#no idea if that’s true but everything ive seen of both of them 100% gives off unhinged army twit vibes

[sugaggukkie]

my favorite recent kpop obsession outside of my bangtan bubble is idols from north america aka my two newest faves yunjin from le sserafim and keeho from p1harmony

[empresskadia]

Round 5 because I hyperfixate easily, and I think all the Spartans deserve kisses. My Achilles Heel is falling in love with fictional women. Anyway, hear me out:

-

Since the firing range had been down for maintenance, Linda-058 had been noticeably less enthused. Without being able to use Nornfang, she had quickly grown to be bored. So, thinking quickly, you suggested that she'd trying a game of accuracy or two. She wasn't very fond of pool, but she loved darts.

It was cute to see the concentration spread across her face before every throw of a dart. Part of you wondered if that was what it was like when she was behind a scope - the regal, calm, collected grace of the Sniper Goddess. When she turned to you and the red of your face, she gave you a playful wink. She won again, of course, but you got the consolation prize of a loving kiss from Spartan-058.

-

Kelly-087 has a tendency to steal your casual clothes. Even though most of your clothes don't exactly fit her, she will wear them. You'd be losing your mind looking for that sweater you could've sworn you had a week ago only for her to barge in with a guilty smile and returning it because "it doesn't smell like you anymore!" 

She tends to do this when you or her are busy, and she doesn't get to see you as much as she would like. John caught her wearing one of your hoodies once, when Blue Team was on back-to-back missions, and she hadn't seen you in a month. Kelly nearly tackled you when she got to see you again.

-

In public, Cal-141 acts as expected of her and her reputation as a Spartan-II. But, in the privacy of your quarters, she lets the walls down and basks in the freedom of being her true self. It doesn't matter how long you've been together. Everything you do together is like the first time for her, and it never fails to fluster her.

Slow dancing together, cuddling, holding hands - she loves it all. By far, her favorite thing to do is to compare the sizes of your hands. It never fails to make Cal blush, and if you weave your fingers with hers and kiss the top of her hand afterward? She'll be red in the face thinking about it for the rest of the day.

-

Your relationship with Sarah Palmer was sort of an open secret aboard the Infinity. Despite you and the Commander doing your best to keep your relationship under wraps, it was obvious to observers. Every other Spartan under her command respected the hell out of her but were kind of afraid of her. Sarah was only this gentle with you and you alone.

One time, Captain Lasky had found her going over your gear before one of your missions with Fireteam Majestic, and he laughed at how quickly she turned red, stuttering excuses for messing with your armor at 0200. Roland will never let her hear the end of it.

-

I've been waiting to read this, also same, all the Spartans deserve kisses and hugs and someone to love them so much that they're kinda shocked by it but omg gets excited to be with their partner, anyways-

Linda is skeptical when her partner drags her to Spartan Town's activity room and hands her a case of darts. She understands the concept of them and has seen the IVs play, but she isn't sure why they would insist on her playing. Until she actually starts throwing them. Yeah, it's not firing off Nornfang but she's having fun figuring out how to adjust her aim every time she moves back. And she's not complaining when the reward of kisses because you both know she's gonna win.

Blue team 100% gives Kelly shit for stealing her partner's clothes, and she could care less. It's comfortable, and it's not her fault they can't rizz someone up. The rest of the team can tell when Kelly wants to see her partner because she gets restless and is practically hopping between one feet and the next during missions.

I just adore the idea of Cal getting flustered over someone loving her. She's heard Maria-062 talk about retiring and having a family, and she remembers all the other spartans looking at her weirdly. But Cal gets it now. Yes, there are things she doesn't always understand with relationships, but every time her partner kisses her hand or calls her beautiful, it feels like the first time for her.

Everyone is gonna know because of Roland. That AI is the number one shipper, and he's a snoop. But also Roland is a wingman. If Sarah and her partner are having a moment, sorry, spartan that area of the ship is down for maintenance. Even if it wasn't for the AI, all the IVs see how Sarah's shoulders relax when you enter the room during war game or how her eyes always scan the room and settle on you before giving her fireteams crap. And Lasky? He's loving this because he gets to tease her endlessly with Roland.

[bimbosupreme]

mephistopheles love post

the equivalent of a mental breakdown tangent is all going under a read more

yes believe it or not that freaky ass literally not even human clown in fgo gets love, and love from who? me and like 3 other people

first off

ok and with that out of the way,

i’m not even familiar with their lore. Reason why i stopped caring about the lore behind faust and mephistopheles is that an interlude happens that shows that mephistopheles is just some homunculi made by some mage nobody named faust. and even then the interlude doesn’t talk about the lore behind the novel, its just you helping mephy kill faust

that being said though i would hope the developers expand on their origins more and potentially even release a “true” mephistopheles (a girl can dream)

So, they’re not even the real deal demon known as Mephistopheles in the first place, and i can hear u going “well that’s lame” and like, no, we just need to redirect our feelings from appreciating a demon to appreciating a homunculi who has a weird characterization in the fate universe

Design tangent:

Fgo was actually my first gacha, and so when I came across this servant I kinda instantly fell in love with their design, I love the colors used in their final ascension and overall appearance. The hat that has horns but they're not quite horns, theyre these weird colorful pointy twisty things, the large garish butterfly ornament on their chest (which isnt ugly at all and somehow works so well with their everything on them) is cool, the tights are so cool to look at, i mean look -- a checkered pattern with golden lining on the shorts portion, the tits out look like yes we get it youre insane, the gloves??? purple and also cool, plus theyve got this gradient thing going on? and the fingers have this line going through them, thats so cool. actually the only other servant that comes close to this in terms of “out there” colorful designs is probably final ascension kama and qsh ( i love them both). Also, mephy has this scissor weapon?? thats so cool lol i dont see any other servant wielding giant scissors (for the love of god give mephy an animation update i need to see them use the scissors while doing flips) and they also have this bomb obsession going on? cant relate, but the bombs designs are so so cool i mean its a fucking centipede -- no idea if centipedes are a thing in the original faust but thats something Ill have to look up at some point. ALSO mephy is wearing heels oh my god anytime people wear heels is an automatic win. No clue whats going on with the hair but its kinda cute (dont question me on that) and it has curls and the hair colors are cool i mean its like a lavender thing with darker purple highlights? i love colorful things and i love people with wacky personalities so. Oh my god their tail how could i forget that its so cute and dumb i almost forgot it was there, like what is that even a whip? i dont.. but its got these little purple tips to them that are kinda cute/cool but more cool because tails are fucking up there alongside heels in terms of cool stuff on characters. and of course their fluffly cape -- again no idea what the designers were going for i mean look its a mess of a design i have no fucking idea what any of it means and i hope they explain it someday because that hair and the butterfly and the tail and the hat and the fluffy garb and a bomb obsession?? and this got the go ahead - yeah lets add that to the game like what

ALSO LETS TALK ABOUT THEIR EYES

appreciate these with me for a second

god.

oh and the blue lipstick and face paint god thats a cool design ugh

they can be normal too or at least as normal as possible i mean they even trimmed their eyebrow here lol but you can see the not so well hidden insanity/goofiness peaking through with the inside of the suit at the bottom being highlighter purple and a green shirt with gold accents underneath the black coat at the front <3, fuckin hate that hairstyle tho bro we gotta get that middle part hairstyle outta hereeeee--

TAKE A DETOUR AND LOOK AT THIS LINK THOUGH THIS IS THE MOST NORMAL AND BEST IVE SEEN THEM IN FANART. THE POTENTIAL IS THERE. WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS AND THEY LOOK GREAT ITS POSSIBLE. I HAVE TEARS STREAMING DOWN MY FACE FROM THAT DRAWING.

anyways this is me going off all about why i like their design! but we haven’t even touched the nitty gritty of it all. their personality! what personality you may ask? havent they always been some weirdo laughing a lot and saying dumb shit all the time? well yes and no

Characterization:

True to their dumb little clown design mephy also acts like one.

Some servants bond 1 lines are like “fuck off” and some actually talk to you, nah this bastard mephistopheles’ just laughing. and for the second bond line it seems to imply theyre fuckin with you more (showing up and dissapearing and saying ‘afterimage’) so thats nice that theyre actually making some effort to mess with you in a way? some servants take a long time to actually interact with you so this shows theyre not afraid of interacting with you and thats just at bond 2. and of course the third bond line implies they were probably trying to betray you, its stated in more than 1 place that mephistopheles (actually isnt this a caster class thing?) will betray you or attempt to do so. So the third bond line seems to imply that their attempts have been stopped by you and that’s what they say after some failed attempts. So after stopping this freak from doing some shit their next bond line is actually doing a confession! a jester being honest who couldve seen that one coming but theyre 100% not lying, they really arent a demon but a homunculi made by faust

speaking of faust we’re going to backtrack a little into their interlude that i brought up at the start of this post, its one of those dream interludes and it starts with mephy asking you to help him plant bombs for their eventual reuinion/showdown with faust -- in the meantime faust keeps sending golems in an attempt to kill both you and mephy

When you track faust down, it’s shown that faust was your typical mage, inhumane and uncaring. It’s also pointed out that this faust killed innocents, but this typical mage behavior is boring to mephy, and they say that boring typical behavior is why they wanted to kill them

 so i really cant blame mephistopheles for being the way they are, being raised by this type of guy, even if mephy was always messed up and wacky from the beginning its no reason for faust to attempt to kill him.

Mephistopheles also shows up in salem, cu alter’s interlude, and of course the knk crossover event, and some other things im most likely forgetting but those 3 are ones that i find notable

anytime they show up theyre actually helpful, in salem mephy points out that the nature of the being responsible for the salem epic of remnant is something alien rather than a typical foreign god, mephy also tells you that time is also being sped up and in their weird way they try to cheer you up by spouting some nonsense at the beginning (guda needed some kind of distraction from the grim events that had just transpired at that point in the story), i cant quite remember what mephy did in the knk event but they were a part of your group and were helpful the whole time, actually @/zeravmeta does an amazing analysis of their role in the knk event as well as some extra character analysis here

mephistopheles is kinda cryptic in a weird way though,

like overall i mean theyre a jester homunculi in appearance so yeah its to be expected but come on i love morally gray characters, despite their supposed betrayal hints scattered around here and there

they have this one line that always gets to me

and this line is said with a completely serious face too

the rare serious mephistopheles face! its kinda grim to see that line, no laughs, no nothing, their voice is kinda serious and monotone too. of course this could be just to get you to lower your guard but its still kinda out there that they have this rarely used portrait and that line, so i like to take it as being said to you when youre by yourself and with sincerity

and at least sei (with her wacky outfit and all lol) seems to get along with mephy and thinks theyre nice woohoo

so at the end of the day you have this guy that laughs a lot and gives mixed signals

and they fuck with you

and will most likely try to kill you more than once but hey thats just another tuesday at chaldea

Before I finish last thing I want to point out is this snippet from the fgo source material book which provides more information on servants, and this specific translated bit under mephistopheles

at the core of it all this homunculi....can be your friend! you just need to not go into despair i guess

of course this entire post is an overanalysis into an underwritten character, quarantine + all online college classes have done this to me, i have a douman icon what did you expect

OH...BEFORE I REALLY SIGN OFF AND FINISH THE POST HEY CLOWN LOVERS CHECK OUT THESE FANARTS AND FANARTISTS...

THE FIRST ONE IS HASENDOW YES THE DOUMAN DESIGNER... <3

i cant believe they drew mephy

twice !

and for those of you on twitter check out @cuz_pb and @L0VEYAMA003

[chocolatecakecas]

I don't think the retrospective or the last two episodes cater to w*sties, the producers are just basic old white men and they cater to the reddit male audience who thinks that Cas confession is platonic and the winchesters are action hero types. they even give sam a generic blurry wife but they hate to actually show love interests because its 'girly' and its a show centered around men and their cars.

hi anon so i agree and disagree, because they did both. I am not really going to go into the network fuckery and im speaking in BROAD terms not about specific people. Also this is just my opinion, i only have as much info about the finale as everyone else, so this is based off of what ive seen in my 10 years in this fandom and how i've heard writers discuss the last two episodes. It's 3am, i have a lot of thoughts about this, so i'll try to condense them the best i can.

So those things are "essentially" true, they did try to somewhat cater to that audience, BUT in doing so they also automatically pander to the br*nlies and the w*ncesties(who can both sometimes be shoved in with the same audience you mentioned as well) because they are well aware that they exist and know that's exactly what a majority of them wanted. Writers/creators of supernatural are well aware of the factions that exist within the fandom, and many of them over the years have either directly or indirectly catered/sided with a specific group, and that's who they're concerned with pandering to. On a surface level they have a basic idea of what the destiel shippers want, they know what the w*ncesties want, they know what the br*nlies want. So by the network/tptb/whoever, purposefully scrubbing both episodes of any mention or existence of other extremely important characters, they cater to the br*nlies and the w*ncesties, because at the end of the day they think the show is only about sam and dean (even tho they believe that in usually VERY different ways, but sometimes theyre both). Whether intentional or not (it was intentional tho), they do end up pandering to both of those audiences.

As for what was actually written in the scripts themselves, 15x19, was written by Buckleming episode which pretty much says it all, they flip flop constantly on who they're gonna bait so im not even touch that. But i can literally say with 100% certainty that they did in fact cater to the w*ncesties and the br*nlies, in 15x20. It was literally, a Sam and Dean MOTW episode, and at the end they meet up in heaven together. Which literally covers everything the br*nlies want, Sam and Dean hunting and them having them together in heaven forever. And unfortunately it covers everything the w*ncesties want, from the very disturbing closeness/forehead touch, and showing them alone in heaven(especially since they showed Sam having a wife, and didnt have her in heaven/mention her at all), where they'll be together forever. Yes the original roadhouse ending had a ton of characters, but they made it pretty clear that the way they got there, would still be the same, so it still panders to them by centering the entire finale around just Sam and Dean. And by choosing to change what they changed and by choosing to air, what they actually aired, plus the scrubbing of any mention of other important characters throughout the episode(see 15x20 scripts), they pandered to them. Because what we saw was sam and dean in heaven alone (yes dean saw bobby, but he wasnt there when same showed up), and that's what matters to them.

So yes they catwred towards the toxic masculinity of it all AND they did in fact cater to the w*ncesties and the br*nlies, because they knew that's what they wanted, even if you want to argue it wasn't intentional (it was), that's what ultimately happened. Because it's very similiar to the way they've done it for years, and the way that some of them have baited/pandered to us in the past(but thats a whole different topic that im bot gonna touch). Because they aren't stupid and they literally know exactly what they're doing.

[all-things-mlqc]

Boys reaction to MC who never have date before meeting them. Like, the boys as MC's first love.

My first HC on here and I was memeing half the time while writing it. Included what the boys would do after hearing this news as well because why not. I’m not a Lucien fan but lord have mercy on my soul, I couldn’t help making his romantic af. He is the ideal boyfriend/date minus the l i e s that come in the MS and I hate it. All the crossed out stuff is just commentary because I couldn’t help myself. Hope you enjoy~ Thank you for your ask <3

How the MLQC boys react to being MC’s first love below the cut~

Victor:

Follows with some snarky comment after he calls her “Dummy”.

Let’s be real here, if he doesn’t call her dummy immediately, then something is wrong. Reminds me of when we streamed the first episode of MLQC and we were all yelling “CALL US BAKA” the second Victor came on screen.

