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mallowbees · 5 years ago

Text

4,555 words

POV: Logan centric

Characters: All ts sides

Warnings: Let me know if i need to add any!

From the anon writing prompts^!

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‘Waking up as a cat, however, was a surprising first.’

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This was… less than ideal. Hoping down from the edge of the blue duvet onto the floor, Logan stared down in disdain all four of his paws landed with a thud. This was not the first weird situation he had found himself in, being an incorporeal figment of someones personality living without the all the grounding rules of reality often resulted in odd occurrences on occasion ranging from simple to bizarre.

Waking up as a cat, however, was a surprising first.

Logan's tail flicked as he padded through his room. His desk, usually only to his hip, now towered a foot or two above him as he stood on the dark blue rug below. Faintly he could hear the noise of a conversion from down stairs with acute clarity, but he couldn't make out a word being said. He could only hypothesize his sudden transformation had possibly altered his senses as well as his physical form. That seemed to be the case based on his earlier experience 7 minutes, 46 seconds ago and counting.

Logan had tried shifting into a human form upon awakening. Confused and dazed buried under his blankets, that he quickly realized where much larger than usual, or he was, as it turns out, much smaller. However this proved not to be like a simple wardrobe change or a shift that he would under usual circumstance be able to complete. He took a few minute to asses the situation after that.

Now staring up at the deep blue almost black of his door, the next most rational step was to attempt to have Roman change him back. As he usually seemed to be the causation of these things, though not always intentionally. He would also have to avoid Patton preferably, lest he agitate the others allergies with his current form, or worse, Patton begin doting on him. Logan's fur ruffled.

Honing in on the gold door knob, he knew he should have no trouble jumping up to it with the cats average jumping height without running being 5 feet, but the matter of actually opening the door would provide to be difficult without hands. He could just meow loudly at the door until someone came up, but he’d prefer to save that for a, ‘last resort’.

Logan lowered himself to the ground, calculating the general trajectory he could need so he wouldn't just throw himself against the wood. He leaned forward and down on his paws and wiggled in anticipation; He lunged. Logan was air borne, he swatted the doorknob hitting it with his paw, bound off the door with his back paws and he was back on the floor. He regathered himself from the sudden burst of energy. First attempts are often not the successful try. Logan backed up a bit further from his original trajectory point, and began to try again.

A time and multiple tries later, Logan stood proudly in the now open and somewhat scratched up doorway. It had admittedly taken longer than he had anticipated, having gotten distracted more with actually trying to catch the doorknob rather than open it having not been accounted for, but he was now free from his own room. And free to go in search of Roman.

Padding down the hallways past the various doors of bedrooms, he could hear everything much louder. Along with conversation, the hum of the refrigerator and tv was also more noticeable than on average. Slinking to the edge of the stairway, Logan could tell the tones of the voices were Patton and Roman, as well as a movie playing. He tail flicked to the side. Having both of them together would provide to be quite the obstacle if he was to get to Roman, and the living-room was a very open to anyone who happened to walk through, which was inconvenient for not bringing attention to himself too. He could wait for them to finish the program they were watching and hide out by the stairs up in the hall, hearing the music number, people laughing, and a door opening on the show he couldn't tell what it was to estimate how long was left but-

Logan froze in the air as he was suddenly lifted up from the floor. Chattering indignantly he found himself suddenly face to face with a confused Virgil. Virgil held Logan in his arms, pulling him to his chest facing him so he was no longer suspended in air. He seemed to ask a question as he lifted a hand gentle up to Logan’s face. It seemed, despite the sudden rude attack of picking Logan up unprompted, Virgil did intend to bond with the random cat he found in the hall, in this case. He wiggled and bonked Virgil’s hand with his head, intending to get him to withdraw it, as there was no need to extend an offer for trust, as Logan already trusted Virgil.

However given the chuckle he suddenly felt rumble from Virgil’s chest he quickly realized his own mistake in cat behavior and went to do anything else, but he was suddenly overtaken by a warm contentment as a hand was placed on his head, beginning to pet him. Logan closed his eyes leaning into it and purred. Very loudly, even to his own ears. Virgil seemed to make some sort of surprised delighted noise and momentarily withdrew his hand with it; Before Logan could think better of himself, he was quickly swatting and pulling Virgil’s hand back to him, rubbing against his shirt.

Virgil said something but he didn't really take note as his ears were stroked, he couldn't understand his words at the moment anyway. Logan briefly had a fleeting thought that this cat transformation was influencing him stronger than he had initially realized, but it was long forgotten with his own figurative motor going and the warmth of Virgil’s hold.

Logan had completely melted in a grinning Virgil’s grip by the time he was carried down stairs.

Roman and Patton laid in a partially destroyed blanket fort, now just sitting on the piles of pillows and blankets on the couch, singing along as Moana played on screen.

“Yo guys, since when do we have a cat?”

Patton’s head immediately swung around, nearly launching himself off the couch, his foot getting caught on a light blue comforter, his face lighting up. “Cat?! Oh my gosh we have a cat? I love him can I hold them?!”

Roman blinked in surprise at the new arrival, the slower of the two to respond verbally. He swiveled in his sitting position to look on as Patton stood up making grabby hands to the cat in Virgil’s arms. “I… have no idea where that cat came from, where on earth did you find-”

“Him I think?” Patton now had the cat in his arms, holding him almost like you would hold a baby; The cat just purred.

Roman nodded. “-him.”

Virgil shrugged as he shifted the cat to a better suited grip in Patton’s arms. “He was just standing staring down from the top of the stairs when I came out of my room, I’m not sure where he was before that.”

Roman hummed as he got up from the couch and approached the other two, taking a moment to give the black cat some brief loving pets as well. The cat merped when the sides finally stopped, blinking up at them with deep bright blue eyes that seemed to come out of a daze.

“Well that's certainly odd! Do ya think he came from the imagination maybe?” Patton gaze turned to roman.

Roman ran a hand through his hair. ��I mean, I’m usually pretty good at keeping the door shut Pat,” He stated, before wincing. “But it wouldn't be the first time I accidentally left it open however, I will admit.”

Patton gave Roman a reassuring pat on the shoulder with his non cat holding arm. “Don't worry about it kiddo! It happens!”

“Yeah and when it happens it usually cause a mess that takes like a week to clean up.” Virgil countered before putting his hands up. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Roman waved him off sheepishly.

“Uhh, anyway do you think maybe hes one of those, what are they called, those things of your that just kind of, pop up?” He grimaced slightly. “Bad explanation.”

“Oh oh!” Patton interjected. “Like those glowy flowers we had for while growing in the storage closet?”

“Drifting daydreams?” Roman gazed over the cat with a skeptical eye. “Perhaps? Though he doesn't seem particularly sparkly, or dream like. And I haven't really been think of any cats more than usual.”

Virgil hummed in consideration.

Roman just stared down the cat, the cat stared disgruntled back, having been watching the three.

Patton cut through the pause. “Soo, can we keep him?” He held up the cat carefully, a bursting smile on his face. The cat looked displeased.

His expression dimmed as Roman and Virgil shared a look. Roman grimacing and Virgil’s face a mix of sympathy and ‘i don't think this is a good idea, we care barely take care of ourselves, we cant take care of a cat’

“I don't think this is a good idea, we can barely take care of ourselves, we cant take care of a cat.” Virgil said.

“But!! He’s only gonna be here for a little while probably, and we cant just leave him to fend on his own in the mindpalace!”

“Pat you are literally allergic to cats, you could inhale his fur and die.” With that Virgil looked uncomfortably aware that Patton was the one holding the cat.

“Well, more likely sneeze like you’ve had pixie dust thrown in your face, but I agree with nightmare before christmas over here. That doesn't seem like a grand idea as far as keeping him. But! I also don't think we should just let him roam.”

Patton tilted his head. The cat shifted slightly in his hold so it was much looser. “Well what can we do with him then?”

“We could put him in the imagination with-”

“Woah!”

“Ah!’

“Great beard of Zeus!”

And with a hiss the cat darted out of Patton’s arms, skid across the floor passed Virgil’s shoes, and bolted down the hallway of the mindscape.

–

Logan ran, the shouts of the others behind him as he zoomed down one of the many connecting hallways as fast as his paws could carry him. The only thought going through his mind saying run, the sudden restless energy seemingly coming out of nowhere, and hearing at least one of the others following after him only spurred him on. He skittered past the bedroom doorway, sliding on the laminate and knocking his own bedroom door back closed as he ran straight into Roman’s open door.

Entering the large room Logan flew by the papers covering the floor on hopped up onto the desk, almost sliding off the ledge as sheets went flying off instead. He could still hear the others calling out for him but not anywhere close, presumable having lost track of him. The moment seemed to subside as the tension started to ebb from Logan. He reflected, dumbfound, at his behavior and sat down on the desk corner, absentmindedly fixing his fur with his paw. This momentary lapse in logical thinking, in human logical thinking, flustered him at his lack of self impulse control as a cat.

The others had seemed to be debating something about him while he was in Patton’s hold, and he could almost feel the conflict in the room when instinct of some sort, he could only guess, encouraged him to bolt. An odd thing to warrant running at full speed from a non-threatening situation, but his cat body supposedly disagreed with his rational brain.

His ear twitched as he heard the voices seeking him, now getting further way. Going down a different hallway it seemed. Patton cooing for him and Roman calling out fading away, Virgil likely with them as well, just less vocal. Now presented with an unaccounted for minor difficulty in being turned back, the best course of action would be to stay as far away from from the others to avoid physical contact with the other to reduce the amount of stimuli that could induce a reaction, while also somehow alerting them to his unfortunate transformation.

Perhaps he could write some sort of message, that would be the most straight to point way to inform them, without being physically direct. Looking around Roman’s desk, the cherry wood stained with paint and markers, it was only covered in one or two papers that were left on its top and a pair of scissors. Looking around the room it seemed he had knocked the pen holder off as well in his earlier haste. Logan realized while he had been in Roman’s room many times prior, he had very seen it from this angle. Being a cat sitting on his desk, obviously not. Though the room itself had not changed at all.

It was still the same large room, white cream walls and intricate swirling wall trim. The desk he was sat upon, the vanity adjacent to it, and the bookcase all appeared as they usually did, and dull white glow from the fairytale-like door to the imagination cast over them. The fairy lights on the walls cast as a main light source however, tacked on the walls next to Roman’s ‘prince’ bed, a canopy bed with tall cream and gold drapery, hanging down in twisting towers of fabric, soft and delicate, easily ripped. A thing that could easily offer him the highest vantage point in the room.

Logan involuntarily found himself lowering slightly. The fine sparkly drapery was perfectly climbable, he could just make his way up and see the room much better. Surely, he could find a pen much easier that way. Logan wiggled and a resounding ‘no!’ echoing from behind him as he pounced and launched himself up onto the curtains, claws digging in as he quickly began pulling himself up them.

He panicked as one of his claws got caught up in the fabric. Logan wiggled wildly and flailed his paw in all directions trying to untangle himself. He could feel hands attempt to pluck him from his mess and began to wiggle more. he was caught and something was grabbing him and he did not like this. He was lifted upwards and his claw came out from the drape, frenzied he did what felt natural and now latched onto the hand holding him so he wouldn't fall. He was dropped to the floor while at a loud exclamation came from the side who had been muttering as he tried to release him. Logan, now on the floor, meet Roman frazzled eyes with his own and fluffed up as large as he could.

Roman glared down at him for a moment, saying a word Logan could only guess was a swear before his shoulders slumped and he sighed, holding his slightly scratched hand. Logan stood his ground as he slowly held his hands up and conjured a water bottle and a band-aid. Roman didn't seem to be trying to hold him now and Logan felt a pang of regret as his heart rate came down and he watched Roman tend the wound. Before he knew it Logan padded over to the wary creative side and rubbed against his leg. Roman huffed but gave him a quick gentle pat.

His ears perked up, turning his head as Virgil entered the room, quickly followed by Patton. He skittered back a bit as Pat rushed pasted him to Roman who just laughed and waved him off, showing the small scratches. Virgil said something, the only one still standing in the doorway.

Logan suddenly remembered his search for a pen now that everyone was in the room. Running over to the scattered pens and papers, he heard Roman groan, as he had apparently just noticed that specific mess he had caused, as Logan picked a pen up in his mouth. Not the most ideal thing but it would do. However, it was quickly pulled out of his mouth by Virgil. Logan hissed up at him in annoyance, Virgil hissed back. As Virgil reached down to pick him up and presumably move him away from the pens, Logan decided he was not getting picked up again.

The cat bolted once more, a frustrated yell from one of them as he narrowly dodged Virgil’s grip, practically using him as a spring board in the process. Virgil probably would have been successful in grabbing again if he hadn't slipped on the pens scattered on the floor. There was a concerned call from a conflicted Patton but Logan was off once again.

No one had followed him this time it seemed, Logan noted. He had concluded he likely couldn't get any pens with the other sides around. Bur looking around the kitchen all pens seemed to be put away, not that there logically should be pens in the kitchen anyway, but there usually was. Any and all of his personal pens were stored in is room, which the door was now closed to, thanks to himself.

Claws tapping on the tile Logan leapt up on the marble counter-top. There wasn't anything up there either, aside from a few unwashed dishes. The room still smelled like microwaved thai noodle leftovers too. His ears flattened as the smell was much stronger as a cat. He could try doing things to indicate who he was, but that would require going right back up the others again, and he wasn't sure about trying that direct of a method after those other stunts he had pulled.

Logan's eyes drifted to the far hallway, this one a little darker. He could hear loud cackling laughing coming from down that way, and it wasn't a movie playing either.

Perhaps the others had some spare pens lying about.

Logan strode down the hallway, which usually seemed much darker than it actually was now that he was in it, likely dew to his current senses. The sound of Remus cackling somewhere down the way getting louder. The hard wood floors transitioned to light grey carpeting and Logan entered the other half of the mindscape. It seemed Remus was somewhere to his left from what he could tell, so Logan took a right and found himself in the living area.

Scanning the floor from next to the coffee table, he couldn't see anything that would indicate any writing utensils laying about. He quickly scaled up the side of the dark grey couch poising himself on the arm of it to get a better view. It was immaculately clean in here, much more organized than their current mess.

Searching around the room once more from his perch there still didn't appear to be any stray items he could write with that were visible. Going across the cushions he hoped down from the other side of the couch. While perhaps not the option with the best success rate, his next option he planned to take, was searching the next most likely place he would be able to find something to communicate with, where most of the sides personal stuff was stored. The bedrooms.

Logan was usually someone who respected the other sides privacy in his own option. But he found as a foot tall ball of fur and claws he didn't find himself caring much. Walking into the corridor he could still hear Remus, who was clearly doing, something, in his room, and he didn't intend to tread into it with him still there. So Logan now stood in-front of the door on the other wall, a pale yellow door that was thankfully cracked open slightly, Deceit’s room.

Slipping through the small opening Logan immediately froze. Staring into the lush room, he found himself making direct eye-contact with a startled Deceit who kept his gaze as his office chair slowly stopped spinning. Logan's ears flattened but he took a cautious step forward. Deceit tilted his head to the right before slowly holding his hand down and out to Logan.

He didn't seem particularly bothered by the sudden addition to his room surprisingly, one would think deceit would be more bothered by an intrusion of privacy. Regardless of how unbothered he seemed, Logan wasn't going to take any chances of getting to close, lest he get pet again. He padded past him and hopped up on the desk. Deceit made some sort of remark but otherwise did nothing about him invading his space. There was a tank with a snake right in-front of the desk inlayed in the wall that he hadn't noticed from the floor: Logan sniffed the glass but he couldn't see the snake inside at the moment. Looking around the other edge of the glass he searched to see if he could see the snake. The door suddenly banged open and Logan fluffed up. Pushing himself to the corner of the desk, Logan watched Deceit turn around with Remus now in the room.

–

“Hey double dee!” Remus exclaimed slamming open the door easily with a wide grin. “Guess what I just-”

He blinked in surprise as his ivy eyes locked in on an un-amused deceit and some sort of small grey puff on the corner of Deceits desk. Hissing, not at deceit, but at him.

“Congratulations Remus, you've now startled the cat.”

“The cat?” Remus parroted bewildered.

“No, the dog that is clearly here.” Deceit drawled. “Yes the cat Remus” He said as he rolled back a bit to give some space to the cat pressed against the wall. “He made him self at home a minute ago after slinking through my door.”

“But that can’t, that doesn't,-” Remus looked genuinely stumped, somewhere between recognition and conflict on his face. “-but Roman’s still in the light sides commons?”

Deceit’s eyes narrowed as he quirked a brow, leaning forward in his chain, now intrigued. “Oh? What does this have to do with Roman?”

“I was gonna turn him into a cat! I made a potion and everything yesterday!” He gestured to the door behind him. “I used some dragon bones and swap slug water and magic powder and a piece of his hair and everything!” He lamented dramatically. “But I was just down there and hes still the same boring him! I was gonna watch emo and debbie downer freak out about it but everyone was down stairs except for logic!”

Deceit froze for a minute, what had just clicked in his head clearly clicking in Remus’s head too as his face lit up with realization.

“Remus,”

“Dee dee.” He grinned guilty.

“Where did you get the piece of hair you used for your potion?”

“Off their kitchen table...”

“And who exactly was last at the table?”

“Roman, i thought, but there was a jar of crofters sitting out too...”

They both turned to the cat, who still couldn't understand them.

Deceit leaned back to face the somewhat calm cat, staring back at them with curious eyes.

“Logan?”

He certainly reacted to that.

---

Logan jolted as Deceit very clearly said his name to his face.

Remus cackled loudly practically wheezing while Deceit gave him an un-amused glance. Logan looked rapidly between the two for some insight. Deceit tried to say something to Logan as he usually would.

He tilted his head as he spoke, still not understand what was being said beyond a single word. Deceit turned to Remus and asked him something before looking back to him. Logan watched them both with calculating eyes, this was certainly not who he expected would be the ones to realize his situation. Though connecting context clue’s he had a guess of who changed him in the first place. Remus nodded to something Deceit said and ran off down the hall. Logan just sat patiently, as the wasn't much he could do for now, though he could run once more if need be.

