#anyways i have like 20 posts left until i hit post limit so

[sweetie-bri]

*Quietly slips you $20*

How about a caption about a woman who finds out how to grow by disenfranchising money from people and then she finds out how to get money by doing the same to corporations. And then she gets very big by doing the same thing to governments?

Upward Mobility [Giantess Growth Caption Commision]

Despite the process being BAFFLINGLY simple, Veronica was an airhead and requested myriad re-explanations of how her new implants worked. The scientists had perfected explaining it in 2 sentences for her as they awaited the dreaded 7-word sentence.

"So... What did you do to me exactly?"

"Imagine that inside of your body is a bunch of little house guests! These guests are powered by *money* in *this* bank account to make more of themselves. Now, since they're polite house guests, they dress up the exact same as your normal body, so they become more of *you!*

"So... The implants eat money and... become more of me?" There was no chance anyone could explain to Veronica the currency gas-cycling e-mechanism so... they just nodded. Veronica was overjoyed! "Then I'm going to get *all* money!"

On impulse she immediately pumped the account full of her entire savings. $60,000. pulsed through her veins and her body began slowly inflating her feminine curves. She didn't mind at all that her underwear was all that remained of her cute outfit as she continued to ascend, eventually totaling about 12 centimeters taller. The height looked good on her, and the scientists were relieved the job was well done. After much of what Veronica probably thinks is contemplative thought. The epiphany dawned on her, realizing how small-time she was being.

Veronica left out for bank after bank post-hast. Not even bothering to change clothes. She had credit as a notorious impulse purchaser, so many banks were dying to put a credit card in the girl's hands. She signed any contract that gave her a 6-figure credit limit. She must have felt like a genius when she pumped 12 maxed credit cards into her body. $1.2 million dollars.

Her body trembled, but not painfully as she struggled to maintain footing. No clothes fit her figure anymore, but she wanted to see her results anyways. It wasn't stopping. Watching her veins swell, her muscles tense, her curves explode. It was exhilarating! Eventually finalizing with her being over 12 feet tall! But 4+ meters wasn't enough for her! She had another of her "good ideas."

"I bet supermarkets and stuff have money!" The eager giantess streaked from building to building. Unsurprisingly. It was a giant woman screaming "GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY" worked to great effect and she was raking in thousands more. Veronica was *juuust* smart enough to know that items cost money, too. So, she was quick to snag expensive goods and make it off like a literal bandit. As the cash flowed in, her growth was exponential.

She began with a few centimeters, then grew meters and now was growing tens of meters. Once she hit 100 feet tall, the milestone put an excited pit in her stomach, she wanted more... But she'd looted most every convenient place... "Who has the *most* money?" The titan knew just who to ask.

She knocked on window after window until she found someone who claimed to be a CEO. The mass hysteria and her total ignorance that the police were trying to arrest her was endearing if anything. Veronica was looking for sponsorships. She would sign any contract that would give her cash up front. As afraid as these shrewd businesspeople were, they were more excited by the possibility of *not dying.* Millions of dollars were given to this newfound giantess. Veronica was so excited! She had no concept of how much money was a lot, but she knew her "house guests" would be happy.

Bigger, BIGGER. The ground was so far away that it was often blotted by clouds. Roads couldn't fit one of her feet. No scientist imagined that Veronica could get a hundred million dollars as quickly as she did. The only place left to ask, wasn't too far. Not that anything was far away from her anymore. Veronica collapsing on her knees in front of the buildings sent a huge rumbling earthquake through the capital. She stooped low enough that her huge face wasn't obscured by the sun anymore.

"Hey... You guys *make* the money, right?" She asked the entirety of the federal reserve at once. Rumbling the building with her voice. "Can I make a withdrawal? All of it?"

Reasons to Tip Sweetie-Bri 1.) She loves positive reinforcement. 2.) It's fast, it's easy and it's free. 3.) She- Wait, isn't 2 like... 3 reasons?

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Timeline: Part 10 - December 11-31 2017

For earlier timeline posts: click here or here.

There's a limit to how many links you can put in a tumblr post. Who knew. Anyway, continuing where we left off...

12/11/2017: Andrew Morton announces new biography of Meghan. Rebecca English writes about Meghan's yoga influencing. Meghan's "Sexy Santa" costume from Deal or No Deal is republished. Kensington Palace announces William and Kate's trip to Sweden and Norway, and The Times debunks The Crown.

12/12/2017: Harry and his friends kill 15 boars during German hunting trip (Meghan's not happy). Harry and Meghan take credit for William and Kate showing a little PDA on an engagement, while Meghan merches her parka. Later, William and Harry attend the Star Wars premiere.

12/13/2017: Kensingon Palace officially confirms Meghan is spending Christmas with the royals. Meghan is revealed as Google's most-searched celebrity of 2017. Meghan merches her handbags, especially Strathberry's, and modernizes the monarchy.

A UK survey finds that a majority of their respondents are unhappy with Harry's engagement:

67% of women surveyed are devastated by the engagement announcement.

20% of overall respondents prefer Harry to be single.

57% of respondents are against Harry marrying Meghan.

And Meghan leaks that Kate has taken her under her wing to protect her from negative parts of royal life. She tells The Express that "Harry is like a brother to Kate and she has never seen him so happy."

12/14/2017: Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, announces that he expects to preside over the royal wedding. In the morning, the royals attend a service for Grenfell Tower at St. Paul's Cathedral (Meghan isn't allowed) and they gather again in the afternoon for The Queen's annual Windsor Christmas luncheon at Buckingham Palace (Meghan is invited). In the evening, the Kensington Palace Christmas party is held at a nearby restaurant that Harry and Meghan may or may not have attended (it's claimed they left early) while William and Kate are papped leaving.

Meghan merches Strathberry again and she is named the #4 Fashion Influencer of the Year, besting Kate who comes in at #5. (I really doubt Kate cares about this.)

12/15/2017: Kensington Palace announces the wedding date. Palace gift shops begin selling engagement memorabilia. Harry visits Sandhurst Academy and awards Cadet of the Year. Idris Elba shows support for Meghan while Meghan merches tea tree oil.

12/16/2017: Meghan teases a Canada tour post-wedding again.

12/17/2017:

The Daily Mail reminds us that Meghan is attending royal Christmas.

Harry announces that he has interviewed Barack Obama for BBC Radio 4 Today, but the interview won't air until the end of the month.

Meghan used to work at a yogurt store in LA as a teenager and everyone just loved her.

William's diary clash: Harry scheduled his wedding on the same day as the FA Cup Final, which William usually attends.

To prep The Queen and Prince Philip for spending Christmas with Meghan, Harry says he has shown them clips of Meghan in Suits.

Windsor hotels begin to profit off the wedding by marketing Meghan and Harry.

12/18/2017: The Cambridges release their Christmas card photo and Kensington Palace announces that Charlotte will begin nursery school in the new year. Meghan is voted one of the UK's ideal Christmas dinner guests and she leaks that The Queen likes her better than Kate but Buckingham Palace hits back with a denial.

12/19/2017: William and Kate attend the Royal Variety Performance. Meghan tries to ride their coattails by hinting she and Harry may be their guests and Harry is appointed Captain General Royal Marines, succeeding Philip.

Sketches of potential wedding dresses are published/leaked again.

Doria is papped at a LA laundromat.

Meet Meghan's lookalike

Will Meghan have to curtsey to Kate?

Meghan is crowned Hello Magazine's "Woman of the Year."

12/20/2017: Meghan hypes up her Kate-like style makeover from the Windsor Christmas luncheon at Buckingham Palace and merches her dress again. More wedding dress sketches are published.

12/21/2017: The royal engagement photos are published and:

Prince Philip and The Queen leave London for Sandringham.

Meghan modernizes the monarchy.

Meghan merches Ralph & Russo.

Body language analysis

Yorkies are papped at Soho House.

Meghan leaks that The Queen wants her and Harry to have a prenup and that she (Meghan) is hurt the family thinks she has an ulterior motive for marrying Harry. (Well...) In the same article, Meghan teases her and Harry's individual net worths and hints at the wedding budget - £22 million minimum overall cost and her dress budget is £375,000.

Harry debunks Meghan's PR about the prenup, saying no one asked for one and that William and Kate don't have one so they don't need one.

Meghan v Kate fashion showdown over their engagement photos.

12/22/2017:

Princess Michael's Blackamoor brooch controversy kicks off.

Cambridge vs Sussex engagement portraits showdown

Meghan merches her Ralph & Russo gown again

Press criticism of the engagement photos begin

Meghan takes credit for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner posing together.

12/23/2017: Meghan announces that Guy has broken two legs in an unprecedented Kensington Palace statement and her lookalike does a wedding dress photoshoot.

12/24/2017: Meghan leaks that Harry will not participate in the royal family's Boxing Day shoot because it would upset her.

12/25/2017: Meghan joins the royal family on their Christmas Church Walk. She merches her coat and her hat is the stuff of poo memes.

12/26/2017: Criticism from Meghan's Christmas Church Walk continues with coverage on her curtsey fail and sticking her tongue out. Meghan also merches her outfit again.

12/27/2017: Harry's interview with Barack Obama is finally released. He makes a "we're the family she never had" comment that sets the Markles off. Harry also bans blood diamonds from Meghan's jewelry and Meghan merches her lip gloss.

12/28/2017: Some poor media intern who listened to the Harry/Obama interview realizes that Harry invited the Obamas to the wedding. Meghan deals with more curtsey criticism. She deflects by announcing that she was shortlisted to be the new Bond Girl but she had to give the role up because of her relationship with the Harry. Meghan also merches the Soho House restaurant she and Harry had their first date.

12/29/2017: The royal family's engagement count for the year is released and Harry worked more than William and Kate. The Markles begin popping off about Harry's "we're the family she never had" comment.

12/30/2017: No new Meghan or Harkle stories.

12/31/2017: No new Meghan or Harkle stories.

[liesmyth]

Your jock posting is always super helpful, but I’ve got a question! I’ve been doing couch to 5k for awhile, probably the third time over the course of my life, because I need more cardio and running is the easiest to fit into my schedule because I can just put on shoes and go out the door, you know? I can do 20 minutes of sustained jogging, I just hate every minute. I’ve read about how your pace is supposed to be something that you can sustain a conversation during, but I don’t think there’s a pace slow enough that isn’t a walk where I could do that. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks for your time!

hi hi hi I'm glad I could help! The short answer is that you're fine to keep doing what you're doing, actually! the much longer answer is below

So, you're correct that "conversational pace" is ideally supposed to be your ideal easy run / jog pace, but it's really not uncommon for beginners to not really have an "easy" pace because you feel extremely out of breath even if you're going as slow as you think you possibly can.

Short digression. "Conversational pace" doesn't mean that you should be able to recite poetry fluently — if you can burst out a short sentence or do a decent sing-along to your playlist, that's okay. If all you can do is grunt and say "yes" or "no", even when jogging very slowly, then yeah, you want to be able to eventually build an aerobic base where you can jog and have enough breath left to communicate. It just means that you have a goal to work towards.

Anyway. One thing to keep in mind is that "you shouldn't run any harder than X" is a rule of thumb that's geared towards runners who want to optimise their efforts, whether that's a hobby runner who wants to get faster or an athlete who's stacking up easy miles to rest for the quality workouts. But it's not, like, a hard limit. For most people, there aren't negative consequences to doing high-intensity cardio for 20 minutes a few times a week. If you were training for a 10k and needed to hit a certain (higher) mileage, then the fact that you finish all your runs feeling very out of breath might have been more of a concern, because it would be less sustainable. But if you want to keep training at your current volume, you don't HAVE to change it up if you don't want to. Genuinely, the best exercise is the kind of exercise that's convenient to you, so you can keep doing it consistently. If you keep running those 20 mins every few times a week at the same speed, it will eventually gets easier in terms of effort. Once it starts to feel easier, congrats, you're done! Keep on doing those 20 minutes but enjoy being able to breathe better. Maybe you'll hate it a little less, but even if you don't it'll still be short and convenient, which is what most people want in a workout 💪

IF you want to change it up a bit, you could try doing some intervals. Jog then walk until you catch your breath then start again. Jog then walk briskly. Jog faster then slower. Whichever feels more fun or rewarding to you. You can lengthen the C25k schedule for your purposes if you want to fit in longer walking breaks.

(Another common recommendation you might see online is to go slower. yes. even slower. I KNOW; you're probably thinking "I might as well just walk. I'm going slower than if I was walking." But, actually, the mechanics of running and walking are different enough that it could be worthwhile to condition your body for running if you jog at a glacial pace vs. if you were walking briskly going faster. HOWEVER. In your case. I think it's not really worth it, especially because jogging slow as hell can be quite frustrating and your objective is to make it as painless as possible. So I'm bringing this up for completion's sake in case you want to give it a go but I wouldn't recommend it.)

I hope this helps!

