#remember when we had to just delete the original post like animals . and know it was still floating around somewhere beyond our control

[cliveguy]

the turn off reblogs feature if literally the best thing tumblr has done in years

[transmascanakin]

For the varmitech bro au

1. Does Martin remember Chris? Does he know how he could've/should've looked like?

2. How brainwashed is Chris? How much does he actually believe?

3. Do the Kratt parents take any role in the au?

4. Can we get more Tortuga crew??? How does Martin deal with missions alone, how do the others react to him?

Ty for the ask anon ! Honestly some of these questions are things i originally wanted to include in the explanation post but ended up deleting because i didnt want to make it too lengthy so Im glad to talk about them now!

1. Martin doesnt remember Chris clearly, he has some blurry memories and flashes but its mostly the feelings he remembers if that makes sense. Like how he was close with Chris and loved him a lot, the feeling of fear everyone felt when Chris went missing and the despair when no one could give them closure, how lonely he felt after.

He doesnt really know what Chris could look like, maybe he likes to imagine, but you cant really get accurate answers like that. Also with cases like his you often see detectives constructing images of what the missing kids could look like now years later and I thought about Chris getting one of these done but he probably would only do that if he sorted through everything else because while Martin thinks his brother is alive, Chris firmly believes that he died a long time ago. He doesnt really think the image would be useful

2. Hes half brainwashed and half doesnt remember a lot of things naturally because of a traumatic reaction. What he has been told was that they have been through a traumatic accident (like a car crash) of some kind that damaged his brain temporarily and thats why he barely remembers anything from his early childhood and has some memories that never actually happened (the memories of the Kratt family) and he believes thats true because frankly, he has no reason not to. Maybe he questioned it when he was younger, but as an adult your childhood memories get really blurry (especially if youve been through something traumatic) so he kind of just accepted the car crash excuse to be true. He suspects there's something hes not being told but he doesn't even think of him being kidnapped as a possibility

3. A little, yes ! The reason Martin wanted his brothers case to be investigated again was actually because of how bad it affected his parents even after 20 years, which is just the sad reality of missing child cases. This part is unfortunately not that well developped yet, but maybe the Kratt brothers father fell really ill and Martin was worried hed have to pass away without knowing what happened to Chris, or maybe they got divorced after not being able to move on from the incident evem after all that time, ill have to think about it but whatever happened motivated Marin to contact detective Chris.

Either way I do have 2 scenes in my head that include atleast one of them ! The first one is where Chris and Martin go back to Martins childhood home to search the area again, and they briefly talk to mama Kratt who still lives here, and she takes one look at Chris with a mothers eye and thinks "wow he looks exactly like Chris" and although she doesnt believe its actually him she does think its some sign from the universe or idk something sentimental !! I just rhink itd be sweet of her. I also think itd be interesting from the pov of Chris because this is a maternal figure who treats him really nice and he just cant help but notice how different his mom is from Martins yk sad feelings...

Also Chris gets to reunite with his parents after everything goes down :)

4. Hell Yeah!!

Martins missions here are a bit more professional as he doesnt really have anyone to goof around with but he still has fun because he gets to gush about animals to the team.!! (He definitely wishes he had someone with him out in the field) Also i guess the villains are also interesting here because dealing with them alone causes confrontations to drag out, and they also become harder and more serious, especially with Zach as he got a big advantage with 'the crawler'. Aviva does jump in to help a lot but shes a bit limited because at this point she hasnt finished making her own cps yet (this might become relevant later i havent decided yet.)

In the last part I assume you were asking about how they feel about Chris, and they do meet a lot while Martin and Chris are working on the investigation, and Koki actually helps them a lot with her computer skills. The crew also grows pretty close to Chris, i mean he kinda just clicks with them, and he latches onto them a lot as he hasnt really had proper friends before. Like ever. Basically theyre just found family i love them. !!!

Sorry for making this so long haha I just love talking about this au... I hope these answers satisfied!

[vikenticomeshome]

Cyberchase Character Discussion (for your local Cyberchase trivia quiz) - #3: Jackie

Here we go again. I've made this style of post about Inez and Matt, and now it's Jackie's turn.

