She woke up in a sweat. It was a dream, of course. She was above calling it a nightmare, but the crude barrage of sub tweets in her feed had left a wound in her stomach. It felt too real. People turning their backs on her, people stopping their donations. The sweat was drying up and she was getting cold. She turned back and checked he was there, not that she needed to. She reached back with her feet and found his soles. It was like putting her feet into an oven, onto two ever so slightly crusty loaves of bread.
Wiping her eyes, she reached for her glasses, and then her phone, swiping it to get the morning’s feed.
There was a comic of a buff man in a tank top saying to a girl in a sailor school uniform “no girl speaks to me like that” with a hand outreached to grab her. The next picture showed the man being thrown onto his back, via the hand.
It already had 3000 likes. People were cheering. But nobody talked about the reality, the consequences- whether the man would fight back, get revenge later, physically, mentally, or socially. Violence, abuse, torture, rape, posting photos online, making allegations, even a charge of assault, how many things could happen as a result? And who would look at this and be inspired, and get themselves into huge trouble when they could have walked away?
It’s still cool though. She gave it a like and then scrolled down through more of the usual kittens and cute girls with a long ice lolly and fan art. Oh right, it was Kula’s birthday…
But the make-believe strong school girl was bothering her.
This is unrealistic, this is nonsense, this is a fantasy cartoon, this is stupid anime and as usual someone’s going to try and copy it.
She scrolled back up and hit the retweet button.
She felt better.
She flicked through FB, a contrasting bag of the usual: pics of babies, people she barely knew on holidays, news of corrupt politicians she didn’t know, appeals to rescue animals in countries that didn’t give two shits, American black people getting shot by cops for no reason, witty cynical comic strips, bootleg dbz tshirts and ones that celebrated special people of her birthday month/ university/ town/ planet etc…. She kept scrolling, until she saw a post of news of an upcoming tournament. Her eye quickly caught the poster’s profile pic – Akane from the Ranma Nibonoichi. Heh, cool. Does that mean there’s anime and cosplay? This could be a good opportunity. She flexed her hand. Better get on that stream and make some green.
This is a work of fan fiction. This work is not to be reprinted, reposted, sold, copied, or stored anywhere but here on orochinagi.com. Please share a link to this page so I can get 0.0001 cents from ad revenue lol. Characters are copyright SNK, I will apply for licence if this ever gets popular (as if). Work is copyright Alan François.