered players: they're in China.

In "Steam Discovery 2.0, Stegosaurus Tail 2.0", we noted the trend of Chinese players appearing on the global PC gaming radar.

For one, Valve mentioned the trend at Dev Days 2016:

and I had noticed it myself, both anecdotally:

as well as in our revenue reports:

At the time, China was still a very small slice of our overall revenue (as you can see in the graph's embedded pie chart -- it's the tiny turquoise slice at the very top). Still, it was enough evidence to start localizing Defender's Quest into Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

Now, whether or not localization is worth it depends on how much text the game has. And Defender's Quest has a lot of text.

Category # words Cutscenes 22,196 Journal 24,943 Everything else 8,709 Total 55,848

The Cutscenes and Journal together comprise a small novel -- 47,139 words, about the same length as Slaughterhouse Five. We decided to translate only the "everything else" category: the game would be completely playable in Chinese, but the story content would remain in English. This way we could test the waters, and if initial results were good, we'd follow up with a complete translation.

Spoiler alert: results were good.

I have never had a localization pay for itself this quickly, not to mention this unambiguously. When you localize a game, you are betting that sales from the target region will increase more than they would have had you not done it. Usually, however, you're never quite sure how many regional sales you would have made anyways. For example, my first language is Norwegian, and most Norwegians my age speak fluent English and consume lots of English media. Chances are they'll buy a game whether it's localized into Norwegian or not. This effect is so bad that prominent Norwegian games like OwlBoy aren't even localized into the developer's native language. (Same goes for um... Defender's Quest. Tilgi meg, Bestemor!) But what about Germans? There's a lot more of them, and research says they have a stronger preference for native-language media than Norwegians. So we did a German localization (among others). And it was probably worth it, but the effect was somewhat obscured since Germany was already a strong selling region.

The Chinese stats tell a completely different story.

For context, when we updated the game with Traditional and Simplified Chinese translations, we ran a Steam weekly deal at 50% off and popped one of our visibility tokens (see this article).

Result: China was our #1 sales region, not only in terms of units sold, but also in terms of gross revenue.

Last week's sale figures:

As mentioned previously, the before/after results of localization were completely unambiguous.

Of all the revenue Defender's Quest has earned from China on Steam in its entire lifetime, 45% of it was earned last week. That's right, we basically doubled our lifetime sales from China almost immediately! Obviously there's some degree of "pent-up demand" in play here, but based on other developers' experience, I suspect we'll see improved sales from China in our long tail, as well.

Here's a per-country breakdown for our lifetime sales, excluding this past week (ie, the entire time before the Chinese localizations were availalbe):

Back then, China was #22.

"But, Lars!" you say, "Defender's Quest has been on sale for five long years! Maybe it's already soaked up most of its potential western buyers already?"

Judging from 2016's figures, apparently not:

The same 10 countries that dominated lifetime sales show up here, just with a few positions swapped. The biggest change is that Japan and Korea represent a larger overall share in 2016 vs. overall lifetime (We shipped Korean and Japanese localizations in 2014). And the Anglosphere + Europe still dominate.

Here's a side-by-side chart of last week vs. 2016 for easy comparison:

So China zooming to #1, even for just a week, is amazing. Germany has traditionally been our strongest non-English region to date and it's never pulled off a feat like that. But you'll also notice Korea and Japan had a higher market share in this last sale, and Taiwan showed up out of nowhere to beat Russia, Canada, and the UK!

How do we explain all this?

Concerning China, it's basically the perfect candidate for localization:

Large market (18% of world's population!)

Strong preference/need for their native language

Population spends money on games (middle class has exploded recently)

But there's another story here. During the sale, 50% of copies were sold in East Asia. The growth from Chinese speaking regions makes perfect sense, but I was surprised to see growth in Korea and Japan. We've had Korean and Japanese localizations available since 2014, after all. What's going on? I have five potential explanations:

First, it could just be statistical noise and I'm reading too much into things.