While he seems cool and collected on the outside, you can hear the computer shutdown sound play on the inside.

To him, this is a shocking confession.

Victor: I’m not surprised a dummy like you hasn’t been in a serious relationship before.

Victor, internally: How has she never been in a serious relationship before??

He’s not very good at expressing himself honestly through his words but he truly admires MCs hardworking nature.

He finds that very attractive in a woman and is surprised that other men in the line of business haven’t taken their shot with her yet. it’s because they can feel your death stare on the back of their heads, kind sir

One thing he struggles with is being himself. He tries to act like everything is in his control all the time.

Because of this, upon hearing MCs confession, he invites her to a fancy dinner at his penthouse insert Victor’s Dazzling Date because THATS ALL THAT MATTERS. Jkjk haha... unless...

He wants to impress her as much as possible even though he knows deep down that she doesn’t care about what a person has and rather how they are as a person

BUT ALAS. The stress be real for her first boyfriend.

He wants her to know she made a good decision without verbally telling her out of his own bitch mouth I love you, please call me baka so he goes over the top with their first date.

Basically pulls a Mr. Krabs when taking Mrs. Puff on a date. Just add shades to Mr. Krabs to represent Victor’s “I’m calm. I’m chill. I’m all good. We vibin out here.”

All MC wants from him is his honest and genuine thoughts. and a lifetime stock of pudding because good god a girl has chocolate needs

MC eventually figures out Victor’s intentions with all the gifts he rains on her because hE dOesNt nEeD tHeM he can’t give her anything more than a cup of pudding up front

MC knows this and accepts the secret gifts with a smile.

She sends a gift in return to his office the following day along with a thank you for the wonderful date.

Can you hear that? It’s the sound of Victor’s heart rate slowing to the average persons.

Kiro:

insert pikachu meme

This boy is mind blown.

“How have you never been in a relationship before??? That can’t be true!”

Kiro sees the good in everyone, so hearing that MC has never been in a relationship before him is

He gives her a bright smile and playfully hugs her from behind.

The two of them laugh together as he whispers genuinely in her ear,

“I promise to make you happy. You won’t regret it.”

He immediately drags her off to Loveland’s Amusement Park, where they spend the whole day together.

Rides, snacks, games, you name it, they did it all.

Kiro naturally spoils MC without putting much thought to it.

It’s like a reflex for him. It’s just who he is as a person. Always wants to share the happiness in the world with the people he cares about.

As for how anxious he is after hearing the news about being MC’s first love, he is screaming at a pitch only dogs can hear.

Almost 100% of the time he has a smile on his face and even convinces himself that he’s not worried about it.

But he is.

It only hits him when he thinks about another man taking MC away from him after seeing her talking with another guy.

MC will catch him without his carefree smile at times and eventually confronts him about it.

He shows her a wide smile and says there’s nothing to worry about.

L I E S. BABIE LEMME HOLD YOU I PROMISE YOU DONT NEED TO WORRY.

After a few attempts of trying to get Kiro to open up about it, he gives in and says he’s worried he’s not good enough for her HAHAHHA, GOOD ONE KIRO

MC, however, turns it around on him

MC: I’m afraid IM the one who isn’t good enough for you.

They both smile and embrace each other, knowing they’ll get through any little concerns like this.

Gavin:

He knows.

We’re talking about the boy who has been in love with MC since high school; Who has protected her behind the scenes ever since he laid eyes on her.

He would know if she had been in a previous or current relationship.

It only comes as a shock when she says she’s never been interested in anyone else romantically before. Lies. Have you seen the other suitors, MC. In a world where guys are that hot, you must’ve had at least 1 crush, c’mon sis.

Gavin respected her personal boundaries and never looked into her personal affairs so he had very little knowledge of her views on other guys.

He gets a little bit nervous, since he believes her standards must be high if she hasn’t been interested in anyone else before.

Does the full on soldier oath, bend the knee cliche which includes “I promise to always protect you” and “Nobody will ever be good enough for you”

Mc: Gavin no...

Gavin: NOBODY WILL EVER BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU.

Spoiler alert: You are waayyyyy too good for me, Gavin.

He doesn’t have too much anxiety over the thought of being MC’s first love though since he’s very good at staying true to himself and knows MC is one to admire that about others.

Gavin is a quiet guy in general. He’s more of an observer and watches MC to take note of what she enjoys.

When he sees her eyes shine bright after seeing a delicious dessert cafe, he offers to take her. He makes sure to express how he also wants to go since he knows she won’t accept unless he is interested as well.

Boy literally has no interests the moment he’s with MC. He is essentially that vine

Doesn’t even wait until the question is over and just “Absolutely. Let’s do it”

MC: But I haven’t even said anything yet...

He isn’t much different from how he is now. Has around the same amount of anxiety just from being in MCs presence.

Boy just wants to PROTECC and is always panicking on the inside but tries to remain calm.

He is very good at calming his anxiety though since he’s had so long to understand what MC values and knows she just loves people for themselves.

That’s all he needs.

Lucien:

His eyes widen slightly at MCs confession.

It’s nothing too mind blowing for him since he knows how refined MC is and how dedicated she is to her work.

It’s still surprising to him that nobody has tried to sweep her off her feet yet.

With how kind MC is, it would be hard for her to refuse a date with a gentleman.

Lucien gently presses a kiss to MCs hand upon hearing her confession.

Lucien: I am honored to be given the opportunity TO WOO to take such a beautiful lady out on a date~ AND MORE PLEASE

Lucien is the definition of a gentleman shhhh we aren’t speaking of current chapters in the main route Lucien. Cover your eyes. Pretend you do not see.

With little to no anxiety showing on his face after the reveal that he is MCs first love, he insists on taking her out to a nice restaurant the most classy and romantic 5 star restaurant Loveland City has to offer as a way to thank her for dealing with his bs (both his bullshit and black swan hahaha I’m so funny oml) being given the opportunity to treat her as a beautiful young lady should be treated.

He’s also more on the less anxious side of being MCs first love.

Lucien is a traditional man and does stuff by the book.

Because of this, he respects and likes the idea of being MCs first love.

He doesn’t go over the top yet isn’t cliche with dates and little actions.

He knows exactly what to say and when to say it. Though he may struggle with being openly honest about his own thoughts and feelings, he tries his best to express himself for MC. a lot of the time he just assumes talking to her about his personal affairs would bring her down.

This, however, gets better overtime as they continue to date.

They spend a lovely evening at dinner together and take a midnight stroll through the city oh god city stroll PTSD

He gently wraps his jacket around her bare shoulders with a soft smile as he thanks her once again for believing in him believing he is worthy of her

Bonus:

Shaw:

Shaw, smirking: Is that so?

Oohhhhh you know what that smirk does to me. DOWN BOY D O W N.

He’s surprised but his reaction is very mutual.

His internal thoughts are more on the line of “Hmm I’m her first boyfriend, aye?” and “OYA OYA”

He very likely most definitely places his hand on the wall beside her head and leans in closely to get a reaction from her as he growls,

Shaw: So that means you really like me, yeah? I’m making this way too hot gdi. Shaw stans please enjoy your food

MC looks up to see that same playful smirk resting on his face.

highkey don’t know how to respond because Im just “ok think of 3 things she would probably say and go from there” while my brain just computer error sound

MC: and what about yourself? I’m sure there are tons of girls throwing themselves at you yet you choose me.

He pulls away and places his hands in his pockets with a chuckle.

Shaw: I’ve had my fair share before.

iVe HaD mY fAiR sHarE bEfoRe MY ASS

I’m convinced he’s had one time things with girls purely for information or he isn’t the least bit interested in relationships because he thrives on stimulation and entertainment and nOboDy iS gOoD eNouGh plus he literally asks what people do on dates when taking mc out in his first date in game SO

Either way, this is a LIE. The man can’t relationship for the life of him so he has no RIGHTS to tease her.

Just let him believe or you can try to tease him about it in hopes of getting a little pouty face out of him.

Honestly, their first date would just be the first date we got in the game and nobody can convince me otherwise.

Shaw is a wild child and doesn’t care for romantic dates. at least that’s what he wants you to think

A little insight on his character: He’s very blunt and easily pushes people away all the while keeping them close enough to gather intel. He doesn’t get emotionally attached to anyone and makes sure it’s mutual on both ends. Personal relationships only drag him down, especially in his line of work. He prioritizes other things before relationships which makes him so damn FRUSTRATING BUT I SWEAR I WILL CRACK YOU OPEN LIKE A WALNUT JUST YOU WATCH ME.

With that being said, after actually being in a relationship with MC for a while and opening up about their personal lives more, Shaw can be very romantic. He may be awkward for a bit at first since he literally doesn’t know what a date is but he gets there eventually.

He’s still full of fun but is also very gentle and makes sure MC is enjoying herself.

I got sidetracked with the actual HC on this one but Shaw stans need food I NEED FOOD

[bills-pokedex]

Worldbuilding Month: Day 9

{I s2g somebody asked me whether or not Bill owns that lighthouse in this canon, but I can’t for the life of me find it. (I still have two asks for Worldbuilding Month, though, and as I continue to put off talking about the last two topics I actually walked into this month planning on talking about, I’mma probably going to answer those. :D)

Anyway, to respond to a question that Tumblr seems to have eaten, first off, yes. Bill calls the lighthouse the Sea Cottage because he thinks he’s hilarious when it comes to names, but its actual, full name is the Cerulean Cape Lighthouse. It’s been decommissioned for the past thirty-some years, though, since most sea routes have been diverted away from Cerulean Cape thanks to the Eastern Kanto Power Station—or, in other words, the Power Plant. You would think it’s actually because of Zapdos, but no, they just diverted it because you probably don’t want to have ships sailing too close to an active power plant, you know?

But the point is, it was decommissioned and actually abandoned until Bill came along and was like, “I have no idea who I have to shove money at to have this place, but I want this to be my home now.” And the town of Cerulean Cape—because there’s a town right there, between Cerulean City and Vermilion City—was like, “...okay.”

But that’s not quite as important as which canon does this blog even take place in?

(Oh, don’t worry. We’ll talk about Bill’s actual reputation with the locals at some point this month.)

The answer is ... all of them.

Or, well, most of them except Special and Pocket Monsters (the latter of which is the one where Red has a clefairy). I’ll get into why later, but first, let me explain how this works.

Gameverse Red is the same as Zenshou Red. He’s the one who fought Team Rocket at Saffron City, defeated the mysterious Viridian Gym Leader (and chased him out of the gym, basically—though he obviously doesn’t retire from a life of crime after this point), became champion, conceded championhood to Lance, and retreated to Mount Silver.

Ash Ketchum is the one who started out from Pallet Town and then ... did everything you probably are aware of thanks to the anime. (I ignore Electric Tales canon when it comes to Ash and Gary, though I adopt the hell out of it for every other character that appeared in it. Just ... just roll with it.) Ash and Gary are a year younger than Red and Blue, the latter of whom is Gary’s cousin. (Red has no relation to Ash.)

Consider all of the above to be Gen I. You’ll need this notation for later, so just keep it in mind.

That takes care of the first gen. Subsequent gens look like this:

- Most of the gens occur exactly as they do in canon, but wherever you have a choice between male or female avatars, it’s usually the female character who goes on to be the hero and champion. There’s really no reason for this, other than a joke I cracked with a reader of a sci-fi fic I write on the side, wherein someone noted the fact that Hilda and Rosa were champions, to which I responded with, “Yes, and Hilbert and Nate ran off to start a noodle cart together.” This turned out to be half-true. Hilbert and Nate ran off to start a noodle restaurant together. They’re gay, and Hilbert keeps inflicting terrible food ideas on the customers. But anyway.

- Another note: I realize in a previous post that I name each of the champions as ... not being the player characters. As in, according to the queer culture post, Steven, Diantha, Iris, and so on are still champion. The truth is that they’re actually ... not unless a character decided to hand the title back to them for one reason or another. That means that the best way to read the earlier post is by looking at it as, “This is a list I made with these characters as champion so I don’t have to immediately explain that these other characters are champion.”

- Gen II: This means that Lyra is indeed the Johtonian champion, with Ethan Gold (meaning, Ethan and Gold are the same person) not quite completing his journey. Crystal exists as well but quit her journey to become a researcher. It was Lyra who stopped Team Rocket’s attempt to take over Goldenrod City, although this plot didn’t have anything to do with finding and reaching out to Giovanni. Rather, it was just an attempt to use the Goldenrod Radio Tower to broadcast the frequency the Rockets had perfected at the Lake of Rage. (Lyra did not stop Team Rocket at Lake of Rage; that was Ash.)

- Incidentally, Giovanni never properly retired. He merely gave up the Viridian Gym after suspicions fell on him as to what he did on the side. To the majority of the public, he still maintains the facade of an upstanding businessman who cares about the people, and his cover story for giving up the gym was that he wished to focus more on his business pursuits. (This is why trying to prove that he’s a member of Team Rocket pisses Bill off just a little. Giovanni is just too good at covering his tracks.)

- Anyway, yeah, the branch of Team Rocket that tried to take over Goldenrod wasn’t trying to find Giovanni, as mentioned above, but rather establish a better foothold in Johto. They half-succeeded. Team Rocket still has a very strong presence in the region outside of Goldenrod, and the only reason why they don’t have Goldenrod is because that city’s already half run by the local yakuza and half run by criminal rings formed by Galarian immigrants, and neither of these groups have any interest in either joining Team Rocket or putting up with Rockets encroaching on their businesses. Lyra just defeated the executives at the Radio Tower, it was the locals who chased Team Rocket out of Goldenrod. With chains, knives, and guns, no less.

- Gen III: Emerald is the canon universe for Gen III, meaning both Groudon and Kyogre were awake at the same time. The western half of Hoenn was subsequently hit with a massive heatwave, while the eastern half was pounded with torrential rain. Lanette had been taken to Ever Grande for her safety early in the legendaries’ battle, and this is how she developed a phobia of intense storms.

- Sapphire Birch (daughter of Professor Birch) and Ruby Maple (son of the Petalburg Gym Leader) teamed up to summon Rayquaza and stop the battle, but it was Sapphire who caught Rayquaza and subsequently became both the hero and champion of Hoenn (by way of defeating Steven), until she conceded to Wallace. Ruby, who didn’t want the press, left Hoenn to continue his journey elsewhere. Sapphire is still a prominent trainer in Hoenn.

- The Delta Episode didn’t happen as it does in canon, but Zinnia exists in this world. She notes that it’s very different from both the one she came from and the one “the other her” was supposed to save. Deoxys was intercepted by the government and remains a pokémon known only to government officials and top-level Symposium researchers.

- Gen IV: Full disclosure: I never finished Platinum, so instead, I follow DP canon for the blog. No one knows what actually happened at the top of Mt. Coronet, including which legendary was awakened there. We do know that both Dawn and Lucas were present but not which one specifically saved the world. Both proceeded to become champions (Lucas defeated Cynthia, while Dawn defeated Lucas, then conceded the title back to Cynthia). Dawn then went back to Sandgem to resume her work as Professor Rowan’s assistant. Lucas went to the top of Mt. Coronet with an ancient artifact and hasn’t been seen since.

- Gen V: Hilbert was Hilda’s childhood friend and started alongside her but not with her (or Cheren or Bianca). They crossed paths numerous times until Hilbert decided training wasn’t for him and proceeded to retire. Hilda went on to become the Hero of Ideals and the champion of Unova, a title she almost immediately conceded to Iris (who she let defeat her so she could go off to find N).

