#also pikachu just chilling on its wing???

[adobe-outdesign]

I love this one leaked model sheet for Lugia where it's just standing with its arms crossed looking like it's about to drop the hottest album of 2000

[fierykitten2]

There was this leak just over half a year ago and it was on April Fools but it seems like there was a tiny bit that was correct (rest of the post under cut)

It sounds like the bit that’s true is Pikachu (of all Pokémon) getting a special Tera form and I was thinking, what if all Unrivaled Pokémon get the special Tera forms? Only thing is I only seem to have a decent idea for the two Decidueye (and even then I’m not 100% sure about Hisuian Decidueye)

Dragon Tera type Charizard: longer tail, slightly bigger, more infernal wings, fire comes from its mouth like Mega X and GMax

Fighting Tera type Cinderace: Best I can do is you know Puss in Boots? Get ready for Bnuuy in Boots

Poison Tera type Greninja: longer toungue? If in doubt, if they have a long tail or similar, extend that

Water Tera type Pikachu: the current theory in the leak community is we’re getting another surfing Pikachu

Flying Tera type Alolan Decidueye: big wings which don’t flap (similar to Mega Charizard X and GMax Corviknight). Never touches the ground

Bug Tera type Unovan Samurott: bigger horn idk. Maybe more horns. Maybe butterfly wings? Idk, that probably wouldn’t go

Ghost Tera type Johtonian Typhlosion: idk, probably just turn it into Hisuian Typhlosion but angy (this is why they should all wear masquerade masks)

Ice Tera type Inteleon: longer tail, bigger head crest

Rock Tera type Chesnaught: thicker shell, more spikes (less probably makes more sense but the spikes are iconic. This is actually what’s stopping me from removing Inteleon’s tail as well), probably goes without saying but make it browner (like closer to its shiny form)

Fairy Tera type Delphox: FAIRY WINGS! Maybe make the leg (and probably also arm) fur more floaty

Normal Tera type Rillaboom: idk probably bushier hair? Bigger drums? Honestly the Tera types of the Galar starters are in three completely different leagues and Rillaboom was the one done most dirty (I’m fine with Eevee having it and think that makes perfect sense but I’m still not fine with my drummer baby having it IT SHOULD’VE BEEN STEEL!)

Psychic Tera type Mewtwo: longer tail, sort of a fluffy version of the Mewtwo outfit from GO, floating energy stuff

Grass Tera type Hisuian Decidueye: more leaves in the wings, hat and legs! Give it chest hair comprised of leaves!

Fire Tera type Hisuian Typhlosion: idk, probably just turn it into Johtonian Typhlosion but chill (this is why they should all wear masquerade masks)

Normal Tera type Eevee: Eevee but floofier

Water Tera type Hisuian Samurott: make the moustache floatier (and more I just can’t think of anything else)

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Gale Reviews: ML Season 4 Episode 19: Simpleman/Simplificador

Spoilers below

(Live reaction/review)

Marinette’s babysitting and its absolute chaos. (Poor Kwami)

-Marinette really needs to chill. I thought she learned to just tell kids she likes a guy. Did Chrismaster mean NOTHING?

-This feels more like a season 2/3 episode, aside from all the kwami

-Marinette being a good friend and letting Alya have a date with Nino. (Which considering what happened in Rocketear, the boy needs)

-Oh NO! CHRIS! Welp that’s 4.

-I thought Lila was gonna be the designated babysitter? Well I guess she is busy not being involved which works for me.

-THOSE POOR KWAMI. ITS LIKE THAT SCENE IN TOY STORY 3

-The fear in Khlaaki’s eyes tho

-OH FLUFF! NOT FLUFF

-Marinette is not a fan of the PV. XD

-Oh snap, Adrien is calling!

-The kids don’t give af. They watching the cartoon

-Look at Marinette TRYING to be normal

Marinette, Honey. Sweetie. I love you dearly. But WHAT THE F*** IS WITH THAT OVER COMPLICATED PLAN?! You really need to simply that s***… OH. I get what the lesson of the day is gonna be

-Step 47 is a pigeon? STEP 42 IS A PIECE OF S***? Marinette what is this plan?

-The kids are just listening to this

-I do like the hand drawn shojo.

-Manon is like “Just give him this drawing.” Manon is my favorite

-THERE’S A CHOCOLATE FAIR!? I WANT TO GO! NO FAIR

-FEI REFERENCE!!!

-The grandpa is not happy about this.

-The grandpa went from not happy to offering to show them how to make a potato cannon. Amazing. I want to learn that

-Poor Grandpa. He is so confused. He doesn’t understand laptops

-Also I am assuming that the laptop has the movie downloaded, since there is NO WAY that guy has wifi

-Aww the kids are explaining the movie to him. Side note. HAWKMOTH IN 2D looks awesome

-He tried to use the video tape in the laptop which didn’t work.

-Adrien has heart eyes for her and I refuse to believe otherwise

-And Marinette got things complicated and ruined her chance to ask him out.

-Though Adrien seemed happy

-and tikki states the lesson

-Wait… is Marinette going to sabatoge him by ruining the wing so she could fix it again? Tikki pointing out its stupid

-Marinette blatantly deceiving a fisherman… (Shakes head in disappointment)

-And Hawkmoth slides into the grandpa’s DMs

-Hawkmoth… you are literally the prisoner of the past. Ya f***ing idiot

-DAMN! GRAMPA ROASTING HIS DUMB NAME! 10/10

-Shadowmoth had to keep it simple

-Grandpa doesn’t blame the kids. How do people not like this guy?

-I love the lame design. Its like mermaid man but French. Or like those old heroes from the powerpuff girls

-“IM GONNA MAKE EVERYTHING SIMPLE!”

-Shadowmoth (Shock pikachu face)

-Shadowmoth gets owned count now at 4

-Oh wow, Simpleman made it so everyone is a selfish idiot that only thinks of themselves and if something doesn’t work out for them then the other person or thing is wrong. He just made the world into Twitter… THAT’S F***ING TERRIFYING.

-OH NO THE HELICOPTER!!

-So was marinette not affected? She is still doing her fishing rod plan?

-NEVERMIND! SHE WAS

-…WAIT IS SHE GONNA TELL HIM?!

-And helicopter cock block

-Oh no. This akuma made marinette an idiot! This might be the most powerful and dangerous akuma Shadowmoth ever made

-Is it weird that I notice almost NO DIFFERENCE between simple Adrien and regular one (He is just more of a himbo)? Also Plagg is completely unaffected. I love him

-They are actually gonna go and fight shadowmoth directly. Ladybug called Chat noir’s idea a great idea… IM DEAD

-The kids realized everyone is a f***ing idiot now…. So like the usual show

- Simple Shadowmoth is AMAZING!

-OH NO! THEIR COMPLEX FIGHTING MOVES HAVE BEEN REDUCED TO SLAPSTICK

-OH NO! HE MADE THEM EVEN STUPIDER!

-I could make a cop joke but… nah low hanging fruit

-Super simple Shadowmoth might actually be smarter than normal shadowmoth

-CANDY FOR THE MIRACULOUS. I cant…

-The kids gotta help them

-The kids figured out the lucky charm! Amazing!!

-And day saved

-Honestly the writing was so deep in this episode

-DAWW THEM KIDS ARE GOOD KIDS

-Well Marinette tried to confess. Realizing her reason for over complicating things was out of fear of rejection

-Marinette still mucked up confessing but she and Adrien did have a cute banter

-Well that ending was cute. And encouraging

____________________________________________________________

Overall its pretty much a filler episode. It was a much needed break. It is a decent look into the writing process of ML. (That simple is what they can manage)

I will say that Its on the level of bakerix if it was better. I will give it a 7/10

Just for comedy and a decent adrinette

[alolanrain]

Fangshipping nobody knows how’s ash

I’m gonna guess that you ment to say ‘who’ instead. I also turned this into a little fic things as well ^_^

—————————

Raihan bounces on the top of his feet. Eagerly bouncing around his home as well. It was all cleaned and spiffed you for once, cute fairy lights he finally bought for his living room and kitchen all stocked and cleaned for the incoming week and a half. Arceus he’s so excited!

Checking the time on his Rotom phone one more time Raihan grabbed his wallet and house keys before going to the mud room and slipping on his shoes. He just about pulled the door back and was greeted by Leon with his hand raised to knock on Raihans front door. Piers and Gordie were standing behind him.

“Raihan!” Leon beamed happily.

“Leon,” Raihan smiled a little less happy then before, “Piers, Gordie. What are you guys doing here?”

“Bar hopping.” Pier grunted out. Crossing his arms. “We came to see if you want’ta join us?”

Raihan took a sharp inhale of breath. Smile falling as he watched Leon wilt just a little at his reaction. “Sorry mates,” Raihan scratched at the back of his head while stepping out of the door way and shutting the door, “I’m actually headed to the airport to meet up with someone.”

“Really?” Gordie spoke up, giving Raihan an incredulous look.

“Really.” Raihan smiles a bit brighter this time. “Now if you’ll excuse me mates, I got someone to meet.” And just like that he was down the porch steps, across the large barren garden, and out the gates closing his property in and onto the gravel path that lead to Hammerlocke city. Pulling out his phone and the CorviCab app.

“We’re following,” Piers spoke up after a few minutes as he stared at Leon’s face, “aren’t we?”

Leon didn’t even say a word as he bounded down the step and onto the gravel road in seconds. Leaving Piers and Gordie to scramble after him, yelling at Leon to wait.

————

Raihan was near vibrating in his skin. Watching as People slowly walked past him into the ticket lines. He signed a few things here or there for passing fans and was mobbed once and a while for pictures. It was all fine since the plane he was waiting for is actually a tiny bit behind schedule. It gave him half an hour just to chill hack and people watch for once, even though he was nervous as all fuck. He didn’t even notice the three very familiar people watching him from a cafe table just across from him.

Piers had his hair tired up. Dressed more comfy and he was glad that he brought a warmer sweater, Airports are always cold for him. Gordie didn’t even try but switch out his shades for a darker pair and messed his hair up just a tad. It still worked for him and Leon was a bit jealous. Leon himself had his hair tied up to. Cap and glasses obscured his face.

“He’s just... standing there!” Leon whines and let his head rest against the table. Board out of his mind and waning curiosity getting to him.

“That’s what you do when you wait for someone, idiot.” Piers snarled around the straw he was drinking from.

“Hey.” The Champion weakly objected but said nothing more of.

“Oh,” Gordie finally spoke up, making the other two immediately look over to Raihan, “he spotted someone.”

True to Gordie words, Raihan looked like a damn near wiggling Yamper. Eyes tracking something until a Pikachu came bounding out of a crowd of passing people and jumping straight into his arms.

“Pikachu!” Raihan cried out happily and easily rubbing his cheeks back into the frantic mouse Pokémon, “I know, I know! I miss you too.”

“Raihan! There you are!” A voice spoke up.

Raihan couldn’t help but nearly melt into the ground when his bright blue eyes met warm hazels.

Leon watched in renewed curiosity as a very short, to Galar standards, male came jogging up to the Gym Leader. Black fluffy hair that looked sinfully soft and the warmest of hazel eyes he’s ever seen.

“Ash!” Raihan greeted happily. Pikachu climbing up into his head so he could use both his arms to fully wrap Ash into a hug, making Ash drop his luggage bag and lifting the tiny Kantonian off the ground.

“Raihan!” Ash squealed his name again, wiggling his feet in the air. “Set me down please.”

The dragon tamer did just that. Hands lingering on Ash’s shoulders before fully dropping back down to his side. “So...” he drawled nervously.

“So?” Ash asked. Bending down to grab his luggage again and offering an arm out to Pikachu who happily chattered and purred on top of Raihans head. Very clearly not moving and content where he is.

“You must be tired.” Raihan broke out of what her haze he was shortly in. Hands flying back up to nervously hover around Ash’s body. “You look absolutely exhausted! Look at those bags under your eyes. Have you been sleeping well?” Raihan gently pulled at the skin under one of ash’s eyes.

“I haven’t slept the past three days.” Aah happily learned into the hand before jerking awake and pulling back sheepishly. “Never could really sleep on planes.”

Leon continued to watch in wrapped fascination as Raihan fluttered around this ‘Ash’. The boys Pikachu’s tail gently tapped the back of Raihans head and soon enough Raihan grabbed Ash’s luggage out of the boys hand and started hearding him out of the airport. Babbling on and on about something Leon didn’t understand and could no longer hear.

“Sonia and Nessa are gonna flip when they see this.” Piers started tapping away at his own Rotom phone. Leon wondered when he pulled that out but didn’t object. “Nessa is understandable yelling in the chat but Sonia is being unusually quiet.”

Leon was happy he had his phone shut off and on do not disturbed. Something he recently learned how to do so that Oleana and Rose couldn’t bother him on his days off.