[three--rings]

I would *love* to hear your tropical storm Allison story when you're up for it. I was living halfway between Houston and Galveston when it blew through, reversed course, came back, and sat over the area like a big ol' rain conveyor belt, but was very, *very* fortunate that our house didn't flood. We stayed up all night watching, worrying, waiting to see how far the flooding would reach. My brother and his fiancee were visiting at the time, so there were a lot of cars in the driveway, (1/3)

and around 1-2 am we went out to try and get the cars as far up the driveway as we could to avoid the floodwaters, angling them and putting them like an inch next to each other, but one car still got water damage. Around 4 am we started gathering important things on the ground floor preparing to take them upstairs. At 5 am the water was at our doorstep but that's where it stopped. (2/3)

I ended up doing a project on it in a college science class on natural disasters, and I remember one source saying that the rain was falling so fast at times that it approached the upper limits of clouds to release rain. Anyways, uh, thanks for indulging my storytelling, I'd love to hear your Allison story. (3/3)

YES, hello friend!

Okay so Allison happened very soon after I graduated college. Like it was right after starting my post-college job, by a week or two. So the majority of the people in my office went out that Friday night to a bachelorette party at a club downtown for one of the people in the office who was about to leave (and who I was replacing.) But because I didn't really know those people yet and because I had other plans, I didn't go.

My plans were to go to downtown Houston to a DIFFERENT club to see my friend's sister's boyfriend's band from Austin.

People not from Houston may not understand that everyone I know was going clubbing when a tropical storm had hit two days before and was hitting again. But like, this was just NORMAL. We have hurricane parties. We don't stop our lives.

We just wore crappy shoes. Mr. Rings and I parked our cars on the higher ground spaces of our Montrose apartment complex and took the precaution of riding with a friend who had an SUV. This was storm planning. (I mean, Allison had already hit us two days before! No biggie. Except it went back to the Gulf and got more water and we were already saturated.)

We get to the club and dash across the street through standing water already. We're drinking Hurricanes, of course. And we see the band we're there for, but the storm is really hitting and sounding bad, so we are like, "hey, we're gonna head out" around 10:30. But my friend whose sister's boyfriend's band it was and the sister and the boyfriend had to stay until closing so the band could get paid.

So we said hey be safe good luck and left. It was ROUGH out there, very poor visibility extremely heavy rains. Cause we're driving through the center of a tropical storm like idiots, you know. So we get to our place (not far, 10 minutes away without a storm) and we're trying to convince the driver and her boyfriend not to drive across town but to stay with us. But they say no.

So we go inside and start watching the news and only then realize how BAD it's getting. So we sit and start watching the water rise. And at some point the local CBS station just has to stop broadcasting because they are flooding out. We watched them all the time because they were only a few blocks from us. But they just went to test pattern. And soon after the power went out anyway.

So after that we go out to the balcony and watch the water rise, very glad our cars are like 20 feet from the road and our apartment is on the second floor.

And we end up hanging out with a bunch of our neighbors. We offer some downstairs people to bring stuff up to our place in case they get flooded but they turn us down. We find out one of our neighbors is a cool artist and see his work and he passes around a joint. So we get high and watch the water rise. Luckily it stopped about 12 inches from the wall of the apartments.

Meanwhile, my friend, his sister, and her boyfriend are still at the club when water starts pouring into it, so everyone left at the club has to retreat to Some Dude's Apartment that happens to be over the club. Like 20-30 people in this guy's apartment, I think drinking alcohol from the club that they brought up with them. Sometime around dawn Some Dude and the club owner get in a fight and he kicks everyone out.

At which point my friend looks to the parking lot where he (and we) parked and can't see his car because it's fully submerged. He ends up walking home, which luckily he lived in Montrose, too so he was able to, given enough time.

Later that day there's talk the rain might start again, so we are afraid to move our cars, knowing the spots will be stolen, so we walk to the nearest grocery store for belated storm supplies.

Yeah, Allison was the one that taught me not to shrug off storms. Even if they're not Real Hurricanes. (This was pre-Katrina)

And here is my favorite photo from Allison.

This is not a river. This is US 59, one of Houston's major freeways, those bridges are overpasses. The city got between 25-35" of rain in a few days.

My supervisor at my new job, a like 50 year old woman with gray hair was at the bachelorette party and ended up getting stranded on the side of the road, flooded out, and was rescued by a random trucker in an 18 wheeler who drove her to a gas station on high ground where she spent the night. So lots of interesting stories around.

[ravynfyre]

I hit my limit today, and I think that makes me an asshole, but mainly I feel relief.

I have a friend I have written about before here. This friend and I had been close since high school. some close to 20 years ago, though, this friend got very, very sick and suffered a serious brain injury. I won't go into all the gorey details except to explain that this friend really has the functional intellect of a 12 year old, mainly, and the emotional maturity of a toddler because of this injury. They will never get better than they are now. that means that I need to be the mature one in our relationship now.

this friend has always been a bit self-centered... but we all are to some extent. but he brain injury has really exacerbated this part of them. to the point that they will literally throw a nasty, public *fit* and scream on facebook about how inconvenienced they are because the person who helps them in the care home where they live is not available one day because that person is getting *cancer* treatment. They will call that person out by name, tagging them, and yelling at them for not being there to do their laundry or whatever else... because the person is dealing with *cancer*. screaming and calling people out on facebook is pretty common for my friend. any inconvenience, real or perceived, is a sudden public blast, and they can get pretty hateful and hurtful when they say things there.

i lost count of how many times *I* have been put on blast, usually for not having dropped everything and driven the 4 or so hours each way to see them in person. (when I have to use food banks to feed myself and I still can't make ends meet, but, sure, lemme just bend over and shit out that tank and a half of fuel to do that) but I have also been put on blast for explaining to my friend that they are saying hurtful things to people who love them. Or for trying to explain certain social issues of the day. the other big complaint i get put on blast for is that my "new friends" are "taking me away" from them. (again, usually because i don't travel to see them, because i don't travel at ALL anymore, but what the fuck is logic to an emotionally-a-toddler anyway?) i've talked about some of this here before.

i didn't feel like i could just... walk away, though. see after their brain injury, all of our closest friends just... ghosted. (I'd already been ghosted because i moved away, but this friend was still often in contact with the rest of the gang.) my friend had no one left but family. just me. i couldn't go too... especially since they threatened on *several* occasions that I was the "only thing keeping them alive", they they would "die without me". yes, I know that's manipulative as fuck, but my friend was an incredibly smart person who is now a child, and remembers just enough to know what they lost... including all of their friends. i didn't want to be like the "gang".

but the constant public tagging on facebook about how i was letting them down, or how i must hate them, or how i was being taken away, or how i was rude and mean for asking them to not do hateful things... it's stressful. and that didn't even touch on all the vague-posting about "their friend who is being taken away from them" or "their friend who yelled at them for being a bitch to their helper" or "their friend who must hate them". i did get a few NASTY messages from some of the people they started talking to online who knew nothing about me but what my friend would post. it was exhausting. and if i asked my friend to stop, it would only get *worse* for a week or two as they pouted and screamed, until they literally forgot and then it would cycle back to the beginning. i finally broke down and just unfollowed. it helped a lot, as now, i only knew about the complaints when i got tagged and put on blast *personally* (which was about half the time they posted about me). but the tagging complaints didn't stop. i might have peace for a few days, or a few weeks... but, eventually, i'd get put on blast again for... something.

enough times, and i started to wonder... maybe i *do* suck for not finding a way to see them? i knew i wasn't talking to them as often as i "should"... but it was exhausting, and it negatively affected my health, but did it really or am i just making things up to avoid discomfort? i mean... they have a brain injury. my friend really doesn't understand just what they are saying sometimes. i should be the mature one here, suck up my discomfort, and just ignore the digs and the pokes and the nastygrams. i mean, i'm the adult, and, realistically, i don't make enough time for any of my friends because dealing with people *hurts*, and i should just get the fuck over that and... and find a way.

but it was a lot better, not seeing their posts unless they tagged me. but they would still stalk *my* facebook, and anytime i posted any of my social justice stuff, they would comment. sometimes it was a simple, "eh? i don't understand", sometimes it was something so for out of touch that it was a glaring reminder that they probably weren't capable of actually understanding the issues at hand. sometimes, it was an argument against my post or meme or thoughts, because those were "new friends ideas" or because they didn't get what i was saying, or because they genuinely disagreed with the idea.

for a while, I would try to engage... either to explain, or to ask what they meant, or to have an actual discussion... but when my friend wouldn't even remember what they were thinking when they made the comment in the first place... there was limited success. so i just started... ignoring the comments and questions, unless it was a real simple, easy to explain, non-confrontational thing.

so yesterday, i posted a meme about how everyone has preferred pronouns. my friend commented, "Ehh?" i should have just walked away and ignored it like i usually did. but stupid me thought this would be a safe one to tackle. so i asked if what pronouns that they would prefer. they answered that they had always used a specific one, so probably stick with that. so i asked if they thought it would be fair for someone to make fun of them for preferring a pronoun that matched their genitals. they said "nope!" I literally replied: "That was what this post was about. That it isn't appropriate to make fun of someone's preferred pronouns, no matter what... because EVERYONE has preferred pronouns."

my friend started yelling at me for "calling them out". then they proceeded to post to their wall that they were SICK of ME "calling them out". but, see... i was "calling them out" because my friend literally forgot that they asked me yesterday to explain the meme i posted. and had no idea how to read the previous six comments between us that were immediately above where they started screaming at me... but that didn't become obvious until much, much later in the fight.

and today... i just couldn't handle it. so instead of ignoring it and moving on, i responded that 1) i *hadn't* done anything of the sort, but 2) i really didn't CARE anymore if they hated it when I "called them out" because they *did* do and say shitty things sometimes. so if they didn't want me to say anything, either stop doing and saying shitty things, or unfriend me.

the responses were reiterations about hating when i point out when they are being nasty, screaming about how my "new friends" are taking me away from them, how they are "losing me to my new friends" (and I don't even know who these "new friends" are supposed to even be? I guess anyone who isn't THAT specific friend?) and some other things, that i genuinely don't even remember anymore... and i can't look them up, because they blocked me.

and my primary emotion over that? relief. relief and a fervent hope that they don't *forget* that they were this angry at me and unblock me again in a week.

this was my friend. my friend who has a brain injury. and i am relieved to be done dealing with them. i'm sad this happened, because if i could have just been a better person... i should have just kept my mouth shut or something. right?

my friend is a child because they literally can't not be. i was a child today because i lost my temper. but i'm not sorry, and i won't apologize, because i still just feel... relieved.

so i guess... i just need to come to terms with being that kind of a person.

anyway... sorry. i just needed to get that all out.

[rxttenfish]

legitimately think the state of media literacy on this website would increase if nyall actively seeked out and consumed disgusting media. the vilest media. the gross shit.

[echoweaver]

Check in Tag

Thanks for the tag, @anamoon63​

Why did you choose your url?

I’ve been using the username Echoweaver, or Echo Weaver, for probably 20 years. At the dawn of the commercial Internet, I used Echo because I loved the Greek legend of Echo and Narcissus. That username quickly became impossible to get, so I stuck it together with the name of an online fiction club I was president of at that time, World Weavers.

I love it because you can take it so many different ways. Weaving a tapestry of echoes seems like a callout to roleplaying or writing fiction or other flights of the imagination :).

How long have you’ve been on Tumblr?

Buh. I looked this up for a different tag some point in the past. I burned out and dropped from Simdom for three years and then returned during the pandemic when I needed something to do other than read news. It was a good decision.

Do you have a queue tag?

I don’t know what a queue tag is either. I have a queue, and I try to usefully tag my posts. Does that count?

Why did you start your blog in the first place?

I’ve been blogging Sims 3 on-and-off since 2009. The Samples have literally been running since then. Ha! At some point I discovered that a lot of the Sims blogging had migrated to Tumblr so I checked it out. As you learn when I have a fit of the grumps, I’ve never really adapted to the format over here. But I like the people and the stories, so I try to adapt.

Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

My icon is my simself petting a turtle from my short-lived, long-hiatus Waypoint challenge, where my simself foundress was marooned on a desert island. I don’t have a turtle, but I thought the animation was so full of wonder and delight.

Why did you choose your header?

It’s a pic of sims being chaotic. I love that about sims. Even though I gravitate toward mostly-serious stories, I never want to lose the whimsy and absurdity that is Sims.

What’s your post with the most notes?

Definitely the post I made about how to optimize your TS3 game. I still get notifications of it being shared around.

How many mutuals do you have?

I deliberately don’t check. I feel pretty much the same as @anamoon63, which is that mutuals are people I interact with. In the last few months, I’ve been feeling like I’ve finally reached a point of RELATIONSHIPS here that rivals my heyday on WordPress. So.... maybe 10? If that includes you, thanks 🥰

How many followers do you have?