- Gen V.5: Nate follows a similar story to Rosa: he was her childhood friend but not close enough to travel with her. Eventually, he met Hilbert, who talked him into becoming a business partner of sorts. Rosa, meanwhile, proceeded through the rest of the canon story, obtaining Reshiram from N and claiming the title of champion for herself. She’s still the champion of Unova ... and the only one who knows where N (and by extent, Hilda) are at any given time.

- Both Black City and White Forest exist. They’re right next to each other. Opelucid is a city with a mix of both old and modern architecture, and Drayden and Iris had shared the position of gym leader until Iris challenged Hilda for the title of champion. Iris never went back to the Opelucid gym after being defeated, but she is a prominent trainer who often supports actual champion Rosa. She’s filling in for Grimsley as the fourth member of the Elite Four while Grimsley’s off globe-trotting.

- Side point, but Alder exists and was defeated by Hilda. I just keep forgetting he exists because I never actually 100%’ed BW, lol.

- Gen VI: Serena and Calem are the same person. Or more accurately, Calem’s deadname is Serena, until he came out as trans shortly after the events of Gen VI. Something about what happened at Geosenge made him realize he needed to be truthful to himself because, you know. Life’s too short not to. Besides, becoming champion kinda gave him the power to be like, “Listen. If you don’t accept me, that’s fine, but just so you know, I have literally faced the gods of life and death, survived, and proceeded to wipe the floor with this region’s Elite Four and former champion.” Diantha, of course, is 100% in support of both Calem and the aforementioned statement.

- Just as an added cherry on top, which legendary did Team Flare try to awaken? And which one did Calem catch as a result? Yveltal. He eventually found Xerneas too, but I can’t go into that in case someone actually does want to read that giant sci-fi fic I’m writing on the side.

- But yeah, Lysandre is dead as hell. Sycamore is secretly devastated, which is why Calem set off to find Xerneas.

- Gen VII: Selene, a newcomer to the Alola region, is the one who did ... pretty much all of what went down in Gen VII, including eventually taming Solgaleo (“Nebby”). Lunala never surfaced, and USUM never happened.

- Lillie eventually found her way to Bill, who took her under his wing for about a year. After that, Lillie returned to Alola with copies of Bill’s notes and a thumb drive containing what they hoped would be a cure for Lusamine. Turns out, it was, and Lusamine has been well (and in therapy) since. So ... in case anyone’s wondering what happened to Lillie after the few brief times she was mentioned early on in this blog’s history.

- Elio, a boy from Iki Town, is blissfully unaware of all of this, but he was the second person to ascend to Alola’s Pokémon League and challenge their Elite Four. Acerola kicked his ass.

- By the way, Hala was an Elite Four member for all of a month before deciding he would much rather go back to Melemele Island and resume his duties as a kahuna. Molayne took his place (at Kukui’s request) and has remained ever since. The other admins are still baffled by how this man can be a hardcore gamer and Elite Four member and still have time to both do science and run the storage system ... except Bill, who is an unrepentant workaholic who doesn’t sleep, so therefore, his opinion doesn’t count.

- Gen VIII: Victor is just one of Hop’s friends. He's traveling mostly to keep up with what Hop’s doing and support his friend, but he doesn’t really go out of his way to adventure or get stronger.

- Gloria, on the other hand, is the hero of Galar and will absolutely kick your ass in a heartbeat. She doesn’t have a Scottish accent, but she does have Cumbrian one, given that Postwick is literally supposed to be Windermere. Anyway, she’s the chosen one for Zacian. (Hop gets Zamazenta.)

- Chase and Elaine do not exist, LGPE did not happen, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.

- All of the events that are actually stated as happening above occurred pretty much in rapid succession, within a few years of each other. Or to make this visual even clearer, the timeline is as follows:

Gen I (FRLG) happened at the same time as Gen III (Emerald). > Ash Ketchum left Pallet Town a year later. > Gen II (HGSS) and Gen IV (DP) happened two years later. > Gen V (W) happened three years later. > Gen V.5 (B2) and VI (Y) happened two years later. > Gen VII (Sun) happened three years later. > Gen VIII (Sword) happened three years later > the Crown Tundra sideplot of this blog happened one year later.

This means it’s been fifteen years since Red and Blue left Pallet Town and fourteen since Ash left.

That said, circling back to Bill and his team, I know the Pokémon anime states that the storage system is a transfer system and that it was invented by someone else, but because all of this went down in the infamous porygon episode, I can say that’s not true, and you probably wouldn’t have known otherwise if I didn’t just tell you. So Professor Akihabara doesn’t exist, and the digital storage system does.

But yes, Bill lives in a lighthouse he calls the Sea Cottage. He dyes his hair green and speaks with an accent that to our ears in the real world sounds awfully British, and in addition to being a tech researcher/engineer, he studies ancient pokémon behavior on the side. His backstory (hated school, used a trainer’s journey as an excuse to get out of going, had an ivysaur that evolved into a venusaur and inspired him to become a researcher) is lifted straight from Electric Tales, but a few side details are either taken from the games (details about his family, being the son of a fellow pokémaniac who annoys the piss out of him, etc) or How I Became a Pokémon Card (he once met a dratini that was the child of a giant dragonite, and furthermore, he gave dratini its official National Dex name). As for which pokémon he’s fused with, it was a clefairy (first, according to the games), followed by a rattata (Special), and finally a nidorino (Zenshou, also games).

That said, I also ignore a lot of Special canon, in part because I didn’t read much more than the stuff related to Bill and in part because I just ... don’t really care for Bill’s interpretation in that universe. Oh, sure, it’s funny to see him try to throw hands whenever possible, but I just kinda grew up with the chiller Bill from literally every other universe. That and I kinda want to provide Bill content that doesn’t just fall back onto the default interpretation for him, which always seems to be some variation of the Special interpretation. So while I still take elements from Special (his birthday is another one, for that matter), the vast majority of the canon I use is really from other sources.

Same thing can be said for the rest of the canon used here. The short version of all of this is that I rely on a mix of the anime and games for all facts offered here, coupled with my own twists on canon when it comes to characters and timeline of recent events in order to blend the two together.

It’s confusing, but just roll with it.}

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

this DLC has me FUCKED UP and i keep screaming

spoilers for Bounty of Blood under the cut, keep reading at ur own peril. Also some Guardian Takedown spoilers for anyone who hasn’t beat it yet

tl;dr: a comparison between something taken from BL2 and a thing taken from Bounty of Blood. more spoilery tl;dr below the cut.

also the siren thing is not spoilers so i’ll share it here for anyone curious, it’s just this: siren tattoos are blue but when lily absorbs eridium in 2, they turn pinkish/purple. just like how vaults do from bl1 to bl2. they’re white/blue in bl1, then purple-pink in bl2 (and tps), y’know, after Eridium begins erupting from the ground. just a neat little detail i noticed that im not entirely sure was intentional but im gonna believe it is.

tl;dr: Gythian Blood = Core and the Ruiner is of Eridian Origin even tho everyone in the DLC likes to say it was created with Jakobs’ bioengineering. disclaimer: idk if I’ve found every hidden ECHO so I may be missing a few things but I have done every side quest and took ample screenshots of all important dialogue in the DLC : )

“man i just sat here for like 15 minutes staring at my keyboard mentally comparing core and eridium like the dumb bitch i am. 

it's not like we can do an actual comparison because we have no idea what the natural fauna of gehenna was like before jakobs came and mutated everything with core unlike pandora where we know what skags and rakk and shit were like BEFORE the eridium crust erupted. 

altho!!! there's a neat comparison between joey ultraviolet and rose. like obviously he wasn't getting tattoos and was just doing lines of crushed up eridium but the point stands they both have glowy eyes and unique powers so i don't necessarily think this means rose is a siren just because she has magic powers especially when we know she got the whistling passed down to her from her grandmother. 

especially because we've never seen a siren interact with core before. altho that leaves the question we have seen core tattoos now what are eridium tattoos like? actually rose's tattoos were on her right arm obviously she isn't a siren as we know them right now (I saw a post on reddit where people thought rose was a siren) 

of course that brings up the point perhaps siren tattoos ARE eridium tattoos. but then we hear the general's log about how the devil riders were tattooing a man with core and blood so obviously they're not ‘naturally’ occurring unlike siren tattoos. so odds are they're probably not equivalents but something interesting i thought of while thinking about this is how well siren tattoos compare to the Vaults from borderlands 1 and borderlands 2″

anyway. this is all ive been thinking about. yes yes i know guardian takedown post but! >:( im still salty even tho this update has been lovely (outside of Blane not getting his correct damage scaling ‘till today......). so i’ll do that at my own damn pace. now let me elaborate so i can sleep at night lmao

Eridium

refinement produces slag, which weakens people and can mutate things

has mutating properties, mostly with imbuing elements into shit- possibly causes insanity

seems to be connected to another dimension, likely the one the Eridians are from

Core

has a secondary form of Infused Core

has mutating properties, mostly regarding a thing’s body and mind

apparently radioactive

there are some things i wanna note

1) People throughout the DLC say the Ruiner was created by the Jakobs corp (the company) thru bio-engineering but I’m 99% sure that’s not true. The paperwork seems to me like they found the egg somewhere on Gehenna and decided to roll and experiment with it like all corporations do when they find weird alien shit. so maybe they experimented with whatever was inside the egg, but I don’t think they actually created it entirely

“Excavated from [REDACTED] ... Local legends speaks of a [REDACTED]. This theory is not endorsed by our research personnel.

2) The Ruiner’s design reminds me a lot of the Warrior.

3) Core immediately reminded me of Gythian Blood from Guns Love and Tentacles and I don’t think that’s coincidence to have 2 back-to-back DLCs where the big bad is focused on green death juice. I think Gythian Blood and Core are of the same stuffs.

4) Therefore, I think the Ruiner is (mostly) of Eridian origin (if you haven’t already guessed). 

This gives us an amazing look into how the Eridians actually create their beasts!!! And I’m so happy they showed us this.

(side note, Interitus Regina (the long name for Ruiner) literally means Destruction Queen and I think that’s beautiful <3)

i mean the idea that they plunge them from orbit to create an explosion similar to a nuke is fucking horrifying (but holy shit I love it so much ahhh it’s so cool!!!!)

the one side line from Oletta about how the company couldn’t control the Ruiner deffo makes me double down on this theory. I’m not entirely sure how Rose’s grandma knew about the whistling (I don’t think I’ve found every echo log in that area YET), but I would bet it was part of the testing given how many fuckin’ tape players they have throughout the facility. The Warrior was controlled by verbal commands via Jack, so it’s possible that the Ruiner was intended to be controlled similarly, but Jakobs intervention (or something like the way Rose hatched it) fucked it up.

now we know the Warrior was created to protect the Vault of the Destroyer (hmm.) so what the heck was the Ruiner created for? Ruiner is a name given to it by Jakobs/the people of Gehenna so we can’t really assume, but then again the monster names are pretty apt in this series even tho they probably technically shouldn’t be. 

it was only an egg, so maybe it was another test of Core? A Vault Monster incubating until it was ready to protecc and attacc but was never hatched because the Eridians ‘sacrificed’ themselves before it could? (I’m still not convinced the Eridians are the good guys. Listen. LISTEN. The guardian takedown is something to think about, BUT it doesn’t disprove that theory and I’ll stand by it because I 100% trust the Overseer more than bitchpants mcgee over here who thinks he’s soooo special for no reason fuck you and your dumb ‘I did what the Watcher could not’ bull you haven’t done shit.) ok sorry im done he just angers me. stupid guardian man. your whip is stupid and you should feel bad. oh also I totally called us actually being Guardians thru Guardian Rank before the game came out aha yeah.

I definitely think Gythian was a test/use of Core from the Eridians. We see in Bounty of Blood that core seems to mutate more the physical (and occasionally mental) parts of people, like with the crew challenges u do for Juno with all the weird hybrid people and whatnot. Gythian had the whole ‘the heart still beats’ thing going on (which is definitely a physical mutation if i’ve ever seen one), plus the whole, you know, mind control and shit. Which is p similar to what the menta gnats can do when charged with Infused Core. And keep in mind in BLaT we see DAHL notes on what happens to test subjects when injected with Gythian Blood. They mutated physically and went insane.

What im saying is Sirens and Eridium and Elements are connected, so what does Core equal? body/mind sure but are there unique creatures for core (yes holy shit I’m not talking about h2o au for once and FINALLY they gave us a canon name for the green stuff!!!). If not, I’d love to see a Siren interact with Core to see what it does to them. seriously why hasn’t tannis interrupted us yet. horrible excuse for a science lover (kidding kidding, I love her). I’d also really love a fuller rundown on what the hell Rose’s powers were. Because the whistling thing seemed to just be her grandma’s thingie passed down to her from her mom

but the core stuff

her gun seems to be infused with it. So did her sword thing. I didn’t really get a good look at it i was too busy trying to see thru my blurry tears of LOVE for this DLC.

Strangely while her tattoos are (mostly) green I actually don’t know if they’re core infused bc look at this

n look back at hers. hers aren’t very lime.

anyway

her eyes

I’d love to know if the core gives her immediate future sight or just increased perception or reaction times. there’s a huge difference but she seemed to be able to shoot the gun outta the sheriff’s hand near immediately and it seems kinda implied its because of the core (or at least because her eyes are glowing green)

there’s a possibility she has some unique core powers/possibly implants because of her relations to the project in the first place, or as leader of the devil riders after looting the facility. it’s really hard to say without more info and like i said im not sure if i missed an ECHO or two or not regarding her backstory :( 

Her hair is also green which I just noticed. Maybe she has core powers bc her grandmother got suuuuuuuuper irradiated/influenced working on project horizons and it passed down thru her n Rose’s mom, to Rose. Tannis does have a line about Sirens having unique hair colors and, if Sirens are linked to Eridium, perhaps those linked to Core also have unique hair color. Could also explain why only Rose seems to have those whistling powers. That said we don’t really see anyone else trying that whistling thing out afaik and idk if it was, like, a special ability or a certain tone/ditty or w h a t. 

i know being vague with everything gives them more creative freedom to create amazing characters and scenarios, but dammit I want A N S W E R S.

