#or taking him on a fun family trip to an island with a literal zero percent survival rate

[yandere-daydreams]

If Vil and Rook get divorced…does that mean Trey is the

Stepfather to Epel?

technically yes in that vil's second option would definitely be trey who would happily accept his new stepson as he already has several freshmen children of his own, but also no in that epel would absolutely be one of those 'you're not my read dad!!!' kids. he's just not made to be a child of divorce y'know.

[hope-grace-serenity]

In Defense of the Deputy: Morals and Ethics in Far Cry 5

The narratives of recent Far Cry installments have been framed in a way that make the player question whether or not they’re truly playing as the “good guy.” In Far Cry 3, Jason slowly embraces the violent lifestyle on Rook Island, gradually finding the killing to be a fun power trip instead of the horrifying reality that it is. In Far Cry 4, Ajay topples a ruthless dictator, only to replace him with a revolutionary that is either a religious extremist or a person who has children kidnapped in order to make them into soldiers/slaves. In Far Cry 5, the Deputy goes up against a professed prophet in an attempt to subdue him and his cult, only to find in the end that the prophet was right about the end of the world. It is logical to think that if the Deputy would have just left the cult well enough alone, then that would have been the right choice, as it would have avoided the war between Eden’s Gate and the rest of Hope County, as possibly the Collapse itself. However, there is a different way to view it.

The purpose of this post is to convey that Joseph being accurate regarding the Collapse does not necessarily mean that avoiding confrontation with Eden’s Gate or joining them would have been the “right” thing to do. In fact, it will suggest the opposite: that the Deputy has a moral and ethical obligation to fight *against* Eden’s Gate and that the actions of the cult are firmly wrong despite the Collapse happening. While we as players can certainly feel empathy for the Seeds, their actions within the game make them the clear villains in this scenario, in my opinion. The Deputy deserves no blame for attempting to subdue the cult, and I will explain why by focusing on both in-universe rationale and looking at the narrative from a broader perspective.

The Warrant

First, we need to examine the idea of morality and ethics. Morality refers to a person’s principles of right and wrong--this is something that can be influenced by a person’s culture, religion, family, experiences, etc. Ethics refers to rules of conduct given by some kind of external source. In Far Cry 5, the protagonist is a law enforcement official with an ethical obligation to uphold the law and confront those who break it. Furthermore, from the perspective of a 21st century American--which we can assume the Deputy is, based on the setting of the game--Eden’s Gate commits several acts that cause harm and remove the personal agency of others, which provides the Deputy with a moral motivation for stopping them, as opposed to solely an ethical one.

An arrest warrant is made for Joseph Seed due to suspicion of kidnapping with an intent to harm. The Deputy choosing not to go through with the arrest would be bad from both a moral and ethical perspective. “Kidnapping with an intent to harm” is a serious charge, and can be a matter of life or death for the victim. Imagine if you were the parent or sibling of the kidnapping victim, and you found out that the law enforcement officials chose not to go through with the arrest of the suspect because they were afraid of rocking the boat. If that information was made public, the law enforcement officials would be rightly criticized for not doing their jobs, and for prioritizing their own desire for convenience over bringing justice to the victim. By arresting Joseph Seed, the Deputy made the moral and ethical decision.

As we see from the main game, the “suspicions” listed in the arrest warrant are later proven to be correct. Alex is killed, and his body is mutilated and put on public display as a warning. Hannah is tortured physically and psychologically, and is also killed due to her forced participation in Jacob’s trials. Joseph and several members of Eden’s Gate knew that they kidnapped the film crew. They knew in advance that Law Enforcement was coming. So, how do they decide to handle this? In a way befitting for characters who are meant to be viewed as villains.

Before the Reaping

Before we get into what the Deputy actually sees in-game, one thing needs to be made clear: Eden’s Gate always had an underlying darkness surrounding them. Regardless of what they looked like on the surface, they were never some peaceful hippie commune that was minding its own business before the Deputy came along. They’ve been committing crimes and getting away with them for years. They didn’t suddenly snap once the Deputy arrived--the Deputy’s arrival simply peeled back and revealed what was already there.

We know from the “Grieving Note” that Angels have been with Eden’s Gate for several years, longer than the current Faith has been with the group. Angels are humans who are exposed to an extreme amount of the Bliss drug, which causes them to lose their capacity for human thought and essentially act as a literal mindless follower. Their loss of identity and individuality is furthered by Eden’s Gate shaving the heads of the Angels and surgically removing their ability to speak. They act as slave labor--described as "beasts of burden"--and are fed dog food and garbage. The idea of becoming an angel is used as a threat to fellow cultists in the “Cult Note” in the King’s Hot Springs Hotel. The fact that Eden's Gate creates and condones the existence of these Angels is truly disturbing from a moral perspective, due to the inherent exploitation and dehumanization. When Angels die, their bodies are tossed in a pit of “boiling muck” in Horned Serpent Cave to disintegrate.

Angels aren’t the only ones thrown in the pit to disintegrate: Joseph threw the body of Lana, a previous Faith, in there as well, despite being told by him that she was “special.” There is a reason the writers chose to highlight that the bodies were disposed of in here, as opposed to the cult simply burying them. Bodies are disintegrated if you want to hide evidence, and by tossing the bodies in a location with properties dangerous enough to require a bio-hazard sign, any crimes are easily covered up. We don’t find the bodies of Selena or the other previous Faiths who were "used up and thrown away" by Joseph, but considering there are hints that point to foul play (disintegration of Lana’s body, Megan leaving out of fear of what Joseph could do after seeing that there was a new Faith, the way the position itself is dehumanized, the fact that Joseph has a designated corpse disposal spot in the first place, etc.) and absolutely zero evidence towards any kind of alternate fate for the previous Faiths, it’s easy to put two and two together and conclude that the previous Faiths met a grisly fate that was covered up as well.

Eden’s Gate was also involved in animal abuse through the creation of Judges, which were unleashed after the reaping. These animals were kidnapped and forcibly exposed to an obscene amount of the Bliss drug, which purposely causes them to act like rabid killers in the service of Eden’s Gate. According to NPCs, they were trained to hunt humans.

Let’s also not forget that Joseph personally gorged a guy’s eyes out for being a traitor. If the developers didn’t want us to view Joseph as someone who was capable of doing that, then they would have removed it from the introductory video, but they didn’t. Also, the fact that Eden’s Gate has been planning for the Reaping for a while now shows that this group had the intent to launch a large-scale attack from before the Deputy even arrived at the compound.

And last but certainly not least, YEARS before the events of FC5, Jacob sent the Cook to kidnap Jess’s family. The Cook starved the family for days before torturing the parents and children by playing sick mind games and feeding the parents' flesh to their children. After all their toes were cut off, the parents were set on fire in front of their kids. The fact that this happened years ago, and this Cook is still with the group, is quite telling and reveals a lot about the morality and priorities of Eden’s Gate. If they wanted to get rid of him, they would have.

So as we can see, Eden’s Gate has no moral high ground to stand on at the start of the game. Not only is Joseph guilty of the crime he is accused of, but he and his organization are guilty of so much more, and have been for years. These actions committed by Eden’s Gate violate numerous laws and are morally wrong, as they bring severe harm to others and/or forcibly remove another’s personal agency for the convenience of the cult. The Deputy uncovers all of this throughout the course of the game.

During the Reaping

Knowledge of Eden’s Gate’s past crimes would be reason enough to take down this cult, but the Deputy also sees the current horrors firsthand. During the Reaping, cultists kidnap, torture, mutilate, and murder numerous unwilling participants. They steal supplies and were willing to kidnap a beloved pet dog in order to perform experiments on him and turn the poor dog into a savage killer, after killing his owners. Defaced corpses are decorated and strung up as warnings. Some citizens of Hope County are fed to Judges, while others are turned into Angels or are forced to leap off a giant statue. If someone doesn’t convert to the religion of Eden’s Gate, then they are either tortured or drugged until they give in, or murdered.

The Deputy has zero incentive to walk away from this conflict. Why would they? As a deputy of Hope County, they have a moral and ethical obligation to protect the county’s citizens, and those citizens are under attack by Eden’s Gate. Eden’s Gate are the aggressors in this scenario. *They* are the ones who are kidnapping, murdering, torturing, and brainwashing the Hope County citizens. As far as the Deputy is aware at the beginning of the game, they are the only remaining police officer and only person in a position of authority to fight against the cult. It is their responsibility to fight against the people causing grievous harm to the county.

Throughout the game, the Deputy’s personal encounters with the heralds further reinforce the idea that Eden’s Gate is dangerous and beyond reason. While confessions can and should be voluntary, John does not approach it in that way. John kidnaps, terrorizes, and tortures the hardened Joey Hudson to the point of tears, and brings the Deputy to his torture dungeon where he once pried confessions under duress from prior individuals of the county. He kidnapped the Deputy in order to forcibly baptize them to the point where they might have drowned without Joseph’s interference, and captures them in order to make them confess, using the presence of Hudson as leverage (Hudson’s misery was also used as incentive on the video to draw the Deputy to the Holland region). He lures the Deputy to the church in the same way (by kidnapping their friends) and then permanently modifies their body against their will. Despite his proclaimed desire to have the Deputy atone, John also expresses desire to see the Deputy dead on occasion, such as after they destroy his sign.

While it might be easier for the player to sympathize with John due to his backstory and dynamic with Joseph, from the Deputy’s in-universe perspective, his instability represents a very real, tangible threat not only to them, but to the people of Hope County as a whole. At every turn, John has either imposed his will onto the Deputy by removing opportunities for agency and/or harming others. The Deputy owes John nothing. Any "choice" he gives of saying "Yes" is undermined by the massive amount of strings attached. It is difficult to envision a reason why the Deputy would decide to give into John’s philosophy, aside from faking it in order to protect their allies. This is a failing on John's part, not the Deputy.

Like John, Faith also expresses a desire for the Deputy to give in to Eden's Gate. But unlike John, she initially appears to the Deputy in a more pacifistic, less confrontational way. Despite this, the Deputy is still able to see her darker side due to her views on the Angels and fate of the unfortunate souls who walk the path whipping themselves and take a literal leap off of the statue of Joseph. Furthermore, she overrides the Deputy’s agency through the use of Bliss, which drastically warps one’s perception of reality. The Bliss that she now controls makes the horrific creation of Angels possible, and this Bliss is also used during baptisms, which muddles the issue of personal agency and consent to John’s process in addition to her own conversion process. The dangers of the Bliss and how it affects one’s thought process become highlighted in the Henbane region, and letters, voicemails, and NPC chatter show that Faith is not one to be trifled with. This comes to a head when Faith brainwashes the Sheriff and manipulates the Marshall into killing Virgil before killing himself. While it’s easy to have sympathy for Faith and her experiences, from the Deputy’s perspective, Faith is still a potential danger, which is why they step back when she leaned toward them during her death scene.

Jacob too removes the Deputy’s personal agency by literally brainwashing them and turning them into a tool that he can command, which eventually results in the Deputy being forced to kill a friend. He forced captives into competing against each other in life or death trials. He keeps the Deputy in a cage with a dead body and feeds them “mystery meat” after seven days of starving them while telling them a story about how he cannibalized his friend. The Judges are his brainchild that he sends to attack and kill others. Like John, Jacob also kidnapped and tortured a fellow police officer, to the point where they act like a slave to Jacob’s whims. Jacob has not done anything other than convincing the Deputy that he is a threat.

It is not the Deputy's job to fix the Seeds' personal issues--it's their job to protect Hope County. Throughout their journey, the Deputy sees various atrocities being committed, both to strangers and to themselves and the people they care about. There is zero reason for the Deputy to genuinely give in to the Seeds and join Eden's Gate, considering the horrible way they were treated and how they saw others being treated.

Joseph and the Voice

The Deputy’s presence did not *force* Eden’s Gate to start the Reaping. *Joseph* was the one to initiate it as a reaction to the Deputy’s presence, and all of Eden’s Gate followed him lockstep. When given the opportunity to finally confront and arrest the man responsible or walk away, it almost feels laughable that it’s even a choice at this point.

As leader of Eden’s Gate, Joseph oversees all parts of the Project. The buck stops with him. If he had any issues with Faith’s Angels, or Jacob’s trials, or John’s torture, he could have and would have said something--such as when he intervenes during the baptism--but he doesn’t. Because it furthers the goal of the Project, he doesn’t see any issue with these actions and feels they are justified.

Joseph’s vision of the Collapse coming true doesn’t mean that his actions throughout the game have greater inherent morality than the Deputy. It just means that he’s right about the Collapse. Regarding the Reaping, I do not believe that Joseph was motivated by a sense of cruelty, but that doesn’t change how many of the actions he participated in and oversaw *were* cruel. In real life, we see various examples of some people (not just in religious institutions, but in positions of authority in general) who commit harmful acts for the sake of a perceived “greater good.” And many of those people genuinely believe in what they are doing, believe they are in the right. But that doesn’t mean they actually are.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room: the Voice. If the Voice of God supports Joseph, then surely the deputy is automatically the “bad guy” for opposing him, right?

Wrong.

First, we have to be willing to admit that we know next to nothing about the Voice. The only things we know about it is what is conveyed to us by Joseph. We do not know the exact wording of what the Voice says, the level of detail it gives him regarding expectations (if any), or even what it is. Is it the voice of God? Satan? A real angel? Some kind of eldritch entity from another dimension? How accurate is Joseph's reiteration or interpretation? Sometimes it seems to directly tell Joseph things (hence the title, “the Voice”), other times it shows him visions. Clearly, there is some kind of supernatural component, as it allows Joseph to see the future, but since we don’t know much about it specifically, we can’t automatically assume or attribute inherent benevolence or morality to it.