Deceit suddenly smirked and gave Logan an, albeit very clearly patronizing pat, it was sympathetic in nature. Logan couldn't help the sudden loud rumble that came from him, despite his best efforts, slightly leaning against the gloves hand. His ears flatted in embarrassment as Deceit pulled back looked stunned, but quickly put himself back together. Thankfully doing nothing more, if only for Logan’s own self-respect.

Remus returned skidding around the corner holding a sloshing bottle filled with a saturated pink liquid, it almost glistening in the light.

Logan was suddenly picked up by Remus and he dug his claws into the puffy sleeves as he was transported to the dark living-room. Deceit briefly scolded Remus lightly but the latter just shrugged with a teasing smirk. Logan fluffed up again when he was set down on the floor, the others much taller than him standing up, but before he could do anything the cold liquid suddenly splattered onto his head. His thoughts briefly became fuzzy as he felt his senses dull and felt a similar flip of when they changed from as suddenly, opening his eyes once more after getting a grip on reality, Logan, the human Logan, stared up at the ceiling.

–

Logan blinked a few times at the sudden change in lighting and sound feeling a bit disoriented, a dull throb behind hid eyes, but not painful.

“Whoo! It worked! Aaand you didn't turn into a glob of mutated human flesh!”

Logan tilted his head back glaring slightly at the delighted Remus looming above him with a grin. He adjusted his glasses slowly sitting up and regathering his bearing.

“Thank you for the lovely visual Remus.” Deceit quipped. “And I’m sure this totally was what Logan expecting for this morning, so my apologies.”

“Always here to please! In more ways than one.” Remus shimmed next to deceit who rolled his eyes with a slight smirk.

Logan stood up, fixing his hair which seemed to have residual fluff from the transition and re-adjusted his tie. “It is quite alright Deceit. And I would also like to apologize for invading your space, and will soon be leaving your metaphorical hair. However, to be clear i take it Remus is the one responsible for my sudden feline attributes?”

“Yep!”

“Unfortunately.”

“Ah. I shall have to take that into consideration then.” Logan nodded to himself.

Remus stared blankly with a smile tilting his head. “What?”

He reassured him. “Nothing of concern or malicious intent, merely an event to take into consideration when future events may take place. As they say, ‘keeping receipts’.”

Deceit raised an amused eyebrow.

“But I believe I shall be leaving now. And hopefully reconciling any mishaps that may have taken place by some cat in the past hour and 32 minutes I was away. Goodbye Remus, Deceit.”

“Don’t look froward to seeing you again Logan.”

“Bye Nerd!”

And Logan sunk out.

–

“What d’ya you think he meant by mishaps?” Remus looked to Deceit while picking his ear.

Deceit hummed. “Gossip seems to find its way around when you live in one persons mind, I suppose I could find out later and let you know.” He drawled with a smirk. “Secrets are my thing after all.”

“Whoo!”

#sanders sides #logan sanders #remus sanders #deceit sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #logan centric #potions #cat #transformation #k writes things #ts logan #virgil sanders #P anon

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

Text

Close Enough Season 2 Review! or Josh Murders About 10 People

It's been hard to put into words just how wonderful a surprise this season getting released this month was. For starters before JG Quintel announced it last year shortly after season 1, I honestly was convinced season 2 wasn't happened. Do NOT get me wrong, Season 1 of Close Enough was one of the best parts of last year: It was funny, had a lot of heart, a great voice cast, and a great cast of characters that was throughly likeable and broke sitcom stereotypes, having a doofy husband and more straight laced wife with layers who clearly love and respect each other and BOTH can be prone to taking things too far instead of JUST Josh screwing up. Add in two great fellow leads Bridgette and Alex played by two of my faviorite va's, Kimiko Glen and Jason Mantzokus, whose name I finally learned how to spell, an adorable daughter and neat but out of focus neighbors and supors pearle and randy, and the show was just damn near perfect and felt like an improvement on regular show, taking the same humor and animation style but to an older cast and audience with more nuanced and likeable characters, and far more character development per episode. I wanted to see where the show would go.. but I was convinced given the show was leftover inventory from an animation block that never happened held over to give HBO Max some content it'd be canceled after one season, because I can't have nice things. But....

And very happily so: JG Quintel revealed the show had been picked up for season 2 not long after season 1 dropped, having listned to fans. As it turns out though they hadn't.. they just had a ton of faith in the show as I got ANOTHER bombshell earlier this month. While the show had showed up on the schedule for this month late in January, with no release date on said schedule, I wasn't 100% sure the show was coming back this month or that it wasn't just an error. But once again, I was wrong, it was earth all along, and they merely saved it for the press release for their adult animation lineup: alongside the huge and welcome bombshell they were the ones picking up the Clone High reboot and for two seasons, Close enough not only got two more seasons publicly announced, but fimrly revealed season 2 launched February 25th. LIke they likely had with infinity train the show was quitely picked up for another season, and they simply waited to announce it till the right time. Though unlike infinity train, they had faith in it to become a big hit and while they SHOULD HAVE with infinity train and should've accepted it was already a big hit simply not with the target demographic, it's still nice to see that after all it went through Close Enough not only got renewed but is now the network's flagship adult animated show, closely tied with harley quinn, and will likely go on as long as it wants to.

So naturally given I reviewed all of season 1 in the hopes i'td get renewed, I was happy to make room for season 2 and continue covering it and over the moon it was happening so soon. However I'm doing things diffrently this time: instead of flooding the tag with individual longform reviews, i'm reviewing the season all one go, to see if this format could work for me as I have tons of other shows i'd love to cover in this format that are either heavily comedic like say the Great North, regular show or the simpsons and thus dont' lend themselves to riffing as much and leave me less to do per episode, or more seralized shows like she ra or ones that are entirely complete like Steven Universe or Gravity falls that I could cover alone but this format could help expidite covering. Gravity Falls is also one of my patreon stretch goals if your instrested as is a whole lot of ducktales stuff, link on my blog. It also works with my much larger workload with a much tighter schedule, 6 reviews a week with a flex day in case I get behind so everything comes out as good as it posisbly can be, versus my original method of...

TLDR: One big post with smaller reviews each episode and an overall coverage of what changed this season and how good it is as a whole. We good? Good, then join me under the cut for some delightful sentient presents, couch ghosts, and jim fucking crunch as we get close enough to the heart.

I will never get tired of that image. I want it blown up and put on a banner at my funeral. But death plans aside let's get into the season

Slight Tweaks to a Great Formula: Given it's slice of life format based largely around likeable multi layered characters in comedic absurdity, not a lot has changed nor did it need to. What has are just simple tweaks to make things even better. For starters a natural result of getting to the episodes now produced directly for the 11 minute format means the pacing is much focused, subbing in full subplots for the occasional runner instead, and often only using what characters the episode needs. It will use the main five often, but the lack of subplots for the most part allows stronger focus on one or two characters to give the stories added weight and nuance and often laughs. While i'll always love season 1, this allows for much tighter stories and allows for everyone to get some major screen time instead of mostly Josh and Emily in season 1. It does mean we sadly get less of my boy Alex per episode but it's a sacrifice i'm willing to make if it means the show can grow and take more risks and evolve naturally. Though the former probably wasn't help by two of his three episodes being kinda weak, but i'll get to that.

The other noticeable change is Pearle and Randy. While they were promoted as main characters, even getting profiles along with the rest, they were in practice recurring characters in season 1, showing up pretty frequently but with only one starring episode for Randy and none for Pearle. And givne Pearle has an interesting backstory as a cop who likely had to put up with a LOT being a black woman officer, as well as raising a white redneck, while also being hilarious and having a fun energy to her, I felt they kinda wasted her in season 1.

Here though? Both have been bumped up to main cast proper, getting two focus episodes a piece (compared to the other main adults each getting three, some of those shared, and Candace getting one, hopefully more in the future as it was really good, along with, to my delight, mr.cambell also getting one), appearing far more in supporting roles and generally showing up with the main group a lot more. They still don't hang out with our loveable family all the time, but it makes sense as they have their own apartment and stuff to deal with, but it feels far more like their part of the main group. The show always treated them like this mine, but showing up more makes their friendships with their tenants feel more genuine, as it feels like their part of their lives more, whlie having their own to deal with we get to see now.

So while the series didn't change much, as I said it didn't need to and all of this is stuff is the kind of thing I wanted, especially Pearle getting a larger role and Randy being fleshed out from a dollar store version of muscle man into his own similar but difference character, and i'm happy to have it. So now i've talked about how the seasons' changed, let's talk about the episodes themselves. Grab a snack this is going to take a bit.

The Episodes!:

Josh Gets Shredded:

Our premier and honestly it's a solid one with a singular premise on poking fun at gym culture, though in a nice twist Jim Crunch, the guy who runs the Gym Josh ends up going to to strengthen his core to play with Candace and whose voiced wonderfully by Kevin Michael Richardson is a genuinely good guy and there's no horrifying twist with him. He just wants Josh to get ripped and dosen't know his training is keeping josh from candace. IT's a simple setup of a father doing something for his daughter but getting distracted by it and while not new it works well here and we get plenty of fun gym jokes, including an exchange from Jim and Josh when Josh wants to become an "absolute unit", which in this case ends up meaning turning into the hulk but with the glowing firey eyes of an angry god, feels like it came straight out of the hockey bros from letterkenny, which is a good feeling to have. There's also a nice setup with Candace wanting to play king kong with Josh due to seeing it in class (Specially the Peter Jackson remake, also Candace knows who jack black is which I buy because of who her daddy is. I wouldn’t be surprised if Josh had Saving Silverman on a loop for several days until emily threw it out the window like a frisbee. ), which kicks off the whole thing.. and ends with ultra instinct hulk josh taking her to the top of a building and swatting away helicopters. It’s more of an average episode for the series and the runner about Emily being REALLY hot for buff josh comes off as a weaker version of the plot from family guy where Lois likes a thinner peter, apart from one inspired bit where in order to talk to him about candace without getting distracted, Emily pours an entire bag of ice down her pants.. and subtly after Josh talks about becoming an absolute unit, it’s gone nad rather than animation I like to believe it melted. Still a decent start to a great season.

Meet the Frackers: A Randy Spotlight episode and unlike his season one episode rather than be a subplot in another episode it’s a full episode about him. And the starting incident is great as the gang gets their ancestry results back from costco, with Emily and Bridgette having ancestors in Guadalajara and Kiyoto.. and Josh being white (”Can you believe it?”). Alex coming from a long line of creeps is also pretty funny, those are his actual results by the way.

But what the episodes truly about is Randy finding out his parents are alive in Malibu after Pearle claimed they were dead when he was a kid. She had a very good reason though: Randy’s parents were serial gas thieves, and Pearle nearly caught them one night with the two chucking him at her to escape. And to her credit Pearle TRIED to reach out to them once they ended up in jail for their crimes.. but they again chucked him at her which is hilarious. She simply didn’t want him to feel abandoned. He instead feels betrayed.

His parents are hilariously white trash and played by two faviorite va’s of mine, David Kochner and Wendy Malick, who i’m happy is finally playing a lead roll on Owl House. They drink redneck maragretihas and eat mcribs (As Randy puts it “God’s favorite sandwich!”) every day and still steal gas, just legally now as frackers. Naturally though the two are still assholes and soon use a carnival as a cover to illegally frack and it’s up to Randy an dhis real mom to stop them> It’s a touching story with Randy genuinely wanting to hlep his mom, though I feel it would’ve been more interesting if Randy’s parents hadn’t been scum an dhe had to genuinely deal with having three parents now. Still it was worth it for some great lines from Malick and Kochner , so it works. Decent ep.

Sauceface: Now we come to both one of the best eps of the season, and the series so far, and one of it’s most unique as it stars Candace and dosen’t feature the other main cast hardly at all, only Emily who kicks things off by, in a great bit, breaking Candace’s illusion their rich as “they live in a castle with alex and bridgette”, with her slowly realizing “Were poor”. Which is just a very kid thing to think that your parents are rich when they very much aren’t.

But the episode really is a crime boss parody story, as the title would imply as Candace and her best friend start selling hot sauce, which is banned from the school due to it’s political correctness having gone mad and it being offensive to “sensitive palates” (They’ve also banned general tso’s chicken for mitlarialism and everything bagels for being “too much”). This leads where you’d expect: Candace getting drunk with power and forgetting why theys tarted, wet willies, and an art room brawl, all leading to candace’s friend getting pinched and candace having to use the money to buy Mr. Cambell a pelaton to get him off their backs, which leads to this lovely exchange “YOur letting them off just because they bought you a present?” “This is a 2000 dollar bike”. We also get the subtle reveal Mr. Cambell is gay which given how straight the main cast is, is nice. But this was a great one with too many good gags to mention, a great setup, a great rolling stones song played during the montage I do not know the name of, and I hope we get other candace advnetures at her school in the future, because this was a real delight. Again one of the best episodes of the season.

The House Guest From Hell: Speaking of best episodes, this is probably the best pairing of episodes yet, as both are standouts of the season.

Emily’s old friend Becca drops back into her life, to everyone’s annoyance as Becca is an utter leech who constantly take advantage of Emily’s lack of boundaries with her to constantly talk about whatever drama she’s wrapped herself in and mooch off her. Josh and Bridgette want her to set firm boundaries, but Emily fails to and instead only gets Becca to set boundaries with her boyfriend.. which leads to her moving into the apartment temporarily, and annoying the hell out of everyone. Becca is a great character, being that asshole in the most over the top and annoying way possible, to the point she takes alex’s room, watches tv on a loop and doesn’t seem to realize Emily is married (Despite being part of her bridal party), or that candace is Emily’s daughter and not a tiny butler (Which Candace assumes is a game. )

Naturally for this show things escalate hilariously as Emily finds out she’s pregnant when she tries to throw her out and the pregnancy is escalated.. and we soon find out it’s because the pregnancy is demonic: She has Hecate as her dula (And Alex naturally asks if she’s single, get it guy get it), needs goats hoves, locusts and the blood of the innocent (Which is the only item that trips josh up who hopes they can get it at costco, which made me have to pause as I could not stop laughing). This would be funny enough. .but what takes it into making this episode a classic is when Emily tricks her boyfriend Luke over he’s unsurprisingly a devil.. but also a hilariously over the top douchebag dudebro played by Beck Bennet, who it’s not only nice to see outside of ducktales, but is also just totally game. Luke is so odious it wraps around to being funny, to the point he unsurprisingly hits on Bridgette while his girlfriend is in labor, messily makes out with her and they try to move in, though thankfully Emily cathartically screams Becca out midbirth. Also they end up going to hell, with Luke getting there by doing donuts. Yes really. This episode is a treasure and does the series schitck of taking a relatable problem and escalating it to perfection.

Joint Break:

Another unsurprisingly good one, as Pearle deals with the fact that despite her decades of service, the force’s health plan doesn’t cover her needed hip surgery after she slides over a car wrong (Which also leads to a great riff on the old csi Miami parody). She then finds herself between her oath as an officer and her needs for help as she befriends a gang of saucy old women at water aerobics who are also bank robbers and want to cut her in. And they provide a tempting offer, getting what their owed and ti feels like a genuine dilemma, even if Pearle ends up siding with the police, not that she should. It’s also full of great bits of the old lady gang weaponizing stereotypes about old people, with the three of them dawning classic old lady getups to fool an officer, and having one of them i a walker slowly cross the street to stop an armored truck. Fun stuff helped by their leader being voiced by Jane Lynch, continuing this season’s red hot guest star streak, not that the series has ever been light on them (They got David Hasselhoff and weird al in season 1, so yeah), but this season ramps up the good guest voices to the point there’s one per episode almost.

Cyber Matrix: This one’s okay though the setup is good. Unsurprisingly given both his dale gribble-esque penchant for conspiracies and his hipster holier than thou ways, Alex has never had a smart phone, and has a very old flip hone that’s horrifc to look at and naturally gets destroyed, leading to him getting addicted to the thing.. and this being the show it is fusing with it. What makes this one is the climax, as the rest of the main group scramble to take out the cell tower so Alex’s phone doesn’t upload him to the cloud while Josha nd Alex open everything they can to slow her down. The result is the phone hacking Emily’s and ordering packages, task rabbits to punch her inthe face (With randy taking it so they can go) and outright hijacking a car in a clever chase. The ending though does sink this as suddenly their in veirutal reality again and it just feels weird given the series, while not really using continuity much so far, dosne’t have negavite continuity punch out endings outside of this one ep and I hope this dosen’t happen again. Otheriwse a decent one if sadly not one of Alex’s best and he equally sadly onlyg ets one truly great episode this season, compared to having a good chunk of the best plots last season. Still you can’t win em all and i’m sure my boy will return to form and said great episode, which we’ll get to soon, certainly shows they didn’t loose their touch. They just fumbled a bit and that’s okay.

Haunted Couch: Balancing that out is the fact that Bridgette, who didn’t get nearly as many good eps as Alex or as much focus as the rest, gets some great episodes this season with this one being my out and out favorite as it fleshes her out more and has some really great gags. Josh brings in a street couch (And he and Emily’s argument over it is great including him using the fact she forced them to get a savings account as leverage somehow), just as Bridgette is in emotional turmoil over her latest boyfriend suddenly ghosting her.

Naturally she ends up falling for a REAL ghost, a french couch designer who had a habit of cheating on his lovers, died for it by one of their hands, and his soul ended up bound to the couch. Naturally hea nd Bridgette hit it off and we get a LOT of good stuff in a montage as the two take the couch everywhere, and her friends, minus Alex who surprisingly rather than being jealous, simply dosen’t like the fact there’s a ghost in the house technically haunting them which surprisingly goes nowhere, are happy for her and like him after the initial shock wears off, though Josh still wants to sit on the couch. He and Bridgette even have really good sex using Randy’s body, with him being a willing vesel for Marcus. And i’d just like to point out that an intensely weird comedy show that also has a sentient present, bob vila with saw hands, and dude bro satan in this very season, 2/3 of those to come.. STILL did this better than wonder woman 87, as they actually asked someone to let the ghost of the couple use his body so they could fuck, and he gave full consent to it. And no I sitll haven’t let that go, it was a very bad plotline with nightmarish implications and the fact close enough did it better in a joke, they also have the song from ghost in the background by the by, than a big budget movie from the same company, is a really large bilboard saying:

But while the episode was thoroughly interesting and funny.. it’s what happens next that makes it one of the series best. While the series is amazing at comedy, it’s the character growth slid in between it that makes it so awesome and this episode is a great example. Bridgette turns cold towards Marcus as it’s clear he’s serious, and he’s even moved a tooth brush in. She gets more and more hostile until eventually Marcus calls her on it, and prevents her from leaving with a vortex of furniture.. which could’ve gone bad very quick but instead just means she has to face him.. and is hit with a rather painful relization when he asks “Do you what me to, how you say, ghost you?” (She explained the concept earlier). She says no.. but quickly a series of flashbacks puts the previous breakup in context as the guy she was seeing asked to leave a toothbrush, a simple escalation and she got real nasty real quick without saying what the problem was. We see more of this with a previous boyfriend and hilaroiusly one before that guy who not only had a toothbrush in a ringbox but was also in a hot air ballon she casually cuts the anchors too and has float away. Which does mean Bridgette probably killed a man but that’s one compared to josh’s 10 this season. Yes, 10. We’ll get to that.