“Oh!” Piers raised a critical eyebrow as he read something that must have popped up on his screen. “Sonia just saw and she’s livid.”

Leon nodded, already standing up after handing the waitress their check with money and telling her to keep the change, he grabbed at Gordie again. Making the man squawk with surprise and struggle to set the drink down before it got pulled away with him as well.

Piers sighed and got up after them. “I really do hate all this walking.” He bemoaned loudly even though Leon highly probably couldn’t hear him with Gordie whining in his ear.

————

Nessa and Sonia met up with them at the small rolling hills just besides Raihans house. The perfect view in the front and back yard.

“If the Paparazzi find this spot, Raihan’s basically trapped in his own house.” Piers grumbled. Head leaning down onto the cool night grass. The other four didn’t say anything to the Gym Leader. More focus in coming up with a way to get Raihan to spill about who ever this ‘Ash’ person is.

“Oh look!” Piers spike up a bit louder when he noticed the sliding back door opening.

Everyone turned their head to see what Piers was and it got real quite afterwards.

“Everyone come on out!” The tiny raven haired trainer yelled happily. Throwing his Poké balls up into the air.

“Is that Ash?” Nessa spoke up. Leaning into Leon’s side that Sonia wasn’t taking up. The Champion hymn in confirmation. “He’s cute.”

“He is!” Sonia agreed readily. Eyes widening as the Pokémon materialized in Raihans large back yard. “Holy shit!” She hissed. Flattening her body more into the hill side.

“You must be Melmetal!” Raihan padded off the back porch and reached over to the giant glimmering Pokémon. “Ash kept spamming me pictures of you when you were just a Meltant.”

“Raihan!” Ash cries out in embarrassment as his Incineroar caught him in a near bone crushing hug.

“Lycanroc!” Lycanroc barked. Happily padding around Raihan and licking the palm of his hand. Settling down by his feet and watched as Ash pried himself from Incineroar’s hug.

“Hey buddy.” Raihan mumbled. “It’s good to see you too.”

Rowlet cooed above from a branch it settled down. Opening its wings the grass peel Pokémon gently floated down to Raihans waiting arms. The gym leader scooping the grass type form the air and hugging it close. The three watched Ash interact with Incineroar and Melmetal.

Pikachu opted to stay inside, curled up with Raihans Flygon on a pile of blankets by the gas fireplace, then to meet his Alolan team mates.

“Watch’cha thinking about?” Ash asked. Padding over with Incineroar close on his heels. He took Rowlet from Raihans arms and watched happily as Raihan greeted the fire Pokémon. Incineroar purred loudly as it rocked its face more and more into Raihans hands that were petting its cheeks.

“Just ho amazing my boyfriend is!” Raihan teased.

“Ah!” Ash whined wordlessly. Face blooming red in embarrassment. “Raihan!” He grumbled once more.

“Just spitting straight truth!” The large Gyn Leader crowed happily.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Ash groaned grabbing a everyone’s Poké balls, “return everyone!”

“Aw!” Raihan whined jokingly, “and we were just about to have some fun to.”

Ash rolled his eyes but couldn’t help the smile that filtered into his lips. “I would like some fun with my boyfriend to, you know.”

“Oh?” Raihan asked. Pupils already blowing up. “And what kind of ‘fun’ do you want to have?”

Ash didn’t answer. Only using his fingers to beckon Raihan to bend down. He curled his arms and kissed his boyfriends. Arching with a gasp as Raihan slid his hands from the back of Ash’s shoulder blades down to his ass to squeeze it.

Ash was picked up so that Raihan didn’t need to keep bending over to kiss him. Legs curling around Raihans lower stomach as he held on tight.

“I like this kind of fun,” Raihan growled happily against Ash’s lips, making the Champion shutter in expectation, “but I think we’ll have even better fun if we do this in the bedroom.”!

“Take me away then,” Ash giggles when Raihan dove back for a smaller and chaste kiss, “my dear Dragon.”

————

“Well damn.” Piers spoke up. Watching with raised eyebrows as Raihan carried Ash inside. Presumably to go have sex in bed.

“I was...” Nessa’s face scrunched up in thoughtfulness and disgust at the implications of Raihans words hit her, “not expecting that.”

Sonia and Leon didn’t say anything. Their own cheeks a little bit red as they pressed their shoulders more into the grass.

“Welp!” Gordie’s hands hit the grass lightly before pushing himself up. “I’m going home now that we figured this out. Night!”

[letswritefanfiction]

Lost in Halloweenia! Ch1

Crosspost from ffnet and AO3.

Summary: It's Halloween! Ash and the gang are living it up trick or treating when they stumble upon a strange house with some strange artifacts. What mysteries do they hold and…wait, who are those three lurking behind them?

Word Count: 2,997/27,343

Setting: Set in between Hocus Pokémon and Here's Lookin' At You, Elekid.

A/N: Hello! This is a story I wrote back in 2016 and, since it’s spooky month yet again, I thought it was time to bring it back, since it’s one of my faves! This story is meant to by in the style of the Pokémon anime, plus Scooby Doo vibes. It’s all just very fun.

No ships!

Next chapter here

Chapter 1: Trick or Treat

Having just received his last Gym Badge from the Blackthorn Gym, Ash and his friends are hard at work as ever in preparing for the Silver Conference…

“Oh boy, a king size candy bar!”

Or are they?

Ash brought the plastic-wrapped log of chocolate up to his nose and inhaled loudly, salivating even though he couldn’t smell anything beyond the crisp October air burning his nostrils. After savoring the moment for all of two seconds, he ripped open the chocolate bar and bit off a mouthful, strands of caramel lacing his teeth and the candy together, looking like strands from the play spider webs decorating the houses of the neighborhood. When he licked it all away, he offered a bite to Pikachu, who was perched as a Golbat on his shoulder, wings and all.

“Ash, you’re supposed to be saving your candy, not eating it all tonight,” Misty stated, dropping her own piece into her orange jack-o-lantern bag hanging from the crook of her arm as she held Togepi to her chest. Togepi was thrilled by all of the sights and was content to do nothing but trill away at all of the lights and spooky decorations.

“Who says?” Ash grunted through the sticky sweetness.

“I bet your mother would,” Brock said. “And please tell me that you’re not still wearing your fake teeth.”

After swallowing, Ash felt around his teeth with his tongue to discover that he was, indeed, still wearing the false teeth that were the finishing touch on his vampire outfit. Except now, instead of glowing a light green in the dark, it was certain they were stained brown with milk chocolate and caramel goodness. Pikachu barred his teeth to reveal much the same on his own fake incisors.

“Oops.”

Misty sighed, shaking her head. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to handle accessories.”

“Hey, at least I was smart enough to wear a costume that I wouldn’t freeze to death in!”

Misty looked down at her costume, mostly just to hide her flushing face behind her bangs. She was wearing the Goldeen outfit that she had worn ages ago in that crazy magician act. “So what? I already owned it, so I figured I might as well wear it! Besides, Brock isn’t any better.”

Brock had decided to dress like Bruno of the Kanto—and Johto, since that’s where they were—Elite Four leaving him entirely shirtless. He was hoping that it would gain him points with the ladies. Unfortunately, most of the ladies they had seen so far were half his age. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to be pulled into the argument, so he suggested, “Hey, why don’t we just check out the next house?”

Misty harrumphed. “Yeah, Brock. Let’s go.”

Ash lingered behind for only a second. “Thinks she can boss me around like that,” he grumbled. “Why shouldn’t we be able to eat our candy on Halloween?”

Pikachu chattered his agreement before pointing in the direction Misty and Brock were headed.

“Oh, you’re right! We gotta beat them to the next house!”

Moments after Ash ran to catch up to Misty and Brock, there was a rustling in the boxwood hedges lining the sidewalk.

Jessie popped her head out from a bush, making certain that she was holding two branches on either side of her face. She spied the twerp running off after the other two twerps with Pikachu right there on his shoulder, as usual. “Hmm, right on schedule.”

“On schedule fo’ what?” Meowth burst out of the next bush, some leaves taped to his whiskers. “We don’t have a plan!”

“Maybe we would if it weren’t Halloween!” James interjected, poking his head out of a third bush, pausing to spit out a few leaves. “But there are people everywhere! How are we supposed to pull off any kind of a heist?”

“Well…” Meowth began slyly, turning slowly to James as a smile spread across his face, “we could pull off a candy heist if we did a little less trickin’ and a little more treatin’!”

“Ooh, now that’s a good plan, Meowth!”

Jessie whipped her hair around and managed to smack both James and Meowth across the face, leaving them both dazed. “You numskulls! We’re not out to get candy like all of these snot-nosed little kids! We’re out to catch Pikachu!”

“But Jess,” James whined, “think of how long it’s been since we’ve had that much food! Much less good tasting food.”

There was the sound of water dripping into the bushes as James and Meowth began to drool. Jessie clenched her fist until it shook, ready to let them have it again before she heard her stomach rumble. Both boys turned to her with raised eyebrows and Jessie blushed, holding her stomach in a gloved hand.

From out of the bushes, she produced three pillowcases and announced, “Well, I guess it can’t hurt to think about food every once in a while! We can always nab Pikachu once those twerps have had their fill and all we have to do is roll Pikachu off the twerp’s shoulder and right into the boss’s office.”

With matching grins, each grabbed a bag and then made off for the closest house, so close to mountains of candy they could taste it.

“Wow, this house would be spooky even if it weren’t Halloween.”

Ash and Misty nodded along to Brock’s words as they all stood at the end of the street before a huge house that seemed to creak as a strong wind blew the autumn leaves and loose candy wrappers across the lawn.

It was like something out of a storybook. It was dark purple with a thatched black roof, which was made up of all odd angles, coming to a zenith at a pointed tower standing in the middle with a single window. Jutting in front of the window were bars of sharp iron, twisted as if by a giant’s strong grasp.

“Well, the porch light is on,” Ash pointed out. “That must mean that they’re accepting trick-or-treaters.”

Ash began to make for the front deck before Brock and Misty pulled him back. Even Pikachu pulled on his hair a little.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?”

“M-Maybe we should just skip it and head to the next house,” Misty suggested, eyeing the spooky structure warily.

“Why would we do that? Let’s just knock on the door.”

Ash stepped confidently forward, ignoring a whine from the back of Pikachu’s throat as the deck groaned at their combined weight. There was no doorbell, so Ash raised his fist to knock on the door when, without so much as a tap, it opened all on its own.

“Huh, look at that.”

Brock and Misty had reluctantly followed Ash, but now the both of them were slowly creeping backwards. Brock cleared his throat before saying, “Okay, now we should go, Ash.”

“No, wait, look at that!” Ash was pointing just inside the doorway, where there was a small table holding a huge bowl of candy and a silver candelabra. Just above the bowl was a sign that said, take one. “Look, they want us to go in!”

Ash pushed the door open all the way, revealing that the whole room was lit by nothing but the three-pronged candelabra, flickering as the wind from outside tickled the stale air inside the house.

Opening the door revealed a parlor, completely decked out with Halloween decorations. There was a bit of old furniture here and there, but covering every open space were pumpkins, skeletons of humans as well as various Pokémon, witch’s hats, brooms, and gnarled branches with bat-like Pokémon hanging from them. But they weren’t tacky items snatched from the bargain bin of a local drugstore; everything was so well-made that they looked almost real, down to the porous bones of the skeletons and peeling bark of the branches.

After Ash stepped inside, Brock and Misty followed to take their pick from the massive collection of candy. Misty gave a little shriek when she saw an enormous Ariados doll in the corner, somehow suspended from the ceiling. It was shrouded by the dark, but the enamel mandibles almost seemed to glow with poisonous saliva in the candlelight.

She put a hand up to her face, turning away from it. It wasn’t real, it only looked real. So it should only bother her if she looked on it. Nevertheless, the hairs on her arms were standing up on end and, for once that night, it wasn’t from the October chill.

They all turned their attention back to the most pleasant sight of the candy dish. Even though it was pretty late in the night, the bowl looked virtually untouched. Apparently most trick-or-treaters thought even candy wasn’t worth trying the old, creepy house.

But boy, were they missing out! There had to be every type of candy in that bowl. Chocolate, caramels, hard candies, lollipops, butterscotch, even truffles and small baked goods—more than Ash had even thought to imagine.

“You know, I bet we can take more than one,” Ash said, reaching into the tantalizing bowl. “I don’t think anybody would be upset by that.”

“Ash, it says to just take one.”

Misty’s words sounded firm, but one look over at her, with her face inches from the candy bowl, showed that she didn’t much believe what she was saying. She wanted the treats nearly as much as Ash did.

Both Togepi and Pikachu, who had wiggled their way onto the table, were also looking over the lip of the candy bowl, trying to make the best choice.