Second, it’s entirely possible for a genuine prophet of God (assuming the Voice does indeed belong to a benevolent creator), or those who have/had God’s favor, to engage in morally questionable behavior, both in the eyes of God and/or in the eyes of 21st century readers. While the Project at Eden’s Gate is its own distinct religion, it takes most of its cues from Christianity, both in terms of practices and beliefs. In the Bible, King David had a man murdered so he could sleep with that man’s wife. Jonah wanted the entire population of a city to be killed off instead of having them repent. Jacob (the Biblical figure) deceives his father into giving him a birthright that belonged to his brother, and shows blatant favoritism to one son which ends up causing a lot of internal strife within the family. It’s fully within the realm of possibility that Joseph’s actions are not meant to be endorsed, either by the Voice itself or by the narrative in a broader sense.

In New Dawn, Joseph alludes to his own personal failings by saying, “My soul has become a cancer. I am a monster. I only spread suffering and death in the name of God.” The death of his son and the destruction of New Eden act as a moment of awakening for Joseph, as he finally realizes the harsh reality of his actions and how they affect others. He then expresses a desire for death and says, “There is only the justice of God’s hand.” The implication of “justice” being done indicates that the Voice (“God”) would not be happy with some of the actions that Joseph did. So while Joseph’s actions in FC5 were done with the intent of serving the Voice, his execution of these ideas was something that Joseph feels God would not like, as his actions spread death and suffering.

And thirdly, we have to remember that the Deputy and the player are viewing the idea of morality from the perspective of a 21st century human. Let’s say that, hypothetically, the Voice specifically instructed and condoned the erasure of free will/murders/kidnappings/etc. for whatever reason, and by enacting them, Joseph and Eden’s Gate were “just following orders.” Does this absolve Joseph and Eden's Gate of responsibility? No. Willing participation in the crimes committed, even if it wasn’t “their idea,” can still have legal consequences and can still be viewed as “bad” from a moral perspective because of the results of those actions.

The Collapse

It has been discussed elsewhere (on this site and in outside articles/discussions about the game) that the actions of the deputy correspond with the role of the Lamb in Revelations, and by breaking the seals, the Deputy’s actions supernaturally trigger the Collapse. This interpretation is fairly popular, and is one I personally support. However, I do not feel as though this interpretation lessens the morality of the Deputy's actions. Their decision to fight the Seeds is still the right one, regardless of whether or not their actions resulted in some kind of cosmic game of dominos.

First off, when the Deputy is attempting to take down the Seeds and protect the people of Hope County, they are not doing this with the intent of playing a role in a cosmic prophecy that will result in the death of millions. They’re looking at the situation from a human perspective, and acting accordingly and sensibly. The Seeds, on the other hand, were willingly harming innocents both before and during the Reaping.

Second, if there's a need to assign blame to a human for starting the Collapse (and I personally don't think there needs to be), it would be the Seeds, not the Deputy. The Sheriff and the deputies wouldn’t have arrived with the arrest warrant if the Seeds were not kidnapping and doing other illegal actions.

And thirdly, if one does attribute blame of the Collapse to the Deputy, then one also must attribute the birth of the new world to them as well. Following along with the idea that the events of FC5 are a fulfillment of Revelations, then the Collapse is ultimately viewed as a Good Thing within in the context of the Book of Revelations, even if the player might not personally share the sentiment. The Book of Revelations describes how the new world that is supposed to emerge from the ashes of the old is meant to be much better than the one before. And if we look at the world of New Dawn--and I’m going to copy and paste something I wrote previously here---Nature is allowed to flourish, people work together and support each other in a tight community, all the social ills mentioned in the Book of Joseph (and by the characters in-game) no longer exist. The only “snakes in the garden” would be the Highwaymen, and they are abolished by the Captain, who Joseph prophesizes to be some kind of Messiah-like figure. The final scene of New Dawn is one of hope, where the characters talk about building a better future. The way Joseph and Ethan’s storyline ends also connects to the whole idea of breaking away from the past and moving forward. If one believes that the Deputy is responsible for the Collapse, then this new world shown in New Dawn and the context of Revelations complicates the idea of viewing the Deputy's actions as being inherently bad.

Some might also argue that the Deputy has responsibility for not taking Joseph's warnings more seriously. Why though? Why should the Deputy attribute more credibility to Joseph's claims than, say, those of Marshall Applewhite or David Koresh? As players who know the ending, it’s easy for us to say that the Deputy should have listened to Joseph's warning about the Collapse, but there’s no in-universe rationale for the Deputy to do so. Issues of belief aside, Eden’s Gate’s actions alone are enough to paint an extremely negative picture of the group and would be enough to make any regular person not want to associate with them.

Under the framework of the Revelations prophecy being the intended interpretation of the game events though, I personally don't feel that any character "deserves" blame for the Collapse happening, not even the Seeds. I blame the Seeds for what they do to people within the game and before the events of FC5. And my perception of the Deputy is based on what we see in the game as well. But again, the Revelations prophecy idea is simply one way to view the game. Regardless of whether or not this interpretation is the correct one, the deputy still has the moral high ground in their fight against the Seeds.

Conclusion

Joseph being right about the Collapse does not mean that his (and by extension, Eden’s Gate’s) actions during FC5 were justified, and the Deputy should not be blamed for fighting against them. Just as the Deputy made a choice to arrest Joseph, Joseph made the choice to react in the worst way possible with the Reaping. Eden’s Gate were the aggressors who were kidnapping, torturing, and murdering people throughout the county. The Deputy fights against Eden’s Gate as a direct result of *Eden's Gate's* actions. The Deputy deserves no blame or guilt for killing the Seeds and destroying their bases of operations, as they reacted in a logical way based on the quality of information they had at the time.

In New Dawn, the Deputy expresses an extreme amount of guilt, which transforms them into the Judge. This guilt is misplaced and should be attributed to the other resident of the bunker, which is something Joseph himself even alludes to during his final speech in New Dawn when he criticizes his own actions. If Eden’s Gate did not start attacking the people of Hope County, the bunkers would still be standing, and the Seeds and many other cultists would still be alive. But they did, so they’re not.

While I adore all four of the Seeds as characters and have varying degrees of sympathy for them, they are firmly villains within the context of the story due to their actions. The deputy is not a bad guy for trying to stop them. The fact the Seeds sided with a guy who kidnapped and starved a family, then fed the parents' flesh to their children while playing “this little piggy” with the parents’ toes, and then murdered said parents in front of their children should speak for itself.

TL;DR: The deputy’s decision to confront Joseph instead of walking away was the right one.

[bigteefsmallbrain]

MORE SOULMATE AU HEADCANONS

Someone called the first set cute and I am unbelievably determined to make their goddamn day/night now, also, just realized you could get around the talking barrier with your soulmate if you direct your speaking at yourself, though I imagine that would be quite hard without a lot of focus or practice, so I’m implementing that in this set, hope you enjoy!!

WARNING: For Midoriya Izuku - Mentions of past fish death; For Umino Iruka - Mentions of his parents passing; and For Erza Scarlet - Death, the Tenrou island incident, signs of depression and loss of a loved one [It turns happy though]

SOULMATE AU HEADCANONS FOR: Izuku Midoriya, Iruka Umino, Erza Scarlet

Izuku Midoriya

Welcome to your own personal hero encyclopedia

Literally your best friend when it comes to quizzes and homework

If you so much as mutter to yourself a question

He is mumbling to himself the answer and all the steps to solve it

Brain = Autopilot

He doesn’t even consider that you might have been rhetorical

Or that you might be taking a quiz

Soulmate asked a question and he’d rather die than not mutter the answer to himself under his breath so his soulmate can hear

He’s your worst enemy sometimes too though

Trying to sleep? Nah, listen to him fanboy over a hero documentary instead

Trying to have a little you time? Funny joke, you’re learning about All Might now

You now know the weirdest facts about heroes

And events that most teachers don’t know about

May I suggest a heroics history teaching job?

Unfortunately, you also have to listen to his crying

I don’t mean it in a bad way

But you have no way to comfort him

Literally all you want to do is give him a hug and comfort him

But all you can do is say comforting words to yourself

Hoping he’ll hear them over his broken, heart wrenching sobs

But don’t worry, he does, he hears everything you say to yourself

He has a notebook dedicated to you and o n l y you

He nearly ripped Bakugo’s head off when the blonde accidentally burnt it’s pages when they were younger

Yeah, fun times [Bakugo double checked that it was the h e r o notebook and not the s o u l m a t e notebook when he burnt it in middle school, never again would he risk hearing his last name be spit venomously from the green haired males mouth]

He writes down anything he deems memorable [AKA nearly everything] that you say

He notes things you have difficulty towards academically and makes sure to break it down and read the now less complex version aloud in hopes he’s helped you

He has, he’s probably the main reason you’re in the top 5 academically

But also he loves hearing your meaningless rambles

You have scared him a few times

“Wait, is he dead? Oh no! Please don’t tell me he’s dead!”

w h a t

“I don’t think I can handle mom crying over another fish.”

Oh, just a fish, thank All Might, he nearly went into cardiac arrest

They brighten his day, and he can’t wait to meet you and tell you just how thankful he is that you’re his soulmate

Just like you can’t wait to hit him upside the head for all the sleepless nights he’s caused with his fanboy behavior

Okay, but when you do meet, you immediately ask for Bakugo

You give zero fucks about possibly being expelled/sent to prison

Hell hath no fury like you who had to listen to their soulmates broken cries over the blondes treatment for years

And Izuku can only hold you back for so long

He definitely wants to see your quirk in action when you meet

And when demonstrating he’s mumbling all the uses and possible ideas

While also complimenting you and how amazing you are

He doesn’t even notice he’s doing it

If you do it back, he WILL blue screen

Midoriya Izuku.exe has stopped working

He literally freezes on the spot

Iruka Umino

Oh do we love our dear teacher

Maybe a little too much

But we don’t talk about that

IRUKA IS THE TYPE TO MUTTER A SWEET SOFT “Good morning my soulmate” TO HIMSELF EVERY DAY AS HE WAKES UP SO YOU CAN HEAR IT AND YOU CAN’T CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE

He will also say other things, like “I made pancakes for breakfast, I wish you were here to enjoy them”

And call you sweet pet names like “Dear” “Darling” “Honey” etc. and when he’s feeling especially corny “Snookums” or something really out there when he feels like you need a good laugh like “Cookie Cutter”

No, I'm serious, if he thinks you’re sad, he w i l l say “Hey there, how’s my little cookie cutter?” to himself in a half joking tone in hopes of brightening your day

You can pry this headcanon from my cold, dead hands

He loves it if you mutter responses to yourself for him to hear in return

His heart will melt the moment he hears you say “Good morning” back, or if you mention wanting to cook for him

He also loves it if you give lesson plan advice to him

Like, he’ll be muttering about the best way to teach his class how to throw shuriken and your voice will pop up in his head with friendly advice

Makes him wonder if you’re a teacher too, or if you’re planning to become one

Secretly hopes you’re planning to become a teaching aid, because A) Work and soulmate at the same time? Yes please, and B) Kami knows he needs help with his rowdy class

If you are, he’s sure to be over the moon when he finds out

In his younger days, before teaching, he definitely went on missions and looked for you when he could

Like, yes, the mission is important, but finding the owner to the beautiful voice in his head is ALSO important

He’d usually finish the mission and stay an extra one or two days looking for you

It didn’t really cross his mind till later that you could be in the Leaf Village, since he figured he would have already found you if he did

Till he saw people older than him who grew up in the village only just finding out they were soulmates

He went on less out of village missions after that

Till eventually he decided to become a teacher

When I tell you this man melts when you talk

I mean he MELTS

He loves your voice so much

It helped him through his parents deaths

Helped him when he felt at his lowest points

You’ve done so much for him, and he’s so thankful, he’s fallen so deeply in love with you and you haven’t properly met yet!

He still wants to marry you on the spot though

It’s not a strange sight to see him browsing rings

Or thinking of how he’d propose

You’ll never let him know that he’s unconsciously spoken out loud about it a few times

Not until you meet, then you’ll mention it

And never let him live it down

“You know, I’ve heard you say you wanted to marry me on the spot, is that still on the menu or…?”

Yeah, when you first meet each other, that’s the first thing that pops out of your mouth

And it has his face burning red

He’s stumbling through his words, trying to convey that yes, he would like to marry you, but he needs your ring size first to go buy the ring

Trust me, this man has made enough trips to know what ring, he just needs the size

Then he’ll be down on one knee quicker that Shisui’s Shunshin no Jutsu

The fact that you seem okay with it also seals the deal for him

He’s so ecstatic when you meet each other

He feels like he could take on Madara one v one and win

He’s so unbelievably happy

Like he’s convincing you to take a photo so he can frame it on his desk and always remember happy

He’s so cute and blushy about it too

Rambles about never wanting to forget the best day of his life so far

“So far?” “Well, yeah, I imagine marrying you will take the spot soon”

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THIS BOY WILL MAKE YOUR HEART SWOON!!!

He’s so giddy about introducing you to his class too

Especially Naruto

[Mostly Naruto]

He’s showing you off and preening at the congratulations his class gives

And later on introducing you to Naruto personally

As much as he loves his class, he adores Naruto, and really hopes you both get along well

And you do

And it was the worst mistake of Iruka's life

[or best as both you and Naruto often correct him]

Honestly you probably convinced him to at least bring up the possibility of Adoption to Naruto

Which has Naruto howling in excitement and agreeableness

The boy looks up to him and they both have such a father/son dynamic, let me have this dammit

[Also, being able to get Naruto to be the ring bearer/flower boy? P r i c e l e s s]

He loves his family, so very much

And is so thankful that you convinced him to adopt Naruto

The man has been debating on if Naruto would want to be his son or not for ages, you can NOT tell me otherwise

You also can’t tell me Naruto wouldn’t jump at the chance to have Iruka as his father

Erza Scarlet

She’s so eager to find you

She’s spent so long perfecting the art of speaking to you despite the barrier

And she’s always so responsive to you

Always talking about the adventures she's had

What she wants to do with you when you find each other

And she’s always so happy when you do the same

She’s always been responsive with you, even though the beginning was a bit rough with communication

So when she suddenly goes radio silent, it scares you, it hurts when you come to the realization that she’s dead

She can hear you, even in her deep sleep on Tenrou Island

And it’s heartbreaking

Your cries

The endless broken sobs

“I’m so sorry I never got to meet you” No, I’m still here!