Point is she realizes “oh shit i’m the dick”, and has a genuine talk with Marcus, realizing why: “You know how women feign being submissive because society’s taught them to so they don’t get raped or murdered or kidnapped?” “Oui”, best bit of the episode and damn if it ain’t horribly true. But due to tha Bridgette simply got terrible quick to scare guys off when she really just wanted to break it off instead of take things further and breaks it off with marcus.. and is surprised and relieved when he doesn’t want a big fight and takes it acceptably, Marcus having grown from his past of being a women using cad and genuinely wanting to treat them better. For once Bridget gets to have an emotionally mature breakup with someone, and while you could say her relationship with alex is like that, it’s very clear from an upcoming episode it wasn’t a very clean break at first and while their amicable now their marriage was a hot volcano of arguments. This allos Marcus to pass.. if also destroying the couch to Josh’s misery. An instant classic and one of the season’s highlights and one that really fleshes Bridgette out a bit by giving another reason for her relationships not working besides alex that fits the character perfectly and has her grow from it.

Also just a quick sidenote, this episode vaguely reminded me of the Nightmare Time, theater troupe team starkid’s zoomcast I highly recommend set in their hatchetfield multiverse, episode “Jane’s a Car” , which is about a man’s wife possessing his car and also involves an object. Both are very diffrent mind you, Jane’s a Car ends up way more depressing, but its’ stil la story involving ghost fucking though Bridgette found a vesel instead of straight up fucking a couch the way tom went to town on that car. It also involves the lead’s perosnal issues, if far more severe in Jane’s a Car’s case, reflected by their relationship with a ghost. I mean it is a stretch but these are the weird connectoins my brain makes and I mostly bring it up because an upcoming episode in the season goes from kind of similar but only to me to very similar, and a very fun concidence that these two episodes existed in the same year, especially since this happened last year with this show and Ducktales. But first josh doing a murder on some people.

Man Up:

Okay for starters the title man up reminds me of this short lived abc sitcom I never saw but given it was about three guys tapping into their “inner man” it sounds like aresnic somehow took the sentient form of a tv show. This actual poster for it not only proves the point but why it lasted one season if not why the hell I remembered this existed at all despite never seeing it, not recognizing anyone in it and not wanting anything to do with it.

Given I have 8 more episodes to go after this one, I do not have time to disect all the way that poster is a waking nightmare, though i’d love to, and instead i’m going to talk abotu the episode itself. The intro is funny enough, with the Ramierz-Singletons going to a bank for Candace’s first bank account, the Bank of Hollywood. An alien seemingly attacks, it turns out to be a promotional stunt with high budget effects a great gag in of itself, but Josh runs out on his family. Naturally he’s horribly rattled by this, and wants to be a better dad, a John McClane type. So two things: I now want a crossover with this show and brooklyn nine nine along with the hatchefield one in my head and the regular show one most fans want. And the second is that John wasn’t the best dad or husband, and both the original film, the sequel josh saw, and the fourth film all spell this out. The fifth does too but I feel if I wish hard enough a good day to die hard will just spontaneously cease to exist and we’ll all be happier that way.

So Pearle agrees to help him, and we get a fun training montage, with Josh protecting a candace made of eggs Alex made, because of course he did, and an emily made of the same because of course he did, and get punched in the junk by randy in a dog costume, as you do. He actually feels tough and is ready for phase 2, pearle hitting him with something unexpectdly.

Instead what he thinks is Phase 2 is actually a die hard style hyjacking of Emily’s company christmas party, which josh misses due to being in the bathroom after panickily running into corn. As a result.. we get josh killing about 8-10 people not realizing it’s not a simulation but not really caring about that part when it’s revealed. Which granted it is in self defense but he still kills a LOT of people this episode, and I will be forever haunted by the fact that stringbean can REALLY do some murders. Seriously who knew JOSH had it in him. That is terrifying to comprehend. Naturally after he john mclanes his way up, he finds out it wasn’t a simulation panics but instead of running away runs the hans gruber knockoff, whose sadly not very entertaining out of the building and onto some exploding corn, saving the day, earning his family’s respect and cemnting himself as a badass. The reveal of what the text actually was is just.. perfect as it’s just a bat on a string with Alex saying “he’s totally going to shit”. The perfect capper to good ep only hampred by hans being really weak.. seriously he just has a weird sentence sturcture tha’ts hte joke. They can do better. Otherwise a good die hard parody. John would be proud.

Handy:

Another decent one not a standout but it has a truly astounding bit. Randy finds out, after going to Guy Fieri’s flavor diaster for Pearle, that she hired another handyman and he’s not good at his job as as he puts it “I’m going to do what troubled young men have done for years : i’m going to sea!”. Which is funny enough but leads to him stranded on a desert island, hallucinating and then meeting his idols in handy manning who may or may not be hallucinations: Bob Vila, The Ikea Mascot (Who speaks only in pictures and is a fun gag despite never having seen him before this episode) and my favorite tim the tool man taylor, whose tie is constantly pointed up for some reason and who amazingly only speaks in grunts. I didn’t know I needed this so thank you close enough. We also get the three helping with bob turning his hands into buzzsaws, ikea man creating nails and screws and Tim using his head as a tool. All accurate to their original shows and in ikea man’s case brocures. Really good adaptation. But through this he discovers the clog the guy is trying to fix at the house is loadbearing and rushes home to save the house, leading to a fun actoin scene and a weird version of the celebration from the end of return of the jedi, complete with force ghosts. So we also get a tim taylor force ghost which I did not know I needed and as much as that show makes my stomach churn I badly hope shows up in the finale of last man standing. A decent one and givne how I keep sayin ga decent episode over and over you can kinda see why I didn’t review all these. LIke season 1 I simply don’t have a full review in me for every single one of these episodes. We’re now at the halfway mark, only 8 more to go, I envy the dead, let’s do this.

Birthdaze: This was the episode most heavily promoted in the trailer and for good reason as it’s the best of the season. Also relatable as while not having kids I do get how Kids Birthday parties feel and how they often end up weirdly close together. In this case both coalse as Josh and Emily have three birthdays in one weekend, their friends Emily’s friend Trish from “Cool Moms”, who is so far some of the only continuity the series has, but a nice sign it has it, and that we could see Jim Crunch (who rose from the grave after an utterly wonderful funeral) or Dog Boy again. Or this episode’s standout gifty. But we’ll get to that in a second. So Josh and Emily well intentiondly decide to throw a party for the parents at the same time as Candace’s.. but end up neglecting Candace. While their idea is good, to reward the other parents for having to sit through so many parties, putting it at the same time was a horrible idea as giving a bunch of pent up people with low alcohol tolerance booze ends up resulting in drunken antics and them heckling the magicain... and given the world we’re in, that’s a horrible mistake as he makes the children disappear to a world of perptual brithday parties and forces JOsh and Emily to follow him if they want their child back. What results is an utter delightly as we meet the wonderful and incomprable Gifty, a giant living present who works iwth the magician, named sardini, and is voiced by Kate Miccuci, heart eyes> Just.. evey bit with gifty is great, from her genuinely being animated and looking like a muppet, to her casually going demonic to explain if the kids stay too long they forget parents, to as seen up top playing a pipe organ that is apparently made of gold plated clown bones, and her best bit, which I posted on this very blog, where she assures the trapped kids if JOsh and Emily fail their final test, they’ll get to live of nutricious necco wafers before vomiting a giant cloud of them at the poor children. Those things are gross and we now knwo it’s because they come from a giant present’s stomach.

We get a great montage before most of that of our heroes treking through a weird and awesome birthday landscape with too many good parts to mentoin, before finding Sardini who puts them through tests before they can get candace back.. and one of those are you human image tests via the ball from phantasm. As gifty puts it “We have to make sure your not a bot”. But the tests, about candaces faviorite things, help the two realize she liked them because they did it together, and a final talk with candace, as the final test has her ask why theyd idn’t want to spend time with her, with the two warmly apologizing and explaning why they did it but that they went too far. Candace reconclies with her parent,s the kids and our heroes go home, and Sardini finds himself sad no one stayed.. but at least he has gifty... and then start making love to her “Unwrap me!” which is far and away the best gag in the season’s best episode by a mile.

Time Hooch:

Now to talk about two things I hinted at earlier: The only good Alex episode this season and the one that vaugely resembles one of the Nightmare Time episodes. And while their two very diffrent stories with very diffrent outcomes and only one of them involves this guy

And suprisingly it’s NOT close enough that has the eldtrich horrifying goat monster with a goofy cartoon voice who says things like “I’m coming for your ass Teddy Bear!” But both are stories about a sketchy (mildly for alex, entirely for Ted) middle aged man who feels one moment is where his life went wrong then accidently time travels after drinking 80 tons of liquor and decides to use said time travel to save a relationship, and fails at it in some fashion. There’s even a jaunt to a distopian future with robots and cyborgs. So while it’s not 1:1, alex is far more sympathetic than Ted, Time Bastard is dark horror comedy, and it again dosen’t involve a horrifying goat man suprisingly enough, it’s till way too many happy coincidences for me to outright ignore. Also check out nightmare time and especially the musicals it spun off from The Guy Who Didn’t LIke Musicals and Black Friday. It’s good stuff. But I couldn’t help but make the comparison, or now imagine Alex, Ted and Professor Hidgens as some weird diasterious power trio. This is how my brain works now.

But to the episode itself it’s just great from start to finish: Bridgette finds out while rumaging for an old photo in an old box of their stuff that Alex never signed the divorce papers. Turns out he was hoping they’d get back together.. and while not doing it and not telling her was a VERY selfish and horrible action.. you still sympathize with him. He hoped things would work out and they’d get back together, and given they had some close calls with that in season 1, to the point I shipped them, you can see where his sprig of hope came from. But with this he’s realized there probably isn’t any hope and drinks some old moonshine he and Josh made in college. Said moonshine was from a recipie in an old blues record, the titular time hooch that true to form, allows them to travel back in time. And since he was thinking of when he thought the relationship truly hit it’s breakig point, when Bridgette at a sandwitch of his and he’d said in the heat of it he wished he’d never met her, they end up there and Alex tries to use it to help. Also Jason’s delivery of Alex saying what the recipie was “rye, barely, a dead man’s pocket watch, mixed under a full moon (Laughs) okay we probably should’ve seen this coming.

Naturally here’s where it really gets intresting. As you’d probably guess, our heroes are the ones who made the sandwitch disappear and in desperation, alex kidnaps his past self before he can say the fatal words> We also get another spectacular bit where all past alex needs from alex to know he’s really him from the future is what year he was born (1982), meaning he’s defintely older than the rest of the cast. Though I wouldn’t be suprised if he was held back.. like at all. Look i’m not thinking too hard into it this is also a story about whiskey based time travel.

But with that said intresting part takes hold as Josh’s past self reminds him of another fight that made things tense for a while.. and you can see where this goes. Alex keeps going back, and back, and back and back and back and back and back... and back, to try and stop the one fight, only to find a bigger one, leading to a montage.. to the point he ends up at the start of the relationship, the day they met at a college bar. The younger Alex’s have decided screw it it was always wrong, let’s end the relationship.

We also get more of Alex’s backstory as it turns out he’s at a community college rather than UCLA, where he used to teach because of his own dumb actions: He met bridgette, let her enroll in his class and didn’t try to convince her to take another one. Don’t get me wrong the decade age gap and power dynamics are iffy.. but it’s not as bad as it could be. They met before the class, and it comes off more as both being too stupid or too horny to realize how her being in his class came off before it was too late. She got with him entirely on his merits, and yes he has some trust me. Case in point.. Alex realizes a few things. The first is that no amount of time travel can save his relationship. They fought all the time clearly, and there were inherent problems. It’s also clear just from the series itself that while they have chemistry their just not that compatible as people. Bridgette is obessed with image, social media, and herself while Alex just two episodes ago called phones the downfall of society and likes feeling superior to the exact kind of person bridgette is. They have chemistry but sometimes it’s jut not enough. You have to have some common ground or your going to fall in a big hole. It’s honestly feels like a much more tolerable and realistic version of Leonard and Penny from the Big Bang Theory. And yes I know that show’s not the most popular with my core audience, nerds, and I bring it up because mom’s been watching it a lately, and any time I see Leonard and Penny on screen it annoys me into a tizzy as the two just have NO REASON to be together other than boning, and even then he’s apparently not a good partner so why then. They have nothing in common and she mocks and belittles him all the fucking time, mocking his hobbies, finding his job boring, and mocking him as a person. And not sharing hobbies or finding his job intresting would be fine, and still work but it’s the constant teasing about it that comes off far more vitrolic than probably intended that just makes me hope for a divorce. Here it’s not only much milder but they did actually get a divorce because their just diffrnet people and i’m not mad the ship was sunk. It was done in a poetic way.

And part of that poetry is Alex realizing that as doomed as things ended up being, via a very sweet montage of their time together.. he realizes he can’t loose this all together. That sure he’d gain a lot and porbably woudlnt’ be living in a closet, but he’d loose all the good times, and he’d loose a friend. His marriage wasn’t so bad he wants to erase it it just ended and that happens. Naturally the other alex’s don’t feel that way but Alex stops them.. Josh is too drunk at this point to help, and ends up creating a time vortex. The vortex sends our heroes home, where Alex realizes his mistake and apologizes for it to bridgette and signs the papers in front of her. As for the Alexs we get a horrifying and hilarous gag as, given they’ve all commented each other is handsome.. start having an orgy, and are later found in amber and their dna is used to create our alex apparently. How does that work?

Point is this episode.. is a masterwork. It’s emotoinal, hilarious, and really good character work, with Alex having a really stellar arc that shades him in and putts a final button in his and bridgettes relationship. And having seen many ships I like end horribly, it’s nice to have one end in a satsifying way like this. Also we see Alex in his borat thong, and i’d just like to point out how funny I find it that the same year they made a borat joke, specifically on it being from a decade or two ago, we ended up getting a second Borat movie. Very niceeee.

World’s Greatest Teacher: This one was alright. On the bright side we got a Mr.Cambell episode! I”ve loved the guy since first meeting him in 100% no stress day, it was the first episode and that hasn’t changed and he’s always a bright spot when he shows up. So an episode about him dealing with a rival teacher, MS. Lake a twice a week music teacher gunning for his job and his students love sounded made for me. In practice he gets a bit too petty to be symapthetic which takes things down a peg, even if it turns out Ms. Lake really is coming for his ass Teddy Bear, but it has enough good gags to help it still be a fun episode.

The biggest one and the biggest reason I sitll like the episode is Timothy’s coffe mug for world’s greatest teacher.. which naturally comes to life, possibly as a psychotic break possibly for real because of the show this is, and starts speaking in the dulcet tones of keith david. ANd i’ve made no secret I love and am thirsty for Keith David on this blog and never will, and having him voice an abusive fowl mouthed coffee mug is something I dind’t know I need but boy did I always need it my entire life. Yes even as a baby. It’s just glorious every time he shows up. The climax is also great as the two teachers end up bonding over the greatest love of all and george micheal after Candace invites River to a part sh’esd having for her tooth coming out, and end up becoming frinemies, a nice solution i was glad to see. Even if i’ll miss evil keith david coffee mug. Rest in power my dude.

Where’d You Go, Bridgette? The second major Bridgette episode of the season and like “Haunted Couch” this one’s an instant classic. After realizing Bridgtte’s already out of control addition to her phone has gotten even worse, Pearle confinscates it and takes her to detox. This leads to two great plots; Bridgette going into withdrawl, complete with an inspired nightmare sequence about her aps and missing her friends death because she was on her phone and the rest of the cast thinking sh’es been kidnapped because she’s not on social media, which while stupid is DELIGHTFULLY stupid and makes some sense given how glued to her phone she is. They end up calling a true crime podcast over, two egosticial college girls who quickly blame them for it despite it making no sense and their fans torm the apartment, and don’t belivie it when bridgette actually shows up.. It takes an inspired speech from Bridgette, whose developed as a person and after actually tasting a late for the first time sees how good they are, and Pearle posting that speech online to dismiss them and our heroes are saved. It’s an utterly amazing plot from josh being excited about the mob attacking them, to Pearle revealing part of the reason she’s so dedicated to helping bridgette is due to her own weird addiction to six flags, which is just so oddly specific I love it.

The Erotic Awakening of A.P. Lapearle This one STARTED well, with Alex reading his viking erotic to everyone, and not getting that Candace maybe shouldn’t be there, only for Pearle to be the only one to actually enjoy it and be inspired by her enjoyment of his work to submit it to a publisher. The publisher ends up making a valid point that women want erotic fantasy from someone they can feel safe by and alex is well.. alex, so he suggests using pearle as a front. it goes how you’d expect: he wants actual credit, the publisher slowly pushes him out, she regrets it, they fight an army of fans and make them vomit with alex reading the book.. standard stuff. It’s just not very funny or a great insight into either characters, and is easily the weakest episode of the season.. though the next one gave it close compettition.

Men Rock!