I hover around mid-200s. That’s not going to win me any awards, but I’ve had to stop following back and even trim some of my follows because I’ve hit my limit of what I can read. I basically think this is a phony number anyway. See question above.

How many people do you follow?

Somewhere in the low 200s, which is still a bonkers number. I read the folks I follow.

Probably half are pre-hiatus folks who don’t post anymore but who I want to hear from in case they do.

Have you ever made a shit post?

I spent a stupid amount of time pondering the answer to this, but I think no.

Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

I was going to say once, but I guess it’s been three times. Only one on Tumblr. The other two were on the official Sims 3 forum.

The first time, I fell in love with a Harry Potter world that someone else had created and posted to a thread on thesims3. The creator had since disappeared, and the Pets patch had broken the rabbithole rugs used in the world. I updated the rugs and posted the fix with credits to the creator, but the user WrittenReg accused me of plagiarism. It became a bit of a flamewar, and they recruited folks from some other thread to come harass me. I left, but I didn’t take down the updated world. The creator never came back, and folks continued to download mine until a DIFFERENT creator did a bigger update to the world and posted that. I’m not sure if that creator dealt with plagiarism accusations.

The second time was my fault and very brief. I joined a thread on thesims3 celebrating toddlers with an emphasis on pressuring the devs to add toddlers to TS4. I discovered that the ringleader of that thread was following staffers around on other media and posting complaints, and that hit a button for me. I said she was not a nice person and stalking staffers was bad and left. I got a warning from EA later. I’m not sure why I reacted SO strongly. What the ringleader was dong was rude but not nearly as rude as what Sims staffers deal with on a daily basis. She wasn’t doxxing anyone.

The third time was here. It was short but got under my fingernails in large part because it wasn’t about sims. I hooked up with a simsblogger I had followed in the WordPress world whose work I loved. We started chatting and had a brief honeymoon of mutual admiration. Then she started posting essays about gender. Now, if you have been following me for long enough, you might’ve learned that my spouse is a late-transitioning trans woman who came out (to me and herself) almost four years ago after 16 years of marriage. My LIFE has been gender for years. I’m taking notes for a book. I am a bisexual woman who was active in helping my wife discover and accept herself, and I was completely blindsided by how difficult it has been to adjust to her transformation. I have tried to be active in helping transitioning spouses find their voice and learn that they are not alone. One thing I say to sum up my experience is, “You may think gender is complicated, but it’s more complicated than that.” So... it turned out to be actually painful to read a series of essays by someone who reduced gender to high heels and lipstick and claimed that she was unaffected by gender because she grew up in an environment where femme appearance wasn’t valued. I tried to engage with her about my experience of how deep gender really goes, but she ignored me. So I finally commented something like, “You seem to be really attached to this story you’re telling about gender, but it’s not real. Since you’re not responding, this is the last time I’ll comment about this issue.” She unfollowed me and posted a big public essay about how she was coping with internet hate that was clearly about me. I ranted to my wife and posted a vague tumblr about staying away from the crazy, and I left it at that. But it has haunted me for a while. I thought I was being restrained, and though I may be being overly kind in my memory of what I commented, I actually put work into NOT making it accusatory. I guess social networking is what it is.

How do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this’ posts?

I don’t reblog anything that carries any kind of guilt trip to share.

Do you like tag games?

I do! It’s a way to get to know people in my community. I sometimes get overwhelmed by how many tag/ask games are circulating, and I have weird self-consciousness about tagging other folks.

Which of your mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

Probably berrysweetboutique, who I’m not going to actually tag because in this context it feels weird. Overall, though, I don’t pay that much attention.

Do you have a crush on a mutual?

Lol. If you  mean crush on someone’s CREATIVITY, then totally. I take myself fairly seriously as a writer, though I haven’t done much serious writing since my kid was born 11+ years ago. I use my sims game to build emergent stories from the gameplay, and I like it as a low-pressure way to keep my creative braincells from atrophy. But some of you folks tell AMAZING stories using this game. I try not to let it hit me in the self-esteem 😅.

Dur.... so can I tag somebody? What if they don’t like being tagged?? Argh! Maybe @rebouks, @zosa95, and @nocturnalazure?

[fang11803]

Wrow Colleen i sure am glad you reblogged that artist questions list three times today. I'm sure all of your followers and mutuals have already flooded your inbox with numbers, because its really easy to just click on a blog and type a single number into someone's ask box and hit the submit button, thus giving you the illusion that you aren't screaming into a void, but i just GOTTA KNOW what your answers would be for EVERY QUESTION, please.

Golly random anon, I'd be happy to do that. In fact, this will be the only ask I'll answer out of the windfall of messages in my inbox, because it's so convenient to have allllllll the answers on one post instead of many individual posts. How helpful of you.

1. Art programs you have but don't use: I've had a program on my computer for a while that lets you draw only in hexagons. It's neat but has limited uses.

2. Is it easier to draw someone facing left, right, or center: Left.

3. What ideas come from when you were little: Well, Fang is my oldest oc, so anything having to do with her. I had a lot of cool ideas about werewolves when i was 12.

4. Fav character/subject that is a bitch to draw: I like plants a lot, especially Weird Plants(tm). The issue is when it comes to making a bunch of foliage for a background, i end up making everything look too samey or too busy.

5. How much of your art do you post online vs. Keep to yourself: I keep 90% of it to myself now for two reasons. 1) little to no feedback on pieces i worked hard on. 2) number 2 is personal but related to number 1.

6. Anything that might inspire you subconsciously: music, probably. Music affects my mood which affects what i want to draw.

7. A medium of art you dont work in but appreciate: Anytuing related to sculpture. From ceramics to metal work that stuff is cool af.

8. What's an old art project idea that you've lost interest in: when i was about 22 i had this idea for a comic series that was just me illustrating dreams from my journal. I didn't get very far because i didn't think people would enjoy it.

9. What are your file name conventions: up until I save the final draft it's called whatever, but after I'm done I usually do title_year_intendedUse

10. Favorite piece of clothing to draw: Jackets. Or those skirt things i made up for world building purposes.

11. Do you listen to anything while drawing: Sometimes, usually music.

12. Easiest part of the body to draw: Hands.

13. Skip. Unnecessary drama starter.

14. Any favorite motifs: i love celestial bodies and floating crystals. And eyes.

15. *where* do i draw: at home. On my bed or at my desk.

16. Something you are good at but don't really have fun doing: Clouds imo. They sure are there. In the sky.

17. Do you eat/drink while drawing: No thats messy

18. An estimate of how much art supplies you've broken: ive worn out two drawing tablets and dried out much acrylic paint.

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw: jewelry

20. Something everyone else finds hard to draw but you enjoy: architecture and interiors in perspective. I don't bother most of the time, but i really enjoy it when i take the time. It's like a puzzle.

21. Art styles nothing like your own, but you like anyways: pixel artists are Next Level Coolness

22. What physical exercises do you do before drawing: i do wrist stretches

23. Do you use different layer modes: yes? Work smart party hard.

24. Do your references include stock images: if i can't draw the thing i google it and upload all the results directly into my brain and then hopefully i can draw it afterwards.

25. Something your art has been compared to that you were NOT inspired by: one time someone saw a picture of Bill and asked why I drew a genderbend of that green haired girl from code geass, which I had never heard of at that point.

26. What's a piece that got a wildly different interpretation from what you intended: have you ever been part of an art pipeline where you hand your drawing off to be digitally inked, and the other artist completely misinterprets the facial expressions you gave the characters, because this has happened on several occasions!

27. Do you warm up (etc): No oh my god.

28. Any art events you have participated in in the past: ive participated in a zine and a few game jams.

29. Media you love but doesn't inspire you artistically: most podcasts. I don't really draw anything for podcasts.

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated: i once did a big painting of Korra and Raava in a field of stars that i thought was beautiful but nobody else seemed to like it. I want to get it framed someday.

[badsext]

A Comedy of Errors: Nathan Young x Female Reader

This was a combination of a request from my friend @elliethesuperfruitlover for a story where Klaus and reader are exchanging horny messages all day, then go crazy on each other when they finally see each other. That is combined with an anon request I received for a Nathan fic wherein the reader notices his boner and they have dirty filthy sex with loud moaning, biting, etc. I took some liberties and changed a few things to fit the narrative. I hope you like it 😚 Warning: Smut (of course)!

——————————————————

‘I had a dream about you last night.’ You knew a spicy little text like that would get a reply, even at 9:00 AM. And it was true, you’d had a filthy sex dream about Nathan Young and woke up horny as hell.

You pictured him zipping himself into that orange jumpsuit, then checking his phone and grinning like a jackass with his imagination running wild. He responded immediately, begging for details. But you loved teasing him. You were going to make him work for it, dropping hints and innuendos all day long.

As soon as the probation worker sent him home, Nathan headed for your place. But first a quick stop for something to spice up your evening for less than 20 quid. Double cream, a jar of maraschino cherries, a (stolen) bottle of vodka and ultra thin condoms that claimed to provide a tingling sensation. Nathan was very pleased with himself and optimistic about the evenings events. He became so distracted daydreaming about your naked curves that he ran smack into another pedestrian, sending the contents of his grocery bag toppling onto the sidewalk.

Nathan immediately let out a series of swears until he realized that this human obstacle was a wisp of a woman old enough to be someone’s gran. The impact had knocked her to the ground. He apologized and tried to help her back up, but his clumsy effort only made matters worse. The old broad was mortified. Help!,” she shrieked. “This man is molesting me!”

Nathan panicked, grabbing whatever was on the ground and stuffing it back into his bag so he could get the hell out of there.

After getting on the bus he noticed the cherry juice leaking all over everything in the bag and instead of condoms he had taken the old lady’s rash ointment. He sighed, abandoning the whole sticky mess and cutting his losses. He patted the bottle of vodka still safely tucked into his pocket. ‘Fuck it,’ he thought, sneaking a quick swig, then took a seat by the window.

By this time you knew he had already left the community center, so you sent him some extra motivation.

‘Hurry, I’m so wet!’ 💦

Nathan started to get hard and the fact that he was on public transport made no difference. His lust knew no such limits. ‘On the way’ 🍆

He looked out the window to see what street he was on and it suddenly dawned on him that he was headed in the wrong direction. He had gotten on the wrong bus! How could this get any worse, he thought, signaling the driver to get off at the next stop. He exited the bus like a shot and ran haphazardly across the street, his boner leading the way like a divining rod.

A car smashed into him going about forty miles an hour, enough to snap several of his important vertebra. Nathan heard the loud crunch of metal against bone before hitting the pavement and losing consciousness. Shocked onlookers started to gather and emergency services were called. Nathan expired in a pile of gore and debris just seconds before the ambulance arrived.

The paramedic examining him couldn’t find a pulse, so she administered CPR, but it was no use. He was pronounced dead on the scene. She had already called the coroner, placed a sheet over his body, and began filling out the paperwork when she noticed it. A conspicuous lump forming under the sheet. She dismissed it as nothing but a post mortem involuntary spasm until he sat up and threw off the sheet with a loud gasp. The paramedic stared back at him in shock. Nathan looked down at his erection, then back up to her and winked. “Thanks, love.” He got up and dusted himself off. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta get home to my girl, so I can fuck her brains out.” Priorities!

He arrived at your door panting and sweating. “Jesus, Nathan! You look like hell,” you teased, pulling him inside by his shirt. Your mouths converged, tongues fighting for dominance like a couple of territorial moray eels.

He tasted pleasantly of cherries and vodka. You pried your mouth away from his to playfully admonish him. “You’ve been drinking already I see...and why are you so sticky?,” you said, tracing your thumb over his lips and chin.

“I’m gonna make you sticky.” His breathy retort tickled your ear as his hand crept under your t-shirt to play with your nipple. You could feel yourself getting wet at his touch.

“Mmm.” You grabbed his stiff cock through his jeans.

He groaned, peeling your shirt off and eagerly cupping your breasts. “You wouldn’t believe what I went through to get here. A fucking quest!” Then he whipped his shirt off dramatically for emphasis, mussing his curls.

“Ooh. Did you slay a dragon?” You unbuckled his belt and pulled it through the loops with a snap, dominatrix style.

“No, but I died.”

You learned of Nathan’s immortality soon after meeting him. Following the initial shock you discovered it was a huge turn on. “Oh, fuck,” you gasped, gliding your hands down his chest. Nathan cracked a sly smile as you drew closer, kissing and nibbling his neck. You pressed your cheek to his to body to listen to his beating heart. “Was it painful?,” you asked, gazing up into his eyes, deep green pools of chaos.

“Excruciating.”

