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coramatus · 2 years ago

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A Unovan in New York City (part 1)

An AU in which Ingo and Akari go on a rescue mission to retrieve Emmet, only to find him living a perfectly normal life… in our universe’s NYC.

(Currently incapable of committing to a full story. Hope rough summaries will suffice.)

Our story starts in Hisui, where Akari, or rather Dawn, and Ingo have said their goodbyes and are about to head home by speaking to Arceus. Arceus is happy to send them back to their time, but something has come up that is relevant to them. It seems Ingo’s twin brother has thrown himself through space-time and landed somewhere that Arceus’s influence is almost non-existent. They can all still go home together if they use a macguffin device on the machine that eeby deebied Ingo’s brother. They just need to find him first.

The two humans exchange glances. Ingo tells Dawn she ought to go home to her family, but she shakes her head. Dawn is all too happy to help Ingo with this retrieval mission. Knowing how capable she is, Ingo accepts her assistance with a small smile.

Before they leave, Arceus warns them that they need to exercise great caution in this world. Pokémon do not exist there at all and the presence of theirs could cause trouble if they’re too reckless. Which sounds completely insane to them but if Ingo’s brother is there then they have to go.

Arceus nods, opening a glowing portal with a thought. Dawn reaches out for Ingo’s hand, who grasps hers with a comforting squeeze. Hand in hand, they step through into blinding light.

When the light clears, Dawn and Ingo find themselves blinking away light spots in the middle of a large city on a cloudy day. Towering buildings of stone, metal, and glass loom around them and bustling crowds of people and vehicle traffic are everywhere. Between the sounds of countless humans chatting and shouting blending into a noisy thrum, indistinct music can be heard playing from the many surrounding shopfronts, vendor carts, and cars. In the distance they can hear the piercing call of sirens, sharp whistles, and dull rumblings of heavy machinery at work. Lights and screens of advertisements play continuously, screaming for attention despite it being the middle of the day. Punctuating all of this chaos are the scents of wet pavement, hot food, and old trash mixing into a smell that was unmistakably of a developed city. (Not Times Square)

But all of that is suddenly lost to the sound of screeching tires as an incoming car brakes to a stop mere inches away from a startled Ingo. It’s followed by a cacophony of screeches as the cars following it are forced to suddenly stop too. Dawn looks around and realizes they’re on a street in the middle of an intersection. The first car blares its horn loudly and repeatedly at the two, the driver even sticking her head out the window to scream at them to get out of the road (“I’m drivin’ ‘ere!!”). More horns blast as people behind the first add into the noise by throwing in their displeasure. The explosion of sound only causes bystanders to stop and stare at the scene unfolding before them, a fair number pulling out flat rectangles that resemble smartphones of some sort and aiming them in their direction.

Ingo freezes. His mind is instantly overwhelmed by both sensory overload and a visceral memory of experiencing almost the exact same situation long, long ago.

Dawn is quicker on the uptake and grabs the dazed Ingo by the arm, pulling him out of the asphalt road and onto a sidewalk, ignoring the angry shouting behind them. Onlooking pedestrians back away at their approach but otherwise they just give them the stink eye. She mumbles shy apologies and hurriedly pushes past the small crowd, dragging Ingo along the sidewalk, who thankfully seems aware enough to keep his balance and follow after her.

After a lot of shoving her way through throngs of people, Dawn finally comes across a small park with trees and a fountain. Ducking into it, she and Ingo collapse onto a bench, taking a moment to regain their bearings. As Dawn catches her breath, she notices that Ingo is… somewhere else, slightly disconnected from reality as far as she can tell. She gently shakes his shoulder to get his attention and asks what’s up.

In a daze, Ingo says he recognizes this.

This place feels eerily familiar to Ingo. The crowded nature of the city, the traffic of motorized carriages, even the rude attitude of the people… he’s lived this life before. It was what he was used to until… until Hisui…

Dawn looks around in confusion. Here? Here, here??

Ingo snaps out of it and shakes his head. No, not this place in specific. It’s too… strange. There’s not enough Pokémon.

Wait…

They’ve seen neither hide nor hair of a single Pokémon since they got here. Checking around her, Dawn finds a lot of bird things that look like tinier Pidoves but literally nothing else. It seems that Arceus wasn’t kidding about this world’s lack of Pokémon.

Pulling out her Arc-phone, Dawn checks the device’s functions. Fortunately, it seems it’s granted her access to this world’s internet. With a little poking around, she finds a map site that shows them being in a place called ‘New York City’. Ingo shakes his head, those words meaning nothing to him. Zooming in and out of the map doesn’t offer much more context, just the names of more unfamiliar places and unrecognizable geography. All they can say for sure is that this city is stupidly huge and finding Ingo’s brother in this won’t be easy.

Deciding they need a better place to start, Dawn asks Ingo if he remembers anything about his brother. Arceus said he’s his twin? That had to be the ‘man with a face like his’. Right?

Ingo gets that distant look again as more bits are shaken loose from his damaged memory. He remembers a few scraps: the color white, a broad smile, the crackling of electricity, something about fuzzy yellow things, someone always at his side in the good times and bad. And a lonely sadness.

But those are just thoughts and feelings, nothing substantial worth mentioning to Dawn. And unfortunately, none of them came with a key piece of information: a name.

But Ingo does remember the word ‘train’ being strongly associated with his brother. More specifically the word: ‘subway’.

Now that they’re in a place with internet, Dawn realizes that finding things out should be a lot easier. On a hunch, she finds a search engine and looks up the word. The results are quick with pictures and articles aplenty.

There’s a choked noise from Ingo and Dawn turns to find him staring wide eyed at her screen, a shaking hand raised as if trying to reach for her phone. Dawn wordlessly hands the device over to let Ingo look at it and he easily thumbs through the webpages. His eyes keep drinking in the images, unable to get enough.

“This… This is it!” Ingo breathes out as long withheld memories finally break free. “This is exactly it!! THIS is a train! A machine on rails! The greatest form of transportation ever invented! I used to drive these all the time! How could I have ever forgotten this?!”

“Ingo??” Dawn gently squeezes his arm in worry, “You’re crying.”

Ingo blinks at her before pressing the tips of his fingers against his cheek. They come away wet.

“Ah, so it seems,” he acknowledges, wiping his face with the back of a sleeve. He chuckles reassuringly, “Never fear, Miss Dawn. These are happy tears. You’ve rerouted an important part of me back to my station. I should be thanking you right now.”

Without another word, Dawn holds out her arms in a clear offer for a hug. He embraces her in gratitude.

“So your brother worked on trains too?” she asks when they part.

“Yes… we did it together,” Ingo says wistfully, “Like everything else we did. He would battle Pokémon alongside me in a moving subway car. It was what we were renowned for.”

Dawn shoots to her feet, her fist punching her palm as she grins at him, “Then that settles it! First, step! We find a subway. If your brother is as obsessed with these things as you are, then he can’t be too far off from one!”

“That sounds like a good place to start,” Ingo nods sharply. With a dramatic sweep of his arm, he points towards the road, “Next stop: a subway station! All aboard!!”

His moment of triumph is interrupted by a surrounding flock of not-Pidoves erupting into flight, startled by the sudden boom of his voice. Parkgoers and pedestrians are equally startled by the fleeing birds, eliciting a few shrieks of terror. Some people turn to glare at him and Ingo has the good grace to duck his head down, tipping his hat brim over his eyes in embarrassment.