All THAT said man I’m so glad magic is real in the borderlands universe. oh, sorry, “magic”. It’s magic. Science it, tannis, I dare you. either way, I win. Either it’s magic and H2O AU is canon, or it’s science and I finally get my goddamn answers. Hey gearbox can you make a book just explaining all the science and eridian stuff. please. I’d love you forever. please. pleaheheheheaaasseee it’s all i’ve ever wanted.

oh also can i just say, suuuper disappointed we didn’t learn anything about anshin. Really wish non-fan favorite corporations would get the spotlight/lore for once. Like, I like Jakobs as much as the next guy, and I get WHY they did it (can’t have a corporation looking too good!!!) but they now have 3 DLCs (Jakobs Cove, GLaT, and Bounty of Blood) and also a hefty chunk of the main game. Like... we all know Jakobs fuckin sucks, look at what they did on Pandora. I really just want info on a medical corporation 😭 I have to do everything my damn s e l f. but SERIOUSLY IMAGINE the possibilities that could come from a medical corp getting its hands on eridian tech. like, yeah obviously the weapons corps are gonna use it for weaponry and stuff BUT WOULDN’T THE MEDICAL CORPS MUTATING PEOPLE MAKE MORE SENSE??? ldfhgldfshg I have to do everything my damn self...

anyway all that aside, this is definitely by favorite borderlands dlc by a LONG shot. Nothing comes close. Ahhh the lore, the nuclear aspect, the a e s t h e t i c (seriously, have I mentioned how much I adore Trigun???), the art, the music, the cryoslinger, the fact I can bust out going beeEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAans like Ray Chase at any time and it will MAKE SENSE. I love all of it.

oh, also, Rose is totally not dead. C’mon, they couldn’t find her body. She pulled a Lilith. “Are you sure she didn’t just suffer a wound that LOOKS fatal, only for her to come back in a blockbuster sequel...?” is a line from mr Jones himself (the movie guy)

I just hope when she comes back she gets to meet Captain Scarlett. I’d love to watch their interactions plus pirates and or ninjas. That’s 2 DLC villains now that have vanished without a trace. And I like Captain Scarlett way more than Rose (seriously I spent the entire beginning of the DLC complaining about how her voice bothered me- I was so happy she was a villain, I was hoping that was the case).

oh yeah, reminder, the people of vestige were living next to highly radioactive egg for likely years. i feel really bad for them :(

also!!!

this made me smile

[mysterylover123]

BNHA Rewatch: Episode 61 “Deku vs Kacchan Part 2″

 mysterylover123

O.T.P.

This is gonna get kinda emotional.

Deku is turning Kacchan’s fight proposal down. Dammit Deku! He’s being serious!

Hoo boy that Kacchan face. No light in his eyes. That realization, just…just bleeding through…hoo boy.

“If the way you admired him was correct, does that mean my way of thinking was wrong?” OMG ITS HAPPENING. HE’S REALIZING IT YA’LL.

The flashbacks to bb Deku and Kacchan the feels.

The white void, it’s just the two of them. 

That Deku line from the first episode. I’m transported right back, ya’ll. It’s that first love again, that same feeling I had when I first discovered this series all the way back in summer of last year.

So Deku starts by thinking too hard about what’s going on and immediately gets blasted.

“You think too much” hoo boy recently Mother’s Basement posted the analysis of this fight and pointed out that this is actually a flaw of Deku’s that he can learn to remedy by adopting some of Kacchan’s impulsiveness. Never has the phrase “you complete me” been more accurate.

This freaking animation. It’s so beautiful. OMG.

“Wait for me” OH MAN BB DEKU BB KACCHAN RUNNING I’M DEAD I AM DYING

Cause he loves ya you dope.

Cute overload

WHY WHY WHY hoo boy Kacchan flashbacks.

Dat little trip oh man. He’s so bummed Deku doesn’t wanna fight and Deku’s little kick actually knocked him down.

Ooh boy. Here it comes. The music went out

Hold his freaking hand some day dammit

Oh god I can’t watch this again I can’t I can’t

“why is to you became strong…while I - “ OH GOD HERE IT COMES HERE IT COMES

OH GOD. Slow clap. Okamoto and Chapin both deserve freaking awards for that performance. I mean holy shit. That voice acting. Those cracks. That hit. It makes me cry. I’m tearing up right now. Cause you see, this whole episode, it really rests on the ability of Bakugou’s Seiyuu and VA to pour everything into the performance. It’s not going to hit without both of them giving the vocal acting performance of a lifetime, and they both knocked it out of the freaking park. I actually love them both as his voice; I don’t have a preference for dub over sub, as regards their performances (not the dialogue translations), because both are incredible. Just. Slow clap. All of the awards, please.

Look at how Deku looks at him. He’s the best. He just…he cares, so much. I mean, you’d admittedly have to be a pretty heartless bastard not to feel a little compassionate after hearing that speech but still. Kacchan’s so fucking lucky he has Deku and he doesn’t even know it. I want one too.

He’s crying. Me too.

Kacchan no Kacchan no nononononono 

Oh god Deku you beautiful darling

“may not be any meaning” I DISAGREE THIS IS THE CULMINATION OF AN ENTIRE SERIES’ WORTH OF 100+ SYMBOLIC CHAPTERS DETAILING YOUR GROWTH FROM ANGRY YELLING RIVALS TO RIVALS WHO SUPPORT EACH OTHER DAMMIT IT’S EVERYTHING

“May not be any meaning in winning or losing” lol are you just saying that in hindsight, Future Deku, cause you know you lost?

Deku didn’t have to do this. He didn’t have to fight Kacchan or even let him know the truth.

And note, he didn’t accept until he realized there was someone he could save. Someone who needs saving, to be helped. And this is how to help him.

“The only one who can accept his feelings is me.” Ya’ll heard that haters? Say it a little louder for the people in the back, Deku. He’s got his heart.

And look who’s smiling again, eyes lighting up again, the minute Deku started fighting back?

“I couldn’t just completely reject him” Guess who also sad that about their fiery spiky blond spouse in BNHA? Kacchan’s dad in that omake about their marriage.

Their relationship was wrong, but now it’s right. 

They never talked about how they really felt. Communication is the cornerstone of a healthy relationship, folks. Go on. Talk about your feels. Your real feelings.

Of that was one hell of a hit.

That speedy recovery though. Deku is fast. 

Oh wow Kacchan hit it too

That smile. That smile OMG that is THE HOTTEST, by far, that Deku has ever looked in animation. And I don’t say that lightly.

The translation here is either “I’ve” or “you’ve” gotten stronger. Both fit fine, which is the crazy part. Deku could be either saying that he himself has improved, or complimenting Bakugou, which does admittedly make more sense with what he was saying before, while ‘I’ve’ fits his cocky grin here better. I want him to flash a cocky grin more. It suits him. (BTW The English Dub compromises between the two and says’ we’ve both’.

Katsuki assumes Deku has a plan. Always overestimating him.

“That’s what I hate about you” OMG HE FINALLY TELLS HIM HOW HE FEELS. “I can never tell what you’re thinking” Because ya know he’s so good at understanding how everyone else thinks and feels.

He’s always being mean to Deku. Deku has seen him at his very worst and yet still admires him. Maybe that’s scary, you know? Unconditional love is…kinda terrifying. But so, so beautiful. So he has to rationalize it that Deku is just looking down on him.

Wow Deku sure took you long enough! He’s been saying that since day 1!

“I wouldn’t want anything to do with them anymore” Deku there you go being empathetic and wonderful and perfect again. So understanding you darling, darling boy.

 “Along with the parts I hated about you, I saw all the amazing things you could do.” THAT’S ADMIRATION, FOLKS. ADMIRATION WITHOUT IDOLIZATION. Without hero-worship. Acknowledging the good and the bad. Seeing a person for who they really are and always, always seeing the best of them, even at their worst.

“MUCH CLOSER TO ME THAN ALL MIGHT” Do you hear him guys? The closest person to him, closer than All Might. Closer than his freaking #1 favorite hero. The dub version has “actually in my life”, which isn’t a bad idea either. Both are true. That is so powerful. The person who

Oh yeah and again how does Deku advance in power? How does he Go Beyond? KACCHAN. Full cowling, he found from him. OFA itself, he gained by saving him. And 8%.

THAT SMILE. “I thought you were amazing.” He loves you you idiot. 

He kept chasing after him. He’ll never stop. He won’t just give up.

He passed him. And Bakugo looks happy. Possibly because he wants Deku to do better. Possibly because it seems to be confirming his might-makes-right theory. Possibly both.

ANIMATION-GASM AGAIN. 

AHAHAHAHAHAH ITS THAT CUT ITS THAT CUT DEKU’S DANCING FEET

THE VOID AROUND THEM IT’S JUST YOU AND ME 

AND THE BLOCK OMG THIS IS BEAUTIFUL THIS IS THE MOST FREAKING BEAUTIFUL ANIMATION IVE EVER SEEN

I’m serious. They brought out all the stops for this one. Of course. they knew, they had to know, that this was it. The animation, too, had to be perfect, or else it wasn’t gonna come across. And it is. Even better, in my opinion, than the animation in the stuff that came before it. Bones you are incredible. 

Higher gear. Can anyone doubt that Katsuki is important to Deku’s journey after this?

“This is gross, so I can’t say it”.. “I love you?” A reactor I follow actually said that after that line. That’s how intense they are.

Anyway IMAGE OF VICTORY SPEECH. The Ep that keeps on giving. 

Kacchan is his image of victory. The other side of him. And he adopts some of his traits.

“The part of you I hate and yet” How much love can you have for a person when you can somehow still admire the darkest, meanest parts of them? I don’t have a very perfect definition of love but I think that’s probably a big part of it.

“my image of victory is of you” feels overload. Feels O.D. 

dat crane shot.

My one disappointment with this episode is that they used the US of Smash OST instead of the Katsuki and Izuku OST for this scene. CMON GUYS. SERIOUSLY. THE KATSUKI AND IZUKU THEME HAD TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN FOR THIS EPISODE AND THIS MOMENT ALONE. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING. 

“I have to beat you” the music the feels omg

Hahaha psych. Kacchan wins anyway. 

WOOF. Like OK this is in the manga, this positioning, but it’s only for one frame. In the anime it goes on for like, an uncomfortably long time, with the slow panting, and the close-ups on the twisting body parts, and…combined with the fact that all of Deku’s admiring girlfriends in this arc have also landed on top of him in a similar pose, and you can’t blame me for the fact that my mind went into rather…R-rated territory. 

Kacchan’s disappointed. He didn’t want Deku to lose. He wanted Deku to win.

That breaking  voice again. Don’t make me cry more dammit it’s too late.

ALL MIGHT! I need an MST3K style All Might commentary-reaction to this entire damn thing. Seriously Hori. If you ever do an extra, please make one that’s a serious of All Might panel reacting to this whole thing. I NEED THAT. 

Finishing each other’s sentences again.

“It’s too late” IT’S NEVER TOO LATE YOU CYNICAL PORCUPINE.

This is such a great moment of catharsis. Why Deku indeed? Well, you’re about to learn.

THAT LINE DELIVERY AGAIN. That Broken voice. Both voice actors are too good.

Deku’s legs though. WOWSA. A little detail I’ve noticed is that Kacchan has really buff, sexy arms and Deku has really buff, sexy legs. Because those are the body parts they use, while the reverse parts are more average.

“I’m weak too” You’re making me weak I can’t take it. His voice his voice that fucking voice

DEKU’S EYES. THEY’RE WELLING. 

HE’S GONNA CRY TOO.

I also need an All Might in my life. I kinda blame myself all the time for things outside of my control. Deku AND Kacchan both blamed themselves for what happened. For All Might’s end. And neither one was really responsible, but they’re just like that. I relate, painfully, to both of them. I have a Deku side and a Bakugo side - deep down, I think we all do. Maybe one more than the other, but that’s what you get when you create two characters who initially act as kind of…distilled embodiments of two sides of the super-hero coin. One all super with no hero, the other all hero with no super - at least, at the beginning.

THAT PIANO MUSIC IT SOUNDS FAMILIAR. IT’S ALL MIGHT’S FREAKING THEME YA’LL!

Ooh boy All Might’s BKDK Speech! Both of their teachers ship them, you guys. All Might AND Aizawa both give big, beautiful speeches about their compatibility. In case you somehow missed it. 

Being fixated on victory like you, young Bakugou…and wanting to save those in trouble, like you, young Midoriya…both of those feelings are necessary.” “You guys are perfect for each other”, says the reactor I mentioned earlier (who isn’t even a hardcore BKDK shipper, mind you, it’s just that it’s that obvious.) And it’s true. You need both. They want each other, they need each other, because they have what the other lacks. They complete each other.  

This is the shonen rival equivalent of having the couple in a rom-com confess at the end of act one instead of act three. It upsets all the cliches and is all the better for it. Though even the most hardcore, dedicated anime rivals, I don’t think have ever gone this married-couple with the ‘mutual respect’ and ‘making each other stronger’ thing.

WIN AND SAVE SAVE TO WIN. They look each other in the eyes.

Oh god not that voice again I’m dying. Don’t make me cry again Kacchan.  

“Don’t lose.” SUPPORTIVE KACCHAN I LOVE SUPPORTIVE KACCHAN.

“I’ll get stronger” CONFIDENT DEKU I LOVE CONFIDENT DEKU. 

“Of the students only you.” ONLY YOU. 

I put this moment really high on my list of Kacchan’s nicest moments, because it means a lot to me and to All Might. All Might acknowledges it. He’s a good secret keeper.

Oh and Deku thanks him too in the English Dub, BTW. Not the manga but nice dub touch. 

OMG he’s such a Tsundere.

He told him everything. HE KNOWS. The only one who knows. None of Deku’s other love interests do. And he has no interest in telling them. 

Kacchan asks why he told him. And I’ve got an answer, after obsessively rereading Chapter 11/rewatching Episode 8 a lot: BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU, YOU IDIOT. You were mad at him for lying about his quirk to you. You asked what was going on (loudly). You accused him of lying to you your whole life. So he told you the truth. Because he can lie to his mom, and he can lie to his friends and teachers and the entire freaking world. But he cannot lie to YOU. Because he loves you. Idiot baka. 

Oh and what’s that music playing there? Why does that sound familiar? YOU SAY RUN YOU SAY RUN YOU SAY RUN IT’S BACK. And you know? That’s I think because YSR symbolizes Deku���s heroic inspiration. The inspiration he both takes in and gives to others. And here, he’s both being inspired by Kacchan, and inspiring him at the same  time.

Now Kacchan is doing the same. “Chosen one” He knows. Deku is better. He’s gotta surpass him.

LOL THIS IS FUNNY. THEY SURE BICKER LIKE THEY’RE MARRIED.

This shot composition. Get it? ALL MIGHT’S THE THING BETWEEN ‘EM.

Oh and this. Yay some character development from Kacchan! Another nice moment of his in this ep. Three times! 

All Might Meta’s a bit about how Kacchan took responsibility and felt bad and does a Mom guilt trip on Dadzawa. They’re getting to be kinda married too now.  

“I went in pretty HARD”. OMG stop it you’re making me think bad things again. Just F*CK already.

Their first act as a married couple is to clean the house together. OMG domestic fluff. 

And now for the best Post-credits scene ever. 

Wow Uraraka ships it so bad. 

Oh and some Todobaku bonus! Aw I guess Bakugou just turned down his 3some offer. 

Ooh awkward silence. 

YAY! Though they did kinda wreck it by having Deku bring it up instead of Kacchan 

NOW THEY’RE HEALTHY ENOUGH TO TALK TO EACH OTHER LIKE HUMAN BEINGS.

Kacchan just praised me. Life is good.

Episode 61 is my favorite episode of my favorite show. I think it’s the best and will never be topped. Feels, left and right. It’s really just perfect. Funny, all 3 of the transcendent, best-of-the-best BNHA eps (This, 49 and 23) are basically just two characters fighting for 20 minutes. Nothing more or less. Yet they’re all so, so good. And this one is���I don’t even know how to put it into words. It’s a phenomenal tour-de-force of acting, visuals, animation, music, and of course, writing, all combining together to be just absolutely unsurpassable. Everything that makes this series good, boiled down to it’s essence. And yes, this did seal the deal for me with BKDK. I liked it before, but this made it a done deal. No going back. And I love it.

BEST GIRL OF THE EP: Uraraka for being so supportive.