“One each,” Brock stated. Both Ash and Misty sighed, resigning themselves to follow the rules before Brock spoke up again, this time with a big grin. “Though that doesn’t mean we can’t each choose one for each of our Pokémon too!”

Ash and Misty cheered as they finally dug into the bowl, counting off candy for each of their Pokémon as Brock wedged himself into the mix as well.

“Do you think all thirty of my Tauros count?”

“Only if all of my Gym Pokémon count!”

“Those aren’t yours; they’re your sisters’!”

“No, they belong to the Gym! And I’m better with them anyway!”

“Are not.”

“Am too!”

“Are not!”

“Am too!”

“Are—”

“Enough out of both of you!”

Brock unwrapped two pieces of caramel and stuck one into Ash’s, then Misty’s mouth to quiet them. He nodded at his handiwork as both of them struggled to chew.

“That’s probably enough candy for the both of you.”

Then Misty made a gurgling shriek through the caramel as she began looking about wildly.

“What?”

“Pobeebee ih aw!”

Brock cocked his head. “What?”

Pikachu reached and patted Brock. “Pipipi!”

Ash caught on at that point, joining in with Misty’s mumbling. Brock, however, still had no reaction, so Pikachu was forced to concentrate, spiking the fur on his head and rounding his body until he looked like an egg.

“Oh, Togepi!”

Misty finally managed to chew the caramel down to a workable level and shouted, “We have to find Togepi! Anyone see where it went?”

Everyone collectively shook their heads. Then, they heard a light trill echo throughout the whole house. They cast about, uncertain of the direction the sound came from. Pikachu’s ears twitched for a second, and then he took off, scampering out of the room.

“Hey, Pikachu!”

Ash ran after Pikachu, with Brock and Misty not too far behind him. There was no electric lighting to speak of in the house, but every hallway and room was lined with sconce-like lanterns, fire blazing in each of them; there was just enough light to see a few feet in any direction, but no more.

After rounding just a few corners, they stopped in their tracks, finding themselves completely lost, with no trace of Togepi or Pikachu. There wasn’t so much as the light thump of a footstep. Nothing but dull creaks from the house, coming from every direction so that it seemed like the house was trying to move or maybe even say something.

“I think we should head back to the front of the house,” Brock suggested. “Just wait for Pikachu and Togepi there.”

“No, we have to find Togepi!” Misty was insistent, her jaw clenched and her gaze firm, but the wavers in her voice belied her strong façade.

“Pikachu will find Togepi, Misty. And we’ll be easier to find if we just stay put.”

Misty looked to Ash, who nodded at her. “Misty’s right, Brock. I wanna find Pikachu.”

Brock could only shrug. “Suit yourself. But let’s retrace our steps at least to find a better path, okay?”

“Fine.”

“Alright.”

It only took a few steps for them to realize they had no idea where the front of the house was. They turned around a few times, poking their head past corners, into hallways, looking for any sign of familiarity.

Somehow, the whole house was designed the way the parlor had been. In every corner were pieces of antique-looking Halloween paraphernalia, most dusty with time, like they hadn’t just been set out in the past few weeks for the holiday. It seemed as though it was always Halloween in this house.

Ash stepped over the black statue of a Purrloin wearing a witch’s hat, trying the last exit from the room for any hint as to where they had come from.

“No luck. That hallway just has some huge ghosts that I don’t remember seeing.”

“So, we’re lost?”

Misty looked at Ash with a perfect blend of irritation and fear while he sweat-dropped and backed away slowly, nearly tripping over the Purrloin.

“Not lost,” Brock stated, trying to diffuse the situation—or rather, avoid any situation that got Misty too mad. “We just don’t know where we are or how to get back to where we were.”

A vein began to throb on Misty’s forehead as she turned to Brock. “Well, what is that if not lo—”

“Pika! Pika!”

The sound echoed all throughout the house until the two calls became many, sounding like there were dozens of Pikachu hiding in the very woodwork of the house. It sounded like it could have come from anywhere. Ash, Brock, and Misty cast about in all directions, to little avail.

“Priii!”

That sound too began to echo, morphing until it was a twisted distortion of Togepi’s cute call.

“I think it’s coming from upstairs!” Ash finally declared. “Which hallway had the stairs?”

“This one!” Misty shouted, pushing in front of them and making for a set of wooden stairs, spiraling up with an iron rail, lined with cross-shaped spikes.

“Careful!” Brock put a fingertip to one of the spikes and yanked it away quickly. “These are sharp!”

“Pikachu! Where are you?”

“Togepi! Please come out here!”

Ash and Misty tumbled onto the landing at the top of the stairs and listened as more calls came from their Pokémon, bouncing off every which way, but stronger than they had been down below.

“This way!”

“You better not be getting us lost again, Ash Ketchum!”

“No, they’re definitely this way!”

“Guys, wait up!”

The trio eventually stumbled into a large, cluttered room, furnished like an attic, with no candles to light the way. There were, however, windows washing the room with the moon’s pallid glow.

“Pikachu?”

“Pikapi!”

Ash nearly ran into a tall suit of armor as he rounded a stack of items, opening the large room up even further. There, bathed in a deep red glow, were Pikachu and Togepi, eyeing a strange object.

“What is that?” Misty asked with a gasp.

The red glow seemed to be emanating from the object, which was resting in a basket on top of a treasure chest, just out of Pikachu and Togepi’s reaches. Not for lack of trying, though, as Togepi kept stretching its arms out, trying to touch it.

“It looks like an egg,” Brock observed. “Like a dragon egg, or something.”

“Oh, that’s so cool!”

Ash rushed forward to look at it and soon enough, the whole gang was taken in by its almost supernatural glow.

Pikachu took it upon himself to take Togepi in his arms, raising it over his head so it could get a closer look at the object. Togepi trilled in delight, leaning in to reach it.

“Don’t touch it, Togepi,” Misty chastised. “It’s not yours.”

Togepi frowned for a second, whimpering a little. Then it jumped out of Pikachu’s grasp, arms outstretched as if to give the egg a hug. Togepi landed in the basket, which was lined with straw and wheat in a neat nest, and tried to hug the egg, but its stubby arms kept it at a distance.

“Oh, Togepi.”

Misty reached for Togepi, but before she could grab it back into her loving arms, the egg began to glow brightly, blinding everyone for a moment as their eyes adjusted. After a few burning blinks, everyone turned back to see Togepi being sucked into the egg.

Everyone gasped in shock. Pikachu was the first to regain his wits, and he leapt up, grabbing for Togepi, only to begin being sucked into the egg too.

“Oh no, you don’t!”

Ash grabbed for Pikachu, Misty grabbed for Ash, and Brock grabbed for Misty, each disappearing faster and faster as the glow became stronger, before fragmenting from a blood red into individual beams of orange and black like a Halloween sunburst.

Then, they were gone, and the room was once again dark and silent, save for the whistling of the wind outside, and the gentle groans of the old, dark house.

On Halloween night, Ash and friends had expected lots of treats but this is one trick they hadn’t expected! Where have they gone and how will they get out of this one? Stay tuned for next time!

[elizabethrobertajones]

14x06 watching notes

Bugs 2.0

this is more like a sleepy note to self from last night (hi future me in the morning, you better have coffee) but I can't believe Yockey is sending Jack, who is consumptive, caught in a crisis of personal identity, and sworn to kill his AUncle who is blurred dangerously with one of his fathers, WITH said father on a hunt, while Dean is so messed up about Michael and guilt and all he's coming at the angsty nonsense from the complete other side... And that's still like half the story because also Sam and AUCharlie and a giant fly monster or something...

Anyway last time a Yockey episode showed up I wrote 100k words of watching notes, broke down crying over the elevated Shakespearean drama, and astral projected into watching the final five-ten minutes in the Globe Theatre.

What we know so far about this episode has me legitimately terrified to the point I'm writing preemptive episode notes the night before so maybe I will fall asleep and dream in such a way I sort this all out and can come to it with Secret Dream Knowledge.

-

Mittens had the audacity to remind me that Speight directed as soon as I rolled out of bed as well

-

Oh no the recap is awful in moments. Please leave Jack alone. He is small and young and doesn't deserve anything bad that has ever happened to him.

The ticking and chiming of this all coming due is a great way to raise blood pressure, and as I was saying last night, we get both Dean blurring with Jack in his issues as well as Dean blurring with Michael

I remain eternally optimistic that seeing Christian Keyes in the recap means he might get smuggled back into the show.

I WILL say this every time it happens and refuse to back down on that :P

Anyway, tying the two main points of plot stress together - what is wrong with Jack, and what is wrong with Dean. We KNOW what is wrong with Dean - he said yes to Michael, and got taken for a ride and sorely used. Don’t know if there’s a ticking time bomb about Dean and something Michael did to him. We can guess a few avenues of where the awful comes from for Jack, but I suspect it's going to be at least another full episode of Rowena poking him next time to figure it out, if not an ongoing mystery so his consumptiveness can be dragged out as a point of tension.

His is so obvious that equating Dean's tick tock clock with it is considerably more alarming on Dean's behalf, since we have a much better visual of what's up with Jack, and just "djinn didn't like the inside of Dean's head despite dealing in nightmares" to wonder about Dean.

We get the recap that Jack's being given his hunter go ahead, but then Dean's dismal "it's all on me, it's my fault" over a dark screen and even the "Now" which is a very over dramatic way to press home the sense of ongoing trauma and how that line is going to be affecting him.

Not that we haven't seen him very visibly affected already, behaviourally, but this seems like a clock reaches the end of its countdown episode now >.>

-

ANYWAY HAVE SOME UPBEAT MUSIC AND THE KOOKY STATUE GUY

Ooh dear, here's bandanna girl from the promo pics, but wearing......... would you fukkin believe it............................................. a long tan coat with large dark buttons up the front. Hilariously, I nearly mentioned when chatting about ascots yesterday morning, that ties made of ribbons were a modern equivalent you see in the same professions so maybe she is just visually connected to these sort of neck ties. Her floofy shirt and that ribbon tie has both shades of people's fem!Cas cosplay and also the sort of faux puritan modern witch look from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, so. I'm gonna assume whether they know it or not she's a witch.

-

Aww she is the librarian :')

-

I love her already because she said good morning to the old person sitting by the statue, but also because she did that and therefore is emotionally completely at odds with the show and her personal theme music means she's in for it and I already feel protective that her jaunty tune is going to get interrupted.

-

Why do I feel like at least 4 of the library rules are going to be broken

-

Aww the floofy frills go all around her shoulders. She's so upbeat! Shelving books like it is the most thrilling and wonderful thing to be doing on this sunny morning after rain :')

-

She looks so much like Bela when she talks... good grief... I wonder if she's related. Anyway first jump scare is her library boyfriend because she was just so caught up in shelving.

Listen I get names wrong or ignore them constantly but for some reason I do not understand them at all so it sounded like Ambraubry to me and probably isn't Amber or Aubrey and also how comes I understand all the other dialogue but not this??? To the point that in multiple past episodes despite my slow and steady approach to understanding an episode, I've completely and utterly mangled understanding or missed entirely the name introductions D:

I really am going to try and do better this episode, because it's so awkward.

-

"Harper, are you okay?"

Adsjfhdkjsfhskjfds

-

She's an angel. Wings, trenchcoat, tie, harp -

-

Anyway she appears to have the affections of at least two dudes, one of whom will defend her with a stapler, and we're lucky the detective pikachu trailer came out like 2 days ago because the kid in that does it but it's too late to be an homage.

Obviously Harper's knight in dark plaid is brooding, gingery, and armed with a projectile weapon. *fires staples at sweater nice!guy*

"Put the stapler down"

*Dean Winchester's it back into the safety setting*

-

"That guy's always been creepy" See that was hilarious but now I like sweater guy better.

"He's just overreacting because nothing ever happens here" Is this Cas defending Dean to the bitter end, even when it might literally involve watching him murder the world for his own personal angst?

-

Harper is very clearly setting boundaries while being a total sweetie about being sad no one goes to libraries or reading time. She's almost too frighteningly well put together. No one is this well-adjusted :P

-

Aaand sweater!guy loses points for nice!guying his way into assuming he has a date

dear lord the music

-

RIP Sweater Guy.

We hardly knew ye.

-

Dear lord I love Yockey characters

And Speight directing

this is truly as unholy fun as I was fearing D:

-

Also re: something from 14x04... nice guy characters again being portrayed in this way where the old school "geek" coding (or at least, beta male who is small and wearing a sweater and such in this very old-school way which honestly I think is fashionable again or was recently... It's a coding which comes with not just the appearance but also the attitude, and if he'd been cool and charismatic, the same costume could have done something very different). It isn't so much the problem as the attitude... Nerds are beloved on this show, but people with gross toxic attitudes such as insisting dinner is a date and not taking no for an answer on that are going to be summarily murdered round back for hubris.