This one was a chore to sit through, and is only ahead of the last one because it has some really good josh bits and musical numbers which is more than the last one gave me so hey. In a nutshell Emily is on the verge of quitting her and Bridgette’s music careers as she feels they’ll never be famous only for their latest song Men Rock!, an ironic title for a sarcastic song poking fun at a bunch of toxic masculinty bs that is a good song, has hit it HUGE in a fictonal foreign dicatroship and get invited to go, reclutantly agreeing. If you haven’t seen the ep, you can still guess how this goes: say it with me THEY TOOK IT AT FACE VALUE. So our heroines have to help inspire the repressed women and inspire a bloody cou, helped by josh finding some improisoned femisinists in a bathroom. They also gain a fan. it has a few good gags, mostly Candace trying to remind her dad to help her find a place to pee after he keeps getting sidetracked by being taken back by Emily’s sucess. I’ts just a very bad, very predictable episode with very obvious misogyn is bad jokes. And misgoyny IS bad but other shows, paticuarlly tuca and bertie with one early episode, have tackeld this topic better. This episode did not. Last one.

Secret Horse:

This one in stark contrast is one of the series best and an utter joy to watch. On a bad day for the whole apartment with some santa anna winds, an adorable, poofy mained utterly precious horse gets free and ends up at the apartment. Thus we get a vingettte episode, as the horse has a delightful adventure with each of our main 7, and each up tot he last try and hide the horse badly only for the horse to suddenly sprout up and help their mood.

I do love a good vinegtte episode, with two of my faviorite simpsons episodes being 22 short films about springfiled (Minus kirk dragging MIlhouse away from the bathroom, fuck you you balding asshat, it makes the episode hard to watch) ,and trilogy of error, and this is a classic example of it as we get some fun adventures fro each of the housemates: Candace plays with the horse, adorably so, Josh finds it in the garage as his car breaks down and takes them on an install with him, even stuffing them into a suit and we get a great bit of the horse getting fed sugarcubes and josh money. Brigette gets help living in the now instead of posting about it all the time.

My faviorite comes next as Alex needs new patches for his suit but obviouslyc n’t afford them so he takes the ponyt ot he track.. to help him pick which horses to bet on. It’s just such an inherntly funny idea, especially since it works, and really the horse is just hilarious wherever it ends up. It next helps randy win a skating contest, we get a touching story as Pearle misses her old tragically dead horse partner and uses our boy as a subtitute and finlaly we get emily who needs help relaxing and while she naturally calls animal control she hangs up as she falls for hte horse. The group all fight over the horse in the end, the horse leaves and they let it go home, wonder if it was a hallucination and it whizes on thier car. Overall a really great finale and a wonderful note to go out on.

Overall Ranking I’ve decided eveyr time I do one of these, or a post season wrapup of a show i’ve covered every episode of the season to rank them from best to worst sooo

Birthdaze Time Hooch Haunted Couch Secret Horse Where’d You Go Bridgette? Sauce face Houseguest From Hell Joint Break Josh Gets Shredded World’s Greatest Teacher Meet the Frackers Handy Man Up Cyber Matrix Men Rock! The Erotic Awakening of A.P. Lapearle

And i’d like to note that outside of the bottom two hear.. I enjoyed ALL of these. WHich leads to

Final Thoughts; This season was excellent. It had everything the first season had the heart, the character and the utterly great sense of humor, and fine tuned it to be a well oiled machine I could hardly stop laughing at and with tons of great character stuff. Before it had the potetial to surpass regular show but now it has as despite having a few dud episodes itself, as is intievitble in any show, now, they still aren’t as bad as a lot of RS’s early misteps. And Regular SHow as a FANTASTIC show and really stuck the landing, so i’m only saying this is even better and can only go up from here. And even if it stays about the same quality wise, that won’t be a bad place to be. This season was near damn perfect, i’ll probably watch it again and again, and I can’t wait to devour more and given the current tragectory probably will this year. And I couldn’t be more excited.

If you like this blog follow for more reviews, become a patreon to help reach stretch goals or comission a review outright, details for the latter two on my blog. And i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

#close enough #josh singleton #emily rameriz-singleton #bridget yoshida #pearle watson #randy watson #candace ramirez-singleton #hbo max #animation #reviews

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pocket-monsters-precure · 3 years ago

Text

Chapter 21: File Not Found!? A Negative Missing Number!

This week’s nega-evolution was designed by @dai-rokuten-maou !

Guest appearances by Fanfancures by @salsasprecure and @bubblemahouhub !

“Hnnnngh…”

With a grunt, Alice stretched herself as she leaned back in her chair, taking off her glasses briefly to rub her eyes. She got screen headaches much more quickly these days; she figured it was just a sign of getting older. But she still had more to add to her database; how could she possibly continue to be on top of her research into pokemon health if she didn’t keep up with the new information on nega-evolution provided by the Precure?

A slight rumbling noise came from her lap, as she looked down to see Penumbra staring curiously back up at her; the Umbreon had been disturbed from its slumber when she stretched.

“Oh…sorry,” she apologized softly, gently scratching her companion under the chin. “Though…seeing you sleepy like that makes me realize I should probably get some rest, too.”

She looked back to her computer and navigated to the start menu, noting the computer wanted to update before shutting down. “Alright…there we go.” She selected the proper option before turning off the monitor, picking up Penumbra in her arms as she stood up. She couldn’t stop learning, now…for the sake of both people and Pokemon. And for the sake of the group’s new, reluctant ally in the form of a highly dangerous escaped genetic experiment, but he wasn’t there that evening.

As she prepared to crawl into bed that evening, she stopped to lower the blinds on her window, obscuring her from the prying eyes outside.

=====

“Alice Pierce, pokemon researcher specializing in the field of pokemon health and medicine….” Bedlam muttered, arms crossed as he went over his gathered information aloud while lounging in a tree. “Yeah, I can see why they’d look to her for guidance.”

“There you are!” Ataxia appeared on an upper branch, sitting daintily and looking displeased. “Return at once. Lord Tumult has informed us all of some strategic changes. All of us, that is, except for you.”

“I’m assuming the changes aren’t all that different from the old strategies,” Bedlam shrugged, “Nega-evolve pokemon. Be defeated by a bunch of little girls. Swear revenge. Repeat.”

Ataxia huffed. “If only you’d put a little bit more enthusiasm into this. Once Dys has enough sustenance to breach the worlds, we can expand, and create the paradise meant for us! Does that not appeal to you at all!? Don’t you want to succeed!? Don’t you want a world where everyone’s as wayward and lost as those Tumult has brought into his service? Where we can all be brought together by Dys, and never struggle or worry again?”

“Quit with the preaching. Of course I wanna succeed,” Bedlam replied, “But frankly, I find it just a bit odd that Tumult hasn’t lifted a finger to do anything.”

“Tumult answers directly to Dys!”

“Whom none of us have seen up close. How do we know Tumult isn’t lying, or trying to screw us over so he looks better?”

Ataxia sputtered. “A-are you…are you questioning your very mission, Bedlam!?”

“I’m trying to figure out a new way, without Tumult. I’m going to strike at the heart of the Precure on this island….and if it works, then we can repeat the strategy across this world…”

Ataxia watched him in silence for a moment. Then, she sat down next to him. “Well, then…be a team player. Tell me what you’ve learned so far, won’t you?”

Bedlam looked back at her, briefly surprised. Then, he nodded.

===

“Ready, and—!” Naomi set the volleyball, before leaping up as a mischievous glint flashed in her eyes, staring down Kailani opposite her.

Kailani, meanwhile, froze. “I’m beginning to think I made a mistake—“

“—SPIKE!” Naomi slammed her fist into the ball, smashing it down into Kailani’s head as she let out an unladylike squawk and fell over into the sand. The girls were playing out on the beach on a weekend day, having finished some difficult exams (and balancing that with battling nega-evolutions). It had been about a week since the previous incident, and though the girls had been keeping the island safe, nega-evolutions were still cropping up across the globe, and Rotomi hadn’t shown any new developments ability-wise, despite continuing to absorb the nega-energy left behind after each purification.

“Kailani! Are you alright?” Fae called from the blanket where she sat with Asuka and Clefable; Asuka was focused on a tablet in her hands, while Clefable was sunning herself.

“I’m…okay…!” Kailani called out, finally sitting up and rubbing her head. “Come to think of it, anyone know where Raichu is?”

“He’s over there,” Naomi pointed, seeing Raichu surfing with his tail on some small waves out on the water, Rotomi flitting after him. “Looks like he got tired of watching us.”

“Poor guy…I’m sure he misses the waves in Alola; they were much larger than these. We used to surf together.”

“I’m much more of a windsurfing person, myself,” Naomi said, “Anyway, you wanna try again? I won’t spike anymore.” She held out her hand.

“Yeah, let’s try again…” Kailani accepted the hand offered to her, standing up.

Back with Fae and Asuka, the former glanced to the latter. “You seem really focused on something. You haven’t even let any of your pokemon out like you said you would.”

“Huh? Oh! Ohh!!” Asuka hurriedly took out two pokeballs, releasing her Cyndaquil and Scizor. “I should shuffle my team more…I’d release the whole team but we shouldn’t crowd the beach.”

“What’s on your mind? You’ve been glued to your tablet…” Fae tipped her head a bit as Asuka glanced back at the tablet.

“It’s…this news from the Galar region. A nega-evolved dynamax pokemon appeared.”

“Dynamax!? Those are huge, aren’t they!? That must have been absolutely massive once it nega-evolved!”

“It was stopped by two Cures—Cure Monarch and Cure Phantasm. What luck they showed up…”

“Nega-evolved and dynamaxed…the Cures in Galar must really have it tough.”

“You’re telling me…” Asuka frowned as she looked back at the article on the screen. “And we already know that they can nega-evolve people…”

Fae watched her face for a bit, trying to read her expression. “It’s okay, Asuka. I’m scared too. We’re all scared.”

“We just…need to go over all the information we have,” Asuka muttered. “Maybe…maybe I’ll feel a bit better after we do that.”

Asuka always preferred cold, hard facts. She liked being well-informed before making decisions. Being a Precure hadn’t always given her the luxury of that, but since they seemed to have some downtime, it was time to catch up.

Nega-Evolution was spreading like a disease.

More Precure were popping up, as if her world was creating antibodies, of a sort, to combat it.

Darkness was a sickness…and they were the cure for it. It made sense. To her, anyway.

As she was pondering this, Fae got an idea.

“I’ve got it!” Fae tapped a fist in her palm. “Why don’t we go to Dr. Pierce’s place later and ask to see her collected notes? I know she’s been trying to keep things organized for us…”

A rustling sound came from Fae’s bag as Rotomi burst out of it. “I need her to update her database from the Cure Dex anyway!”

Asuka looked at the pair of them, as a smile began to cross her features. “That…would help a lot.”

===

Meanwhile, in Johto…

“Brace!” Cure Faith shouted—the trio of Sacred Beast Precure crossed their arms in front of them to absorb the blow of a shockwave caused by a Nega-Stantler, skidding back from the impact. The beast leered at them with a piercing, enraged glare, its sharpened, hooked antlers ready to gore anyone who got too close. It was rather small for a nega-evolution, but was still larger than the average Stantler; this beast stood about one story tall, and was making up for its smaller stature with pure rage. It dug a hoof into the ground angrily, before charging.

“Shining—“ with a twirl, Cure Cascade sent a jet of water toward it to force it back, “—Torrent!”

“How ‘bout this!?” Flash shouted, and with the snap of her fingers, she electrified the jet of water. A gruntlike, pained roar emitted from the nega-evolution, but as the jet of water ended, the creature still stood, its antlers beginning to glow with a sinister aura.

“That’s a problem…!” Faith ran forward, before digging her fingers into the earth with unnatural strength and hurling a large chunk of solid earth at the beast—not only did the chunk break into smaller pieces as the incoming blast from its antlers was fired, but the chunks smashed into Nega-Stantler’s head, causing it to stagger.

“Nice!” Flash pumped a fist, “About time we caught it off-guard, right?”

“Let’s hurry!” Faith turned to face the other two. They shared a nod, holding out their hands as three large, golden, intricate fans appeared in their hands.

“Open!” They declared in unison, opening the fans with the snap of their wrists. “Miracle Matsuri Fans!”

“Precure!” They began to dance a choreographed routine, with grand, sweeping gestures, the fans seeming to leave trails of light as they moved. “Miracle Matsuri Refresh!”

In a brilliant flash of sparkles, Nega-Stantler was defeated, the original Stantler left dizzily standing in its place. Shaking the dizziness away, it approached the Precure, seeming to understand the situation and nuzzling Faith before giving her a hearty lick on the face.

“Ack—!” Faith made a face, as it scampered off into the brush.

“Done and done.” Flash dusted off her hands, before flipping her massive, swirling ponytail.

“At least it wasn’t more than one this time…” Cascade rubbed her temple with a hand.

“Wait, what about the Shadowlings our pokemon were dealing with!?” Faith yelped in realization.

“Grrrowf!” A voice declared, as Faith’s Growlithe ran toward them, joined by an excited Azumarill; Noctowl swooped down to join them.

“Oh, thank goodness….!” Faith knelt down to catch Growlithe in her arms, sighing in relief.

“Come on, we better hurry back to the National Park,” Flash grinned as she ruffled Noctowl’s feathers. “We might be able to catch the end of the Bug-Off! We can update the group doc later!”

It seemed, even without someone like Rotomi to guide them, the Precure across the other regions were developing their own ways to learn and keep track—be it with technology or simply word of mouth. As the girls reverted to their true forms and headed back toward the National Park, the girl who was Cure Cascade was already pulling out her phone, accessing where they kept their notes, eager to jot down the information before it had a chance to leave her memory.

===

“It’s a lot more to look at than I expected…” Asuka admitted as she sat before Dr. Pierce’s computer. The Cure Dex was connected nearby, Rotomi humming contentedly inside.

“It’s not just notes we’ve gathered,” Dr. Pierce explained, “I’ve been keeping up with news headlines, and speaking to colleagues located in other regions to learn about their own experiences. Don’t try and overwhelm yourself, Asuka; it’s best to do things in bits and pieces.”

“Hang in there,” Kailani reassured her, “If you find anything new or interesting, let us know! We’d hate to crowd around you while you’re trying to read. We’ll just help Dr. Pierce around the house.”

Asuka looked over her shoulder at them, giving a smile and a nod. With that, she got to reading, looking at files that had names that piqued her interest—she was fortunate that most of them were fairly easy to read; they didn’t use a lot of complicated language like she was expecting. All this information now at her disposal…and more.

But as she went over a headline regarding the spreading nega-evolution cases, something occurred to her.

“Rotomi?”

“Yes?” Rotomi’s voice came from the Cure Dex.

“Your whole world suffered from this nega-evolution thing, right?”

A pause, then a sad reply. “Yeah. Yeah, it did.”

“…we’ve never bothered to ask you what it was like, have we? A world entirely nega-evolved.”

A longer pause. “It’s really sad. I didn’t wanna bring it up in detail unless someone asked.”

“Well…” Asuka debated opening up a word processor to note down what she was about to hear, but opted instead to just…listen. “…I’m asking now.”

Rotomi exited the Cure Dex, looking down at the floor before floating into Asuka’s hands.

“It’s dark. It’s hard to breathe, the air is so thick with…not something physical, but…just..this unease. This unfixable feeling that nothing is right. That nothing will ever be right. The people and creatures nega-evolved are shells of who they used to be. There’s no warmth or comfort. No satisfaction. It feels like whatever the solution is to whatever ails them…is just out of their reach.”

Asuka listened, her stomach dropping. “That sounds horrible. I’m so sorry…”

“It’s supposedly to feed ‘Dys.’ Whoever that is; I’m not sure. But what kind of person…what kind of thing…feeds off the misery of others? That’s just…that’s terrible. And…” Rotomi’s eyes saddened even further. “To think that…that Amaranth might be going through the same thing right now…”

Asuka brought Rotomi to her chest, as if to hug her. “It’s okay. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to not know, and to worry. I’m sure Amaranth is worried about you, too. But we’ll find a way to save your home. And to help the people and pokemon here who were nega-evolved. And you’ve been getting stronger by absorbing the leftover energy, so maybe you still have things you’ve yet to figure out you can do! Even then…you’re safe, and you’re with people who will stay by your side until this is over.”

Rotomi looked up at Asuka, smiling a bit. “…thank you.”

“Of course, Rotomi. Any time you need reassurance, just tell me.”

Asuka looked back at the screen, setting Rotomi carefully on the desk as she got back to skimming the notes; the little fairy flew back into the Cure Dex.

Some time later, the girls were gathered around the coffee table while Dr. Pierce set down some tea and cakes. Asuka was sharing her notes with the group as they enjoyed the snack.

“Dr. Pierce has been keeping notes on not just the nega-evolutions we’ve defeated, but any that her colleagues have encountered,” Asuka began, “Thankfully, some of said colleagues are also working with Precure…”

“I’m currently adding their data to your Cure Dex,” Dr. Pierce explained as she looked over from her computer.

“We were correct in assuming they just use warped versions of moves the pokemon knows,” Asuka continued.

“Like Mr. Mime’s Trick Room, that shuffled the rooms at school!” Naomi piped up.

“Exactly. But now there’s the matter of Shadowlings…”

“They’re not physical pokemon, thankfully,” Kailani said, looking at the notes Asuka had written, “But they can be battled like any normal pokemon. I think we should be able to just leave those to our own pokemon in most situations.”

“Chu-chu!” Raichu threw a little cake in the air in joy, as it landed on his head when he was unable to catch it and seemed to forget he had psychic powers.

“…you’re lucky you’re cute,” Kailani sighed.

“That reminds me,” Fae started, “There’s apparently this place in Sinnoh that, if you don’t take a ‘cute enough’ pokemon…”

As the conversation started to derail, Asuka tried to get the group back on track. Dr. Pierce watched quietly, before hearing a knock at her door.

“Hold on…” Dr. Pierce stood up to answer the door. “I’m coming!”

However, the moment she opened the door, the girls heard her cry out in alarm. “Dr. Pierce!?” Kailani called as they stood up from the table, rushing to the foyer to find her in the process of sitting up, looking up in shock and fear at the new arrival…

“Hello, ladies.” Ataxia waved a hand daintily as she stepped into the room, heels clacking on the hardwood floor. “Or, should I say, Pretty Cure?”

“Ataxia!” Rotomi cried out, “You…you’re here!?”

“I thought today I’d take a bit more of a direct approach.”Ataxia rotated her wrist, the Nega-Ring flashing briefly on it. With a flourish, she prepared to summon a ring of nega-energy.

