#it sounds like some sort of Pokemon

[mobisharksona]

Get pokemoned….idiots…

Bonus;

Yes this is related to this post

[g0nefischin]

MERSKELES PART 3!

Definitely not mermay anymore but here's the last 3 sirens I wanted to do

and some explanation on why I choose what I did under the cut

(little warning for parasites on fresh's section)

So from left to right

Dream is a golden colored koi carp fish, I picked it because they are very pretty and they represent a lot of positive things like luck and fortune, some people even wish on them to make their dreams come true :> I also thought of the legend where a golden koi fish climbs a large waterfall to turn into a dragon, so they have some mythical legends as well. In terms of the actual fish, Koi are very sociable and sturdy, they also live for quite awhile.

Nightmare is a coelacanth, he should probably be an octopus considering he has tentacles, but I really wanted to make him a coelacanth because I think they are neat. Coelacanth's are very old with the latest fossils being over 400 million years old, they were thought to be extinct until one was found in 1938, grandpa nightmare. They are also nocturnal, sleeping in caves during the day, they live deep in the ocean as well. 

Fresh is actually a two in one, he is a rainbow parrotfish with a tongue-eating louse in his mouth. Out of alI the bright fish I did a parrotfish because I really like their gradients, and I think the magenta fins fit his jacket. He's a parasite inside of a Sans body, so I picked a fish parasite to go along with the fish half of his body. I chose the tongue-eating louse, a type of parasite that replaces a fish's tongue. It first severs the blood vessels to the tongue and once it falls off takes its place. feeding on nutrients and acting as a new tongue for the rest of the fish's life, very cool and terrifying.

[kingofanemptyworld]

Choji’s Team:

Cinderace (Partner Pokemon)

Monferno

Torracat

Castform (Sunny Day Form)

Litleo

Charcadet

Yes, Choji has three starter pokemon evolutions on his team. I couldn’t help myself and neither could he, apparently. Choji’s definitely been abroad a fair few times, both before and after becoming his town’s gym leader, and it’s like he’s got a sixth sense for finding the pokemon in each region that are going to give him the biggest challenge. The rarest and most difficult to catch have all been starter pokemon so far (and Castform, which he may or may not have stolen/liberated from a weather research facility in Hoenn). Cinderace is his ace (ha) pokemon, and it’s… totally because he’s got the kanji for rabbit in his name (correct me if I’m wrong but that’s why everyone uses the rabbit emoji for him, right?). Also fire types just felt fitting for Choji. Bright and burning like the sun, just like him! Hence why Castform is perpetually in its Sunny Day form. Monferno matches his acrobatics in a fight and Torracat is for Shishitoren!

As for Litleo… gonna be totally honest here, I briefly forgot Torracat existed and thought this was the closest I was going to get to a tiger. And then I did find Torracat, and I thought about dropping Litleo from the line-up. The eyes, though. Litleo’s damn eyes reminded me too much of Choji, so I kept it. Also it’s cute and I can very vividly imagine Choji play-wrestling with it. And probably playing soccer/football with Cinderace. Choji would dominate in a lot of sports but I’m partial to soccer, so. Might as well tack that headcanon on.

(Also, hey. If my very tired brain is misfiring at the moment and shishitoren’s animal is a lion, not a tiger? I did Litleo on purpose)

Last but not least, Charcadet. I said this in another post but I literally have no idea what goes on in Scarlet and Violet. I don’t know if this is a rare pokemon, or one Choji could feasibly have without completing some plot-relevant quest. But we’re throwing logic out the window for this one because I took one look at Charcadet and said, yeah, that’s Choji’s. No need to look for a backup sixth pokemon, that’s him all over. Tiny fire child warrior!! No regrets.

[sunbedo]

Hey guys. gay rights

[apatheticsunday]

Batfam Eldritch Horror

AKA "inspired by that one post about Danny being a flerken and living with the Batfam" idea! Except he looks pants-shitting, "oh dear god, what is that" terrifying.

I just love slightly feral animal-like Danny in a... shape. It's not immediately identifiable as a cat or dog, maybe he has a few too many legs that kind of look like a tail at one point? And when he skitters up walls like a particularly small dog-sized tarantula, it's terrifying enough to make seasoned criminals squeal.

Let's imagine Danny had some sort of accident with a portal and was Wizard-of-Oz'd into Gotham, a literal hellmouth of a city with so many curses that it'd make John Constantine start to sweat. And this city also has... weird Ecto. (In my brain, there's a connection between the Lazarus Pit and ectoplasm, like pit waters are the sewers of ectoplasm or something.) It's enough for Danny to still exist but he can't seem to stay human-shaped. It's better than being a Blob Ghost, but not by much. His fur-scales-feathers-skin-something look dark as the midnight sky.

And who should stumble on this weird-looking Thing aside from Damian, secret animal-whisperer and passionate Pokemon collector? Damian, who known what a scared feral animal looks like and who can coax it into his arms? It doesn't matter that Danny has maybe five or six limbs. He can make himself slightly smaller at will (not in a Magical-Girl-Transformation way, mind you. When he changes shape, there's the distinct snap of bones breaking and wet, fleshy sounds of his organs, muscles, ligaments, tendons, everything shifting).

Damian has literally been trained by the League of Assassins under the Demon Head. He's likely seen more people's insides than an ER surgeon; he's killed more than enough people in incredibly grotesque and violent ways to be totally unphased by Danny changing shapes. Maybe he'll actually be sort of touched, a bit pleased, that his new Thing pet would change itself so violently so Damian could hold it.

What would Damian name it? He's outwardly violent and aggressive towards others, but pretty passionate and heartfelt once he cares for someone. Alfred the Cat comes to mind. So maybe Damian takes one look at this supposedly scary Thing and thinks, "It looks like Father."

As in, Dark as Night? A shadow inspiring fear amongst criminals? Spoken about in whispers, sometimes laughed off as a joke but still cautiously reverent, just in case?

Danny's new name is Batman.

Of course, this causes some confusion when Damian comes home to Wayne Manor and says, "Batman and I will retire to my room." In front of Bruce, who naturally and kind-of-correctly assumes his son picked up another animal while on patrol. Bruce had a hard time explaining this to a very concerned Dick, who was holding up a wooden stake and a bible (Dick totally wasn't going to kill Bruce if he turned out to be a vampire but it's always good to be prepared!), after Damian apparently made a wayward comment that "Batman refuses to eat anything besides raw meat."

And Danny is having a great time!! Sure, Damian treats him like a pet, but he gets affectionate pats on the head, incredibly expensive steak, and a soft place to sleep. He awkwardly dragged several blankets from the living room to Damian's room to make a bed in the kid's closet. (Alfred watched from behind the couch as this six-legged hairy-ish catlike Thing determinedly waddled with three blankets in its mouth, occasionally tripping on its own legs. He went back to dusting the crown moulding silently. So, that's why Master Damian requested uncooked sirloin steak twelve times in last few days. Hm.)

So, the Batfam accept there is another Batman in the family. Except they haven't actually seen Danny (aside from Alfred and Damian).

Until Dick needs to talk to Damian and goes into the boy's room. But it's empty?? He could've sworn he heard somebody talking or something in here, but maybe not? He turns to leave and then hears it again: a soft kind of thump coming from Damian's armoire. A shit-eating grin spreads across his face as his Older Brother Instincts kick in. Jason used to hide in closets and try to scare Dick when he was little; Damian, despite being a child soldier and trained assassin, was still a little kid at heart, right? The kid's clearly hiding from Dick to scare him or something.

(Damian was in the Batcave, studiously typing "Google, what non-Earth animals reside in Gotham, please?" into the Batcomputer. I like to think that Damian uses the internet like a 85-year old man who thinks a Google employee personally replies to each question.)