I mean the title is "optimism" and he was WILDLY over-optimistic about his chance of getting with Harper, so. I mean. If that's the magnetism that pulls the monster in...

-

On the other side of the title card, Jack is stayin alive, and curiously pouring way too much sugar in his coffee as the title comes up - there's an immediate irony that he may be optimistic that he is doing better and on his way to hunting with all his dads and being part of the team again and also optimistic that this much sugar will not ruin the coffee... It's also a little worrying though I doubt he thinks this far ahead, in the sense that too much sugar is bad for you and like Dean being thrilled at the thought of bacon killing him, Jack risking the health damage from drinking sugar-coffee-sludge is an endgame beyond his current consumptive state.

See also: tragic or byronic heroes who are gonna self-destruct because they have mayfly lives in the age of consumption. Jack again being at genre odds with himself as part of an internal conflict...

"What's with the sugar?"

"without my powers, everything tastes different, and I can't get this how I like it"

Maybe you aren't meant to be drinking coffee if it's too bitter for you. I mean in your current state what is chugging red bull gonna do to kill you faster.

It's very Cas in 9x11, commenting on being an angel again after being human. But we know Jack's still in that state. It's interesting because we know he has a sweet tooth because literally the first thing he ever eats is nougat and now we all call him nougat child, but I feel like with powers he was probably rather less discerning because nothing would kill him and everything was digestible... Coffee tastes bitter because it's technically a bitter poison warning, telling us not to consume because caffeine bad... Er, yeah, sorry, coffee plants. But bitterness to humans is supposed to repel us on a “is this food safe?” level, and kids have trouble with bitter foods, and prefer sweetness and uncomplicated flavours because they're instinctively safer.

Jack's struggling to consume the bitter adult juice that makes the hunters run, and is dealing with it by a Sisyphean task of just adding more and more sugar to taste. It reminds me of when I was smol and wanted to drink cranberry juice because I thought it would make me more sophisticated, but it was too bitter, so I kept adding more and more water until it went from even remotely resembling juice to sort of pinkish tart water that still tasted gross and made my mouth dry and didn't even taste like juice any more. At no point did I hit the sweet spot where it was drinkable, because I wasn't even putting the right stuff in to make it taste better. In that case, a spoonful of sugar. In Jack's case... dude. A splash of milk. You don't have to drink it angsty black-like-his-soul like Dean does.

Anyway, "I can't get it how I like it" is very telling of Jack's current overall mindset and sense of place and all. Now he's human but despite having chosen his family and even declared himself human before his powers were stolen, he now has no powers and is consumptive to boot, so the balance has swung way too far over from super powerful cosmic entity to sick kid who can't keep up with the adults. No amount of sugar can change that to something he WANTS to drink when there's still a fundamentally fatal problem with his situation. Sure the dangers of being cosmic lil nephilim on everyone's radar is over, but as this show always does, it swings over to an ironic flip of the first problem, and he's too weak to help.

I suppose the optimism is that he can change this scenario by pouring sugar into it - hunting with the dads - when he needs a different drink.

-

Whoops already with the dramatic irony - Jack's excited and admiring of heroes Sam and AUCharlie (ChAUrlie?) and just assumes they're having the time of their lives. He's yet to solo hunt with either Sam or Dean, but he'll tick Dean off the list today. For now, what No.1 Dad gets up to (no offence to other dads, this one just tackled Lucifer for him that one time) is mythically amazing, so probably why it's the last on the list... if we'll ever see it. After all, Sam and Jack had their whole season structured around their dynamic from open to close, while actual conflict and confusion remains between his dynamics with both Cas and Dean, as much more complicated, less ideal dads.

Meanwhile: Sam is discovering that it's SUPER AWKWARD to go on a stake out with an AU version hardened by war and with like at least 5-10 years less pop culture than the Charlie you knew, loved, and got murdered by accident that one time.

Which I am totally sure is not on Yockey's mind at all now he's caught the Charlie ball that Buckleming threw recklessly out there.

-

Anyway. Dean not sugarcoating (haha) "he just left you here" "yeeeep." Obviously Jack's spent a LOT of time in the Bunker recovering and training (he's back in his tracksuit top at least here) but Cas declared him fit for service and they even seem to have survived that hunt together. Somehow. (No slight on their competency, but it's Cas and Jack. Come on, that was a TRIP and I'm so bitter we didn't see it :P) So now Dean can say this in a way that makes it sound like Jack's being left out and get his bitterness immediately on the surface, as he doesn't really have filters.

More bitterness you can't pour sugar over.

-

The fact that Jack is sitting with his back to Kevin's coffee machine is the worst thing ever.

-

LOL, poor Dean. Sam deputised Jack to wait for Dean to get back from his supply run to the love cabin, because he was worried about him, which means that Dean now has his own kick from Sam which I am assuming is the spite motivator to take the boy out hunting with him, that he thinks that *Jack* now has to look after *Dean* at least emotionally.

Obviously, like. Yeah. They're good for each other especially if they can bond some more. But like. Try telling Dean that while insisting it's mandatory father son bonding time out of CONCERN.

*cat falling in a bathtub and freaking out and reaching supersonic speeds out the door gif*

-

Nougat Son attempts a pep talk anyway because he is good and pure of heart and adores his pop pop, even if by sheer lack of interaction or early interest he technically does rank at no.3 in the charts. Listen, Dean WOULD tackle Lucifer for you if he had to, but the story wasn't framed in such a way that he COULD over Sam's narrative need to tackle Lucifer for you.

-

Dean rebuffs it not out of harshness to Jack but to himself - Jack repeats the line that no one blames Dean, but Dean is like "i do"... Honestly I'm curious for the Dean n Cas version of this because Cas was there in the room and he so far hasn't given Dean the pep talk. Mostly out of them not spending any time together, and I'm sure Dean has a lot of shame that Cas saw him do it, but for as much as Cas blatantly loves Dean still and all on first sight, does he have a more complicated view on it, given he was in the room and tried to argue Dean down?

Anyway Dean and Jack share a very knowing silence of mutual self-loathing and wow this is hilaaaaarious that that's their mutual relationship bedrock but yeah. Last season the most bonding they did was in 13x23 when Dean was like yeah we all get horrifying nightmares kiddo.

-

*consumptive noises* *Dean's eyes immediately shoot over to the kid*

-

"Maybe I'm allergic to sitting around doing nothing"

THERE HE IS. THERE'S MY SARCASTIC LIL NOUGAT

-

We do not get enough of him. I mean, like, maybe since 13x04? He had a rough childhood but now he is a Teen, with all the door slamming and threatening to kill dad no.3 that entails.

-

"What do you want to do?" We really are getting Dean coming towards Jack from arms' length even now, so he sits down with him and NOW and only now he stops the pretence of being a somewhat disinterested grumpy adult talking to another angst ball adult - very 13x02 last scene kinda wary understanding but without the threat of murder - to sitting at the table with Jack (who of course is in Sam's place) and reaches out to him with a very clear opening up of father son bonding time. I think obviously Jack has grown on him and he cares but he's resisted overt responsibility and their connection has been tentative and weird, and as paternal as Dean can be and has been since the start of the show, with Jack only he's been very careful about opening himself up, specifically for reasons of not wanting to get lumped with another baby to care for right when he was truly setting Sam down at last, and also for like, the whole getting Cas killed thing, and even a year and a half later, he may actually HAVE tentative paternal feelings towards Jack, but he's very much intent on keeping himself Dad no.3, and to only open himself up when it's necessary or else he's emotionally ready for it.

(The description of next episode makes me pretty sure Dean is the worst person of them all to have to discover Consumptive Nougat Son issues which is why I’m assuming he’ll figure it out)

In this case, this appears to be a mutual distraction from their angst - "HUNT" Jack says, with the kind of horrifying enthusiasm of one who still doesn't see it as nightmarish as Dean does.

-

"Cas is an insurance policy on those hunts" Awww Dean loves his hubby and thinks he's still the biggest BAMF ever, even when Cas has, er, a patchy record lately. Though perhaps low-level monster nonsense is still within his scope...

Anyway, after the Sam n Cas nurturing Jack conspiracy (how dare they love and care for him!!!) Dean straight-talks the kid that he's still very much on hunter probation and has been tagging along with Cas specifically for his own protection. Again, Dean never sugarcoats for Jack, but that honesty has always been a core part of their relationship, even when things were really, really, really bad. Jack still cared what Dean thought and Dean, eternally bitter from his own childhood, gave it to Jack straight, even if it would hurt. No fairytales for Jack.

Even though he has fanciful notions of sleeping beauty from his more whimsical fathers and whatever Kelly left in there :P

-

Why does Sam have a fidget spinner except that Charlie may be about to declare HIM the monster of the week and kill him.

I mean, dramatic irony and making him look goofy. And Sam is very very very hard to make look goofy because he had all his funny bones replaced with serious bones.

It is very embarrassing to watch him be a goof for this exact reason.

I suppose it is a way to make us start to sympathise with AUCharlie and start to get into HER headspace. We're seeing Sam from an outside perspective - Jack and Dean saying admiring things about him, while looping over to Sam to show us what CHARLIE is experiencing of this. Especially as she's spent a lot of time on the road being an independent agent, rather than sticking with the AU Peeps all the time, she's very much a strong personality of her own as a former rebel leader, and yet knowing OUR Charlie it's less the leading and more the rebellion that would have drawn her. Though she makes a great Queen of Moondoor, that's her softer, nerdy side, and she very clearly had a hunter!Charlie persona of a rebel that struck out on her own, and even when she was a civilian whistleblower/hacker from within RRE, she was acting on her own initiative against the corporate enemy. With her trip to Oz she also had a similar role as AUCharlie of being perhaps a general to a higher leader such as AUBobby in Dorothy.

-

The adverts on the McCook Sentinel are for TRAVEL, retirement funds, eating healthy and a local student initiative cleaning up the park - the next generation doing their bit to make the world better.

-

Oh dear, Winston "sweater guy" Mathers - the same name as Dave Mathers in 13x06 - was bitten all over and it was probably bath salts. Case closed.

-

Now the negotiations and loopholes: Sam said we all need partners now "so we can be hunting buddies!!" Oh Jack. Alex really is good at sounding innocently purely enthusiastic with total childish glee.

-

"A: don't call it that."

-

Dean snarks at Jack that HE is going to back ME up? Nah kid. Mistake - this is the key to the angst floodgates. Honestly pausing just after the "I could have killed Michael when i was strong enough!!" declaration is enough info for me to accept a smash cut to Dean and Jack kitted out and on the case, guilt trip accomplished.

It's also very familiar to Dean to have the guilt of having not done enough, to find someone else also specifically feels responsible for what Michael is off doing. And Jack's claim to guilt lies like a whole FIVE MINUTES earlier than DEAN'S claim to guilt. If Jack had killed Michael, Dean wouldn't have had him there to say yes to.

Check and mate.

-

Sorry, Jack is saying he was distracted and stupid so now Dean is legally obligated to take him hunting to cheer him up.

-

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"AND NEITHER DID YOU, BUT THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY EASIER, DOES IT?"

Okay, what is the one that comes after check mate but even more vicious because Jack's running loops around his old man.

-

Dean is making.... left over noodle... taco.....

Jack, knock him out, drag him to the impala, and start driving before he can eat it

-

He also sharply identifies hunting as the coping mechanism and how they don't just sit around in the Bunker feeling sorry for themselves, and Dean not only can relate but he is being wildly called out by someone who has no filters and also will tell him the absolute truth about it. More than Cas, these days, who carries so much of his guilt and shame secretly so as not to burden Dean, that Jack is now the refreshing voice who cuts through all their crap and shows it for what it is.

-

Dean is like, man, I never wanted kids. Because they do this to you.

-

Thank god Jack won that argument with the final emotional appeal and we shifted over to Sam and AUCharlie's adventure.

-

They really are not getting along.

-

Charlie just has a jar of sloppy goo. What did she get it from? How did she get so much in the jar when it's so runny? Why does she still have it? Why did Sam put it on the dash? How comes they have Bobby's truck?

Or do the AU Peeps have a whole collection of identical beaten up blue trucks as part of their uniform shabby hunter look?

-

It's super weird having Charlie pull out an old book instead of a laptop. How do you do product placement????

-

Dick's Red Rooster diner!

-

There's a massive photo of a barn at sunset behind them. Putting them out to pasture??

-

"Yeah, when a young guy dies they never know what to put in those things." Ouch, Dean. Spent a lifetime reading obits, he has a deep insider knowledge of the writing style of them.

The line itself in a more meta way is really sad to think about contemplating anyone having that thought to write it in the first place :( It's deep enough that it doesn't seem an obvious thing to occur to you unless you're super morbid or have first hand experience with this.

Let's just go with these writers all have to write fake obits all the time for their show(s) so they know the struggle of trying to pass off the obit as legit sounding while also contemplating what to even say about their fake people who of course they have just imagined up so don't even know anything about them to start with.