“Hey soulmate wha- oh, right, you’re..” I’m not dead! I promise I’ll be there soon!

To say the least, it’s a long 7 years

And you never did get over your soulmates tragic death

Though you did find out who she might have been

Hurts more knowing how she passed on though

She always spoke of her guild, Fairy Tail, and you had been saving up enough jewels to go there, in hopes of finding her

You know she must have been on Tenrou when it fell

And by deductive evidence, it must have been the S class wizard

Erza Scarlet, you’re soulmate

Dead, soulmate

You joined not long after the news had spread

Figured it might help with the ache

It didn’t

But you grew to love the guild anyways

They welcomed you as family

Because to them, you already were

Erza spoke so highly of you

Always talking about how amazing her soulmate was, and everything she wanted to do with them when they met

And it was because of that you were able to deduce that she is your soulmate

Was, your soulmate

It wasn’t an odd sight to see you crying when the Tenrou group was brought up

Or after a particular rough beating from the Twilight Ogre guild

They watched you slowly fall apart when you tried speaking to her

Helped put you back together when you remembered she wasn’t on the other side

And eventually you began healing

Never getting over her or forgetting her

You could never forget her

And broke down just thinking about trying to find another

You took to talking to her in hopes she could still hear you in the afterlife

Talk about your day

How the guild is doing

If there was a particularly rough beating from the other guild

It hurt, much worse than when you forgot that she wasn’t there

But you carried on, believing that if she could hear you, she’d want to know

She adores that about you, your will to carry on, even though it hurts

And she’s sure to leave nothing but corpses in Twilight Ogre for all the years of torment

When Blue Pegasus found remains of the Island, no one stopped you from boarding the ship

They knew you needed this, more than the rest of them

You needed to know if she was really gone or not

And when you caught sight of scarlet red hair

You wept

She’s here

She’s alive

She turned the moment she heard your voice weekly call for her

To say your first meeting was filled with tears would be an understatement

You were attached by the hip from that point on

Not that either of you were complaining

Erza was especially ecstatic to have you by her side finally

After all, she had 7 years to make up for

And you can show her where Twilight Ogre is

The Master and Mira didn’t question why she was especially rough with a select few members

I Hope you enjoyed reading this set of Soulmate AU HC’s! If you would like to see any specific characters, don’t be afraid to leave a comment or submit an ask! If it’s a character I’m not familiar with, I’ll do my best to learn about them!!

P.S. I nearly killed Reader-chan off in Erza’s (:

[peralta-guaranteed]

Family day playing hooky hc

(this turned into another fic. Apparently I don't make the rules anymore)

Read on AO3

It's the beginning of a long summer. Both kids are home - well, not really, since Amy has signed them up for several activities all around the city. Today is arts & crafts time at the children's library wing, Jake notes as he checks their shared calendar before the morning meeting. But they are home, insofar as Mac's school is closed for the summer holidays, and so's Maya's kindergarten. They drop them off at their daily activity in the morning, and the rest of the time they're at his mom's, who's been happily overfeeding them and entertaining them as the proud grandma she is. Or they drop them off at Gramma Peralta’s first, and she drives them to whatever place they were signed up at. It's a pretty good routine, and he's proud of Amy having found so many things for them to do that seem right up their alley, judging from their excited stories during dinner and the ever growing collection of handmade gifts on their living room shelves.

But they're home for the summer, and Jake and Amy have to sit at the sweltering precinct, slogging through paperwork and a dull week of almost no new cases. It's really not fair, Jake thinks. He remembers his summer days with Gina, when Nana would hand them both a couple of dollars and tell them not to be home until sunset at least. They can’t do that, obviously - Mac and Maya are still too young, and Brooklyn has definitely not gotten any safer since his early teens, when it was already questionably sketchy for him and Gina to stalk around the neighbourhoods and buy cheap ice cream and soda at random bodegas. He also remembers those few rare days when his mom would get a day off that did not need to be spent on catching up on housework, or when his dad would finally show up for more than one day and they could plan a little trip (which would actually take place at least 50% of the time). He remembers the aquarium and the zoo and the natural history museum and Central Park and Coney Island.

And they could absolutely do that, he realises, so the decision is pretty much made before he’s even set his bag down at his desk. But he’s patient enough to wait through the morning meeting - blessedly short, because nothing new has come up anyway, and they’re all told to finish up the paperwork and start on re-organising the evidence room. Jake supposes it’s a generally good thing that crime seems to slow down in the summer heat a little, but that’s not really why he’s so happy right now hearing the captain tell them to ‘find something to do anywhere’. He certainly knows what he wants to do already.

Amy’s morning meeting must’ve been just as short, because she’s already at her desk when he jumps down the last steps of the stairwell to her floor. Her uniformed officers mostly give him a quick nod or smile as he passes - it’s not a rare thing to see Detective Peralta come by to visit his wife outside of break times.

“Good morning, Lieutenant.” He smiles at her, and she rolls her eyes with fondness. The title is still pretty new, and he loves to remind her of it any chance he gets.

“Hey babe. We’re not due for lunch for another 4 hours, you know that, right?”

“Yeah there’s no way I’m waiting that long.” He’s still smiling wide, and when she looks up from whatever paper she’s been filling out, she instantly recognises that mischievous glint in his eye.

“What are you planning?”

“Let’s bail the kids out of the library and go somewhere fun. Coney Island? It’s all open since last saturday I think.”

“We have to work, Jake.” Amy levels him with one of those ‘please be a grown-up’ looks, but she knows they seldom get results.

“Do we, Ames? Do we really? Because Holt has us organising the evidence room. I have literally zero open cases on my desk. And how far ahead are you with all your paperwork and organisation?”

She looks sheepishly at the very small stack of papers on her desk.

“About two weeks, I’d say.”

“And you’re saying we can’t take one day off? Just one day of family time? Getting cotton candy and taking Mac on an actual roller coaster now that he’s tall enough and winning a new teddy for Maya because you’re an ace at the fake shooting range?” He wiggles his eyebrows for emphasis, and Amy stifles a snicker. It’s too bad her husband knows exactly how to win her over for most of his childish endeavours.

“I guess it wouldn’t be so bad to take some personal time right now. We’d still have to convince Holt-”

“On it.” Jake slaps her desk in excitement as he gets up, ready to race upstairs and sweet-talk Holt into giving them the day off (or rather, annoy him into it). Only Amy Santiago would request permission from her boss to play hooky, of course, but there’s no way he’s not going to indulge her.

It’s not even fifteen minutes later that he’s back downstairs, his bag already on his shoulder, almost pulling her out of her chair.

“Got the go-ahead, so let’s go!”

“Give me five minutes at least to brief Gary, and change out of my uniform before I leave.”

He sighs and thrums his fingers across his thigh, but obediently watches her talk to her ‘own Amy’, eagerly taking notes about the few things they actually have to remember to do. He refrains from pushing her forwards by the shoulders as she heads to the locker room, deciding to pack up her purse instead (he knows the layout perfectly by now - the calendar and pen goes next to the baby wipes, and the glasses case has to be by the little box of healthy, kid-friendly snacks). But the moment she returns in one of her signature flowery blouses, he grabs her hand and drags her out of the precinct so fast she can barely protest.

-+-

The drive to the library is equally as quick. Amy only manages to slow him down once they step into the actual building, reminding him of the library rules of being quiet and calm.

“Lieutenant Santiago!” The librarian behind the desk greets her - she’s well-known around these parts, obviously. “Back so early? Isn’t your mother-in-law picking up the kids later?”

He should probably call her to tell her about the change of plans, Jake thinks as Amy explains and asks if it’s possible to get Mac and Maya packed up and ready to leave already.

It’s absolutely possible, of course, and Maya proudly shows them the pipe cleaner and yarn figurine she’d just finished making as the kids librarian leads them out to the main floor. Mac, a few feet behind her, seems wary as he hugs them hello.

“Did something happen?” He asks into the hug, quietly, and Jake remembers with a twinge in his heart that the last time someone picked him up unexpectedly early from football practice, it was aunt Rosa, taking him and Maya to the precinct until Amy brought Jake back from hospital after getting knifed by a perp.

“No, buddy, this is a good surprise.” He hugs him back extra tight, ruffling his hair for good measure, and silently cursing his line of work being so shit sometimes.

Mac smiles back at him, luckily, but there is still a bit of hesitation in his eyes, and Jake’s excitement about his own idea of playing hooky falters for the first time. Maybe they should’ve just let the kids enjoy their crafts and grandma-time, and planned a proper day out for the weekend-

“Grandpa Holt gave us today off.” Amy explains as she steps up to the two of them with Maya by her side, and that title still sounds a little weird even years later. “So we thought we could all go out for a fun day at Coney Island!”

The squeal Maya lets out certainly changes Mac’s smile for the better, even as it is quickly shushed down (they’re still in the library after all!), and they’re soon dragged outside to the car by their kids the same way Jake had dragged Amy out of the precinct.

“C’n we get hotdogs?” Maya asks as she clicks her seatbelt closed and Amy smiles at her through the rearview mirror.

“We sure can!”

“Can we go on all the rides?” Mac joins in, and Jake is glad to see there’s absolutely no hesitation on his face anymore.

“All the ones you’re old enough for, sure.”

The questions and cheers and excited chatter keep up during the whole drive, even as Amy calls Karen and barely gets a word in, between the happy interruptions shouted from the backseat, and it takes a lot more to actually keep them together as they step on the boardwalk, Maya already running left to some game parlour while Mac races on ahead to the first ride he sees.

-+-

The rest of the day does not slow down in their whirlwind. Mac decides after three roller coasters that maybe he’s had enough (and Jake is glad they didn’t go through the food stalls before it), but he spins Maya around in the teacups ride like only an older brother could. The ice cream after is well deserved, seeing how sweaty and exhausted they are already, and gives them more than enough energy to hit literally every game they can see. Jake can watch Amy calculating the vast amount of money they’re spending in tokens, but she’s also the first one in line once they reach the toy-shooting range, winning Maya a unicorn plushie and Mac a knock-off superb-man figurine (his wife is a goddamn sharpshooter and he’d be lying if that wasn’t a turn-on). The third shot earns him a wacky pair of sunglasses that make both Amy and Maya giggle in that way he loves the most, and he refuses to take them off for any of the silly pictures they take in front of cutouts, wall art and weird statues.

He’s pushed them up into his hair by the time they get hotdogs (3 for him, 2 for Mac, one each for Amy and Maya), because the sun is already starting to set and he can barely see. Maya begins to shiver as they stroll down the quieter parts of the boardwalk, so he buys her one of those kitschy animal-hoodies all the stalls are touting (they know their clientele too well), and of course Mac immediately needs one too, so now there’s a tiny tiger and a slightly larger dragon running in front of them with cotton candy sticking all over their hands and faces.

Amy slides her arm around his waist as they slow their steps a little to let the kids go ahead, and he lays his across her shoulder as she leans into him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun playing hooky.” She mumbles, and Jake laughs for a second.

“Amy Santiago, are you telling me you’ve played hooky before? I am shocked. Here I thought I’d married an upstanding girl.”

He gets a soft punch to his side for that before she leans back and whispers.

“Actually, you’ve made me play hooky before, remember? But we didn’t exactly go to an ‘amusement park’…”

“And yet you’re saying this has been more fun. I see where I stand.” He pouts before grinning again, and leans down for a soft kiss. (He definitely remembers the last time they played hooky now.)

“Sorry, babe.” Amy smiles as she looks at Mac and Maya again, currently busy chasing each other and dueling with the sticks left over from their cotton candy. “But this has been such a great day.”

“Yeah, it’s gonna make for one hell of a memory, I hope.” He follows her eyes forward, thinking about that short moment with Mac at the library earlier today. Amy hadn’t heard it, he’s sure, but the look on her face as she pulls him to look at her with a hand on his cheek tells him she knows his thoughts well enough.

“Hey. No sad thinking allowed on such a fun day, okay? We had a great time today and we’re gonna have so many more great days in the future.” She’s still smiling, swiping her thumb across his bottom lip, where he’s sure some cotton candy is still left clinging. “We could take them to the zoo next week.”

“Santiago!” He gasps again. “Are you insinuating-”

“On the weekend.” She leans up to kiss away the last bit of sugar on his mouth. “Like the upstanding girl you married would do, obviously.”

He laughs into the kiss even as he pulls her closer, and it’s only Mac and Maya, running back to them with news of another stand they’ve discovered selling funnel cakes, that makes them break apart again.

-+-

Later, after Jake’s carried a sleepy Maya up to their apartment, and she and Mac have barely had enough energy left in them to brush their teeth and wash their faces free from all the grime and sugar that’s covering it, he falls down on the couch as Amy checks on them one more time to see both fast asleep before the lights are even out.

“Do you feel as tired as the kids?” She says in her deep, sing-song voice that sends goosebumps up his spine, just as much as her hand raking through his hair does as she stands behind the couch.

“Well, it’s been a pretty long day. But I do have more sugar in my system to keep me running, I guess.” He tries to sound nonchalant, but then she leans down to nip on his ear and ‘nonchalance’ is the last thing he’s thinking of.

“Then how about we save time between now and bed by showering together?” She whispers, and he lets his head drop back to actually look at her.

“We have never saved time in the shower together, babe.”

She only smiles at him while humming an M-hm before heading for the bathroom, and he definitely doesn’t waste any time following her.

[laughingpinecone]

Trick or Treat 2020 letter!

I am laughingpineapple on AO3  

Hello dear author! I hope you’ll have fun with our match. Feel free to draw from general or fandom-specific likes, past letters, and/or follow your heart.

All requests are art or fic - for art, the stuff I like is the kind that depicts the characters doing something. I’ll always be happier with a very simple drawing of two characters walking together or sharing a cup of coffee than with an ambitious composition that looks like an Avengers poster. I also enjoy seeing them wear different clothes, getting a feel of what their fashion sense is like beyond their canon outfit(s).

