#I DON'T JUST GO OFF GALLIVANTING 100% OF THE TIME

[unclejawbone]

Hey kiddo. Uncle Jawbone here. Just wanted to interrupt your self-hatred and remind you that there are variables you're forgetting in this scenario, those being everything else your mom was going through in that phase of her life.

I know that it feels like people who choose to be parents should always make their children their first priority, especially when you're the child in question. And certainly in your case, it seems like what was your mom even struggling with, when she had so much handed to her on a golden platter?

Now that you're a man, Fabian, I have to tell you some hard truths, and one of them is: that could be exactly why your mother struggled. She grew up in a place where everything was handed to her, everything was this perfect shiny utopia -- and she couldn't really appreciate it because she'd always lived there and didn't know anything different, right? You've heard some variation of the phrase "you can't know the good if you don't know the bad", right? She probably took everything in Fallinel for granted and thought it was super uncool and was desperate to get out.

And then she got whisked off her feet by your dad, the great Bill Seacaster, and he gave her excitement and adventure and danger. I've heard your mom was pretty impressive with the sword back in the day, huh? They probably really tore it up on the open seas. Has she ever talked about that time of her life with you, or did she put those memories away like a box on a shelf and has never revisited them again?

Eventually your mom and dad decided to get pregnant, and Hallariel had to give up the life of piracy I assume because it wouldn't be safe for you. I know kids don't like hearing this, but the hard truth is that when people become parents they have to make sacrifices and give up some of the things they want to do. And even though being a parent can be amazing and fulfilling, it's also a thankless job and boring as shit. And most of the time people don't tell you that before you become a parent, they just act like it's the best job ever and talk about the miracle of childbirth and blah blah blah... They don't talk about how boring it is and the endless dirty diapers and messes to clean up, and the little piss and shit machine you created doesn't say thank you, it just screams at you and makes more messes.

Now, maybe your mom didn't do all the changing of diapers and cleaning up of messes -- she had Cathilda to help her, right? She had help, but presumably your dad left and went off gallivanting again on the high seas. And she probably missed him a lot, don't you think? And she probably worried about him a lot and was never 100% sure he was coming home.

This is the really big hard truth, kiddo: your mom was probably really, really depressed. When you're just floating through life drinking all the time like a... I dunno, like a drunk ghost... that's depression behavior, dude.

Unfortunately the reality is that you can have everything and still be depressed. You can have a rich husband and a big house and a maid to help with all the boring housework -- but pretty soon you realize that all of that just gives you more time to be alone with your Big Depressed Thoughts. And maybe being a parent wasn't what Hallariel thought it would be, so she just handed you off to Cathilda and chose a path of self-medication through intoxication.

Let me be clear, Fabian: none of that is your fault. You weren't the reason for your mom's depression, you didn't ruin her life or take her away from some imaginary alternate future where she was happy. Your parents chose to have you.

Here's the last hard truth. As much as Mr. Aguefort likes to talk up the power of chronomancy, no one is going to turn back the clock and give you the childhood you wanted. And it's not gonna do you any good to go to your mom and throw this all in her face and demand some kind of reparations. In many ways, she did give you a good life, right? You, too, grew up with safety and riches and almost anything you could want at your fingertips. Not all of your friends had that kind of childhood, right? The most mature and manly thing you can do, I think, is open your heart to compassion and empathy. Have some forgiveness for your mom -- accept that she was flawed and made mistakes, and forgive her for all those million little heartaches you felt when she wasn't the mother you wanted her to be. Accept that you can't change the past, but you can have a better relationship with her now. And now that your mom's in a better place, maybe you can talk about these things with her someday, huh? Improving and strengthening your relationship with her in the present day will help smooth over some of those painful memories and feelings.

And if I'm wrong and your relationship with Hallariel doesn't get better, you can always come and talk to me again, okay kiddo?

Why can't you accept that she might be living a good, honest life? That she's an attentive partner and a good mom?

Because I wanted that mom. I wanted the mom who made me afternoon snacks instead of telling me to look for loose fries in the third kitchen freezer. Why does [baby name] get that mom? If Hallariel Seacaster has truly changed then that means she was always capable of change but I just wasn't worth changing for.

Fabian Seacaster, going home from college a few years from now to find a warm and attentive home he never had

[saltpepperbeard]

“For the first time, I look at him and realize that ablaze with the fake flames, he is dazzling. And I must be too.”

[fire-and-swan]

Today I watch the last two episodes. Dimension 20: A Starstruck Odyssey, episodes seventeen and eighteen. The final set. It all comes down to this.