Dawn just about loses it from laughing so hard.

His shout also catches the attention of a colorful group of people who immediately start excitedly pointing at them and chattering amongst themselves. Dawn pays them no mind until one breaks off to approach them.

She looks a few years older than Dawn with brightly colored hair in pink and purple and wearing a slightly off-beat outfit compared to most of the city-dwellers around her. She smiles at them, raising a hand in nervous excitement.

“Hello! I’m really sorry to bother you two, but I just wanted to say that I love your cosplay! It looks amazing! So on point!”

Dawn and Ingo exchange glances.

“Oh, uh, thank you!” Dawn says, thinking fast. She has no idea what this stranger is talking about but she seems to be nice enough. Dawn hopes that’s the end of it, but the girl pulls out a smartphone and looks a lot more nervous.

“Um! May I please take a picture of you guys?” she asks with an embarrassed flush in her face, yet looking hopeful, “It’s just that you did such a great job on your costumes!”

Ingo looks like he wants to say something but Dawn cuts in with a polite but rueful smile, “Ah, I’m sorry, no, we’re kinda in the middle of something. Maybe some other time?”

There’s a look of faint disappointment, but it doesn’t last as she grins in reassurance, “Oh! Of course! I totally understand. I’m really sorry for interrupting you! Have a great day!”

And just like that, the stranger waves goodbye as she makes her exit and jogs back to her friends. A few of them tease her but she takes it in good stride, tossing a few comebacks at them. They depart trading playful insults.

Dawn sighs in relief.

Ingo looks puzzled.

“What is ‘cosplay’?” he asks.

“It’s a dress up thing, where you wear what a movie or tv show character wears. It’s just for fun,” Dawn explains.

“Hrm,” Ingo rubs his chin in mild concern, “I wonder what they think we are cosplaying as.”

Dawn shrugs, “I guess they have something where characters wear clothes like ours?”

Ingo makes a noise of uncertainty but doesn’t press the matter.

They have to walk a few blocks, but they find the nearest subway station easily. Going down the stairs, they are met with a scene that makes Ingo stop and stare as familiarity washes over him once more, the feeling rocking him even more powerfully this time.

Ticketing machines, turnstiles, worker booths, the smell of stale air and the faint rumbling of fast-moving steel.

It’s like he’s come home.

Dawn is just as fascinated by Ingo’s reaction, “Is this what your subway station looked like?”

“Stations,” Ingo absently corrects her, his eyes sweeping across the station interior, picking out every familiar detail, “And yes, some of them were not dissimilar to this.”

But as he takes a closer look, the reality of this place seeps in. There’s litter strewn everywhere, the lights are too dim to be effective, several machines are labeled with out-of-order signs, and that odor… Ingo makes a faint sound of disgust and covers his nose with his coat sleeve.

“Except my stations were far more sanitary than this! Ugh, did someone urinate in here?!”

Dawn crinkles her nose too. “So they’re not supposed to smell like pee?”

“Not in a properly run system, no!” Ingo growls in a rare show of irritation. “If my brother holds a job here, he has some explaining to do!”

“I get the feeling this is something out of his control,” Dawn comments. Then a lit board shifts her attention, “Oh hey! A map!”

She hurries over to the display, but as she gets close she realizes they may have underestimated things.

“Ingo? I think we have a problem,” Dawn calls over her shoulder.

He’s not sure what she means until he gets a clear look at the map for himself: a sprawling mess of lines and stations crisscrossing the map in a dizzying display. Even he has to admit that this is going to be a daunting task.

“That is… a lot of stations,” Ingo mutters in awe.

Dawn doesn’t recognize the characters used on this map. She pulls out her Arc-phone and thumbs over to her translator app. Holding the phone up to the display, the screen instantly offers an overlay of letters she can read.

She turns to look at Ingo expectantly, “Any ideas? You’re the subway master.”

Ingo squints at the translated map, the corners of his mouth pulling down in visible concern, “It’s hard to know where to start, even for me.” His frown deepens as something else occurs to him, “Not that it matters. Neither of us has the local currency to purchase tickets.”

Dawn realizes he has a point there and thinks about it, “Ok, plan B! We walk to each station!”

Ingo side eyes her, “That will also be a significant undertaking.”

“Well I don’t have any better ideas.”

Dawn is about to suggest using one of their Pokémon when she suddenly remembers that might cause more problems. She sighs and shrugs.

They stand there, stumped.

This is when the group of fans pop up again. One of them notices Ingo and Dawn and excitedly points the pair out again. This time they can see that the two ‘cosplayers’ seem to be having some trouble and offer to help. Akari tells them they want to ride the subway but they don’t have any money on them, laughing it off as the result of a long story. One of the fans is feeling charitable and gives them both twenty dollars. A friend makes a small objection to the amount so Akari gets the idea to offer them those pictures they wanted earlier as thanks. The group excitedly agrees and they head back up to start their impromptu photoshoot.

On Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok and Tumblr, images and video of two cosplayers start making the rounds through the Pokémon fandom circles.

In the photos, an Akari cosplayer is grinning widely with her fingers up in a v-sign. Her outfit is remarkable in how worn it looks, like it had been repeatedly rolled in mud, grass and stone. Her makeup is on point too, looking scratched and smudged with dirt.

She is accompanied by an Ingo cosplayer, who is dressed in a similar state, though his outfit is far more realistically tattered and frayed, as if it had become that way through natural wear and tear. Even his face seems naturally lined and aged. What really stands out is how he’d styled his trademark knife-sideburns/locks, which seem to offer a definitive answer as to what they really were. This cosplayer, however, looks genuinely baffled, wearing an uncomfortable smile that borders on a grimace. All of this is perfectly in-character of course and he absolutely sells it.

Most of the pictures features a group of friends posing with the two, either just smiling in excitement at the camera, doing silly poses, or are seen in a few candid shots of them marveling over the costumes.

However the most notable result of this meeting was a short Tiktok they’d shot together.

The Tiktok video only features the Akari cosplayer. There is a brief blip of the Ingo cosplayer in the beginning, the camera turning to him sitting off to the side, shyly begging off from whatever came next before the camera refocuses on the Tiktoker and Akari. The rest of the video shows Akari being shown how to do the steps of a Tiktok dance, followed by a few clips of some goofy failed trial runs, before concluding with Akari and the Tiktoker successfully pulling off the dance together. They excitedly high-five and congratulate each other, punctuated by a loud ‘BRAVO!’ booming in the background, before the video ends.

The Pokémon Legends Arceus fans are particularly tickled by the new images and happily share them amongst themselves. It doesn’t take long for them to land on the Tumblr dashboard of one Jamal Bashir.

By the time any of this reaches Jamal, he is still waking up from a nap and sleepily flipping through his phone before he has to get back to work on a project. When the first pictures flash by, he chuckles and taps the like button before adding the posts to his queue. He figures that’s the end of it until he comes across a reposting of the TikTok video. The video is short and sweet and he gives that a like and queued reposting too. On a whim, he rewatches it to admire the realism of the outfits. But as he spots the Ingo cosplayer again, something catches his attention.

There’s something familiar about his face.

Intrigued, Jamal goes back to the photo posts and studies the man a little more closely. His side hair and goatee are spot on and natural-looking in a way that is difficult to replicate without actual facial hair. Jamal has only seen one other person who managed to pull it off so well and that person is…

When the realization hits him, Jamal just about falls out of bed.

