Fanfiction Fridays: Becoming Pandora

[Spoilers for Borderlands 2 Below]

When playing a game, there’s nothing more satisfying to me then when I can start to sympathize with the main antagonist. And there’s no character in the past couple of years that I can think of that has encapsulated this as perfectly as Borderlands’ Handsome Jack. When I began my new journey on Pandora, I hated him. I hated him so much, him and his stupid crystal pony and stupid surveyors. (GAH! Could there even be a more annoying enemy?!) I loved to hate him. Then I made it to the BNK3R and it all went to shit. And after going to the Arid Nexus it went even more to shit and I actually began to like him.

The shift from over-the-top despicable to 3-dimensional character who is still awful, but has motives that one can empathize with was amazing. One aspect that really helped propel Jack’s character was his relationship with his daughter, Angel. Fraught with power struggles on both sides and a general feeling of helplessness, it was something that so strongly motivated the now Hyperion CEO, but in ways that weren’t, and still aren’t fully known to the audience.There just wasn’t enough on their past together for me to be satiated. More. I wanted more. Luckily, Cybertronic Purgatory has taken up the slack with their fic, Becoming Pandora.

Manga Mondays: A Dash of Brotherly Love (For Real)

Now, I like slash and shipping as much as next doujin buyer, but I realize that I’m in one of the less catered to markets in general. You see, I make it my mission to find family/friendship/gen doujinshi as much as I can. It’s not profitable, but sometimes I just don’t want to read about bffsies boning each other. And between E-bay sellers giving nary a description of the comic’s contents and stores like Mandarake not letting you read before you buy, it’s a very dangerous game to play. I have some failures that I may go over in future but today is a day for the rare success story. Today we look at Crybaby Gil! Shocking! Baby Brother’s Confession by @nm°c.