(prev episode notes are here, here and here, btw)

Battle Stations!

Ponytail Barry is the good Barry.

Gold Tier Jib-Job makes Jib-Job fight! That is ridiculously useful.

"I need the surrender of X" "Oh, that's lovely, please hold."

All the U4F backup!

Amusing that the Bad Call is U4F

Enemies starting a slap fight, like "mine" "get off, they're mine!", which does make things a bit simpler.

Wait. What? When the heck did Barry Nyne get on board the Wurst? And why is he targeting Barry Syx, rather than seeking Skip?

So ridiculously cool that the group came up with a way to defeat a Slug. That they took the time and effort to work out what would beat Skip, and bought the stuff, for this exact moment.

Margaret has a minor war room. That is awesome.

Oh no. It was going so, so well. Except now, Barry isn't a slug, and the Princeps is. (Did Zortch use something like Dominate Person on Barry Nyne? Is that what happened?)

Yeah, this. This would've been so tense to watch live. There is so much going on. It was all going so well, and that last reveal? The pilot got attacked? Now we're really in trouble.

Anyway: Eighteen!

Skip: in trouble. Barry: safer than he was. Everyone else: honestly, doing fine.

Ooh, the decision of whether to do ship stuff, or people stuff is so key here.

There are so many people in this combat. I though the battles of Crown of Candy were bad for management. This, however. Comparable, at the very least.

Nyne thinks that he's Syx? What? This is wacky.

The Barry v Barry discussion is really really something. Both in all of Murph's incredible argument there, and in Brennan's Barry preformance. "In this roll, you have expertise. Because you are expert in nothing more than than being a Barry."

One tiny FTL jump. One round, no pilot, no prep. Oooooh. Oookay. That was stress. That was legit fear they might go down. I'm sure that being thrown into space wouldn't have killed them all, but still, that could have been disastrous. But that's dnd.

Loose Duke? LOOSE DUKE?!?

Call to Guards is such an amazing use of action economy. Absolutely amazing!

Worm fight!

All hail the King!

Holofract success! And the entire house of Frangus is gone. Oh boy, that's a lot.

Yesss, all the debt gone.

Calling it now, a full ship sweep is now going to be a part of daily operating procedure.

First ever lie, and it's a 21! Go Riva!

Amazing to have saved the galaxy, to have achieved success on basically every level, and there is still another ship left to fight.

*blinks. Stares at screen. Taps back to rewatch scene just to check what I'm seeing* Skip is helping Skipper fly the ship. Ookay. Well, that is kooky.

I love ship fights in this game. They're completely, 100% teamwork. It's beautiful to see.

They have the ship down to nineteen fifteen hitpoints before they ram it. WILD!

Okay, turns out they needed that. Don't ram things, just boost guns and shoot them. Noted.

This has been so wild. I literally cannot sit still. All fidget and stim rn. All fidget and stim.

Skipper had a moment to be actually supportive of the crew. Which is oddly cathartic. Like, he learned something through Skip and the crew. And then chose to become Skip again. Which, uh, yeah. That's a choice.

I do wonder if they are both conscious and aware now.

Oh, the end of a gallivant. She learned to lie. She learned to look out for herself in the harsh realities of space. And now she's leaving.

Oh, oh heart. These campaigns always end so strong. Such beauty. Found family and strength and everything. The adventure save the galaxy, yes. But more importantly it saved a small rag-tag group, and it made a family. And that is beautiful.

And now it's over. It's all over, and now I have to just pick up and go on with my life, as though watching through Fantasy High, Unsleeping City, A Crown of Candy, and now this hasn't been life-changing.

The ball is rolling up.

[wafflesetc]

Do you feel safe traveling as a woman alone in a foreign country? I want to travel but my friends don't like too... I'm independent enough to go, but I get scared.

The short answer to this is both yes and no.

I am super independent, that sometimes it is actually a weakness of mine. If I want to go and I have the time off, chances are you will find me at an airport boarding a plane and texting my mom right as we’re taking off so she can’t tell me no. 

When I was 18 I took my savings account, started a new checking account, and bought a round trip ticket to Athens. I spent 3 weeks gallivanting around Greece and Cyprus. (My mom DID find out, after I bought the tickets.) I have family and friends over in Greece, so I just hopped around visiting them. It was fairly safe, seeing as I speak Greek too, and I 100% look Greek. It was very easy for me to get around. 