He frantically checks and rechecks the photos, scanning over them and picking out details that only add to his theory. He even pulls up a few of his photos to be sure, because if this isn’t anything less than what he thinks it is, his friend is going to kill him. And he can’t do that to the guy after everything he’s been through.

But he’s almost positive.

Only one last thing to do.

With his heart pounding in his throat, Jamal sends a frantic text to a contact only labeled with a train emoji.

DUDE HOLY SHIT YOU SEEN THIS?!?!?!?!??

He attaches links to the videos and images, practically flooding their chat history with embedded media.

I THINK ITS HAPPENING GET UR ASS READY

The next hour is agonizing.

Jamal has probably worn a track into his floor from all his anxious pacing as he tries to figure out what’s taking so long. He’d figure the guy checked his phone on occasion while working, but has to remind himself of who he’s dealing with. He absolutely would not check until he was on a break. Just as Jamal is about to march off to go find him, his phone dings with a new message.

The reply is concise in its desperation.

WHERE

#pokemon #pokemon legends arceus #pokemon black and white #pokemon black 2 and white 2 #a unovan in new york city #subway boss ingo #warden ingo #akari #dawn #arceus #jamal #jamal bashir #subway boss emmet #coramatus’s writing

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wafflebloggies · 11 months ago

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the long con - part 1/7

a Don't Feed The Muse crossover story. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The con was coming to an end.

DIGIVID, the largest annual convention for digital content creators in the Southern United States. Three days of booths, networking, merch, watchathons, speeches, special previews, presentations, weird food, crowded spaces, fun.

Fun in theory, anyway. For Mark Mayhew, it had been three days of a brand new kind of purgatory. Unavoidable, self-inflicted, endless.

“...honestly, we couldn’t choose, so like for our first video we just put all our favourite movies into a picker thing and it turns out Watchmen came out the exact same year as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and I know, they’re totally different movies, but then we were like, wait, there’s some parallels here...”

Mark was certain by now that the con had been a terrible idea. True, if he’d had the time all over again, there were several big, pressing reasons why he would still have made the same choice, but only a couple of them were fit to explain to anybody else. Even if he’d known how frankly- miserable- it was going to turn out to be, he probably still would have chosen to go, but knowing this didn’t make it feel like any less of a mistake, or change the fact that he would have given almost anything, right now, to not be stuck in the middle of it.

“...and the whole ship metaphor they cut from the movie, and like, Flint’s invention basically has the same thematic purpose as Veidt’s EDBE? We kept saying ‘eeby-deeby,’ it took us like, twenty takes…”

It was almost incredible to him, as he stood in silence, how alone it was possible to feel in such a big crowd. The main convention hall was hot, airless, busy. Even though some people were already packing up, here at the end of the third day, plenty of bodies still shuttled back and forth in clogged little streams whenever they found the space to move, elbow to elbow between the double rows of human backs shutting out the tables, the crowded booths. It was easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer press of people, the talk and the noise. If Mark had only walked in alone, twenty minutes ago, and spent the time silently trying to make his way from one side of the massive space to the other, he would already have been more than a little agitated, ready to leave.

“...and he has all these shell companies, like all these theatres that play alien invasion movies all the time, to subconsciously prepare people? And when you look at Meatballs, you’re actually getting lowkey bombarded with fast-food imagery the whole time right up to when he turns on the machine...”

Mark had been in the hall for hours, and he was done. Currently, he was standing in a small pocket of space in a very nicely put-together booth belonging to a fairly well-known ASMR channel, watching a conversation happen right in front of him that he had about as much share in as an exiled Martian had in a conversation backstage at NASA. Yes, he’d started this conversation, he’d introduced himself, he’d started to steer the topic in a useful direction… and then Anthony had happened. Anthony Williams had turned up with his big, friendly grin and his busted paper carrier bag full of leaflets and merch which had been shedding everywhere since Friday and his completely distracting, distracted self, and now…

“...actually the biggest audio problem we have is my cat, Blaze, when we film at my house she’s got a real thing for the fluffy boom whatever on the mic, she wants to kill that thing on sight, right Mark?”

“Yeah,” said Mark, in the same way a corpse will twitch if you electrocute it. Anthony, who was too into the conversation to notice his friend’s thousand-yard-stare, carried right on going.

“Yeah, so we have to shut her in my parents’ room, but then I feel so bad, and she yells so loud in there it picks up on the video! So we usually record at Mark’s, but with our Parasite video...”

And so on. And on.

Not that the ASMR guys seemed to mind. People always seemed to open up and respond to Anthony quicker and with far more warmth than they did with Mark alone, which added another layer of frustration to the silent, invisible war he was fighting against himself. If Anthony could only have understood, and been focused, if Anthony could have been trying like he had been, these last three days, they might have found a sponsor already.

A sponsor, a partner, a collab, anything, anything to make the whole weekend feel worthwhile, instead of a painful waste of time.

Mark could tell that these guys had lost focus completely. One of them was still chatting quite happily with Anthony about God alone knew what, relaxed and disengaged, and the other was already moving away, eyes on a new bunch of visitors. There was no way Mark could steer this back the right way again now. Even though, at the bottom of his heart, he’d known it was a lost cause before Anthony had joined them, the tide of bitterness ebbed higher as he listened to the conversation wander so far wide of the point.

He must have looked distant enough for a party of people trying to use the booth as a short-cut to mistake him for an unconnected bystander, because as he stood there they pushed gently between him and Anthony, widening the gap as they passed through. On impulse, he went with it, let them nudge him and his whole parcel of garbage feelings to the side, let the general stream of the crowd push him out of the booth.

Without waiting to see if Anthony had noticed, he started shoving his way towards the main exit at a quicker pace. It was a relief to just move, without Anthony winding along just behind him, getting distracted at an average rate of once every four booths. Through the whole weekend, every time Mark was just trying to get from A to B, every time Anthony spotted something which made him want to stop and take a closer look, he would reach forwards and pat Mark on the back of his right shoulder. By this point, three days in, the feeling was starting to evoke a kind of Pavlovian response in Mark, knowing that every time he felt that light touch he would have to stop and stand and wait, getting hotter and more squashed and more impatient by the second, until Anthony was done, and by now just the feeling of Anthony’s hand on his shoulder had become a button that hiked his blood pressure, his heart, his temper.

By all appearances, Anthony had enjoyed the weekend a great deal. He got on with everyone he met, he was absolutely down for talking with new people on a vast range of subjects (with absolutely no practical application towards growing the channel whatsoever) and with his usual unbounded enthusiasm he seemed happy to keep going for as long as the con lasted.

Which wouldn’t be for that much longer. The hall was crowded now, sure, but already not as bad as it had been on the previous two days. Mark could see stalls and tables beginning to clear as their owners began to pack away. Pressing towards the main door, he had a sharp and ghastly vision of the convention hall as a vast interconnected series of nodes, bright and promising, each shutting down and turning black and dead as he touched them, came into contact, even approached them at all. Each booth, each prospect, each point of hope-

(nobody is going to want to work with you.)

He couldn’t feel normal, he couldn’t relax for a second, when on the one side the enormous thundercloud of dread loomed and on the other… something nobody here could understand, something he barely understood, something that lurked at the bottom of his stomach like a squishy leaden bowling-ball, the part of him that whispered that he really was just torturing himself for no reason, because what he had been granted out of the blue was, could be, his miracle. That it had been pointless coming here at all, that he was wasting time, wasting precious time not just ditching any other blighted and unreliable possibility and reaching for it with grateful hands-

“Mark!”