So, Dick creeps forward and abruptly slams open the armoire doors!! Only to let out an unholy shriek of terror as Danny, who was taking a nap, frantically skitters out of the closet looking like a Frankenstein cat-dog with bat wings. He crawls under Damian's bed as Dick scrambles into the hallway.

The cat-dog-Thing is out of the bag now. Damian looks utterly deadpan as he explains that Batman is his pet and not to concern themselves with it; Bruce, Tim, Jason, and a white-faced Dick disagreed. They need to see it to make sure the Thing won't harm anybody, especially considering it's fucking living with them!! How do they know it won't try to eat them in their sleep??

"Batman does not eat raw human meat, Todd. Why are you concerned now? It has resided with us for two months now."

"Two months?" Dick nearly faints (again).

"Yes, Batman is very well-behaved, Master Dick." Alfred, who's been feeding Danny for the last two months and has seen all the little quirks the Thing has, offers a consoling half-smile.

Ultimately, the Batfam decide to keep Batman in exchange for scary dog privileges. They'll have to think of another name for Danny considering having two Batmans in Gotham would be pretty confusing (especially if one of them decided they did, in fact, like raw human flesh).

[txttletale]

hey what DO you watch on youtube? seems like you'd have some neat recommendations :3

i really loathe the like super-highly edited sound effect post-mrbeast slop most of youtube is now so i mostly like stuff that's like... calm and sedate. stuff i've been watching lately in no particular order:

northernlion vods and clips. he's an OG. i especially like his react court series, i must have watched all of them like five times.

speaking of OGs i've been watching zero puncutation (now fully ramblomatic) for like ten years and if anything it's only gotten better. best game review content on the internet. been really enjoying his more recent, slightly longer and more thoughtful 'extra punctuation/semi-ramblomatic' series too.

any austin's skyrim unemployment rate videos. instant classics to me, it's just a guy going around in skyrim trying to figure out the unemployment rate in every town. it's a very dry kind of humour, he plays it admirably straight, and it's weirdly calming.

kitten arcader's foot the bill videos. in a kind of similar vein, he watches the saw movies and then produces an itemized bill for everything jigsaw needed to buy to make his traps. it's kind of like... if cinemasins was fundamentally curious instead of fundamentally incurious, it scratches a similar sort of nitpicky detail-oriented quantifying itch but without inimical to the concept of art.

shuffle up and play. it's a magic the gathering play series that has enough editing that the gamestate is actually legible but not enough editing (or at least, not enough obtrusive in-your-face editing) that its annoying. i also like that they reguilarly play non-edh formats like cube and pauper.

spice8rack. i'm pretty picky about video essays but spice8rack has very obviously actually read books and has interesting things to say about the topics it discusses (mostly magic: the gathering). sometimes it has a kind of grating Theater Kid Energy but the fact that it actually meaningfully structures essays and analysis to earn the silly long runtimes is a rare delight from a video essayist.

jenny nicholson is a long-time favourite and another permanent fixture in my rotation. she's just extremely, remarkably funny which makes her the only 'basically just summarizing a thing' youtuber i think is worth the time of day.

i watch some sketch comedy, mainly wizards with guns and aunty donna, who both consistently put out really funny stuff that's kind of ITYSL-adjacent in its barefaced absurdism and contenmpt for concepts like "stopping a joke at the logical punchline". i also really like alasdair beckett-king and binging the old clickhole backlog for short-form comedy on youtube.

wolfeyvgc is right on the edge of the level of editing i find tolerable but as a long-time fan of multiple esports he Has It, he's absolutelyt fantastic at t elling the narrative of a tournament, explaining plays clearly, and generally making competitive pokemon esports thrilling and interesting ti someone (me) who#s never played it and doesn't care about pkoemon that much

i religously watch every elliespectacular/dathings YTP, the absolute best in the game right now, top tier snetence mixing and really good at actually setting up and paying off jokes in a way it feels like a lot of ytp doesn't. verytallbart is also pretty good.

trapperdapper is a channel i recently binged, it's a really fucking funny parody of minecraft challenge content that veers slowly from obvious angles of parody into pure absurdism with tons of blink-and-you'll miss it subtle visual gags.

too much future is a great youtube series where the two guys from just king things/homestuck made this world play through every fallout game and analyze them in that context. extremely funny and also just top-tier very sharp analysis. really good

another one of the rare good video essayists is jan misali. they're really funny and will go into topics that kind of seem narrow or strange to begin with in such depth and make them so interesting that it's consistently astonishing.

oh and finally sarah z makes pretty good videos. 'the narcissist scare' is an absolutely brilliant deconstruction of one of the most annoying pop-psych phenomena of the last couple years. and remarkably well script supervised i think did anyone else watch it and think 'wow the script supervisor on this must have been, a mind geniuse'

ok i think that's all i've been watching lately. hope you like whcihever of these recs you check out :)

[itzy-bitsy-spidey]

"Pokemon collection (pt. 7)"

Or "something made a hole in my backyard pt.7"

Shadow The Hedgehog x reader (platonic)

Notes: Happy Valentine's day!! If you're feeling nice leave a comment, they are hugely appreciated!

Part 6

Fainting was a weird sensation. It´s like when you stood up really fast and you get dizzy, except instead of going away the dizzines just makes you fall to the ground and hit your head.

It was the waking up part that was higly confusing. Mainly because the first thing you saw was a yellow-orangey creature.

"AHHHHH" Yeah, probably the whole neighborhood heard you scream.

And then you heard multiple voices at the same time from which what you understod was: "Hey, there´s no need to scream" from what sounded like a child, "You´re not dead!" from an older child, "This one is weird, she is silent and then loud" that sounded like a grown ass adult. And there was also Ozzy barking.

"Okay everybody, move aside, give her some space" Now that voice you did recognize, that was your aunt Maddie.

Only when she sat next to you did you register that you were laying in the couch. How long had it been?

"Hey sweetie" She started as she gently laid her hand on your arm as though you were a scared animal that would run off at any moment. "I´m sorry this all came as a surprise to you, we didn´t mean to..."

"I´M BACK, WHO SCREAMED?" Tom interrupted her as he appeared out of nowhere, or maybe he had come from upstairs, you didn´t know, you were sooo confused.

"What happened? And why is there a blue hedghog here?"

"We were going to tell you, but then you showed up with Shadow and we didn´t want to..." Once again your aunt was interrupted.

"Hi! I´m Sonic! Your super awesome cousin you didn´t know you had" The hedgehog practically screamed on your face.

"I´m sorry, did you just say cousin?" You asked at him, but you didn´t even let him speak as you turned towards your uncle "Is this why you said kids? Are these... things..."

"Rude" Said, well, Sonic, you guessed.

"...Your kids? And you didn´t tell me?" You couldn´t quite tell if you were feeling offended or confused, there was a sort of thightness on your chest, as if you were hugely overlooking a very important detail.

"Why did you not tell me? And why are there so many of them? What, do you collect them like fucking pokemons or something?" Now you did know what you were feeling.

Angry, hot with anger. You could feel it in every vein on your body, your eyes couldn´t focus on anything, until you found a victim, still sitting right at your side.

"I asked you for help! I thought he was dying and you didn´t even think about telling me that you had seen others like him?!" you screamed at your aunt Maddie as you got up from the couch.

"I didn´t know what to do, he is dangerous!" She quipped right back.

"That´s not your call to make, I would have handled it if you had said something" that was probably one of the first times in your life you had disagreed with your aunt.

Shadow wasn´t dangerous. Sure, he was hurt and he didn´t really trust you, but that didn´t make him dangerous.

"HE TRIED TO KILL TOM!"

...

...

"What?"

Your voice had came out so low you weren´t sure the words had actually left your mouth at all.

"He did, that´s why he has a broken arm" Maddie explained as she grabbed your hands on hers.

"But he´s not bad..."

"He has the ability to be..." she stated as if it was an unmistakable truth.

