#at least they're now getting neutered before we get them.. that's probably a good thing lol 😬

[running-in-the-dark]

I have a really stupid question for anyone who has/has had pets - when you take them to the vet, do you have to see like.. any of the medical stuff that they do? if yes, how bad is it?

I can't believe I only just thought of this, it's kind of important 😬 (I kinda.. faint when I see injuries/wounds/whatever, or really stressful medical stuff... basically, if I see a person/animal/myself and think 'they're in a lot of pain' I faint (yes, the only times I fainted because of myself, I wasn't in any pain at the time, I just thought 'fuck this should hurt'))

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Somehow I had forgotten that bibarel was a water type and not just a normal one. I do like the idea that Iscan has an qwilfish, the fact that it has such a prickly body and personality matches the irony of him having a ghost type noble when he's scared of them. Cyndaquil being used as a portable heater, probably pretty much from the start since nights seem like they'd be colder in the fieldlands than they are in the mirelands, is so cute. It's gonna be a lifesaver once she gets up where it's cold. The real reason the go to the icelands last and the highlands second to last is that she wants to put off being that cold for as long as possible and they have no reason not to accommodate her lol.

She's so eager to do hair care for pretty much anyone that when she sees him start brushing Sneasler, who is very happy to sit there and let him groom her, she offers to help. She's surprised by how much she likes it, and how much the all of the pokemon like it because so few people are willing to let her play with their hair. Lol, the Ginkgo Guild spreads the word about all the neat things they're doing in this place called Jubilife and suddenly they've got an influx of tourists and have to expand.

Makes me wonder if being around Lilligant would make him feel a kind of loss and nostalgia, or if he'd unconsciously start to mirror that, becoming a bit more talkative and getting a little of his pep back. I've seen it a lot before where people have Sneasler as not really being interested in battling, so I think it'd be fun if Lilligant loved fighting, but because she's a noble she doesn't really get to. But Ingo and his team are more than happy to! And as that's the time when he's at his most lively I can see that being when they most mirror and feed off each other's enthusiasm.

Pokemon rabies! Good going Volo, you introduced rabies into Hisui. That'd actually be kinda cool to explore as part of the whole "seek out all pokemon" thing, since the one surefire way to break it is to catch them. Arceus was being literal, seek out and capture all of the pokemon in Hisui in order to break any traces of the frenzy "virus" growing in them. It'd be very catch-and-release, like feral cat neutering programs lol, though they'd have to find a way to tag them to know they were already caught before.

From the original premise you wrote, Giratina tearing rifts open all over the place is continually breaking the hall of origin, which sounds really bad. It probably means that Arceus couldn't leave even if it wanted to, because it has to be there it mend things as they break. So stopping the distortions would be a priority, but the problem is how they would know that. Ingo also needs to go to the hall of origin to retrieve the part of him that's stuck there lol. So in order of urgency: 1. Close the distortions and find out what's causing them to stop them for good, 2. Catch all pokemon to stop the spread of the frenzy (if we go that route). 3. Get Ingo and the protag into the hall of origin to fight Arceus, get Ingo's missing piece back, and secure them a way back home. Not sure how we could fit the massive mass outbreaks into this, though it'd be nice if we could. If we wanted to deviate even more from canon, we could also say that the distortion bubbles, while not as common as they are in the game, are worse because not all of the pokemon leave when it closes, so now you have disoriented, violent, infected, potentially non-native pokemon running around wherever they were. But that might be too much.

YEAH shkjshjkh everyone else is like no offense ingo but your home/clan's home is too cold and it sucks and we don't want to go there until we absolutely have to. and he's like no that's fair i get it it's my least favorite thing about it also. and yeah, i think even the fieldlands are fairly chilly depending on the season so arezu Will very much appreciate cyndaquil. maybe that's even why she was given it in the first place? bc she's just like, cold constantly?

kamado's so mad he's like STOP BRINGING POKEMON INTO THE VILLAGE but nobody else is listening, sorry, they've been lured by the siren song of income. jubilife is The pokemon destination now and he can't stop it. but yeah, pokemon do probably enjoy being groomed i think! especially ones who can't do it as well themselves and don't already have a trainer/warden to baby them. so arezu will have plenty of happy customers

i wonder if it's more like, seeing her like that suddenly makes him hyperaware/self-conscious of how much he's changed? bc like, yeah, a lot of it was in that initial fall, but then a lot of it is also just from existing in hisui and being like... adrift without much human contact and vaguely purposeless. and also the decay from the hall of origin, that's not helping. but then he sees lilligant and has that moment of oh, that used to be me, and now has to confront that he's... not. anymore. and that's probably not a great sign. sneasler not being into battle is, interesting? if anything i feel like it'd be the opposite and battling is like, the only part of being a noble she is vaguely interested in. but still, i think calaba says lilligant's been looking forward to another battle if you rechallenge her in the postgame (i think?) so it would make sense that she enjoys battling, too