#3: Jackie

Let's start with her bio from "Meet the Cybersquad". Again, this almost 25 years old now, so who knows how much of it is still canon.

So, we get our introduction to Jackie. She's smart, funny, has a plan, and is over-the-top. Yeah, that's accurate so far.

For some reason, this page was not in her original bio when they released it in 2001. They went back and added this page later in 2002. This is the only bio that I have seen that had content added like this. This page lets us know that her favorite color is yellow, and she loves tofu burgers. I don't know if the show has confirmed that she is a vegetarian or vegan. She is shown to care about animals, so I wouldn't be surprised if she was canonically a vegetarian.

Her favorite book is one that I hadn't heard about until now: "Walk Two Moons" by Sharon Creech. In this story, the 13 year old protagonist, Salamanca (Sal) Hiddle, goes on a cross-country road-trip to visit her mother. There are themes of coming to term with loss and building new relationships. It makes me wonder if, at some point in development, the show-runners might have been interested in giving Jackie a tragic loss similar loss to Sal. I haven't seen the later seasons where they bring in the kid's families, but I don't believe they have gone that route so far.

For her favorite music, we get two bands: Destiny's Child and NSYNC. These are very much a product of the time. Destiny's Child actually disbanded in 2006, as the members went off to do solo work. NSYNC disbanded in 2002, and then reunited in 2023. Well, we know that Jackie loves her R&B and Pop music, so I'm sure she found other bands to follow since then.

Her favorite movie is Shrek, which only came out in 2001. Matt and Inez have definitely sent her all the memes that have come out about that movie since then. Her pet peeves are bugs and anything messy. Yeah, that still tracks. She has a "Wheaton Terrier" named Brandy. I don't know if the spelling has changed over the years, or if they just made a spelling mistake in her bio, but I have only seen it spelled as "Wheaten".

Jackie also gets a bio from Nelvana, which is pretty cool. I've only been able to find surviving archives of bios for her and Matt. They have sections for Inez, Dr. Marbles, Motherboard, The Hacker, Buzz, and Delete. However, all of those are left empty in the surviving archives of the pages. I don't know if bios were completed for those other characters.

We get emphasis on the point of Jackie being organized. We also get more insight into how she solves problems. She uses diagrams, charts, and graphs among other things. She also touched on her tendency to use initials as shorthand for things. I remember the Blue Bunny Place (B.B.P) from "Of All The Luck". Was she hip in 2002? Is she still hip now? I'm not qualified to say.

We also get an introduction to Jackie through the official prequel web comic, "How It All Started: Episode 3". We see Jackie making her own skirt out of strips of fabric. I assume it is for cheer-leading.

Narration: Meanwhile, on Earth, three kids who don't know each other are about to have the adventure of their lives.

Jackie: I gotta organize this stuff

Narration: meet Jackie, who has her own sense of style...

Narration: And her own way of doing things!

Here's Jackie's Official Cyberchase Trading Card.

When they picked her favorite line as "Make room! I gotta pace!", they probably picked her most iconic line. She loves video games, piano, and foreign languages, which is great. We do get to see her play an unnamed videogame during Season 1 Episode 25 "A Battle of Equals". The hero "San Man" is trying to save the environment by stopping the villains that are trying to pollute it. One villain is called Johnny Grime. There are number riddles, and they are the same sort of riddles that the kids solve during the episode.

I don't think we ever see her playing piano or speaking a second language on the show. Quick question: What are those shoes that she wears? Inez has a pair or blue boots. Matt has a pair of red and white sneakers. Jackie's shoes are a little harder to place. They are purple, and they have considerable heels. Were these meant to be high-tops? I don't know that I've seen high-tops with heels in that size before.

The big thing that people remember Jackie for are her dramatic outbursts. And her most iconic one is probably from Season 3 Episode 4 "A Piece of the Action". You can tell that someone in the animation department had fun with this one.

Here's a transcript.

Jackie: Great! Now we'll never get into Hacker's control center. And if we can't get in there we can't stop Hacker. And if we can't stop Hacker, he'll erase Motherboard's memory with the magnetite! Cyberspace is doomed! Doomed I tell you! Doo-hoo-hoo-hoomed!

Matt: And the award for best dramatic outburst of today goes to Jackie!