“Not so fast…!” Kailani and the girls pulled out their compacts, while Ataxia was already in the motion of preparing to cast it toward them—only to turn and direct it at Dr. Pierce.

“Wha—“ “NO!” Rotomi shot out of the Cure Dex and smashed her tiny body into Dr. Pierce, knocking her over as the force knocked the Cure Dex off the table—which landed in the dark circle that had formed where Dr. Pierce once stood.

It shook, rattled, as the darkness spread down the cable connecting the Cure Dex to the computer. The lights flickered, the air grew tense, and numerous error messages appeared on the screen. Before, finally

ERROR: MISSING_NO.();

The darkness shot out the window.

“Wait!” Kailani darted past Ataxia, who quickly vanished while the remaining girls tried to register what just happened. Kailani came to a stop outside, finding the group’s foe.

The beast hulking before her was an amalgamation—vaguely carrying the traits of pokemon she knew, yet all the same crossing way into the uncanny valley.

“NEEEGAAAAAA….” It rumbled, its voice distorted, as if trying to speak through a poor speaker, or a damaged sound card. Ataxia reappeared sitting on top of the roof, legs crossed daintily.

“My,” she remarked, “That’s an unusual nega-evolution, for sure.”

“It’s a…computer error, or something!?” Naomi tried to comprehend as the other girls caught up to Kailani. “It Nega-evolved the Cure Dex itself!”

“Missingno!” Asuka reasoned, “It’s…some kind of error that pops up in pokedexes sometimes when it can’t find what it’s looking for!”

“How can a computer bug be Nega-evolved!? It’s just code!” Naomi argued.

The creature seemed to glitch in response to this, as if angry. Then, it raised its misshapen hands in anger. “NEGA!”

“Alright, enough!” Fae pleaded, “We need to deal with it before things get out of hand!”

“Right…!” Kailani gripped her compact.

“Precure! I! Choose! You!”

“Swarm it!” Sunrise declared, the quartet of girls rushing Nega-Missingno at once. It glitched away just as Sunrise and Starlight lunged, the two crashing into each other.

“What a surprise,” Starlight mumbled, “That didn’t work.”

“Wish whimsy….” Wish started up an attack, when Nega-Missingno glitched in front of her. “Ohh—!”

“NE!” Nega-Missingno swatted her away, giving off a sinister aura of binary code and nega-energy.

“Gotcha—!” Willow caught her.

“Thanks…” Wish muttered dizzily.

“Wake-Up Shock!” Sunrise clapped her hands together, sending the bolt toward Nega-Missingno. It glitched in place, and the electricity had no effect when it struck. “Huh!?”

“That thing’s made from a modded Pokédex; why isn’t electricity scrambling it!?” Starlight summoned Absol. “Type: Dark! Precure Wicked Whirl!”

As the duo’s summoned cyclone of darkness approached Nega-Missingno, it glitched in place again, giving off a bright pink burst of light as the attack struck…once again, no effect.

“Oh, come on!” Starlight complained. “What’s going on!?”

“That pink light was almost like a fairy-type aura….” Wish muttered.

“Like a fairy-type…and dark types can’t affect fairy-types….” Willow murmured. “…hey. I wanna try something. Dr. Pierce!” She turned toward the house.

“Huh!? Y-you need me!?” Dr. Pierce cried out from the window.

“You have a regular Pokédex, don’t you? Scan the nega-evolution!”

“Scan it!? Oh, yes…!” Dr. Pierce came outside, holding a standard Pokédex as she aimed it at Nega-Missingno.

ERROR: MISSING_NO.();

“It’s coming up with the Missingno error!” Dr. Pierce called out, “…but…it’s showing a fairy-typing!”

“Someone attack it!” Willow called out.

“On it!” Sunrise whistled, as Raichu zapped out of the house. “Type: Psychic! Precure PK Spectacle!”

Master and pokemon placed their hands to their temples, as a spiral of psychic energy launched itself toward Nega-Missingno. The nega-evolution gave off a dark aura as the attack struck. No effect.

“Scan it again!” Willow ordered.

“Same error! But….dark-type!?” Dr. Pierce called back.

“That’s it!” Willow pumped a fist. “I know what’s going on! It’s changing type once it realizes what type the incoming attack is! That nega-evolution is literally a walking database of pokemon typings!”

“Then how do we beat it!?” Sunrise asked, letting out a startled yelp as she dove away from an incoming swipe.

“I’ve got an idea! Huddle!”

The four Precure immediately moved into a huddle, much to the confusion of Nega-Missingno.

“Nega?” It comically leaned in, trying to eavesdrop from multiple angles, before jumping back as the girls parted.

“Ready!” Wish and Willow narrowed their eyes, each summoning a pokemon—Charizard appeared proudly behind Wish, as Cyndaquil joined Willow.

“Type: Fire!” they cried out in unison. “Precure Passionate Inferno!”

As the heart-shaped, rose gold-tinted blaze spiraled toward Nega-Missingno, it seemed to shift in place, before the flames struck, with no effect.

“Ground-type!” Dr. Pierce called.

“Now!” Willow shouted. Sunrise and Starlight leapt up from behind with Brionne and Sharpedo.

“Type: Water! Precure Wild Geyser!”

Before Nega-Missingno could react, the pastel-colored, sparkling geyser of water struck it in the back; as it impacted the ground, Fae’s Charizard flew up and unleashed a flamethrower, predicting it would then change its type to grass, burning it in the process.

“Now!” Sunrise shouted as the girls regrouped.

“Precure Quartet Refresh!”

As the refreshing attack purified Nega-Missingno, it seemed to stare at the group, in silence, before slowly fading away…leaving the Cure Dex behind.

“Ohhh…!” Ataxia stomped a foot, crossing her arms, before glancing at Dr. Pierce. “…..” she vanished.

===

“That was some quick sleuthing you did, Asuka!” Kailani beamed; the girls were seeing off Asuka as she was waiting for the ferry to head home.

“It was just standard type-advantage logic…” Asuka replied sheepishly.

“We even have an entry on Nega-Missingno now!” Rotomi piped up from inside the Cure Dex.

“But now we have a bigger problem,” Naomi spoke up.

“Yeah,” Fae began, “It looked like Ataxia was specifically targeting Dr. Pierce….”

“We’ll be sure to check on her every day, then!” Kailani pumped a fist. “And if Mewtwo comes back, he’ll be sure to check on her, I bet.”

“If he comes back,” Naomi emphasized, “He doesn’t seem keen on forming any kind of bond with us, though.”

“He wants to keep himself updated on Dr. Pierce’s research, so I’m sure he’ll return,” Asuka reasoned, “Don’t worry…”

The ferry arrived, and Asuka boarded, waving to the group as the boat set sail. She replayed the day’s battle over in her head—despite it being an amalgamation of code and data, she couldn’t help but feel bad for Nega-Missingno. For the fleeting time it existed, it only knew to fight and defend.

She sighed, then nodded to herself. That was likely how all nega-evolved pokemon felt. And that was terrible. Stepping away from the rail and going to sit down, that realization was all it too to reaffirm her mission—she would do whatever it took to keep any pokemon for feeling that way for long. She had to work faster, undo the nega-evolutions faster.

#precure #pocket monsters precure #pokemon precure #pokemon pretty cure #missingno #missingno.#story #chapter 21 #PMPC #pretty cure #precure fanseries #pretty cure fanseries #fancure

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its-sixxers · 4 years ago

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20 OTP Questions - Lizzy x Charon

tagged by @potatocrab aaaah tysm <33

tagging: @randomwordsandstormydays, @benny-gecko-official, @sunset-cassaparilla and if u see this and haven’t been tagged and want to do the thing take this as a tag from me! :)

1. Who can out-drink the other?

Charon, easily. He’s got like two feet and at least a hundred pounds on Lizzy, and Lizzy doesn’t really drink. Any drinking contest would probably end with her passed out on the table and Charon mildly buzzed.

2. Who says “i love you” more?

Lizzy verbalizes it more due to just having a general ease with expressing affection and vulnerability. Charon has an under-running fear that verbalizing things will doom them somehow, and when he does it’s usually in his native language, as if that dodges fate.

3. Who has trouble sleeping alone?

A pretty even split between them to be honest. Lizzy’s issues with sleeping alone is just that it feels wrong to her - she’s a creature of habit and likes her routines and structure, and when something she’s used to is gone it can really mess her up physiologically. With Charon, his issues are thanks to fear and lingering mental conditioning - he struggles with the idea of her being on her own and something happening with him not present, and can’t allow himself the calm and vulnerability required for sleep when that whole mindset’s going on.

4. Who swears more?

Charon - сука блять is one of the first Russian phrases Lizzy learns for a reason. As they grow more comfortable with each other (Lizzy’s not super pro-swearing at first) he dips more into English curse words. Lizzy swears rarely but when she does it’s usually a sign of some serious shit.

5. Who does more of the housework?

Even split. Anything involving scrubbing stuff down Lizzy tackles, but Charon handles putting things away and more physical tasks. They’re both fairly neat people.

6. Who forgets their anniversary?

Lizzy, surprisingly! They don’t really have a concrete date for it, and she caught feelings before Charon did, so it’s hard for her to remember what the technical date is to begin with. Add on being scatterbrained and you have a recipe for disaster. Charon’s quite detail oriented (thanks, mental conditioning!) and is pretty good at remembering a variety of things.

7. Who steals the duvet in their sleep?

Charon, inadvertently. He’s a big guy and needs a lot of blanket. They tend to sleep with their own blankets for this reason - it justifies Lizzy’s habit of hoarding them.

8. Who keeps the other awake at night with their snoring?

Lizzy isn’t a loud snorer but Charon’s an incredibly light sleeper. If he doesn’t fall asleep before her he’s not getting much sleep.

9. Who finds stray animals and begs the other to let them keep them?

Lizzy, of course. Dogmeat’s the first stray and the one who sticks around, but she’s notorious for finding injured animals, nursing them back to health, and trying to convince Charon that keeping them around is a great idea. They don’t have the space for it and she knows it.

10. Who usually makes dinner?

Charon, since Lizzy’s usually nose deep in research and easily loses track of time. She’s likely to forget to eat if he doesn’t put something in front of her.

11. Who plays their music out loud?

Lizzy’s fond of having her pip-boy blaring. Charon plays guitar on rare occasions, and does so fairly quietly.

12. Who hogs the bathroom?

Lizzy both pre and post ghouling. She frets over her appearance - having the disheveled appearance of an average wastelander stresses her out subconsciously as it’s a reminder that she’s lost her childhood and innocence. Post ghouling she frets even more.

13. Who gives the most compliments?

Lizzy gives out little compliments often. Charon’s compliments are rarer, but like Lizzy’s swearing, when they happen it’s a sign of something major.

14. Who usually starts/causes arguments between them?

Charon. Once he’s comfortable enough to state his opinion - and he starts holding Lizzy in esteem - he isn’t afraid to call out when he thinks she’s making unwise decisions. They clash a lot due to his focus on self preservation and her martyr/savior complex. Once he finally tells her that if she dies he’s going to have a very bad time she starts taking her own safety seriously and the fights drop off. Their most vicious argument was regarding Lizzy’s devotion to finishing her father’s work at all costs - but after the Enclave’s dealt with so are any major arguments.

15. Who isn’t afraid to embarrass the other in public?

They both engage in some mutual teasing. Charon keeps her down to earth, and she ensures he doesn’t take things quite so seriously.

16. Who gives the other cringe-worthy pet names?

Charon, Charon, Charon. At first they start as borderline mockery with a more affectionate tone than he’d like to admit - ‘little rabbit’ or ‘faun’ are given to her due to her high strung and frightened nature, but they grow pretty sappy to him over time. They’re all in russian, of course - there’s no way he’s going to be mushy in a way anyone can understand.

17. Who fusses over the other when they get sick?

Lizzy’s got a lot of medical training and a lot of anxiety. Charon’s constitution is strong enough that when he does get sick it’s something to worry about. Fussing is what Lizzy does.

18. Who finds it impossible to stay angry at the other for long?

Lizzy. She’s not built for long term anger in general. She quickly forgives, for her own sake if nothing else.

19. Who clings to the other for comfort when they’re sad or scared?

Lizzy. It just makes sense at first, given that he starts out as her bodyguard. Charon’s got vulnerability issues and while physical touch soothes him, he has issues seeking it out.

20. Who is more ‘physically passionate’? (hugs, kisses, or maybe more…)

Charon’s not someone who can find the words for what he means easily and he places a lot more weight on actions and body language than words. Extremely tactile. Lizzy starts off fairly inexperienced in the ‘passion’ realm but once things get rolling she’s more than happy to reciprocate.

#tagged stuff #love dese two sry #gettin back into the swing for writing again #alcohol mention #almost forgot to tag for that sry buds >>

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louloutche · 5 years ago

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Motherland Fort Salem 1x07 - Mother Mycelium

Here we go again, here are my thoughts on that week’s episode.

The opening scene

First of all: the opening scene. It was pretty obvious that the episode would start with that but wow. The confrontation between Scylla and Alder, the illusion, the tension. It was intense and that’s why I loved every second of that. If I’m not wrong, this scene was also the first one where we got a glimpse of the Spree’s motivations. Now it’s starting to make sense. They are primarily opposed to the conscription but they are targeting civilians because they are the ones they actually hate. They think (and they might be right) that the hunt is not over, just different now, and all witches should be free of the humans. Now, we can actually identify with them and understand their motivations.

Abigail

I knew from the beginning I would like that character and I was right. How could you not?

Abigail at the beginning of the season every time Raelle did anything:

Abigail since ep 1x06 every time Raelle does anything:

She’s so supportive and that’s so beautiful. A real link is creating between Raelle and her and I’m here for that. I think sooner or later Raelle is going to push Abigail away because she feels smothered maybe? Deep down she’s glad that Abigail cares about her, but she’s been so used to rely only on herself that she will probably have a hard time believing that someone is willing to throw themselves under the train for her.

Honestly, some people say and/or wish Raelle is going to take responsibilities and become the head of the unit, but I wouldn’t mind if she didn’t. I think Abigail is a great leader because she’s devoted and protective, even if she doesn’t admit it.

Also, in this episode, we’re starting to see Abigail’s convictions crumble. Adil will be the element that will make her question the army more and more. He’s already started. He’s here to defy the idealized picture of the army she has been fed since she was born and prove there are always different sizes on a war. Not one, not even two, but many sizes and more often than not, innocent people, civilians suffer. Some people said they didn’t like the show because they thought it was glorifying the army. I don’t know where they got that impression from. Maybe Alder, but for the rest, I don’t really see any idolization and it was pretty obvious considering the angle the show was taking right from the beginning that there wouldn’t be such thing. Now we know there won’t be any.

To close that part about Abigail, I would love for her to develop a really bond with Augustin and whatever that other guy’s name is. It doesn’t mean I want them to have a romantic relationship (pretty easy to guess Adil will be her love interest) and I’m not even talking about friendship without sex. They could be friends with benefits. I’d just like to see her develop a meaningful friendship with them beyond sex. Just a personal wish.

Tally

We didn’t see much of her in that episode. I was disappointed, but that’s often the case in TV shows, not all characters can be at the center of each episode. Nevertheless I enjoyed that scene in the forest where Raelle tried to confront her. She will probably discover the truth soon, because Tally will tell her or in some other way. It could happen in the last episode, it would be one of the cliffhangers of the finale and would be pretty interesting in fact.

Raelle

I hadn’t commented on that so far, but I find it really interesting that her magic is based on speaking instead of singing. That’s a nice callback to paganism. But that’s precisely why I wonder why the girl said it was “pagan nonsense” or whatever. Their way of life is pagan. They celebrate Beltane, which is a pagan celebration, they refer to “the goddess”, which is probably the Triple Goddess (also called Hecate), they honor earth (Adil did in that episode). They are the definition of pagan witches, so I don’t understand why that girl would say that.

Now, that scene where Raelle fixed Khalida. She knows something is wrong and we know it too. It’s very clear that despite what Abigail said about Raelle being powerful and getting better, something unusual happened. Or didn’t happen precisely. Maybe the mushroom has something to do with that? Maybe Khalida is not really cured? That last guess doesn’t seem very likely to me, I think she is cured. But maybe that thing that was poisoning her got scared by Raelle and went away somehow, maybe it will infect someone else. But for me the best lead is the mushroom.

Scylla

It was pretty easy to see even before Anacostia said it that she was starting to have regrets. Her tears were for Raelle, for the shock of what Anacostia just did to her, but also for the realization of what she had done. Speaking of what Anacostia did to her, I wonder if they will treat it later. I don’t know if she’s the only witch able to do that in Fort Salem (I will speculate on that below), but there’s no doubt that being the victim of such invasion must be traumatic and Scylla might and should suffer aftereffects.

Raylla reunion

That. Scene. Was. So. Intense. Like, I said the opening scene was, but it was nothing compared to that one. Kudos to Amalia and Taylor. Their acting was on point, I almost cried. This was really, really impressive. I wish Scylla had told the truth, but at the end of the day, maybe it’s better. Raelle and her have such a special bond, I think that it will have more impact when the moment comes that Scylla told her that she loves her and she wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, instead of telling her what she had done and add something like “it was for the good of our people” or something like that. And I think Scylla understands Raelle very well and knows what will be efficient when the time comes. Raelle will be pissed when the truth comes out, but in my opinion she will be more inclined to take Scylla’s side (Scylla will probably not stay with the Spree much longer once she's out of this imprisonment and her side will be her own side) with what she told her. Once again, kudos to both of the actresses for that heartbreaking but beautiful scene.

But also, I'm not sure what was their purpose when they brought Raelle. Of course they wanted to weaken Scylla (Amalia confirmed it) and it worked, but did they have other intentions? Maybe Raelle wasn’t just a tool and she was also one of the goals. When she knocked everybody out during training and Izadora briefly talked to her, she said something like “let the army make you stronger”. It’s clear the army is very interested in Raelle, and for good reasons. What if they were trying to make sure she lays on them so that when the time is right, they can use her? They probably want her on their side, because she’s powerful and because she expressed her hatred, or at least her dislike toward the army, and it makes her dangerous. So maybe they have a plan and for that, they needed her to see Scylla without knowing who was holding and/or to be weakened and confused (what is real and what is not? did she dream? is she crazy? it could lead to (self)isolation and thus vulnerability), so that they can “come at her rescue”.