-

Cocks, everywhere.

-

(Man, I really hope there aren't people who read these notes before/instead of the episode also hi if you do, you weird wonderful people) (the diner has a heavy red rooster theme and there's metal cockerels all over the place)

(I assume they're for Dick Speight)

-

Oh dear, Dean is indeed going to have to be the parent who gives Jack the birds and the bees talk, because they've left their kid to learn what he can from TV while creating a perfect circle of Cas assuming Sam will do it, Sam assuming Dean will do it, Dean assuming it's not his problem but it would be hilarious if Cas did it...

So of course Dean ends up being the one on the hunt with Jack where he goes down the sudden horrifying rabbit hole from explaining courting to hearing Jack say "the sex" like he's freakin swap-meated Sam...

-

Worst case scenario: Cas has ALREADY given Jack the talk but Dean's now going to have to fix that damage :P

-

Oh teenagers. You want them to stay disturbingly 1 day old naked manchildren forever.

-

Of course the waitress leans in like "sometimes you just have 'the sex'"

Dean shifts uncomfortably and rotates the cock that had been staring right at his midsection away, like he'd not only clocked it earlier, thought about what it innuendoed, but now in the moment where they're thinking about all this stuff surface text, he's too uncomfortable to deal with cocks right now.

-

Thank god Dean is as uncomfortable as I am dealing with the concept of Jack being adult bodied and now emotionally teenaged, because he puts the conversation back on track before I actually expire of horror.

Me and Dean are mutually uncomfortable at the realisation that Jack is catching up fast with his outward age. More than halfway there, probably. Only just started bonding with the kid and now we have to let him fly the nest :P

-

Awww we're getting the everyone loves Harper montage of townsfolk. I love one of these things.

We're spending a LOT of time on the Dean n Jack side of things, which is making me wonder if Sam and Charlie will play catch up later, or if they really are a comic cutaway case to the real angst. That Yockey really really wanted to get our two tragic main dorks into one room alone to work through their issues of guilt and murder and stuff and Sam is too emotionally well-balanced currently to be around that.

-

I'm pretty sure one set of the townsfolk are two married women

-

Oh Harper. She's so bubbly and she keeps losing people D: Is there a Nice Guy latched onto you?

(Is it stapler!guy? Nooo I was rooting for him. Maybe he's innocent but will be the next victim... Or maybe not. He DID just see Winston trying to pick her up moments before he died)

-

"She's bad luck" "real shame."

Yeah, something wants her for itself >.>

-

Maybe Harper is the one doing the murdering and eating

Probably not.

-

Sam sits there picking his teeth and AUCharlie finally snaps and tries reaching out to him if it will make him a less annoying stakeout partner. She also does not come under the bracket of Sam's hunter army in the sense of being inexperienced and over grateful of the rescue - that fierce Charlie spark clearly sets her aside not to treat him like the Chief in the same way of needing to be coached and looked after and she was immediately free last season to head off with main named characters like Rowena for side adventures. 

It's interesting just because WE know better that she's interesting and Charlie-like so obviously worth a main side character promotion, but in-universe in a practical way, on the surface there might not initially be anything to set her aside from why she gets special treatment except that she had a former leadership role and clearly more experience and innate feeling towards hunting and rebellion than the rest, compared with Maggie who clearly comes across as a refugee wanting to make a new life and learn the ropes of this world with skills she didn't even develop growing to adulthood in the AU.

Anyway, AUCharlie's attempts to shore Sam up end up with Sam throwing the awkwardness back on her and finally opening up the emotional heart of their story - telling her that Charlie was Dean's old wingman and that she'd been a best friend of his (see also: they'd been going to Moondoor meets off-screen)

-

This is also hilarious that they're using the term wingman when Cas is blatantly the "wing man" in Dean's life and yet Sam is of course focused on Charlie when it comes to dealing with the awkwards of being in a car with AUCharlie but also this skips over Cas's place in the order of best friendyness, because Cas is so much beyond that with his family status.

-

Anyway Sam uses "you" to refer to Charlie to AUCharlie, which is a direct comment on how they find it weird to have her around and she recoils also from the weirdness that they'd been so close to her in their universe. Their mutual discomfort with each other probably also being why she's been happy to go off on extended adventures on her own getting to grips with this world.

"I'm just saying, I'm not surprised you survived the apocalypse" "Well, I am!"

Sam and AUCharlie going back and forth on his uncomfortable admiration of the other Charlie, while AUCharlie is of course having to fill the shoes of the dear departed first Charlie, a harsh copy of her to Sam's eyes and she can feel that because of course of the weird hug when they first met, it's clear that he, like Dean, struggles to separate her - even in a way where she's AU Charlie but Bobby is "new bobby" which is a distinction which shows more awareness of Bobby as a clean replacement while Charlie is a murky zone where should she be treated like just having another Charlie dropped in their laps, or should she be seen clearly as a completely different person from the one she's replacing for them?

-

Oh nooo this Charlie worked for RRE but she had a love of her life unlike our singleton Charlie. Just like AUBobby had managed to have Daniel with Karen so things were clearly easier between them than our version... It seems like Mary's sacrifice to not have John somehow boosted the relationships of all the AU people except maybe poor old Kevin :P

-

Oh noooo what if AUCharlie goes to find this universe Cara??

-

Oh goodness actual details of the "angel wars" - a massive EMP that put Charlie out of a job just for starters.

"We banded together, thought, someone will save us! No one ever did." Probably not a commentary on the effectiveness of the current government/world leadership at protecting us from disaster >.>

-

You made AUCharlie cry, you asshole. D:

It's mass grief vs personal grief - the AU peeps lost their world, Sam and Dean saved their world at great personal loss. They took on every one of these deaths into their own personal angst machine, so no wonder it's still rolling on :P

Because in the AU everyone has a Karen or a Cara - everyone who was left lost everything and everyone who was gone.

In Sam n Dean's world, paradise world, the heroes had their own grief, but it's a mythologised version, the great mytharc of losing Mary, Jess, etc that powered the intense personal angst of the apocalypse. But that angst which was so intensely forged in Sam and Dean for taking on the entire burden of everyone's angst that made them the heroes who stopped the apocalypse.

And literally one episode later I'm back to Dean's 2x20 speech about why does it have to be us who saves the world and sacrifices happy normal lives - throw "Carmen" into the Karen, Cara collection.

-

"One day the water gets shut off. The next day, people are on fire."

-

Anyway, AUCharlie is intensely hardened to the point of "it all falls apart" because of course she's seen their world crumble.

And again, the outside view point where she's not got the perspective that Sam is the hero that saved the world - it's for us to remember that Sam is the reason this world hasn't crumbled, that hunters are the secret glue holding this world together and we can correct Charlie about their world.

Going too deep is quite uncomfortable to end up comparing 2 worlds, one with a set of destined heroes who are just about holding this one together from at least supernatural threats, and one which immediately fell to pieces when the damage came. In 13x14 AUBobby said that their world just had him, again leaving that empty space that Sam and Dean fixed. But implies the everyday heroism of the AU peeps who managed to hold it together enough to rebuild communities and organise fighting back in their spaces, even heroic-minded people like Bobby and Charlie... AUBobby reckoned he didn't have it together as much as Sam, but in our world, Bobby was a pillar who held the boys and hunting community together much of the time. And Charlie helped save the world once, yet this one felt it crumble around her.

There's something vaguely divine right of kings going on with Sam and Dean at this point, that whole Chuck getting personally involved and calling Dean the firewall between light and dark, that puts their role in a much stranger and more cosmic position. The same thing that made Billie angrily stop pursuing the Winchesters and sit back to read Dean's books in bafflement about how he doesn't die every other day of the week, but is so important on the grand scheme.

To go another step beyond that into meta realms, they have a main character narrative purpose in their own world, so embedded that in the world building of a similar universe, there's no one remotely fit for purpose to step up because no one else was narratively placed to do what they did. And that's their tragedy that they were the people singled out by the narrative, that it's character fights god, directly and on a meta level at times, yelling "why me" and getting "because you're the main character, dumbass, now get back to work" as the answer.

Sam has CONSIDERABLY less interaction across the entire show with being the more meta character, as Dean has genre savvy and was the onlooker to Sam being the one in the crosshairs, that the choice was on Lucifer's vessel to say no or yes, or crack him out of the cage or put him back in. Michael's only purpose was to kill Lucifer, and the rest was free character development space for Dean to yell about how unfair it was that he was there and Sam was being forced this way and that to fulfill his destiny. Even in some meta episodes Sam stayed within the lines or played a role while Dean was the one critiquing and going to speak to the manager, as per the metaphor of Swan Song - 4x18 is the best example of that.

So I think Sam having to confront this here and now is really interesting that he seems considerably less challenged over time to think of himself as the centre of this narrative and what causes and effects this has caused, and to see himself from outside eyes rather than being the one trapped in the middle of it. Lucifer showed him a clip of Swan Song from outside eyes, but it's just not been enough for Sam to really conceptualise himself in this way. Perhaps it'll help him appreciate more what he's done for the universe. I think 6x15 might be the only time he showed more interest than Dean, and that also was about an alternate universe and working out their effect or lack of on it. Of course it was a branch AU from OUR world, while Apocalypse AU is a branch AU from THEIR world.

"not here"

"not yet"

-

More sugar for Jack. Dean rewards him for finding a case with PIE. Not cake though there was a lot in the displays.

There's still cocks in the background. In the old season 10 pie vs cake thing (10x12 and 10x13 and 10x15 working HARD on it) cake was the forbidden option and pie was the sexy thing that literally was used as a yonic symbol. I'm beginning to dread that Jack's going to get the talk, if for no other reason that Dabb's pre-episode tweets of Jack as Fabio on romance novel covers, but the previous conversation sure didn't help. We're visually and show-language primed for Some Nonsense.

-

Oh Christ Jack starts asking about courting, and he says he's never experienced it "unless what you said about Rowena and Gabriel counts"

This dumb lump of nougat has witnessed one of the most ridiculous chapters of Dean n Cas angst and hasn't got a clue.

"No, definitely doesn't count."

He never saw them together, but he would have been there when they broke the news to Rowena I guess. Maybe had some innocent questions then too.

Maybe was advised not to touch the books on that side of the library until someone hosed them down with holy oil.

-

I've been avoiding watching more for like. 2-3 hours. I mean I've been dipping in and out but the mere prospect of this conversation has had me noping out for extended chunks of time to knit and stare into the void and I just realised it's 9am and I started at 5 and only some of that was typing.

My second hand embarrassment squick is barely able to cope with this concept. Now I'm IN this scene I've watched all of Rachel Maddow and nearly checked my dash before I remembered I'm avoiding watching the new episode because Dean has to give Jack the talk so I still have an unwatched episode and spoilers to avoid.

I'm ranking this episode right up there with my conceptual horror at 11x04 just for the prospect of Jack and sex in the same sentence.

-

Oh thank GOD "when we get back I promise I'll give you the Talk" I should have pressed play so much sooner.

(No, you're fooling yourself Lizzy. This concept doesn't just come up in the first quarter of an episode and then go away)

-

Oh. Oh Dear. Yeah, trying to do a trust fall with the rest of the scene just meant I walked right in to Dean proposing, I think, using this strapping young lad he has with him as bait to investigate Harper, by sending him to meet cute with her. You know, Jack, dressed in his tan coat, Harper now dressed with her red bandanna ascoting around her throat and a black shirt so she's more Dean-like.

Bless, Jack's all grown up, he's in a Destiel parallel :')

-

A Ploy! Father Son roleplay! Dean plays the horrible looming FBI man who is threatening a smol lady with only a book for protection to interview her aggressively... And in steps the hero, in his red shirt and still tan coat of course, primed for young love and a hunger for local history books! :P

Well at least maybe stapler!guy might be protected by this if he's not the monster :P

-

Dean has watched enough rom coms/read enough romance novels to know how to set this up even if Jack doesn't. Canon.

-

Put that nasty FBI man in his place! Bam! Jack's getting another one in over Dean in the roleplay which mirrors their starting conversation of him emotionally triple-checkmating Dean over letting him come.

It is also a position of trust to let him do the work to chat up Harper.

-

Gosh I am curious about the endgame of where the Jack vs Dean conflict goes. Jack was literally yelling at Cas that they might have to murder Dean to get Michael a few weeks ago. There's shit going on here and the self-aware staged conflict really makes a curious sort of play within a play aspect, where it mirrors the dynamic. Set a play to catch the conscience of the king.

In this case, Dean being overbearing and threatening to a young woman mirrors Kaia and his treatment of both versions of her, but this time someone is here to step in and stop him, when Jack has been a bystander in the past. And in 13x09 of course, when they first met Kaia, Jack was being really grabby and possessive of her, and she had to beat him off and when Sam and Dean caught up with Jack, Dean immediately said "Good!" about Kaia hitting him, because Jack really was overstepping lines and was wavering one way and the other about being a Joffrey.