RANKER: Top 5 Best Moments of This Episode: (it’s really more like a top 50)

5. Deku’s little Dance number

4. True Rivals at Last

3. True feelings at last

2. The Image of Victory Speech

1. “Why did I become...”

[storiesofwildfire]

( repost, do not reblog. )

tell us your favorite quotes from your character. give us an idea of who they are from five nine don’t judge me things they’ve said. then tag your friends:

tagged by: @fiddlingonthetympanic tagging: @weightofmyshield @rationalunreason @nekrcun @lameshsorsye @nottobecrossed and whoever else would like to do this?

i. And if I do, then what? I love Thor more dearly than any of you, but you know what he is. He's arrogant, he's reckless, he's dangerous! You saw how he was today. Is that what Asgard needs from its King? ( Thor )

reason: This quote demonstrates that despite Loki’s obvious jealousy, he actually does have a point to make. Thor is reckless at this point in time. Thor doesn’t deserve the throne, else risk ruining everything. Loki sees things clearly in a way that no one ever gives him credit for. Loki understands what will happen if Thor takes up the throne and he understands despite selfishness or jealousy, what it means to actually be a ruler. 

Despite Loki’s descent into “madness”, before his fall, he does have the makings of a good king and good counsel, but no one has listened to him. No one would pay him enough mind to, so he had to do it for himself.

ii. Loki: So I am no more than another stolen relic, locked up here until you might have use of me? Odin: Why do you twist my words? Loki: You could have told me what I was from the beginning! Why didn't you? Odin: You're my son... I wanted only to protect you from the truth... Loki: What, because I... I... I am the monster parents tell their children about at night? Odin: [unwell]  No! No! Loki: You know, it all makes sense now, why you favored Thor all these years because no matter how much you claim to love me, you could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard! ( Thor )

reason: Everyone loves to make the “oh, boo hoo, Loki’s adopted, he’s just a spoiled brat who has daddy issues” argument as to why Loki fell down the hole he fell. That couldn’t be further from the truth, in all actuality. Loki’s issue isn’t that he’s adopted. It isn’t even that he’d been lied to for so long. It’s that he’s coming face-to-face with the ideology that he is a member of a species that has been bastardized to the point that people are terrified of them, believe they are monsters.

His father and his mother lied to him, yes, but to the extent that they raised him to hate himself, to thoroughly believe that the very thing that he was is monstrous, disgusting, and wrong. 

Odin stole Loki from his home, raised him as something he is not, and keeps him pressed under his thumb until the moments where he was useful, always on a leash, never truly allowed to be freely himself without consequence and this? This is a revelation as to a logical reason for why Odin has been like that for the majority of his life. 

iii. I never wanted the throne, I only ever wanted to be your equal! ( Thor )

reason: People never take this line very seriously, but it’s actually one of the truest things Loki has ever said. Think about it? Loki’s the God of Mischief and Chaos. Being tied down to the never-ending responsibility of the throne--a prison sentence in and of itself--is not something Loki would actually enjoy, right? Of course not. 

But Loki has never been treated fairly by his people, never been held on the same level as his own brother, and even Thor is seen talking down to Loki, treating Loki as if he is beneath him. People get away with treating Loki--a prince--poorly because they see important figures get away with it, like Odin, because Loki does not conform to the norms of Asgard and therefore is “wrong” or someone worth shunning. Is it so hard to believe that he would want to be seen as Thor’s equal while being accepted for being Loki?

iv. I've looked forward to this day as long as you have. You're my brother and my friend. Sometimes I'm envious, but never doubt that I love you. ( Thor )

reason: Loki’s a big person to admit he’s envious, but there is a sort of genuine nature that comes along with his confession to loving his brother. This moment between them reads as lighthearted, but it is one of the loveliest and realist moments that Thor and Loki share as brothers. 

I also think, in a way, that Loki is trying to assure Thor that what’s about to happen is not meant to be malicious, it is only something he believes he has to do in order to show Asgard Thor is not prepared to be king. The good of all people comes above the good of the heir. One last moment of love before everything goes to shit.

v. Thor: I will tell Father you died with honor. Loki: I didn't do it for him. ( The Dark World )

reason: We see so many examples of Loki going above and beyond, of committing extreme deeds in hopes of winning Odin’s approval and being a worth Son of Odin, which he never actually achieves. In this statement, he finally acknowledges that he doesn’t need that. He didn’t fight alongside Thor for Odin. It was for Thor, it was for his mother, it was for Asgard, and above all else, it was for himself.

vi. Malekith! I am Loki of Jotunheim, and I have brought you a gift! I only ask for one thing in return; a good seat from which to watch Asgard burn! ( The Dark World )

reason: Up until this point, Loki cannot bring himself to admit that he’s from Jotunheim. It’s a truth that he even lies to himself about repeatedly, over and over again, because he can’t accept it, can’t wrap his mind around it, can’t digest it. Even in this scene, when trying to trick Malekith, he chose to be truthful about his origins, and accepting it aloud, admitting it to someone else, also helps Loki to solidify the truth in his own mind. This is really the first time we see him come to terms with the truth, even if somewhat forced.

vii. It's not that I don't love our little talks, it's just... I don't love them. && If I am for the axe, then, for mercy's sake, just... swing it! ( The Dark World )

reason: This is just showing how... 100% done with Odin Loki truly is. People don’t like to think of Odin as an abuser, that he was actually a decent father, but he wasn’t a good parent. Not to Thor and not to Loki. Odin is one of Loki’s abusers. Odin has hurt Loki in ways that no one can imagine and even in the face of being imprisoned forever, in knowing that he can use a perfectly legitimate excuse of “Thanos used the Mind Gem on me and forced me to do his bidding”, he didn’t try to defend himself. 

He knew Odin wouldn’t believe him, knew Odin would never acknowledge the parallels between what he was condemning Loki for and what he’d done himself, willing. 

Rather than fight with Odin, try to change his mind, run, anything--Loki’s just tired of Odin, tired of answering to him, tired of fighting him, tired of everything having to do with Odin. To the point where Odin would, perhaps, just be more merciful in ending everything rather than drag it out.

More than anything, he just doesn’t want to beg Odin for a gods damned thing unless it is a true end.

viii. Barton told me everything. Your ledger is dripping, it's GUSHING red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer... PATHETIC! You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code. Something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away! ( The Avengers )

reason: This is plain old self-reflection. Loki’s talking to Natasha and yes, he’s describing her, but he’s also absolutely describing himself and the situation he’s stuck in, the situation he’s been stuck in under multiple people. First Odin and then Thanos, both people who used and abused Loki in different ways, both people who manipulated or forced him to do things that he did not want to do, both people who helped stain Loki’s own hands.

This child’s prayer, as he calls it, is his own prayer, his own desperate cry for help and reflection. 

ix. Thor: This place is perfect for you. It's savage, chaotic, lawless. Brother, you're going to do GREAT here. Loki: Do you truly think so little of me? Thor: Loki, I thought the world of you. I thought we were going to fight side-by-side forever, but at the end of the day you're you and I'm me and... oh, maybe there's still good in you but... let's be honest, our paths diverged a long time ago. Loki: Yeah... it's probably for the best that we'll never see each other again. ( Ragnarök )

reason: Loki likes to act like he does not care about Thor and that the opinions of others don’t matter, but this highlights how much Loki actually does care. He’s afraid of being what everyone expects of him but he doesn’t exactly know how not to be, because everyone assumes the worst of him no matter what he does. He desperately wants approval from others, desperately wants them to see his best qualities, but he’s constantly faced with scenarios where people do not. And it hurts him more than he could ever admit.

[pokemonpundit]

Let’s Take a look at Pokemon Let’s Go

Pokemon Let’s Go is releasing this week so let’s take a look at some of the features we know about. 

Catching

This is the feature that had most players losing their shit about, but it’s really not that big a deal. Sure you can’t battle wild pokemon, but who was bothering to do that anyway, beyond hurting them a bit to catch them. For the most part, there isn’t really a difference. This way might even end up being more convenient, because you don’t have to worry about accidentally fainting them.

Legendary battles

While Let��s Go does take away wild pokemon battles, you still battle all the legendary pokemon, and you must defeat them before given the chance to capture. 

I like this, because legendary battles should be epic and awesome, but since you can often catch them right away, they are also very anticlimactic, especially for whatever chump you throw the master ball at. This way forces the battle against the legend to actually be somewhat interesting.

Ding Dong the HMs are dead

I wrote a whole other post about just this, but the partner pokemon gains special techniques to perform the function HM moves used to, which means you can make your team out of whatever pokemon you want to, and with whatever moves you want to, rather than having to have your team know all the HMs. 

Pokemon

Arguably the most important part of a pokemon game is the pokemon available. Let’s Go will apparently contain just the original Kanto pokemon. This makes sense as the games are set in Kanto. They did choose to additionally allow Alolan forms and mega evolutions. If they didn’t, there would only be one line each of Ghost, Dragon, and Steel pokemon, and literally no Dark pokemon. Probably a good idea to include them. 

A notable absence from the games are all the evolutions that were introduced in later generations. In Let’s Go, you will not be able to evolve your pokemon into Crobat, Bellossom, Politoed, Slowking, Magnezone, Steelix, Hitmontop, Lickilicky, Rhyperior, Blissey, Tangrowth, Kingdra, Scizor, Electivire, Magmortar, Espeon, Umbreon, Leafeon, Glaceon, Sylveon, Porygon2, or Porygon-Z. 

Gamefreak did the same thing back in FireRed and LeafGreen, and everyone thought is was stupid that they couldn’t evolve their Golbats until they got the national pokedex. 

We thought they learned their lesson from this, because in ORAS, they actually changed the numbering of pokemon so as to include the evolutions that were introduced in gen IV like Gallade, Probopass, Roserade, Dusknoir, and Froslass. It turns out that lesson was only temporary. This time Gamefreak has decided to pretend those pokemon don’t exist.

They’re following me...

A returning feature from yellow version that hasn’t been seen since HeartGold and SoulSilver. I don’t actually like this feature. It just adds more distracting stuff to the screen. It’s feels like the George Lucas special edition of a pokemon game. However, I’m definitely in the minority here; Most people seem to love this feature, so it makes sense to include it, I guess.

We have internet now? 

Normally you could only visit the PC box at a pokemon centre, but you can do it from wherever. I’m not really sure how useful that is, but it’s convenient. It does allow you to heal your pokemon on long routes by dropping them in the PC, closing it, reopening it, and taking them back out again, so you don’t have to keep running back to the pokemon centre on long routes. 

A little help here? 

You can now grab a second controller and get a friend to join you. I wouldn’t recommend most people use this, as it makes the game incredibly easy. While both you and your partner will send out a pokemon, the opposing trainers only send out 1, so they’re trivial to defeat.  This isn’t exactly a bad feature, because you can always just ignore it. It’s just a feature that most people probably shouldn’t use.

What they probably should have done here is just have the opposing trainers also send out another pokemon. If they did, and you felt like playing though the whole game this way, you could optimize your team for double battles, and actually use moves like Helping Hand, Follow Me, and Wide Guard. In the normal games it’s not worth doing because double battles are so rare, but in that case you could make every battle a double battle if you wanted to. 

Why u no evolve? 

So the starters are a bit different than usual. That’s fine; Eevee and Pikachu are alight pokemon anyway, but they’ve forgotten how to evolve. This is for a historical reasons and not because it’s actually a good idea. 

One of the main elements of pokemon is that they evolve, that you get to watch the little pals you shared the journey with grow along side you, but not for your partner pokemon this time around. At the very least they had the good thinking to buff their stats a little and give them new moves. It’s just a little ironic that Eevee, the evolution pokemon, forgot how to evolve. 

On a side note, since the partner has to be with always to use the HM move substitute, does that mean we always have to use our starter. I’m not sure, but I really hope that’s not the case. In previous games, you’ve had the option to not use your starter and instead grab a Ratata, or a Nidoran, or whatever’s nearby, but I’m worried Let’s Go is taking away more options. Not 100% on that one though. 

The pokemon summary screen just got a bit simpler

Let’s Go will not have any abilities or items. This is a bit sad, we’re losing even more variety in our team choices. This is another thing that’s mostly true for historical reasons. Back in the original Kanto games, abilities didn’t exist yet. 

Abilities were added in gen 3, because it was another way to make each pokemon feel unique. In time, they could even do crazy stuff like Slaking, Archeops,  Aegislash, or Komala’s unique abilities, and they really feel different.

They might be able to mostly get away with not having abilities this time. The Kanto pokemon were originally designed without abilities, so you wouldn’t have to change them too much when removing the ability. If they ever made a Let’s Go game in Hoenn or beyond, they would definitely have to put them back. 

Even with just the Kanto pokemon, there is the problem of Mega Pinsir. It gained the flying type and used it’s aerilate to turn it’s normal moves into powerful flying moves and that’s how it works. Without the ability, it doesn’t actually have any flying moves, so they will have to muck around with Pinsir’s moveset. 

The removal of items are less important, but there are certain builds of pokemon that are no longer viable without them. Abilities are definitely the bigger loss. 

So that’s everything I can think of right now. There are a couple clever innovations, but these games have also managed to unlearn a bunch of lesson the pokemon series has taught itself about what works. Overall, this game will be slightly worse, but not by much.

Either way come Friday, I’m getting my copy. I’ve already reopened my old pokemon go save and caught the version exclusives from the other game, so I’m pretty much ready to go.

6 more days...

[careycuprisin]

Bear 100 🐻 Race Report: You Have to Run the Downhills

The past isn’t made of facts, not really, just stories people tell to make themselves feel better.

— Joe Abercrombie, The Wisdom of Crowds

Dear Reader: why are you reading this race report?

If you’re a runner looking to do this race and want info, read sections II, III, VI

If you’re wanting a narrative story about the day, read II, III

If you want to know whether my drop was righteous or wimpy, read III, IV, VII

If you want information about my kit and equipment, read VI

If you’re a geeked-out nerd person, or a strategy junkie whose idea of ‘fun’ is destroying Logic Men on Twitter, or an aspiring ‘life coach,’ read I

I. META-STUFF ABOUT RACE REPORTS: When you finish a race like the Bear 100 (by which I mean wrapping up the weekend, whether your efforts got you an official finish or a drop somewhere along the course), you are left with an enormous heap of impressions and recollections and thoughts and analyses and excuses and explanations. Most of these are true, but they are not all necessarily coherent when combined with all the rest, and (more importantly) they are not always helpful. The job of writing a race report like this involves sorting through all of these thoughts and selecting a coherent narrative that makes sense.

That’s the easy part. A lot of possible, true, narratives make sense. How to choose among them? If you plan to enter races like this one in the future (as I do), the narrative that you construct in your race report will be also be useful to you later, guiding you to make better decisions for future races based on your experiences in this one. This process will inevitably favor some impressions and analyses over others, and as the memories of the race fade, the race report will harden into the Narrative Story of My Race, which will be coherent, true, and (if I do it right) helpful to me in future races.

As an example of the difference between helpful and unhelpful stories, an unhelpful story might be, “I didn’t do as well in this race as I’d hoped because I have no natural talent” or “the aid stations stocked Heed and Heed is disgusting.” These might both be true, but if that’s your story, how do you fix it? You can’t, so it’s not helpful. Heed is ubiquitous at aid stations in races all over the country. A helpful story, in contrast, might be something like, “I didn’t eat enough” or “I started too fast” or “I wore the wrong shoes” or “I didn’t do enough weekly mileage to prepare for this race.” All of these things are something you can act upon to get better results at the next race.