You looked back at him as if to say ‘no more fucking around.’ You led him back to your room and made him sit on the edge of the bed. You knelt down between his legs. “It looks like you need some T...” You unfastened the button on his jeans...”L” You unzipped them...”C”....You pulled them off along with his boxers. You began stroking his stiff cock gently with your fingertips. Nathan struggled to keep his cool. He propped himself up on his elbows to watch you work. His ragged breath betrayed him as you began to nuzzle him, dragging your lips and nose over his smooth, sensitive flesh. You licked his length and lapped playfully at the little drop of pre-cum at the tip. He whimpered. His eyes shut tight and his hands grasped the sheets.

Nathan let out a helpless moan as you took him into your mouth, bobbing slowly up and down, savoring him. You became lost in the act until you noticed Nathan’s breath change. “If you do that any more I’m gonna come,” he said with desperation in his voice.

You released his cock and raked your fingernails down the length of his thighs before standing up and sliding your panties to the floor. Nathan’s green eyes studied you, hazy with lust. He latched his mouth to your nipples, suckling each one them ravenously as his hand crept between your legs.

“Oh, no,” he said suddenly, his voice muffled between your breasts.

“Oh, no what? What’s wrong?”

“That old lady has our condoms.”

“Nathan, what the fuck are you talking about? I have an IUD....birth control. I got it a month ago.”

“So I get to fuck you raw?....unenCUMbered?” He smiled, and wagged his eyebrows.

You nodded with a giggle at his enthusiasm...”Wait, Nathan, was that a pun? You know that’s grounds for PUNishment.” He bit his lip, trying to hide his excitement.

You climbed on top of him, kissing him roughly, forcing his head into the pillow. Then silk ropes were used to secure his wrists to the bedposts crucifixion style. Nathan flicked his tongue at you defiantly as you straddled his face. “I’m going to teach you a lesson,” you said, lowering your most sensitive flesh onto his open mouth. You gasped at the exquisite feeling of his warm tongue on your clit. You ground your hips against him over and over, the rush of adrenaline filling your head. Using him the way he liked to be used. In this moment he existed only for your pleasure, your insatiable need. Your breath grew heavier, building to a sort of primal growl. Then the sudden pulse of your muscles, echoing the pleasure radiating from your core to every inch of your body.

After coming back to your senses, you realized you were squeezing the poor boy to death with your thighs. When you looked down Nathan was still. His neutral expression started making you nervous. “Nathan? Nathan?! “ You shook him. “Nathan?”

He opened his eyes. “What, love, I was just quietly basking in the afterglow,” he said, innocently fluttering his long eyelashes.

You hit him with the nearest pillow. “Jesus, Nathan I though you were...you know! I thought I might have...”

Nathan laughed. “You thought you smothered me to death with your fanny?”

You were embarrassed, but you had to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. “You are such a little shit,” you said with your hands covering your face.

“Yeah, but you love me anyway. Now, let me fuck that juicy little fanny before I go mad!” Nathan rolled on top you and searched your eyes for reassurance. Then he lined himself up with your entrance and moaned as he delved into your silky softness for the first time without protection.

You grabbed him by the ass and shoved him in as far as he would go. He started achingly slow, so you bit his chin and raked your fingernails over his shoulder blades. Nathan was always encouraged by a little bit of pain. He drove into you over and over, with vigor and purpose. You felt yourself unraveling once more. Your voice rang out at the peak of orgasm, then mumbled unintelligibly into his neck as you savored the rush of dopamine that flooded your brain. You watched his face contort as he came inside you. Nathan’s body suddenly tensed, then twitched. He made a new sound, vulnerable and uninhibited. He sighed contentedly and it looked like he wanted to say something. Of course you knew exactly what he wanted to say. You almost said it yourself. If he can’t bring himself to say it, here comes a joke, you thought, but Nathan just smiled shyly and laid down beside you. Then his hand crept nervously under the covers to hold yours.

@elliethesuperfruitlover @bubblyani @vinawyatt @chipster-21 @chokemerobert @helena-way07 @moorehollandplz @punknatch @renegadesheehan @dandycandy75 @meowbearspandas29 @taintedrosebud @bi-satanist @gunnerxsenpai @allthingsextrordinary @royhey @bitshy-life @honeymelon22 @gurlimtired @nobodydoodle @anonymouscherry @clownass-hoe @shuckinsquib @that-boi-misfits @klaushollandyoung

[inkribbon796]

The Marvelous Misadventures of One: S. Marvin Argentum Ch. 4: Unsettled

Summary: Marvin and his team go to take on the hunters, and to hopefully get back to Egoton in time.

Post A/N: *Host glares at me* Why is he back so early?

Me: *throws hands up* I tried! Okay!

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4

It took a couple days for them to get all the supplies they needed, Techno insisting that a war could not be won without supplies. But when they did and Ghostbur was hanging at some hideout with Techno’s sister, they went up to the hunter’s base and waited a safe distance away from it. Philza sent a couple of his crow familiars to scout ahead.

Marvin dared to hope that it wouldn’t come to anything too severe, like wiping out the entire Guild. He didn’t think they deserved that. After all, everyone on Spade’s list of “people willing to burn an entire city of innocent people” were already dead so he hoped that meant everyone else was fine.

Although he didn’t like the idea of justifying a barely human glitch demon’s murder spree. Especially if that person was an evil Logan.

“So if Plan A an’[1] B don’t work,” Marvin told Techno and Quackity.

“Trust me, these assholes are going to go with the third option,” Quackity smiled, tossing Marvin a potion and the underhanded a second one. “They’re hunters, being dumb and violent is in their blood. I’ve never met a hunter that hasn’t been like Dream.”

“I’ve met a couple of decent ones, Dream’s not so bad,” Techno disagreed.

“Are you fuckin’ serious right now?” Quackity demanded angrily.

“Oi![2] Quit being children, yer[3] gonna[4] give us away!” Phil yelled at them. He glanced at Taylor and Marvin. “Get goin’ an’ we’ll be waitin’ fer the signal.”[5]

“Thank you,” the hunter told him.

“Just don’t blame yerself[6] when it ends violently,” Phil warned, both him and Techno down some invisibility potions and then disappearing.

Marvin and Taylor then walked up to the base and a couple hunters were already waiting for them.

“Bout[7] time you showed back up,” one of the hunters said, the Guildmaster quickly coming out.

“Guildmaster, I challenge you—” Taylor began but the Guildmaster just fired at them. Marvin immediately summoned his cards to deflect the shot but Techno dived in front with a massive tower shield appearing to tank the hit.

A cloud of black began to head towards them as the squawking of hundreds of crowds began to descend on them.

Techno pulled some ash-greyed skulls and his blood red aura curled around them and bones began to construct around them. The human skeletal figures had three heads a piece and gore hanging off the bones, they were just a spinal column with massive rib cages and they were three times the size of a normal human. Instantly they began spitting napalm-like fire and began attacking everything around him. Some of the bursts of fire almost hit Marvin.

Chaos erupted immediately, and Techno flung himself into the fray, his axe gleaming in the sunlight.

“Fucking demons!” Taylor shouted in anger as they raced towards the Guildmaster, both them and Marvin throwing magic at the Guildmaster.

The fight itself was relatively quick, Taylor trying to get a duel with the Guildmaster, and more and more hunters were quickly turning to side with Taylor for multiple reasons. But right before Taylor could fire on the Guildmaster, who was weakened by all the fights and skirmishes she’d been in since May, a single poker chip flew towards her.

It was coated with potent magic and sliced through her skull. The smiley face on it was coated with blood.

The fight switched on a dime as all the hunters looked at Quackity. The skeletal abomination that Techno had summoned was finally killed, bodies strewn around him. Phil was summoning some little configurations of magic to keep Techno fighting something until his bloodlust calmed down.

“What the hell!?” Taylor shouted at Quackity.

Quackity shrugged, “Hey, she was going to kill you, you should be thanking me.”

“She was defeated,” Taylor spat.

“Apparently not if she almost took your fucking head off,” Quackity dismissed.

“I should take your head off,” Taylor spat.

“Quackity, take Slime an’[1] Fundy an’[1] go,” Phil ordered sternly.

“Fine,” Quackity shrugged. “Got shit ta[8] do anyways.”

Taylor was already summoning up magic and Slime turned into a mass of green gloop that Quackity took with him, throwing down some potions to make him and Fundy faster as they left.

Taylor sent some hunters after them, but they would lose them. Quackity too ruthless to let them take or capture him or Fundy. The new Guildmaster turned to Marvin. “We’ll meet you at Egoton, I just have to take care of this mess first.”

“Deal, don’t be late,” Marvin ordered.

“We’ll follow, maybe we can keep the feds off the party,” Taylor promised him.

“I’ll tell e’eryone ta expect yah then,”[9] Marvin warned.

“Good,” Taylor yelled as they raced off after Quackity.

That left Marvin to tell Chase the good news to the other heroes . . . or he would have. His calls and messages weren’t getting through to anyone, even if he used Phil’s phone. It made Marvin uneasy.

So they were forced to hitch a ride in Thompson’s jeep when they had issues getting a train ride. It let Marvin talk to the two very battle experienced demons and desperately hope they weren’t already too late. They were running out of time. There were only four days left and Marvin knew they needed all the time they could get.

Marvin was currently driving with Techno and Ghostbur currently napping in the back of the car. Ghostbur was leaning up against Techno.

“Like I said,” Philza smiled. “If yer[3] ever in the area when we are, yer[3] welcome ta[8] a couple rounds.”

“Ain’t[10] that a death pit?” Marvin asked.

“Yeah, maybe yeh wanna wait until yer one ‘a us,”[11] Philza smiled. “Yeh look like yer one life away from turnin’.”[12]

“I hope I die then, doesn’t seem that good ta[8] be a demon,” Marvin told him.

“Sometimes it sucks,” Phil admitted. “Yer never full, never content. Yeh always feel like yeh should be doin’ something. But it has its perks sometimes.”[13]

The avian demon looked back at Ghostbur and Techno, smiling a bit. “How’s Tommy doin’[14] these days?”

“He was alright last time I saw him,” Marvin reported. “He’s a good kid.”

Phil smiled, “Yeah he’s a lil’[15] shit but he’s got his moments. Glad him an’[1] Tubbo are back on good terms.”

“So what happened ta[8] him ta[8] make him move out?” Marvin asked. “If I’m allowed ta[8] ask.”

“Tommy was in a rough place an’ he need ta get away from Dream, he lived with Techno fer a while an’ then,”[16] Phil trailed off, waving off with his hand. “Tommy needs ta[8] stay away from Dream. It’s not my business ta[8] talk about something he doesn’t wanna[17] talk about. Ask Tommy.”

Marvin left the topic at that and after switching off between Phil and then Techno they made it back to Egoton in almost record time.

After a nap in a very uncomfortable car, Marvin realized a lot of hours too late that Host could have cut their travel time down to minutes and he was just a little bit pissed about that. But they were here, and everything was going to be alright.

Phil stopped at a gas station right outside Egoton’s city limits, after finally receiving a text from Ethan. The young hero was confused at the urgency, but he promised everything was alright. So Marvin was finally feeling less anxious and stressed.

“We got a couple days,” Marvin smiled, feeling victorious, a coffee in his hands. “We’ll prepare an’[1] then we’ll—”

Marvin’s proclamation cut off when he slammed into an almost invisible barrier, his mask protecting him from breaking his nose.

“The fook[18]?” Marvin spat.

Techno walked up and braced his hand on the barrier. “That’s not good.”

Then he took out an axe and tried to cut his way in but the barrier held.

“Bruh,” Techno looked back at Phil, who was already summoning some crows.

Ghostbur tried to phase through the barrier, but he only slammed against it. “What, why can’t I—”

“Pardon the Host, he thought that Marvin would take longer.”

Marvin glanced around, trying to find the Host, but the four of them were pushed back as the Host almost seemed to emerge from the barrier in a flurry of words.

“Host, what the fook[18],” Marvin spat, only frustrated instead of furiously angry.

“Oh, Host, can you let us in?” Ghost asked politely. “Are people already fighting?”

“No, Marvin and the others are early,” the Host dismissed.

“Then let us in,” Marvin felt an ugly weight settling in his gut.

“Oh Marvin,” the Host smiled. “The Host cannot have Marvin arrive too soon. All his hard work would go to waste.”

“Yeh[19] bastard!” Marvin spat. “We’re supposed ta[8] take this on ta’gether[20]!”

“No,” the Host corrected with an eerie smile. “The Host’s sole mission is to protect his family. Regardless of the goals of the other heroes or villains. The Host has put too much effort and correction to do anything less. Marvin should not worry, the Host will ensure he does not remember this altercation.”

“People are gonna[4] die!” Marvin spat, starting to throw his magic against the Host, his aura wiping it away as if Marvin had merely sneezed at him.

“Marvin does not know what the Host has sacrificed to protect people, he has done everything in his power to protect those close to him,” the Host’s aura wiped around him, words and narrations charging the air. “And the Host will not allow Marvin to ruin it.”

The Host snapped his fingers and his narrations wrapped around the group as Marvin and the others were almost pushed into another space as time began to tick on.