Jackie: Matt!

What else can I say about Jackie. Well, she has an amazing tolerance for cold weather. Even in Arctic Cybersites, she still made do with the same short skirt.

Anyway, here's the prototype for Jackie. She had a completely different hairstyle and outfit. She was also called Julie. Again, I consider her current design an upgrade from the prototype.

And here's the Who's Who document on her.

We get more discussion on Jackie being a gymnast and artist. She loves Instant Messaging. I guess that would have been AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) at the time.

[troublerats]

Hey, I remember seeing your Flipside comic concepts on Reddit a few months ago. When I checked Reddit recently to see if there was anything new, I saw that the account you posted them on appeared to be deleted. I was really interested in following along the process. Is the comic still coming or has it been cancelled/on hiatus?

Okay so I’ve got this question a few times but I suppose it’s time I fully clarify what’s going on on Tumblr in a form I can repeatedly point to.

The comic IS still coming, but it is going through some major changes. For a variety of reasons, we have decided to de-fnaf the series and turn it into an original IP.

This is for a few emotional factors, like the abuse we’ve experienced and seen from the FNaF community and generally just hitting the point where we don’t want to deal with it when it comes to something we’ve put so much work and love in.

That and of course, the creative freedom and income we can get from making an original IP, that we already planned to work on for several years. We’re hoping to bring something new to the table

Though of course because of this, the comic is going through another phase of conceptualization. Which I will show off at the end of this thread.

-

As for why my Reddit account is gone, I deleted it since it had my old name, Treblebaps, and I could not change it so it caused to much pain. A bit of a warning here as I bring up transphobic harassment and being sent very triggering things.

As a bit of backstory, I was the first person to talk about Gwen Stacy being trans in ATSV, a post that was just meant for my friends and audience but absolutely blew the fuck up. Because of this I was harassed by transphobes for days, they sent me gore and cp, and terrorized my friends and went after my income by defacing it.

Their mass reporting resulted in me losing my account on Twitter, and ever since I just decided to rebrand because I couldn’t have the name “Treblebaps” as my @ on everything anymore. Maybe a bit dramatic, yes, but it bothered me nonetheless.

-

Going back to the Flipside, what you need to know is that the main story of Purpleside, now called Rubyside, has changed. But the story of Yellowside, now Goldenside, has all but stayed the same premise wise. I will now explain the premise of both stories to better explain the changes.

Rubyside

Edgar Adams-

the owner of a popular arcade, now slipping out of it’s golden age, accidentally murders his business partner, Oliver Walker, in a drunken spat. This act of violence, awakens a dormant entity, which begins to reach out to Edgar. Promising him various things and telling him secrets no living person knows.

Edgar follows its guidance and kills, experiments with living matter, and carves a gateway between this world and the world the entity came from, The Flipside. Held together by six arcade machines that encoded with both of their secrets.

After a pattern of tragedy Edgar disappears. Presumed dead, but continuing down his path as he repeatedly builds himself new identities, and faces, as he consumes an element known as Gold to try to keep his own face from falling off.

Following Edgar’s fall, Edgar’s two sons, discover a sliver of the secrets Edgar had kept from them. And while the younger Edgar Jr. goes down his own path,

the story from here primarily follows the older, David, as he hunts down all of the six arcade cabinets, which are now scattered in different locations across America with no signs to tell them apart.

However, his journey is made even harder on account that these arcade cabinets continually spawn twisted forms of life in many different horrific ways. Ranging from a mad race-car driving hairless cat that has split itself into endless fragmentations, a deep diving space game that causes people to drown in their sleep, a zombie shooter game that’s brought its main antagonist alive in a strange, eccentric, but annoyingly helpful way, and a boxing game that has strangely caused one of the animatronic animal characters in a pizzeria to spring to hungry life (as a little final nod to the original.)

Rubyside’s story follows David and several other characters amidst a story of living media, cults, body horror, and bloodshed.

As for Goldenside

The events of Rubyside never took place in this universe, Edgar never killed anybody, Finch never interfered. And many of the characters who died or became victims of the other worlds trauma, are able to happily live.

Namely Edgar Adams Jr. Or also known as Edwin, got to experience a vaguely normally childhood with his friends.