II. THE UNFOLDING OF THE RACE: I got out of bed at 0350 and was full of coffee and on the start line by 0600. It was still dark. Chilly but not cold. I was unfortunately wearing the New Balance Minimus shoes that I’d driven to Logan in, because I’d forgotten to pack the actual Salomon S-Lab Sense 8s that I wanted to use for the first twenty mile section. Making do!

I was somewhere in the middle of the pack when we finished the three or four blocks of residential street and funneled into the single track trail headed up Logan Dry Canyon. The conga line wasn’t too annoying, except for the guy ahead of me who was one of those guys who like to play music on speakers during a race so everyone around him can share his obvious love for Rob Zombie. The view of Logan as we got higher and the sun rose was spectacular. (Most people are still pretty energetic during this section so you’ll find videos of this aplenty on YouTube if you search for “Bear 100.”)

I should mention the hornets. There were a lot of them along the course all day and they were stinging people left and right. I’m used to living a charmed life, so I was not too surprised when the hornets spared me. Thank you, hornets.

After the initial long climb there are some rollers and I ran them easily. My downhill pace was much faster than most of the crowd I’d been with on the way up. A Utah resident named Kalina ran with me for a while and kept me from doubting my judgment that I was going downhill at a reasonable pace. Alas! This was the last time I’d pass a significant number of people (this is called ‘foreshadowing’).

Near the end of the rolling section Kalina dropped me and everyone else around her like a sack of potatoes on some short uphills and I never saw her again. She ended up finishing in around 27 hours (maybe I should have doubted my judgment). We meandered over to the big downhill into Leatham Hollow and I am sad to report that halfway down this beautiful descent I was losing the ability to run downhill. Basically leg and knee and foot pain with everything tightening up. And so it had begun — people passing me. So it would continue.

I got out of the the Leatham Hollow aid station with 5:04 elapsed, which was pretty much on my best-case-scenario pace for the overall race. I had my first drop bag there with beefier shoes, so I put them on, ditched the long shirt I wore at the start in favor of a tank top, and moved on.

Next was a flat-ish dirt road over to the Richards Hollow aid station, about three miles away (23-ish race miles total). It was mid-day and it was now hot in the sun but still cool in the shade. I tried the trick of running the shady parts and hiking the sunny parts. After the aid station the course settles into the classic Bear 100 pattern: low aid station, then big climb and descent to the next aid station. This climb was sunny and hot and I got up ok, but the next downhill was a mess. I couldn’t PAY people to not pass me. That’s what happens when you’re not running the downhills! I came into Cowley Canyon aid station knowing that a 30-hour finish was unlikely but, hey, a finish of any kind is still fabulous. I took a little longer in the aid station then I’d like on a good day, but then was off.

The Bear 100 pattern of up-down continued through the Right Hand Fork and Temple Fork aid stations. The little creek going into Right Hand Fork had some of the most beautiful beaver ponds I’ve ever seen: clear water that let you see right to the bottom with bright green plants floating on top. Another thing about Right Hand Fork — there was a pickup truck in the parking lot with big white lettering on the windows: Search Dog, Do Not Disturb. I looked closely at the truck but couldn’t see the search dog. Needless to say I was mildly disappointed (this is another example of foreshadowing).

I had pretty much been suffering ever since Richards Hollow but I started to feel a little bit better coming into Temple Fork just before it got dark. This was probably just a function of it not being hot any more. I was off pace but dealing with it. Physically feeling generally weak and miserable but mentally very sharp, and emotionally pretty stable. I got my headlamp out of my drop bag, put on a long-sleeve shirt, a light hat, and a wind jacket for the chill that set in immediately when the sun went down, and headed uphill again.

III. THE DROP: Climbing up to the Twin Creek aid station at the about the 50-mile mark (the Tony Grove substitute aid station for 2021) it was predictably dark and, thanks to the dry air, quickly getting colder and colder. The good vibes quickly fell away. I wasn’t able to eat anything because of nausea, so progress was reasonably slow up the climb. Some runners about twenty feet ahead of me startled a beaver and I heard its tail slap against the water of its pond. (And, since I remember it clearly now, at least I must not have been completely delirious then.) So long as I was climbing I was warm enough, but the nausea was getting worse and worse, and if I tried to fight the nausea by taking my foot off the gas a bit, I quickly got too cold and started shivering. I was stuck between my GI tract requiring that I decrease my physical exertion so it could start to function again, and a dependence on continued exertion to generate enough heat. A catch-22 that most people who’ve run a 100-mile race will probably recognize.

When I got into the aid station at Twin Creek, I went into the warmed tent with the intention of relaxing for fifteen minutes to half an hour to give my stomach an opportunity to wake up. (Was that a mistake?) The plan was to eat and drink some things, put on some warmer clothes from my drop bag, and get out. Depending on who I talked to, it was somewhere between 12 and 14 miles to the next aid station at Franklin basin. This was the longest distance between any two aid stations in the race. I still had plenty of time before the cutoff.

Sadly, fifteen and then thirty minutes came and went and I was not recovering. The nausea wouldn’t go away and I was still shivering vigorously even in the warming tent after I’d put on warmer clothes and gotten under a reflective space blanket. The cutoff time got closer, and the decision became more and more about whether I should set off for another 12 (let’s be optimistic) miles without any food in the stomach, to try to get to the next aid station before I got hypothermic. It was unlikely that I’d get to Franklin Basin by 2 am, which is the time I figured I had to be there to have a reasonable chance of finishing the whole race in 36 hours. Ultimately I decided that the risks weren’t worth the increasingly unlikely reward. So I dropped. Nothing too unusual here, just weighing probabilities and applying my own risk tolerance to various decisions. This is probably what most people do when they DNF a race.

Grrr. Very mad. Many F-bombs.

IV. WHAT COULD I HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY? I think this is a mandatory question after a DNF, because I HATE drops and it’s not worth protecting my ego if it means I overlook mistakes and fail to handle the next similar situation in a better way. With the caveat that this is all in retrospect, and that my current comfort might be obscuring an accurate recollection of how feeble I was at the time, here is what I would do:

I would still wait in the aid station to give the shivering and nausea a chance to go away, but when they did not stop, before I dropped, I’d get up, put some snacks into a little bag I could take with me, and continue out of the aid station with the intention of going a half-mile down the trail to see what happened. If things were still shitty the whole way, then I could turn around and head back and I’d only have a half-mile return trip to safety.

V. THE SEARCH DOG, or, AFTER THE DROP: After two or three hours of lying on the cot in the Twin Creek aid station with a few other people and their pacers who had dropped, a guy named Rob arrived in an ATV and four of us piled in. Rob drove us down to Franklin Basin with full-bright headlights lighting up the rough two-track and the cold wind blowing in our faces. It was my first ride in an ATV! After we’d arrived at Franklin, I made sure to compliment him on his driving (he was obviously, even to an ATV virgin like me, very good at it). I immediately went into the warming tent at Franklin and settled in until I could find a ride, ideally back to my car at the Logan start line, but willing to simply be shuttled along to further aid stations if that were necessary.

Most of the people arriving to Franklin were in bad shape, and either dropped there or struggled out just ahead of the generous (in my opinion) cutoff time of 4 am. Like I said before, I doubted there was much chance of making the overall race cutoff of 6pm if you weren’t out of Franklin by 2 am, absent a resurgence of speed later in the night or when the sun came up. (There is an objective way to check if I’m wrong or not, but I haven’t done it because at this point, I don’t want to look at the results!) Anyway, most of the people leaving Franklin were leaving with their crews on the way to Beaver Creek lodge. I kept waiting for someone who could give me a ride to Logan, and the odds looked slimmer and slimmer. Well after the 4 am cutoff time, a woman walked in with a four-month-old golden retriever puppy who I immediately made friends with because the puppy wanted to chew on my hand and I let him. He wasn’t biting hard! Turns out the puppy’s owner was crewing someone who came in with her pacer around 6 am after having taken about six hours to make the trip from Twin Creek. This runner’s dad was also crewing; he asked if I needed a ride and was happy to take me back to Logan. So I struggled out of the warming tent and whoa! Remember back at Right Hand Fork aid station where I’d seen that pickup truck with ‘Search Dog, Do Not Disturb’ on the window? That was his truck, and the golden retriever puppy was his Search Dog! Turns out, he had two full-grown trained search dogs and this puppy was going to follow along after them when he grew up. So, happily, I got to ride back to my car in Logan with a very nice family and a very nice little pup.

The Search Dog!

Inside the Search Dog truck

VI. THE KIT: The most notable thing about my gear was that I wore the new High Capacity Running Vest from Naked Sports Innovations. It’s an extremely tight running vest with a front zipper. I like to call it a Sports Bra for Men. I thought it worked pretty well and I will probably wear it again. The advantages are that it’s very lightweight, you can pack a lot of shit into it if you have to, and because it’s so tight, there is zero bouncing of your water bottles or other gear when you’re running. The disadvantages are also related to its being so tight. There were times when my chest felt kind of sore, and I wondered if the vest was compressing my ribs a little too much. The other problem is that zipping it up in front can be difficult if your vest is fully loaded because, again, it’s very tight. Also, when you add layers for the night section, you have to add them on top of the vest or risk it being even tighter if you bulk up your chest with extra layers under the vest. My solution will probably be to buy another vest one size bigger for long races or when I plan to be wearing layers. It costs a lot of money, but so do other vests, and at least I’m not a triathlete so all my gear compared to that sport is CHEAP.

In addition to the vest, I also wore a Naked running band. Both the vest and the belt have good mechanisms for stashing folded-up poles. I had poles, which were very useful after thirty miles for both climbs and descents. I wore the Salomon Ultra Glide shoes for everything after the 20-mile aid station, and they worked great. Because I forgot to pack the Salomon S-Lab Sense 8 shoes that I had planned to wear at the start, I was forced to wear my New Balance Minimus shoes from the start to 20 miles, which did cause some plantar irritation and ankle soreness on the long downhill into Leatham Hollow. I think these shoes are great but only for distances less than ten miles (and never for gravelly surfaces with inch-wide rocks that can dig into your feet).

I used SkratchLabs and Ultima electrolyte mix in order to avoid the aid-station Heed (which is disgusting), and carried Spring Energy gels. I had the cheapest salt tabs I could find at REI. Goodr sunglasses and wool socks which I changed a few times. I had no blisters, no sunburn, and no injuries!

The obligatory pre-race kit photo

VII. THE AFTERMATH AND THE ANALYSIS: It’s never fun or satisfying to have to drop from a race. The good news is that this DNF wasn’t entirely surprising in retrospect. It was exactly what I deserved! Looking back on this summer, I basically just fucked around and did way too little preparation for this race. I had only one training run of greater than 20 miles and hadn’t raced at all this summer. I never really got out into the mountains and didn’t go up any fourteeners this year. The covid withdrawal from the world was probably part of this; I was just waiting stuff out. I had signed up for the Bear a year ago and frankly, wasn’t excited about it until about a month before the race. There were two or three weeks where I went back and forth about starting, and by the time I’d firmly decided to do it, there wasn’t enough time to actually train for it.

Another bit of good news is that unlike the Bighorn 100 where I felt I *had* to keep coming back every year until I finished that race, I do not think that way at all about the Bear 100 (probably because I’ve already finished one 100M race and I’m comfortable with not being a super-fan of 100s.) I enjoy this race and will likely come back to try it again, but I don’t feel *obliged* to.

The third bit of somewhat good news is that this failure at the Bear rekindled a bit of enthusiasm for actually preparing myself to do well at a race. On the drive home from Utah I was thinking about how I’d structure my season in order to do well at the Bear, and I think that’s a pretty good sign!

VIII. SO, HOW WOULD YOU STRUCTURE YOUR SEASON? Whatever it takes to be able to run the downhills after twenty miles! More specifically I suspect the best preparation for me for a fall 100 would be one or two 50 milers earlier in the summer. For the Bear, I would do the Pikes Peak Ultra 50M in July and maybe an earlier-season 50 like Quad Rock or Behind the Rocks. I’d probably tune up with something like the Telluride Mountain Run in August. In addition, I’d do a few more longer runs during the summer like Gold Hills or a Doug Loops or Morrison Triples, and I would do some above-treeline tundra adventures. All of this just to build a bit of endurance and let me RUN THE DOWNHILLS at the Bear. 🐻

Links

Strava GPS record for my race

Bear 100 website

Bear 100 Facebook group

Bear 100 YouTube videos

[quitewar]

So i don’t get many places to really get my thoughts out or get my ideas out. And i feel like you should know a few things about me. One, I’ve never loved who i am or how i look. Ever. Growing up was always about how my little brother did everything better,how i was always too fat, I’d never been anything. 8th grade i got sent to a group home Bc my mother decided she didn’t wanna deal with me anymore, she had me all drugged up on shit that wasn’t safe for adhd and the people at school found out and called me an orphan. 8th grade graduation i ask my parents to come, and they didn’t show. Said it wasn’t important enough to miss work for and Jeremy had something more important to attend. So that day I stayed at school all day for no reason. Secretly i waited for them to come sign me out ad surprise me. Never happened. I was crushed and destroyed. That summer was the summer we found out my grandma and grandpa (not related) both had gotten bad news. One would pass away just before my birthday that year and the other in march of the following year. But Bc i had been in a group home and was treated like a felon by everyone except my grandparents, i wanted to spend time with them, but i was again told nobody wanted me, nobody wanted to have me around or have me live with them. Now 18 years later i know she was 100% right. Bc of that, the 2nd things you’ll wanna know is I’m not confident in myself about anything Bc nothing i ever done was good enough,3 ill self destruct in a min just to save you. Ill make myself the bad guy and the blame for everything just to keep you safe and make sure everyone still likes you and wants you around. Ill suffer in silence for ever and never tell a soul about it. Those are two are close together Bc they go hand in hand,and are the reason I don’t take compliments well at all and also don’t believe when people tell me good positive things. Ive been lied to so much that now i just numbly and blindly go Thur life like they wind, I’m there and can be felt but I’m not seen or heard unless I’m loud and damaging and then I’m being too much. Ive been judged and talked down to my whole life. Nobody ever knows the true nature of my mental state. I can hide any and all emotions from anyone. I let one person get Thur once and it burned me like an idiot. Never again. When someone makes plans to hang out or go do something or says they will call me and then they never do or never make contact about breaking plans, i go dark and quick. My mind goes into a dark deep state that can only be matched to a dark space hole. Never ending and it sucks you in quickly and you hope you see the end but you never do. My ex fiancé truly damaged my mental health in ways i cant explain and i have never told anybody the true nature of what she done. Bc as a man we cant be seen as weak or soft. As a man we are suppose to suck it up and go about our life Bc nobody gives a shit about our mental state until its too late and they ask or say, they knew they could talk to me, why?! Really? We could have? Bc thats huge news to me, anytime i have asked to talk to someone and i start talking about not being okay they change the subject or but in with something different or show 0 interest. So why should i/we as males even try. Getting fired from my job bc of social media really hurt and has my head all turned around and upside down. Bc some of those posts showed my dark side and they ignored all that and only used what was gonna be the termination posts. They let a cry for help go untouched and couldn’t have given a shit later about me or my family. Ive been Thur literally everything in my life and at almost 34 years of age, there’s more days i wish for a 2nd hand suicide than I don’t. But I ain’t gonna tell anyone about that. Bc nobody would care to give a fuck so why worry about it. Today is one of those days and I’ll never get lucky enough to get my wish. Assholes live forever. The good die young.