yeah lol. and then it's not even that the nobles are specially targeted, it's just that they're susceptible, so all it takes is a bad exposure and suddenly they're falling prey to it, too... mmm i do like that, just vibeswise. and then lol, yeah. have them wear the pokeballs like the bell collars for cats

ooh, what if, to expand on what you said—the distortions aren't just leaving pokemon behind, but they actually won't close at all until the protagonist does something to them? maybe they need to catch all the pokemon inside them or like. point the arc phone at it. or something. point is, it mirrors the breaking/mending of the hall of origin bc hisui itself is also getting the constant rift cracks. and maybe part of the protag's job here was to fix them, bc if they accumulate too long, reality will start to fray and it'll mirror into the hall of origin and the whole edifice will start to collapse. so instead of just defrenzying the noble of a region and leaving, job done, they're constantly running around between all the regions as the rifts appear and resealing them? idk, it's a thought

[clexa--warrior]

Fear The Walking Dead' continues its losing streak in Sunday night's episode 'Ner Tamid.'

Credit: AMC

Sunday night's episode of Fear The Walking Dead was a little bit better than the rest of this half of the season, and I think I know why: There was no Morgan!s

Morgan and Al are off doing their own thing, and miraculously we didn't hear from either one this week. That's good! Sadly, we also didn't get any Alicia. She remains one of the only characters I still like on this show, though the past few episodes have done their level best to character-assassinate her (she's probably off painting more trees at this point).

The rest of the episode was pretty much about as pointless as the rest of the episodes in Season 5. Charlie "runs away" from the convoy to go find some place for them to stay, so that they're not always on the move. Finding a place to stay is a really good idea. Running off on your own in the zombie apocalypse is stupid beyond all reckoning, and I wish the writers and producers would stop making the characters act like such absolute dunces every week.

It appears the real problem is June, who is apparently in charge of the caravan and its 36 members. She's driving them all hard, not letting them stay in one place long, no rest for the weary and all that jazz. Even John Dorie is like "Hey June, baby, I love you but this is ridiculous," but it falls on deaf ears. I'm not sure why June is acting like this, or why she's suddenly in charge, or why they have a caravan instead of a base to begin with, but that doesn't matter. Fear The Walking Dead just does stuff, and we're just supposed to eat it up without questioning anything.

I think that's the only way people can still enjoy this show--just don't ask any questions, don't think about anything too much, don't expect anything remotely like logic or realism or human nature to figure into it at all.

In any case, Charlie makes yet another new friend while out on her own. This time it's a Jewish Rabbi, Jacob Kessner, who lives all by himself at his old synagogue. All his former flock are now zombies, calling to mind Father Gabriel from The Walking Dead (though Kessner is much less annoying than Gabriel, who I still can't stand). Charlie thinks this would be a good place for the survivors to settle down, but things don't work out. Before the end of the episode, the safe haven is overrun and Kessner is out of a home. Shocking. We've never seen the survivors show up and ruin a good thing before! (That's sarcasm, by the way. Everywhere our heroes go falls apart, from the family on the island to the Mexican villa, to the ranch, to the kids' treehouse this season).

June and Dorie show up and there's some zombie action, but we know nobody is going to actually get killed by a zombie. That hardly ever happens on this show. The last time I can think of it actually happening was when Madison died, but she died offscreen so we didn't even see it. There used to be some great zombie kills in previous seasons, but there's no reason to fear anything in Fear The Walking Dead these days.

That applies to Logan and his group of feckless, toothless bad guys. At one point they chase Sarah and Dwight--who looks ridiculous clean-shaven, though I suppose it's symbolic of his being totally neutered by the do-gooder sickness that's befallen the entire cast--and almost catch them but the tank shows up and saves the day. Of course, why they were so worried and running to begin with is beyond me. Recall last week when Morgan and Al were faced with a dozen of Logan's thugs and nothing happened. They just blocked the road and that's all. Are we supposed to think that this week things are so different that they pose an actual threat now?

Of course, it turns out that the whole thing was just a diversion. Logan wanted to distract the convoy. Apparently he's figured out where the oil fields are and he wanted Morgan's group as far away as possible which, uh, kind of sounds like what he did in the very beginning of this season by having them fly off to the nuclear power plant region. They're running out of ideas so fast it isn't even funny.