"Maddie that´s enough, we talked about this" Finally Tom approached the two of you, he put his working arm in between you and stared sternly at his wife. Yet she kept looking at you in your eyes.

"But it doesn´t matter anymore, he´s gone" She tried to smile reassuringly.

"What?" Suddenly the hold on your hands felt restrictive "What do you mean? What did you do?!" you ripped your hands of of hers.

"I-I, nothing, I didn´t do nothing, he was gone when I went looking for you" She seemed shocked at your harsh reaction.

Dread filled your entire body, it had drenched you in an awful way, freezing you from head to toes. A sound left your lips, it wasn´t quite a word, more like a strained gasp.

And the you ran.

You didn´t hear your aunt calling for you as you left the house, or the little yellow fox asking "What is going on?", all you could be aware of was the blood pumping through your legs and your heart beating wildly in your chest. There was a ringing in your ears too, that damned type of ringing that appears when the world is too quiet.

The run to your house felt awfully longer than the walk you had taken that morning, and once you finally arrived your brain was working too fast, trying to focus on everything at once.

From afar the house had looked normal, but the door was open, the lock busted. Your heart had left your chest altogether and was then beating on your throat.

You walked in slowly, the speed you had taken on the run dead as you had stepped on the welcome mat. A voice came from the living room, so you went there first.

The wooden floor creaked with every step you took, and anticipation built in your chest. But there was no one there, only the TV on, broadcasting a Mexican novela.

With every second you gained speed as you ran all the way to the bedroom you were staying in, the one Shadow had taken as his own while he healed.

The bed was neatly done and everything was on place, except the window, which was wide open

"SHADOW! SHADOW WERE ARE YOU?!" you screamed through the window, looking for signs of him on the backyard.

Something warm dripped onto your hand, and, as you touched your face trying to figure out were the liquid had came from, you felt traces of tears painting your cheeks.

You kept calling out his name as you searched around the house, your voice growing weaker and more broken as you didn't find him.

Finally you reached the living room once again, and you collapsed on the couch. You tried to hold your hands together so that they wouldn't shake.

A creak sounded from the window behind you; you turned around.

There he was standing, looking straight at your eyes with his usual frown. He exchanged looks with you for a few seconds and when you finally moved he was too confused as to move.

You jumped over the couch and hugged him. The hard floor digged onto your knees and your body felt tired, but he was alright which was what mattered.

"Where where you?" You questioned him.

"A woman came by, I did what you told me, I hid". His frown looked almost concerned then, as if he was worried he had done something wrong.

"Yes, you did well" You laughed and broke the hug, choosing to keep your hands on his shoulders instead "Maybe a little too well".

"I'm..."

"The ultimate life form? Yeah, yeah, I know"

"No, I'm... Sorry, that I worried you" he stared at the ground.

You almost choked on a sob at his words.

"It's okay, I was just worried you were hurt, there's nothing to apologize for sweetie" you explained as you held his face in your hands.

What a twist your life had taken.

Taglist:@boogiemansbitch@vxllys@whoisgami@baby-bloos@sapphireravensworld@mothmanperson@4rm-the-mf-concrete@eliknowsnothing@pooplyface1423@kyouzki@moon-trash1507@shadowforlive

[milykins]

Hacked

I felt like I needed to redeem myself with Donnie since I’ve had a couple comments where people expressed feeling sad that I had a girl scream and run away from him in a previous headcanon. I thought maybe I should give him something sweet and fluffy. Added some fun quotes as well.

Special thanks to @iridescentflamingo @the-cauldron-witch @avery73 and @sophiacloud28 for all of your help with this story, editing it and helping me with ideas! I hope you enjoy reading it!

Aged up TMNT x Reader

TW: None: Donnie's system keeps getting hacked into and he gets increasingly more frustrated.

“No I’m not playing hard to get! I’m telling you, Sir, it’s not that kind of phone line!”

“It’s always the time for accuracy, Leo.”

“When you put it like that it sounds ridiculous.”

“Let me be the bad-ass for once.”

On the outside, Donatello was the brain, the tech-wizard, the tinkerer. A master of all things technological and a true intellectual able to solve a Rubik’s cube in less than 20 seconds. If it was broken, Donnie could fix it, if it was a seemingly impossible situation, Donnie could figure it out. His three brothers relied heavily on him because he was the smartest, even Leo because there were some questions even he couldn’t answer. This is how it had always been, and he didn’t mind for the most part. He did feel like he was a valuable asset to the team if not a bit overused.

On the inside however, he was the shy one, the introvert, the one who secretly feared being alone forever while slowly descending into madness from his own self-induced seclusion.

Despite Chief Vincent telling them they’d be accepted by society, the collective agreement to stay hidden remained. It had served them well, why mess with it? As they aged into adulthood, it became glaringly obvious. Loneliness, the fear of being forgotten after their father passed on. The crushing reality that he may very well die alone.

He wasn’t like his brothers. Mikey had gotten himself on the scene pretty easily and had made friends and had girlfriends. Raph too, had managed to snag someone, even no-nonsense Leo had. That just left him and he couldn’t help but think. What was the point of having all of this intelligence, creating all of these wonderful inventions, all of the things he’d built… if there was no one but his brothers to share it with?

Donnie acted like it didn’t bother him but secretly he felt it: a sort of crushing loneliness that seemed to stretch on and on. Sadly, he’d sort of given up on meeting someone. It just wasn’t in the cards for him… or was it?

It had started off innocently enough, one day he’d come to work on his computer and noticed something was… off. His desktop looked normal but none of the icons worked when he clicked on them. It didn’t take him long to realize it was a false desktop placed on top of the real one. Odd, he thought. Who had managed to even do this? He’d had the best firewalls and encryptions and security that not even the FBI could crack. Yet, he’d been hacked, someone had hacked him.

He blew out a breath of disbelief, ran a diagnostic and fixed the issue in no time. He did a careful sweep and found nothing else out of the ordinary. He chalked it up to a fluke and went on with his day thinking that was the end of it.

Then it happened again. Upon sitting down in his computer chair he noticed his taskbar was horizontal.

“What the hell..?” He fixed it and upped his security and left it at that.

A week after that all of his icons were replaced with Hello Kitty characters. He was beginning to feel annoyed. Who was doing this, and why? It seemed like they just wanted to mess with him. Frustratingly he couldn’t figure out how they kept getting in. Every time, he strengthened his security it didn’t seem to matter!

He reached his breaking point the following week when he was re-routed to a popular Pokemon meme every time he clicked on something. He was going to find this person and ask them to stop. They weren’t that hard to trace and soon he was purposefully typing a message.

Please stop, you’ve had your fun but it’s getting old

No :)

Seriously, you don’t know who you’re messing with.

Someone who can’t even stop a low-level hacker, clearly.

Who are you?

No one :)

Why are you doing this?

I’m bored, it’s fun

Bored?! How did you even find me? These servers are highly encrypted!

LOL not enough… I was just bouncing around and found them.

Are you with the Foot?

What?! No? I told you, I was bored and saw your shit, and took it as a challenge.

A challenge indeed. Stop this now, this is your final warning.

He broke off their connection then because that had better be it.

Of course, it wasn’t. One boring Saturday night, he was zoned out, totally engrossed in one of his projects. His computer screen flickers a moment. He almost doesn’t see it thinking it’s a trick of the light but it does it again. Curiously, he moved to his computer screen. When he realized what was happening, he actually laughed.

“Seriously? Again?! They have no idea who they’re messing with…”

It was clear that this was same someone who had been hacking him for weeks was trying to get into his system again.

“I’ve got you this time…” His fingers fly over his larger-than-normal keyboard as he managed to secure a one-way live video feed.

“Someone forgot to cover their webcam…” He sang, “Hello, you’ve been hacked by Donatello, I thought I already told you to cease and desist.”

