A/N: Okay, so I didn't see you again next year, but now we're back! Welcome to this year's love story anthology!

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Dare Not Speak Its Name Love Stories

by Shadow Crystal Mage

Disclaimer: This is a parody. The fandom love is real, however.

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Explosion Is Love

He was the only person she'd ever meant who saw them as beautiful.

Oh, she knew they didn't mean the same thing to him. How could they, when he was but a mere spectator. He couldn't feel the swirl as the power rose into the air, couldn't feel the vibration in the either as her very soul displaced the essence of the world itself. The way her very mind burned as the air turned to fire, the ecstasy of release!

Still, only he had ever anything besides fear or anger when gazing upon her masterpiece. Only he had ever spoken praise of her art, and had taken the time to learn and appreciate the subtleties of her creation. Even though he was an uncomposed, hardworking, lazy, gentle, vicious, smart, dumb, kind NEET.

A man who could love Explosions was already almost perfect.

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Roles

"SETCHAN!" a tearful Konoka cried as she made her way to Setsuna's room.

Setsuna looked up from her Ogino Jun manga. "Ojou-sama?" she said, looking blank.

"Setchan!" Konoka cried. "I waited all yesterday, but you never came! Why, Setchan? Why?-!"

"…" Setsuna said succinctly. "Huh?"

Konoka pointed dramatically at Setsuna's Swords Monthly complimentary calendar. "Yesterday was February 14th, Setchan! Valentine's Day! Why didn't you make me any chocolate!-?" Konoka gasped. "Have you grown tired of me? Is that it? You're dumping me for that Tsukuyomi psycho, aren't you? You've been listening to that Immi girl, haven't you?"

"…" Setsuna repeated herself eloquently. "Ojou-sama, I thought you were the one who did the stereotypically girly things and I did the spineless boy things?"

Konoka pouted. "Where did you get a silly and sexist stereotype idea like that?"

"…" That time Setsuna was just speechless. "Um, our entire relationship to date?"

"…"

"…"

"Well, you're wrong," Konoka huffed, crossing her arms. "Hmph!" Her nose went up and 'tsun!'.

"…" Setsuna repeated herself a third time. "Oujo-sama, you're not helping your argument."

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White Gold

He knew it was all in his head. After all, she was gone except for his memories and a recording he'd copied in so many different places, some future archaeologist could be forgiven for thinking that she was more famous than previously assumed. The metal, her metal, had been smelted, forged and shaped anew, cleansing whatever lingering touch she might have had upon it.

And yet, every time he drew his sword, Jaune couldn't help feeling that Pyrrha's hand held his still.

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R1: Mother and Mother

Neptune, Noir, Blanc and Vert leaned around the door. Blanc's face was, in not perfectly blank, then close enough for an RPG CGI. Vert's expression was near-maternal concern, and Neptune was of bright and wide-eyed curiosity. Only Noir wore what she felt was an appropriate expression, which was barely-contained freak-out. "Don't any of you find this weird at all?" she said as they spied on the woman once-called Arfoire and Histoire making breakfast together.

"What's weird about it?" Neptune said. "So the woman who gave birth to us and the loli book girl who raised us are shacking up! How is that weird?"

"Don't phrase it like that, it sounds not-wrong when you put it that way!"

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The Maybe God Only Knows

Even choosing Chihiro wasn't the end of it. Of course not. In a game, it would have been. The hero and heroine come together (figuratively, though some games can do it literally without being tasteless), the final CG of the route is unlocked, and roll credits to bring you back to the loading screen to try and unlock the next route or the alternate ending. However, since reality is a shitty game, it did not have the decency to do that.

There was no neat, climactic resolution, no time to bask in the warm feelings rising from a satisfactory ending. There sure as hell weren't any roll of credits to sit through while beautiful music played and you caught your breath from your emotional climax.

Instead, there was a torn, mixed-up young woman who did not have the decency to stick to any one particular role so that he knew the proper way to treat her. She was a tsundere one day and an artist the next. One hour she would be shy and quiet girl in her first romance, the next a shrill and demanding housewife type with ten years of a stressed marriage behind her. There was no rhyme or reason to her and she was as likely to greet him with a cheerful wave, a shy smile, an annoyed glare, a cup of hot coffee poured over his head or a blushing kiss on the cheek. Sometimes all in the same day! Or in the same greeting!

