...the web writer...

Sophia Maoulin

"And... that's enough of that chat" Sophia sighed. The 21 year old girl was sitting at her bedroom desk. The room was illuminated by her four computer monitors, each with a different task. Her desk and room was also surrounded by various plushies and Gundam models. As for Sophia herself, she was small, wore glasses, and was in a light purple hoodie.

Sophia closed her chat window, knowing that there was no saving it. The discussion had started about new rumors on Apple creating a phone, but had somehow devolved into flame wars politics and if having a Macintosh made you a fascist.

Not that it was a big loss. The girl had plenty of other tabs to get back to. Several were dedicated to anime fansub browsing, Javascript tutorials, and tech news sites. She also had a few other applications open, including RPGMaker, a program she was writing in Vim, a Keygen to get Adobe Illustrator, and a Word document of her latest Teen Titans Fan Fiction draft.

Deciding to work on the latter, she maximized Word to look at what she had. The page had nothing but vague placeholder descriptions, not even having a title, beyond Chapter 43.

She had been having the worst writers block. Of sure, she had the NEXT chapter written, where Starfire and Robin sleep together, but was having trouble bringing where she was in the story currently and where she wanted the chapter to go.

She chuckled slightly at the fact that the ship that was giving her the most trouble was the cannon one. She hadn’t had any difficulty with Starfire/Raven, BB/Cyborg, or even (embarrassingly) Robin/Slade, but somehow getting the characters who actually had a crush together seemed difficult for her today.

“Maybe I’m just out of practice writing Het romance?” She wondered to herself.

She switched to the next chapter to see if it would be easier to change its intro to better connect the two story beats. As she did so, she started reading her own words again, blushing the smallest amount at how spicy she had written it. To add to the mood, she pulled up a fanart she liked of the two characters intimate together, which she had been using for inspiration.

There was a knock on her door. “Sophia, you in here?” Her roomate Katie asked.

“WHAT?!” Sophia shrieked, closing the windows. “I mean… yeah.”

Katie opened the door and Sophia spun in her chair to face her, trying to look casual.

Katie was wearing a dress, some jewelry, and had done her hair. Katie could smell her perfume, and couldn’t help but think how pretty she looked.

“I just wanted to ask if you wanted to come with me to Ken's party.”

Sophia smiled, now that she was pretty sure she was safe from her roommate learning of her pervy side.

“Thank you, but like I said, the last time I went there was no one I knew or could really talk with.”

It was true. Sophia had trouble connecting with people she didn’t know or who didn’t share her interests. Though Katie was an exception as she had no problem speaking with her, even though they were so different.

Katie replied “There’s probably going to be plenty of guys from CompSci there. Maybe you'll meet someone new.”

Sophia tried not to roll her eyes. Katie was always trying to set her up with someone, even though she was currently uninterested. She assumed Katie did so because she was worried Sophia was lonely or something.

“Thanks, but I have a lot of homework to do” Sophia lied, having already finished all her work the day she got it.

“Don’t you have Friday off?” Katie asked

“Yeah, but I have a game jam I want to do… so… no can do.”

Katie sighed. “Alright. Just… don’t burn yourself out

“This from the party animal” Sophia replied, smiling slightly.

Katie laughed “I’ll have you know us extroverts actually get less tired from all night parties, thank you very much.”

“How illogical captain” Sophia responded, doing the Spock hand gesture.

The two girls laughed.

“All right, well, have fun with… whatever it is you’re doing” Katie chuckled.

“You too” Sophia nodded.

Katie closed the door and Sophia swiveled back to her monitors.

‘Perhaps she’s right about burnout’ Sophia thought ‘maybe that’s why I’m struggling to write’

She stretched in her chair, cracking her back as she did so. She vaguely considered that this might be a good time for a break. Especially as she suddenly felt tired. And then even more tired.

"What the..." Sophia began, before her face collapsed onto her keyboard.

Azure

“And coming in from Quebec Canada, let’s give a big Harem Hotel welcome to Sophia Maoulin!”

As Sophia was raised onto the stage, her expression quickly rotated through confusion, panic, lost in thought, and then calm.

Azure gave her the microphone and she began speaking. “I'm Sophia Maoulin, age 21. I also go by a few names online, the most common of which is ReiUsa19 and SomaX. I haven’t the faintest idea who this guy is. And I haven’t had sex before, though I'm quite happy with expressing that part of me with reading or writing erotica in secret.”

Sophia blushed slightly and continued.

“My hobbies include writing fanfiction, RPGMaker, trading card games, making PC gaming mods, Mario Kart, Avatar, Teen Titans, Adobe, hacktivism, sprite comics, torrenting, fansubs, neural ai models…”

“Uh…” Azure started but Sophia kept going, even faster now.

“...anime like Sailor Moon, the original Dragon Ball, Rarorin Kenshin, anything by Rumiko Takahashi, Fruits Basket obviously, Eva, Excel Saga, Yu Yu Hakusho…”

“Ok that’s plenty…”

“...Cowboy Bebop, Tenchi, Love Hina, Mizaki obviously… though that’s almost its own category, Aria: The animation…”

“That’s enough!” Azure cut in loudly.