Unaware up until that moment that he’d stopped dead in the heaving crowd, Mark started and looked back as Anthony shouldered through the general stream of people, a small, willowy splotch of red flannel and concern. He felt Anthony’s hand on his shoulder again, guiding, steering him forwards and sharply left into a faster-moving stream of people that quickly swallowed them both and spat them out on the other side of the main doors. He wasn’t even aware of how much he’d just wanted the fresher air outside the hall until they were out in the gigantic hub of a lobby, the atmosphere so much lighter and cooler just from the fewer bodies and the bigger space, the vaulted metal-and-glass ceiling lined with great sheets of striped tarpaulins like a vast circus tent, shaded against the fading July sun.

He gulped several big breaths, realised his eyes were watering from the heat in them, the blur of colours and the crazy nimbus around each far-distant light, and angrily dragged his glasses from his face, looking down to clean them on his T-shirt as Anthony arrived by his side.

“Hey, you just dis- are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” said Mark, putting on his usual wry, flat, deadpan tone with difficulty, like a familiar sweater that suddenly felt too small. “You sure you’re done? You didn’t have any more hilarious cat stories to tell them? ‘Cause you all seemed to be getting on great.”

“Uh… yeah? They seemed like cool guys.” Anthony never usually minded Mark’s sarcasm, but finding the sharp end of it directed so pointedly towards himself clearly threw him. He shrugged, uncomfortably.

Good, thought Mark. Be uncomfortable. The thought wormed sharp and slimy through the back of his head, and it left him feeling ashamed. He didn’t want Anthony to be miserable just because he was, as if making Anthony feel awkward or hurt could make him feel any better about himself. He wasn’t that shitty a friend.

At least, he didn’t want to be.

Anthony looked down, shuffling through his bulging paper bag full of garbage, the thing he’d been stuffing every sheet, pamphlet, sticker and card he’d collected the whole weekend into as if it was as big as a lending library. He pulled out a couple of stickers from the top. “Here, they gave us a couple of these.”

Mark took the stickers. They were the window-clinger kind, for cars. He didn’t want to put any stickers on his car. They would be a pain in the ass to peel off, if-

(when)

-he had to sell it.

“Thanks, Anthony. Using my car to advertise someone else’s YouTube channel instead of our own, that’s a really proactive move there. Real four-D chess strats.”

“I, um… I just thought they’d look neat.”

“Yeah,” sighed Mark. “I know. Come on, let’s go find somewhere to sit.”

Even though it was getting towards evening, there weren’t too many people in the food court seating area, and half of the kiosks still had their metal hatches pulled down. At a long, near-empty table, sticky and spotted from a day of crumbs and wipe-downs, Mark dropped into a chair across from Anthony, always easy to spot in his bright red-check flannel, who was already halfway down a container of loaded chilli wedges.

He shrugged his backpack into the darkness under his feet and back-kicked it under his chair, and set his styrofoam carton on the table. Following the trend of the whole weekend, he hadn’t had as much luck with the food options as Anthony, whose potato wedges looked pretty good, apart from the whole ‘drenched in meat’ thing. His vegetarian lasagna looked like a slab of undercooked doormat in half an inch of thin red soup.

There were no real quiet places anywhere in the hall, but the food court was at least a little quieter, only a couple of other people at this table, eating alone. Mark tried to let himself relax, as much as he could, forcing himself to untense joint by joint as if his skeleton was an IKEA diagram strictly controlled by his mind, but only got about as far as his elbows before giving up.

Anthony grinned at him. Mark attempted to smile back, didn’t point out that he had a speck of chilli cheese on the tip of his nose, and ate a couple of bites of lasagna. The best that could be said about it was that it held no surprises- it tasted exactly how it looked. His phone buzzed, and he checked it hurriedly, trying to look preoccupied enough to dodge any conversation, to at least catch ten minutes worth of peace and silence while they ate.

He got maybe two minutes, because by then Anthony had wolfed down enough chilli to have taken the edge off his appetite, and wanted to talk.

“What happened back there, anyway? I just looked round and you were gone.”

Mark shrugged. “They weren’t going to give us anything,” he said. “Before you came over, I managed to give them our card, but really, I could just kind of tell they weren’t going to bite, so, like…”

With some trouble, he could make himself see that what had just happened wasn’t Anthony’s fault. He had known those guys weren’t interested, just like all the others. He’d known it in his gut before Anthony had even shown up, and with just a little distance he could see that clearly and admit it, and know that it wasn’t fair for him to put the blame on Anthony at all-

“Wait, that’s why you were talking to them?”

-for almost five seconds.

“Yes,” said Mark, trying to keep his voice, down, for all that it mattered. “Yes, Anthony, that is why I was trying to talk to them, before you-”

“But they’re nothing to do with our channel!” Anthony looked genuinely confused. “They do 3D print projects, they do that ASMR printing thing-”

“I know, what they do, Anthony,” said Mark, barbing every comma as if it was a physical thing, something pointy he could flick against Anthony’s forehead. “It doesn’t matter, they get two hundred K views per video, we could do something-”

“Come on, Mark,” Anthony drooped back in his chair, rubbing his face, obliterating the chilli cheese with his palm and pushing his curly mop of hair out of the way. His legs slid forwards on the tiles and his heels bumped into Mark’s toes. Mark pulled back and tucked his legs under his chair like a curling bug, hooking both feet tightly around its front legs. “You’ve been doing this the whole weekend, the mobile game people, the wallet people, the deodorant people, the freaking- weird pillow things people-”

“You think we can just wait for someone to come to us? That’s not how it works-”

“This isn’t how it works, Mark,” said Anthony. Now he leaned forwards, pushing his chilli to the side, all earnestness, his freckly face an open book urging Mark to hear him. “I’m just being realistic. We’re a really small channel, we don’t need sponsorships, it’s okay if none of these guys want to work with us yet. Maybe if we get bigger it’ll happen, fine, but you can’t force it, you’re just making-”

“When are we going to get bigger, Anthony? When? How long? When is our first sponsor going to come along and ask us? Another six months?”

“Maybe-”

“A year? Two years? I don’t have-”

“Maybe not at all!”

“-I don’t have that kind of time!”

Mark had almost yelled over his friend, but he’d heard him perfectly well. Although he knew exactly what Anthony meant, although it was only echoing his own thoughts, the words still stopped him dead.

“Maybe never,” said Anthony, quieter. “Look, you know I love our stuff, I love the channel, I’d love it if it got as big as those ASMR guys one day, are you kidding? But I’d be fine if we never got any more subscribers than we already have, I’d do it if we got like three views a video. It’s just supposed to be for fun, Mark! Remember the first time we uploaded and we got like, twenty views? We got pizza to celebrate!”

“That’s… that was different.” Mark did remember, and the memory made his throat tighten and his eyes prickle. It didn’t feel like a long time ago. The summer they started the channel, leapt into making videos as soon as term ended. That summer, back when his dad was only normal-crazy, back when Theo’s acceptance letter was stuck right on the front of the fridge all month, back when the thing that sucked the most in the world was the prospect of having to miss the second half of summer for some stupid family cruise.

That summer. Before everything went to shit.