You are absolutely mortified. You’d been doing this for fun, and had no ulterior motives. Truthfully you had been bored and loved a challenge. Yes, you were warned but you didn’t think he would hack your webcam! Immediately, you attempted to hide, hoping he didn’t catch a glimpse of your face.

On his end, Donnie first heard a soft, distinctly feminine gasp and a string of curses. There’s a flurry of movement as you tried to move out of the range of the camera and swiftly stick a piece of tape over it. More shuffling followed, along with the sound of you returning to your computer chair.

He can’t help but feel amused. “There’s no point in hiding, I saw you. How did you think this was going to go?” He waited patiently for you to answer.

You swore softly. The cat’s out of the bag. Swallowing your embarrassment you gingerly peeled the tape off. It didn’t take you long to notice that the video feed only went one way. That was unfair and you intended to change that.

“Sorry…” you murmered. Shit, shit, shit! I’m gonna get you for that!

He took a moment to get a good look at you. Even with the soft lighting of what he assumed to be your bedroom, he could still make out your pink cheeks, flushed flushed with embarrassment and the bridge of freckles across your nose. It was… cute.

“Sorry?” He echoed. “That’s it? You still didn’t answer my question.”

“Do I have to?” You’re trying to keep him talking while your fingers worked their magic. If he could do it… so could you.

“No, but I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me alone. You’ve had your fun, go bother someone else, please.” He replies.

“But I like bothering you.” Almost there… just a few more seconds…

Donnie has to scoff at that. “You don’t even know me.”

“Not yet… there you are!” You cheered as you manage to tap into his own webcam.

In a split-second Donnie had instantly ascertained that she’d been distracting him. To his horror, the little red light of his webcam had blinked to life. Two seconds too long which meant he’d been seen…

“FUCK!” Immediately he cut the power, sending it straight through to your house. He was panicking, he’d been compromised, he was going to have to wipe her computer, all of her hard drives. His heart was pounding and his breathing had quickened as he tried to tamp down the panic he felt. No, maybe he’ll just find her… ask her to keep his secret…? All options were equally bad. What do I do…?!

Luckily, it didn’t take long for that powerful brain of his to think of a solution, albeit a temporary one. His fingers flew over the keyboard once again, restoring power on her side before getting to work.

You were utterly confused. Two seconds ago, maybe five…? Once the webcam was active, you saw what appeared to be the green, blurred image of his face. Was he wearing a mask? You heard the panic in his voice and the ensuing curse word right before your entire room was plunged into darkness. What. The. Hell. Just. Happened?

Just as quickly, it all came back and your computer was rebooting. Okay… you attempted to type once it was all back up and running but something was wrong. Nothing was clickable, nothing worked save for the cursor on your screen. Furrowing your brow, you kept trying, but to no avail. Then, something finally.

A message popped up on your screen and you wasted no time in reading it.

Apologies, I had no choice but to freeze your system. I promise I will explain everything but I need to do it in person. Meet me here:

There was an address to a building between two cross streets and he was asking you to climb the fire escape to the roof.

At first, you scoffed in disbelief. Hell no, you weren’t going to meet some stranger on a rooftop at some weird location. Did he think you were stupid?

Then, as if your mind is being read, another message popped up under the first.

I understand if this is something you might be uncomfortable doing but my identity and the safety of my family is at stake so I must give you an ultimatum. Meet me or your computer will remain frozen.

You swore softly to yourself. This wasn’t something you could fix on your own and you knew it.

You murmured a sarcastic reply. “Well, damn, I guess I’ll just go die then,”

He was giving you no choice and you needed your computer, not only for work, but it had everything. You considered it one of your most precious items. After a minute you’d made up your mind but you still packed your taser and pepper spray just in case.

Donnie was an absolute bundle of nerves. He’d already arrived at the location and was pacing back and forth while sticking to the shadows. He was berating himself about how stupid this plan was. She wasn’t going to show up, but he’d giving her no choice. He did feel a twinge of guilt but years upon years of lectures from Leo had made him be extra cautious. He couldn’t risk his family’s safety because he was careless.

You were nervous too as you carefully climbed the steps of the fire escape. Luckily, the building was only four floors but you still would’ve liked to take an elevator. Reaching the top, you took a moment to catch your breath.

“I do… computers… not stairs… you better be here.” Upon first glance you don’t see anyone and your annoyance grows. “Hello? Please don’t tell me I came all this way for nothing, I just want my computer back.”

Again, there was no reply.

Talking to yourself you groan. “Fuck… you are such an idiot…”

Donnie was only slightly panicking. To his amazement and relief, you showed up. In his anxious state he did manage to notice you looked kind of pretty despite the frown gracing your features. He felt frozen the moment he saw you but snapped out of it pretty quickly when he saw you about to leave.

“Wait!”

You turned. It was actually him. You recognized his voice prompting you walk closer to the source.

“Hello? If you’re here please show yourself. This is sus enough as it is and I’m already over it.” You couldn’t mask the exasperation in your tone. This was already beyond ridiculous.

Donnie had to admit he found her frustrated tone kind of endearing. In a fleeting thought he’d felt she was someone who could match wits with him.

 “Okay, okay, hold on, I’m coming out. Just… do me a favour and don’t scream, please.”

Arching an eyebrow you repeated. “Don’t scream? What kind of question is… oh.” You saw one extremely long leg and then another followed by a lengthy torso and a very green… okay, that’s definitely not human face. “Oh… so it wasn’t a mask…” It wasn’t as though he was unpleasant to look at though, just different.

He was trying his best to control his breathing, bracing himself for some kind of negative reaction. When none came, he took a breath and spoke, trying to keep his tone as even and neutral as possible.

“You see, when you hacked my webcam, you had unwittingly put me and and the safety of my family at risk… this is why I had to s-see you and why I froze your computer.” He was cursing himself inwardly for stuttering.

You were still trying to find your voice. You had SO many questions and actually still a bit annoyed. “First off… how…? You’re a turtle… I doubt anyone would even believe me… and… second… I didn’t even really see you! It was a complete blur and then you cut my power!” You exhaled as you took another breath. “NOW, I’m seeing you.”

Donnie couldn’t help but flinch a little. “I had to make sure, I had no idea how much of me you did see.” A soft sigh followed before he continued., pinching his skin just below where the bridge of his glasses was resting. “And if you had listened when I told you to stop, we wouldn’t be in this situation, now would we?”

He’s got you there and unconsciously you bite your lower lip. The stubborn part of you, however, wasn’t ready to admit defeat yet. “Well, how was I supposed to know that you were a… seven foot…”

“I’m six feet, eight inches.” He interrupted with his matter-of-fact correction.

Another exasperated exhale from you. “Sorry, six foot, eight inch… turtle man!” emphasizing your point, you gestured wildly at the full length of him with your arms. “Who’s apparently so good at hacking that my entire network is completely frozen and I had to drag my ass across town to beg you to unfreeze it!”

He was a little amused by this, he had to admit as his mouth quirked a smile. “Like, I said, I had to be sure, and might I remind you once again… you were the one messing with me.”

“Yeah! Because you were fun to mess with! It was giving me a chance to practice, and it was just innocent fun, it’s not like I could do what you did! And… AND you wanna talk about an invasion of privacy? You hacked my webcam first!”

Donnie blinked, she was really getting all worked up now, and he was trying not to stoop to her level. He was failing. “I only did it because I didn’t think you’d stop! I gave you fair warning.”

“I would’ve stopped!” He doesn’t believe you at all and you hate that because he’s right, messing with him had been too much fun.

“Really?” he deadpanned.

“Yes,” you stubbornly replied.

There’s no stopping his eyeroll at that. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

She crossed her arms with another soft huff. “Fine, don’t believe me.” A shrug followed. “So, now what?”

The tall turtle paused. Usually, he had all the answers but now that he’d frozen her computer and dragged her all the way out here, he felt at a loss of what to say. “I… I just wanted to make sure you’d keep my secret and not tell anyone.”