As I have become older and traveled more extensively, both domestic and internationally, it has been a struggle. I love to go find dive bars in US cities where local bands play and I can get the best microbrew beer you will find. I love to go in Paris and walk through the Montemarte district and eat at a cute cafe and with a nice glass of red wine. 

Traveling alone can get lonely, but it is also SUPER EXHILARATING. There’s just something about that long plane ride, getting off in a foreign country and having no one else’s agenda but your own. That’s what I did with Scotland. Although, my one of my greatest friends from this website, @ttiva, met me over there, I had no agenda and no specific plans other than just see whatever I could. We ate and drank, went to some museums and just had a grand old time.

The thing with traveling alone is you just have to be smart. I always make sure the hotels or hostels I stay in have a safe in the room so that any electronics I travel with and my passport always have a place for when I am not in the room. My suitcase also always has a photocopy of my passport and driver’s license should I lose them on my travels. Once I have a hotel booked, I text the address to my mom and dad and the phone number, so if they don’t hear from me, they have a location I am considering to be ‘home base’. As for the other stuff, it’s truly just to be situationally aware, trust your gut, and don’t do anything stupid.

But seriously, there is no greater feeling than traveling by yourself. It’s magic.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

YOU WANT SHIP JOY??? OH HONEY YOU HAVE ACCIDENTALLY STUMBLED UPON THE RIGHT PLACE

*cracks knuckles*

So SoRiKai is FANTASTIC because these three idiots have been gallivanting all across the universe trying to find each other for, what, years now? They have one braincell between them and it's usually in Kairi's possession which is why we see Sora and Riku constantly just bypassing each other while screaming the other one's name, but if you can get the three of them to hold still for ten seconds they have such a beautiful, mutually supportive relationship that the games shamefully ignore but that's neither here nor there.

Roxas and Ventus need to have at least five minutes of screen time just chatting. Try to tell me that these two wouldn't hit it off splendidly. Ven is sunshine incarnate and will do anything for his friends, and Roxas is less sunshine but also 100% all about his friends and also I just kind of want to hear Jesse McCartney have a conversation with himself, like I think that'd be fun

I didn't ship Axel and Saïx that much until KH3 but now I ship it like FedEx, they have SUCH a good dynamic and they understand each other so well but they're still prone to miscommunication and I just want to see them work through their shit, okay? Like just sit down, have some coffee, and work through your issues, guys, c'mon. Have a heart-to-heart, it won't kill you. But with Axel being the way he is and Saïx being Like That™ getting them to look at each other from opposite ends of a table (or couch, I'm not picky) will probably be equivalent to herding cats.

RIKU AND REPLIKU OKAY like I don't ship them romantically but HOT DIDDLY DANG the interactions between these two in canon never ceases to provide me with glee~ Repliku's existential crisis in CoM about what makes him a fake versus Riku being the Real Thing™ is just *chef kiss* so beautiful. And then Riku's all like "wtf is up w/ u" and Repliku LOSES HIS SHIT and it ends with Repliku wondering what's gonna happen to him when he dies and RIKU BLESS HIM TRIES TO OFFER THIS CLONE WHO JUST TRIED TO KILL HIM COMFORT AND I JUST CANNOT WITH THESE TWO OKAY I LOVE THEIR BROMANCE SO MUCH

Speaking of bromance TERRA AND VENTUS. TERRA OFF ON HIS EXISTENTIAL CRISIS FIELD TRIP BEING ALL BIG BROTHER TO VEN I just ehfjjakckvksjha Terra bb ilu MAYBE TAKE HIM HOME AND GO HAVE A TALK WITH YOUR DADMASTER??? And Ven running through the worlds screaming "TERRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" at the top of his hella powerful Ven lungs, like, he's so concerned and scared for his big brother and not even the existence of Vanitas will deter him from making sure Terra isn't alone, it's just SO PRECIOUS AND AMAZING I LOVE THESE BOYS

And FURTHER SPEAKING OF SIBLING DYNAMIC, WHEN AM I GOING TO GET KAIRI AND AQUA CATCHING UP, NOMURA!??!!? That's it, that's all the screaming I have about Kairi and Aqua, I need more of them talking to each other like I need blood in my veins, okay????

I hope this is enough gushing bc I've been neglecting my friend in voice chat to type this but if you need further gushing hit me up I'm ALWAYS AND FOREVER DOWN TO SCREAM ABOUT MY BABIES

I'm feeling lil sour today,

Tell me a out your favorite ship(s) and why you love them!

Friendships too! Who you think SHOULD be friends etc

Or just your favorite characters~