After all, the Host had a wedding to prepare for.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Accessibility Translations:

1. and

2. Hey! (or: Wait a second!)

3. you’re

4. going to

5. Get going and we’ll be waiting for the signal.

6. yourself

7. About

8. to

9. I’ll tell everyone to expect you then

10. Isn’t

11. Yeah, maybe you want to wait until you’re one of us

12. You look like you’re one life away from turning.

13. You’re never full, never content. You always feel like you should be doing something. But it has its perks sometimes.

14. doing

15. little

16. Tommy was in a rough place and he need to get away from Dream, he lived with Techno for a while and then

17. want to

18. fuck

19. You

20. together

[sroloc--elbisivni]

*sits down* *pours a glass of water* *pours one for scott westerfeld* *sips*

so here’s my pitch for an adaptation of Uglies specifically and the Uglies quartet* more generally. vague spoilers. i can’t figure out how to make the readmore work anymore so hit J or start scrolling fast.

*theoretically it’s a trilogy with a bonus novel, but I fuckin love Extras.

First, it’s a webseries, because Hollywood refuses to  option a series brutally dissecting the culture of cosmetic surgery and brainwashing through a dystopian lens (gee I wonder why).

The first few videos are amateur vlogging, taking us through the first part of Uglies, aka “Tally and Shay fuck around and find out.” it’s their shared dark web youtube channel, maybe it’s uploaded to the Crims’ private server or something and as bonus content sometimes we see videos that Shay made with Zane before the Crims cut out. either way we have to be convinced, as an audiences, that the girls are sure this is secure. The scene with Paris is never in-video, or if it is it’s just audio of Tally recording herself breaking into the party, so we don’t see the Pretties.

anyway. Tally’s hoverboarding saga, the hypothetical makeover side, sneaking out to the ruins, the good shit. it’s a webseries from the PoV of two kids who don’t know too much about making videos so shots are limited and we can really lean into the suggestions of this world instead of trying to build whole sets.

use of CGI, but only for detail work, leaning into the uncanny valley, making the world of Tally’s city very clean and polished, too clean, and putting skeletons in the Rusty Ruins.

the hoverboarding-down-a-roller-coaster has to be in there, preferably filmed on a GoPro equivalent, but if there isn’t enough budget we cut away from a painted shot of the ruins where Tally’s at the top into static bc the camera went too fast and then it’s Tally and Shay losing their minds with the adrenaline comedown and they kiss nope where was i

Shay’s letter--i can’t remember if it being on paper was a plot point in the books but I’m really feeling video message, ideally uploaded to the same channel, and then when Special Circumstances drop the bomb on Tally we as the audience go oh shit. they’ve seen everything.

this is where the mode of the story changes--no more amateur vlogging, now it’s Tally recording reports for SC. They’re not transmitted, so we just get this video diary of Tally’s trip, a little camera running the whole time, and then....I'm not sure whether it’s Tally talking to herself to vent her feelings, or the footage is cut together as a summary and the video is prefaced with a Very Official Special Circumstances report, so it’s like a debriefing.

The Smoke. That whole thing. the very last part is chaos and confusion and found footage. >:)

PART 3, which is Tally’s video diary of the whole next part of the trip with David. This part is more edited, more condensed, than the earlier parts, and the connecting throughline isn’t always clear. some of it is just the two of them talking, some of it is long epic scenery shots, some of it is after everything goes down and they get Shay back and they’re having these Very Serious Discussions, and those are shot like...the camera is being the record. except for where it isn’t.

SPEAKING OF SHAY. if it’s at all possible to pull this off, Shay is cast with two different actors, one for the first two thirds and one for the last third (and most of Pretties). The first Shay is an actual teenager, zits and all, not a beauty by any means. The second Shay is classic Hollywood cast-a-20-something-as-a-teen, rounded out with makeup to be just inside the uncanny valley. surrounded by everyone else, who’s been living in the woods. This should be the most jarring thing.

The last video is a discussion of informed consent, and the making the plan happens largely offscreen so then there’s a long sequence of Tally hoverboarding back to the city (shot by drone) where she’s just narrating, and the leadup to the ‘make me pretty’ penny dropping that oh. This is Tally leaving a message for herself and she’s not sure who she’s going to be when she watches it.

PRETTIES. Less of an outline on this one, but it works from the same framework of three parts, three storytelling styles--the first part is total Instagram Influencer, professional vlogging, glitz and party culture. The camera is floating now so Tally’s always in frame. Same trick pulled with Tally’s actor so you’re looking at actual different people. Tally and Shay are dating but the conflict is them both refusing to talk about whether this is a casual thing or an actual relationship so when the thing with zane happens it’s a mess.

when tally and zane start looking for the pills, that’s when it flips back to a narration style similar to Uglies, where Tally’s carrying the camera and they’re documenting their crazy adventures, thumbing their noses at SC. maybe it’s also intercut with like, news stories, because trying to film the ice rink scene would be bananas. unreliable narration as they try to pretend they’re completely law abiding.

 from the balloon and onwards, it’s all found footage. maybe anthropological stuff of the village, official reports, and then those end with the camera falling to the floor as the anthropologist is like ‘you’re not supposed to be--’ but we do make it all the way to the camp and the Specials showing up, and this is where the CGI comes in again to get just that over the edge of weird badwrong.

Specials is a mix of surveillance footage, recorded reports, and callbacks to the Crims’ channel in Uglies--at least one shot-for-shot remake but way more dangerous. sometimes the camera is just left running on a log in their campsite and no one even notices, and this is the tragedy, they’ve grown so used to their lives being recorded that they don’t even bother to care.

From Tally going down in Deigo until her message at the end, she doesn’t appear on screen, but she does carry the camera in to her saying goodbye to zane.

HEY REMEMBER HOW I LOVE EXTRAS? EXTRAS IS A MOVIE.

by this point there’s enough following and enough buildup that you might actually get a movie out of this, especially since it’s tackling things that are less explicitly ‘societally expected body modification is bad.’

it’s also dissecting the meta narrative that’s been set up throughout the webseries--it starts with Aya recording herself talking to Moggle, and then we zoom out, getting Moggle in the shot, and from there it’s just leaning into the wild fucking scope of this book. mag lev train? hell yeah. mountain?? hell yeah. the flaws in a society obsessed with reputation and vlogging which cannot be successfully explored within that medium??? hell YEAH. I FUCKING LOVE EXTRAS.

I personally think it would be very cool and narratively sexy if the entire thing was subtitled in English and the characters spoke in Japanese except where they switch into English, like in the book, but I also get like....familiarity and the danger of exoticizing. but driving home that this is the whole world that lives like this.

footage from the webseries is recut and narrated over into something more professional, and interspersed with the movie to catch up people who haven’t watched the webseries, and also to show how the narrative of history gets cleaned up. but if it’s done right, three things should happen:

We barely see anything of Tally’s Ugly days and the Smoke. There are shots of her chatting with her friends and laughing, way back from the Ugly days or the Pretty ones, but we never hear her voice except for the final letter

Shay and the rest of the Crims get important footing in the narrative but Zane is nowhere to be seen.

everyone in the audience, including people who haven’t read the books or watched the webseries, should LOSE THEIR MINDS when she shows up

There’s a post-credits scene of everyone covered in cake after it exploded.

*pauses to drink water* in conclusion give me licensing rights and a good director.

[vg-sanctuary]

The World Ends with You

Jupiter - DS - 2008

[screenshots from Nintendo Life, jack-reviews.com, and LPArchive; please excuse the low res, I couldn’t find better ones]

TWEWY is an RPG with modern (circa 2008) style and character designs by Tetsuya Nomura, the director of Kingdom Hearts. I meant to write about it the day its sequel NEO: TWEWY came out but missed that by a few days. anyway, I think it's reasonable to call this game the epitome of the Nintendo DS. it has every feature to be expected of any game on the wildly unique handheld: a touch-based minigame with wireless multiplayer and little bearing on the main game, a sleep mode puzzle, touch controls, forced use of both screens, and gameplay and plot designed to be enjoyed in short bursts. it's loaded with cool ideas, some of which are more than questionable, even barring the crazy DS features, hence the remakes. (savvy readers will notice I left out the iOS and Switch platforms and, while there are remakes of the game for both platforms that have extra content and a more elegant combat system, they don't hit quite like the DS original.)

I don't fancy myself an RPG fan for the most part. the usual high fantasy themes and turn based combat are boring to me. usually, if an RPG has either one I'm not interested, and this has neither of those. I decided to try TWEWY while collecting DS games, and the plot and combat had grabbed me within two hours. I haven't mentioned the awesome music and visuals, both wonderfully stylish and unique in the same way Persona's UI is stylish and unique, only this game uses the style on its game world and characters instead of menus.

the premise is the antisocial protagonist, Neku, wakes up in a killing game wherein each day has a mission that he and his partner either complete or face erasure. after a week of these missions he'll be free. I can’t tell you the massive general plot spoiler that makes the whole thing so compelling as it goes on, so this section of the post is sadly pretty short. there is an anime that goes over the main events, but it's only four hours long compared to the game's 20, character development is sometimes lacking in detail or totally inaccurate, and it generally doesn't include the hardships you would go through as a player e.g. having to try a boss five times.

almost everything about TWEWY's gameplay is intriguing, so I'll try to be concise. combat is a strange beast that comes from developer Jupiter's need to use both screens to the fullest. by the way, don't let this wall of text scare you away from the game; it introduces these mechanics much slower and it's easier to understand and use. the bottom screen is gesture-based ARPG combat where, for example, short swipes over an enemy makes Neku use a sword attack or touching somewhere on the screen makes him fire a bullet. the exact gestures and attacks are determined by what pins he's wearing. the top screen asks you to use the d-pad to attack with Neku’s partner and navigate along a tree of cards where getting the right card grants a star; enough of those allows you to use a powerful and health-restoring fusion attack. there's this green light puck that passes between characters when the one holding it does a finisher and multiplies the finisher's damage with each successful pass up to five times, but disappears if held by one character for too long. fortunately the game has an auto mode for the top screen that's roughly equivalent to mashing left or right on the d-pad so you don't have to try to split your brain between both, but you get a little more experience if that's turned off. I love the bottom screen and the idea of the top screen but could never really get my head around doing both at once. maybe the intent was to focus on the character that has the puck and leave the other standing still or spamming defense? (in NEO: TWEWY, the light puck mechanic was changed to beat drop combos, where using a different character to attack shortly after a finisher gives you some charge for a super. no attention splitting, just fun ARPG combat with an interesting combo system that can inform what pins you use.)

turning up the game's difficulty makes enemies stronger and mostly drops different pins. there aren't random encounters: you have to scan for enemies and mostly get to choose which encounters to take. you can choose to fight multiple in a row without getting health back between them and multiply your drop rate multiplier, with enemies getting stronger the more encounters you take. you get your health back when you return to the overworld, which cuts out a lot of the obligatory spending for healing items and the trouble of running out for the player. there are still some pins that can heal you during a battle, though.

leveling up, instead of arbitrarily increasing every stat, only increases your HP, but you can turn your level down to lower your HP and multiply the drop rate of pins by one for each level. other stats can be increased with clothes or food, with different foods permanently increasing different stats and have different calories. each character can only eat so much in a single real time day, which is wack but still interesting. the food system in NEO is similar except without the per-day limit, and I think it's a great idea that gives the player agency in terms of what stats they want to increase and whether they want larger or smaller boosts.

pins can evolve when leveled up enough, but may only evolve if you give them the right kind of pin points, which is like experience for pins. there's PP from battles, from the game's proto-StreetPass mingle mode (that you could only get randomly roughly every hour, from other folks in TWEWY's mingle mode, or from other DSes running any wireless software; thankfully this is removed from the remakes but it's a neat idea), and from turning off the game for up to seven real time days. if a pin reaches max level with the wrong kind of PP, you have to go get another one to evolve it, but I don't think there are any super rare pins that evolve. the game doesn't show what kind of PP you need to evolve a pin, so while it's a cool idea, there's a fair chance that you'll miss lots of evolutions and not even notice.

there are lots of rare pins that can be worn as a set to do something ridiculously powerful, but you have to go out of your way to get them, like the Darklit Planets. it's a set of seven pins that are useful alone, but if worn all together they become three times more powerful. they all drop rarely from bosses on the highest difficulty. I love wacky, mystical, obscenely powerful postgame stuff like this but can't be bothered to actually go and get it. some games give you their best weapons last, which is always a shame because there's nothing to use it on, but in TWEWY, there's a boss rush that saves your best time and lots of bosses to re-fight for their rare pins, so you'll have a reason to fight bosses until you've got every one of those rare pins.

speaking of postgame, TWEWY's is rather extensive, with a bonus day focused on the Tin Pin Slammer minigame and goofy non-canon alternate personalities plus four sort of tedious missions for every ingame day that unlock secret reports for much more lore about the Reapers' Game. (one of the missions for every day is "find and destroy the pig Noise," which mostly have puzzle-ish fights; one is killed by closing the DS and opening it again, which is the sleep mode puzzle I mentioned.) if you get them all, it unlocks a special scene in the ending, but again, I can't be bothered to do that kind of postgame. not all of it, anyway, the bonus day's missions are too tedious for me.

in Tin Pin Slammer, the minigame with almost no bearing on the main game, you use your pins to play kinda-sorta Beyblade. every pin has different stats, many of which are hidden, and different amounts of the different weapons to stun your opponents' pins with. it's a rather extensive side mode and a totally unnecessary inclusion, but really fun anyway, and can be played wirelessly with others. there are some other mechanics that are also interesting but not quite worth adding any more words to this ridiculously long post, including a brand trends system and an interesting way to limit running from fights.

even with all of these words and some pictures, I seriously can't offer a glimpse of the vibes, the combat, the music, the story, the characters, the entire energy of The World Ends with You in a blog post, and in my opinion, it's not the same without the crispy DS sprites or peculiar dual screen combat. if you like the DS, 2000s energy, or action RPGs, this is an essential addition to your library if you don't want to track down a DS copy or you prefer more elegant combat, try one of the remakes instead. you're this far into the blog post, so I'm sure you won't be disappointed. (NEO: TWEWY is very good too and has a free demo on PS4 and Switch; while not the same, it's still worth trying. it carries a modernized audiovisual energy of its predecessor, more elegant combat improvements to other TWEWY systems.)