Second, it could be part of an ongoing regional rise in PC gaming in East Asia in general. Japanese publishers are releasing more games on Steam, whether it's Square-Enix's back catalogue of Final Fantasy games or From Software's latest Dark Souls title, and Japanese players are following them:

@larsiusprime Yes, Japan certainly grows faster than an average on Steam http://pic.twitter.com/FVx90voTJ3

— Steam Spy (@Steam_Spy) December 27, 2015

Meanwhile, Koreans have always been big fans of PC gaming, and Steam has lots of games they like, most notably DOTA 2. Also, Steam has made strides in supporting local Asian currencies, so this growth makes sense.

Third, it could be a result of Steam's discovery algorithm explicitly recommending games to players based on their native language. Just a few years ago, everyone in the world saw the exact same Steam home page, whereas now it serves up unique recommendations, and the user's language is a key variable:

Fourth, just as there are large numbers of Spanish speakers in the USA because of its proximity to Mexico and Central America, I bet there's a decent amount of Chinese speakers in Japan and Korea. So some of those extra sales from Japan and Korea might actually be from Chinese players.

Fifth, there might be a "cultural lift" phenomenon, where visibility in a major country (such as China) trickles down to nearby countries within its cultural sphere of influence. I'm not as sure about this last one as the observed lift in Korea and Japan happened a bit faster than this explanation might predict.

But if any of these effects are in play, I can still make a solid prediction: Asian countries will continue to dominate Defender's Quest's market share in 2017. Last year Asia was 11% of our revenue and 14% of our units sold. I expect that market share to at least double for 2017.

Traffic Analysis

So, we got a lot more sales from Asia, and especially China. But how are these Asian customers finding us? Here's a breakdown of our traffic report during the post-localization sale:

Category % Visits Home Page 37.36 Weeklong Deals 15.80 Specials 14.01 Discovery Queue 11.10 Tags 7.79 Search 4.61 Valve Website 2.46 External Website 1.46 Games < $10 0.97 Other 4.44

These are some really surprising results. If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll know that the Discovery Queue almost always dominates our traffic charts. Here's our traffic from our last promotional event, by comparison:

Category % Visits Discovery Queue 23.47 Tags 14.3 Specials 11.73 Home Page 10.62 Search Results 9.15 External Website 7.89 Weeklong Deals 6.98 Valve Website 5.29 Games < $5 3.05 Games < $10 1.64 Other 5.88

Here's a combined table for easy comparison:

Latest sale Category % Visits     Previous sale Category % Visits Home Page 37.36   Discovery Queue 23.47 Weeklong Deals 15.80   Tags 14.30 Specials 14.01   Specials 11.73 Discovery Queue 11.10   Home Page 10.62 Tags 7.79   Search 9.15 Search 4.61   External Website 7.89 Valve Website 2.46   Weeklong Deals 6.98 External Website 1.46   Valve Website 5.29 Games < $10 0.97   Games < $5/$10 4.69 Other 4.44   Other 5.88

Expanding the "Home Page" category for the latest sale reveals that 30.40% of the traffic came from the Special Offers Grid, and 4.56% came from "Updated Games."

What's really interesting to see here is that despite the fact that this latest sale had a smaller discount (50% off vs. 67% off for the previous one), much more traffic came from the "in-your-face" promotional channels (Home Page, Weeklong Deals, Specials) rather than the softer-touch organic discovery channels (Discovery Queue, Tags, Search) we've almost exclusively relied upon until now.

Next, let's look at our visibility round results.

As mentioned in the previous article, post-Discovery update 2.0 visibility rounds are optimized for signal-boosting frequently updated games. They specifically target your existing audience as well as people who have wishlisted your game. On the face of it this seems pointless because it's not giving you any "new" visibility, but for games like ours, it seems to work -- probably because the "Recommended by Friends" module has the highest click-through rate of all the discovery channel on Steam's front page.