“Okay… I won’t.” A simple answer, and a truthful one. You watched as he looked at you a long moment. No doubt wondering if he could trust you or not.

Donnie was actually subtly checking for very slight facial cues to determine whether you were lying to him or not. He could tell that your heart rate appeared to be steady. Your gaze never wavered from his, no dilation of her pupils and no mouth tics either. He believed you.

“Okay.” He finally said. “Thank you. I’ll unfreeze everything once I get home.” He turned to leave. “Please get home safely.”

Wait… that was it? Just like that, he was leaving!? “Wait!” You rushed forward to grab his arm. “Wait… that’s it?”

He looked… confused? He had immediately zeroed in on your hand clutching his bicep and then back to your face. “Yes…? You agreed to not tell anyone so… you probably should… let me go? The less you see of me, the better? I thought you were… angry anyway.”

Reluctantly, you released his arm, speaking softly. “I’m not… that mad, I never was really, I just… didn’t want this to be… it. I feel like I could learn a lot from you.”

You watched as her hesitated, seemingly working through his own inner conflicts at this presented opportunity.

“You could…” He turned back around, facing you once again. “Although, you’re already pretty good, I was actually impressed that you’d made it as far as you did.”

You couldn’t help but puff up a little with pride. “Thanks, you’re not so bad yourself. Maybe I could teach you a thing or two.”

He actually laughed. Like a soft little chuckle with a wheeze, his lips blossoming into a smile. “Perhaps you could.”

You smiled back, that laugh of his was adorable. “I’ll let you go but, Donnie… don’t be a stranger, okay?” You already had known his name from getting into his system so many times.

He spoke your name too, softly. “Okay, I won’t.” He looked a little shy then. “Please, allow me to escort you home. It’s late.”

“How very chivalric of you.” Smiling at him with a nod. “I accept.”

Donnie looked pleased with this turn of events and then a little nervous. “I could… carry you, if you want, it’s faster going by rooftops.”

That was an unexpected offer. and now you hesitated before answering. “Oohkay… what are you, some kinda parkour master?”

He snorted softly with a little smirk. “Something like that, ready?”

When you nod, you’re scooped up into his arms at speed that makes you exhale quickly. Being in his arms and feeling the power they held was… nice.

“Hold on tight.” Is all he says and then he starts running.

Automatically you wrapped your arms around his neck watching as the edge of the building came closer and closer… and then, you were flying. Air shooting past your face at a speed that made your eyes water. Your stomach dropped and you clung tighter as you sailed through the air, landing with a thump on the other building.

“You, okay?” He wasn’t even out of breath, like this was easy for him.

“Yes…! Do you know where you’re going?” You ask a little breathlessly.

“Yep. Hold on, I’ll be there in ten.” He took off again, leaping across to the next and the next.

You had to admit it was probably the most exhilarating thing you’d ever experienced and you were actually a bit regretful when he stopped on the roof of your apartment building. Carefully, he brought you to your feet and pushed those large glasses of his up a bit.

“Here we are.” He was more relaxed now, you noticed and felt glad for it.

“Thanks, I appreciate you bringing me back.”

He offered a shy smile then. “You’re welcome. I dragged you out there, the least I could do is make sure you get home safely.”

“That is very much appreciated.” Feeling a bit shy yourself, you paused before heading in. “I’ll see you around.”

“For sure.” Donnie had found he didn’t want to leave yet either, he wanted to make sure you entered the apartment safely.

Heading in, you waved to him before closing the door behind you and took a deep breath. Wow… that really happened. That was incredible! You could barely contain your excitement as you went back to your apartment.

Once Donnie arrived home, true to his word he freed up her system and felt proud of himself for handling things the way that he did. He blew out a breath, leaning back in his chair a moment while lacing his fingers behind his head.

*bing*

He glanced at his screen to see his computer icons dancing and an unseen song playing in the background.

Ninja, ninja, rap, ninja, ninja, rap, go go go go. Go ninja go ninja go! Go ninja go ninja go! Go go go go!

Donnie snorted softly to himself and quickly typed a response.

Back in your apartment, your computer screen suddenly became flooded with memes. Mostly turtle ones of course and try as you might there was no containing your giggles and snorts as you watched them take over your screen. You liked him; there was something very endearing about his quiet shyness mixed with his sharp wit.

Typing back, you take over his screen once again. You took a breath and pressed enter. This was a big chance you were taking but you couldn’t help but feel a connection with the tall, lanky turtle man.

Go on a date with me

Check box yes or no

No rush

Donnie froze, his fingers twitching slightly as they hovered above his keyboard. She wants to go out on a date? With him? He had a mild panic attack for a moment and read and re-read the message at least ten times.

His cursor hovered over the ‘yes’ box. Come on Donnie, throw caution into the wind for once. When are you going to get another chance like this?

Making his decision finally, he clicked his mouse button.

Yes

You couldn’t hold your excitement as you blew out a breath of relief.

He said yes.

The End

@danceingfae @thelaundrybitch @iridescentflamingo @redsrooftopprincess @ninnosaurus

@the-cauldron-witch @thepinkpanther83 @avery73 @adebauchedsloth @sophiacloud28

@definitely-canon @scholastic-dragon @truffle-reblogs @fyreball66 @yorshie

[waywardstation]

About the reblog game--is the POV going to stay on Ingo the whole time or are we going to get Akari randomly showing up incredibly confused and possibly falling from the sky again

On that note, did Akari even get sent back? Some of your works sort of imply that Arceus is kind of cruel and it won't let them go back together, so is she like fistfighting it right now to get sent back too? It would be absolutely GUTTING for Ingo to finally remember Akari only to find out that she never got sent back and then yet again start to beat himself up over the hypotheticals <3

As far as I know, it will just stay with Ingo. It’s planned to so far, but of course a winning option could always change that!!

And yes, Akari got sent back too, they just got sent back to their respective regions! It’s something that’s supposed to be made clear later on (if this story ends up going the projected way, at least) and we have not reached that yet, so yes it’s not very clear right now. But she got sent back and is now back in the modern day, same as Ingo!

I do hope to continue this comic soon, I know we reached the goal but I’ve been unable to work on it lately because of my neck ;-; I hope I can do so again soon!

And as for my interpretations, I have many, many thoughts about Arceus. I do not intend for Arceus to be cruel (it’s actually meant to be rather the opposite, Arceus is supposed to be extremely hands-off but compassionate, not intervening but offering guidance and help. There is emotional distance and no attachment or personal sentimentality; Arceus helps in situations it’s present in where it realizes it can be helpful, but it does not seek them out. If that makes sense (Like if I see a bug drowning in my pool while I’m swimming in it, I will scoop it up and watch over it as it dries itself off until it can fly away. But I do not go out of my way to go out to my pool and search for bugs that need help every day. Best way I can describe Arceus being hands-off but compassionate).

But of course no one really knows this interpretation in my works yet yet except for me, as I have not published the works that focus on this yet. (And to be clear, this characterization would extend to this reblog comic too)

As of now, all that people have really seen from me that I can recall is that Akari has expressed worry that they will not be allowed to go back together and Ingo will have to be left behind, so she will force Arceus to let her take Ingo back with her if she must. So yes Arceus sounds cruel lol, but it’s really Akari just assuming and preparing for the worst in an unknown scenario.

More about my interpretation of Arceus below, and how it relates to my overarching narrative in my fics.

Here is a piece I’ve been sitting on for a long, long time. But again because of my neck, don’t know when I am going to finish this art. A handful of people saw this sketch last year (and it is almost a year old now which makes me sad ;-;) but it is for my overarching canon that I have built for my fics, most of it becoming relevant in works that have not been published yet. Stuff in the stained glass depictions probably do not make sense yet because of this, apologies.

BUT it is Savepoint AU. I’ve talked a little about it before but some things have changed since then. Basically as it is now, both Akari and Ingo are not from this time. The timeline is trying to clean itself out (as it does with Pokemon and things that manage to stick around after space-time distortions) and get rid of them.