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic, hurt/comfort or just comfort from the ample canon hurt, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, canon-adjacent tropey plots, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploration of secondary bits of canon, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played straight, sensory details, sickfic, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships), emphasis on inhuman traits of characters who were human once and have sort of shed it all behind

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, nerdy canon references, unrequested characters popping up.

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay!), canon retellings, consent issues

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Hurdy

I love the game’s world and all the little stories and legends that fill it. Great atmosphere, great lore, so if you feel like getting a little worldbuildy and indulging in the scenery and its story, please do! A focus on the sense of camaraderie in a caravan would also be great (like people could do on Gamecube.....). Hurdy’s a bit of an odd duck for that theme, but maybe he hitched a ride at some point? With whom? Amidatty or De Nam maybe, among the nominated characters? I love the whole cast so anyone goes. Do they travel together enough for them to cotton onto the weirdness of the whole Gurdy situation? Got any run-in with Lady Mio? Or what’s his status after the miasma is lifted, can he go back to Tipa, can he/they begin to heal? What does healing even look like for him and Gurdy?

Ghost Trick: Cabanela

You know.. him. Dazzlingly OTT, untiring, rock-solid self-esteem, loyal to a fault, following a rhythm of his own, flawless intuition until it fails and it all burns down... him. I just want to see more of him doing stuff! The way he’s chill and open toward new people (like Sissel and Missile in ch15) makes him perfect to throw at most other characters and see how they react to the sparkles... I’d love some focus on how ridiculous his aesthetic is, half Saturday Night Fever half hardboiled detective half bubbly preteen (for a total of 150%) and yet he makes it work. Or how ruthless he can be, possibly for the sake of the people he cares for. The quote “The intimacy of big parties”. Him and Alma in the new timeline bonding over knowing (once Jowd has spilled the beans) but not remembering that terrible timeline. Some tropey scenario on the job. Snark-offs with Pigeon Man, by which I mean PM snarks and it bounces off him like water off a spotless white goose’s back. Dreaming Sissel but he’s strange... and wrong?

Ship-wise it’s only Cabanela/Jowd whenever it’s not infidelity, Cabanela/Alma in what-ifs and Cabanela/Alma/Jowd for me (and Lynne/Memry and Yomiel/fianSissel on the side). There are a bunch of shippy prompts in all my past letters - I would however reiterate here that Jowd. is. the worst tease. always.

Conversely, Cabanela/Lynne and Cabanela/Yomiel are NOTPs especially from Cabanela’s side. So while I appreciate the thick tension of a good Yomiel VS Cabanela confrontation like everyone and their cat, and also really appreciate a roughed-up Cabanela, and I do love Yomiel in his own right... I don’t want Cabanela being into it. Adrenaline junkie he may be but this hurts and his coat’s a mess and there’s no perfect winning scenario so he hates every second of it. (JOWD being into it is another matter altogether and he should probably mind his own business)

Kentucky Route Zero: Carrington, Cate

Act after act, intermission after intermission, I somehow didn’t see the arts rising to such a dominant theme in KRZ and it’s stuck with me since the ending finally hit. It’s great and moving. So! Who better than good ol’ antler man to linger in those feels! Carrington’s playwright adventures or Carrington&anyone you fancy, either way I’d listen to him ramble for a week and I would like to know more about his big dramatic plans. Or maybe him helping someone, more or less accidentally, by offering his unique takes? Overriding my “no canon retellings” DNW for a hot second, did he ever figure out what was going down in the Death of the Hired Man (or Nap of the Hired Man as the case may be) interlude?

For Cate, I’m mostly interested in two things: life on the river and mushrooms. Maybe both! The Echo river ecosystem is intensely fascinating to me as opposed to life on the surface and life on the Zero, and yet all these environments are permeable. So what’s a moment in her daily life that encapsulates the river? Someone they picked up on the Mammoth, a strange island that popped up at some point? Cate&Will bonding extremely welcome, I’m love Will. And then there’s the mushroom hunting. I don’t know much about mushrooms, but I do know that they’re cool. Cate seems to agree, so if you’ve got a story or pic in you about her and them mushrooms, I’d love to see it.

Pyre: Volfred Sandalwood

This is a Volfred solo, Volfred&literally anyone or Volfred/Tariq, /Oralech or /Tariq/Oralech request. If &Manley or &Brighton, I am not interested in more lenient takes on their characters than canon’s. fwiw I also enjoy Jodi/Celeste and Bertrude/Pamitha a lot!

I feel deeply for all of Pyre’s main themes - literacy, degrees of freedom, the fragile time that is the end of a historical cycle, nobodies rising up to the occasion, building a better society, and of course found family, “distance cannot separate our spirits” and all that jazz, and Volfred is squarely rooted at the center of all of them. Just please tell me things about my fave. His relationship to the Scribes (as a historian, a some kind of vision, via *ae or once he’s a star himself)? A ‘forced vacay’ Downside ending where he looks at the Union from afar and keeps living in this strange transformational place? Life in a cramped Blackwagon that was meant for like 5 people tops and is currently eight Nightwings, a herald and an orb? Since he picked him for the job to begin with, does he respect and cherish Hedwyn as he dang well should? What does it feel like to try and Read a herald? Was he ever in danger, in the Commonwealth or in the Downside? Does he puff up as prime minister because he’s nervous, and who can see past his hyper-professionalism and lend a hand? Please roast him big time about the votes he assigns to the various Nightwings in his planner? What’s his attitude toward the flame’s purification (what with being a tree but mostly like, as a general concept. He did nothing wrong!) (well he definitely said some things wrong and sometimes oftentimes the ego jumps out, but his intentions did nothing wrong)? When did his calculating approach fail him? Something with Pamitha along the lines of that edit that goes “Can we talk, one ten to another?"/"I am an eleven, my girl, but continue."? btw that ‘emphatically yes xeno’ from my general likes is only applicable here I guess so: emphatically yes xeno to both shippy interactions at all ratings and to gen explorations of what a Sap is like...

Shenmue: Qiu Hsu, Xianzi Bei

Cormorants... kung fu... cormorant kung fu. They turned out to be my faves in a very likeable cast and I’d love to see either or both of them slice-of-life-ing it up in Niaowu, or anywhere up or down the river. The rest of the cast is welcome to join! Did Ren end up at Liu He Hall for whatever reason, or did Shenhua chat up a cormorant, as she does? Id love to see a spookier mood too! Ghost story time in Liu Jiao shrine maybe?

The Silver Case: Catherine, Kodai Sumio, Kuroyanagi Shinko, Kusabi Tetsugorou, Macalister Edo, Morishima Tokio

I‘m all for the surrealism, big things being introduced and never picked up again, Rashomon’ing it up with six explanations for the same thing where no single one can be true, people dying and then popping up again like nbd...  maybe the thing I like the most is characters transcending their humanity and looming over the dystopian world like ominous avatars. Correctness’ first ending had me swooning, that kind of mood is unparalleled. I have played TSC, FSR and 25W so far and have vague memories of K7. I’m aware of the “everything’s connected” readings but that’s not my main interest in these games. Mainly I see Lospass as a real island but also a metaphysical  place of transformation first and foremost, where strange things happen that don’t make sense elsewhere, but I’m good with anything that works for your story! There are a few & prompts for these fine folks in my Press Start letter [here].

For Catherine, I’d love to see something along the lines of her YAMI appearance, on Lospass on her own or hanging out with another character of your choice (or Tokio again). Sumio leaves me at a loss for words... if you’ve played 25W, maybe an expansion of his [intense ethereal whooshing] moment? He’s a gust away from vanishing from existence altogether... &Sakura and/or &/Tetsu if you want. Or his time in prison or a return to Lospass or whatever’s going on with that one, really. For Shinko I’m itching for different team-ups! Throw her at anyone you like and see what happens! FSR-era Tetsu could be cool, or off-the-grid Tetsu, or Tetsu&anyone... as for Edo, I’d be curious to see his pov on anyone and anything! WAS the Flower Sun and Rain the friends we met along the way? And Tokio... oh Tokio. Something about older Tokio and his gaggle of tulpas (Slash and whatshisface from YUKI who looks suspiciously like YAMI Tokio himself?)? Any...thing...about any part of his life from Lifecut onwards? Any portentous encounters?

[spn-meanttobe]