Edwin's friends being Lucy Smith

Eloise Baptiste

Tracy Walker

Teresa Chowdhury

Gabe Mitchel

Rodrick Woods

And Cody Fischer

These are our primary protagonists for Goldenside, and for the most part, they are happy.

However, consequences from Rubyside begin to leak through into this "good timeline" and bringing echos of events and creatures from the bloodier timeline into this one. On account of the Flipside being one dimension, while the worlds that exist, are many.

This is a constant threat the main characters face as they struggle to preserve their little slice of life lives, and live through events in one time, out of their control.

Though there are entities, that have other plans, that work tirelessly to mold this story into their own vision.

But mostly, Goldenside functions as a less dire reprieve from Rubysides often pessimistic and grim tone. It's more of a villain of the week, though doesn't shy away from drama.

-

Overall, that's the rundown of what has been going on with the Flipside thus far. And how Rubyside differs from it's original retelling of the FNaF story.

There is a lot I can't say here, and a lot I am unable to show since there is a lot of concept art I am still having to work on, equally so a lot of stuff Riddles has yet to write. But I hope nonetheless this will still be something people are excited to follow.

[askaceattorney]

Dear Lemmy-kooopa-rocks,

Chief Mod Edgeworth: Computers have been able to connect to the human brain and do so all the time in hospitals to read brain waves. What are you talking about?

I... guess you don't know? Alright, I guess since I am the daughter of a certified nurse... So, when you are in ICU, you are placed in a hospital bed where they connect you to wires to read your heart rate, your fluids, your breathing and your brain waves. This is how they're able to know if your brain is functioning properly or not. Even now, there are at-home sleep masks for those with sleeping disorders that record your brain waves while you sleep.

So yes, it does make sense for widget to know what Athena is thinking without concluding that she's a robot. Also, in case you try to use the, "widget is around her neck, not anywhere near her brain." Widget is connected to her earrings, which are located right next to her Temporal Lobe, which is the part of the brain where your emotions, visual processing, memories, hearing, speech and behavior is processed.

Dear Charicla,

Chief Mod Edgeworth: I don't know. I guess Dark Age. That'd be a cool name.

Co-Mod: Hmm...

Ace Attorney: Face of Justice?

...Sorry, not at my most creative right now.

(Referenced Letter)

Chief Mod Edgeworth:

You remember Olga Orly? Originally, Kristoph was going to pin the blame on her before Phoenix mentioned another possible person that was revealed to be Kristoph. Just as the bloody Ace was used to make Kristoph the guilty person, it could also be used to make Olga the guilty person for similar reasons.

Dear Anonymous,

Chief Mod Edgeworth: I'm guessing you're meaning to respond to this?

I'd hardly call something that I literally just explained in my answer to Dawsongfg's letter in two sentences: "mental gymnastics." It's a headcanon and there is nothing wrong with having a headcanon.

What I find to require mental gymnastics is how you came to the conclusion that THIS expression titled "serious" in the gif was a sad expression...

when Trucy has these two, one titled "worried" and the other "sad."

Just my opinion, but I'd hardly call an expression meant to be serious "sad." Trucy is no Edgeworth.

(Referenced Letter)

Dear Dawsongfg,

Chief Mod Edgeworth: Alright then, if Dick means Detective and Gumshoe means detective, then this is Detective

and this is Detective.

Therefore, Robin has gum on his shoe. What?

Dear Anonymous,

Chief Mod Edgeworth: When I say "show the link" I mean the full url not hyperlinks. Hyperlinks don't always work.

Dear Dawsongfg,

Chief Mod Edgeworth: From what I researched, he was the script supervisor for the anime, but that was it. He was not in control or responsible for what became of the anime. That also doesn't make the anime good. JK Rowling directed Fantastic Beasts and that bombed.

Even so, it is expected that an anime adaptation of anything will involve the original creator in some form because of Japan's laws protecting creators. America doesn't have this, which is why many anime/manga adaptations often bomb harder if made here.

Dear Dawsongfg,

Chief Mod Edgeworth: We'd consider it, but even now, you haven't proven to be able to write letters closely in character. We have hundreds of others who write letters as other AA characters that are more in character than yours has been.