Anthony pushed a finger against the smeary tabletop, drawing a big invisible circle, tapping a small dot next to it. “We have to think of it like, there’s hundreds and thousands of people here who have a channel, and you know it’s only a tiny, tiny percent of a percent that ever get big enough to get sponsorships and stuff. You know that. We were never doing this for sponsorships. I mean, I’m not, and- we’re on the same page, right? This is like when you wanted to do that video reading negative comments-”

“Okay, that? That stuff works. People love hate-comment videos. We’d easily get twice as many views as our last video, and we wouldn’t even have to write a script-”

“We don’t even get hate-comments- we’ve had like, one! Even if we did get a bunch for some reason, why would we even want to focus on that shit?” That’s just going to make it seem like we don’t care about the people leaving us good comments, and then we’d just look like assholes!”

“We don’t have to wait for real ones.I could make some fake accounts, or- or something. Who cares what we look like-”

“I do,” said Anthony. “And so do you, Mark.”

He sat back, as if he’d made a really good point, and gave Mark his best knowing look, which made him look about as sly and full of deep psychological understanding as a first-grader’s spelling primer.

“I know you, and I know the channel means way too much to you, for you to really want to screw it up like that just for a bunch of views.”

(It’s not about what I WANT!!)

In the real world, where screaming at the top of one’s lungs is unacceptable mealtime behaviour, Mark swallowed and looked down at his lasagna.

“It’s not like that’s why we’re here,” said Anthony. “This was just supposed to be fun. I mean… it was supposed to be.”

His tone of voice made Mark look up, quickly. Anthony was still watching him, and he looked worried. Not just worried, but uncertain, sympathetic. Mark felt his stomach lurch. He knew that look, because he’d found himself on the receiving end of it a lot lately, from a lot of different people, all for mostly the same reason. He hated it. He hated the pity, the pointlessness of it, the unwanted obligation of knowing someone felt bad for him when he never asked them to, wouldn’t ask them to, because they couldn’t do a single thing to help. Seeing it in Anthony’s guileless hazel eyes was worse than seeing it in the face of a stranger, because-

(he could help he just doesn’t want to)

-it cut deeper, somehow. Mark shut his eyes hard for a second. Hard white light, clean surfaces, the pervasive smell of disinfectants and sickness and waiting, and the voice, thin and drowsy and blurry with sleep and painkillers, but the same, the same well-loved voice-

(It sounds great, honey. You two go have a good time. You’ll have fun.)

“Sure,” said Mark, to his lasagna. “Fun.”

There was a short silence. Anthony clearly wanted to say more, probably to the same purpose, but he knew Mark well enough to recognize when he was being shut down. He shifted uncertainly in his seat, picking at a bit of cracked decal on the front of his t-shirt. Mark picked up his spork again.

“You know,” he said, casually, drawing small deliberate lines across the top layer of his gross lasagna, just like someone might do when they were absolutely unbothered and totally not trying to force the issue, absolutely not so wound up to the point that their usual sharp, smooth-running voice was fracturing into bits and pieces of sentences like grammatical shrapnel, “if you ever felt like- you were kind of done with this whole thing, with the- the channel, I’d completely understand. It’s been a... stressful weekend, right? It hasn’t really worked out like we wanted it to, and I can tell you’re not really into it, I... I wouldn’t be mad.”

He coughed, poking holes in the lasagna like he was trying to seed a miniature lawn. He hadn’t even eaten three bites, but it felt like it was stuck in a big ball in his throat.

“If- if you were feeling like, ‘You know what, I’m over this stupid YouTube thing, but I don’t want to disappoint Mark!’ I’d get it. Really, you wouldn’t be disappointing me, or- letting anybody down, I’d be- I’d be fine with just- running it on my own.”

He looked up, barely daring to hope. “If that’s how you were feeling... you could hundred-percent just tell me.”

Anthony leaned across the table, putting a hand on Mark’s arm, stopping the nervous movement of the spork mid-jab. His face was encouraging, wholly sincere.

“Mark,” he said, with serious emphasis, “I love our channel. I’m never going to be ‘done.’ I’ve got you, buddy. You don’t have to worry about me- I am never gonna just leave you to do it on your own. Okay?”

Mark looked at him, helplessly. Anthony smiled, his beautiful Anthony smile, nothing but sunshine and freckles, a smudge of chilli cheese and a total absence of doubt. He squeezed Mark’s arm, gently.

“We’ve had a long day,” he said. “I’m gonna go back to the room, get some packing done. Take your time, okay?”

And with that, and another quick, reassuring grin, he grabbed his raggedy paper bag and the rest of his chilli, and was gone.

Mark sat there for a little while as if he’d been hit with something heavy around the back of the head, looking at the place where Anthony had been. After a moment or two, he screwed his eyes very tightly shut, jabbed his spork into his lasagna so it stuck there like an upright little sail, put his face down in his hands and made a noise like a high, muffled nearly-silent scream.

#dftm #don't feed the muse #muse arg #alex bale #mark mayhew #anthony williams #my writing #happy christmas eve c:

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elysia-nsimp · 2 years ago

Text

Tagging: @queerlordsimon @thesunshineriptide @aetherphobia @end3rm1st @ladyzsgolla

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 5 // Part 6

Warnings: Cursing, caps, joking threats

Enjoy lmao

——

Leona: anyway please stop shoving paper up your ass

——

Yuu: they’re so louuddddd

Floyd, handing them scissors: go get them

——

Ruggie: The theme is jungle animals why is Hatsune Miku here

——

Deuce: maybe the real lollipops were the friends we made along the way :)

Trey: no. eat food.

——

Jack, holding up a teachers pass:

Epel: you don’t need to hold the pass up, you look like a police officer

Jack: Its like I have full immunity to everything, just like a real police badge!

——

Trey, walking into a classroom:

Ruggie, pulling tissues out of a box:

Them, making eye contact as Ruggie rapidly removes tissues:

Trey: …im not gonna question

Ruggie: good. [RUNS AWAY]

——

Riddle: are you really over there insulting a bug?

Deuce: ITS BEING A DUMBASS

——

Ruggie: Good job escaping Colonel Sanders “The Riddler”

——

Ace: I couldn’t decide if I was gonna say “crunky” or “cookie” so I said “kroonky”

——

Jack: I will protect you from glowsticks and danny devito

Yuu: thank you

——

Floyd, throwing a stuffed shrimp around then biting it:

Yuu: What are you DOING to that poor thing

Floyd: showing it love and affection

Yuu: …PLEASE don’t fall in love with me

——

Deuce: I thought this was a movie about skiing. Lord help us all.

——

Ace: mariah carey’s spirit has possessed me starting today

Deuce: I’m calling an exorcist.

——

Lilia: ITS MY WAY OR THE HIGH WAY

[highway to hell starts playing]

——

Azul: That's why we don't enforce child labor--because they'd suck at it

——

Riddle: i think I know more about semi-colons than YOU DO

——

Floyd: fill your mind with shrek! be free!!

——

Ruggie: I, too, am tiny, and scared, and have no money

——

Idia: get in bitch we're going to eeby deeby where the souls are damned and the girls are pretty

——

Epel: y’all eat your eggs with or without the crust?

Jack: what a terrible day to have ears

——

Azul: maybe american flags are the new cryptocurrency

——

Idia: i do not care about freddy fabear's love life

——

Vil: Do not throw the ham across the library!

——

Jack: you look very intense

Leona: yea my face just does that

Jack: yea mine too

——

Azul: Mansplain, manipulate, malewife

Floyd, NOT PAYING ATTENTION: that's donkey from shrek

——

Deuce: It’s not even objectively true, it’s right!