Spn Meant To Be Masterlist -2011

RPS

Title: Once Upon a Breakup Author: anyothergirl415 Artist: favoritedarknes Pairing: Jared/Jensen, past Jensen/OMC Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 26K Warnings: AU, minor violence, extreme schmoop, background character deaths, an abudance of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter references. Prompt: Getting Rid of Bradley Lucy Savage is finally getting rid of Bradley—and his hideous green recliner. Bradley is out of her life for good. Or so she thinks. Turns out Officer Zack Warren wants to arrest the very same Bradley for embezzlement and figures the lovely Lucy can lead him straight to his target. Good thing there's a cop around. Because someone shoots at Lucy and then blows up her car. Zack insists she needs twenty-four-hour protection. What does he think her three dogs and attack cat are for? Still, he insists on moving right in to Lucy's house. Now there's danger lurking outside and in her own kitchen, bathroom—and bedroom. Or maybe Zack is just what Lucy needs.… Summary: Jensen would consider his life pretty magical, buried in fantasy and cookie dough, and free of the ex that was really no good for him. Everything was on the right track, which was probably why he suddenly had a Detective in his shop, guns waving in his face, and a whole mess of trouble he didn’t sign up for. Bloody Hell. Link to fic: on Ao3 Title: That a Broken Bone in Your Pocket, Or You Just Happy to See Me? Author: dugindeep Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 26.5K Warnings: language, sex Prompt: Here I Am: Born into a real-estate dynasty, Brandt Wainwright chose football over the family business, and now he's a Super Bowl MVP. That streak of good fortune runs out the day Brandt crashes his SUV into a tree. During the long recuperation, the fun-loving quarterback becomes cranky and sullen—until private nurse Ciara Dennison shows up for duty. Ciara has zero interest in sports, or in tall, blond jocks with overblown egos. She's dated a man in the public eye before, and she's not repeating that mistake. Somehow Brandt keeps breaking down all her defenses, seeing through her facade to the sexy free spirit underneath. But once his recovery is complete, will he return to the celebrity life he knew—or choose the woman who can fulfill his dreams? Summary: Jensen Ackles is a physical therapist who couldn't give less of a crap when he's assigned to help Chicago's hottest basketball player recover from a wrecked knee. As an NBA All Star, Jared Padalecki's crass and smug as all hell, but he's also persistent and committed to this thing they've got going on. Link to fic: on LiveJournal Title: Love Burns Author: dante_s_hell Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 26K Warnings: minor character death Prompt: Wild Fire. Battling a fire at a friend's house turns into a nightmare when firefighter Shelby Fox becomes the only witness to a murder. Unfortunately, a bad fall at the killer's hands leaves Shelby with traumatic amnesia and plunges her life into danger. Assigning himself as Shelby's personal protector is Detective Clay Jessup, her best friend and someone she always counted on. But as they work to find the murderer, a fierce desire begins to replace the simple friendship they once saw in each other's eyes.After all these years, could there finally be something more between them, or are they just flirting with danger? Summary: Jensen is a firefighter with a close knit group of friends. One night, he's called to fight a fire at a friend's house and he witnesses a murder. Only he doesn't remember. His best friend, Detective Jared Padalecki, decides Jensen needs his protection. Over the course of the investigation, Jared and Jensen realize their feelings for each other have changed. They are growing closer, but will a murderer intent on killing Jensen halt their burgeoning relationship in its tracks? Link to fic: on Ao3 Title: Some Things Stay the Same Author: peggy_lane Pairing: Jared/Jensen, background Misha/Sebastian Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 24K Warnings: none Prompt: Ramona and the Renegade Deputy Joe Lone Wolf never would've guessed that helping someone at the side of the road in a thunderstorm would throw his carefully controlled world into a tailspin. But that's exactly what happens when he realizes the sexy "stranger" is his childhood best friend, Ramona. He's spent years convincing himself that she deserves more than a former rebel with a scarred past. But all it takes is one stormy night in a deserted cabin with Ramona to make the fierce lawman change his mind. Falling for Joe is a risk veterinarian Ramona Santiago knows she shouldn't take. Everyone she's trusted has let her down and left her alone…except him. Can she possibly hope that she and Joe were always meant to be more than friends? Summary: It just feels like more bad luck when Jared's car breaks down in the middle of a thunderstorm. But when the Good Samaritan who brings him in from the rain turns out to be Jensen, his best friend from childhood, things start to look up. For Jensen, seeing Jared again after so many years could be the best chance he's had yet to get everything he's ever wanted. Link to fic: on LiveJournal Title: One Small Step Author: sandymg Artist: apieceofcake Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 38K Warnings: Jared/Jensen, Jensen/Tom, Jensen/OMC Prompt: For Business … Or Marriage: She'd always been in love with her boss. Secretly. And it had almost killed Abby Morrison each time magnificent multimillionaire Cade Stone began dating another woman. And now ... he wanted her to plan his wedding! Abby knew Cade was making a mistake -- marrying for business reasons a woman equally uninterested in love. For too long she'd been the mousy little secretary. But now she refused to keep quiet. So she had one month to plan Cade's wedding? That gave her one month to change his mind. Summary: Jared has had a secret crush for months. But it’s not like publishing genius and gay activist Jensen Ackles is going to notice the tall, weird guy pushing the mail cart. So when Jared’s best friend and Jensen’s assistant, Sandy, tells him that Jensen is getting married in one month to a fellow activist -- something about being the first gay couple to get married in the state -- Jared knows some things just aren't meant to be. And now Sandy is insisting that Jared help her plan the wedding. She thinks it’s a good idea. Jared thinks she’s nuts. Because the only thing this could lead to is heartbreak. Right? Link to fic: on Ao3 Link to art: on LiveJournal Title: Home Is Where the Hurt Is Author: tebtosca Artist: fiercelynormal Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 15K Warnings: Total schmoop Prompt: My Favorite Cowboy  Rugged, rough and rowdy, Jarred Riddell is everything a cowboy should be. That's the problem. 'Cause Jarred has set his sights on a pretty lil' socialite who has no use for his unrefined ways. Luckily, he has a plan: get the local librarian to whip him into charm-school shape and that city gal will fall right into his gentlemanly arms. But co-conspirator Serena Higgens has more on her mind than proper manners. She's pined for years after the sweet, hardworking rancher who lacks a bit of polish. To earn some much-needed cash, she'll put her feelings aside and give Jarred a crash course in respectability. Besides, throwing out mud-caked boots and correcting double negatives should help Serena get over her crush. It's the perfect situation…until Jarred adds kissing to the lesson plan! Summary: Librarian Jensen Ackles has been secretly in love with cattle rancher Jared Padalecki since high school, but Jared's been pining after the Big Oil socialite that got away. When said socialite returns to their small town newly single, Jared decides to finally woo her by having Jensen teach him how to be a proper gentleman. Jensen never could say no to those stupid dimples. Link to fic: on Ao3 Link to art: on LiveJournal Title: Deception Bay Author: zubeneschamali Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 15K Warnings: none listed Prompt: A Caribbean island...a honeymoon suite...sexy lingerie. Emily Wright has everything for the perfect honeymoon—except a husband! Although her nuptials are off, Emily takes her honeymoon, hoping for peace and quiet. Instead, chaos erupts when a stranger crashes into her suite and tackles her to the ground, protecting her from flying bullets. His chiseled physique sets off a wild desire in Emily.Delta Force Commando Tyler Matheson wasn't planning on a gorgeous civilian to come between him and the assailant he's chasing. Now he needs her help even though it means jeopardizing her life. Neither of them counts on the very real danger their sizzling chemistry provokes....Summary: While trying to enjoy his honeymoon-turned-solo-vacation, Jensen's party for one is literally crashed by a handsome, mysterious stranger who saves his life. Before he knows it, he's thrown into a world of danger…and passion like he's never dreamed. Link to fic: on LiveJournal Title: How a Writer Survives His Sister’s Wedding Author: matalinolukaret Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 18.5K Warnings: None Prompt: The Rogue Wedding GuestHannah couldn't wait to get back home for her sister's wedding. But it's hardly a holiday—to research a new TV show, her boss has decided to come with her! Hannah doesn't want the roguish Bradley Knight with her as her wedding date! How can she act professional with karaoke as the wedding entertainment? She's harbored a secret crush on Bradley since she started her job—so spending the weekend with him is a little too close for comfort. Especially when she finds out he's booked the penthouse suite for them both to share.Summary: Jared’s ready to go back home to celebrate his sister’s wedding. But that all changes when his crush/somewhat boss joins him on the trip to Texas. It’s going to be an interesting week, that’s for sure. Link to fic: on LiveJournal Title: Making Opportunities Author: raeschae Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: R Word Count: 21K Warnings: None listed Prompt: The Bikini Car Wash: After Andrea Wolkowicz abandons corporate life to help care for her sister, she quickly wears out the want ads in their rust-belt hometown. Time to be her own boss. Every mogul knows the best idea is an old idea with a new twist. So Andi proudly revives her father's business: an old-fashioned car wash…staffed entirely by bikini-clad women. That ought to get traffic—and blood—flowing on Grosvenor Street! This gutsy gimmick soon has the whole town in a lather, and not necessarily in a good way. Scandalized citizens are howling, neighboring businesses are worried. But straitlaced grocery-store owner Pete Guthrie is definitely intrigued. He knows it's hard to run a small business in a big-box world. To him, Andi's brains and bravery are as alluring as the bikini she calls business attire. Summary: LA event planner Jared doesn't take many trips back to his small, Midwestern hometown these days, but when his first crush, Jensen, is in need of his services, Jared can't resist the urge to drop everything and drive half way across the country. Now he has one week to raise thousands of dollars, save a youth center, and show Jensen exactly what he missed out on all those years ago. Link to fic: on LiveJournal Title: Shadows of the Past Author: myficjournal and saklani2 Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 26K Warnings: violence, some hurt!Jared, almost undoubtedly some mistakes in regards to police procedure Prompt: Rogue Stallion: "I don't want kindness—or your kind of woman."Sterling McCallum gave the plain, hard warning to Jessica Larson. The brooding rogue cop had a stone in place of a heart and a past as mysterious as the case that had brought them together. But this time Jessica couldn't back off. Something compelled her to stand her ground and brave the emotions this man had long aroused. Suddenly, their darkest secrets, their deepest desires, shimmered to the surface…about to explode.Summary: Detective Jensen Ackles was betrayed by his former partner and lover. Ever since, he has driven away all his partners and been alone. But new partner, Jared Padalecki, and the murder of a man tied to his past will force him to change everything. Link to fic: on Ao3 Title: I see great things in baseball Author: withdiamonds Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: R Word Count: 8K Warnings: None Prompt: In Bed with the BossFor three years, Kalera has been a model secretary to Duncan Royal, with only one hiccup in their otherwise perfect relationship: a one-night stand that should never have happened, and which both have tried to forget. Or so Kalera thought.  But Duncan is haunted by their one night of unbelievable passion, and secretly longs for their relationship to develop after office hours. As a rule, he can have any woman he wants—so he's furious when Kalera announces her engagement to another man! Whatever it takes, Duncan intends to entice Kalera into his bed once more—and this time it will be forever.Summary: For the five years that Jared Padalecki has owned the Albuquerque Isotopes, Jensen Ackles has been his perfect assistant. Two years ago, they had a one-night stand. It was awesome, but they decided business and pleasure really didn't mix and agreed to forget it ever happened. Jared has no clue that he harbors real feelings for Jensen. He merely thinks that he thinks Jensen is hot, but when Jensen announces his intention to marry another man, Jared realizes he's actually in love with Jensen. Now he has to figure out how to convince Jensen that he feels the same. Link to fic: on Ao3 Title: The Long Way Home Author: jesseofthenorth Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: R (language) PG-13 (Action) Word Count: 11k Warnings: none Prompt: Texas is a long way from Oregon, but Amanda Allen isn't planning to make her stay in Brody's Crossing permanent. All she wants is to meet the brothers she only recently discovered she had and head back out—mission accomplished. But what to do about Leo Casale? The tempting Texan is doing his level best to make her feel right at home. Leo is completely captivated by the stranger with secret! written all over her. He wants to help her, but Amanda refuses to confide in him. Does she have to be so stubborn and independent? Things are happening way too fast. Suddenly, Amanda has a whole new family to get to know, including a certain irresistible charmer who's making her believe that she belongs here too! Summary: That, mostly. Except more gay. And told from Jared's point of view. Link to fic: on LiveJournal Title: It's so easy loving you Author: the_milky_way Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: R Word Count: 15K Warnings: None Prompt: Her Best Friend's WeddingWhen did Sadie Beecham get those curves? She'd always been the geek next door, his baby sister Meg's brainy best friend. Smart, sure. But hot? He never would have imagined it…before. Now, Trey Kincaid's imagining all sorts of things. And none of them has to do with Sadie's gifted mind. A mind, he discovers, she's clearly lost. Because she thinks she's in love with Meg's fiancé. And that's an obsession he's determined to put an end to—one way or the other.Summary: Jensen looks up then and stares. Open mouthed and all that. He must look quite idiotic, sitting on the stairs with a kitten hanging from his little finger, mouth open and eyes wide. Because, holy hell, is that really Jared Padalecki standing there? Link to fic: on LiveJournal Title: The Tampa Connection Author: tcs1121 Pairing: Jared/Jensen, past Jared/JDM Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 17K Warnings: Harlequin Romance. (Please read in the spirit it was written.) GuySex. Some Hurt/Comfort eventually. Prompt: Summary: On paper, Jared Padalecki Morgan had a lifestyle most people would envy. Only he knows what a sham his marriage really was. So when his politician husband is killed in a hit and run accident, he moves to Florida and takes a job as a personal assistant to Jensen Ackles, a powerful CEO with an intimidating reputation. Jared's intelligence and social grace prove invaluable to Jensen, and on a business trip to South Carolina's lush Low Country, their business relationship takes a sensual detour. But when threatening letters arrive at Jensen's office, Jared realizes that his husband's death was no accident—and that he will meet a similar fate unless they can uncover the scandalous truth together... Link to fic: on LiveJournal Title: Let the sun rain down on me Author: trinipedia Artist: theblackrose16 Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: R Word Count: 15K Warnings: language Prompt: The Angel and the OutlawHe wants her as his bride, but the law wants him! No one asks the dark, brooding stranger about his past. People gossip, but daren't question. He and his young daughter live alone--and that's the way Stuart Taylor wants...needs it to stay. When the spirited new schoolteacher, Rachel Houston, is touched by Stuart's shy little girl, who's never uttered a word, everything starts to change. Stuart's surly manner doesn't worry Rachel--she can see the vulnerability hidden in the depths of his blue eyes. She's convinced there's more to the rugged, handsome stranger's story. But when the truth comes out, has Rachel the courage to stand by her man?Summary: Jensen Ackles is a moody petty-thief who marries his parole officer's nephew, believing that he can use the honeymoon to escape to Canada. Jared Padalecki is the sweetest guy you can ever hope to meet. He truly believes that Niagara Falls will change Jensen for the better and won't let anything stop the honeymoon...not even his own death. The story of a marriage that truly is forever, based on the movie "Camille".Link to fic: on Ao3 (art embedded in fic) Title: Quite So, Sir and Other Code Words Author: forelyse Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: PG-13 Word Count: 9K Warnings: None Prompt: What's a Housekeeper to Do?Being housekeeper to crime writer Cameron Travers should be a pretty simple, safe job—just what Lally Douglas wants. Once burned, forever shy Lally wants to blend into the background. Cameron Travers is attractive, intelligent, fun and very charming! Soon Lally wants to wear all colors of the rainbow and embrace life. Most of all she wants Cameron to notice her, in that way.Summary: Being housekeeper to novelist Jensen Ackles should be a simple, safe job—just what Jared needs. Once burned, Jared wants to lead a pleasant but otherwise generic life. Jensen is attractive, intelligent, thoughtful and very charming! Soon Jared wants to wear all colors of the rainbow just to get Jensen to notice him, especially in that way. Link to fic: on LiveJournal Title: ho'ololi (transform) Author: topaz119 Pairing: Jared/Jensen Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 8K Warnings: None Prompt: #31 Pleasure in HawaiiGene Malloy is finally ready to get on with his life. And he just may have found the perfect woman to share it with him. From the moment Gene rescues Sloane Hepburn from a rogue wave on the beach, she makes his most passionate fantasies come true. With her sultry beauty and lively spirit, Sloane is turning the divorced Maui B and B owner's life upside down—and he's loving every minute of it….Relocating to Hawaii is a big step for the overextended career woman. But with hunky, seductive Gene Malloy romancing her under a tropical island sky, how can a woman keep from falling? Now he just has to make her see that their love is here to stay. And that the pleasure is just beginning…Summary: They were good together, in bed and out, but Jensen didn’t know if that was only because they really weren’t together all that often. Link to fic: on Ao3 Supernatural Title: Cover Art Artist: gold_bluepoint Pairing: Sam/Dean Rating: PG-13 Word Count: N/A Warnings: None Prompt: "Responding to a 911 call, Whitehorse Deputy Halley Robinson is stunned to find herself face-to-face with her teenage crush, Colton Chisholm. The schoolboy who had teased her is now a strong and sexy man—and he's on a mission to solve a case! But if he plans on unmasking a killer, he's going to need her help. Colton can no longer run from the truth…someone in his small town has gotten away with murder. Now it's up to him to bring the killer to justice—with the help of local authorities, which, to his surprise, include Halley. The girl who had once idolized him is now a woman he must fight to resist. But as they work on the case, the attraction between them only grows stronger. Their rocky past may lead to a future together…unless the killer parts them forever." Summary: Interning at a local police department while at Stanford, Sam is stunned to find himself face-to-face with his older brother, Dean. The overbearing sibling who had teased Sam is now a strong and sexy man - and he's on a mission to solve a case! But if Dean plans on hunting the killer, he's going to need Sam's help. Dean Winchester can no longer run from the truth... a violent creature is taking victims in the San Fransisco Bay Area. Now it's up to him to find the killer - with the unwitting help of local authorities, which, to his surprise, include Sam. The boy who had once idolized him is now a young man he must fight to resist. But as they work on the case, the attraction between them only grows stronger. Their rocky past may lead to a future together... unless the killer parts them forever. Link to art: on LiveJournal (art is no longer visible)

[greentrickster]

@someoddmix   #MAKING THE TENANTS CRY LMAO #I LOVE THE SKULL FAMILY SO MUCH

Guzma and Team Skull are the entire reason I knew anything about Sun and Moon prior to this AU, because they are precious and made to be loved. I end the prior sentence with a period instead of an exclamation mark because this is a simple statement of fact, not an opinion.

The grun- tenants care about their landlord, okay? Do you know how hard it is to find a good landlord? In this economy?!? Let alone one that will let you have some of his Tapu cocoa stores and talk with you in the middle of the night if you have nightmares? You’d cry too at the thought of losing such a commodity!

(And also he’s their boss and they love him and want all that’s good for him in life because that’s what he wants for them and they’re a family your honour-!!!)

On a more serious note, I think this bit of psychological trauma actually ends up having a positive impact on Guzma overall. Up until this point he’s been sort of taking care of the house and doing odd jobs around the islands while he gets used to being a vaguely more functional member of society, but not really thinking about things long-term just yet.