[gendercensus]

How people found the survey

It’s day 12 of the 2020 Gender Census (closing 12th March), and there have been almost 16,000 participants, which is phenomenal. I’m still boggled! It’s 40% higher than last year, and over 4,500 more people than last year!

But anyway, since things have been going to well in the participation department, I’ve shifted over to the analysis department. A lot of my calculation spreadsheet stuff from last year still works, so I’m already able to see what’s popular this year and so on, which has saved me a lot of time and energy. I’m using it to analyse the results of the new questions: ages and referrals.

If you’ve read last year’s report you’ll know that I’ve been particularly concerned about making sure that older participants are represented. With that in mind, this year I added an age question and a referrer question.

I have previously asked about age as a one-off (2017), to see whether that could tell us anything useful or interesting, and it wasn’t particularly successful because the ages of participants were more representative of the usual age distribution of people on the internet and using social networks. That makes sense, because most people are finding the survey through social networks! In previous years I asked for an exact number. This year, to preserve anonymity in the public spreadsheet as much as possible (you never know), I split age answers into groups of 5 years. (11-15, 16-20, 21-25, etc.)

If you’ve been keeping up with status reports or looking at the progress spreadsheet you’ll know that participants over the age of 30 are not as common in the Gender Census. The percentage of participants aged 31+ is currently about 14%.

I also asked how participants found the survey, and the responses to this have been interestingly diverse (GoodReads, Penny Arcade forums, Pornhub??) but mainly focused on the Big Three:

Tumblr - 36.4%

Twitter - 19.8%

Facebook - 12.2%

That’s just over two thirds of participants from those three websites alone. (Runners up include Discord (9%), Reddit, our own mailing list and the Nonbinary Wiki.)

For the first few days Twitter was bringing in a lot more people than Tumblr, but then after a week Tumblr took the lead significantly. I suspect this might mean that Twitter is better for intense flash-in-the-pan viral activity, whereas Tumblr might be more slow and steady.

But the most interesting information can be gleaned by comparing age and referrer. It’s particularly interesting to me because I want to get more data from underrepresented age groups. Perhaps if some social networks are more frequented by those ages groups I can focus the survey’s presence more in those communities.

This is what I found:

This picture might be a little difficult to see, so I’ll do my best to describe it. (I don’t know how good Google Sheets is with screen readers but I’ll make sure this data shows up in the publicly viewable stuff-tracking spreadsheet too.) The table includes the Big Three referrers (Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook), plus the Gender Census mailing list. They cover almost three quarters of all participants.

Broadly speaking:

Tumblr was the most popular source for finding the survey among people under the age of 30, peaking in the 16-20 range.

Twitter is unusual for having a nice even age distribution of about 26-55, with no clear and definitive “peak” - 46-50 looks popular until you see that the sample size for that age range is pretty small at 121 participants.

Facebook covers a lot of the older age ranges starting at 41+, and excelling in the 56+ ranges too, though it should be noted that sample sizes for those age ranges shrink significantly.

The first three I included just because they were the most common. Those three sites cover all age ranges, more or less. But the Gender Census mailing list is of interest to me because it’s so far the joint most common way for people over the age of 70 to access the survey - and it is only common in that age range, even though about 4% of participants are coming from that source. If you look at it in isolation it’s also consistently common in the 50+ range.

[Not visible in this limited table: Discord and Instagram were particularly popular in the 15-and-under age group; 39% of participants are under 16 so far.]

So this tells me a few things about how I can move forward:

I was right to start crowdfunding for a mailserver so that I could run a proper mailing list. Older participants are much more likely to stay in tune with the survey using email, it seems - and ages 41 and over are only about 3% of survey participants. At first I used Mailchimp, and this year when I hit the 2,000 subscriber limit for the free tier I switched to the less sophisticated but well-suited TinyLetter, for the 5,000 subscriber limit. There are already 700 more subscribers so I feel good about that decision! If we go over 5,000 I will definitely be including mailing list service fees in the annual crowdfunding, because the mailing list is clearly an important way to get the word out to underrepresented groups.

I probably need to have a Facebook presence. Thanks, I hate it. The older age groups are not represented, the older age groups are often finding the survey on Facebook, and the survey doesn’t have a Facebook presence. The latter is because Facebook’s surveillance culture creeps me out so much. I’m currently undecided about how to move forward with this. Even if I have a Facebook page and post about the survey, since I left Facebook over 10 years ago it’s come to light that the posts of pages who don’t pay for attention are often not seen at all due to ~algorithms~ and that makes me uncomfortable. I’m honestly not sure what to do.

Anyway, if you’re curious enough to have read this far and you want to help more, sharing the link on Facebook and by email is a great way to get the survey out to underrepresented folks! Here is the survey URL for easy copy-and-pasting: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/gendercensus2020

[dontbesoweirdkira]

Ok, I was gonna ask you about something else, but after reading the part 2 of the Mic and the exchanged student, I'm in DIRE need to see the part 3 where she has to start her hero career and she, obviously, need his help(not because she is not capable of starting it by herself but because she just needs him to continue to be by her side like it always has been)! Pretty please! Thank you! 💗

A/N: SKSKSK hOw cOUlD i sAy nO to tHat prEtTy PwEasE uwu. Haha yeah totally i’ll do this. Sorry if this comes out a bit late i’m working on some things. Thanks for requesting <333 Any requests let me know!

-So you know that bonus thingy i did in the last one? Where the parents were mean and all that? Well let's continue with that story line, I feel like that’s a bit more interesting for this!

-So i feel like after everything went down, realistically your parents would have forced you to come home and not contact Hizashi. Which sucks because he was the only one that really believed in you, And Japan became like a second home, even though your japanese isn’t the best and you may not look like everyone, you grew to love it and appreciate it. The thought of going back home to your parents stormed in your stomach

-Hizashi hated the idea too, he felt like your parents were mentally abusive and he really hated the idea of you going back. He talked to you and wanted to know if you wanted to get others involved and what not so you didn’t have to go back and leave the school. But you didn’t want to go through that whole process

-Besides you were “almost an adult” and soon able to start your hero career. You somehow convinced him to let it go and have faith you’ll be okay.

-”Alright Y/N, If you ever want it, you can always have a job under me and my agency. Even if you don’t wanna be a hero, you can work on my radio show.”

-Damn leaving Present was like the hardest thing. He was like a positive father figure that you always wanted and finally got, then when everything was good it got ripped away. It hurt so badly.

-Plus present took it so hard because he felt it was his fault, ‘Why did i have to say something?’ ‘It’s all my fault’

-Going back to your home country was like heck? Your parents forced you to stop with all this “hero mess” and made you go on a “more stable” path. They took away all your devices and stuff so you can “focus” but in reality they wanted to make sure you weren’t contacting Present or looking into hero stuff.

-Damn You’re really wishing you took Present up on that offer and let him help you stay

-You couldn’t work on your quirk or train so while everyone was asleep you’d do exercises and warmups Present taught you

-In those few years you were so miserable, and all you wanted to do was go back to japan and go on the path you always wanted to. You missed Hizashi and the friends you had made, Here you were lonely and tired, but there you had so much life and happiness.

-So secretly you were saving money so as soon as you get a chance, you can get away. So occasionally you’s ask for 20 or so dollars to get “books” or “go to the mall” when in reality you were just storing the money away in your secret trust fund lol.

-By the time of graduation you had enough money saved up to go travel, thanks to the extra help of graduation money from family members of course.

-As soon as you got home you brought a ticket, reserved a hotel and packed all you bags and left to the airport by the early morning. Whew you felt as if you were running from the Feds and for some reason that gave you a rush of excitement you hadn’t felt in a long time.

-finally you get to see Hizashi after all this time

-When you got to Japan, you went to the first place you could think of. Present’s agency. You couldn’t quite think of where else to get to him, so this was your first resort.

-Upon arriving you were so nervous. What if Hizashi didn’t even work there anymore?? What if he didn’t want to help? After all you kinda of cut him off even though you promised to keep him posted every once in a while. Although that wasn’t your fault but maybe he hated you for it?

-Either way it was too late now and you were already at the front desk, standing awkwardly standing

-“Hello dear, is there anything I can help you with?”

-“u-Ugh wEll uHhh???”

-“....“

-“....”

-“Do you have an appointment...or….”

-“nO...yeS? Haha i'm sorry, I'm looking for Hizashi Yamada. I’m an old friend and he told me to come here if I ever needed him..?”

-“...right...Your name?”

-“Y/L L/N.”

-“I don’t see you name under any notes or messages for him. By safety protocol I cannot let you up past this floor without a proper appointment or verification.”

-“Well is there anyway that I can leave him a note..with my contact and such? Or a way to set an appointment?”

-“Yes I can leave a note but I cannot guarantee he will see it and you can only make an appointment if you’re an endorser.”

-“Ah I see, Well I guess I’ll just leave a note then? Here is my name and number and can you just tell him I’m back in Japan. I need to talk to him.”

-“of course.” The lady at the front desk smiled as she finished writing the small note and moving it aside with the others

-You began to make your was towards the exit only to be stopped dead in your tracks when you heard an all too familiar voice boom through out the lobby

-“YEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH WHATS UP OFFICE LAAAAADDYYYYY! ANY NEW MAIL FOR ME??? HMM HMM????”

-Turning around, your eyes met the sunflower blonde male that leaned against the counter with a Gigantic smile across his face.

-suddenly a similar smile he wore, slapped across your face as you unconsciously shouted

-“H-hizashi?!”

-instantly his eyes landed upon you, yet his award winning smile vanished and turned into a tired expression

-ugh another crazed fan waiting at the front desk for him.

-except you weren’t, you were his most favorite person on the planet. However you looked so different. And he could hardly recognize you.

-For a moment he just stared at you with the utter most bleak face, until it hit him.

-“America?”

-“Mr. Hizashi!”

-HE IS SOOOO HAPPY SKSKSKSKSKS LIKE BRO HE THOUGHT HE WOULD NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN.

-HE SMILES SO WIDE AND LITERALLY JUMP HUGS YOU

-“MRSSSS. AMERIIICAAAA.”

-he has a moment where he pulls apart and just gazes at you

-i-is that tears in his eyes??

-awww so soft

-sMotheRs yOu In kIssEs (friendly forehead ones lmao)

-He’s just so happy to see you looking healthy and safe. He loves you so much, even if it’s been years.

-“I thought something bad happened to you, I tried emailing and contacting you but no response. Oh I’m so happy I get to see you again! Are you okay? Are you hungry?? Wait let’s go talk at a restaurant.”

-So you guys go to a restaurant and talk and reconcile about the past. Apologized for not responding and talking so long to come back.

-“No worries I’m just glad your here now! How has hero work been? Signed with any major companies.”

-“Haha um actually no not yet.”

-“WHAAAAT?! What are you waiting for?? I’m sure by now your quirk skills and everything has gotten waaay better now with all the training you’ve probably had there. I’m sure you’ll get signed just like that.”

-“Actually Hizashi. The last time I actually trained or really used my quirk was the last time we trained together.”

-He literally thought you were joking. No that’s not possible that was years ago.

-“No I’m serious, my parents wouldn’t let me do hero work after all that went down and they limited the use of my quirk. These past years I’ve been studying to be a pharmacist because my parents says it’s a more realistic job for someone like me and hero work is nonsense.”