——

The dark mirror: i sense no magiwal powew fwom dis one. cowowless, shapeless, vaycant

——

Kalim: The animals not gay enough for Jumanji get sent to jonga

Jamil: I just looked it up. Jonga is a vehicle. What the fuck?

——

Trey: nope, just sleeping

Ace: free trial of death?

Trey: no, just sleeping

Ace: free trial of death, with ads?

——

Jack: Explain to me, Ruggie, where are the vocal cords in the donut?

——

Floyd: i could randomly yell somethin- FUCK THERE WENT MY MEATSTICK

——

Deuce: YOU CANT DEATTACH YOUR BRAIN

Ace: SAYS WHO

Deuce: ME! I SAY SO!

——

Idia: the further down this mountain I go the more alliums I find

Cater: is it candy mountain

Idia: NO

——

My Yuu, Comet: Does this mean I get free tea and foot rubs when I get married? 🥺

Vil: Marry someone who will make you tea and give you foot rubs! If they can’t make you tea and give you foot rubs, that isn’t someone to marry!

Jade, threateningly: Establish it early.

——

Floyd, to Rook: Comment dit’on… ‘gET OFF MY ASS YOU BITCHASS MOTHERFUCKER’

(Comment dit’on is French for “how do you say”)

——

The sheer amount of quotes of Idia and Floyd being said by me is sending me

Anyway hope you enjoy. I still have many… MANY more.

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maidenofcrows · 1 year ago

Note

Fandom ask thingy, af

I. Forgot I had rb’d an ask thing.

Blorbo: Holly :)

Scrunkly: Uhm. They’re all pretty Shaped, imo, but regarding “cuteness aggression” specifically, probably No.1

Scrimblo: idk if I’d classify Minerva as under appreciated or underrated, but she’s definitely worth talking about more

Glup: that guy that called Holly “Polly Little.” I think about that way too often

Poor little meow meow: the Fowl parents, methinks, but in a way that makes me want to put them in a Petri dish for scientific observation

Horse plinko: uh… select all. The best way to know a character is to see them suffer and I think that’s great

I don’t think I have any eeby deebies…

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hunsa-jars · 2 years ago

Text

I posted 11,708 times in 2022

That's 4,587 more posts than 2021!

424 posts created (4%)

11,284 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@smokeys-house

@rye-in-a-coat

@flowerbloom-arts

@laecandraw

@iemondropsss

I tagged 11,687 of my posts in 2022

#moomin - 2,469 posts

#moomins - 2,464 posts

#lego monkie kid - 1,081 posts

#snufkin - 989 posts

#dhmis - 797 posts

#don't hug me i'm scared - 789 posts

#this - 510 posts

#animals - 484 posts

#cuphead - 465 posts

#lego monkie kid season 3 - 414 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#the whole 'you're so much more than what i've become' got me so hard he's just holding snuf close to him and his expression dear god i can't

My Top Posts in 2022:

so you all know that i’m in a “oh my god monke!!” mood so it’s the perfect opportunity to appreciate a forgotten moomin character, the little Silk Monkey

wish we saw more of her..

Also silk monkeys (or marmosets) are super adorable and tiny, just look at em!!

See the full post

300 notes - Posted January 5, 2022

If you guys gonna give Red the Tumblr Sexyman status I will get a free license to be unbearable on main, I think that would be fair

332 notes - Posted September 27, 2022

Autumn this, fall that

W r o n g

It's Night in the Woods/Over the Garden Wall/Fran Bow season, get it right 🙄

348 notes - Posted September 5, 2022

Girl help I'm so autistic about the autistic spaghetti man

401 notes - Posted September 29, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Eyey so i made this chart, since i haven’t seen one around including every important term so here it is!

i also added two more i always use because why not

The terms explained (the first 7 from this post):

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most)

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped)

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave)

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week)

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave)

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason)

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell)

Bonus 2 from me:

second dancers or “Másod táncos”, a word mix from my mother tongue, from the words “másod pilóta” [co-pilot] and “háttér táncos” [background dancer] (basically the background character or the one you just don't think much about. they’re there, they exist, and that’s kinda it for you)

blarba (the menace blorbo, the derogatory fave, you think about them a lot and you absolutely HATE it, they live in your head and aren't paying rent)

489 notes - Posted May 2, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #11708 POST A YEAR YALL #well damn #of course the moomin tag took the crown. i saw that coming #hahaha help the autistic spaghetti man post is number 2 sfndhnf #hell yeahhh the silk monkey appreciation #this is great- i'm happy with this

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officialambassadorfrisk · 1 year ago

Text

DnD Adventure 22 - Moss Edition

Shades was tired so you get me instead!

Half of us aren’t here so Dans, Undyne and Cam just got eeby deebyed

“Oh shit… everyone’s gone” -Dess, still slightly cooked

Frog: Now what?

Dess: We’re gonna go kill Dans’ fuckbuddy I guess

Frog: …what’s a fuckbuddy?

Tori: No-

*wheezing*

Charaty is dying help

Discussing whether we should talk to Steve or just kill him

“Murder is wrong” “Only if you get caught”

Suzy wants her own dick club and Tori said no >:( let her cook!!

Dess is approaching Steve!

“Hey do you deal in curses and dark magic? Are you, perhaps, a stupid motherfucker?” DESS STOP

He says he doesn’t know anything. Insight check for Dess! It’s a fucking nat 1! She leaves.

“He does fuck Dans a lot” “HE WHAT!?”

Undyne’s not here with Soupnik so now what?

Dess really wants to kill Steve lmfaooo

We’re going to the inn! Frog wandered off because of course they do

Side quest time!

Dess asks another adventuring party to move so she can see the notice board. A fairy turns around and tells her to go shove a stick up her fucking ass. She pulls out the dick club. Fairy is confused as fuck we’re going great

Dess calls him short and he tries to challenge her to a fight. His friend, a centaur, stops him and pulls him away

Dess reads the notice board! There’s a green dragon a while away. Dess tells Tori and Suzy that they should go fight it and asks the fairy and co (Magpie, btw) if they wanna come. He gets mad because they were already gonna fight it. She calls him little. He says he’s not little. She tells him to say that to her face, so he flies up and punches her in the face, so Dess grabs him and swaddles him like a baby. The third group member, a goblin, finally turns around and agrees to come with them.

Time to find Frog! They’ve been busking :] they got 24 gold they’re so proud of themself. The centaur introduces herself as Tymeneus and says the goblin is named Stags.

Off we go!

Tymeneus asks how they started travelling together and is very confused lol

We’re here! Tori rolled a nat 1 on investigation and looked directly into the fucking sun. We’re doing great

The dragon is here!

“Holy shit that’s a dragon” -Dess

Dess then tries to flirt with it but Magpie shoots it with his longbow! Goddamnit Magpie

Suzy attacks because of course she does! She does a whole 12 damage! Roll initiative

Tori uses lightning bolt! Unfortunately Suzy was directly in front of it so she also takes damage. The dragon is judging Tori lmao

I am bad at notes esp during combat um it’s shit lol. Also it’s judging Dess for the penis club

FROG JUST DIED!? I’M???