After he’s laid on the couch for long enough, had some cocoa himself and a few days to calm down and think things through, I think he starts to take the fact that he owns a house more seriously. He ends up doing a lot of research with Plumeria on what sort of maintenance a house like his requires over a long period of time and how much it costs, does a better breakdown of what amenities cost on a monthly and yearly basis, and how that’s likely to change, how many people the house can reasonably fit, that sort of thing. Then he has a big group discussion with the grunts to figure out how much rent should cost so that they can keep the electricity, water, and wifi on, and also ensure Guzma himself has enough to both live on and keep the house in good shape. He’s probably going to end up learning a lot of home repair in the process.

It’s honestly an interesting situation in a way, because none of them see this as a business venture so much as figuring out how to make sure they get to keep living in this pretty awesome house for as long as they all can. It’s a group of people that already have some pretty good bonds who want to support each other. So like, the tenants can and will graffiti the crap out of their own rooms if that’s how they want to decorate (and, let’s be real, some of these kids have talent when it comes to art in that style), but they don’t mess with the structural integrity of the building, and experimental cooking tends to be done via hotplates and extension cords in the yard so they don’t wreck the kitchen. Way more leeway than you’d get in a normal tenant situation, but also way more respect than you might normally have for a place you’re renting because it’s place you genuinely want to take good care of.

(Also the landlord is the dad/olderest brother of your found family and you want to make him proud of you.)

So the end result is everything gets a bit more structured in a way that’s going to make this crazy thing Guzma and his team have landed themselves in actually sustainable, and Guzma and Plumeria both get a good six levels apiece in being responsible adults.

Also literally everyone calls it ‘the Skull House’ and Guzma just isn’t even bothering to try and make them stop anymore. That’s just the building’s name now, Team Skull is over, but the bond of Skull House is eternal. Makes for some really interesting explanations whenever someone new moves to town. ;)

@someoddmix  #sounds like Cyrus packed well for a tropical trip #yeah time for some local shopping! #aaww Cyrus hanging out with the kids! going on little adventures! that sounds so fun! #lmao Cynthia has zero regrets. good for her and she's right. her usual outfit is awesome #LMAO BLUE #does he worry about that? XD

Blue absolutely worries about that, because he’s vain like that. And also horrified because the kids convinced Cyrus to get a couple really touristy patterned shirts of the tackiest souvenir tit-tat sort, and they’re just... it hurts his fashionable soul to look at them.

Also he doesn’t realize until later that Cyrus has mostly gotten some really nice shirts made and sold by locals that are more along the lines of the stuff Hau and his grandpa tend towards, lovely local colours and patterns that are okay for people not native to Alola to wear.

(Red is of the opinion that Blue is reaping his just deserts for things like the ‘I’m not angry this is just my face’ shirt. He is the one who taught Cyrus to be trollish in this manner, it is only fair that he now suffers for it.)

Okay, been thinking about the Rainbow Rocket confrontation, and here it is!

So, Archie, Maxie, and Trainer Cyrus are in place, and Sun, Moon, Lillie, and Hau head in to face Rainbow Rocket. They fight a decent number of grunts, Lillie has a couple pokemon now (she’s been through a lot, she can have more than one, though she’s still a relatively new trainer and thus is still the one focusing on healing everyone else’s pokemon more than battling), and eventually make it to the first checkpoint. Sun goes to the left, Moon goes to the right, and they battle against Maxie and Archie at the same time while Lillie and Hau guard the main hall to make sure no one can sneak up on them.

(While this is happening, our team of foreign ex-Champions on look-out duty spot another of our favorite Alolans heading towards the Rainbow Rocket Castle with both purpose and a full roster of pokemon - it’s ya boi, heading in to help get these creeps off his island! And normally this would be great, but this plan already has a lot of moving parts, and Guzma’s not read in on any of them, so Red and Cynthia run interference and manage to get him over to their table with Blue, where they fill him in on the plan. Guzma’s not happy about having to sit this one out, but grudgingly agrees to wait on the condition that he gets to lead the charge if the kids call for help.

On the plus side, he does end up having a really interesting conversation with Professor Blue about bug pokemon (there aren’t a lot of them native to Kanto, so he doesn’t have as much experience with a wide variety of them as other types, and it’s interesting to talk to a bug-type specialist).)

Back in Rainbow Rocket, Sun and Moon move to the next room with Lillie and Hau, the latter two once again staying at the doorway to prevent any Grunts from trying to interfere, while the twins ‘confront’ Cyrus, who manages a vaguely decent speech about why he needs to stop them and recreate what he did in ‘his world’ in this world (Maxie and Archie honestly did so much better, they have so much practice and are a pair of drama llamas to boot), puts up a good fight, and then hands over the key they need once he’s beaten. A bit more exploring and the group finds Lysandre’s room, again, guards at the door, and a confrontation with the Team leader.

Fun fact: a ‘which door will you choose’ challenge is far less effective when you have two chaos twins run past you and each press one of the two buttons one at a time, turning on and turning off your doomsday machine in quick succession. The leader of Team Flare is extremely miffed and gives them a very hard match as a result, but is eventually defeated an the group moves to the final room, where they’re confronted by Ghetsis. Again, speech, battle, we win!

Except Ghetsis is Ghetsis and does not lose gracefully, instead taking Lillie prisoner and demanding Sun, Moon, and Hau throw down their pokeballs and surrender to him if they don’t want their friend to die.

This is the point where Ghetsis learns the error of tossing the timid little girl behind him then focusing all his attention on the sturdier-looking kids in the room, because Lillie summons that resolve to be stronger that she gained during the whole Aether Foundation fiasco, and also her legs under her.

You ever been full-body tackled from behind at exactly knee height by a girl with every ounce of protective rage her small body can muster? Because that’s what Lillie just did to Ghetsis. It makes an impression, both of them, because he goes down and Lillie ends up getting kind of squished as a result.

Fortunately a moment’s weakness is all the rest of the group needs to decide that violence is the answer and get to work grappling with Ghetsis to get any weapons and pokemon he may have away from him and also to get him off of Lillie. After some very thorough tussling, Ghetsis is left tied up in his own cloak with Hau and Lillie sitting on him for good measure.

He may return to his dimension where he’s in charge, but he’s going to have to spend the rest of his (hopefully short) reign with the knowledge of how thoroughly he just got owned by four twelve-year-olds.

Anyway, on to Giovanni! Again, it’s another speech, another battle, and another victory. Which Giovanni responds to with a shrug, a smirk, and the comment that he’s gotten as much as he probably needs of the Aether Foundation’s tech from this dimension anyway - there are other dimensions to see, other worlds to loot. Lights start flashing, he types a few things into a keyboard, and the castle vanishes like it had never been, leaving the Aether Foundation in its place. Victory! Celebration high-five and strike a pose, yeah!

This is when Lillie and Hau come running in after Sun and Moon, with the revelation that Ghetsis just vanished out from under them, and all there weren’t any grunts left in the hallway when they unlocked the door and checked, either. It’s back to normal, yes!

Moon’s phone buzzes a text alert.

Cyrus: I assume the building changing means you won.

Cyrus: Archie and Maxie vanished with it.

[xavierfiles-blog]

Entry 072 - Iceman

Art by Chris Bachalo

Name: Robert Drake

Code Names: Iceman

First Appearance: X-Men #1 (Oct ’63)

Powers: Ice manipulation

Teams Affiliation: X-Men, Champions, Defenders, X-Factor

About

My first draft of this article had a pretentious quote from Watchmen (the Pagliacci joke) because I wanted to talk about how much Iceman avoided his real internal problems by being a clown. Then I realized that was the least Iceman way to open up this article. Instead, I am going to pull the equally pretentious trick from Sex Criminals where I break the fourth wall and just talk directly to the themes I am trying to discuss. That seems more up Bobby’s alley. So here is the deal, Bobby is the class clown. He also recently came out as gay as an adult (and at the same time as a teenager but don’t worry about it). His entire characterization in the modern age has been about holding back something. It just so happens that one of those somethings is his sexuality. He is still the Bobby we know and love, now with a twist! Anyway, here is the part of the article people actually care about.

Portrayed by Shawn Ashmore

Bobby Drake had a simple life on Long Island. His father could be overbearing, sure, but it wasn’t a bad life. While he was out on a date, like all boys his age were doing, Bobby was interrupted by the town bully and decided to reveal his secret. He shot a blast of ice out of his hand, freezing the ruffian in his tracks. The news about the Drake boy spread fast and a mob assembled to attack the young mutant. He was rescued by Professor Xavier and his recruit Cyclops. The Professor offered Bobby a spot at his school for gifted youngsters and erased the memory of Bobby’s powers from everyone in the town.

Art by George Tuska and John Verpoorten

Bobby took the name Iceman and trained in the use of his mutant powers. He discovered he could cover his body in snow, creates slides of ice, and freeze his enemies in their tracks. He formed a close bond with his teammate Beast and the two often went on double dates with some hip chicks from Café A-Go-Go. He had fun with the X-Men, they became like family, but soon new members appeared and Bobby realized it was time to move on.

Art by Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman

His father always wanted him to have a respectable job so Iceman enrolled in the accounting program at UCLA. He and his roommate Angel got embroiled in a plot by the god of the underworld to defeat Hercules and had to team up with Ghost Rider and Black Widow to form The League of Leftover Heroes The Champions of Los Angeles. They quickly folded, realizing they had literally no reason to be a team and Bobby decided to head back east to finish school. His good buddy Beast enlisted him to join the New Defenders with Angel while trying to finish his accounting degree. He began a relationship with his gender fluid teammate Cloud but struggled to accept them for who they were. He felt a sense of emptiness when they left the group and the Defenders soon disbanded and Bobby finally got his CPA.

Art by Don Perlin

Bobby got a job at an accounting firm and quickly realized that he didn’t want to spend his days hunting for deductions. When he found out that the original X-Men were reuniting as X-Factor it took literally zero effort to convince him to be a superhero again. Iceman started mentoring their young wards, even if kids like Boom Boom pushed his patience to its’ limits. He was captured by Loki, who unlocked the potential in his powers, but Bobby didn’t want to put the effort into testing them further. He began dating record store employee, Opal Tanaka and was entangled in a power struggle involving her family’s branch of the Yakuza and Cyburai (who, yes, are cybernetic Samurai). X-Factor rejoined the X-Men and for the first time since the silver age, Bobby Drake was home.

Art by Whilce Portacio and Art Thibert

Speaking of home, Bobby decided to take Opal to meet his parents. His racist father didn’t approve of his son dating outside his race and refused to accept the relationship. Between Mr. Drake’s attitude and Opal’s Cyburai based issues, the two decided to split. Without a relationship to define him, Bobby felt aimless. This only got worse when a comatose Emma Frost took over his body and used his powers in ways he never dreamed of. Iceman was dejected that Emma was so much better with his powers and left the team to go on a soul-searching road trip with Rogue.

Art by Steve Epting, Dan Green, and Steve Buccellato

Iceman volunteered to by the X-Men’s spy in Graydon Creed’s presidential campaign and saw a different side to his family. His father attended a debate of Creed’s but surprisingly spoke out against the anti-mutant bigotry the candidate spewed. Bobby was touched by his father’s words and moved to action when Creed had him attacked for speaking out. Soon, Bastion’s Operation: Zero Tolerance was underway and Iceman was forced to recruit a team of ragtag mutants to combat it. He had grown as a leader and as an X-Man.

Art by Carlos Pacheco and Art Thibert

The X-Men grew again, enlisting Northstar into their ranks. The Canadian speedster made a pass at Iceman, assuming he was gay, and was strongly rebuffed (oh and Chuck Austen starts writing Bobby like a jerk here for absolutely no reason). In response, Iceman pursued a relationship with the X-Men nurse, Annie Ghazikhanian but also Polaris at the same time. It sure felt like he was overcompensating for something. Soon after, M-Day hit and it appeared that Iceman was among the mutants to lose their abilities. It turned out that his issues were psychosomatic and Bobby only thought he has lost his powers rendering the whole thing pointless. Boy was this a bad time to be reading X-Men.

Art by Sean Philips

He was recruited by Rogue to join her X-Men strike force. He fell for fellow teammate Mystique and was shocked by her sudden but inevitable betrayal. Iceman and Cannonball were the last men standing after her attack and led the counter-attack. He followed the X-Men to San Francisco and was a solid contributor to the team, with the most notable thing being the time he had his body blessed with holy water so he could fight a vampire army. He wasn’t being well utilized on the island and jumped at the opportunity to follow Wolverine back to Westchester to start the Jean Grey School.

Art by Billy Tan and Andres Mossa

Iceman finally put his degree to use as the school’s chief financial officer. He taught classes, had a fling with Kitty Pryde, and joined one of the field teams. He also gained better control over his powers, mastering the ability to create an army of ice men. On a mission battling Celestials, Iceman was infected with the Celestial Death Seed, and his inhibitions slowly slipped away. He gathered all his ex’s and kidnapped them, he needed them to see he was worth their love. He confronted his father, nearly killing him as he asked why he could never accept his son. But above all else, he called on all his powers to cast the world into Fimbulvetr, the Norse great winter. The X-Men stopped their ally, but something was different in Bobby. Knowing the anger inside him and the insecurity he had repressed, left a mark on Iceman. He knew he would have to confront this sooner rather than later.

Art by Gabriel Hernández Walta and Cris Peter

Beast decided the best way to teach Cyclops a lesson would be to totally mess up the space-time continuum and bring the original five X-Men forward from the past. Iceman got along pretty well with his younger self, maybe he hadn’t matured much past the class clown he was a 15. The young Iceman confronted his older self with the revelation he had come to. Iceman was gay. For years he put his energy into being a superhero, doing what his dad wanted, trying everything he could to avoid coming to terms with the truth, but he couldn’t hide any longer. Bobby decided to come out of the closet, but the M-Pox crisis put personal relationships on pause. Now that it is resolved, Iceman has an upcoming solo title that promises to explore what this new normal means for Bobby.