Here's where we're at so far:

Our click-through rate is lower, which makes sense as we ran the last round in December and have likely thinned out the pond a bit. However, we're still getting a good number of clicks. We've already beaten the previous view count in just one week -- it will be interesting to see if we're also able to surpass the total absolute number of clicks by the time the visibility round expires. I'm pretty sure these last for either 1 month or 1,000,000 views, whichever comes first, because my last round lasted for 1 month down to the minute, and my friend Ryan Clark recently ran a round that halted at around 1,000,002 views, a suspiciously round number to suddenly terminate on.

It's hard to tell how much the visibility round had to do with the Asian regions. Steam indicates 30.7% of our purchases in this period were fulfilled wishlists, but we don't get any kind of regional breakdown for that. The fact that we reached more eyeballs faster makes me think we've got wider Asian visibility than before, but I don't have solid proof.

So, should you localize your game into Chinese? Probably.

Some quick caveats. If your game isn't selling a whole lot already, I can't guarantee that localizing into Chinese is going to double your sales or anything, and the cost of a localization might even exceed what you could expect to earn from it. Furthermore, genre effects likely apply -- some games probably resonate with the Chinese audience more than others, and our story-heavy Tower-Defense RPG is apparently one of them.

Do your homework

If you've got a simple game, you can probably get away with simple bitmapped fonts, but if you absolutely need full true-type font support with arbitrary dynamic text (as we did), you'd better get your head totally wrapped around Unicode, text encodings, fonts, possibly even IMEs (Input Method Editors). In my case, the prior experience of eight previous localizations, including fellow "CJK" languages Japanese and Korean, was invaluable.

Localize your store page!

Nobody's going to bother buying your game if they can't even read the description, after all. If your game has minimal text, this might be all you have to do to reach the Chinese market.

Now, some things not to do.

Don't use Google Translate.

Just don't. You'll wind up with a garbage translation that's incoherent at best and insulting at worst. Players will definitely notice and kill your review score. A partial translation is better than a "complete" garbage one.

Don't mindlessly 'Orientalize' your game

Localization is much more than simple translation, and you'll come across plenty of guides that insist you pick up on the cultural context and make sure to make proper adjustments for those, too. And this is important! For instance, literally translating jokes and cultural references from English isn't going to work -- your translator will need to adapt, change, or even drop them entirely. However, if you do this wrong, you're in dangerous territory of going too far and confusing or even insulting your audience:

The bottom line is -- trust your translation/localization partner to suggest proper adjustments, but don't go off on your own as a clueless westerner trying to "Chinese-ify" things for the locals.

The rise of China, and Asia in general, has taken me somewhat by surprise. Conventional wisdom has always been that Japanese players only play console games, Koreans only play StarCraft and MOBAs, and Chinese players are only interested in mobile F2P games. Although I'm sure those larger trends are true, the sheer size and diversity of these regions shouldn't be ignored, opening a new niche for some indies. This is definitely a great opportunity for some of us, but this works both ways -- we should expect to see a rise in Chinese-developed games, both Indie and AAA.

We've already seen this famously with ICEY.

So I guess the question is -- how long until we see a Chinese-developed Indie game win awards for Game of the Year, Independent Games Festival, Game Developer's Choice, and sell over a million copies?

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

It's a trick question :)

That's all already happened.

That game is FTL:

According to GiantBomb, Subset games is based in Shanghai*, and the two main developers were former employees of 2K China.

*Technically the founders of Subset moved to Shanghai from the USA, but since my own game Defender's Quest was made by an "American developer" -- ie Level Up Labs -- despite the fact that I am a Norwegian citizen who lives in the USA, I think it's fair to call Subset games a "Chinese developer" by the same standard.

I can recommend a great translator by the way, her name is Amy Ho. She does both Simplified and Traditional Chinese and comes with my personal stamp of approval.

Good luck out there!

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

For the past five years I've been maintaining Defender's Quest, I've kept telling myself: there's got to be some magical untapped audience I've yet to reach. I've tried every possible trick to find them, and while many have helped, none have been a silver bullet.