Arceus brought Akari to this timeline. Arceus has made save states for Akari (think like literally saving the game), something like an instance of how she should be (healthy, unharmed) as a reference. When the timeline tries to take her out (think like when you black out in PLA after taking too many hits from wild Pokemon, drowning, falling too far, ect.), Arceus reverts her body back to a previous save point where she was healthy and unhurt. Arceus brought her here for a reason and it wants to ensure she can finish the task. It will send her back when she completes it, so the timeline stops going after her.

Ingo was not brought to this timeline by Arceus. Ingo does not have save points. Ingo does not have a promise to be sent back home when he finishes his task, as he has no task to complete. Not because Arceus doesn’t care about what happens to Ingo, but because Arceus had nothing to do with Ingo’s arrival, and Ingo has nothing to do for Arceus. Ingo is just not really on Arceus’ radar, it’s focusing on Akari.

When the timeline starts trying to take Ingo out, he does not have save instances like Akari does to fall back on. For a while, Akari just relies on Arceus sending her messages through the arc phone about when something will happen (a method that Arceus employs once Akari has made it aware that Ingo is important to her, still without intervening) so that she can help Ingo avoid these incidents and stay alive, until she can finish her appointed task and bring him back home with her (as I said before, in her words, she’s going to do it whether she’s allowed to or not. She doesn’t know Arceus’ stance on things).

But this method cannot work forever, surely. And it doesn’t. Without spoiling anything, Akari begs Arceus for another way to keep going at Ingo’s end, and in its empathy, Arceus complies.

I’m looking forward to when I can get these works out and finish this piece. I think about Savepoint AU constantly haha.

As a last thing, I’ve attached this song. Practically all of it really works with this AU and I would like to do some sort of PMV for it eventually. But there are several lines in here that connect well with Arceus’ relationship with them in this AU as well from Ingo’s POV.

You held your hand in mine And then it felt so clear That you were in the air And I think so was I - Ingo does eventually receive care and protection from Arceus, but only through Akari’s insistence that he does. He experiences what Akari has been blessed with this entire time, and the difference is noticeable.

There’s a part of us in you And I was a fool Thinking it was me - Arceus is with Akari and protecting her, but it is not with Ingo nor is it protecting him. Before Akari came along, Ingo believed he was ‘protected’ too though, somehow managing to escape this timeline cleanse fate (yes, he did know about it technically from seeing what happened to space-time distortion pokemon), but he had not; it only started late.

Something outside my vision - Arceus, in relation to Ingo. It is not there for him, it does not appear for him, and has not reached out to him like it has for Akari. But it does eventually make itself noticable to him, it’s just not made itself comprehensible to him like it has to Akari.

[kitkat13001]

This event is so cute!! Thank you for doing it!

Tomura Shigaraki + 1 (Tangled Christmas Lights)

ꨄ︎ 𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚕𝚎𝚍 𝚕𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜 | 𝚝. 𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚐𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚔𝚒

tomura scowls at you from where you’re bent over laughing at him. 

“what the fuck?!” he cries, offended. “are you gonna help me or are you gonna keep laughing?”

he’s answered only by the sound of your wheezing as you struggle to get a breath in through your giggle fit. 

he seethes at you, stewing in his rage,  and utterly immobile. 

“tomu,” you finally manage when you can breathe again, “how the hell did you manage to get this tangled up in the lights? i ask you to help decorate the tree and i come back and you’re kakuna.”

it’s true, he looks like some sort of cocoon pokemon nestled up in all the lights from his neck to his calves. you don’t even know how that’s possible. 

“shut up!” he snaps, but there’s no real malice behind it. his cheeks are too red from embarrassment, and you know although he’d deny it to his grave, he’s asking you for help right now. 

you come over to him, looking over the tangled mess of lights entrapping his body, and rest your hand on his cheek. he leans into your touch, though his face is still screwed up in a scowl. 

“i’ve never done this before,” tomura huffs, pouting like a child now. “how was i supposed to know? they…they sprang out of the box like they were alive and then…”

you give another laugh, softer this time, and start on unraveling the mess that is your boyfriend. “i know, honey. it’s okay, i’ll get you out.”

“my hero,” he scoffs sarcastically. 

“i’ll leave you here like this if you want.”

“don’t! i’ll be quiet now, promise.”

hihi! i hope you liked 🫶 thanks sm for the req! i had fun writing it, this was cute. i enjoy a humiliated tomura. happy holidays! 🩷🩷 -𝚔𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚢

[pokemonshelterstories]

On the topic of poor Pokemon behavior seen on social media, there was something weird I saw a few days ago. There was a video of a rapidash stallion charging at his owner (who was filming), rearing up with his ears pinned and eyes wide. The owner had captions saying things like “social media says he’s dangerous, but he’s really sweet! He’s just playing” followed by clips of him being very gentle with a couple small kids, like trotting carefully and taking hay from their hands.

I’m not sure what to make of this myself. I worked with equine pokemon for a few years, but the barn owner specifically disallowed stallions from being boarded there because of how young some of the riders were there, and how unpredictable stallions can be, so I don’t have any experience with them. I can’t imagine charging and rearing is safe behavior to be doing towards people, but I don’t know enough to say one way or the other. Is play behavior like that really normal for stallion rapidash?

yeah that's how you get gored by the giant horn on a rapidash's head. rapidash can indeed play rough, especially as stallions. but there are two things that make that sound really really scary to me. the first is the facial expression you're describing, which sounds to me like it's territorial/aggressive and not play. the second is that, even if the rapidash were playing, you cannot let a pokemon with hard hooves and a massive horn and several open flames (assuming this is a kantonian) roughhouse with you like that. rapidash play often involves a lot of chasing and biting and kicking, but a rapidash can take what it gives. a human can't. i've almost been seriously injured by equine pokemon that are sweet and gentle and just happened to get scared while i was around them.

stallion rapidash aren't necessarily dangerous by default, but you have to be really careful in training them and not allowing any sort of aggression towards humans, because an intact male rapidash has typically evolved because it needs to fight to maintain its territory and herd. a pokemon that can hit 240 kmh in ten strides and breathe fire is not a pokemon you let act that way around you.

[dyktvideogamesfx]

I lvoe these types of blogs. "Oo a mystery button for me?? 👉👈 Is for mee?? Dont mine if i do 🫵"

On the same note Im putting this blog in front of my gacha playing friends like "no more mystery anime girl button. take this free mystery sound button instead" like some sort of button-pressing nicotine patch

I wish you all the luck for curing them! Happy to have my blog hopefully be able to fufill that haha.

In all seriousness if they are trying to get out of gacha i wish them well, and want to maybe suggest shiny hunting in other pokemon-type games perhaps?

[catmask]

been absolutely adoring your daily mons!!! what inspires you to pick the mons you do :0? is it just your favorites? or do you pick simpler designs for ease of drawing purposes? i hope you have a wonderful day !!

its a mix of things!

obviously i have favorite pokemon, sometimes ill see one or remember it and go wait!! i love that thing!!! and draw it

i asked a lot of my close friends and oomfies what their favorite pokemon are and made a big list of those. some days i pick from that, other days i dont.

on days where nothing from either of those groups sounds appealing, sometimes ill go through the comments and see if anyone said like 'i wonder if theyll draw xyz pokemon' and if it sounds fun that day i will

and then if all else fails i go to the random pokemon generator site and pick one from there

the purpose of the challenge was just to get me started drawing earlier in the day, because i get sort of frozen in fear when it comes to starting tasks - even tasks i enjoy.

i wanted these daily drawings to be done in the mindset i had drawing when i was a kid - just draw what im feeling. dont overthink it, draw whatever is exciting or interesting and let the drawing take the shape it wants to as its being made.

for whatever reason thats worked to get me over my resistance to changing tasks!