Jack is again playing the hero - he's been the prince to sleeping beauty and now he's the Fabio to this love-challenged cursed town darling. This is about perceptions and surface levels - playing the games of being the hero while still working out his own place in the world and discovering that heroism can sometimes mean a murderous revenge quest against the AUncle and the high collateral damage of achieving that. Despite Jack's full on tragic narrative he's battling it hard to dabble in other more light-hearted genres, and join his dads who have all survived by travelling between genre lines and becoming action heroes instead of tragic heroes.

And why is Dean now the possessive and grabby one when he was possessed and grabbed? Or is he still the one who did the grabbing? He CAN'T be Just Michael for all this time, but what's the secret Michael has set up? We can't know it yet but there must be clues, and more we'll work out when we know and can look back on these episodes with hindsight...

But Dean also was presumably the one to come up with the ploy so is it HIS play, and we're getting the boy king (v.2) conscience caught here?

"Why don't you back off kid?"

"You back off... Old man" Jack suddenly sounds threatening enough that Dean recoils, having never been on that end of Jack's terrifying switch Alex can make to being a truly frightening presence, at least not when Jack wasn't naked and lashing out dumbly because he was literally hours old. Jack's never threatened Dean with intent because why would he.

Dean's caught off guard and makes a genuinely "uh" noise in his throat while recovering from the threat, but it impresses Harper so I suppose that's what matters.

Dean vs Jack is very much the Dean and John version of this whole thing, except Dean tried to launch himself to Mars rather than parent Jack and give him the same experience... While accidentally doing stuff like handing Jack a shovel and dismissively telling him to dig which had the exact same effect of being raised as he was. Because like it or not, by 13x02, Jack was mimicking Dean and idolised him a little all along. And now of course, with Daniel laying into Bobby and probably a bunch of other stuff I can't recall mid sentence, we're deep into confronting father figure territory, with John's ghost looming over them all.  

-

"This isn't over" after a moment of comical blustering, the squint Dean gives Jack is almost imperceptible but there's a bit of confusion/curiosity there about just where Jack's assertiveness came from, because DEAN didn't teach him to disrespect authority like that (he totally got it from you Dean). The warning is of course nice and meta in the sense that this staged conflict probably is over, but the Dean vs Jack stuff is only just kicking off.

-

Jack... Smith.

Aw hon.

Still no surname then? Not Kline or Winchester or... whatever Cas's surname is.

-

"Dean what do you mean you don't know Jack's surname? It's the same as mine!" Dean stares blankly at Cas. Cas squints at Dean. Dean slowly, slowly, sinks to the floor and crab-walks backwards out of the room.

-

Anyway awwwwwww romance hero Jack! You play those genres! Find the one where you don't have to be consumptive and murderous!

-

Aha, Stapler Guy is probably called Miles, since Dean is getting perfect audio on this conversation from the car.

Jack is the politest nougat ever, and wants to shake hands with everyone. SOMEONE raised him right. Probably Kelly. I can't even begin to imagine where else he gets it so it must be an instinct she hammered into him from the womb.

Anyway as soon as another guy leaves to get coffee with Harper, Miles comes shooting out of the library to ask what's up, so he's looking more and more like the monster. Grabbiness as the motw!

-

Oooh she's taking Jack to her apartment to get him a book. Oh dear, Jack, this is what Dean did in 9x08.

Be careful, sweetie. No one's given you the Talk yet D:

-

"You don't even know this guy!" "Miles, stop it!"

Yeah, staples guy is definitely my no.1 suspect.

-

Oh.

Is staples guy about to be eaten?

-

Whoops, me and Dean both made the wrong call there. And I was just about to tell Dean he should have been following him in case he was the monster, which would have at least saved him.

-

Apparently just crushing on Harper is dangerous enough. Though Staples Guy crushed hard enough to be a threat. Which means, I would guess, that the MotW feeds on toxic masculinity.

-

Oh my GOD Sam is still stuck in the truck with AUCharlie.

-

"Who wants to be a hunter? Just a lot of tears and death." Yeah, our Charlie got into it with only personal sacrifice of broken arms in exchange for a bunch of thrill-seeking adventure. Until she died, of course. AUCharlie is what you get when Charlie has a tragic backstory involving monsters. I think she must still be hunting for the same principle Charlie had on our first meeting, of what sort of douchebag doesn't help when monsters are eating people in your very building you work... But at the same time, AUCharlie has none of the sunshine, because it was already all taken from her, and she never started hunting to save people, only to fight angels and survive. I suppose the only difference in this world is that now there's no angels to fight, she's outcast from society by default and  has ended up with the same asocial vigilante skills from guerrilla warfare as hunters use day by day for their less world ends stakes job.

-

Sam says "you" and then corrects to "our Charlie" - I can't remember exactly when this was but I think it was 10x18, after Charlie had been through enough that she was starting to lose the shine and Robbie knew he was writing a Charlie who was about to be chewed up and devoured by the story. By Sam's man pain in the story.

This is a baton that Yockey is having to take very seriously and carefully, because of course AUCharlie is so different but the meta perspective on bringing her back is very much about replacement and loss of a fave and facing what the story did to Charlie and for what stakes, vs what was she brought back for and can just shoving a new different Charlie into the story actually make up for doing what they did to her.

-

"So glad this is my last case" aw no she's retiring to the beach. Has she just been working with them while she gets enough resources to start over?

She's going "away" - from monsters and people. Go live on a mountaintop or something. Again, this is more about the trauma she's been through and how she copes, and what she needs to do to settle herself.

(PS: I will weep openly if the last shot of this is Charlie outside a cupcake shop)

I don't think this means she's necessarily out of the story or that through this van conversation bottle episode, Sam might not convince her to at least just take a break like Mobby are doing, but she's clearly there in the collection with them and Dean of people who have been so badly hurt that they need to retreat from the hunting frontlines. Dean NEEDED to watch 2 weeks worth of horror movies and take it easy. He's not exactly describing himself as really ready for action now either. Charlie may end up a mirror that's a fair bit darker, because while AUBobby is full of grief and self-destruction, it's open and explosive, while she's cold and retreating and surrounded by people who see the wrong person when they look at her - the bubbly fun Charlie we used to know. In the same way, if Dean has changed, people look at him and see the Dean THEY used to know and expect things of him he's sometimes not ready to offer. He made a big step in letting Sam take charge of the operation, in the sense of acknowledging himself under Sam's direction.

It's interesting now that both AUBobby and Charlie lost romantic loved ones, when we saw Dean change so dramatically in season 13 without Cas and that being the beginning of Sam's tentative need to take control and start to be right about his hunches like nurturing Jack. The swap in the roles and Sam struggling to understand Dean, and in 13x05 - the Yockey episode - failing so desperately to help Dean on his chosen cheer up hunt compared to acing it the same time next year.

-

LOL Harper's house has "AMOUR" and a huge love heart on the wall. This poor romantic sap. I'm so sorry a monster is eating all your prospective boyfriends.

She has stuffed toys on her bed and so many shelves of books. I love her. She's the best. Protect her, please, Jack.

-

His "??" over the "moves" also is a great way to make her way more the flustered one, because Jack could be way more awkward with inexperience except he's literally transcended it, as Cas often does, back out the other side of obliviousness :')

-

He leaps into action to prepare to test her for monstery things :') He's been trained well!!

-

On the other hand it does look like he now has REALLLLLLLY sweaty hands after covering them in holy water.

-

Oh christ, Jack, this is why we don't do Christo any more. Also. You shouldn't be aggravating your cough. You could really set yourself off.

-

"I'm just nervous"

Harper goes through the correct range of emotions for how adorable Jack is.

Charlie's "I got something" is layered over Jack being invited to sit with her - both of them just got a break on the case, though for Jack it is being prey for the boyfriend eater, and Charlie has read enough books.

-

Muscas look horrifying. I love the 17th century illustration of one.

-

Awww AUCharlie calling him a nerd. Those awful flashes of her being the Charlie they once knew.

-

LOLLLLL the Musca has a "bad egg" who FAILS TO FIND A MATE and goes bad, and starts killing people to nest. So we're really roasting beta males who fall into the woe is me victimisation trap of incels and would rather kill people (literally, unfortunately, in some cases) than address their own issues, get help, and find some peace and probably, honestly, a girlfriend as soon as they stop behaving like that and learn to see women as people, not mating-prey >.>

Why do I feel like whatever has latched onto Harper is going to have a suspiciously similar motivation where it's picking off men in order to leave her single...

-

Not that I have the best judgement on her case, but it's B L A T A N T L Y about courting.

-

And these guys are courting her - lots of innocent courtly gestures like dinner dates, protecting her nobly with a stapler, fighting off the nasty FBI man... She's their damsel.

-

"Our perp might just be a giant fly with low self-esteem" Don't sugar coat it Sam.

-

Is this episode "wow look at this hetero bullshit by Steve Yockey"

-

AHAHAH THE GIANT FLY IS MANSPREADING AT THE BUS SHELTER

It also has ribbons at the front of its cloak. The design is both modern with the suit and boots, but with enough of that old 17th century twist to give it a nice spooky old fashioned uncanniness. it's not of this time, place, world, etc...

-

Awww Harper has a halo with the lamp!

-

Oh Jack no, I told you not to aggravate the cough.

-

Vance... probable monster. (I say that a lot but we’re past the elimination round)

She didn't want to leave town... we could see the world in books!

You are also adorable and not quite of this town or modern world. Her "sappiness" does make her a weirdly good match for Jack, though, just because of the pure-heartedness they exude.

-

Jack can not IMAGINE someone leaving Harper behind.

-

"That was the beginning of my bad luck" Fancy that.

Also you still keep a photo of your ex in your apartment.

That’s weird, hon.

-

Oh dear, now Jack's opening up. "I try to stay optimistic." "Me too."

Awww sweetie. for all the bad that's happened he keeps on powering through, because sometimes that can be powered by optimism for a happy ending

Unfortunately, we're in irony town where the grimmer you are about your fate the more chance you have of surviving just to spite that. And, you know, vice versa, it gives you consumption just to make it harder... like, how much can we throw at this kid before he stops?

-

"Do you believe in love in first sight?" "Harper..... do you mind if I use your bathroom?"

Unlike 9x08, Jack is rather less distracted by being adorably hit on by the sweetest romantic. Time to flee.

-

Dean has been standing awkwardly at the corpse this entire time.

-

The bathroom has dragonflies all over it which I assume are interesting symbolically in a way which relates to her love struggles. Also the other side of the story's bug struggles.

-

"Harper is not a monster. And i'm 99% sure she's in love with me."

-

"She was looking at me with these googly eyes"

This is like, warning for next time Cas and Dean are in the same room because you SAW them last time

Next time, you will be prepared.

-

Dean is convinced she couldn't be in love with him so instantly. What do YOU know about love, Dean?

-

"But if she is I need to know everything about sex. Go:"

Kid, there isn't time in the world to tell you everything Dean knows about sex. Also, are you really going to pull a Dean and hook up despite all the deaths in town? ALSO dude, courting. Court her first. You know NOTHING about this or what you're feeling.

-

Teenagers are the worst.

-

Ooops Dean just stood around talking and now he's been eaten.

Guess it's time for Jack to SAVE HIM

-

"You're fine. I'm fine." No you aren't Jack, stop kidding yourself.

-

Oh good, she's scaling back to saying they should get coffee.

This is sensible and take notes, Jack, but also disregard this offer of a date entirely and go save your dad, you're not in a romance novel.

-

"I... don't know" this was Jack's stock response when he was younger to encountering new things about himself and deep philosophical questions which he just had not had time to ponder but in the world he had been thrust into, he was being asked to immediately have an opinion on.

I think we ought to file courting and sex under those headings for now :P He will figure it out but not at this breakneck speed, no matter how fast he grew up.

-

Bam, Dean bursts in on them - is there remotely time for him to have done this fast enough? Is this really Dean? Are we supposed to be doubting who Dean is?

-

Vance has literally come back from the dead to bother her about having new boyfriends. Great.

-

Oh, okay, this looks pretty cut and dry that it's a zombie now he's in the room :P

-

he looks like Archie Andrews. Is this the crossover we've been waiting for?

-

"Archie! Hey!"

oops.

*puts another penny in the "quoted Dean before he said the line" jar*

-

I can't believe Dean watches Riverdale.

-

I mean, yeah he grew up reading the comics, but you know it's on his netflix queue.

-

Stop smashing up Harper's bookshelves! Dean's all "let's dance," still looking waaay too excited to get to wrestle monsters to take his mind off of all his angst.

-

Why are Sam and Charlie still sitting in the truck instead of following their weirdo fly? 