Support Mac and Linux

5.2% and 1.8% of lifetime revenue, respectively

Participate in Humble bundles

(back when they were really good)

Sell direct, on GOG, Itch.io, etc

significant chunk, still dwarfed overall by Steam

Localize all the things

Professional: German, French, Spanish, Japanese

Volunteer: Russian, Korean, Italian, Czech

Probably worth it? But not crystal clear.

Well, I finally found these magical undiscovered players: they're in China.

In "Steam Discovery 2.0, Stegosaurus Tail 2.0", we noted the trend of Chinese players appearing on the global PC gaming radar.

For one, Valve mentioned the trend at Dev Days 2016:

and I had noticed it myself, both anecdotally:

as well as in our revenue reports:

At the time, China was still a very small slice of our overall revenue (as you can see in the graph's embedded pie chart -- it's the tiny turquoise slice at the very top). Still, it was enough evidence to start localizing Defender's Quest into Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

Now, whether or not localization is worth it depends on how much text the game has. And Defender's Quest has a lot of text.

Category # words Cutscenes 22,196 Journal 24,943 Everything else 8,709 Total 55,848

The Cutscenes and Journal together comprise a small novel -- 47,139 words, about the same length as Slaughterhouse Five. We decided to translate only the "everything else" category: the game would be completely playable in Chinese, but the story content would remain in English. This way we could test the waters, and if initial results were good, we'd follow up with a complete translation.

Spoiler alert: results were good.

I have never had a localization pay for itself this quickly, not to mention this unambiguously. When you localize a game, you are betting that sales from the target region will increase more than they would have had you not done it. Usually, however, you're never quite sure how many regional sales you would have made anyways. For example, my first language is Norwegian, and most Norwegians my age speak fluent English and consume lots of English media. Chances are they'll buy a game whether it's localized into Norwegian or not. This effect is so bad that prominent Norwegian games like OwlBoy aren't even localized into the developer's native language. (Same goes for um... Defender's Quest. Tilgi meg, Bestemor!) But what about Germans? There's a lot more of them, and research says they have a stronger preference for native-language media than Norwegians. So we did a German localization (among others). And it was probably worth it, but the effect was somewhat obscured since Germany was already a strong selling region.

The Chinese stats tell a completely different story.

For context, when we updated the game with Traditional and Simplified Chinese translations, we ran a Steam weekly deal at 50% off and popped one of our visibility tokens (see this article).

Result: China was our #1 sales region, not only in terms of units sold, but also in terms of gross revenue.

Last week's sale figures:

As mentioned previously, the before/after results of localization were completely unambiguous.

Of all the revenue Defender's Quest has earned from China on Steam in its entire lifetime, 45% of it was earned last week. That's right, we basically doubled our lifetime sales from China almost immediately! Obviously there's some degree of "pent-up demand" in play here, but based on other developers' experience, I suspect we'll see improved sales from China in our long tail, as well.

Here's a per-country breakdown for our lifetime sales, excluding this past week (ie, the entire time before the Chinese localizations were availalbe):

Back then, China was #22.

"But, Lars!" you say, "Defender's Quest has been on sale for five long years! Maybe it's already soaked up most of its potential western buyers already?"

Judging from 2016's figures, apparently not:

The same 10 countries that dominated lifetime sales show up here, just with a few positions swapped. The biggest change is that Japan and Korea represent a larger overall share in 2016 vs. overall lifetime (We shipped Korean and Japanese localizations in 2014). And the Anglosphere + Europe still dominate.

Here's a side-by-side chart of last week vs. 2016 for easy comparison:

So China zooming to #1, even for just a week, is amazing. Germany has traditionally been our strongest non-English region to date and it's never pulled off a feat like that. But you'll also notice Korea and Japan had a higher market share in this last sale, and Taiwan showed up out of nowhere to beat Russia, Canada, and the UK!

How do we explain all this?

Concerning China, it's basically the perfect candidate for localization:

Large market (18% of world's population!)