[just-an-enby-lemon]

Another one of my silly Epic headcannons is that Athena was also training baby Diomedes while she was training baby Ody.

Now while she helped heros Athena tended to try to not be at all involved with them. She even chose a champion but kept her distance. That is until her champion just decided to eat a guys brain.

She decided that not only she needed a new champion she needed someone she could mold so they would met her standards and more importantly not comit canibalism in front of her for no reason. First move magic boar.

Except she got bored no one was solving her test and did a move that would have very different results when repeated and went check on Tydeus kid. Six years old Diomedes was smart, dedicated and thanks to being raised as a child soldier already really good with a spear. And she was like "oh perfect". Unlike Ody, Dio is shy and very awed/respectfull at first.

Less than a year later ten year old Odysseus solves her test (now Diomedes is sayed to be four when his dad died, I'm not making that one up, but Ody's age is very open, Epic implies he already had Athena when he became king at 13 so I'm going with 10, the boar was his Pokemon journey). So she now has two chances.

She never figths with Diomedes but they get distant for a bit. When she goes for Telemachus she is hoping for second Diomedes and instead she remembers that a) Ody is one of her kids at this point b) she actually likes Odysseus c) Ody didn't ate people. Besides 3 warriors are better than one. She soons recognizes she just has 3 mortal friends.

Before the Troyan War Dio and Ody were not friends, buddies, Diomedes gay awakening, and in fact didn't know about the other except via Athena weird questions. Some memorable moments:

- When Odysseus becames king and is overwhelmed by anxiety and sadness over his father condicion. Athena goes "Diomedes what humans do when their fathers go mad" and Dio is "my dad is dead" + "how do I deal with my human being sad and anxious and make sure he'll be a good king when he is a child?" "I'm literally nine"

- Athena fails to explain her worries about Diomedes fate as a kid soldier and instead Ody is fully convinced she wants him to invade Thebes and starts to get ready for when the order comes. "Okay, goddess, for real do you want me to invade Thebes or not?" and Athena is like "No, but hypotetically if it distressed you" "It does sound distressing" "How do I help a crying human" "Have you tried conforting them? Maybe offer a hug."

- Thanks to Odysseus Athena knows puberty is a big deal for humans. But unlike Ody, Dio does not have active and present parents to help. So Athena goes to older teen Ody "how did your parents give you the talk?" and Odysseus is fully dying of embarassmenet after the conversation is over but Athena now has enough notes to give a sort of decent talk to her other kid.

- The moment Diomedes turns 17 Athena is fully expecting another "pleasepleasepleaseplease help me with Penelope" situation so they have akwards "Do you want me to like wingman you" conversations for a bit. [When Diomedes actually starts liking someone it is Odysseus and Athena is just "you have bad taste good luck with that one" and very unhelpfull].

- After getting bad advice from Dionysus and trolling from Apollo, Athena finally goes to her other human to ask for help about not noticing her human was expecting + tiny baby in no armor. Diomedes got his talk from Athena and suddently realizes he actually has no idea how babies are born and has very weird conversations with his war friends.

- Athena is fully used to talking to her champions and not being heard by anyone else. This cauuses a small problem when she is trying to advice Odysseus about Iphigenia and Diomedes is fully "what are you talking about?" and that how the War Crimes (with Extra Lying) Trio is founded.

- Unrelated but after realizing Telemachus could think it really was a Tydeus situation except with forgiving Athena goes to Telemachus to assure him his dad was not a family-murdering cannibal. Telemachus knows Ody would never kill his family but he had never even considered his father and cannibal in the same sentence before and is very concerned over why Athena felt the sudden urge to promisse him his dad never ate people.

[gurggggleburgle]

As funny as it is to talk about Airplane meme speeching in front of Cucumber bro and being cringe and fail with modern slang a part of me stops and goes:

This man has basically lived an entire second life free from a context where that sort of linguistical expression exists in any real meaningful capacity. Which makes me wonder how much context does Shang Qinghua remember towards any of the slang he says on a regular basis. Like 30ish years is a long time to go without other people to reaffirm you're remembering something correctly. I don't know about you, but I barely remember memes from and slang from high school until someone brings them up, let alone when I was 10. So I am left wondering how much modern vernacular Airplane actually has floating around in his head. How much is from the system specifically saying things? How much is just stuff that made it's way into his novel just by accepted textual dialogue? How much is things he remembers and has held onto.

Does he even remember pokemon? Would he even remember how to use his phone? The system gave him the option to go home but just... would he even know how to function in that space if he did wake up post coma or whatever in it. Is talking to Cucumber bro sometimes overwhelming because man will just start saying stuff at him and just doesn't remember what it means? Or does he have just so much stuff he's forgotten hit him all at once in this terrifying and overwhelming way that leaves him floored? Does he even remember what poggers mean? How much of Airplane is just Shang Qinghua ship of theseused to himself. Where does the break between who he was before and who he is now begin? Does he even rasterize?!! Is Twitter just a vague floating concept that he only has feelings towards?? Could he even tell you what modern music sounds like anymore??

And for Cucumber Bro does he actually have a problem where the slang and expressions that have come to exist in the PIDW world organically simply because of language leave him talking in a weirdly out of touch and formal way that only adds to his old man points? Like does Shang Qinghua say some very specific equivalent of 'rizzing it up' or whatever like ' thats like flower picking on the first date, hell of a move. We'll see how that plays out for you' and Shen Qingqiu starts math guessing what it means. Does he just miss out on small folk actions and fairy tales everyone knows or understands and end up sounding like an idiot or just extremely rich and out of touch. Like sure you know white snake, but what do you mean you don't know The Begger Boy and The red and white Hermit Crab? Everyone knows that! It's asking for what you assume is a classical dish that's been around forever so obviously would make it into the setting but actually this dish was invented in the late 1900s/2000s and therefore doesn't exist and everyone is looking at you like you're insane?

Do the two ever just sit there being absolutely confused at what the other is saying because they're just so unsure how to handle shit? Not in a sad way but in a I refuse to admit that I am confused way.

[kafus]

why 100%ing the pokeathlon in HGSS is one of the longest challenges in all of pokemon

ok so the pokeathlon right. the fun minigame collection in HGSS that is sort of but not really a replacement for sinnoh contests. one of the achievements you have to get to upgrade the HGSS trainer card to 5 stars is beating all 10 preset records for each minigame in the pokeathlon, and this is probably what it's most known for outside of just being a fun minigame collection. i think most people beat all the records if they're going for completion and call it a day but despite how easy it is to get that trainer card level, it's actually barely scraping the surface of what this game expects out of you for 100% completion. i genuinely think it's one of the most insane pokemon challenges in terms of the amount of grinding and for WHAT??? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING AAAAA

okay deep breath hear me out. all of the images in this post are pictures of one of my own HGSS files that i have been slowly working on 100% completing the pokeathlon in. i am not done yet and you will soon see why

in the basement of the pokeathlon, there are four rooms that get progressively unlocked as you play. the first one ("solidarity room") is there at default, then you unlock the "trust room" by winning a medal in all five courses at least once, then you unlock the "potential room" by winning a medal for all five courses on the same pokemon (AKA what is called a "medalist pokemon"), and then lastly you unlock the "friendship room" by beating all the preset 1st records, which also gets you the aforementioned trainer card level. each of these rooms is there to display various pokeathlon achievements and holy shit there are a lot of them that just get more crazy as you go further back in the rooms so BUCKLE UP

this is the solidarity room, aka the first room. very easy stuff, the only records down here are in the glass case and they show your highest collective score in each of the five pokeathlon courses. for 100% completion of this room you need to get a score of at least 450 in each course and you can tell you've done this when there are two trophy icons filled in next to each on the right hand side. a couple examples:

the only one in particular that took me more than one or two attempts to get the score i needed was the jump course for some reason and i have no idea why honestly, i think i just suck at lamp jump. on the other hand the skill course is extremely easy entirely because snow throw can be cheesed (video of me doing this here)

next up is the trust room. mainly it features the glass case that shows off every pokemon you've ever received a medal on and also totals how many full medalist pokemon you have, as shown below (i don't currently have any pokemon who AREN'T medalists here, but medalist pokemon are given the red ribbon on the bottom screen, so any non-medalist pokemon won't have that icon):

yes i have 73 medalist pokemon at the time of writing this post. don't worry about the trophies right now, we're going to talk about it later

despite the glass case being the main thing here, the flag, jersey, and golden shoes on the back wall aren't actually there at first. they show up for accomplishing certain things. from left to right you have to switch 200 times in any minigame that requires swapping mons, join the pokeathlon (not necessarily win) 50 times, and dash in any minigame where you flick the stylus to dash 5000 times. these numbers might sound kind of high but it's potatoes compared to later and if you're trying to 100% the pokeathlon these will just naturally show up here eventually without you even thinking about it

amusingly after you get them and interact with them, it doesn't actually tell you what you did to get them there lol. it's just like wow! those are yours! crazy!