-

"You can't just quit and go live on a mountain somewhere"

Somehow when he sits in cars with female characters in Yockey episodes he ends up saying a lot of things like this. Bless your heart, you just described my whole life.

-

"People need people." "We're social animals" Sam is finally starting to realise that maaaybe that bit in 8x10 where he and Dean removed everyone they cared about from their lives and sat gloomily in silence anger-eating chilli in a dank cabin in the backwoods was PERHAPS not the best way to be people.

He's really starting to like having a squad around him... Maybe this is awakening a bit of Sam that he never had except in college when he got to have people around him without too much fear about having to leave them behind because he was so determined to stick to his new life there.

-

Sam pulls that not only he tried and failed to quit hunting, but our Charlie did too.

"She ain't me!" but you are still cut from the same cloth whether you like it or not.

"It's my life, Sam! not hers and not yours" basically no one else can tell me whether I should be here or not, and it's on my terms if i am or not. Which is very healthy but kind of sad about the commentary on having a Charlie on the show if she's so insistent to escape hunting. Because it killed our Charlie so we should want AUCharlie to be safe. But at the same time, bringing her back then sending her off to a mountain... it's a cold comfort that a version of her survived, that they saw her face again before she left in slightly better terms. But what does it bring to the show to have had her back but then to let her go again?

And, on a character level, can Boss Sam wrangle a great asset and potential amazing friend to stay and work with them and be a key part of his hunter squad, or will he have to let her go and fail to achieve some networking people skills.

-

They have a funny friend potential moment as sam says we don't want to tackle him in case it’s a guy into weird fashion and she's all, don't we?

-

This hesitation was enough for that poor guy to get grabbed under cover of the bus.

Though perhaps the hesitation was also timed to stop Sam and AUCharlie getting mowed down by a bus and very disappointingly ending both their careers.

-

Harper stops and demands to know what's happening. Jack throws aside the book that was the ruse, and holds out his hand for trust with open honesty now and she takes it, and he continues to pull her away to protect her. Awwwww.

-

Has Dean been wrestling in her apartment since it got dark?

How has no one called the cops.

-

Vance gets a spidey sense tingle that someone is holding Harper's hand, and marches out of the apartment, to Dean's disappointment that he didn't get to smash a chair over his head. Because that was a totally normal amount of enthusiasm for a fight.

-

Jack is clever, Harper is snarky... aw :P

-

I can't believe Sam and Charlie can walk after sitting all day.

-

"Brass nail dipped in sugar water" lol flies are drawn to sugar. More flies with honey than vinegar.

If you creatively mock that up using American beverages I will be horrified that corn syrup counts as sugar. Charlie literally just reminded us of Dick Roman taking advantage of your industry's corn fetish

-

BUGS

-

Those who don't learn from history etc

-

I don't think that's enough fly papers

-

Sam just sniffed a chloroform rag. Er.

-

Oh that is disgusting. Why weren't you wearing the orange jacket so we could ritually burn it.

-

Oooh gross. (pt.2 - Yockey was only warming us up with bug juice)

Harper let the zombie in and now she's kissing him? She better be mind controlled or this is a whole level of weird Jack should not have had to deal with because no one should start the Talk at necrophilia and work backwards from there D:

-

Oh NO this is going to be the Talk Dean has to give Jack, and to top it off they have a jealous boyfriend stalking roleplay kink, AND she threw in a bunch of other things for Jack to ask questions about >.>

-

Told you she was a witch. It was the Sabrina-like collar that gave it away.

Who knew my dorkiest joke about my suspicions was the most accurate.

She's even wearing a red jacket, just like Sabrina has her signature red coats.

-

This is a CW cross-promotion episode.

-

"It's first love, Jack. The best kind. Without baggage or compromise. I mean. I did have to kill him to keep him here after college..."

She's a Mary mirror. This is Mary and young!John. Oh god. Azazel's deal is her raising the dead, and sharing a gross kiss to boot... And Harper is from a long line of necromancers and Mary was from a long line of hunters, the last of them...

Of course, Mary has all that baggage from her first love but has moved on and is now having a happy vacation with Bobby but I don't think it's symbolically unimportant that that was literally last episode and now we're seeing first loves with an undead boyfriend, that Harper couldn't let slip out of her hands so she did the most toxic thing to bring him back. It's very much like the Plum sisters being the zombie-raising parallels to Sam and Dean and their need to bring Mary back come what may - which of course after Jack's vision in 13x09 made Dean threaten Kaia in the first place

-

Can't spell Necromancer without "Romance"

-

I love the hiding from the zombie chase going on here. Vance is dumb as a box of rocks and we’re getting lots of new gifs of Jack being “sneaky”

-

Ahaha she has a romance novel called "Lances and Laces" (i think?)

-

Awww Jack is doing a Ruse again, playing dumb for her. "I thought we fell in love at first sight!"

-

Awwwwww he's proposing to her. The allure of un-undead love.

-

"But I tried to kill you!" "Every relationship has its stuff, right?"

pffffffffffffffft

You aren't officially in love on this show UNTIL you try and kill each other

-

Ow, Jack. That's going to shake some bloody phlegm loose.

-

FATHER SON TEAMWORK SAVES THE DAY

-

Lol, Vance got ditched as soon as it was awkward to have a zombie boyfriend

-

Sam is seriously using the fly as a parallel to Charlie being a loner. I wonder what you could put in front of him that he WOULDN'T be able to twist into a moral. He really is the camp leader :P

-

Awww the gross bug thing's people came for it

-

Sam I can not hear a word of your motivating speech over these terrifying things and their nightmare aesthetic taking home one of their own who strayed from the swarm to swooping music.

-

AUCharlie relents enough to have a door open... Yeah, she did also get knocked out when trying to hunt on her own and though she wanted to retire, well...

-

I can't believe Yockey metaphorically compared the hunter community to the fly swarm. Like, Charlie was all blurr the metaphor has holes but they had no idea the bugs looked after their own like that D: Dramatic irony again - this time against Charlie to make her more right than she knew that she has people who would care for her.

-

Oh NO, Jack has left an impression on Harper... Oh dear oh dear oh dear. You can NOT have a necromancer long distance girlfriend.

-

Even though she's in a different diner there's still a cock in the window.

-

"I'm sorry I have to kill you!" heee she's so cute. In a very twisted way, I still like her even though the necromancy thing is gross, and Jack should steer WAY clear.

But awwwwwwwww.

-

"And that's love."

Dean saying it can get crazier than that... Dude, just give him the talk, I'll turn off the last 2 minutes of the episode. You clearly need to. Or at the very least start the ball rolling on suggesting Sam do it, Sam asks Cas if he’d want to, Cas comes and asks you for help to do it and you end up being the one to try after all.

-

I LOVE Jack hanging with Dean, with his too-sweet coffee, angling to make Dean let him come on hunts more because he was right.

-

I think Dean just pointed out neither of them are ready to be hunters if they can't cope with the mistakes they make without feeling super guilty, since they had the guilt Olympics at the beginning.

-

Oh Jack, no.

-

OH NO HIS NOSE IS BLEEDING

-

Down he goes!

-

This is what happens when you meddle in genres you don't belong.

Tragedy comes back and kicks you in the face.

-

Dean on his knees by Jack yelling his name: same. D:

[iftekharsanom]

Ash's Top 10 Strongest Pokemon

1. Charizard

Category: Flame Type: Flying, Fire Ability: Blaze Weakness: Water, Rock, Electric Evolves from: Charmeleon Height: 5′ 7″ Abilities                    Episode Flamethrower +  Charmander – The Stray Pokémon Leer                          The Tower of Terror Rage                 Primeape Goes Bananas Skull Bash         Pokémon Scent-sation! Ember                 The Ninja Poké-Showdown Fire Spin                 The Ninja Poké-Showdown Submission          Volcanic Panic Seismic Toss         Volcanic Panic Mega Punch         Charizard Chills Dragon Rage         Charizard Chills Take Down         Charizard Chills Tackle -                  Pokémon Double Trouble Fly                          Fighting Flyer with Fire Dragon Breath  The Symbol Life Overheat                  The Symbol Life Steel Wing         Gathering The Gang Of Four! Wing Attack +  The Fires of a Red-Hot Reunion! Slash +                 The Fires of a Red-Hot Reunion! Dragon Tail +         The Fires of a Red-Hot Reunion! + indicates this Pokémon used this move recently.* - indicates this Pokémon normally can't use this move. Charizard, known in Japan as Lizardon, is a Pokémon species in Nintendo and Game Freak's Pokémon franchise. From Emotional on-again-off-again relationship with Charizard Ross and Rachel Ash from Friends Ships and used to a great contrast with his ever sunny relationship with Pikachu. Viewers love drama, and children love their inflamed dragon lizards; Charizard is the ideal package! Comments: "Charizard is so strong it beat an articuno" "My favourite pokemon charizard he came when ever ash needed him and battle with legendary makes him more specialM" "Ash's Charizard has beaten Magmar and taurus in the initial stages. That was the time when it didn't listen to Ash. It's seismic toss I think is the most powerful attack till date. After that Its power has further increased on training with Lisa. I think now it can be hardly be defeated until a very strong water pokemon comes in front." "It is the best and strongest because it is made for winning" 2.Greninja

Gender:        Male Ability: Torrent (not yet activated)                 Battle Bond (as Ash-Greninja) Debut:        Kalos, Where Dreams and Adventures Begin! Caught where: Lumiose City Received from: Professor Sycamore Released In: Facing the Needs of the Many! Type:           Dark, Water Weakness: Bug, Grass, Fighting, Fairy, Electric Evolves from: Frogadier Height: 4′ 11″ Abilities       Episiode Water Pulse Kalos, Where Dreams and Adventures Begin! Bubble        A Battle of Aerial Mobility! Pound        An Appetite for Battle! Double Team  A Rush of Ninja Wisdom! Cut +        Forging Forest Friendships! Aerial Ace + A Stealthy Challenge! Water Shuriken+A Festival of Decisions! + indicates this Pokémon used this move recently.* - indicates this Pokémon normally can't use this move. This Greninja is a Water/Dark-type Pokémon that was owned by Ash and was the first Pokémon he obtained in the Kalos region and became one of his strongest. After training hard and soul the become the strongest pair in the arena. They became one during battle and Greninja becomes mega-evolve without stone for the bond between these two. Comments: "Greninja is ashes strongest Pokemon so far and and the only one with a special form equal to mega evolution." "Greninja is definitely Ash's strongest Pokemon and those two have a remarkable strong bond even when they far away from each other. Their bond is one of the best kinda of like Pikachu, those two should together from now on due to them knowing each other so well! You couldn't asked for a better team then Ash and Greninja ; I love them both!" "This Pokemon is so good that it has an ability that's not even out yet! Greninja has mega evolution stats and isn't overrated like Charizard plus Charizard never listened and is a pretty crappy Pokemon. You say Charizard beat legendary Pokemon so did Sceptile and Pikachu against Tobias. And that was Darkrai and Latios. Greninja is great too because it can turn into Ash Greninja and is super powerful."  "Definitely ash's strongest pokemon" 3.Infernape

Category: Flame Type: Fighting, Fire Ability: Blaze Weakness: Water, Ground, Flying, Psychic Evolves from: Monferno Height: 3′ 11″ Abilities          Episode Ember         When Pokémon Worlds Collide! Flame Wheel When Pokémon Worlds Collide! Scratch          When Pokémon Worlds Collide! Dig +         Different Strokes For Different Blokes! Fire Spin Top  Down Training! Flamethrower Tag! We're It...! Mach Punch + Evolving Strategies! Flare Blitz + Working on a Right Move! + indicates this Pokémon used this move recently.* - indicates this Pokémon normally can't use this move. As Monferno these partners could fill a complete explosion "Hydro Cannon" a fadless Empollon and in its final form Simiabraz almost unilaterally won the Ash rivalry with Paul during the quarterfinals of the League of Sinnoh. 4.Pikachu

Category: Mouse Type: Electric Ability: Static Weakness: Ground Evolves from: Pichu Evolves to: Raichu Abilities                     Episode Thunder Shock   Pokémon - I Choose You! Thunderbolt +            Showdown in Pewter City Agility                    Electric Shock Showdown Quick Attack +   Electric Shock Showdown Thunder                    Abra and the Psychic Showdown Double-Edge            Friend and Foe Alike Tackle -                    The Double Trouble Header Leer -                    Hour of the Houndour Iron Tail +           All Things Bright and Beautifully! Volt Tackle           May's Egg-Cellent Adventure Electro Ball +           Dancing With the Ducklett Trio! + indicates this Pokémon used this move recently.* - indicates this Pokémon normally can't use this move. This Pikachu is an Electric-type Pokémon owned by Ash. He is the first Pokémon Ash ever had and is always by Ash's side, along with being one of his greatest battlers. Comments: "Defeated Tyranitar and Metagross. Both are very powerful pokemon. More than that he defeated legendary pokemon. I think this guy deserves." "He killed Latios, Regice and Mega Lucario. Also, he defeated Drake's Dragonite and Trip's Serperior." "Pikachu has been here from the start, it must be level 100 by now, but it does seem his level resets after each region... no-one knows, it's debatable but Pikachu makes most sense." "Defeated the regis latios and still stays cuteMnew" 5.Sceptile

Category: Forest Type: Grass Ability: Overgrow Weakness: Bug, Poison, Ice, Flying, Fire Evolves from: Grovyle Height: 5′ 7″ Abilities         Episode Leaf Blade +  Exploud and Clear Solar Beam  Ka Boom With a View! Agility          Curbing the Crimson Tide! Leaf Storm +  The Semi-Final Frontier! + indicates this Pokémon used this move recently.* - indicates this Pokémon normally can't use this move. Ash Sceptile is another Pokemon success story. Not only does Sceptile chew sticks as a kind of cowboy Clint Eastwood, but is also one of only three Pokemon Ash possessed and the defeated a legendary Pokémon. This legendary (Darkrai) also happened on single-scan ALL in the Sinnoh region, making Sceptile probably the best Pokemon ever to grace the Sinnoh region. Comments: "It killed a Darkrai in one hit with leaf blade. What else do I need to say?" "I voted sceptile because he was my first starter and defeated the darkrai." "I think sceptile should be behind infernal because it lost more battles and had lower stats" "I agree but I think Torterra should also be in the list."