Co-Mod: Yeah, I'm gonna have to take a pass on this one.

(Referenced Letter)

Dear Dawsongfg,

Chief Mod Edgeworth: I know you don't do that anymore.

Though, that post was not made because of your shenanigans. You did spam a bunch of letters like crazy, but I had been intending on updating the letter rule for a while and I wasn't Head Mod at the time. At the time, there was no clear limitation on how many letters we were allowed to post and I decided to give a limitation. It was to the point some of the letters I wrote were getting deleted, because there was no clear limit.

Dear Kunaiman,

Chief Mod Edgeworth:

Actually, Tumblr has found a way for me to block letters sent anonymously and now no one is allowed to send letters without an account. So, the troll sending the Hotti letters is gone.

Now, that Tumblr has given us a way to block any anonymous letters, do not and I mean DO NOT break the rules or send discomforting letters. WE HAVE MINORS AS MODS HERE!! If you're going to write any Hotti letter, make sure it's tame enough for a minor to answer. Thank you.

-The Mods

[asoaf]

What I think Belos is going to do in the Boiling Isles (Small theory)

This post contains images of the deleted scene from the "Hunting Palismen" OST (Full theory under the cut)

In "Thanks to Them" we can see through various scenes that Belos has been practicing how to posses a body. From animal bodies (which could not endure the whole "process" and died) to Hunter (who did die for a moment, after Belos left his body).

But, let´s go back to season 1, specifically episode 18 "Agony of a Witch" when Lilith goes to the throne room.

Remember this?

This gigantic heart is right in the middle of the place and beating, we can see several tubes connected to it and expanded all over the castle

We all thought that this heart would be relevant at some point in the story but I think a lot of people have forgotten about it (and I don´t blame them, there has been a lot going on the show and "The Owl House" doesn't show things like this just because).

When the OST for "Hunting Palismen" was originally uploaded to youtube it had a very interesting scene on it.

At the moment this clip fuled a lot of theories for the Day of Unity, but then S2B happened and they were discarded.

What does this have to do with Belos possessing other beings?

Originally Belos probably had other use for the heart BUT now he just wants to get rid of the entirety of the Boiling Isles. One way or another.

We don't know the state of the Boiling Isles for the moment, but lets say that The Collector left the heart untouched, Belos might try to posses the Titan to fulfill his "noble mission" and end with all demons and witches once and for all while somehow getting to the Human Realm.

Maybe this is the scenario for the final fight, Belos in this monstrous form against all witches and, maybe, humans that he was trying to "protect from evil". I'm expecting to see some tanks and fighters in the finale (like in Amphibia).

[lovelypurplefox]

I need a break. [please don’t reblog].

TLDR: The Walking Wake Tera Raid had me frustrated and angry (it’s why I rarely play video games) that I’m keeping away from it and social media (because one I might feel jealous if I see someone with it and two seeing other fanartists online last night had made me depressed and sad that I’m keeping away from fanart to focus more on original art and voiceovers stuff). I’ll be active on Friday just to post gifs on the next PKMN episode if I can. For now, college and other stuff that makes me happy.

Sigh…. this is why I rarely play video games. I’m try not to vent on this blog.. but I have to just to release my frustration.

Earlier, I was excited to do the legendary raid battle (Walking Wake) that Pokémon Presents had announced. I almost had him… but the timer was up. He was on low… red health. I kept trying with my Gardevoir (holding a clear amulet to prevent my attack from being lowered), using clear mind or double team and then thunderbolt… but he just kept spamming that hydro steam move. It made me boiling angry. And then the shields. I almost had him… three times.

I wish I had friends to play with but sadly, I don’t have Nintendo Switch Online and I refuse to pay for it. I guess the internet was right on 5-star raids being difficult on solo. I’m trying to get my Gardevoir on lv. 100… but still. The NPC’s Pokémon kept fainting. The long painful animations, getting burned, the text… are time wasters (I even turned off my Switch and the clock was still running when the raid started). No wonder I’m hearing some people saying that the Tera Raids aren’t great. In Sw/Sh, I remember getting angry at a G-Max Duraldon raid, but luckily caught him (I used to have a video of me beating him on my channel but I deleted it cause of copyright claim on a song I was using and I was mostly talking over it; I’m not reuploading it and I didn’t want to mute the song). That moment made me avoid raid battles in that game and this Walking Wake fight makes me want to avoid tera raids. I wanted to participate in the Greninja one, but because I was behind in the game, I missed it + I knew it would be so tough due to it being a 7-star. I almost was gonna ruin my controller.