“But I haven’t even gotten to…”

“I said that’s enough!”

“Fine,” said Sophia.” So what’s your name then?”

“It’s Azure… I must say, you seem fairly calm. Aside from the drunk one the other girls freaked out when they were forced to speak.

Sophia looked around and the people she was surrounded by. She shrugged “Clearly I’m asleep, and dreaming I fell into one of my anime fics. I mean, half naked women with crotch shots, girls with weird hair color, the maid mini-moe over there. Logically speaking, this is clearly a fantasy.”

And totally unprompted, Sophia reached out and squeezed Azure's left boob, making a ‘honk’ sound effect as she did so.

“Oh my” Azure said, taken aback.

Sophia laughed. “Man, I’d never have the guts to do something like that in real life. I love lucid dreaming.”

Azure considered giving her a reality check, but another part of her found this too amusing.

Levi cut in. “I thought you said you were only getting people who hurt me. You heard her, she doesn’t know who I am, and I don’t have a clue who she is either.

“Of course you don’t. You’ve never met her before” Azure responded simply.

Levi stamped his foot. “Then she shouldn’t be forced to do this. She should be allowed to leave.”

Azure shook her head. “It's possible to hurt people you’ve never met. It happens all the time.” She turned to the new girl. “Take Sophia here. Though the damage she did to you was in the digital world, rather than IRL.”

The screen showcased an eleven year old Levi on a Windows 95 computer. Azure narrated “it was 1999 and Pokémon had just become a juggernaut in the US. Levi was also just getting into the internet, and stumbled across a Pokémon fanfic webring. This is when he stumbled upon Sophia's story, the breakup of Team Rocket.”

“Wow, I totally forgot about that cringy dark-fic. My subconscious has a good memory” Sophia mused.

Azure continued. “Being new to the internet, poor Levi didn’t quite understand the difference between Fan Fiction and Canon. So when he read about the death of Meowth and how it led to Team Rocket falling apart, he cried.”

Levi waited for several seconds, expecting there to be more. “And then?”

“That’s it” Azure said simply

“That’s ALL?!”

“Yes. It completely ruined your Saturday.”

Another awkward pause followed, as Levi tried to process this.

“But that’s nothing! She doesn’t deserve this! I mean, none of them do, but her especially!”

“You underestimate how traumatic this incident was for you baby” Azure said, taking his hand and patting it. “Up to this moment, Pokemon was something of pure innocence. The last bastion untainted childhood joy. But her written words shattered that security. It let the ugliness of the world seep into something that was so good. It traumatized…”

But then Azure was interrupted by, of all people, Alison. “I thought you said you picked her because the idea of punishing someone for something so minor was funny” she said without emotion.

Azure, wide eyed, snaped her gaze at Alison, whom she had nearly forgotten was even there. Alison just stood there, her head tilted slightly, her face blank.

Azure instantly felt an inferno of fury ignite. ‘What the fuck did that bitch say?!? That’s not in the script! Who the fuck gave her permission to speak!’

Azure let out a chuckle, trying to maintain her host persona, but her left eye twitched in anger. “Ha ha, silly Alison. Always joking around.”

Alison, still not showing the slightest emotion, simply said “I was not telling a joke ma’am. Though I may recite some if you wish.”

Azure's could barely contain her anger now, her entire face twitching now as she struggled with all her might to not break her perfectly prepared script and strangle this blue haired girl to death. She bit her lips eyes and she gave Alison a death glare that would give anyone else a heart attack, though Alison did not react, which only pissed her off more.

Sophia cleared her throat. “Sorry, you keep talking about me and if I ‘deserve’ something. What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been kidnapped so we can forced you to be this twerps sex slave!” Azure snapped, her stage persona shattering, along with any pretense.

Sophia raised an eyebrow. “Oh, it’s one of THOSE kinds of dreams…”

“Jesus Christ! You’re not dreaming!” Azure shouted, and pinched her hard on the arm.

“Ow, that hurt! Wait… but that means…”

Sophia’s eyes went wide. She looked at her hand, then at Azure's chest, and then back into her hand. “That means I…”

Sophia’s entire face blushed. She pulled her hoodie over her head and tightened the strings, hoping to escape into it like a cacoon.

Meanwhile, Azure wanted nothing more than to punish someone just to feel better, but knew that would just draw more attention to Alison's slip. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a few seconds to collect herself. When she opened them, she was back in character.

“Tee hee. So that’s Sophia folks! I’m sure she’ll be an unforgettable member of the harem. Alison, why don’t you show her to her seat”

Alison nodded her head, and took Sophia by the arm. As she did, Azure leaned forward and whispered to Alison “you and I will have a talk later”

“I enjoy our talks,” Alison whispered back in the same flat tone that made it impossible to tell if she was sarcastic or sincere. Alison then led Sophia to her seat, to which the girl simply followed, still hiding embarrassed in her hoodie.

“Let's keep going with number five!” Azure shouted, trying to get the show back on track. “And it’s someone Levi is very familiar with. Introducing…”