Undyne shows up and kills it! And then immediately goes to help Frog

They’re back! Just like Frisk fr

Undyne bear hugs them because holy shit. Tori reminds her to be careful, trying not to cry while Frog just has a thousand-yard stare and then starts crying my poor child :( Magpie is judging Dess for antagonising them when the kid just started crying

Undyne is trying to comfort Frog gaaaah. Dess pipes up and asks Tori what Dans is gonna do when he finds out Frog died. Instant lightning bolt. Undyne hands Frog to Tori ;-;

Dess introduces the other group and says they’re part of the ‘Dick Club’ now. Undyne is pissed because this isn’t the time for jokes. Dess says that’s the name and that Suzy agrees. Suzy tells Dess to shut the fuck up and joins in on the hug. Tori gives Undyne a look and she kinda sighs and picks them up in a bear hug and Dess leaves.

Undyne puts the group down and talks to the others. Magpie seems to recognise Undyne. She does Not recognise Magpie. Tymeneus heals Tori and Frog and the gang leaves. Undyne checks on everyone and admits that took a toll on her as well. Emotional vulnerability?

Anyway, they head back to town to get a room so everyone can rest.

And then we talked about Undertale!

#moss post #dnd adventures #drugs cw #jic #anyway yeah fun session!

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thesitharts · 2 years ago

Text

I posted 1,941 times in 2022

That's 1,922 more posts than 2021!

499 posts created (26%)

1,442 posts reblogged (74%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@genifer-first-of-her-name

@d3epfriedangels

@thesitharts

@queen-breha-organa

@fooolisher

I tagged 966 of my posts in 2022

Only 50% of my posts had no tags

#jess says stuff - 146 posts

#maul - 49 posts

#thesitharts - 44 posts

#dathomiri - 41 posts

#path - 41 posts

#my art - 40 posts

#video - 35 posts

#queer - 34 posts

#me - 30 posts

#self reblog - 25 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#i leave for twenty minutes to check something in town come back to hear her upstairs screaming and crying because she’s been left unattended

My Top Posts in 2022:

People who draw clonecest, why do you waste your talents

Just why

They’re brothers, please.

Same goes for people who ship RexSoka and/or MaulSoka, just why.

Rex and Ahsoka are practically siblings, Maul and Ahsoka not only hate each other’s guts but MAUL IS IN HIS FORTIES AND AHSOKA IS A MINOR

Y’all are gross

Edit: aaand comment privileges have been lost. If you want to add your shitty take onto this post, you’re gonna have to reblog.

119 notes - Posted May 3, 2022

I need Obi-Wan to understand that what he’s seeing is more than likely the reality for clones regardless of who won the war.

The clones are not seen as people by the Republic, the Jedi (at least some of them) may genuinely care for the men under their command, but they are not the Republic. They have no seats on the Senate and it’s extremely unlikely in that universe for any legislation to be passed to allow the clones rights, allow them their personhood.

No matter who won, the clones were always going to go the way of the Battle Droid and be either decommissioned or abandoned.

It’s cruel, it’s unjust, but it’s the reality of a clone trooper.

137 notes - Posted May 27, 2022

Love how SoulsBorne games go “give that beast a sword”

302 notes - Posted July 19, 2022

it’s a “Mystery Flesh Pit” TO YOU. I know what it is.

331 notes - Posted September 4, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Asexual and aromantic people are so incredibly valid and queer and belong in the community, i love ya’ll don’t listen to the assholes 💜

490 notes - Posted September 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

That’s not what eeby deeby means

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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mx-hyperfixation · 9 months ago

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ccouugh wheeze

yummy yummy fixation driving my creativity moment

as per my fixations it’s necessary to my brain to make atleast 1 chill au

therefore I have an eeby-deeby hazbin hotel au cooking

aka the sleepover au because why not

the hotel’s a sleepover party charlie hosts and she wants to invite as many people as possible to make them all happy,, got all the hotel cast yada yada

then heavens like the neighbours/ if it’s in a flat then the upstairs neighbours and yah they’re also having a eeby deeby party

I just think it’s funny and comforting so

Few shitty concept outfits be upon ye (I hate Alastor’s with a burning passion bro does not look sleepy)

I loooove vaggie’s though proud of that one

husks one was inspired by what I would actually wear to sleep (no im not projecting how dare /j)

Might make more, might not who bloody knows

never going to do anything productive with this information but it’s there as a silly daydream

Pentious was just late to the party and got picked up early 🥲

#SSH no tags for you #just daydreaming mwahahahha

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grapecaseschoices · 2 years ago

Text

I posted 19,987 times in 2022

That's 4,624 more posts than 2021!

125 posts created (1%)

19,862 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@thelittlestspider

@santir0sales

@cassiopeiacorvus

@unitedindistaste

@karolinarodrigueswrites

I tagged 13,058 of my posts in 2022

Only 35% of my posts had no tags

#art - 765 posts

#words - 723 posts

#lmao - 610 posts

#fanart - 448 posts

#twitter - 399 posts

#oc: kendis crawford louel - 382 posts

#tiktok - 317 posts

#aid - 315 posts

#tumblr - 290 posts

#fc inspo - 283 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#and they keep earning their pyrrhic victories and they’re inevitably heading for that final confrontation they can’t return from. end tweet

My Top Posts in 2022:

Not Kdramas making me realize that I have a thing for the Older Rich/Wealthy, Hard-working and Work-Focused Woman Who May Not Know How To People (in a SoftTM way) and her human lapdog the Younger Infinitely More Sensitive Philosophical* Dude Who She Shares Very Sexy Snarky Banter With.

*philosophical is the only similarity i could think of between artist and not-a-priest.

If anyone has any recommendations (both of the asiandrama and the non variety), please let me know!

21 notes - Posted July 23, 2022

Bloomic blorbos?

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): Nightowl, my babe.

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped): Nightowl, Cat. AND I COULD SHAKE HIM but Quest.

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): Salo. Two.

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week): I guess BigLady? I mostly just needed to put her / talk about her somewhere -- which fits the bill.

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave): Far from unpopular and not as controversial as they probably SHOULD be but Xyx, angsty little btch. I am fond. And I listed him already but Quest. Actually, technically they're all meow meows. LMAO. I bet toasty is too.

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason): onionthief

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell): societyboi or wte his name was. Deserves this for legit giving me the heebie jeebies.

Thank for the ask, hun <3!!

25 notes - Posted February 10, 2022

Thanks again to @sosolenoo for this LOVELY comission of my oc; and to my pal @quaxorascal for creating an ID for this absolutely lovely piece of work!!:

[ID: a full-colour digital bust illustration of Kendis Crawford-Louel. They are a part black/white person, and they have brown skin; long brown hair that's mostly bleached blonde and braided against their head on one side; brown eyes; thick eyebrows; a wide nose; full lips, with dimples in their cheeks; and a defined jaw. They are wearing a denim jacket with multicoloured lapels with a pattern of leaves and flowers on a cream background; they are also wearing red eyeliner, three silver earrings in one ear, a thin gold necklace. They smile warmly at the viewer. The background behind them is a red-to-orange gradient. /end ID]

34 notes - Posted February 10, 2022

💌 and one of my ifs? Fallen Lights perhaps? 👀 Only if you want to lol!

Meet My OCs:

Anouck Rhys aka Star | Fallen Lights by you! (:-D) @fallenlightsif

40 notes - Posted January 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

A most lovely commission completed by @phy-be of my @exilethegame Demon Commander Xhyera Sarnan.