Anacostia

She will be a key element, there is no doubt about that. We can easily guess that sooner or later, probably not in season 1 but maybe in next seasons if the show is renewed, there will be a rebellion inside the army. It might be small with just Raelle, Scylla and a few others. Or it might be big. Like really big. My guess is that it’s going to start small and then it will get out of hand and there will be an actual mutiny against Alder and the established power. Some rebels might join the Spree, although I doubt it (if they do there are going to be few of them), some might just create their own new group, and that’s where it would become interesting, because then, people like Scylla who joined the Spree out of frustration and desperation might find something closer to their aspirations in that new group. Anyway, I’m drifting away.

If what I’m hypothesizing happens (not a very risky theory, but still), Anacostia will have a very important role. We knew at some point she would doubt Alder, and here we are. It was also very likely that sooner or later, she would have consideration and empathy for Scylla, and here we are. She had probably already noticed here and there that some of the things Alder was doing were not right, but now she’s slowly starting to realize that Alder’s is misusing her power. Or maybe she’s not there yet, but she will be. And I think that what Alder told her really hurt her. Not because of the words she used, because yes, it’s true and pretty logical that as an orphan, Anacostia has “a soft spot for orphans”. But the tone she used and the way she looked at her... Well, all that wasn’t very motherly, friendly or even sympathetic and I think Anacostia noticed the difference compared to the way she usually talks to her.

I will write it in the part about Anacostia, but now it’s about Alder too. I think one of the reasons why she reacted this way is because she’s freaking out at the mere idea of losing Anacostia. There might be personal feelings involved and of course she’s not stupid, she knows she’s on the edge and you might say “everybody wants her head”, so she doesn’t need to have one of her most loyal soldiers against her on top of that. But I’m pretty sure there’s something else. As I said above, I don’t know if Anacostia is the only witch able to do what she did with Scylla, but probably. While watching the episode, I was wondering if each witch had a special ability, but I don’t think so. They are better in different fields, just like every average human, but I don’t think they have “special attacks”. I think Anacostia is an exception. Beyond the fact that she’s super powerful, she has a gift. There’s a reason why Alder took interest in Anacostia above all the other orphans she raised other than the fact that Anacostia is completely devoted to her and very talented (I believe Alder complimented her on that in the scene where we saw the orphans). By the way, the devotion is starting to crumble and that’s probably what pushed Alder to react that way. Anacostia is probably some sort of “special weapon” for her, and she understands she might lose her. Alder showed up to interrogate Scylla herself, but Scylla didn’t talk despite her attempt to make her. She was already here, so why didn’t she infiltrate Scylla’s spirit herself? Probably because she can’t. She must be more powerful than Anacostia, but she can’t do what she does and that’s (one of the reasons) why she needs her and she was so upset when she saw Anacostia show signs of weakness.

Khalida

That little girl is crazy talented. The character, but also the actress. I don’t know how old she is, but an experimented and very good actress like Lyne was impressed (she talked about it in After The Storm). She said she had a very strong presence on set and I’m not surprised because it shows on screen. I can’t wait to see what will be her role in the next episodes. But seriously, can you imagine how powerful she is? She put Alder on her knees, both metaphorically and literally. I’m really excited to see what’s next.

Other questions, assumptions, thoughts, etc

When Izadora slit that girl’s throat? Disgusting in more ways than one. Can you imagine how f*cked up you have to be to do that kind of thing. And yes, she’s a bit creepy, maybe not all instructors would go that far, but it shows the kind of people the army is creating or at least letting fight in their rows and teach. Also, the fact that they could knock Raelle, Tally and Abigail out so easily was disturbing too. They’re only in their first year, we can guess older and more experimented witches might be able to resist or at least feel it, but still. Can you imagine what kind of power teachers and instructors have on you if they can do that?

This is kind of creepy that these old ladies are following Alder everywhere she goes (and hissing when she’s pissed). Don’t get me wrong, even if they don’t have any lines, I think that’s great that these old actresses got these roles. But story-wise, that must be strange for people around Alder. I guess they have to be near her for the spell to work (maybe it was explained off screen and I just didn’t see/hear it).

Witch daddy talked about revocation of the accord? That’s getting serious! It will be very interesting if it gets this far.

Did Khalida knew Raelle’s name because of the linking? Or is she some ancient entity / old wise lady in a child body? That was a bit disturbing. I like the character because but she is kind of creepy and have a strange way to speak and interact with people, even her brother.

How is Adil able to use magic? I thought only women could in witches lineage. Or maybe it’s true only for some ethnies or not for others?

There was a shift for two characters in that episode, Abigail and Anacostia, and I can’t wait to see where it leads them.

We didn’t see Bridey :( I hope she’s going to be back soon! But I doubt it, because it seems that time gaps between episodes are pretty long (or not always, because I don’t think Scylla has been sequestrated for that long, but I might be wrong) and we didn’t see her once in that episode while she was following Abigail like her shadow in the last one. But I’m hopeful, she might be back as a soldier and not Abigail’s bodyguard.

What will happen to Scylla now? They have a location and there will be an attack, but on a more personal level, they know that she murdered civilians. Will they keep her alive to get other information? Are they planning to kill her as soon as the attack is over? I’m a bit worried.

I will conclude this long as* post by saying that this mission is gonna be a disaster. Tally feels guilty, Raelle puked just before leaving the base and she’s very disturbed after seeing Scylla, Abigail is not focused because she’s bothered by what Adil told her and she's worried about Raelle but also probably about Tally because there’s no doubt she noticed she was avoiding Raelle. It’s going to be a mess.

#motherland fort salem #abigail bellweather #tally craven #raelle collar #anacostia quartermaine #sarah alder #general alder #mfs talk #mfs analysis #llt

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 6 years ago

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Humans are NOT Space Orcs “First Contact”

So, I wanted to do something from the human’s perspective for once. This will have a part 2 from the aliens perspective to add a bit more humor to the whole thing. The idea was to show just how humans are scary and they totally don’t see it.

Don’t forget to send me your ideas, and as always I love comments questions critiques, and anything else you can think of :)

So, I may, or may not have been snooping through Krill’s reports while he’s returned home for, “mating season” sort of hope he meets a nice hot….. Whatever he is…. What makes you guys attracted to each other anyway…? Is it the size of the inflatable sack or something?

That’s beside the point though, I thought you all deserved something from a human perspective. Krill has this tendency to make us sound super freaky. I mean calling babies parasites is a bit much. He makes them sound like monsters who feed of a woman’s organs or something like that. I actually think babies are cute, and sure, we eat weird food, but none of us ever get actually HURT by it. The amount of poison in those foods aren’t enough to do anything to us, so it’s not a big deal.

As for me, it’s a little known fact that I was part of the human crew and team that made first contact with E.Ts (Extra-terrestrials). It was the maiden voyage of the USS Enterprise (yeah I know kind of nerdy, but we had to do it. Who makes their first interstellar ship and doesn’t name it the Enterprise, it would be sacrilegious). Personally I fancy myself a bit of a Kirk, and Krill could be Spock (Him being the voice of reason and all) you know if Spock had eight legs…. And emotions. Off topic, anyway, I was straight out of the academy had all my limbs and both eyes, and I was chosen as part of the bridge crew for our first voyage.

I was honestly surprised when the thing didn’t explode as soon as we went into warp, but we held together, and all of a sudden we are in an entirely different galaxy. It was more intense that I could have imagined. One of our infrared specialists detected hits of a heat signatures on a nearby asteroid, so of course we were going to check it out. I volunteered for the mission first, if anyone was going to see an alien, it was going to be me. So we suited up with a team, and sent a landing craft. Imagine our surprise when we sensed signs of life.

***

“Look at this, Captain, these structures, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.” Captain Kelly moved over to examine the pillar with the rest of the crew speaking quickly an excitedly.

First Lieutenant Vir ignored them wandering over to the other side of the room to kneel down on the polished stone floor. Through the armored space suit, and full-face glass visor, he examined the walls around him. He already knew what this was, aliens, he was sure.

He glanced down at his equipment glowing softly at him through the visor of the helmet …. Wait, that hadn’t been there before.

Atmospheric readings.

But they were in the middle of space….. There shouldn’t be atmosphere, and it was a pretty complex one to, sulfur, hydrogen oxygen, and carbon. Still not breathable in those percentages, but… damn.

He turned to get his captain’s attention, but just then, a small sound caught him through the microphone of his suit. A soft click, like a rock falling, he snapped his head in that direction, just in time to see a flicker of movement and a dash of metallic blue.

He threw his rifle over his back and bolted after the movement.

“LIEUTENANT.”

He ignored the voice and raced after the fleeing figure clambering off the small incline and onto a pathway. He scrambled from his hands and toes onto his feet and followed the creature at a dead sprint. The thing skidded around a corner. He followed slamming into the wall before shaking himself off and giving pursuit.

A moment of pure exhilaration added adrenaline to his run, and he spend closer letting off a gleeful laugh, there were aliens, he knew it, he knew it.

The creature took another hard fast turn, and he raced after it, catching only glimpses as the creature raced forward. It was about waist height, but ran on all fours. It had a tail and maybe…. Six limbs.

So cool.

He had to catch it.

A moment later the thing had bolted into a shaft. He followed looking up watching as the creature was carried up by a thick-fiber rope. Alright, he could do that.

Crawling into the shaft, Lieutenant Vir pressed either leg against the wall and began scuttling up after the thing. He was growing closer.

Through the visor of his helmet, he swore he could hear a high pitched keening note. Was that coming from the creature?

He was close now.

He could see it better, about five feet long all together, with six limbs and a tail. Reaching out, he snatched at the tail. The keening continued as the creature hurried it’s frantic pace upwards. Its body was covered in a thin hide like snake skin metallic blues and purples leading up to an almost raptor-like head.

He must be dreaming, there was no way this was happening. He scrambled from the shaft racing after the creature and quickly catching up, at the last moment, the thing took a sharp turn leading him into another wide room. It was made almost like an amphitheater starting with a small bowl and widening upwards towards the top. Thousands of dark black eyes blinked at him from those heights. Glowing substances cast the room into bright green luminance.

And then a circle of trailing water burst down from the ceiling crashing around him to the floor trailing away at the edges of the room. He stopped where he was in confusion and shock.

What the hell.

The creature he had been chasing collapsed near the far end of the chamber body rising and falling heavily.

He looked around at the water again, realizing awkwardly how this must look. He didn’t mean to scare the creature, and now that the thing had stopped running, it probably meant it thought it was safe…. How would water stop him though? Vir decided to stay where he was for the moment, maybe let them ease up.

He waved a hand at them through the trails of water.

“Hey, it’s alright, I’m not going to hurt anyone. I just want to talk.”

The room around him shifted. He could see it through the visor of his helmet.

Hm…. Well it wasn’t really likely they could understand him, was it?

He paused shrugged, and stepped through the wall of water, shaking himself as he came out wiping droplets from his visor.

The room broke into pandemonium as the creatures freaked out. Water cannons went of splashing him from left to right with the substance. It wasn’t even enough to knock him off his feet, and he just stood there hands raised in front of his visor.

He had a feeling that if he had brought a super soaker to the party, than he would absolutely dominate.

Eventually the water ran out and he was still standing looking up at them with his arms crossed.

“Are you done?”

The room was very still.

Wiping his gloves on some of the glowing moss, he approached the first creature, curious. It pulled back against the wall still breathing heavily.

He glanced at his hands to make sure there were no water droplets left. It was probably allergic or something, maybe?

He reached out.

The creature pulled back

He tried to be gentle, running a gloved hand along its ridged back as it pulled away from him. He patted it a few more times. Wow, it felt weird.

That’s when Captain Kelly and the others burst into the room, “ADAM!” They held their weapons up brandishing them at the creatures high above.

“STOP.” Vir yelled, “STOP.”

They did, weapons still aimed.

“Damn Lieutenant, are you ok/”

He walked over, “I’m alright, I think I freaked them out a bit though.” He wasn’t expecting the open hand slap that clubbed him on the side of the helmet. And the other one as the captain backhanded and then forehanded him repeatedly, “You… absolute….. F******…. idiot….. You could have gotten yourself killed.”

It hit him only then what he had done.

Whoops

“Sorry, Captain, I guess I just got…. A little overenthusiastic “

She glared at him through the glass in her visor, “Deal with you, later. Idiot boy.”

He wilted and moved to the back of the group.

But secretly, inside he was thrilling with their discovery.

It must have been a dream, who would have thought he, and average kid from earth would have been the first to whiteness E.T life

****

I like to think I’ve grown up a bit since then. Not so dumb as to chase unknown lifeforms by myself in an unknown alien ship. For that I was NEARLY demoted, and suspended from active missions for over a year. The crew also made up an entire reward ceremony for the, and I quote “THE UNIVERSE’S BIGGEST IDIOT.” As far as I know, I think it’s still instituted in some areas of the glazy.

So you see, first contact story, no big deal, pretty innocuous if you ask me. Nothing to show that humans are scary or anything.

I honestly don’t know where all these weird rumors came from.

Humans aren’t scary.

#humans are space orcs #humans are weird #humans are space australians #humans are space oddities #earth is space australia #first contact

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fantroll-purgatory · 5 years ago

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@theshieldswordandcrown

I’d like it if you guys could look over my tea man for me! (Art by my friend lythaeriahomestucks. I haven’t made him a sprite yet.

Oofadoofa it’s been a while. Hi I hope your roleplay group is fun!

World: Alternia, but the draft is a lot further off than in canon, because none of my group is interested in roleplaying interstellar space battles or politics, especially considering the amount of setup that would have to go into making deep space believable. Though I think Friendsim’s stated they’re dragged off planet at 9 sweeps, so he’d still have a little time before getting dragged underground anyway.

Name: Oolong Matcha. Yes, they’re both types of tea. It started off as a quick joke, but I’ve grown to love it. Not only is matcha green, like his blood, but he’s a gardener, and really enjoys tea.

Mmmmm I mean joke trolls are famously canon in Homestuck. See: SWIFER EGGMOP or the salt and pepper shaker troll BUTTT mmmm. I feel like naming a character based at least partially on Japanese monks Oolong would deserve some side-eye. But I like the matcha bit! So let’s see…I like him being a gardener since monastic gardens were very much A Thing, and one of the famous still-extant ones is at Rievaulx abbey, so maybe we give him RIVULX, which sounds sufficiently trollish and is obvious enough for someone to get the reference.

Age: 9.69 Sweeps, or 21 Earth years.

Theme/Story: He’s partially themed after monks, specifically Irish and Japanese, which was originally an excuse for his bald head, but ended up influencing his clothing, calm demeanor, and lusus. I was also, oddly, thinking of 4chan – not maniacs like /pol/, but just average people who don’t get out enough, like to chatter about anime or cooking, and generally act like a bit of a dipshit. Fatherhood is definitely a theme with him as well – he’s already a father figure to two other trolls.

Hmmm. I like the broad concept, but I think we can tighten up a little on the “monk” theme by expanding it. Review Goals: General overview, classpecting advice, filling in missing details like fetch modus or lunar sway, etc.

Strife Specibus: He greatly prefers to snipe threats before they reach him, but if he’s forced into melee, he’ll grab a pipe and go berserker nuts. He takes satisfaction in neutralizing threats, especially if he’s protecting someone or something. He’s not averse to talking things out, but dislikes putting others on the line.

Hmm. None of that is a strife specibus, though I suppose you’re going for riflekind and pipekind. Generally void players use fistkind since it’s the absence of a weapon, but if you want to give him another option besides hand-to-hand melee may I suggest poisonkind? He could use something from his garden, like monkshood :3c. Or if you want to give him a melee weapon he could use the sansetsukon per the 36th Chamber of Shaolin, which would double as a symbol reminder since he could arrange the segments in a backwards s. Fetch Modus: ;;3;; I have absolutely no idea.

What about a clue modus where the items are obscured but contain details describing them? With the caveat that some of them will have similar color/taste/textures listed. I think this might be fun because there are actually *two* famous detectives with the last name Monk, Adrian Monk and William Monk.

Blood Color: Jade.

That works great, especially with Friendsim’s reveal that many jades are indeed monastic/cloistered.

Lunar Sway: Not sure.

Given that he’s a monk and you have painted him as someone unlikely to cause conflict or rebel against the system, I think he’d be a Prospit dreamer.

Title: Knight of Void, someone who exploits what little secrecy and irrelevance he has for all it’s worth. He was first conceived as a Bard, to fit into a fansession, but I eventually decided it didn’t fit what the character had developed to be.

Symbol and Meaning: I made it up, and it doesn’t have a name. It’s an infinity symbol, broken in the center - like this, but flipped 90 degrees clockwise. I guess it could tie into his aspect by…destroying infinity, I guess, but I really haven’t put that much thought into it.

If we’re going by the EZ, he would be Virittanius, the Deliberate. Which I think fits him quite well! It also looks like a further corruption of the sign you gave him, so I may toy with that a little in the redesign. Handle: I feel like I might have given him a serious handle at one point, but if I did, I forgot it, so for now, it’s oolongMatcha. Just his name. Considering his classpect and desire for secrecy, this makes about as much sense as a rain barrel made out of crackers, but I’m not sure what to give him.

Since his new initials are RM, maybe revenantMyiopsitta. Revenant, of course, to hint at the fact that he’s part of the blood caste most commonly associated with rebirth after death, and Myiopsitta being the genus for two types of parakeet: the cliff parakeet and the monk parakeet. So we have his true identity as well as the unusual nature of his hive, both concealed in plain sight. Quirk: he types in all lower case and likes putting his horns in his emoticons! ’:) Maybe doing it like (:; would make more sense, as it’s his right (our left) horn that’s busted.

I like it! Depending on his redesign you may also want him to uƨe backwardƨ ƨ’ƨ to mimic hiƨ ƨymbol.

Special Abilities: Supreme Dadliness. Jokes aside, he’s a crack shot, even with his impeded vision, and has been successfully flying under the radar his whole life.

If you still want him to be a crack shot even with the changes I suggested above, maybe he uses blowdarts to poison his enemies from afar?