Strong preference/need for their native language

Population spends money on games (middle class has exploded recently)

But there's another story here. During the sale, 50% of copies were sold in East Asia. The growth from Chinese speaking regions makes perfect sense, but I was surprised to see growth in Korea and Japan. We've had Korean and Japanese localizations available since 2014, after all. What's going on? I have five potential explanations:

First, it could just be statistical noise and I'm reading too much into things.

Second, it could be part of an ongoing regional rise in PC gaming in East Asia in general. Japanese publishers are releasing more games on Steam, whether it's Square-Enix's back catalogue of Final Fantasy games or From Software's latest Dark Souls title, and Japanese players are following them:

@larsiusprime Yes, Japan certainly grows faster than an average on Steam http://pic.twitter.com/FVx90voTJ3

— Steam Spy (@Steam_Spy) December 27, 2015

Meanwhile, Koreans have always been big fans of PC gaming, and Steam has lots of games they like, most notably DOTA 2. Also, Steam has made strides in supporting local Asian currencies, so this growth makes sense.

Third, it could be a result of Steam's discovery algorithm explicitly recommending games to players based on their native language. Just a few years ago, everyone in the world saw the exact same Steam home page, whereas now it serves up unique recommendations, and the user's language is a key variable:

Fourth, just as there are large numbers of Spanish speakers in the USA because of its proximity to Mexico and Central America, I bet there's a decent amount of Chinese speakers in Japan and Korea. So some of those extra sales from Japan and Korea might actually be from Chinese players.

Fifth, there might be a "cultural lift" phenomenon, where visibility in a major country (such as China) trickles down to nearby countries within its cultural sphere of influence. I'm not as sure about this last one as the observed lift in Korea and Japan happened a bit faster than this explanation might predict.

But if any of these effects are in play, I can still make a solid prediction: Asian countries will continue to dominate Defender's Quest's market share in 2017. Last year Asia was 11% of our revenue and 14% of our units sold. I expect that market share to at least double for 2017.

Traffic Analysis

So, we got a lot more sales from Asia, and especially China. But how are these Asian customers finding us? Here's a breakdown of our traffic report during the post-localization sale:

Category % Visits Home Page 37.36 Weeklong Deals 15.80 Specials 14.01 Discovery Queue 11.10 Tags 7.79 Search 4.61 Valve Website 2.46 External Website 1.46 Games < $10 0.97 Other 4.44

These are some really surprising results. If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll know that the Discovery Queue almost always dominates our traffic charts. Here's our traffic from our last promotional event, by comparison:

Category % Visits Discovery Queue 23.47 Tags 14.3 Specials 11.73 Home Page 10.62 Search Results 9.15 External Website 7.89 Weeklong Deals 6.98 Valve Website 5.29 Games < $5 3.05 Games < $10 1.64 Other 5.88

Here's a combined table for easy comparison:

Latest sale Category % Visits     Previous sale Category % Visits Home Page 37.36   Discovery Queue 23.47 Weeklong Deals 15.80   Tags 14.30 Specials 14.01   Specials 11.73 Discovery Queue 11.10   Home Page 10.62 Tags 7.79   Search 9.15 Search 4.61   External Website 7.89 Valve Website 2.46   Weeklong Deals 6.98 External Website 1.46   Valve Website 5.29 Games < $10 0.97   Games < $5/$10 4.69 Other 4.44   Other 5.88

Expanding the "Home Page" category for the latest sale reveals that 30.40% of the traffic came from the Special Offers Grid, and 4.56% came from "Updated Games."

What's really interesting to see here is that despite the fact that this latest sale had a smaller discount (50% off vs. 67% off for the previous one), much more traffic came from the "in-your-face" promotional channels (Home Page, Weeklong Deals, Specials) rather than the softer-touch organic discovery channels (Discovery Queue, Tags, Search) we've almost exclusively relied upon until now.

Next, let's look at our visibility round results.

As mentioned in the previous article, post-Discovery update 2.0 visibility rounds are optimized for signal-boosting frequently updated games. They specifically target your existing audience as well as people who have wishlisted your game. On the face of it this seems pointless because it's not giving you any "new" visibility, but for games like ours, it seems to work -- probably because the "Recommended by Friends" module has the highest click-through rate of all the discovery channel on Steam's front page.