6.Hawlucha

Category: Wrestling Type: Flying, Fighting Ability: Unburden, Limber Weakness: Ice, Flying, Psychic, Fairy, Electric Height: 2′ 7″ Weight: 47 lbs Abilities               Episode Karate Chop      The Forest Champion! High Jump Kick   The Forest Champion! Flying Press      The Forest Champion! X-Scissor      Fairy-Type Trickery! + indicates this Pokémon used this move recently.* - indicates this Pokémon normally can't use this move. A recent addition to the Hawlucha team could be the coolest Pokemon Ash today (just check if I find Pokeball Fausto!). In the fight many monsters have dropped Hawlucha's "fly-Press" sign, and even could not take his powerful "High Jump Kick," the boss of the Fitness Haida type.

7.Snorlax

Category: Sleeping

Type: Normal

Ability: Thick Fat, Immunity

Weakness: Fighting

Evolves from: Munchlax

Weight: 1,014 lbs

Abilities                Episode

Body Slam      Snack Attack

Headbutt              Snack Attack

Mega Kick      Snack Attack

Mega Punch      Bound For Trouble

Hyper Beam +     Pokémon Food Fight!

Ice Punch +     Better Eight Than Never

Tackle             The Right Place and the Right Mime

Protect +            Wheel of Frontier

Rest +            Wheel of Frontier

+ indicates this Pokémon used this move recently.*

- indicates this Pokémon normally can't use this move.

Ash cought Snorlax from a grapefruit Islands. It helps Ash to win orange league final. After that he left it to the Professor Oak,s lab. In Johto Sumo Conference Ash win the final with Snorlax. He also use it in the main event of Jhoto League.

8. Talonflame

Category: Scorching

Type: Flying, Fire

Ability: Flame Body

Weakness: Water, Rock, Electric

Evolves from: Fletchinder

Height: 3′ 11″

Abilities                          Episode

Double Team (move) A Battle of Aerial Mobility!

Peck                         A Battle of Aerial Mobility!

Razor Wind +                 A Battle of Aerial Mobility!

Steel Wing +                 Battling on Thin Ice!

Flame Charge +        Battles in the Sky!

Brave Bird +                 A Legendary Photo Op!

+ indicates this Pokémon used this move recently.*

- indicates this Pokémon normally can't use this move.

This Talonflame is a Fire/Flying-type Pokémon that Ash Ketchum caught as a Fletchling. It is the second Pokémon he caught in the Kolas region. Ashe 1st caught Fletchling in the forest. After that it became Fletchender and the evolved into Talonflame to save Ash from legendary pokemon Moltres. It learn brave bard move then. It also helped Ash to collect Gym badges and did well in the Kalols league final.

9.Goodra

Category: Dragon

Type: Dragon

Ability: Sap Sipper, Hydration

Weakness: Ice, Dragon, Fairy

Evolves from: Sliggoo

Height: 6′ 7″

Abilities                 Episode

Rain Dance +       A Slippery Encounter

Bide +               A Slippery Encounter!

Dragon Breath       An Oasis of Hope!

Dragon Pulse +     Good Friends, Great Training!

Ice Beam +       Defending the Homeland!

+ indicates this Pokémon used this move recently.*

- indicates this Pokémon normally can't use this move.

Goodra is one of the Pokémon franchise fiction creature. Introduced in the 6th generation, Goodra is a Dragon-type Pokémon. And 'the evolved form of Sliggoo and end Goomy evolutionarily. Dragon standings Pokemon, Goodra is very intelligent, but Pokemon affectionate, and likes to hug their coaches, covering in goo.

Comments:

"The thing hasn't lost a single battle while with ash. So far, the closest it's come to losing a battle is a tie with a slurpuff, which is a FAIRY type. Immune to one of goodra's best attacks, being dragon pulse. This should easily be top 5 on the list, it has shown to be a war-tank and extremely strong offensively."

"Goodra wasn't as good as expected, especially during thekalos league - yungstirjoey666"

"Goodra is great.Goodra have rain dance and good attacks(ice beam and dragon pulse)"

"If this list is by win/loss record, goodra wins from the fact that it has never lost a battle."

If this list is by raw power, goodra also wins from having the highest numerical stats (with the possible exception of ash-greninja)

10.Swellow

Category: Swallow

Type: Flying, Normal

Ability: Guts

Weakness: Ice, Rock, Electric

Evolves from: Taillow

Height: 2′ 4″

Abilities                Episode

Peck              In the Knicker of Time!

Wing Attack      A Tail with a Twist

Quick Attack      Brave the Wave

Aerial Ace      Lessons in Lilycove

Double Team         Solid as a Solrock

It is one of the Ash's best flying type pokemon. Ash 1st catched it when it was Taillow. Then it evolved and help Ash to win Gym batches. It was one of the powerfull pokemon in the Henon league.

via Blogger http://ift.tt/2lAR9W8

[geekade]

Pokemon Propitiation: Day 819

The importance of saving one's game can not be overstated. 

I may have mentioned here before that my son has gained an affinity for Rhythm Heaven. As it turns out, an excellent new Rhythm Heaven game recently came out on 3DS. 3DS is also where I've been playing Pokemon Blue, and lately, I've been hauling ass. I've gotten into a nice rhythm of playing again on a regular basis and have without a doubt surpassed my previous attempted playthrough's progress point. I'm seeing new stuff, and I've got stories to tell. But a few days ago, my beloved son wanted to play Rhythm Heaven Megamix with me. So he went into my room, grabbed my 3DS, which had my current Pokemon game suspended, opened it up, and somehow managed to quit the game without saving (he's only 3 and doesn't really know how to operate my 3DS) effectively killing about 3 days of progress. Considering that this is day 819 and I've only just beaten the 3rd gym leader, you can see how losing 3 days of progress is pretty painful. I'm also just now looking at a list of gym leaders, and I certainly have a long road ahead of me. Anyway...

Before my game got bumped back, I found myself in Vermilion City. I had dealt with the Team Rocket asshole who robbed that dude's house and decided to just chill in the backyard instead of, you know, going anywhere. Now it was time to see the sights. I went through a suspicious tunnel because some guards told me they were thirsty or something. No really, I have no idea what the living shit that was about. They aren't even blocking the way. I could just leisurely stroll past them and they'd never catch me. They're behind giant desks. Ugh, whatever. Just let an unaccompanied minor traverse some underground tunnels to get to the next town. I swear, I don't know what's weirder, the people of this world or its geography. Once I made it out of the tunnel, I came across some grassy patches, and wouldn't you know, there was a whole group of assholes just standing there in the grass waiting to challenge me to a duel. Well, jokes on you jerks, because I've been grinding my Pokemon like a motherfucker, and I am ready to kick all of the ass.

My Wartortle still looks like an fool, but he's a powerhouse. Also, I've managed to bring my entire team up to his level, so I've got a bunch of fairly strong dudes ready for almost any situation. I've got my Geodude who as long as there's no water around seems nigh invincible, my Pikachu for equal parts ass kicking and adorability, and my Ratatta, my first buddy, ready to kick ass and take names. And ass I did kick. These fools didn't know what hit them. In hindsight, I'm pretty fortunate I got the chance to do this part over again, because it's these idiots who are the real treasure troves of experience points, and I was about to get my first Meowth. I don't know why, but I like this little guy. I don't understand his payday attack, but he does some decent damage, and he's cute. When I had to start over and re-catch Meowth, I did it without challenging any of these jokers to a fight first, and was able to get him a nice little boost of XP in a short period of time. 

The other thing I started doing before the great deletion was check out the S.S. Anne. The great and powerful Bill had given me a ticket after all, so why not have a look around. It was here where I had my first genuinely reasonable Pokemon battle. The first room I walked into had an old man in it. I walked up to him and he basically just freaked out at me for walking into his room uninvited. You know what? I'd yell at me too. I had just become so accustomed to everyone being completely insane in this game, that when this dude was like "What the fuck are you doing in my room? Get out or I'm gonna kick your ass!" and threw his pets at me, I genuinely felt bad about winning. What kind of asshole wanders into a stranger's room on a cruise ship? Apparently, this asshole. I truly am one with the world of Pokemon now. 

As I traveled from room to room, I came to understand that this boat was just chock full of shit heads just waiting for people to walk in and challenge. Me, being on a mission to level up my Meowth, kept tossing him out and seeing how far he could get in battle. Every time his health got low, I'd walk all the way back to town ad heal him up at the pokemon center. Time consuming? yes. Efficient? Fuck no. But it's the only option that doesn't involve me blowing all my cash on potions, so whatever. On one of my trips back I realized that I was walking on a long dock to get to and from the ship. I also remembered that some dude gave me a fishing rod at some point. So I gave it a shot and what do you know? I'm in a battle with a Magikarp!

I'm pretty sure I had one of these bastards the last time I played this game, but I can't for the life of me remember how I came across it. All I know is that I wanted him to have a good life and get strong, so I trained him as best I could. I did not, however, have a Magikarp in my roster this go around. I immediately threw a Pokeball at this little guy and made him my own. It was shortly after this when my game got zapped. Again, it was a blessing in disguise because this time around I caught the Magikarp before going into the ship in the first place, and by the time I was done with the S.S. Anne, my fishy friend was leveled up enough to actually throw an attack at someone! Not an effective one, mind you, but an attack nonetheless. 

At some point when I was  going back and forth to various places grinding or healing, I found some dude who wanted to trade a bird for a duck. I don't remember the name of the thing, but it had an apostrophe in its name, which sounded exotic, so I went for it. I'm glad I did, because it seems to be the only pokemon I have that can learn cut, which I can finally do. I learned it from the captain of the S.S. Anne. He wasn't feeling very well. I met him after beating up a bunch of sailors. Never in my wildest imagination did I ever dream I'd have an occasion to write that string of sentences. 

Fortified with my cut ability, I cut down a branch and checked out the gym and its leader, Lt. Surge. The thought occurred to me, how did all these people get into this gym if that plant was in the way? Can everyone in this game besides me just walk past things like trees? Whatever. It's gym leader time. I had my group all set and ready for a fierce battle. The few times I've fought gym leaders before this were long yet ultimately winnable battles. I was ready for the long haul, but instead I beat his ass into the ground. See, by this point, I had not only leveled my guys up enough to be a virtual murder squad, but my Ratatta had managed to evolve into a Raticate. AND SHIT GOT REAL. I love this guy. If I was in the game, I would have yelled at my squirtle and said "Look at this motherfucker right here. This is how you evolve. Not with those dorky ear wings or whatever they are!" Oh man, I feel like every time I pull this guy out the pokemon on the other end is crapping their nonexistent pants. Raticate looks fucking terrifying. I love him dearly. So with Raticate on hand, and the rest of my crew, Lt. Surge (who looks an awful lot like Street Fighter's Guile) went down. Even his Raichu, which I will admit was kind of intimidating at first, but the whole fight was like nothing. Weird. 

After leaving with my shiny new badge, I headed in the only direction I hadn't gone yet (mostly because I have completely forgotten what the plot is at this point) and came across some more assholes with nothing better to do than toss their pets at strangers, and something called Diglett's cave. I walked around in there for about 5 minutes and called it a day. 

I have less than 200 days before I hit 1000 days at this. Do you think I can do it? I certainly hope so...