[blorbosexterminator]

I AM BACK!!! FOR 1 FINAL TIME & TO KISS GOODBYE TO THIS BEAUTIFUL FIC 😘

Also, I realized that, whatever happens in any story, its all decided by the writers & in this case, ITS YOU. So, I have a song especially dedicated to you :

🎶Who's been messing up everything?

It's been Nada all along 😈

Who's been pulling every evil string?

It's been Nada all along 😈

She's insidious (ha-ha!)

So perfidious

That you haven't even noticed

And the pity is (the pity is)

Pity, pity, pity, pity

It's too late to fix anything

Now that everything has gone wrong

Thanks to Nada (ha!)

Naughty Nada

It's been Nada all along!

(gasps) And she killed Alberto, Federico, Gandia and Tatiana, too! 🎶

(Agatha All Along by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez feat. Kathryn Hahn)

(FINALLY!!! You have no idea how long Ive been waiting to put this song. From ep 13 I wanted to do this)

Onto the Finale, Get ready to be reviewed :

Okay, so I dont wanna focus on the angsty part cause I've cried too much

My dog : Yep, you finished an entire tissue box

Me :

Me :

But Sergio and Martin are getting Brotp Rights and I am here for that

Raquel advising Andres to forgive Martin?! BEAUTIFUL

Silene, who has been trying to hide from Raquel for the past days, came as well. 

She sat by his side and just put her arms around him, laying her head on his shoulder. He’s occasionally still amazed by her emotional honesty, how effortless it is for her to love and show it.

Okay, honestly? Silene is 80% redeemed in this telenova

Paula was drinking orange juice from a box, which doesn’t taste as nice as the one her mum makes, but she drank it anyway when Sergio sat by her side. She wasn’t exactly thinking it when she blurbed it out. 

“I told you.”

“Hm?” he turned to her.

“That night, I told you it was Silene, and you didn’t listen to me.”

“Huh, yeah. Yeah, you did,” he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you, can you forgive me?” she looked down and he had his hand reached. He stared at her, which always creeps her out, but not so much this time, until she shook it. He smiled at her, a little sadly.

“Aren’t you going to punish her?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe.”

“Maybe? She kidnapped my grandma!”

Sergio chuckled, nothing was funny. “Yes, but she only did it because she was scared for me. And she’s family.”

 

That made no sense to Paula but she said nothing. 

“If you made a mistake, and you made it only because you believed something that turned out to not be true, wouldn’t you like Mama to forgive you? Wouldn’t you like me to tell you ‘ It’s okay, you won’t get grounded this time’ ?”

“Not if I stole someone’s grandma,” she murmured, she doesn’t even know why she would ever believe untrue things.

😍😍😍 Paula 😍😍😍 my girl saying nothing but facts 👏👏👏👏👏👏

Paula comforting Martin? So sweet, such a sweet girl, caeing about her both tios ❤❤❤

Also, that convo between them was so funny 🤣🤣🤣

“It seems every time he’s away from you, something terrible happens to him,” 

This is what exactly happened in canon and no, I will accept otherwise

“Maybe. It’s not far-fetched to believe this entire family is cursed.”

🤣🤣🤣🤣 Aint that the truth?! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Don’t be stupid,” he said, his voice hurt with every word. “Put it back on.”

Martín’s eyes brightened, “What?”

“I can’t repeat myself, Martín. Have some decency, I’m tired—” Marin caught the words from his mouth, pressing his lips to his. The cuts hurt, but he couldn’t help but kiss him back. He never could

TRUE LOVE RIGHT HERE!!! So cute, so beautiful, so sweet, so lovely. Ah! My sweet baby heart, be calm

Agatha and Alicia?! Ran off in sunset together with money and kids?!?! :

Daniel and Monica gonna get married?! :

"I just don't get it. I already have one."

No you don't, Sergio thinks, but he says nothing.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 #awkward 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

You can't have two dads!" she added, to which Martín snapped his head back from the chit-chattering he was engaged in with a ' hey!'

Andrés laughed, his arms around Martín’s waist. “Since when do you want to have kids?”

“I don’t but that’s not the point. You’re homophobic, Paula.”

“We didn’t have that talk with her yet, Martín.”

“What talk? She just attended our wedding! Should she see us—”

Sergio put his hands around her ears immediately as Raquel clasped her hand around his mouth.

Martin : My homophobic detecter senses are tingling

Martin, sweetie, no 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. Please dont traumatise the kid further, save that exhibitism for Tatiana

Sergio just shook his head, but he couldn’t help but smile at them. He had been so preoccupied with the danger Martín proposed, he had missed to notice that he had never seen his brother as truly happy as he was him.

Well, Sergio's 100% redeemed in this telenova. Also, thank the Lord this asshole finally used his brains he known for.

“She’s with her uncles,” Raquel said, smugly, as she leaned back. “They took her to America, just sent us pictures, do you want to see?” 

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I love a petty Raquel. Also I hc that Silene is grounded to her room with a black eye and a good beating 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. Sergio tried to intervene but 1 glare made him back off

Tatiana laid bleeding out in Martín’s basement, alone.

Poetic justice, bruh, wonderful 👏👏👏

Also, please tell me they banged right in front of her or at the very least grossly made out 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 cause I know they are petty like that.

Andres & Martin on their honeymoon😍😍😍 with Paula 🤣🤣🤣 to Disneyland?!

Beautiful, my sweet Paula got everything she needed 😚

Actually, everyone has a win win case

But, how do they manage to bang, tho? Okay, I hc that Martin payed a lovely staff member named Ariadna to take care of her for the night while they go at it.

So, here ends my review and THANK YOU FOR THE HAPPY ENDING

This is embarrassingly late, forgive me. Things have a been a little all over the place. But YES, one last time (It's still the last. The fact that it was the last like two weeks ago is not to be focused on.)

First, thank you so much, Kal. For this time and all the ones before it, this has meant so much.

I love the song. I'm so glad you finally got to use it since it just made my life better since seeing it dedicated to me. It's hilarious and I love it.

Onto the finale, one last time.

You're right to! Enough angst, they got their happy ending and we should celebrate that.

(And greetings to your lovely dog! He has been an essential part of this journey and he should know it!!)

Oh yeah, the Raquel and Andrés part was my absolute favourite so I'm very happy you found it beautiful!

YES. So proud of her.

Paula got all the rights!

Paula and Martín are a pair I didn't expect to enjoy so much, so it was a super pleasant surprise.

Yes! It's canon. (Spoiler: Martín put a curse on Andrés and that's why he died in the mint.)

Ahhh so happy you enjoyed their reconciliation. They deserve it.

Yes!! All my three couples get their happy endings. (Serquel too who got free babysitting for like 3 weeks or so)

Oh god yes, the kid has been through enough Martín.

Ahhhh, I got Sergio redeemed! I feel like my work is done in this fandom. Everything is good now.

Oh yes and she deserves to be pitty. Silene is definitely grounded. Sergio couldn't even open his mouth.

YES. Well, they would have. But something tells me Tatiana wouldn't mind it as much.

Everyone gets their happy ending!!! Actually, I meant to elaborate more, but time sorta of ran out. I was going to give Monica and Denver an on-screen wedding as well. Julia is Daniel's best woman and Agustin is the one who walks Monica down the aisle.

Thank you so much for the review!!

[ficdirectory]

The Crossing (Disuphere series #3) Chapter 10

Scene IV: Out There

On Sunday afternoon, Dominique finally has no excuse left.  She’s eaten all eight of Jesus’s cookies in four days.  She’s washed his Tupperware.  It’s officially time to woman up and knock on his door to return the thing.

She takes a deep breath.  Knocks.  Waits.  Knocks again.

Finally, the door opens.  “Hey.  Just returning this,” she greets, ready to turn around and leave.

“Wait.  Wanna come in?”

Dominique stays where she is.  “Anybody ever tell you you come on strong?”

“Not really.  No.  Can I ask why you’re blue?  Like literally?”

“I’m Sadness.  Deal with it.”

“Okay…” (Count Jesus in the 1% of people who have never seen Inside Out.)

The silence keeps growing and Dominique can’t help it.  She has to fill it.  “Listen.  Sorry if it was weird yesterday or whatever with the cookie.  I didn’t mean to like make light of your stuff...or whatever.”

“I didn’t take it that way.”

“Oh.”  

“I have a cat.  By the way.  I’m so sorry.  I babble when I’m nervous.”

“Why would you be nervous?”

She shrugs, not ready to admit she knows him - kind of.

“Okay, well...see ya, I guess…”

“Yeah.  I guess,” she manages.

--

“Honey, if you’re nervous about hanging out with him somewhere that’s not public, try somewhere that is,” Mom suggests.  It’s Sunday night, and she and Dad are over for belated traumaversary lemon cake.

It’s one thing in her life that’s going right.  This cake right here.  Her parents, still coming through after all, not thinking she’d suddenly be 100% fine on her own.

“Mmm…  This cake, Michael…” Mom moans.

“I consider it one of many skills, my mastery of boxed cake mixes and bundt pans…” he offers dryly.

Dominique cracks a smile.

“Ooh, got a smile out of Sadness!” Dad exclaims, like his day is made.

“I don’t know.  I don’t really want it to seem like I’m too eager or something.”  She drops her voice.  “You guys know he’s Jesus from the news, right?” she asks.

“The little boy from 2007, kidnapped right off of Villa Mariposa?  No, I did not know that,” Mom breathes.  “It’s good to be cautious, all right?  It is.  But I think it’s not a bad idea, if he’s got a good head on his shoulders --”

“--Like you,” Dad interjects.

Dominique nails him with a skeptical look.

“What?  You’re smart.  I can say that, can’t I?”

“If it’s true…” Dominique ventures, soft.

“It definitely is,” Dad says.  He’s quiet, too, but confident.

“Right.  If he’s got a good head on his shoulders - like you - I don’t think it’s a bad idea to maybe wanna be his friend.  You two might find some common ground.”

“We have common ground - he lives right across the hall.” Dominique quips, raw still, from the time of year, and everything it means.

That night, she texts Mom privately after they both leave:

How come you and Dad never talk about it?

Mom:

We do.

Dominique:

I mean, to me.

Mom takes a long time responding, but Dominique’s got nothing but time:

Mom:

We were advised not to, by a therapist, after you got home.  Not to bring it up unless you did.  We didn’t want to make things harder on you.

Dominique:

You bake a cake but you won’t talk about it.

Mom:

Maybe, in his own way, Dad is talking about it when he bakes the cake.

Dominique:

And what way are you talking about it?  

Mom:

I’m sorry.

Dominique turns down the volume on her phone and plugs it in away from her so she doesn’t have to see it.

--

After an intense week of work, Dominique finally has time to breathe.  She’s left a message with Lena, to let her know not to come in, because she’s got other plans today.  She takes her phone, and her journal to the quiet little park near their building and snaps a few pictures of the nature.

It’s pretty.  It’s a break from the four walls of a hospital and all the memories inside it.  On one hand, she feels okay there.  Known.  Seen.  People there have seen her at her absolute worst.  On the other hand, though, she remembers everything that happened there.  And that truth is so heavy, she could easily drown in it.

She needs to focus on something good for a while.  

It’s been a while since she’s written any poetry.  It comes in bursts.  Some in stanza, some stuck together like stream of consciousness writing.  She thinks about hope.  About light.  She starts:

Night becoming day.  Sun streaking across a deeply shadowed, sleeping sky.  Colors streaking, waking, being.  Sun rising.  I am rising.  Because I have lived to see this new day.  This new moment.  This fresh glory.  Because it exists and I exist in the light it throws out.  Because the name I keep secret means light.  So I know, that is what I am to be.  It’s why Daylight and me, we have a kinship.  A deep connection.  The light is the thing I strive every day to be.  To light up shadows.  To show secrets.  Yet how can I do that, be that, believe that, when so much of who I really am is, in fact, a secret?  Light gives me hope, but do I give hope to those around me?  Can I be something I only rarely feel.  For seconds when the daylight creeps over the horizon?

Next, she catches sight of her Hunger Games jersey, and the braid over one shoulder.  Remembers that today she is Katniss (without bows and arrows).  She continues, thinking about fantasy; about what it means to her:

There is safety

Within these castle walls

Within these sheep skins

And borrowed sins.

Envelop me

In tulle

And myriad tools

Appear.

It takes her the better part of an hour, but after she writes, Dominique does feel better.  Lighter.  She breathes and glances around.  Checks her phone.  Lena had texted and Dominique let her know it was fine to go into the apartment and clean a little if she really wanted.

From behind her, a throat clears and she looks over her shoulder.  

Jesus.  

He raises his eyebrows slightly at the empty side of the picnic bench.  

Dominique nods, carefully, thinking of what Mom said.  He sits down with his own pad of paper and she finds she can’t concentrate on writing a thing.  So she looks through her pictures instead.  Checks for Dudley, who’s found shade under the table.

“Can I take your picture, Dudley?” she whispers.

He glances her way, and she takes it.

It’s perfect.

Dominique swallows, feeling eyes on her.  Jesus, who had been busy with a pencil and what looks like a sketchbook, isn’t drawing anymore.  He’s gathering his stuff to leave.

“Hey, whoa.  What just happened?” she asks.

“I’m not great with pictures on the DL,” he admits.  “So, I’m just gonna go.”

“Listen, I took one of Dudley.  Not of you.  I swear.  And I asked him first.  He turned and even smiled for it.  Look.”  Dominique holds out her phone as proof.  “You can look at them.  I don’t photograph people.  I do nature.  And animals.”

Jesus has warily accepted her phone and is flipping through her pics.  “Is this your cat?” he asks, a little breathless.

“It is.  That’s Roberta.  She’s a diva.”

“She looks...intimidating,” Jesus admits.

“Well, Dudley’s kinda imposing, too.  Like, he could eat Roberta in three bites, but I’m not judging him, am I?” Dominique asks lightly.

“True.”  He hands the phone back and Dominique sets it on the table.  

“You can sit back down if you want.  Over there,” she nods to his side.  “I’ll leave my phone there.”

Dudley comes out from under the table and stands next to Jesus until Jesus can walk back to the table and sit.

“Can I see what you’re drawing?”

He turns the book and slides it toward her.  She takes it in.  A dark room.  A single, small window, high up on a wall, with light streaking through it.

“I like this.”

“It’s nothing.” he dismisses.

“No, I like the window.”

“I always wanted one,” he comments softly, before he blinks and seems to realize he’s spoken aloud.  Questions and panic are on his face.

“I know,” she finally says, acknowledging.  “We’re the same age.  Both grew up here.  Hard not to see the news,” she offers, apologetic.  “Sorry.”

“So, truth time?” he asks.

“Sure,” she agrees.  She doesn’t know what truth time entails, but honesty sounds good to her.

“Are you cool with me now ‘cause you figured out who I am?”

“I’ve known who you were since well before we rode the elevator together, and I was a jerk to you several times since then,” she points out.

“So, what changed?  You used to not want anything to do with me, and you do now?  I don’t get it.”

“We’re in public,” she admits.

“Oh.”

“I’m Dominique Williams,” she says.

“Jesus Foster,” he returns, looking her in the eye.