next up, the potential room: yet another glass case and a couple of tables on the back for more golden items that appear as you achieve stuff. the glass case this time contains all the records for each individual minigame, including those 1st records you have to beat as i've mentioned a few times.

here are some of my records that i am not so subtly taking the opportunity to show off here lol. i have played so much pokeathlon that all of the 1st records are completely gone from the list, i've overwritten the entire list from each event LOL. on the bottom screen, 1st records you've beaten get a little ribbon on the event icon... but hold on, there's trophies too!

yes there's actually two records to beat for each event, the one that gives you the little trophy is called the mastery record and some of them, unlike the 1st records, are actually pretty damn difficult to achieve. circle push requires 60 points for example, which requires you to get a score of at least 60 - and the theoretical highest score you can get, aka a perfect score, is 66!! that's only 6 points off from perfect!! and don't even get me started on pennant capture, imo it's by far the hardest mastery record, it requires you to pick up 50 entire flags in one game and for a variety of reasons this is very difficult and required me to soft reset over and over doing attempts for multiple hours lol. the mastery records are really where i'm like, damn as a kid with undeveloped motor skills this would make me fucking explode (and it did when i was a child. it almost did even as an adult. fuck pennant capture)

oh yeah btw that "Link" button in the top right is specifically for local wireless playing pokeathlon with friends and there are zero achievements related to it, there's no preset records and no local play is required for completion. figured i'd mention lol

anyway as for the two things in the back, the first with the golden pokegear is for 100 first place wins overall and the one i don't have on the right side is for winning each individual minigame/event in first place... 50 times. 50 times each. there's 10 individual minigames, and some of them don't repeat on any other course, so you can start imagining just how many pokeathlon playthroughs this takes. this is getting ridiculous considering the amount of time investment needed but it Gets Worse!

ah yes the last room. the friendship room. it's cute, it has a statue of you and the last three pokemon you won the pokeathlon with, so you can go in with a team of 3 pokemon you care about and take a photo of your screen surrounded by statues of your favorite guys. here the mons are just random though lol

however there's more to this room and this is where the true insanity of the pokeathlon reveals itself. if you interact with your statue, you get this screen:

as you can see, all of the trophies from the previous rooms are totaled here! the collective trophies are the ones from getting a good score on each course from the solidarity room, the trust trophies are from the amount of medalist pokemon you have shown off in the trust room, the potential trophies are from all the 1st records and mastery records you've beaten in the trust room, and the friendship trophies... well those are actually obtained from the big point score on the top screen, of which you need a minimum of 4500 to get the 10th and final friendship trophy. this total is made up of the sum of all five course high scores, the highest score from each individual minigame (after converting to athlete points, AKA the currency earned), and one point per each medal shown off in the trust room, so five points for each medalist pokemon.

and that's the issue. medalist pokemon. you may have noticed that despite me having a whopping 73 medalist pokemon at the moment as well as getting every other trophy in the pokeathlon, i only have 6 of the 10 trust trophies. do you know how many medalist pokemon you need to 100% the pokeathlon and get that last trust trophy? 200 OF THEM.

let me break down why this is fucking ridiculous. so first of all i've been waiting to mention this until now, but medalist pokemon aren't actually logged by individual pokemon, they're logged by species. this means if you go in with a cyndaquil, and then go in with a different cyndaquil, winning medals on both cyndaquils does not count as more medals after you've already gotten them on that first cyndaquil once. this means that to even attempt getting 200 medalist pokemon, you have to OWN 200 individual pokemon species - as of gen 4 there were 493 pokemon in the national dex including mythicals and stuff; that's a little under half the entire fucking pokedex!! think of it this way, there's 30 pokemon per PC box, and assuming no duplicates, you would need to fill 6 and 2/3 PC boxes with different pokemon species.

pokedex requirement aside, let's break down how many times you have to play the pokeathlon minigames MINIMUM assuming you win first place every single time and don't ever bring repeat species on accident. it's math time babey

you need 200 medalist pokemon but you join the pokeathlon with a team of 3 pokemon at a time, so let's divide that by three and round upwards. 200 / 3 = 67 full medalist runs. for each medalist, you have to beat all 5 courses, so let's multiply 67 by 5 to get 335 total pokeathlon wins. but wait, each course has three minigames! so the total amount of minigames you have to play MINIMUM to get 200 medalist pokemon is 1005. and again, that's at minimum assuming you don't fuck anything up!! these minigames aren't exactly short either, they last 1-2 minutes each and this doesn't count spamming A through dialogue and menus, picking your pokemon each time before each course, watching the cutscene of points getting totaled at the end... 1-2 minutes might sound short but even if we take out all that time menuing and assuming every course is JUST 1 minute for math's sake, that's 1005 minutes - that's 16 hours and 45 minutes of JUST pokeathlon gameplay, and that is absolutely an underestimate.

as you can imagine as a person with chronic pain these minigames are kind of painful after a while and so i'm definitely going slow with this grind but i intend to have every trust trophy eventually. i'm not the first to do it but i've seen very few people online who have even wanted to make the attempt and i want to be able to look at that friendship trophy screen and feel accomplished. (i'm also going to get that last achievement in the potential room but if i don't have it somehow at the end of getting all these medalists i'll worry about it then)

side note i think it's really funny how there's something called the Supreme Cup which is just pokeathlon but harder and the only thing worth doing it for is extra athlete points for winning (300 instead of 100), there's literally 0 achievements tied to it lol

oh, and an aside about how ridiculous the pokeathlon is - the data cards. despite all my rambling here about all these different rooms with various achievements, there's actually even more pokeathlon data that is accessible... for a price.

the lady behind the counter here will sell you data cards for athlete points which let you view more personal pokeathlon data on the computer screen right next to her. the issue is some of these are really expensive, most of them 1000 points or more, which is a minimum of two full pokeathlon courses probably won at first place each. and there's also one card that costs 9999 for some fucking reason, it's the one that shows your total pokeathlon playtime, which i think is really funny. you also can't buy it right away, you have to buy most of the prior ones first. they really said ok here's your reward for grinding enough AP to buy all those data cards including this 9999 one: checking how much time you've wasted on getting here! in total getting all the data cards costs 39499 AP. just to view all your data!! if you get an average of 500 AP per pokeathlon course, that's a minimum of like 79 pokeathlon wins!!

i assume most people have never bought a data card much less all of them, like most people are going to use all that AP for purchasing evolution stones and heart scales from the main shop on the right, but it's kind of nutty how much data the pokeathlon actually saves. very minute stuff. since i've bought all of them, here's my current stats at the time of writing this:

anyways don't do this unless you have a lot of time on your hands to tediously replay the same minigames hundreds of times, and if you do for the love of god rest your wrists btw. these minigames were not built for my bones and they probably weren't for you eitherSFDKSFD