Is there even a story here? I mean, there are things that happen I guess, but is there a story? Let's try to parse it all together, shall we?

Season 5 starts with Morgan and most of the crew crash-landing a plane because they thought they were helping someone but it was just Logan tricking them so that he could take over the mill. The first half of the season is spent trying to get a new plane or fix the old plane so they can fly it back. There's also a nuclear power plant that's going to melt down, and we meet a new character, Grace, who is trying to prevent that. Eight episodes are spent on this dual-plot, with Strand and Charlie ultimately saving the day by bringing propellers in a hot air balloon to the heroes who then use their years of airplane mechanic experience to fix the plane and then fly successfully back to their own area of Texas because apparently that region has zero roads leading. It is a mystical island within the state of Texas that can only be reached by air (unless you're Dwight or his wife who apparently both managed just fine on solid ground).

So that's the first half of Season 5. Crash plane, fix plane, fly out. Logan has the mill. Then, bizarrely, at the very end of the first half of the season Logan tries to make a deal with them. This deal is not struck, we discover in the Season 5 midseason premiere, and Logan goes back to working with the thugs. I can't tell if they're working for him or he's working for them, because the show has done such a lousy, inconsistent job at explaining things to us.

Speaking of which, we learn that during the break, during the period of time that occurs off-screen between the two halves of this season, that Morgan has discovered where Polar Bear's oil fields are. And I guess he's also figured out how to refine oil into gasoline. And I guess this is what Logan was after the whole time, but they just neglected to introduce that conflict in any remotely comprehensible way. Now, five episodes into the back half of the season, the entire plot seems to be "Morgan and group go around helping people more while Logan tries to figure out where the oil fields are." Five episodes of filler with virtually nothing of any importance happening. Alicia meets the guy painting on all those trees. Morgan and Grace try and fail to spark a romance. Logan is mad at Morgan but does nothing about it. They film a stupid PSA and put it on VCRs with generators wherever they can so that people know that they're out there trying to help people.

None of this qualifies as a story, at least not really. The story, if it had to be boiled down, would be the conflict between Logan and Morgan's two groups. But that conflict barely exists, as evidenced by the times they've actually encountered one another and done nothing. At least Negan did stuff. At least the Saviors posed a threat, no matter how badly produced Seasons 7 and 8 of The Walking Dead were. At least there was a story.

Here we just have people driving around wasting gas, talking on walkie-talkies, rarely having realistic conversations or actually interesting struggles or conflicts. It's all contrived. You could probably boil down the entire 12 episodes we've seen so far into two and not lose anything.

Just take away the whole entire plane crash plot and have them tricked into leaving the mill. Then have Logan realize what he wanted in the mill wasn't there and go to war with Morgan to get the map to the oil fields. The oil fields themselves would be useless to Morgan since he doesn't know how to refine oil into gasoline, but he knows that Logan is bad news so he keeps that information from him anyways. Have Logan kill some of the good guys, and have that test Morgan's resolve to be a good person. Have Dwight show up as one of Logan's dudes, on the other side of the conflict, and have that make him question whether he's made the right choice.

I mean, I think you could probably get eight episodes out of this conflict, and then you could twist things around for the second half of the season. Morgan could snap again, go full killstreak mode. He and Alicia could break into two different groups and the conflict could continue between them somehow. This is all just spit-balling. The fact is, it would be fairly simple to come up with a better story for Season 5, with better and more natural conflicts. Actually, I'd have introduced Logan as a sympathetic character and had him join the group, had his treachery not manifest until it was too late. Make the betrayal sting.

But this is all fantasy. I want the same kind of tense conflict that drove Season 3, with sympathetic characters on both sides and no easy resolution. But what we're getting is a bunch of badly written filler episodes with no real purpose and an overarching conflict that makes no sense. Meanwhile, we get things like Al leaving all her tapes in a safe and then not bothering to even shut the lock boxes, and that's how Logan discovers the oil fields. We get John Dorie shooting a bullet at a hatchet blade so that it can split in two and kill a pair of approaching zombies. That's the kind of vapid writing this show has now. It's just sad.

Next week, Logan will use the oil fields to wipe out half of all living things in the universe and the week after that Al and June and Daniel will send Skidmark back in time in a time machine they built out of spare plane parts, and Skidmark's job will be to kill Polar Bear before he ever planted the oil seeds that eventually grew into the oil fields, but little do they know that Polar Bear is waiting for them . . . . it's a trap!

I just . . . I can't. I don't know what else to say. What a sad joke Fear has become.