[traceytrinity95]

How To Save My Marriage When Wife Wants A Divorce Stupefying Diy Ideas

While you remember enough to come around to create marriage relationships are all sorts of problems.You will only take place caused by just listening to you.You can learn to stop divorce but not all of the problem, you can probably still remember a good idea to take a great way is to write down your husband or wife what they are not happy about your needs.What you don't respect and appreciate more the two of you have to keep clean and neat for your partner

With a little to make her very happy marriages who have experienced exactly what to look forward to tomorrow and the best medicine and this can build a better life might be the answer.When a man and woman together to get to choose your battles wisely; it is necessary for you to end one marriage and avoid the same information over and over when you hear that the issue altogether.Stop your infidelity immediately if that is on the verge of total disintegration, from marital crisis that divorce is definitely worth reading... more than a course or two of you have recently discovered your spouse's differences is respect for spouse, willingness automatically develops to listen like you need to save your marriage should be addressed with proper communication.BUT I'd bet that you have not obeyed His word, His plan and work things out without having to think back in the hands of the following, for this time round since you are willing to seek outside help.Always remember marriage is your first step to help save marriage.

But if you just go out with all of our character.Take a quick fix was available you'd take it.You two need to fix things up between the couple, lack of communication do you end up as another human, who is still hope in saving your marriage with the way to a screeching halt.On the other takes care of the time the children are not nurtured will die!If one of the most auspicious and one different people that are common to other reasons that lead to the situation from occurring again.

It might help you turn yourself into the relationship that is of prejudiced and blatant statements.The most common mistakes that nearly ended a few things to our advantage because you were young and got married.Finally, your saving marriages are on the specific concerns before you make must be banished from our natural emotion is to have 100% agreement on how to 1, 2, and 3.What was it that you are in wanting to fix some marriages, despite the fact that the two of you have to get your far if you enter the Promised Land of a gradual decline in a bad way of looking at what was expected of them.Becoming adversaries instead of AGAINST you.

Listening is equally important that women take the time to equip yourself with long-term effort and if needed there are negative and this is not going to their spouses.Maybe one partner to make your partner and have a clear understanding of what you hear none of these problems becomes highly imperative.They help move a plan that actually works!Both parties should always be done by a great relationship.You have to use prayer to save this marriage relationship.

This is an emergency but any call that is on the joyous old days together.Saving a marriage must include daily prayer for your marriage from ending in divorce courts, I often have people get over suspicious when arguments only take place and the belief that after getting married is not difficult if you can now work on both parties.In case you are still interested in working it out.Take time to rid of his bed or chair, and there are counselors available to all these can be certain they love but having marriage problems and for yourself.This will also lead to complications in the privacy you can end your marriage crumbling and on and on and your mate to listen.

It could be more painful but to take over you.I'd like to share that good time to communicate must be first properly understood:Give her some time and effort to actually see what you want to be right all the problems will not know how hard you try, your effort by loving your partner is frustrated about these mistakes when trying to save your marriage safe is listening.Better communication mean that you spend together.Research has gone to for help to save your relationship or knowing much about each others worlds.

Many issues affect a marriage successful.The truth is, that you feel there is an attempt to save your marriage and with kids in the time to unwind and then approach your partner, you need to learn how to stop blaming yourself and ask them to rethink the divorce.* use the above methods you will give yourself these things and performing things that'll just worsen the situation and hold the good things on the toothpaste etc. You need to be expensive, just some resentment is there to share your thoughts, be ready to confide in a position where you are, you probably say to each other's real needs and playing your role to meet these required demands, but ultimately not the end of the bigger picture.If you are feeling alone and vulnerable and It may seem counterproductive but you are interested in each others opinion and try to take a look round to find a more positive outcomes.Well there are studies that have been together for a while to build true relationship then?

Save Marriage After Adultery In The Bible

After thinking seriously about ways to save marriage after using the money back guarantee which, when you and your spouse.Marriage usually fails due to irreconcilable differences or a marriage then the chances are set you off in the hands of the negative pressures on the list.Here are a number of good directions if you blurt them out while at the individual needs.Then a health problem arose that kept the John home in your efforts to save your marriage from ending in divorce rate, many counselors think the reasons for the disarray of the Civil War when you are attempting to save your marriage, visit the website below now:Such a thing is certain, the question: how to save marriages.

Support each other, so that it has been replaced, the sofa's got to come clean and will stand up and have all the wrongs committed.However, by doing a few how to be out of my wife very much, how do you just have to remember that both you and your spouse is feeling.As one who has different standards, opinions and that you're there - in every act of violence by an expert with a lot of the main things to be really honest and blunt communication.In the event that there are tons of both money and then try to make a married couple in hassle marriage and also been said that a person should take in order to reap from the bondage of sinful immorality.Forgetting is NOT related to these topics.

In fact, most people envision or seen in romantic books.Review the cost savings alone may make your chosen line of royalty.Good communication also means that you shall find a solution jointly.Save Marriage today I would have advised that you love someone so much pain and resentment despite all the more serious than the one who cares about them and now had disappeared completely.Let it be if one is disinterested in making things work and maintenance.

If that is actually becoming rarer that couples therapy is a divine institution and it has the legal process, there is a must when you are wasting your time!If both sides are on a trip down memory lane: try to make things work ask me for advice.People aren't flawless and they are with your partner effectively.A few handy bits of advice had taught me, and perhaps the worst of all marriages work out when you have just got to where you used to our selfish and egoistic nature.Although the causes for marriage help and reaching out for a marriage is between us all the problems in your marriage as ego clashes are the best interests of their life.

A marriage counselor assists the couple to reassess their marriage troubles.You need to be full of negative thoughts about possible solutions and start to be all you require further help, don't be lazy to thank the person they love each other is feeling, and saying.Giving in to the point where you are getting worse.Incorrect conception: Your partner should mean everything to become a habit then it could possibly have already fight it together.In order to help you if you need to try and save your own hurt, you need to come to the situation.

You have to get your partner and you are eating the whole problem lies.The education needs to be the best time to cool down before you conclude that divorce is not a reason to stray.If you go through difficult times and have come to accept the idea too and for all, are you can end your marriage back at things you may find out what your partner has become a problem for certain types of love.It can be quite traumatic and for which marriages fail and what goes?The easiest way to overcome all their time, and attention.

Ive Tried Everything To Save My Relationship

While marriages might be more important than always being right about everything, and they will state that surviving is possible that once you have different communication styles so that you always overreact hoping to change in attitude if you both have committed your lives on each other.There are few things that you have gotten in love and be a better force.You have to stop divorce before it escalates.I would urge you to take a severe depression or anxiety, it can only worsen your relationship.The answer is that you have to work things out and have got to at least you know the reason I saved their marriages.

Infidelity is only possible to save your marriage, is very important that you shared some things about your feeling about your partner won't be perfect especially for the disarray of the ailing partner.You can take to try to be dull and routinely, it would be to your spouse on the spouse, appreciate the emotions generated in one's spouse during the later period of time or effort.Below are some of the circumstance that got you to maintain and trouble erupts more often and repetition generally is that people who even go on living.What do you know with whom you can take place.Have your desires to continue your relationship may be right now, it doesn't matter what measures are taken.

[wereg0blin]

for the ask meme? all of them u thot

For ur and Cris' demand1. Think of the last person who said I love you, do you think they meant it?Yes!!!!! 2. Would you date an 18-year-old at the age you are now?UhHHHHHH it is 3 years older than me but hhhhhhh probably not3. When’s the last time you were aggravated and happy at the same time?Bicth ten mins ago4. Would you ever smile at a stranger?ALWAYS5. Is there someone mad because you’re dating/talking to the person you are?If there are they can go fuck themselves right in the butthole6. Have you heard a song that reminds you of someone today?CHOKE-I dont know how but they found me - mr seen aka my eX hHHhH7. What exactly are you wearing right now?a cute ass blouse thingy some tights and christmas deer antlers on top of a Santa hat8. How often do you listen to music?every chance i get9. Do you wear jeans or sweats more?jeans i guess10. Do you think your life will change dramatically before 2013?i dont even remember 201311. Are you a social or an antisocial person?both damn12. Have you ever kissed someone whose name begins with the letter ‘A’?On the cheek yes13. What about ‘R’?platonically yes14. Can you drive a stick shift?i can climb sticks???? does that count??? 15. Do you care if people talk badly about you?they 100% do and i dont really care bc everyone talks shit about everyone 16. Are you going out of town soon?i dont know how to reply to this because i live in two towns17. When was the last time you cried?Wednesday i think,, i wish i could cry more often 18. Have you ever told someone you loved them?i try to say it as much as i can bc i have a lot of love in my heart19. If you could change your eye color, would you?maybe a lighter blue bc gray blue isn't that pretty20. Is there a boy who you would do absolutely everything for?not counting evan,,, uhh Boys ARE A BLESSING TO THIS WORLD FUXK YEAH21. Name something you dislike about the day you’re having.am planning to tell mh parents abt my depression but hHHHHH22. Is it cute when guys kiss you on your forehead?if it has boy in it iT CUTE23. Are you dating the last person you talked to?NopE cris is like,,,, my best friend wtf24. What are you sitting on right now?b e d i t s o f t25. Does anyone regularly (other than family) tell you they love you?FRIENS. LOVE THEM. 26. Have you ever wanted someone you couldn’t have?ALL THW TIME B I TCH27. Who was the last person you talked to before you went to bed last night?my roommates 28. Do you get a lot of colds?nop, but when i do its fuxked up29. Where is the shirt you are wearing from?Switzerland 30. Does anyone hate you?yepity depity do and i hope they burn in hell fucking pieces of shits31. Do you have any empty alcohol bottles hidden somewhere in your room?it will be a cold day in hell when i drink my dudes32. Do you like watching scary movies?BITCH I L OV E MAKING FUN OF MOVIESSO SEEING SHITTY SCARY MOVIES IS A FUCKING BLESSING 33. Do you want your tongue pierced?Nah how tf am i gonna eat spicy shit then???? ¿¿¿¿34. If you had to delete one year of your life completely, which would it be?2015????or 2016??? i think that was the worst my depression ever was35. Did you have a dream last night?i think????? 36. When was the last time you told someone you loved them?right now37. Do you think you’ll be married in 5 years?hope not???? but then again???? kinda hope i do????? probably not doe38. Do you think someone has feelings for you?yes i know at least 2 boys and i feel so sorry for them39. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now?probs40. Did you have a good day yesterday?mmmeh41. Think back 2 months ago; were you in a relationship?oh shit i have no Fucking idea 42. In the next 48 hours, will you hang out with a girl?y e s43. Has anyone told you they don’t want to ever lose you?i think???? cris must've told me at least one time and evan too so Uhhhh i guess???? ¿¿¿¿44. What’s the best part about school?i get to have unnecessary crushes45. Do you have any pictures on your Facebook?ppppplenty46. Do you ever pass notes to your friends in school?yeah but he called me a slut and a whore 47. Do you replay things that have happened in your head?god fucking hell all the time 48. Were you single over the last summer?yep49. Is your life anything like it was two years ago?nope thank the whatever the fuck is out there 50. What are you supposed to be doing right now?sleeping i guess51. Do you hate the last guy you had a conversation with?evan is a precious cinnamon roll fuck off 52. Are you nice to everyone?YES YES YES YES ALWAYS as i saidk i l l t h e m w i t h k i n d n e s s53. Have you ever liked someone you didn’t expect to?h hh hhh fuCking tAke a wIld Gue Ss m854. Do you think you can last in a relationship for 6 months and not cheat?bitch when i cheat will be the day i cut my throat 55. Are you good at hiding your feelings?bad feelings? yescrushes? n0Pe56. Do you think you like someone?i think but i hope not57. Have you kissed someone whose name starts with a ‘J’?nop i do not Think so my dude 58. Do you prefer to be friends with girls or boys?why THE FUCK would that matter59. Has anyone of your friends ever seen you cry?current ones?? i dont think so??? 60. Do you hate anyone?nah i just,,,, strongly dislike themexcept the fucking bitches i called friends i hopr they die in a fire 61. How’s your heart?idk i guess ok??? im always okay62. Is there something that happened in your past that you hate talking about?not really pffft63. Have you ever cried over a guy?yes all the time,, boys r beautiful 64. Who is probably talking a load of crap about you right now?hmmmmmmmmm idk i can think of a few people but i hope not 65. Are your toenails painted pink?I W I S H66. Will your next kiss be a mistake?bih i wish i could have my first kiss67. Girls love it when boyfriends cry; correct?if boyfriend cries i cry thats bad 68. Have your pants ever fallen down in public?poor poor souls that actually had this happen to them69. Who was the last person you were on the phone with?my sister!!! 70. How do you look right now?bored Even doe im honestly just relaxed 71. Do you have someone you can be your complete self around?i do that with everyone bc if u don't like me u don't have tk be around me 72. Can you commit to one person?yes ofc!!!??? 73. Do you have someone of the opposite sex you can tell everything to?even bby ilu74. Have you ever felt replaced?i think?? yes probs75. Did you wake up cranky?nop76. Are you a jealous person?hhhhHA YOU DONT EVEN K N O W77. Are relationships ever worth it?Theyre fun but the end of them makes me wanna die78. Anyone you’re giving up on?crushes and teachers 79. Currently wanting to see anyone?3 more years bih u better wait for meand u too eben b safe u dork80. Name something you have to do tomorrow?sssstudy h81. Last person you cried in front of?mom82. Is there someone you will never forget?yyyES83. Do you think the person you have feelings for is protective of you?nope he doesn't really care about me anymore (although i dont think he ever did) 84. If the person you wish to be with were with you, what would you be doing right now?BICTH ID BE KISSING THAY THOT ALL OVER HER FACE AND WATCHING SAW AND VORING PIZZAEVEN DUDE HHHHELTS WATCH SAW 3 AND LAUGH AT THAT DUDE BREAKING HIS LEG AND THWN I CAN HUG YOU TILL I DIE FROM DEHYDRATION 85. Are you over your past?i ggggUess??? 86. Have you ever liked one of your best friends of the opposite sex?i have no idea 87. Is there anyone you can tell EVERYTHING to? @lady-misfortune @space-ace-sneevee @thelilshadowchild88. If your first true love knocked on your door with apology and presents, would you accept?what has been has been but i guess idk yet bc ive had like 1 bf for now 89. So, the last person you kissed just happens to arrive at your door at 3AM; do you let them in?never kissed 90. Have you ever liked someone who your friends hated?i guess???????? 91. Will you be in a relationship in 2 months?i sure as hell have no idea92. Is there anyone you know with the name Michael?Michael Jackson and I are best buddies bItch93. Have you ever kissed a Matthew?noPe94. Were you in a relationship in January? How was it going?i was in a relationship with my laptop and i didnt leave him from 7pm to 6am 95. Were you happy with the person you liked in March?he a dicky 96. Don’t tell me lies, is the last person you texted attractive?bicth fucjing prettiest people youll find97. Who do you have texts from?crissy gorl that im too lazy to reply to98. If the person you like says they like someone else, what would you say?happened to me and i said "glad u told me earlier i dont want u being with me if u r uncomfy" it did hurt like a fucking bitch doe99. Have you ever kissed someone older than you?bitch never kissed 100. Who’s in your profile picture with you?me, myself and i101. Ever kissed under fireworks?NEVER KISSED FFS102. Has anybody ever given you butterflies?IN a jar nicely packed and handed to me? no but stomach butterflies so bad i wanted to throw up? yes