-What no? They couldn’t of held a grudge that long? No you were on such a good path to become a hero. He was sure of it. The world really needed someone to step up, with the rise of crime and he knew you could do it. So for your parents to say “nonsense” was so unbelievably stupid.

-“What?” that was all he could muster hearing your news

-“yep! And I couldn’t respond to you because my parents took away all my devices, and gave me ones that were restricted and only for school research purposes. Everything about heroes or quirks that wasn’t related to Pharmaceutical Purposes wasn’t allowed. I actually saved up cash for years and gathered up the money I got from graduation to buy a ticket and a small apartment here. Although I’m sure my parents will be hot when they noticed I left the country, but at least I’ll be thousands of miles away and safe from their antics right? Haha.”

-He was so shocked. He didn’t think him telling off your parents and protecting your from them while you were in Japan, would cause them to go to such extremes. What kind of people?

-“Y-yeah. But don’t worry I’m alive aren’t I!” You laughed out

-He smiles at your attempt of optimism and nodded in agreement

- “Do you still want to become a hero?” He asked twirling his spoon around in the soup he earlier ordered

-“W-Well yes. Actually I do a lot, this world is becoming more cruel and I really hate sitting back and seeing these innocent people who can’t fight back get hurt everyday. But I know it’s hard but It’s something I really still want to do.”

-“Okay then, Y/N I’ll train you and help you become a hero. In the moring I’ll start paper works and a letter to get you into my company under me. I’ll make sure you become the hero you always wanted to be...that I always knew you could be.”

-“Wait are you serious.”

-“Only if you are. We’ll train in the early mournings and I’ll take you with me on patrol at night so you can get a feel of what it’s like. I’ll guide you Y/N and do better than I did before. I owe it to you.”

-And after that, that’s exactly what happened

-you guys were out on a morning run by 5 and working out at the gym around noon. Around 11 at night you guys were on patrol until 3 am. And this went on for months

-He pushes you harder than you possibly knew your body could be pushed

-You your quirk became much stronger and stable.

-teaches you different techniques and gives you pointers on where to go out on patrol and how to look for suspicious behaviors

-you’re under his company and training for about a year or so before you break off and go on your own. He makes sure you’re fully confident and he knows that you’re at a good spot beforehand though.

-You actually get signed under a big company and recruited for a few others all over.

-Before you left his wing, you made sure you thanked him for everything and that he was totally fine with it

-which he was

-He’s still always beside you though. You knew in your heart you still needed his guidance and his friendship in your life, and same for him. He really adores you and doesn’t want to just say goodbye. It hurt so bad the first time, he couldn’t imagine how it would feel departing again.

- He checks up on you everyday and make sure to go out to lunch every one in awhile.

-When you’re kind of lost or stuck or need a shoulder to cry on, he’s always right there.

-“Hizashi...I don’t know. Maybe my parents were right and I’m really not cut out for this. It’s so hard and I’m so tired. I just really want to cry.”

-“Hey shh, don’t worry you’re doing great. It just gets hard sometimes but trust me it’ll get better. I’m right here for you.”

-If you parents did come back to Japan and came to harass you or what not, Hizashi is instantly there protecting you and makes sure they won’t ever do that again. You are not going back to the U.S. with them, even if he has to get the legals involved he would.

-Send little gifts to him every so often as a thank you.

-You stay in Japan for the first couple years of your hero career but then branch out a bit to different countries

-collecting Souvenirs and postcards to send back to hIzAsHI

-When you become super successful he’s like “See Y/N, what did I tell you? You’re going to be fucking great.”

[hqprotectionsquad]

Sunlight (Kunimi x Reader)

Title: Sunlight Ship: Kunimi x Reader Word Count: 1,568 Summary: Kunimi takes you home after he is dragged on a double date with Oikawa and his crush.  A/N: cross posted from my Wattpad!

Kunimi leans into the desk chair, scanning the classroom. Deep breath in, deep breath out. No need for anyone to see that he is having an internal breakdown. His face is stone-cold, with his eyes as dull as usual, but his head is clattered with memories and thoughts, and most importantly, a realization that shook his form in the first place: he developed feelings for you.

For him, this is huge. He hasn't had a crush since junior high, and even then, he found the idea of a prospering relationship too much to handle. Now, while his perspective toward romance has matured, he wants his feelings to be like milk, spoiled once exposed to the elements. He just needs a few reasons to create a barrier between his brain and his heart. Maybe you have a bad habit of dog-earring your pages or you chew too loud or you tend to speak on the sarcastic side. Something. Anything.

Volleyball practice arrives and Kunimi pinpoints the original source of the "problem," as he wants to call this thing that's taken over his mind. This man with perfectly styled hair is ultimately the reason why you and your best friend even come to the volleyball games and while it isn't as hard to talk to Ritsuko, you are a little more difficult, only because Kunimi can't look at you in the eyes. Oikawa approaches Kunimi at the end of practice, glowing and glistening instead of appearing sweaty like everyone else. "Kunimi-chan, will you be meeting up with me, (L/N)-chan, and Ri-chan after we finish here today? I could use a friend to help me seal the deal with Ri-chan and she'll only come if (L/N)-chan comes."

Kunimi slings the towel around the crook of his elbow but all he really wants to do with the sweat-sopped thing is throw it into Oikawa's face. Is he really indirectly pushing the limits to his brain? Oikawa wouldn't know anything about it but Kunimi has nothing to do today and his mom is always nagging him to spend time with his friends instead of reading inside or peppering a volleyball by himself. Kunimi replies coolly, "Sure. What are we doing?"

"Cafe study date, of course!" Oikawa sips from his water bottle, but the corner of his lips form a grin. "I hope we do more talking than studying but you never know. Ri-chan and (Y/N)-chan are so studious sometimes."

"I see." Kunimi nods and gathers his things. "I'll meet you in twenty."

"Okay!" Oikawa's thumb and index finger meet to make a circle. "Say hi to them if you see them before I do! They'll be stopping by the gym. See you!"

Once Kunimi gets into the shower, he does everything he can to prevent himself from banging his head against the tiled wall. The water from the shower head rolls onto his body, then off into the drain. Why did he even agree to this? He is just going to shut off, like the robot everyone says he is. This is a mistake.

"Do you understand what they're talking about?" You lean over to whisper in Kunimi's ear. He shakes his head with a frown in response.

Across the table, your best friend and Oikawa are discussing what seems to be school but also flirting with every other word. You didn't think that was possible up until that moment. Ri-chan always goes for the studious kind, which is kind of the reason why you were so skeptical when she asked you to accompany her to this study session. Oikawa never struck you as the smart guy, but here you were, proven wrong, apparently. Kunimi, on the other hand, is quiet, but it appears that he cares a lot about his grades because he actually is studying for an exam he has next week, according to him.

"What are you working on?" You nudge Kunimi's elbow with yours and at first, it looks like he's about to lash out at you. You scoot into the back of your chair, folding your arms. He doesn't seem invested in his work and he sets his pencil to the side.

"A math assignment." His voice is everything but a murmur. "What are you working on, (L/N)-chan?" Your name doesn't roll off as easy as you thought it would, and you can't help but to wonder if his would sound weird in your mouth too.

"An essay for Japanese literature. I don't really understand it though." Your lips form a thin line before you force yourself to take a sip from your latte. If you were going to spend nearly 600 yen on a drink, you needed to finish it.

"I see." Kunimi nodded and looked outside the window, no longer paying attention to you. You know that he's not an outgoing person, but with Ri-chan and Oikawa doing all sorts of things across the table, you wish you had a more receptive person to the left of you.

Ri-chan pushes herself out of the table with her eyes wide open. "Ah! I need to go pick up Haru-kun!" Her brother, only five, gets picked up. You remember meeting him for the first time and you understand why Ri-chan goes out of her way for her sibling. He is one of the shiest things on this earth.

"Let me come with you, Ri-chan! So that you won't have to go alone." Oikawa suggests with his million-yen smile and she graciously accepts.

"I apologize, Kunimi-san and (Y/N)," Ri-chan's words come out fast and muddled. They bow to the both of you before taking their leave. The bell at the top of the door resounds in your ears over and over. Did that just really happen? You ask yourself. You glance over to Kunimi's expression and it seems that he reacted similarly.

"Er, I suppose I should take you home then." Kunimi offers after noticing your cup drew empty a while ago.

"Yeah, there isn't much point to staying after they've left anyway." You shrug, placing your notebook and pencils back into your school bag. After zipping up and thanking the server for the food and beverages, you motion for him to lead the way out.

He does and he barely looks at you before heading off into a direction. "Kunimi, my house is the other way," you pant after needing to run after him. He isn't necessarily fast, but he is persistent.

"Oh. Okay." To you, it looks like Kunimi is one to only work, but you know from watching him over the year you've known of him that he doesn't even work sometimes. What is the turmoil behind his eyes? What is he thinking about?

This time, you lead the way but you make sure you stand next to him. Now that you're side by side, you need to roll your eyes up to your eyebrows to properly have a look at him. Soft threads of hair, a fit and capable body, but saddest of all, his eyes evoke stirring into your heart. When was the last time someone really got to know him?

"Kunimi-san, if you don't mind me asking," you begin as your scenery changes from the hustle of the city center to the suburbs where most people live. "Do you have friends from outside of the volleyball team?"

"Not really," he replies.

"Why not?"

"I don't go out of my way to make new friends." It is simple and the truth, but it stings your eyes.

"Right." You nod, pushing down the stone in your throat. "Have you ever wanted to become friends with other people?"

"I guess," he mutters as you turn a corner and he follows suit, shoving his hands in his front pockets. "It doesn't really matter to me whether or not I have friends."

"Isn't it a little lonely though?" You prod more, seeing if he'll say anything or do anything. You can't really imagine yourself going further out of your current friend group either, but your group is diverse in all the activities you do. No one person shares all the same ones, which makes conversations exciting.

"Sometimes."

His words trail into a deafening silence. You walk for what you believe is hours and you continue toward your home. The next time he looks at you is when you arrive at the gate of your family home. It is modest, but it is perfect for a family like yours.

"Thank you for bringing me home." You smile as you fish for your keys in your bag, holding out the strap with one hand.

"You're welcome, (L/N)-san." His grin is a ghost, only seen for a second, but you catch it.

"You have a nice smile," you comment softly and shake your head. He isn't looking for new friends, you remind yourself. Your voice raises in dynamics when you say, "So! How far away do you live from here?"

"Maybe...20 minutes." He scratches his head with one of his fingers.

"You should've told me! Your house is far from here!" You go as far as slapping him lightly on the arm, but he doesn't really react.

"It's okay. I wanted to." His small smile returns. The sun streams through the tree on the sidewalk and when it hits Kunimi, it washes over his features with a soft glow. No longer does he look dull, he shines brighter than ever.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep 15: Yami Joins the Bay Area Tribe By Throwing a Riot About Sports on Caltrain

So as you’ve probably guessed because of my lack of posts--I got kinda busy with life stuff and just got hit with this really nasty flu at the same time. Yes, I am in a Coronavirus-affected area but no, I don’t have it and I am not dying (although I did do the right thing and quarantined myself anyway, much like a whole lot of the Bay who are just...working from home. Traffic’s been great.) It’s just that every January/February I tend to fall apart and get the flu so bad I lose my voice for 5 days. This year was 6 days. I just catch the flu a lot, but at least I get my shots so it’s not as bad as it would have been.

So, I took a hell ton of Nyquil and Dayquil and while I’m...functional...I don’t know if any of this make sense. So forgive my rambling. I usually ramble, today I’ll be like...hella rambling. About TRAINS.

So anyway, Lets talk about Yugioh.

Lets board a Californian train!

Yugioh has decided that out of every vehicle they’ve devoted episodes to--they haven’t done trains yet, so it’s train time. Train time...in America...which is not a great place for trains. Like I never really think about it but...people take the freakin Greyhound over trains. Which is wild, guys, the Greyhound is...it’s a state of mind. We ignore trains so much.

It’s just really funny that they left Japan to go to America to ride a train when it’s like...the show takes place...in Japan. The land of wonderful trains. But wtv, they wanted ye Old Western experience.

Anyway, Rebecca really wanted to go on the train with them, but everyone pretty much decided that children were no longer safe on this trip with Yugi and co. The fact that Yugi and co are also children is something I guess we decided to push under the rug. I mean Duke Devlin has a freakin job and a work Visa at 17 so...that’s adult enough, right?

(*in a very Roaring Camp Railroad Commercial voice, and over the dulcet sounds of a banjo* More TRAINS under the cut!)

And then Arthur decided to just really grill it into Yami for some reason.

I think it was mostly to act as a recap but damn, Arthur Hawkins just really seems to hate Yami for killing Yugi. Anyway, lets get a good look at our train.

Surprisingly for this show, they decided not to put us on the Roaring Camp Railroad through the Santa Cruz Mountains, instead, they put us on an actual legit commuter train, and it blew my mind because...it’s the CALTRAIN.