Lusus: His father is a MASSIVE white snake; I was thinking some kind of constrictor. Personality-wise, he’s close to a prototypical 50s dad. He’s a safe haven for his son and those his baby cares about, and is exceedingly patient, to the point of letting a small child fingerpaint on him. He’s also willing to carry Oolong in emergencies, though I’m not really certain that would work in real life, movement-wise.

I feel like the snake can be a little overplayed as a lusus. If we want to give him something similar to a mother grub as a jadeblood, why not a massive butterfly based on the monk/dusky friar? It also gives you the mechanics for how his dadderfly would carry him around in emergencies.

Interests: He used to spend a lot of time alone on the internet - I originally conceptualized him as a very lonely NEET, to the point he had to find his wallet to remember his own name - but has become more adventurous and friendly, spending more time with his girlfriend and friends (and he has friends now!) He’s very proud of his garden and fruit trees, some of which are rare, difficult to grow properly, and/or dangerous (offering more security).

Huh! You don’t explain *how* he goes from isolated to friendly, but I’d hope that gardening is a way for him to reach out to others since it’s a hobby you can commit to on your own but bond with other hobbyists.

Hive: He lives out in the woods by himself, though not so far from other trolls that he can’t take the day to go shopping or see his mate. His hive is surrounded by his garden on all sides, and has a very visible path down the center (making it easy for him to see anyone approaching, and shoot if they’re a threat). Trees surround it, and dangerous plants are strategically placed to make going through his garden unpleasant at best (it also makes weeding a pain, but he thinks it’s worth it). His hive is especially unusual in that the porch is raised up to the second floor with large poles, and you have to use a ladder to get up to it (unless you’re snakedad, in which case you go up the poles). He has a remote so he can let it down from the ground, as well as access to it on the platform, so he can let people up himself. I don’t think the ground level has a door. I’d be happy to submit pictures, if you want.

Feel free to show us pictures, but I like the concept a lot!

Appearance: Tall and rail-thin, excepting his oddly curvy hips. (I figured due to jades being majority female, developing jade males might be exposed to more than the usual amount of estrogen and androgens. Also I’m way more used to drawing women than men and his initial outline was a gal for like ten minutes.) He shaves his head bald. (This is because A) I didn’t want to bother trying to figure out men’s hair - I almost never draw dudes - and B) he’s partially themed after monks, who often shave their heads. I don’t remember why he says he does it.)

…man, I’m gonna take issue with the way you phrased this description. There’s a lot of gender essentialism going on in your explanation there, and given that a number of us mods are trans and nonbinary I feel obligated to point out a few things:

1) Trolls are bugs. They’re not even mammals. They aren’t exposed to androgen or estrogen or any hormone to give them a certain body shape. It is quite heavily implied that when the mother grub gives birth it is to a bunch of larvae.

2) I know that Homestuck lore has given us largely jade girls and one jade trans guy but that’s no reason to assume that jade men are broadly more “feminine” by default in *any* dimension

3) Even if trolls *did* work like humans, it rubs me the wrong way to see someone talking about a man’s “oddly” curvy hips like I’ve got guy friends both trans and cis with wide hips and the only reason to remark on it at all is because We Live In A Society that forcibly genders people in relation to physical characteristics.

…So I am otherwise taking your description at face value. ______ Matcha is tall, rail thin, with curvy hips and a bald head. I will probably add some little fangs, per the Alternian fashion guide.

He wears leggings (unless it’s very hot) and long tunics or robes, usually tan, with his symbol emblazoned on the breast. He goes barefoot if he can. His right (our left) horn is broken, due to an accident in his youth (I think he fell onto something?), amusingly improving his vision, since his unbroken left horn points in front of his left eye, obscuring it somewhat. His face could almost be described as delicate, and his default expression is calm.

I don’t knooooow that tan is a color trolls wear all that often in Alternia, so I will see how I can rework that in the redesign. I get him being barefoot, but I may give it a shot spriting him monk shoes for if he wants to go on an outing. :3c For his broken horn…hm. When we see trolls with physical damage, it is almost always something more significant than just “childhood accident” (see: every troll in Homestuck except Equius who somehow had like 3 simultaneous accidents?). I have an idea for his horns that I will get to in the redesign, and I will probably add a hook to his front horn, both because it’s a jadeblood trait and because it seems suitably horrifying to constantly have a sharp implement millimeters from your eye.

Personality: Oolong is a nice, fatherly young man, well regarded by most he meets. He really really likes tea. He has a beautiful, dangerous mafiosa matesprite in a rustblood named Andora Ingenu, and they adore each other. He’s also taken on the substitute dad role for an adorable young fuschia who lives in the swamp near his forest, Lillie Waters, teaching her how to cook (and keep her tools clean) and rescuing her from other fuschias. He’s very protective of his and his loved ones’ privacy and safety, and spends a LOT of his time in the massive gardens around his hive, of which he’s deservedly proud. He is very good at being sneaky, and sometimes takes the time to run around seeing what he can get away with, especially in the realm of snatching seeds up for his garden. He sells whatever plants he can grow for money, especially fruits and vegetables, but he doesn’t really enjoy sales. He doesn’t put a lot of stock in blood superiority, but doesn’t make a big deal out of it. He’s oddly well adjusted for someone who spent most of his life alone.

I like this description! Also looking at his close compatriots, it looks like I can swap the tan in his design for rust or fuchsia. We already see jadebloods wearing a fair amount in the red/burgundy/purple spectrum, so it should fit right in with the others.

Land: I don’t remember if I’ve come up with one. If I did, I feel like it may have heavily wooded areas, dark and tangled and difficult to navigate.

Hmmm. What about Land of Rough and Reflection (LORAR)? Covered in rough terrain, with pools to contemplate oneself. Unbeknownst to your troll, there are switches at the bottom of each lake (deeper than he could ever hope to dive and hold his breath) that must be flipped to drain the lakes and free the consorts from the underwater caves in which they’ve been trapped for generations. His land would initially seem completely empty and without guidance, and it neatly parallels his own situation before he began to socialize.

I hope you like him! :) I’d love to see what you guys think of him.

He’s certainly an interesting troll, and I hope I’ve helped by way of sharpening up on his theme! Let’s move on to the redesign.

Top to bottom as usual!

Hair - I gave him some stubble courtesy of fan-troll (I have never managed a post without plugging fan-troll/tajazzled’s sprite sheet and I’m not gonna stop now)

Horns - I wanted to make his other horn sort of…curve away from his head so it looks like his symbol from above?

Eyes and brows - they didn’t change but big ups to fan-troll for giving me bases to modify!

Mouth - this is a modification of Sollux’s mouth but I gave him lil fangs and a little lower lip definition

Robes - I just modified some of Kanaya’s robes, appropriately enough! I decided to go for a red/pink shade that was between rust and fuchsia so he could fit in while subtly broadcasting his allegiance

Shoes - they’re John’s but with buckles! :B monk shoes

Aaaand that’s about it for my critique! I hope this helped!

-TR

#jadeblood #submission #oolong matcha #oolong #matcha #theshieldswordandcrown #rivulx #rivulx matcha #review #redesign #tr review

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everyman0 · 5 years ago

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WALLS TO BREAK US

so i know i dropped all communication for the past several months...and evans fucking journal might have you believe i sat on my ass the entire time but that isnt the case. I didnt intend on sharing this information, frankly. but my time is running out now, evans already gone. this account of events will be all i have left.

i cant leave this place. i dont even know where the fuck i am supposed to be to begin with.

there is a house. a neighborhood. stores. a town. but nothing has a name.

there are people, but despite the gift of sight i was given, i see nothing of them. like empty thoughts given a shell to walk around in.

i thought at first, a couple months ago when i was first allowed to walk outside again, that they were real and that i was simply too overwhelmed with shock to really notice what was wrong here. but now i see it. i see it because there is nothing to see. these people aren't people at all, more like ghosts.

at least im not entirely alone. there's still the house and asterion.

ive walked to the store many times, even got assaulted in the parking lot. Was that guy a ghost too? I dont know. but i havent only gone to the store - ive walked around the entire town. know what i finally realized, several days after i had made that exploratory journey?

there are no cars here. none being sold, none being driven, absolutely fucking nothing. no bikes either. no skates, no skateboards, no heelies wheelies or fucking feelies. not a single mode of transportation of any kind.

theres a bus stop though! thank fuck for that! oh wait, it's fucking useless. i have not once seen a bus in this god forsaken place.

imagine the anguish i felt upon realizing that despite being able to steal groceries just fine, i cant even hope to steal a car to drive as far away as i can from this hellhole. but it doesnt stop there.

of course it doesnt.

so alright, no cars. but i still had my legs, right? (and still do, somehow.)

so i figured if i cant drive away, i could at least saunter the fuck out of this place and maybe determine some sense of location on planet fucking earth. i set out. i walked in one direction from the house to the town and onward. and onward. and onward. for five fucking hours.

i found nothing.

but it wasnt your average nothingness like that of a long rural road, as it had originally appeared to me. no...instead, i eventually encountered what i call the Edge. here, the road stutters into an impossible blackness. here, if you turn your head, you can see how the blackness runs parallel to the world around you, bordering everything for miles. real truman show type shit.

the real kicker is when i discovered that only i can see it.

like any good scientist, i did some experimenting. kicked some cans, threw some rocks, all hurtling in the direction of the black wall. to my surprise, the items phased through it. swallowed might be a better word. i couldnt see or hear if the objects landed on the other side, if there was even a side to land on beyond the boundaries of ink. so then i decided i needed an extra set of eyes, and brought evan along a few days later.

this is the first and last time i let him outside in my care, and for good reason.

we arrived at the Edge, and evan was immediately annoyed at me as i had stopped walking just a few feet before the black wall. i asked him to explain what the problem was. he was like, "dude, you told me there was some shit i had to see and we have been walking forever. where the fuck is it? is this it? because it looks like a whole lot of fucking nothing."

i then asked, "what does this nothing look like to you?"

evan was growing more confused and angry, but i didnt want him to know what i did until i knew what he did first. i didnt want to contaminate his perception by revealing my own. i needed to be thorough and absolutely sure of our experience.

he threw his arms in the air in frustration, "a road, vin. it looks like a road, the same fuckin' cracked asphalt we've been following for miles. forwards and backwards, road."

evan took a step forward, into the blackness. i saw the tip of his foot disappear, sliced by the unfathomable wall. evan didnt seem to notice anything different, standing there with his arms crossed. so then i knew at least one thing for certain: only i could see the wall.

however, until seeing evan's foot just barely phasing through the wall, it hadnt occurred to me if i could pass through it too...or at least touch it. before, when i had been throwing cans and such, i didnt dare get too close to the black edge. i had no idea what would happen, and wasnt particularly interested in finding out at the time. all i could gather was that, just like the rest of the town and even the house herself, it was designed to keep things inside.

as it turns out, evan was not one of those things intended to stay. i stood there pondering silently, and watched as evan began an impatient pacing along the length of the wall. an imperfect, wobbly hobble across the street and back; i saw arms and legs flash in and out of the blackness as evan walked, still taking no notice. evan couldnt see the difference like i could, and he wasnt the prisoner these walls were meant to encase. so who was?

well obviously it's me. at least, i'm somehow a part of the equation i think. and then i figured now was no better a time as any for me to make my approach and reach out - touch the wall, see what happens, inwardly hope it just kills me on the spot, and so on.

but right as i had decided this, i hear evan angrily spitting an expletive and turn, marching off beyond the pitch black walls. guess he was tired of waiting on me, and you know ev - always runs in head first. i word this story now as if this is something i remember fondly about evan, but let me be clear: in that moment of time, standing in the middle of some fucking road behind a maliciously black prison wall, a wall of which evan was now beyond and impossible for me to see any longer? leaving me, alone?

i fucking hate how much of a hardheaded ass evan is sometimes.

i was so caught off guard by evan's sudden disappearance beyond the veil of the Edge that what that meant didn't register until several seconds later when i found myself clamoring towards the wall. i yelled for evan, then screamed for him. my hands meet the black surface with a loud plang as if the wall was made of glass, but the way the wall felt against my skin is indescribable. i wailed my fists against the presumed surface, the noise of the impacts reverberating loudly. this lasted a few minutes.

evan eventually came back...and he seemed just as he were before, except maybe even more annoyed as he began to once again pester me on why i was just standing there wasting time. he got his first round of bitching out before he noticed that i had tears running down my face, looking disheveled.

he changed his tune and asked me what was wrong, what the fuck happened. his confusion was telling - he hadnt heard me screaming for him to come back. i wiped my eyes, faked a chuckle, and told him it was nothing to worry about and that maybe it was best to go home for now and try some other time when im more 'in the present.'

i decided that i wasnt going to tell evan about the Edge, at least not right then. i needed time to gather myself back together, since the resulting panic attack had taken a lot out of me for one day. But even after i had taken that time...

i didnt want evan to know about the wall. fuck, i know its selfish, but i didnt want evan to know that he had the ability to leave this wretched fuckhole but i didnt, that i was trapped and he wasnt. its not because i wanted to spare evan the heartbreak of knowing his friend was doomed...but because i didnt want evan to get the idea that he could abandon me without consequence.

i didnt want evan to use this knowledge as an escape plan to get away from me.

not wanting evan to leave me wasnt the only reason i didnt tell him though. there was still so much i was uncertain about; hell, i still wasnt sure if just being outside the house put evan at risk. i took a chance in taking him to the wall and he lasted well enough during that time...but given what was discovered, even if evan could sit out on the lawn every day and not a thing touch him...the very existence of the wall was a dangerous game of chance.

this is why i did not want evan to go back outside again after this incident. i couldnt trust that he would truly be safe...and i couldnt trust that he wouldn't just run away on me. i completely fucked myself in both ways, though. he's out there getting hurt or dying or already dead because i pushed him far enough to truly fucking hate me.

even now, ive no idea what happened to evan after he ran out of the house. Maybe he never made it past the wall again.

maybe this post is the first time he’s hearing about it.*

*IT IS, YOU SMART BOY. I COULDN’T JUST KILL HIM BEFORE YOU EXPOSED YOURSELF AS A HIDEOUS EXCUSE OF A FRIEND. THE PAIN WILL ADD FLAVOR! MAYBE I’LL GIVE YOU A TASTE.

#evrymn0 #phase???

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phantomphangphucker · 6 years ago

Text

The Lessons A Mother Gives - Phic Phight

Prompt Creator: @bibliophileap Prompt: He’s flying. Or is he? Summary: Maddie gives a lesson on ghost powers to Danny's class with Lancer, and Danny is highly intrigued by Gravity Nullification.

Warning: slightly depressing, bullying, analysis of the human condition.

also on my AO3 at GothMoth

“Alright class, today we have a presenter-“ Lancer gets cut off by slightly enthusiastic cheering, while Danny simply stares out the window to his left. Lancer, coughing to recapture the students' attention “as I was saying, due to all the recent ghost attacks the school board has decided to have a local ghost expert-”. Danny jerks his head over to Lancer muttering “oh no”, as Lancer continues. “-Ms. Fenton.” Lancer walks over to the door opening it to let Maddie in. “Please welcome Ms. Fenton and try to behave like the young adults I know you are.” Lancer sighs as he sits in his corner chair. Maddie stands confidently at the front of the class and gives a little wave to Danny. Who visibly shrinks in his seat, as a couple of jocks snicker at him.

“Hello class! I’m sure you all know me as Danny’s mom but today I’m here as a professional. So address me as Ms. Fenton not Danny’s mom, please”. Maddie finishes her intro with a soft smile. Walking over to the whiteboard she quickly picks up a green marker and starts to write as she speaks. “So it was decided that you all would get educated on how ghost do what ghost do, meaning their powers. Rather than how to fight them.” Turning around for a second to shrug. “The principal decided teaching teens how to use ecto-weapons was a bad idea, I say pah! To that but rules are rules.”. Turning back to the board she finishes writing out a vertical list of all the main, well-known ghost powers.

Ecto-Blasts

Ecto-shields

Invisibility

Intangibility

Body manipulation

Over-shadowing

Duplication

Gravity nullification

“Miss?” Paulina asks with her hand raised, lowing it when Maddie looks to her. “What’s that last one?” Paulina finishes her question with a few agreeing nods. Maddie smiles, glad to see they’re paying attention; unlike her son. Unbeknownst to her, Danny is actually paying attention. Just with his head in his arms, listening both to her and sneakily watching out the window through his arms for any ghosts. “Well, gravity nullification is probably better known by you as” air-quoting “flying” end air-quoting “ but that’s really the wrong word for it”. Star, looking highly confused just asks “what do you mean?”. “You see ghosts aren’t made out of the same things as you and I, they’re just shells wrapped over ectoplasm.” Maddie doesn’t notice the way Danny faintly shivers at her words and how he grimaces. “And ectoplasm reacts differently to the environment compared to any other substance. Functionally, it is always in a state of weightlessness. Ghosts actually have to force solidity into their ectoplasm to even be affected by gravity at all.”. Kwan shoots his hand up. “Yes?”. “What about that metal one, we’ve all seen him falling and crashing around? Wouldn’t he not be able to do that if he’s weightless?”. Maddie chuckles lightly but quickly scolds Danny’s still slouched down form before answering the question. “Danny dear, please sit up straight. You’ll ruin your back like that.” Maddie scolding is sweet as the class snickers at him more. Danny jolts right up, face red but keeps a hand in front of his mouth, just in case his ghost sense goes off. “Anyways, the metal ghost is an anomaly as it’s actually a small blob-like ghost wearing a suit of armour. The armour, like any armour, isn’t inherently weightless. Meaning the ghost has to extend its natural weightlessness to the suit!”. Maddie is quite pleased with herself hearing the “ooooo”’s and “ahhhhh”’s from most the students. Danny, meanwhile, is wondering just how the hell his mom actually knows about that. Sure, he found out about Skulkers real form right away but he doubts his mom found out the same way he did. And even though he’s not on good terms with Skulker, Danny can’t help but frown at him being called an “it”.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t take long for Paulina to ask about Phantom, much to Danny’s dismay and the rest of the classes joy. Maddie shakes her head at the clear display of fondness for the ghostly “hero” but answers honestly anyway. “Phantom as a whole is an anomaly itself, very little about that one makes sense and finding out anything about it has proven to be, more or less, impossible. However, considering Phantom’s lack of any suit or exoskeleton, it’s safe to say it’s as inherently weightless as any normal ghost.”. Danny is kinda shocked by the genuine response and it does get him to ponder about his “flying” ability. Muttering into his hand quietly, “well it’s not like I can really feel wind strongly flying by, and the wind resistance doesn’t change regardless of how fast I go.”. Tapping his chin, “and thinking about it yeah, it feels like being suspended in water...but more floaty. Huh, I used to notice that a lot actually”. Shrugging, Danny smirks “the perks of getting used to things I guess”. Danny is pulled out of his mutterings by Mr. Lancer “Daniel, of all people I would expect you to be paying attention” causing Danny to jolt and look around, earning him more snickers. Meanwhile, Maddie just sighs and shakes her head. “As I said, all ectoplasm has this quality due to its composition. The particles it’s made out of are so densely compact, that it actually has its own gravitational force. That force is only strong enough to negate the earths pull, however, so you don’t have to worry about being pulled into an average ghost” Maddie adds with a chuckle.

