Oh, wow, over a year, really? I haven't even gotten time to do much more fandom stuff since then; checking back to see if you'd replied was on my mental to-do list for a while, along with checking out the kink meme and finishing my in-progress fics. (None of which I've been managing with much haste...) There was a story up on this account a while ago; I let my sister play around with one of my gen fics here, but she got bored of that and gave me the account (since I was thinking of posting some oneshots here), and I deleted her stuff so that I could gank a few of her themes and plotlines to edit into my version, which I've been working on rather than finishing the oneshots, so... yeah. I'm glad to hear you intend to return the favour, but it might not be possible for a while. I'm so glad you're happy about the review - I'm about equally addicted to reading, writing, and reviewing fic, 'worthy' or not. (The things that engage your interest engage your interest, you know?) Your comments about this being an older, weaker fic have me really looking forward to reading your next few, now.

Jenna and Mia's talk was definitely interesting and enjoyable, though it did have the feel of something definitely written by a guy. Having said that, you might be interested to hear that it passed the Bechdel test quicker than anything I've written. (Which I mainly mention for levity, but also as a compliment, since it's an effect of the things that are good about your writing.)

Oh, so the Babi thing was meant as don't shame the honoured dead, rather than don't shame the person who is offering you this reward by refusing him. The tone sounded way more like the latter, and I've read too many fics where people have seriously forgotten bigger details than that. XD The little hat thing - I think one of the characters here complained that the reward they got for Colosso last year was barely worth it (the little hat item that you get in the game if you win), which seemed spectacularly beside the point, when all four party members discussed Babi's proposals in terms of allegiances in the cutscenes.

If you're coming across as rude anywhere (which you're not, for the most part), it's only by saying that it's 'common sense' that women wouldn't be able to enter Colosso. In game canon, Master Feh and Master Hama are both martial arts masters (Hama even taught Feh how to use Chi, which he teaches to his students at the dojo), and all the NPCs that talk to them take the tone that of course they are the authorities that they are. Likewise, Feizhi studies at the dojo, Menardi is a travelling warrior, Mia decides to travel and fight during the game, and nobody ever says anything sexist about their choices or capabilities, though presumably everyone is aware that, yes, they are women. There are a lot of NPC families where the men have more traditionally male roles (the shopkeeper in Imil whose husband is one of the lumberjacks in Kolima, the Kimbobo farmers who became warriors when Akafubu decided to whip up a raiding party in a hurry, etc), but women who make unusual choices don't appear to get any flak for it or have their choices limited in any way, as far as you an tell by speaking to and reading the minds of every NPC in the game. You can't extrapolate "of course women aren't allowed to be warriors" from real life, either. Just the other day, I was reading a book of Russian folk tales my grandma gave me, and it was full of tales of atamans and boyars and bogatyrs and polianitsas; google Eurasian Studies 201 Handouts: Byliny for a quick definition of the terms. I'd appreciate it if you didn't claim that it's common sense for women to be controlled and infantilized in a canon where they face even less misogyny than in the real-life cultures that have allowed women to fight (including our own).

The anal scene was meant as a parody of all those ridiculous scenes where they love it immediately? Heh, I could tell it was meant as a comedic spin on things, but it still came across to me as just as brain-breaking because the woman in this instance didn't hate it more. Maybe the joke worked for other readers; comedy's subjective that way.

The threesome was supposed to be a way for Mia to get into a mutual relationship with a guy she was interested in, as I understood it; Isaac was as squicked out as I was by the idea of it as a 'reward', until he realised that it was actually his friends' attempt to do something real and fun together. If he had only been looking to use them as if they really were anonymous whores, and hadn't actually cared whether his friends enjoyed the game/scene that they'd set up, then I couldn't have believed that he ever saw them as real people even when they were 'friends', and I certainly couldn't feel any warmth toward him as a remotely likeable character. Mia's opinions filter the information given to the audience, but if the result had been "I don't know why Mia's chasing that bastard", I wouldn't have enjoyed any of the pairings here. As it was, Isaac came across as genuine and fairly sweet, and a bit self centred in the way all teenagers automatically are until he'd had time to think. I like Jenna just as much as Isaac here (do you know how hard it is to find bi threesome fic?), which is why it's so jarring that Mia's opinions make so much of the narrative so insulting to her. You're not alone in finding it hot when characters are "a little bitchy" to each other, though I only enjoy it between two female characters when it comes from an UST-rich personality clash, rather than sheer depressing misogyny. Mia goes far beyond 'a little bitchy' (teasing, snarking, flirting) with Jenna, she truly, viciously hates her, at least at some points. If you were only writing for guys, this feedback probably wouldn't be useful, but this was so close to being uber-hot... There just seemed to be so much disgust behind her hatred. (The only sort of disgust that works in hot hatesex is disgust at one's own desires, etc. Physical lust, not vomity squicky visceral disgust.) If you're saying Mia wasn't meant to come across as outright hating Jenna... then wtf, I don't know. I hope the feedback is still useful to you, though.

Mia's personality clash with Jenna, while not exactly UST, still involves teasing and tsundere chemistry and warm fuzzy moments of rare understanding, at some points. Catfights where there's a patronising "these are just women, they're not a danger to us guys, so let's watch as if it were absolutely no different to a stripshow" attitude squick me through the weight of the misogyny, but female-female fights where male characters get out of the way for their own safety, try to break it up as they would any other fight, worry about the safety of the human beings involved, etc, can be hot even if the guys also get turned on by it. (Every bit as hot as the awesomest, UST-richest fights between badass guys, in fact. It's harder to find hot male-female fights than same-sex ones, what with those having the worst kind of cultural baggage, but they have just as much potential if they're done right. You can write to please more people than you might expect at once, if you know what to avoid and what to include. Hence the feedback.)

I've never personally known a teenage girl who wasn't aware that sex could get her pregnant, and I was a teenage girl, but I was raised in a good area at a good school, and there are always people who don't care or don't think things through, so, meh. It's not an unbelievable part of the fic, it's just a bit surprising given that Jenna's in a position to be relatively worldly, to give the future more thought than usual (the apocalypse, her family), and to ask the healer she's talking to about the things women often talk to herbalist/healer types about in this genre. If Jenna's own reactions to the outcome had been given space at the end, and had sounded natural, that would have been enough. I guess that's probably in the sequel.

The irony is kind of satisfying in narrative terms, despite being frustrating in other ways. Which may in itself be ironic. Gahh, it's getting late, not sure if I can end on an eloquently positive enough note to give the right idea about how much I enjoy this sort of discussion, how much I liked about your writing, and how much I'm looking forward to the sequels. Unless I managed that there? G'night.