And then there were the others.

The girls he would sometimes pass in the hallway or in the street who would slow when they saw him, or smile suddenly then look confused, as if they had no idea why they'd done that. The the small girl from the lower year on the swim team who had nodded at him for seemingly no reason. The girl who worked at the ramen place who'd flirted with him until she'd seemed to realize what she was doing. The captain of the karate club sometimes blushing when they ran into each other in the halls. Devil memory erasure was annoyingly sloppy. And it happened enough times that Chihiro suspected him of philandering. Ironically, this was one of the few times she reacted predictably, which was no help at all since reality was such a crappy game the scenario was bugged to be nearly unresolvable. He just had to resign himself to having to raise her relationship points with him every once in a while as they dropped.

And then there were the goddess hosts.

The goddesses hadn't left when the situation had been resolved. The world was too much of a shitty, bugged game to be that well-organized. They looked at him with eyes that knew. Eyes that hurt. Eyes that asked how much of what they knew of him was true. Eyes that asked how how much of it had been real. In Vulcan-in-Luna's case, eyes that asked why he wasn't currently being bludgeoned to death by the nearest object that came telekinetically to hand. And, ultimately, eyes that accepted. And, behind the goddesses, eyes that still loved him despite it.

And then there was Haqua.

Sometimes he would catch sight of a flicker in the sky, a presence out of the corner of his eye. When the sun was right, on the road ahead of him on his way home, he would catch sight of the shadow of a scythe, now chipped and scratched, but bearing its injuries with pride. If he was lucky, he would catch her reflection on a fortuitously positioned parabolic mirror. Once, she had walked past him when hed on his way home from the game store, completely visible to the world. They had passed each other by as if strangers.

They never spoke, never made contact. He wondered how much she remembered.

And then there was the buggy DLC that had been forcibly installed against his will.

Elsie hadn't changed, for all she was called Eri now. The same bright smile, the same mind-boggling enthusiasm when it came to sweeping, the same the same eyes that shone with boundless respect and faith. At school she was teased (but not bullied, for she was too loved for that) at how highly she held her brother, how she so easily referred to him as a god. She was called a brocon, and she accepted the sentiment if not the title, for there were few words to describe how she felt, and most would only confuse the issue. She played with Ayumi and Chihiro in their band, she annoyed him endlessly with her presence and exasperated him with her ignorance, and lit any room with her very presence. And just to himself, he had to admit there were few things as heady as having someone who loved you with all their heart and called you their god.

The game would not end. It was shitty, buggy and badly written. The prequel had been confusing, and the sequel a long, drawn out affair sacrificing storytelling, what there had been of it, for flashy events. There were no retries, continues, saves or walkthroughs. The flags made no sense, the characters even less so, and the setting was bland, trite and boring. Yet, in the darkest depths of his heart, he knew he would never let this game go. He knew he would boot it up every day and try to make sense of the completely random events that cropped up for no adequately organized reason. It was not the ideal, the world god only knows.

But it was worth loving anyway.

Though why couldn't the extra DLC character have been Yokkyun?

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All Star Voltron: Legendary Defender

Lost Family. Evil Empire. Wide Universe. Determined Sister.

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Big Sisters

"I blame you for this," Ruby told Weiss.

"Me? How is this my fault?" Weiss said.

"You could have picked Jaune in the Emerald Forest," Ruby said, sniffling and patting her eyes with a hanky. "If you'd done that, none of this would have happened! But no, you had to pick me! So I blame you Weiss. You picked me, eventually they met, and now here we are. Yang is ditching me for another woman!"

"…" Weiss said. "I can't fault your reasoning. I really, really want to but I can't."

"Do you, Winter Schnee, take Yang Xiao Long… "

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- End for 2/14/2017

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A/N: I really hope this signifies an uptick in productivity…

Please review, C&C welcome.

Until next time, this is Shadow, signing off.