Paulina, spring her hand up again, “but what if the ghost is carrying you? Would it make them easier to hold you?” Blushing slightly “I wouldn’t want Phantom to struggle carrying me”. Danny physically groans as his mom frowns, “you shouldn’t be that close to any ghost, especially not Phantom. Regardless of the ghosts act, it is evil and it does not care; just like all other ghosts.”. This earns her almost unanimous glares from the students so Maddie just sighs. “But yes, being that close to a ghost would allow for its ectoplasms gravitational pull to have a slight effect on you, instantly making you lighter. But most ghost will almost instantly extend their gravity nullification to anything they try to carry on instinct. So you’d effectively be weightless yourself.”. Dash grins wide “so that’s why Phantom can lift so much...it’s not strength but some weird gravity thing. Cool man, I would kill for that on the field”. Someone chuckles next to him “you’d have to be killed for it” which earns a couple laughs, even one from Danny; who’s ever fond of dark humour. Sighing Maddie corrects Dash, “not quite true, a ghost carrying something would have to exert adequate strength to extend enough gravity nullification to the item in question to render it weightless.”. Danny mulls over this in his head, things were definitely not as heavy or as hard to pick as Phantom; even from the very beginning. Now that both his halves were physically stronger, due to the constant exercise and fighting he did, most things were freakishly light. Even in Fenton form. Muttering again, “though I guess my ectoplasm is a constant in me so I guess I constantly have at least some of this gravity nullification active at all times. Huh, for once I’m learning something that actually helps me”. Noticing Lancer’s glare he makes a point of following his mom with his eyes, instead of staring into space. As Dash pipes up again “so Phantom really is built then? Awesome! I knew he wasn’t punny”. Maddie looks dumbfounded by this, muttering under her breath; though Danny can hear due to enhanced hearing. “I can’t believe how fooled that ectoplasmic scum has all the children. I’ll have to have an honest talk with Jasmine and Danny about their own fondness of him. At least Danny has a healthy fear of ghosts, even if it is a little overboard.”. Danny internally groans, dreading supper, as Maddie continues addressing the class. “Punny isn’t really possible with ghosts, Mr. Baxter, all of them have dangerous powers and most have unique abilities as well.” Earning a couple raised eyebrows from the students. One band geek asks “but what about that box guy? He doesn’t seem capable of doing much of anything” at this most the class laughs, including Danny. Maddie smiles loosely “that one has some sort of power that lets it get into our world whenever it pleases, which is a threat in and of itself. If it wasn’t for how lacking it is in all other areas, it would be an absolute nightmare”. Danny can’t help but laugh hard at this. The idea of The Box Ghost, even after the Pandora’s Box incident, being a genuine threat is so absurd. Danny earns a few odd looks, including from his mom, over his wheezing laughter. Someone in the back mutters “isn’t Fenton, like, terrified of ghosts?” His friend next to him shrugging “I guess even that scaredy cat doesn’t fear the Box ghost.”. The first boy mutters again “That’s kinda sad for the Box ghost actually.”. “Moving on,” Maddie says over the two boys, still shooting Danny curious looks. “Is there any other main powers you’d like me to talk about first before I go down the list?”. Kwan sticks his hand up at the prompt, “uh yeah, what’s intangibility mean?”. Maddie chuckles sweetly, “why it’s the ability to go through solid objects without damaging them. Both intangibility and invisibility have relatively the same explanation, so I do both”. Turning back to the board Maddie cross off gravity nullification. “Basically, ectoplasm is capable of vibrating at specific frequencies and speeds that nothing else really can. This is excluding ecto-raineum which is why ghost hunters make their equipment and weapons out of it.”. Maddie smirks to herself, “this vibration allows for ghosts to move their ectoplasm at such a rate that they surpass that of all the materials around and/or light itself. Rendering them capable of going through almost anything and blinking out of visible range.”. Maddie paces around the front of the room as she continues, “Some theorize that many animals who can see wider ranges of light can always see ghosts, but this is still hotly contested.”. Danny muttered to himself while she was speaking, “yeah and it’s a hell of a lot harder than it looks.”. Star shoots her hand up asking, “I’ve seen ghost turn people invisible and what not, does that hurt the person? Vibrating the persons' cells or whatever like that?”. At that question Danny makes a mildly horrified face, whispering “I never even thought about that, oh god I’m going to have to ask Sam and Tucker about that.”. “Thankfully, we’re certain it doesn’t hurt, if it did I’m sure many more people in Amity would complain about it; considering how commonly that happens here”. The students nod, all but Danny accepting this answer at face value. Danny’s learned not to fully trust all of his parents “science”, after learning so much for himself. He’d rather verify something that could potentially be inadvertently hurting people, for himself.

“Moving on, I’ll talk about ecto-blasts and ecto-shields like I did for the previous two abilities. Both are nothing more than a ghost expelling ectoplasm outside of their manifested form, in a controlled fashion.”. “So kind of like spitting?” Dash jumps in. Maddie, turning to him, replies “That’s about as close as a human can get, yes. Ectoplasm isn’t something ghost can just randomly expel out of their body’s however they please. Ectoplasm is their bones, organs, skin, blood and consciousness. A ghost could destroy itself with over expulsion.”. Paulina makes a disgusted face and pulls her hands up to her chest “so ghost are like? Throwing around their own blood?!”. Maddie grimaces, “in a way, yes, but it’s so vastly different from actual blood that it’s really nothing alike.”. Paulina still looking grossed out, “Well, Phantoms the only one whose ecto-whatever isn’t nasty then”. Danny can tell his mom is restraining herself from going off on a tirade about ghosts. He finds himself rather impressed by her rare show of not going overboard. “Yes well, ectoplasm should always be handled as carefully as possible, you absolutely should not touch it and you absolutely should avoid it; as best you can anyways.” At this Lancer gives a curt nod of agreement. “The last thing any of us want is you, mostly bright, young students getting hurt or worse.” Lancer sighs darkly. While Danny just chuckles to himself “I’ve already done the “worse” option, twice over so...little late for the warning.” Smirking, he can’t help but feel glad for not getting the warning though. He wouldn’t trade his halflife for anything else, though he could do with a break sometime.

“Now duplication is one of the trickier things a ghost can pull. Not a lot of ghost can do it and it’s very difficult for them, but it also makes catching a ghost impossible if you don’t get every duplicate. The body manipulation is similar, being a more basic form of duplication. However, Phantom seems to be one of the few ghosts that actually utilizes body manipulation both offensively and defensively.” At this Paulina grins proudly. Danny’s not sure whether to be creeped out or pleased about her grin. “On one hand she loves me, on the other she’s completely obsessed” Danny sighs. “Yeah, I think I saw him turn his stomach into a freaking donut once” Kwan chuckles. Maddie nods enthusiastically “yes that would be an example of body manipulation, duplication is just body manipulation taken to the extreme. How ghosts manage to control two separate bodies is a bit of a mystery but the general consensus is that since their ectoplasm is their consciousness it’s no different to them than controlling two hands at once.”. Danny has to cover his eyes to keep from boring holes into his mom’s face with his glare. “There is nothing fucking easy about duplication...though I’d have no clue how to explain having 6 heads to a class.”. “I had like 10 bodies once! It was a nightmare, even if it made playing pass more fun.” Kwan shivers slightly as Maddie roles her eyes. “The stories kids spin”.

“Lastly, over-shadowing; easily the most unpleasant and evil power ghosts have. I’m sure you already know but it’s the power to take over a real persons body and control it. Over-shadowing is near impossible to detect without special equipment but ghosts can’t maintain it forever.”. One of the students in the back scoffs “I’m pretty sure all of us have had some experience with that trick.”. “Yes and it’s the only way for a human body to have ghost powers. While possessing a human body ghosts can still use gravity nullification, invisibility and intangibility. Though it is much harder to do.”. Danny can’t help but smirk as he watches his mom talk so self-assured, when a halfa lives in the same house, eats the same food, and talks to her every day. “There’s something hilariously ironic about a scientist living with the very thing that disproves their theories.”. Maddie walks over to the board and draws a red person shaped outline and then a green one just over top. Tapping the drawing with the pen, “this is basically how over-shadowing works. Ghosts layer their own ectoplasm overall a persons internals, including the brain. Allowing it to use its ectoplasm to control all the nerves and access every sense of the body. This is also why no one really remembers what happened. The ectoplasm coats over the brain muting all the synapses and their communication.”. Dash just groans “I didn’t think there’d be so much brain stuff with ghosts.”. Danny, chuckling “what? Your head hurts?”. Dash turns and pelts Danny with a pencil, the only thing he bothered to bring with him to class. “Mr. Baxter! What did I say about behaving!” Lancer crosses his arms staring at the boy, releasing a disappointed sigh as Dash just glares and sits back down. Meanwhile, Maddie has her hands on her hips, clearly not impressed to see even a hint of the bullying she’s been suspecting Danny’s been getting all his injuries from. “Baxter, the only time going on the offence against someone or thing is when that thing is a ghost. People, unlike ghosts, are not inherently out to hurt you. So control your anger and Danny, don’t antagonize him.”. Danny grumbles “it’s called a joke, not my fault he can’t handle being the joke”, at the mild scolding. “Ghosts are the things that lash out violently at the slightest displeasure, you kids aren’t a bunch of ectoplasmic scum.” Danny sighs “and here comes the anti-ghost rant...plus last I checked I’ve still got my healthy amount of ectoplasm so at least one of us here is indeed ghostly.”. In his mutterings, he completely misses the rest of his moms' rant, though he doesn’t miss noting all the unimpressed teenage faces. Even Mr. Lancer seems put off. Maddie, brushing some imaginary dirt of her thighs, “Anyways, I figured to wrap this up, we’d have a little discussion about which of these powers you’re most impressed by and how you’d use them for good; instead of doing what ghosts do.” Looking around at the suddenly very interested students, Maddie nods contently. “We’ll break up into groups of 4 based on seating and you’ll debate amongst yourselves which power’s best.”. Then giving the floor to Mr. Lancer, “I expect written personal reports from each of you, this will count as your creative writing assignment. Worth 20% of your grade, lates will NOT be accepted.” Lancer finishes as he hands out the assignment sheets, all the while glaring at Danny. Danny just rolls his eyes, muttering under breath “hmm an assignment about something I constantly think about and have years of experience with...”. It takes Danny all of two seconds to write down gravity nullification on his sheet, only slightly intending to actually fill the rest out later.

Maddie and Lancer set about pushing everyone into their groups. Danny ends up with Dash, Star and a random band geek. “What’s up Fentit! If you say anything other than that gravity thing you’ll be eating my toenail clippings for a week.” Danny groans sarcastically “oH wOw WhAt A cOiNcIdEnCe, ThAt’S jUsT wHaT i WaS tHiNkInG.”. Star giggles a little while the band geek just stares in awe and mild horror at Danny’s guts. Dash glares at Danny but turns to then glare at the geek who quickly chirps, “gravitynullifcationisbestforsure”. Star sighs, “I was going to say body manipulation but that seems pointless now”. Danny raises an eyebrow at her, genuinely curious, “why that one, it clearly doesn’t have many uses?”. Star rolls her eyes, “for perfect skin of course. Who cares about floating or flying or whatever. When you can make your skin, hair, eyes and everything else look exactly how you want it to.”. Danny sighing, not quite sure what he expected, replies anyways “pretty sure it doesn’t work quite like that and you wouldn’t be able to keep it up forever. Nothing compares to being up in the sky”. Dash rolls his eyes “space nerd much, try caring about something real. You can bench so much with that power. It’s like super strength but better. Gosh, Phantom is so lucky.” Danny smirks, “Well yeah, the strength boost is great but that still doesn’t beat flying. Normal people can be super strong but they can’t fly.”. The geek jumps in, correcting Danny “your mom says it’s not really flying though, just like weightless floating. I think I’d vomit” his face, as if to prove a point, looks like just thinking about it will make him vomit. “Astronauts are weightless most of the time and they don’t constantly vomit.”. Danny rebuttals while painting a hand at the geek. “Yeah well they train for that, I certainly have no training” the geek rubs his stomach. Just as Dash punches him in the arm “that’s pretty obvious wimp.”. Star just rolls her eyes at the boy’s behaviour.

Pretty soon after, Lancer calls everything to a halt and has one person from each group say their piece. Over-shadowing, invisibility and gravity nullification; are the only powers picked by any of the groups. Teams for over-shadowing would use them for politic influence.

Teams for invisibility would use it to make their own lives easier.

Teams for gravity nullification are split on using strength to help people and using floating to become a high-class travel system. Listening to all the reasons people give out, Danny can’t help but be glad that he’s the one who actually wound up with the powers. “Sweet Plasmius, things like this really smack me in the face with how much more serious and mature I’ve become; compared to everyone else.”. Shaking his head “literally none of them even considered being just like Phantom. Sure, some talked about helping but not to the same degree at all.”. The last group leader manages to wrap things up just before the end of day dismissal bell rings.

Danny stands, looking out the window, as the rest of his classmates file out; he can see Lancer approaching from the corner of his right eye. “Fenton, I expect to see that assignment tomorrow...”. Noticing Lancer’s slightly less collected than usual demeanour, “ but that’s not really what’s on your mind, is it?”. Lancer sighs “you’re always more intelligent than your work says and you pay way too much attention to everything. But yes, your mothers, uh, beliefs on ghosts are, honestly, quite harsh and even cruel.” Lancer leans his hips against the windowsill, “I’ve had many personal encounters with, including with Phantom, ghosts. I can’t say I agree with her view of them being pure evil. Even more so in the case of Phantom. While I do not envy him, it’s clear to me he’s a good soul.” Lancer looks down at Danny in time to notice his soft smile. “Both me and my sister agree with you Lancer, but my parents would never hear of it. They’re scientist yes, but their theories matter more than the proof.”. Lancer shakes his head at this, “that’s not how it should be even if they know many things, speaking of work. I’d like to know your opinion now, since I genuinely doubt I’ll actually see that paper. I’m hopeful but not a fool.” Chuckling, Danny’s smile widens “gravity nullification, how could it be anything else. Though I do consider it flight even if it’s really not, which is kind of neat to know now”. Lancer raises an eyebrow at him, “you mean to tell me you never learned this from your parents before? I expected that they’d have taught you this before I even met you.”. Danny laughs at Lancer's shock, “I kind of tune all that out, normally their talk about ghost is completely hateful, today was a rare day where she tired to keep her biases out of the conversation. Pleasant surprise really.”. Lancer shakes his head frowning, “Well, I’m glad you don’t carry that hate yourself. So what draws you so much to gravity nullification?”. Smiling, Danny replies in earnest “the sky is a home, a comfy place where you could just be free. You could sail over oceans, hover over a neon-lit fast food sign eating take out, or you could just go up”. Danny motions his hand upward and looks to the clouds, out the window “space was always my dream and with that power I could just go up and up and up. Get to see the stars like I always wanted; drift amongst Ursa Major, Aquila, and Eridanus. There’s a whole lot up there and to be able to just go and see it all on a whim? Nothing could compare.”. Lancer stares in awe at his most problematic student, unsure of how to respond. Eventually though, “you have wonderful dreams Daniel, though I can hear in your voice that you think you’ll never get see them through. The teacher in me wants to say work hard and you will, but I’ve started to realize that for some unknown reason you’re blocked from giving me your best. That hurts to see but I understand. Life doesn’t always work and a teenager being mature enough to be so introspective and watchful; tells me that something has indeed not worked out.”. Putting a hand on Danny, Lancer asks him one last question, “I could tell you were displeased with the other students reasons and uses for their selected power. Why is that?”. Smirking Danny looks at Lancer square in the face, this boldness takes Lancer off guard a bit. “Because of Phantom, no one, not a single person; aimed to do what he does. Self-sacrifice, leadership, heroism.....none of them aimed for that. They all wanted looks, or political gain, or money, or power for powers sake.” Chuckling, Danny continues “Phantom’s like hope here and none of them wanted to be that hope.”. Lancer is once again shocked but he smiles anyways “even I never thought of that Daniel, that says a lot of good things about you I believe.”. Patting Danny on the back, “go home and sleep, and I look forward to seeing your paper tomorrow”. Danny nods and walks to head out but Lancer just manages to catch Danny mutter “who knows maybe one day hope will fly away and sleep too”. Danny, chuckling heartily to himself “or I guess “nullify gravity or whatever”.

Lancer sits down heavily in his chair, just managing to catch a glimpse of Phantom flying by. “I wonder if Phantom even understands what he possesses and how he’s viewed?” Shaking his head he stares at Danny’s seat. “That kids mind is like a supernova shackled by whatever chains it is that keeps him grounded. In all honesty, I’m starting to just want to see him happy and content rather than grandly successful. And as a teacher, I find myself unsure what to do with that.”

Up in the sky, Danny fly’s around lazily in circles. “Well today sure was something and I now have a new look and appreciation for “gravity nullification”. Shaking his head with his hands behind his back, facing the sky; he slowly continues to defy earths gravitational pull and floats home.

End.

#phic phight #fanfic #phan phic #Danny Phantom #phandom #the lessons a mother gives #slightly depressing #bullying #analysis of the human condition #phantomphangphucker #have a fic suck my dick #mr. lancer #Maddie Fenton #danny fenton #kwan #paulina #star #dash

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