Art by Mahmud Asrar and Jason Keith

So before we get to the end lets talk about this retcon, because I know that’s all the comments are going to be about. There has been rumor and speculation that Iceman was gay since at least the 90’s (since that’s as far back as Dr. Internet can find but I won’t be shocked if it was before then). That doesn’t mean the subtext is textual, gay subtext is there for just about every member of the X-Men, but fans seemed to latch onto it with Iceman. There was even a gag on Family Guy about him being gay. I say all that just to point out that it wasn’t out of the blue. Now, it is obvious that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby didn’t create him as a gay character in 1963 and most writers wrote him straight as a default (Majorie Liu being a notable exception). Characters change and I believe having his sexuality be part of Bobby’s long history with repression is a valid interpretation of his history as a character. Plenty of gay men date women, get married, and have children before coming out of the closet later in life. Him dating women in the past doesn’t invalidate his sexuality. There are plenty of other arguments to get into about the specific mechanics of how he was outed, none of which I feel like starting a debate over, but Iceman being gay fits for me. X-Men fans should be excited that a marginalized group has such a high profile character as a member, not upset that it may not fit into every detail of continuity.

Art by Kevin Wada

Must Read

Iceman is an interesting character to recommend a book for. He often works as a secondary character in an ensemble and his solo titles have been universally bad. The moments where major stories turn the focus to him, like Operation: Zero Tolerance or Austen’s X-Men have happened to single dark times for the books. Probably the most interesting Iceman story comes from Majorie Liu’s run on Astonishing X-Men with Gabriel Hernández Walta. In this story Iceman is forced to confront all his repressed feelings about his father, his sexuality, and the potential of his powers. Bobby questions himself in a deeper, more personal way than he had before. Walta provides stunning, moody art that he would go on to perfect in books like Magneto and Vision. It’s a little uneven but it is well worth a read in trades or on Marvel Unlimited.

Art by Phil Noto

Ranking

When Stan Lee talks about the creation of Iceman he discusses wanting the Human Torch but with the opposite powers, and that is exactly what Iceman is. He is a knock-off version of the worst member of the Fantastic Four. He has often been a one-note joker where the best thing you could say about him is that he has the potential to be really powerful. Writers have struggled to find a good angle for the character and Bobby largely gets put into prominence because of his status as an original X-Man and his arresting visual design. I do not understand why anyone thinks he needs more of a costume than just his iced-up bod, but I digress. It isn’t that Iceman is a bad character, it’s just that I can think of plenty of X-Men I would rather see fill the same niche. The only other O5 character on the list is Cyclops and Iceman doesn’t rank anywhere near that high. In the same way I don’t see him anywhere close to his long time love interest Polaris near the bottom of the list. When I started this, I put Rachel Summers as a weird dividing line, but I like Iceman has had a lot more consistency than Rach. As I scan up the list my eyes stop at Kid Omega, him staring in Generation X has me more excited than the upcoming Iceman solo series so that has to be the ceiling. Right below him is Dazzler, and I’d rather read a comic with Iceman than with her. That slides Iceman in as the new number 25 in the Xavier Files.

Iceman was requested by Patreon supporter /u/bendisisgod among others. Thank you for the request. If you have a request for how about you send it below? If you want to cut to the front of the two-year long line, we have a Patreon you can support Xavier Files for just $1 to get a line cutting reward.

Click here if you want to see the full ranked list, with links to every entry in the Xavier Files so far.

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Entry Key

Entry 072 – Iceman was originally published on Xavier Files

[jaosh-logbook]

LOGBOOK ENTRY#1 PALAWAN

7-5-18

5:35AM — We are on our bus to Clark International Airport and we almost left Gina behind because she was late. I mean what’s good Gina? There’s nothing new here hahaha! Things are getting pretty exciting, minus what happened with those three taxis with Ryan. We also got a discount from the Genesis Bus for being PAL customers! It’s surely is an adventure for us. This is the first time I saw the sun rise while I am inside a bus, this is amazing. Pale skies turned into blue eyes and the sun brought back the colors.

8:30AM — Early birds! We took over a bench and made it our own beds at the airport. We’re still waiting for Ferds because he’s got our hotdogs.

9:55AM — My heart is pounding like crazy at this moment. Besides my ID problem, Clark International Airport just had their last call for team Gina and I still have the nerve to type this down! I’m really nervous and anxious as fuck because we might miss our Palawan trip. Worse, I might not even join them because of my ticket problem.

10:03AM — We literally bolted through the security gates like crazy heads running for our lives! The marshals are pressuring us even more and we were throwing our things through the scanner. It was so funny what the fuck hahahaha! Once done, we ran to our vehicle to our plane. We looked like casts from the Amazing Race Philippines and did the walk of shame for being late to our seats.

10:20AM — Finally on our plane and the adrenaline rush was still pulsing through my body. I got more anxious as the plane got faster, this was the first time for me being concious to ride a plane. Lucky enough to be seated beside my best friend, whose left arm was crushed by yours truly. Sorry Dust haha!

10:40AM — At 44,000 feet, my long life dream to be with the clouds finally came true and I got the whole zoo on my stomach!

11:20AM — We were picked up by a driver who seems to be part of the Need for Speed cast for his driving skills. Busuanga, Palawan already looks fine as hell with these views and the cold weather! Nothing will top Palawan’s greetings with its rainfall. Manila rain can choke. Everything’s going North so far!

12:30PM — Finally arrived at Ryan’s home and the vibe is nothing but warm and welcoming. Food is great. Like reaaaaaally fucking great. View is amazing and the people are so nice. His mom prepared a house for us to stay in. Yes dude, a fucking house. We all took our naps and recharged our energy for another adventure!

10:16PM — Ryan’s mom cooked us the best first dinner at Palawan! All fish and veggies. Lerma is already shaking. We also did some short grocery at the bayan where we met some locals, aunties and friends of Ryan. It’s a small town and people know each other. They are so nice, they always tell us to enjoy our stay in Busuanga. We spent the night drinking mixed alcohol from a blender and playing cards. Okay well they played cards, I don’t know how to play. Someone also cried and poured his/her heart out but I will never tell who it is. It was the best way end our first night, I think this trip will be nothing but memorable and definitely one for the books. The logbook lmao.

7-6-18

8:07AM — We are on a boat to Calauit Safari to meet some MOTHER FUCKING GIRAFFES. My heart is too excited, I’ve always wanted a pet giraffe since I was little but my mom said giraffes are not domestic animals. Yeah, sure mom. My first island boat experience was a cleansing experience. I don’t know why I used the term cleansing. It’s not like I dipped my face in the water or anything, It just felt like the wind is washing something from my past.

8:50AM — I’VE PET AND FED THE GIRAFFES. My heart was so overwhelmed I was smiling from ear to ear. Two giraffes ate at my hand on the same time. Their tongues are kinda rough, long and it has the color of an aged eggplant. Another life-long dream came true, I love Palawan already!

10:21AM — We left Calauit Safari and we are now on our way to a beach to have our lunch. At the safari, we also saw some zebras, monkeys, snakes, turtles, crocodiles and even a porcupine. Our tour guide gave us a porcupine spike as a remembrance for our trip. I kept it behind my phone for luck lol

12:53PM — We had our lunch at a restaurant by the beach called Palatpat. Our food was made by Ryan’s family friend, we ate and dipped our feet at the beach. The view is amazing. It was so funny because from a distance you can see a storm approaching and we did not mind it at first. After a few minutes we took lots of pictures before a heavy storm locked us in our cottages. We were cold and stranded so we just watched our videos from the safari. And also, we discovered that Gina called the giraffes kangaroos hahahaha!

7-7-18

10:29AM — This view of the ocean is really breathtaking. It was drizzling a little bit and the raging waves said hello as we arrived on the dock. We were supposed to go to the famous Black Island, but sadly the current is too strong. I honestly thought it was passable, but tita said our boat might flip and I honestly don’t mind that lmao

11:40AM — We went to the Concepcion Falls instead where I ate a lot of crabs and did not get sick. I fucking love it here. Palawan got me eating crabs! We also met Merissa, who’s a 22-year-old backpacker from California doing her research. She joined us in our stay at the falls.

1:15PM — We took a refreshing swim. The water was cold but it was definitely rewarding. I felt as if the falls was cleansing me from something I was hoping to be free from. But I honestly don’t know what it is but I feel great. Oh and my friends are simply the best, they make this trip extra ordinary.

10:53PM — Sleeping beside your best friend is all fun until he becomes this big scared dweeb. Dustin was so afraid of our ghost stories he squeezes himself beside me and grabs my blanket. He’s not really brave when it comes to this stuff haha! So of course we made fun of him and took advantage. A weakness has been revealed!

7-8-18

5:30AM — Shit! Shit! Shit it’s 5:30AM and I’m already running from Ryan’s house to the church here in Busuanga. I cannot be late for church so I ran like I’m running for the marathon of my life! It was so far and I had no choice but to bolt.

7:37AM — Ferds and Ryan waited outside the church for me. I was surprised to see them there. We went to buy pandesal for breakfast, went to a basketball court and back to the dock. At the dock I saw a sleeping dog under the sun that reminded me of how my Bella loves to do that back home.

12:43PM — We are on a speed boat to an island for lunch, it’s a place called Alfaro. Seriously, I’m still shocked at the fact that you need to go to an island just for lunch hahahaha! Man I hope I live here. Alfaro is at the top of this small mountain and it has a pool that completes the relaxing-island vibe. I ordered squid for lunch of course and it was delicious as eff.

2:46PM — We then took a dip in the pool and enjoyed the every moment Alfaro has to offer. The view at the top takes you to a new level of comfort and peace. I looked far away and I saw a nice place that looked like a private mansion on an island. We all stared at it and dreamed to have our own island one day hahaha! Wish we can go there but I doubt it. They played a game in the pool where the three boys cheated hahaha! We then washed ourselves together in a bathroom and I’ve exchanged sandos with Dustin on our way home.

11:30PM — We drank alcohol again and this time I wanted to get sleepy drunk so that I could feel well rested by the morning. Is that weird? Anyways, we drank and played a corny version of never have I ever and Ferds was so funny with his shit. I then realized that I woke up today at 5:30 in the morning and was so tired from our activities. I then decided to sleep early and ditch my friends who are still chatting.

7-9-18

8:10AM — I woke up with a little hang over (lol at my plan to be well rested) so I decided to do some exercise and stretch out a little bit outside our home.

9:10AM — Today we are about to go hiking to the viewdeck of Busuanga and I’m sure as scared and excited for this activity. Another first for me!

10:16AM — After climbing, stepping on slippery rocks, holding on trees and a couple of mosquito bites, we finally reached the top before the rainfall. The view was covered by the rain and a thick fog, 0% visibility at its finest! We were drenched and frozen from the rain so we huddled in one corner at the viewdeck and waited for the storm to calm.

10:36AM — The rain stopped and the fog cleared, the view of Busuanga was uncovered right in-front of our eyes. It was so fulfilling to climb and witness this view! We took lots of pictures and videos. It was pure and genuine joy for me. I absorbed every moment at the top, just self-reflecting what I have done for the past years and pondering what I wanted to be free from. I whispered, “Come what may.” before leaving the place.

11:20AM — We are now going down from the viewdeck and I think it is much more difficult to go down than to go up. The way was slippery because of the rain and it became more steep. Dustin and Ryan both fell on their asses as we go down and I managed to go down with zero falls. A King, I know. Do we stan? Yes we do. lol hahahaha jk.

1:50PM — After preparing and having our lunch at Ryan’s house, we went to our home and took a shower. We also took our power nap before doing our laundry and preparing for our fishing activity.

2:22PM — So this is what it feels like to take naps with your best friends during the afternoon. I felt like a kid who took a mandatory nap with his best friends, getting energized for another adventure. Dustin can sure get extra sleepy and baby-ish at the same time tho, I’ll give you that. Ryan went missing.

6:05PM — We were peacefuly doing our laundry while waiting for Ryan’s arrival at his house. We planned to go fishing after our hike earlier, but it’s getting late and Ryan cannot be reached. Out of suprise, tita arrived with a van waiting outside. Suddenly everyone was in a rush, it turns out we were going to Busuanga Bay Lounge and Ryan did not inform us! WHO’S SHOOK? BITCH WE ALL ARE. WHERE’S RYAN? WHERE ARE WE GOING? WHAT ARE WE BRINGING? THIS IS NOT IN THE PLAN, WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GO FISHING HAHAHAHA

6:30PM — After panicking, running and preparing around the house, it started to rain and we are now on the van tracking Ryan’s whereabouts in the town. Finally the signal returned and we were able to contact him. We found him in a kubo with two of his friends eating lomi. It turns out Ryan was not informed too and the signal was to blame for no messages can come through. I forgot to mention that there was literally no signal in the island, you are lucky if you encounter a place with a good reception.

7:11PM — Busuanga Bay Lounge - okay so this place is hella expensive. Like waaaaay expensive. I was not prepared for this restaurant by the dock or in other words, I AM SHOOK. We’ve seen this place from the Alfaro view the other day, this was the mansion we were admiring from a far! It’s funny how we were just wishing to go here the other day and now we are actually here. Breathing! Me and my friends were exchanging looks and laughing because of the menu and its price range. We were laughing because we are not used to fine dining, for Pete’s sake we eat at Hepa Lane you guys. That’s our thing, our brand lmao

8:01PM — I had this deep talk with Dustin out of nowhere after dinner. We talked about our separate plans after college, our time together and some more stuff we don’t usually talk about. I like it when I have deep conversations with people, specially this douchebag, because it’s rare. I was not able to say some of the things that I want tho, but I hope he knows how much he means to me as brother, all of them. Food was amazing by the way. It was worth the price if you were wondering

7-10-18

1:35PM — We made fishing rods out of plastic bottles, nylon strings and hooks for our activity this afternoon. We are finally fishing! We went to the dock and I picked up a rod on the way. They said someone owns it so I was worried I will be in trouble for taking it, but I took it anyway to the dock with me. Pasaway.

2:16PM — We were on the same dock where we were supposed to depart for Black Island. I recognized the place because of the mini tower at the sea near the dock. The only thing different this time is that the sea level is low and I think the tower on the sea can be reached.