Here's where we're at so far:

Our click-through rate is lower, which makes sense as we ran the last round in December and have likely thinned out the pond a bit. However, we're still getting a good number of clicks. We've already beaten the previous view count in just one week -- it will be interesting to see if we're also able to surpass the total absolute number of clicks by the time the visibility round expires. I'm pretty sure these last for either 1 month or 1,000,000 views, whichever comes first, because my last round lasted for 1 month down to the minute, and my friend Ryan Clark recently ran a round that halted at around 1,000,002 views, a suspiciously round number to suddenly terminate on.

It's hard to tell how much the visibility round had to do with the Asian regions. Steam indicates 30.7% of our purchases in this period were fulfilled wishlists, but we don't get any kind of regional breakdown for that. The fact that we reached more eyeballs faster makes me think we've got wider Asian visibility than before, but I don't have solid proof.

So, should you localize your game into Chinese? Probably.

Some quick caveats. If your game isn't selling a whole lot already, I can't guarantee that localizing into Chinese is going to double your sales or anything, and the cost of a localization might even exceed what you could expect to earn from it. Furthermore, genre effects likely apply -- some games probably resonate with the Chinese audience more than others, and our story-heavy Tower-Defense RPG is apparently one of them.

Do your homework

If you've got a simple game, you can probably get away with simple bitmapped fonts, but if you absolutely need full true-type font support with arbitrary dynamic text (as we did), you'd better get your head totally wrapped around Unicode, text encodings, fonts, possibly even IMEs (Input Method Editors). In my case, the prior experience of eight previous localizations, including fellow "CJK" languages Japanese and Korean, was invaluable.

Localize your store page!

Nobody's going to bother buying your game if they can't even read the description, after all. If your game has minimal text, this might be all you have to do to reach the Chinese market.

Now, some things not to do.

Don't use Google Translate.

Just don't. You'll wind up with a garbage translation that's incoherent at best and insulting at worst. Players will definitely notice and kill your review score. A partial translation is better than a "complete" garbage one.

Don't mindlessly 'Orientalize' your game

Localization is much more than simple translation, and you'll come across plenty of guides that insist you pick up on the cultural context and make sure to make proper adjustments for those, too. And this is important! For instance, literally translating jokes and cultural references from English isn't going to work -- your translator will need to adapt, change, or even drop them entirely. However, if you do this wrong, you're in dangerous territory of going too far and confusing or even insulting your audience:

The bottom line is -- trust your translation/localization partner to suggest proper adjustments, but don't go off on your own as a clueless westerner trying to "Chinese-ify" things for the locals.

The rise of China, and Asia in general, has taken me somewhat by surprise. Conventional wisdom has always been that Japanese players only play console games, Koreans only play StarCraft and MOBAs, and Chinese players are only interested in mobile F2P games. Although I'm sure those larger trends are true, the sheer size and diversity of these regions shouldn't be ignored, opening a new niche for some indies. This is definitely a great opportunity for some of us, but this works both ways -- we should expect to see a rise in Chinese-developed games, both Indie and AAA.

We've already seen this famously with ICEY.

So I guess the question is -- how long until we see a Chinese-developed Indie game win awards for Game of the Year, Independent Games Festival, Game Developer's Choice, and sell over a million copies?

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

It's a trick question :)

That's all already happened.

That game is FTL:

According to GiantBomb, Subset games is based in Shanghai*, and the two main developers were former employees of 2K China.

*Technically the founders of Subset moved to Shanghai from the USA, but since my own game Defender's Quest was made by an "American developer" -- ie Level Up Labs -- despite the fact that I am a Norwegian citizen who lives in the USA, I think it's fair to call Subset games a "Chinese developer" by the same standard.

I can recommend a great translator by the way, her name is Amy Ho. She does both Simplified and Traditional Chinese and comes with my personal stamp of approval.

Good luck out there!