That’s my train! What’s my Caltrain doing in Yugioh!?!?

They even got the paint job right! This is absolutely the Caltrain!

We never update this train. So yes, it still looks like this over 10 years later. It’s very underfunded.

+++THIS IS TRAIN FACTS FEEL FREE TO SKIP TRAIN FACTS+++++

So the Caltrain was originally privately owned tracks--which is how they are really nicely laid out--a private company bought everything/pushed out the old owners before the place got developed. When trains went under, the tracks were purchased by the State and then given to Amtrack to manage. So, Caltrain is strictly property of the State Government but still run by the Federal Government at the same time. Don’t ask me how it works, I don’t know, I just pay my taxes and it goes vroom.

We’ve wanted to extend the Caltrain down to Southern California for a very long time, but because of corruption and a lot of people in politics refusing to expand the Bay out of the fear of maybe dropping our housing prices to reasonable limits, and the fear of making it way too feasible to get more children to Disneyland, the track has stayed roughly the same length for over 40 years.

Overall, It’s less drive time than this duel that takes up this next arc, I’m pretty sure. I’m gonna guess that the duel will be 3 episodes long because c’mon. This is Yugioh. It’s always 3 episodes long, like a Nintendo boss.

Anyway, all these train facts are things that are probably so weird and foreign to places that have ample trains--but in America, we just don’t have a strong train lobby compared to our auto lobby. So, I’m sure that people in Japan making this series thought “Oh they’re on a train--it can just go forever because why wouldn’t it be long? Aren’t all American trains connected?” but uh...it’s a short train. Like we’re talking like a few hours max, and that’s only if they’re starting from Gilroy.

I will say that BART is longer and has multiple tracks, so you would think they’d just take BART instead. But, it goes under the ocean for part of it, and we’ll get to why that would have been a very big problem in this episode later. Also, BART is very gross and no one wants to animate that outside of a horror movie.

But at least they didn’t go way out of left field and take the SF trolley. The Caltrain does actually go pretty fast. It...kind of makes sense. They did actual research into a real thing that we do have.

++++END RANT ABOUT THIS TRAIN AND HOW NONE OF THIS EPISODE MAKES SENSE BUT IT’S YUGIOH SO I WILL IGNORE THAT++++

And youknow...there’s something just so adorable about seeing desert mesas reflected in the window of the Caltrain. It’s just delightful. Because, in reality the entire stretch of the Caltrain is very densely suburban/urban, and the only place where it isn’t surrounded by city is when it’s flanked by the sea.

But yeah, just put mesas on it!

*freakin curtains*

Joey and Tristan hit the “dining car,” which I don’t think is a thing in any form of commuter train. These trains are for trips the length of about 1 extensive Puzzles and Dragons session on your phone, give or take.

(And man, speaking of, the Yugioh PAD collab was so good, guys. Ah man. Been wrecking like every dungeon in multiplayer ever since Bro and I both got a Yugi to put as our leader. He’s basically one of the best leaders in the game right now and I feel like people at PAD were huge Yugioh fans because they were like “what if we made...basically every Yugioh pull into a freakin beast that broke every dungeon in the game?”)

I can’t believe Joey Wheeler went thousands of miles from his homeland and was like “I better drink an American soda” and chose Orange. I mean he might be drinking an Arizona Tea, but I’m pretty sure he thought “ah, Kenan and Kel, right?” and just nabbed the nastiest soda that exists outside of grape.

I feel like I can still taste the orange soda I drank over 20 years ago. It is terrible. It is SO orange. Gross. But at the same time...good? I really don't know with Orange Soda. It’s probably gross.

Meanwhile, Tea decides it’s an appropriate time for Yami to work on his social skills. Now. When he’s visibly grieving after being berated by his Basically-Step-Grandfather and Rebecca.

And then we find out something I’ve never realized before, and it’s that Tea is really bad at social cues. Like maybe even worse than Yami. Like, I dunno how Pharaoh could look more like an angry cat/hedgehog but Tea was not picking up on it.

And y’all I’m not making that up, these are the topics Tea actually came up with for the guy who just saw his best friend die/was very implicit in said murder. Beaches and Bathing Suits.

She got over Yugi being dead like immediately.

Of course, this episode is kind of weird because, much like this show has done so many times already, these guys are still struggling to truly understand that Yugi is two people in one body. Tea sort of comes to this realization as if she...forgot that she has stepped inside his actual head and seen this for herself.

Or maybe it’s denial, but I’m thinking maybe the show did this for the new people coming to the show, to explain a rather complicated thing that took 3 seasons to cement in our minds. But still, it makes Tea seem very forgetful over a guy she should sort of be dating I guess.

Anyway it’s their first real fight. Kind of. I mean it’s hard to tell if anyone on this show is dating, and it’s equally hard to tell if they are fighting, too.

Well, first real fight if you don’t count Zero when Yugi tried to make out with Miho over a card duel, but I think we’re all doing our best to forget that ever happened. Yugi especially.

Or I guess that time she strangled him nearly to death in the nurse’s office when Shadi took over his body. That counts as a fight, right?

Ah. Now we’re on Caltrain.

Don’t take it the wrong way, Caltrain is actually our higher end safe train, compared to our other transit, BART, which will always sit you next to a weirdo, guaranteed. Caltrain--you can take a good nap on Caltrain. BART...you will never feel comfortable enough to take a nap on BART (also because there’s not enough seating room anymore)

But a lot of people who take the train are just freakin WEIRD. I used to take the Caltrain with my older brother (different bro than the bro of this blog, this is my chaotic neutral bro) because we both worked near the same place in downtown SF, and he would always take with him--I kid you not--a 2 liter bottle of Mountain Lightning for a snack.

For those not in the States, Mountain Lightning is the offbrand Walmart version of Mountain Dew. Yes. I know what I said. It seems dumbfounding as Mountain Dew is already an off brand of Sprite--the true lemon/lemon lime--but indeed, like Inception, you can always go deeper, and if there is a soda so bewildering and random, my older brother will be ON IT.

Anyways, my older bro is a train weirdo, so not only does he prefer Mountain Lightning to Mountain Dew, he would take out a 2 liter from his backpack, tilt back his head, and just chug the whole thing straight from the huge ass bottle in front of God and everyone on that train.

He’d polish it off completely on the ride there and the ride back, because my older brother has this weird medical problem where he can’t really feel pain and he has an insane metabolism and never gained weight until he was like 32, so he can just...chug as much soda as he freakin wants. So, at some point of the trip he would have to use the very tiny bathroom, and it would be very urgent, and he’d just scramble over me to get to the aisle and then kind of skip and hop all the way there on the rush hour train that was completely full of people.

Like, most people don’t even know that Caltrain has a bathroom--well now you know, and for several years there, it was just always taken by my brother violently pissing. That was us (well...him). My apologies.

In case your curious, now my bro has hardcore acid reflux, and all he needs to do is stop drinking so much damn soda, but it’s been very hard for him, so he has cut back to “diet soda”. This is still a lot of soda and it still causes acid reflux. His doctor is working on him.

And yes, Diet Mountain Lightning exists. That’s just so many steps removed from Sprite at this point.

Anyways, enough waxing long about train memories, lets get back to the show, because it’s not this season of Yugioh until there’s a problem with the commute.

Unrelated to Pharaoh punching the walls, everyone has “disappeared.”

My bro looked up the Wiki that says there's “no explanation for the missing train passengers” but we all know what that really means on this show, right?

So, how many people fit on Caltrain?

There’s just NO WAY they’re alive anymore, right? Like Yugioh went and killed 756 Bay Area passengers because...it’s a filler season!

I really feel like there’s just no way Seto or Bakura will ever catch up to Darts’ death count at this rate.

After this, we have ourselves this fun train-jumping trope.

Pretty sure it was the superhuman opposing force of Tea jumping from the back train to the front of the train that forced the back to lose all of it’s 100+ mph momentum and immediately come to a full and complete stop.

Not sure how Darts did this thing with the train separating. But he did. Or maybe it was Rex and Weevil? Either way, he somehow managed to do this well enough to strand Joey and Tristan on the other side of the line that now has no engine.

(course I say this like in 1400 AD the Bay wasn’t full of the Ohlone. this place was basically always developed because...the weather’s hella good when it’s not on fire.)

Now if you go East--southern Utah looks like this, and parts of me wonder if maybe the artists thought they were taking the train all the way to Florida. Did the English dub add “we’re taking the train to the airport” because they knew there was no one in their right mind in America who would take a California-Florida train?

I have no other explanation for why the Bay Area looks like this, than to assume that this is an alternate California where there never was a Loma Prieta Earthquake and also one where Seto and Pegasus bought out and destroyed both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Which makes Seto and Pegasus sound like just real true heroes, never paving any sort of way for Mark Zuckerberg to happen and unintentionally (or intentionally who knows) screw up our elections.

Or maybe that was entirely Darts? Maybe it was Darts who’s been eating up the Bay, harvesting nerd souls for the leviathan and knowing that no one will miss these Twitter developers if Twitter never happens in the first place. Especially if he’s just ghosting entire Caltrains willy nilly.

But anyway, fun fact about the Caltrain that the creators of this show didn’t know--the train is a push-pull train, so...It has an engine on both sides of the train. Joey and Tristan...still have an engine. It would have never stopped, even with Tea’s incredible backward momentum.

This is normal train stuff and is something you should always assume about a commuter train that cannot afford the time to reattach the locomotive in order to turn around, but we forget about this in TV shows basically all the time.

However, there are fantasy rules that we give to TV that we sort of don’t extend to other places. We suspend our disbelief for things like this train stopping in a track that would, realistically, have another train passing by in 10 minutes anyway. Things like rogue waves that topple over ocean liners. Or CEOs in Silicon Valley who have ass-length blue hair that is tied with one single hair precarious band.

The point at which we no longer can suspend our disbelief when it comes to TV is SO interesting to me. Because I’m fully willing to let go of the fact that Caltrain is A Push-Pull train because it’s still a fun trope although this can never really happen to you on...almost any train at all anymore. But if this were a movie? People would be losing their freakin MINDS. Look what they did after Star Wars. They lost their entire minds over force-field science that doesn’t even exist.

Like, maybe the people who made this episode really do know that San Jose is the 3rd largest city in California, and that this is a push-pull train, and that there are no mesas anywhere near the ocean of San Fransisco. Maybe they did know that--but they decided to suspend our disbelief by pushing this Wild Wild West fantasy aesthetic SO HARD so it makes it believable although this is just...so wrong. Mostly because...it’s fun TV. Not because it makes any sense, but because I would like to have fun instead of thinking.

Which is also how most romance novels work ps. But Yugioh, although *almost* understanding the key ingredient to how romance actually works, I will assume never figures that out.

I hope.

Also, Rex is here.

Bro would like to bring up that Red Eyes is not a rare card in the real world. So Rex is going out of his way to venge a card that costs...$4.50 at Target. That’s less than a meal at McDonalds. This card may have been in a Happy Meal at McDonalds.

*pictured here, the actual canyons of San Jose*

So something that’s interesting between Yami and Joey is that Yami gives in basically immediately and decides to duel Weevil, who would be very easy to just gently push off of this train. Joey on the other hand, looks down at both of his punching fists and is like “why would I bother?”

Not that it mattered, it’s just interesting that even Joey has more restraint than Yami, who has 0 restraint, apparently, when it comes to dueling cards.

Joey has more restraint that Yami, and Joey is the kid who has tried to punch out Seto Kaiba in nearly every conversation he has ever had with Seto Kaiba over the last 4 seasons.

Also, Tea is just standing on top of this train like it’s a completely normal day outside. Girl has no fear.

Wouldn’t these people be covered in bug guts? Like how are they not getting assaulted by so many flies and birds?

But because she has no decent cards the Oricalchos just kicks her out? I dunno. There’s a lot of weird physics in the next scene.

And she just grabs onto a moving train with her bare hands. I feel like Tea is just so woefully overpowered in this group but for the wrong game. I say this a lot. She’s like their One Punch Man but will never, ever know.

So anyway, that was a long time between updates and now I’m out of sync and behind on everything so...hell knows when the next update will be. Depends on the length of episode I guess? Bro really wants to get to what comes next soon though. He’ll pester me until I do it.

Now I can’t mention Mountain Lightning without sharing with you what you do with 2-4 liters of Mountain Lightning after your brother leaves and then just...doesn’t have enough room for all of his Mountain Lightning AND his baby in his car, so he just leaves it in your house.

It’s called Mountain Dew Cake <-(that is a link) and it’s actually pretty damn good.

I made this once and fed it to a British person and they were like “this is so decadent--what’s in this?” and I uh didn’t know how to respond to that other than “it’s really just Mountain Dew, I’m so sorry” and that was a lie, because it was full of Mountain Lightning.

Anyway, if you just got here, this is a link to read these recaps in order.