2:31PM — Dustin caught a fish! He got so excited after his first catch. A master of the sea? Does this have something to do about Dust being from Navotas? The Fishing Captial of the Philippines. I don’t know hahaha but he caught a real fish alright! He even got the gang more excited and energized! I did not hold back, I wanted to catch one too!

3:00PM — It started to rain really hard and the rain drops were hitting our skin like pebbles. The wind and the waves grew strong but our energy grew stronger, we did not leave the dock. We continued fishing and I have felt so alive in that moment. It was surreal! Fishing during the storm by the dock made me feel no fear, I was unstoppable.

3:15PM — I have no photos of this moment but we went to the mini tower I was talking about and went back to fishing again. It was still raining hard and the dock was slippery because of the moss, it was an exciting adventure for everyone! We’ve felt so happy we don’t mind getting injured lmao!

3:45PM — After the rain, we went back to the higher ground of the dock and walked back home. I returned the rod I have borrowed earlier to the same place. Dustin was carrying his catch and the others were all tired and happy from our fishing adventure.

5:00PM — We cleaned and piled ourselves on the couch and watched Master Chef at Ryan’s house. Tita arrived from work with these delicious pizzas and pastas from her friend. I was skeptic at first on the taste but Palawan keeps on delivering surprises! The pizzas and the pastas were amazing! The flavors are on point. Others should take notes! We rewarded ourselves for fishing today by eating a lot. Like a lot!

7:30PM — We were still full from our merienda but we have no choice but to eat dinner because tita cooked crabs! I fucking love it here. Happiness never ends, and when I say happiness I mean food! We then realized that it was our last dinner together in Busuanga for our trip at Ryan’s house and it was kinda sad to think about. We ate our feelings that night, we were introduced to the famous Coconut Cake. Let me just get real with everyone here. You have to eat this cake before you die. It’s so good I’m not even exaggerating anything here! I wish I could take this cake home and give my family a slice. They’re missing this back at home!

8:40PM — Still full but it did not end there. Tita and Ferds opened these freshly picked coconuts and we drank and ate it all. It was delicious, it made Gina and Dustin go number 2 hahahaha! Tita is just the sweetest and most genuine, she wants us to rest early for our early trip to Coron tomorrow. That’s when it hit us that it was our last night in Busuanga with tita.

7-11-18

7:05AM — Tita rented a van for us to ride to Coron. I was seated beside Dustin and I immediately fell asleep because we were up so early. We left Busuanga with my eyes open at 25%.

7:30AM — We arrived at our new place and we prepared for our tour. We were not yet allowed to check in so I changed my outfit at the lobby. After changing my shorts, I saw the cctv camera pointing exactly at me and I screamed and we all laughed hahahaha! That was so stupid but I have no regrets hahaha! To Jasmine’s Place of Coron, please don’t leak me online. No one wants to see me that looool

7:55AM — We chose to have breakfast in a mini carinderia where they serve surprisingly delicious and tasty breakfast. For P85.00 I got one longanisa, one egg, one hotdog with rice and a cup of coffee. That was my first breakfast in Coron.

9:05AM — We arrived at the dock where we boarded a boat for our island hopping tour. Our tour guides are locals who are very good at their job and are very kind. When the captain asked for a volunteer for a picture, I immediately raised my hand and took the chance. He was good at taking pictures, even better than some of my friends hahaha!

9:43AM — Our first destination was the Green Lagoon. It was definitely a beautiful moment. The rock formation is really unbelievable and this view just takes you out of the zone. We took lots of pictures on the boat and we dipped in the lagoon and experienced the refreshing salt water. We got that vitamin sea game now haha!

10:19AM — We are off to our next destination and Dustin placed his leg above mine like he always does. He does this when he is too comfortable with the people he is with. I’m gonna miss this little things about this goof.

11:07AM — We arrived at the famous CYC Beach and we were told to be careful as there are sighting of sea urchins and jelly fish. When I got off the boat, I jumped to the water and swam the fuck away in fear of steppin on a sea urchin. Ain’t nobody got time to go to a hospital today, that’s not happening haha!

11:19AM — We were playing with the sand and I said, “Guys gusto ko na malibing.” My friends were like, “Same.” hahahaha! They all dug a whole beach grave for me. How supportive.

11:22AM — While they were busy digging, me and Ryan saw some beach dogs nearby and we immediatley petted them. I never imagined that one day I’ll be at a beach with some dogs.

11:30AM — My friends are assholes! They left me burried as our captain called everyone back to the boat haha! I had to rise up from the dead alone and run on water naruto style to the boat.

11:55AM — Our captain and his team cooked a lot of dishes for us. They cooked fish, liempo, some sea weeds, steamed veggies, oysters, salted eggs with tomatoes and more! Surprisingly, everything taste so gooood! Like restaurant-quality good!! And the most impressing part is that they cooked everything in our boat while sailing. THIS IS THE LIFE, MAN!

12:20PM — I think I’m pregnant after eating a lot for lunch. Patay-gutom jael was satisfied, guys. We are sailing to Kayangan Lake and they said it’s far away from where we are so we’re sailing for some amount of time. The weather turned cloudy and the vibe is just peaceful and surreal. I closed my eyes and listened to the waves splashing our boat before falling asleep.

1:03PM — I know I have been talking about all of the sights and sceneries here in Palawan, but the one above Kayangan Lake is THE VIEW OF THE TRIP. It made me realize that I have been living and doing a lot of firsts again in the past few days. I know that the past 4 years of my life has been a roller coaster, this trip is like a big pat in my back saying “hey, you do you. you did great and you deserve the world.”

1:40PM — We had the entire lake for ourselves. The water is so clear and fresh it is as if the Pokémon, Celebi, lives here. We have to wear our life vests all the time because the lake was very deep. We swam further and floated, just staring at the sky and thinking. I know I sound like someone from a book, but don’t you crave for that experience? just floating, flowing and allowing everything as you pause from the world. It felt like that.

2:05PM — The lake was covered with fog as it started to rain. Kayangan Lake started to look like a place from the Jurrasic World, I was really hoping for a big monster to come out of that big stone formation in front of us and roar really loud. I think I’m imagining too much but I have always been this way and I think a lot of people should too.

2:55PM — We are now on the middle of the sea again. We were looking through the corals below us and I can see from a far that a heavy rain was headed towards us. Everything was slowly fading as it goes inside the fog and the rain. I was outside our boat when it reached us and that rain felt gooooood for some reason. I went inside and we sailed through the cold rain back to the dock.

3:45PM — We thank our captain and his team for doing such a great job. I wish I could do what they are doing someday. Meeting and exploring with new people everyday is something I’ve always wanted to do. At the dock, we bought refrigirator magnets as pasalubongs. And yeah we cheap like that.

4:05PM — So me and my friends decided to go to this famous hot spring in Coron to cleanse us from the sea water right after we landed at the dock. We went back to our hotel to get some money and we did not even change our clothes, we were too excited.

4:24PM —

[theliterateape]

American Shithole #20 — Vacations, Part One: Camping Is For Masochists

By Eric Wilson

This is as good a week as any to introduce my series on vacationing: American style. The president has been overseas; leaving rotten chum in his filthy wake for allies and enemies alike. At least he gave us all a break here domestically from our daily mouthful, I suppose.

My good friend and housemate just returned from two weeks in Iceland, Scandinavia, Europe and Russia, while I have been dog sitting on what was supposed to be a staycation for me (it wasn’t) — providing more than enough material for future articles on the topic.

Part Two of this series is a piece I wrote before American Shithole. It was to be my first feature for Literate Ape; one in which I found myself on a miserable LA weekend getaway for an Eric Clapton show. Unfortunately, the night before I submitted my draft some asshole murdered 58 people at an outdoor concert just down the street from where I live, and I didn’t feel it was an appropriate time to share that story.

In fact, I slid into a funk that week, and I hardly interacted with anyone for  a while. A few months later Trump called Haiti and unspecified African nations “shithole” countries, my inner fury was rekindled, and American Shithole was born.

So I will be returning periodically to this series that never got off the ground. It was always my intention to write a few pieces on the American vacation. I know it's a boon for comedy. Holiday travel is a goldmine for humor in general; in my case, even more so because I truly suck at vacationing, and terrible things always happen.

Staycations — if I am to judge them by the last two weeks — have me faring only slightly better.

The good news is: things are looking up, baby! This was my least disastrous vacation (okay, staycation) yet, even though I slept fitfully, had only a very limited amount of fun, and as expected, terrible things still happened (even though I stayed at home), I still feel like it was a success. More on this later. 

If you’re wondering how it’s possible that a mostly unpleasant staycation was my best vacation ever, it’s because my experience with vacations includes heavy hitters like suicide, sickness, hurricanes and other natural disasters, being thrown off a bridge embankment — and camping, which I’m sorry outdoor aficionados, but camping is just the worst.

I am convinced that folks that choose to go camping over a plethora of other vacation destinations — sunny beaches, moonlit resorts, islands with sexy people, places with people of any kind, coordinates that include a nearby lavatory, locations that aren't teeming with wildlife looking to eat you, etc.  — those people are fucking closeted masochists. Here is how many times you should go camping in your life: one-half of one time. You should attempt to sleep on rocks, in a damp tent, with a wet blanket, soaked shoes — like some sort of cold burrito for bears — hungry, exhausted and homesick, just one-half of once. Then pack up in the middle of the night, drive home, and never look back.

In my lifetime I have been camping roughly a score of times. That’s twenty, millennials. (Well why didn’t you just say twenty then, fuckface?)

While I cherish the time with my father (an avid, well-respected angler and outdoorsman), and I do genuinely love the remoteness and beauty of the wilderness, I have camped nineteen and one-half times too many in this life.

I assume I have never taken to vacationing as an adult, at least in part due to my experiences on vacations as a kid; which were at times awful. Or perhaps just some of it was traumatic, and that is all that I remember.

On one of the first camping trips I can recall I was eight years old, and while we were in the Grand Tetons the mother of my best friend at the time committed suicide. She shot herself while her son and I were camping together. I'm still haunted by that quiet drive home. I can’t imagine being my father and having to tell a child his mother was gone. I can’t possibly fathom what that was like for my friend.

That event set the tone for every subsequent camping trip over the next forty years.

I have been on trips that didn’t involve camping; although only a handful. I have taken one cruise back in the nineties — we were hit by a hurricane. The captain made a late decision to turn the ship around and head back to LA, missing our ports of call, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán, and Cabo San Lucas. Half the ship was throwing up for hours as the swells throttled that behemoth vessel like it was a tug boat in a bathtub with a fat, unruly toddler.

I have never forgotten the generous 25% discount offered by Carnival on our next Carnival cruise adventure, as compensation. Thank you Carnival Cruise Lines, I will never stop telling people of your boundless generosity — I hope you don’t mind that I roll my fucking eyes every time that I do.

On my next vacation (other than sporadic wilderness treks whereupon I fall into rivers, catch zero trout, or get bitten by nasty critters) I spent a month in Belgium, France and Spain during the summer of 2001. I picked up a lung infection on the flight over that dogged me the entire trip. I also fell asleep shirtless on the beaches of Biarritz, after not running with the bulls in Pamplona — probably one of the few smart moves I made. I got drunker than my normal drunkenness to ease the pain of my scorched backside, and somehow managed to offend a tiny British woman; who subsequently shoved me off a bridge.

Besides a brief sojourn in Dublin shortly after 9/11, I haven’t been back to Europe since — or anywhere else of note for that matter. Except camping of course, I have heartily not enjoyed plenty of camping.

I was also taken to Disney World by my mom as a young lad. I cried on the roller coaster, so she took me on the Tea Cups. I cried on the Tea Cups.  

I found out much later in life that my vacations — the majority of which involved camping, I think I’ve mentioned already — were not the vacations my friends from later on in life enjoyed when they were kids. The key word here is enjoyed.

They traveled to exotic places that offered not only luxuries such as food and lodging, but culture and entertainment.

I stared at trees.

My European friends seem to have it all sorted as well. They enjoy paid holiday at least twice a year for as long as they can remember — to wonderful destinations all over the world. Yes, that European socialism sounds like a real nightmare.

Yet, before this bit of light entertainment is taken as some sort of whingeing by my friends at home and abroad, I would like to mention that I am very thankful to have had any holiday trips at all — as I know millions have never been afforded a single vacation in their entire lives.

Except camping, but I have made the case that camping doesn’t count.

We can all agree, right? That camping doesn’t count?

It’s not a vacation if what you are doing is indistinguishable from survival training. Preparing for the coming apocalypse by eating baked beans straight out of a can is not a vacation.

That being said, I have a feeling staycations are the vacations I will look forward to in the future, until it is time that I shuffle off this mortal coil. I am fine with that, although wary that the comedic arc of my creative endeavors will suffer. Granted, this staycation over the last few weeks was rough — and I will get to that story someday soon — but at least I was home.

I don’t know what it is about travel, but I never seem to enjoy myself the way it seems everyone else does on vacation. How about you, dear reader, are your holidays all they're cracked up to be?

On a more somber note, I watched a lot of Parts Unknown this past weekend — I imagine quite a few of us did — and I would like to take a moment to honor one of humanity’s great travelers, Anthony Bourdain. I looked up to Anthony. He had suffered, he was honest, he had integrity. I had always hoped that one day I would be able to call him my friend. As a writer, entertainer, culinary master and cultural ambassador for the world, he was peerless.

Bon voyage, Mr. Bourdain — you will be missed.

B.S. Report

Two of the families of the Parkland student activists were Swatted last week. If you don’t know what Swatting is, that’s when someone calls in a phony emergency — usually involving imminent danger — whereby a SWAT team is deployed to an unsuspecting household, in hopes that they will shoot innocent people accidentally.

So yeah, that’s what conservative gun-loving fuckheads would wish upon the surviving family members that dared to stand up to the NRA. Trump’s base truly is a festering hive of dickless cowards, with no sense of compassion or empathy, and nothing but shit for brains.

4LWjr.