275 notes - Posted May 2, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #tumblr #long post #dang i need hobbies #i do ike how much of this year it appears i spent getting my ocs out there #i thought i really didnt this year #but tumblr says 'aha!'#also wow shut up about kendis

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kitspindles · 3 years ago

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Okay

The whole “Ingo has a receding hairline” thing has been, like, beaten to death by this point so I’m not gonna address that fullly. I for one don’t mind. However. Understandably, as a result of the hair reveal, people want to know when he got eeby-deebied into Hisui (immediately after the events of BW and BW2? A few years later?), and how long he’s actually been there (a few months? A year? Over a decade?). Everyone has been talking about it ever since the art book page was shown, and a lot of people have brought up really good points-- aaaand some people are just off the fucking tracks about it. So I’m just putting together what I’ve heard and what I’ve noticed myself. Here we go. Speculation for why Ingo has NOT been in Hisui for 10+ years:

1). Based on their appearances alone, we’re lead to believe that the player character is Dawn/Lucas from DPPt, but a couple years down the line. They’re not 10 like they were in Diamond and Pearl: Cyllene says right away that they’re “around 15 or so.” So right away we can assume that the events of Legends Arceus occur shortly after BW2 (which is set roughly 3 years after DPPt and 2 years after BW).

2). When characters like Irida mention Ingo and his origins, they talk about it as if it’s a more recent occurrence. If it had been 10+ years the dialogue would most likely come across differently to imply that he appeared in Hisui some time ago. Heck, they might even bring it up if that were the case-- yet we don’t see anyone saying “long ago” or “some number of years ago” in reference to Ingo spawning in. But again, see point one: if we’re to believe that the player character is Dawn/Lucas, who is said to only be 15, then the 10+ years timeline just doesn’t line up.

3). This one might be a toss away, but it’s been said before elsewhere so I’ll just throw it in: the art book states “XX years” or something like that which is ultimately what led people to believe that it’s been 10+ years since Ingo dropped in Hisui. Fair assumption. However, Xs are almost always used to state a vague and unspecified year (obviously) because people don’t want to date their concept in real world measurements, or they simply just don’t have an exact time period set. And given that this is a Pokémon game where the years and flow of time for the whole series is outside our own, we can assume that they’ve done the same here. Also, XX is arguably more visibly pleasing than just putting X. I mean, it just looks weird imo. I wouldn’t put much stock in any years or dates that Pokémon throws out.

4). Ingo’s memories. Yeah, we’re the main character and everything so it’s our job as the player character to go around helping people and progressing the story blah blah. But if Ingo had been in Hisui for 10+ years one would think he would’ve recovered some memories by now, right? I mean, all it took was him walking through the cave with us and having a Pokémon battle to jog some things loose-- surely he’s done both of those things numerous times before our arrival? It makes more sense that he’s only been in Hisui for maybe a year, maybe a couple months, and he’s only just now beginning to think about his past more since his memories obviously aren’t returning smoothly on their own.

5). The receding hairline from the book. I’ll just say it here: it’s not a bad thing if it’s canon-- men lose their hair, lol. That’s life. Even video game life. And Ingo has to be at least in his early to mid 30s (like in BW the Subway Bosses never came across to me as, like, super young or anything. Late 20s, early 30s for sure there). However, as some people have pointed out before, some of the things pictured in the artbook don’t exactly line up with what’s in the game. For instance, the picture of Ingo face down on the ground by the clan member doesn’t line up with what he and Irida say in the game (correct me if I’m wrong on this, though. I’ve seen it said by a lot of other posts). So it’s entirely possible the hairline is false (if you care about this. I don’t really. It adds character. And anyway, he always has his hat on so we never see it to know. Some people on Tumblr are just thirsty for twink men with a full head of hair or something like that). Anyway, it’s concept art. It’s job is to pan things out and plan, but not necessarily everything is set in stone. I think people are seeing the receding hairline and assuming this means Ingo is, like, old now. But who knows? I don’t think we’ve never seen his or Emmett’s hair before this. And I believe it’s the first time we’ve gotten a more detailed art page about one of them? Maybe it’s always been this way.

6). Again I make mention of point one. Because if we’re really to assume that the player character is the same one from DPPt but older (and I mean c’mon, with their appearances they just have to be), then there’s really just no feasible way for Ingo to have been in Hisui for more than 10 years. BW takes place about a year after DPPt at most. BW2 takes place, canonically, stated in game, two years after BW. And Ingo was still in BW2 (ignoring the fact that this game came out like 10 years ago and they had no notion of Arceus then, okay). So it’s safe to assume that Ingo fell sometime after the events of BW2. Say about a year or so after that. Two at most. Because that would land Dawn/Lucas at roughly 15, their given age in Arceus when they fall through the rift.

7). Grimsley. Remember him? He looked pretty young in BW, BW2. But then cut to Sun and Moon-- he was there on the beach right before Po Town, and boy did he look rough. Yet only about 2-3 years had passed since the events of BW, as stated in the game. So if we follow this logic, a lot can apparently happen to a person in two years. Ingo looks so disgruntled compared to his former art from BW and BW2, but so would we all if we had gone from living in modern day Unova to suddenly being dropped into a late 1800s era Sinnoh without any of our usual modern care products (probably why he has a cool little goatee now. Not enough opportunities to shave regularly) and constant stress and threats from a hostile world. This being said, he doesn’t look that much different from his og art, just really tired. He’s the epitome of “I don’t look older, I just look worse.”

8). Volo. Okay, so I’m sure we’re all aware by now that it’s Volo’s fault that Ingo is even in Hisui to begin with, not Arceus’s. As a direct result of him meddling with space-time and trying to get Girantina, the rift opened (and ultimately led to all of those smaller rifts/distortions that open up across Hisui from time to time where modern Pokémon and items are found). And this is all a recent development in the last year or so, as stated in game. As Laventon tells us, Jubilife Village has only existed for two years, and the big rift wasn’t there when they settled-- would you settle so close to a big disaster just waiting to happen? Probably not. especially not Komado, either. Like we learn in-game, he wants no issues-- he tells us about all his hardships in another land. The whole reason why they moved to Hisui and built a new village to begin with. In short, the rifts have only been cropping up in the last few months to a year in game, and we know that’s how Ingo got here. So it couldn’t be that he’s been around for 10+ years if the rifts are a fairly new development.

9). There’s just no way that Gamefreak would separate Ingo and Emmett like that, for so long, with no clear reason or wrap-up.

10). His shoes and dress pants from Unova are still intact. They for sure wouldn’t be after 10 years, especially walking around in Hisui. His coat and hat are actually more beat up than anything else, but still wearable and identifiable as his old uniform. Probably from his spin through time-space and just Pokémon battles and the climate in general. But also, they had to make him look disgruntled somehow but still be Ingo— and Ingo isn’t Ingo without his jacket and cap.

Did any of this make sense? Probably not. Did anyone read this far? Also no. I just really don’t believe that he’s been in Hisui for longer than a year based on a lot of in-game stuff and just based on what the games have done in the past with characters. In reality we just don’t know yet. I could be totally wrong! But until we get more DLC for Arceus, or until another Pokémon game comes out that makes mention of it, we just won’t have any clear answers about Ingo’s time in Hisui.

#pokemon legends arceus #pokemon legends #pokemon #arceus #warden ingo #ingo pokemon #ingo #emmett pokemon #subway bosses #subway boss ingo #subway boss emmett #subway boss nobori #submas

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