My dad heard me shouting madly and we had a talk. I kept telling myself to calm down and take a break but I really wanted to defeat Walking Wake and catch him before March 12th. I know that I have enough time. That Hydro Steam move is gonna haunt me. I’m still a bit shaky. If I go online and check my timeline (especially Twitter), I’m gonna see someone who had caught the mon and I will feel jealous. I’m taking a break and I have plans on returning but I have some college work to do. Also… I would draw the new mons and post them on my sideblog wimbearn, but… I feel like stepping away from fanart. Why? Last night, I was looking at some Digimon stuff and I saw some talented fanartists and read commets of other people appreciating their art and getting commissioned. It made me jealous, sad, and depressed. I was almost about to tear up because as a small artist myself, it’s hard for me to get commissions (put them out there) and to share my talented art with others; I have done 7 last year. I put away my phone, and went to bed. I rather focus on my own original art and characters (if you saw on my sideblog, I shared a Wordpress blog post on my 100% original comic completion).

The reason why I rarely play video games is because I feel anger… and I try not to. It depends on the game. If it’s Animal Crossing, I’m fine. But RPGs like Pokémon or platformers, no. I have seen videos of streamers get mad at video games and I had laughed at them (I used to watch popular Youtubers and stuff like Twitch streamers but I’ve stepped away from it)… but I don’t want to feel like them and I don’t want to be that type of person. I remember getting mad at at a Super Monkey Ball game on the Wii as a kid and my mom punished me. I’m trying to be a positive person, trying to change.

I’m sorry, guys. I feel like stepping away from Pokémon… and maybe social media. I can’t get into hype anymore. I can’t even get into big fandoms that much. I can’t even make more fanart cause I’m losing motivation. It’s hard. I’m almost gonna be in the voiceover community, and maybe I’ll do some dubs and stuff to make myself feel better, but for now: I need a break.

I hope you understand. I’m gonna do the tera raid thing one more time and I’ll take breaks when I need it, but I’m gonna mostly step away from it. I can’t do this. If I succeed, then I’m done with Pokémon Scarlet (although I need to catch the 4 legendaries and the second Koraidon). I’ll do something that will make me happy. Maybe I’ll focus on more of my own original art (some I will share on my sideblog as long as it’s not my important OCs from my own comic) and do more voice acting.

Friday, I’ll be posting gifs of the next Pokémon episode on this blog if I can. I need a break from social media, from the hype, and from the fandoms that I love. Hype on something I love causes me to frequently talk about it (like today’s PKMN Presents) and has my adrenaline pumping, but I’m trying to control it and stay away from it; I know that it’s not a race to be the first person to talk about something. Also, yesterday, I made a post typing out thoughts and stuff on my Wordpress blog: wimbearn.wordpress.com

[northern-passage]

so i thought i lost these pictures to time (locked myself out of my old laptop, purged my art instagram, deleted them all off the blog) BUT i found the old character lineup i did !! i forgot i had an art folder on my phone for my old art insta. i don’t know how many people remember the original art i did back in 2020, but i tend to delete a lot of the older art off the blog because i really don’t like my old art and i get self-conscious about it... but it also means i lose a lot of art.

i’m not sure if i ever did post the full lineup, if i remember correctly this version of merry was actually gender-selectable so i drew her pretty “ambiguous” and i don’t know if i ever ended up sharing her and noel. i think it’s pretty funny/interesting to see the changes both in the designs (i didn’t know how to draw or design clothes back then) and also the change in my art in just about 2 years.

first things first: no i do not know why merry is so fucking stanced. i do actually still like her design (those thigh high boots....), her & clementine’s are the two i still actually think look good here. i really like the bandana completely covering her head and i like the cowries in merry’s hair, though i think it’s funny i drew them in her hair and not noel’s when i’ve always had that as a part of noel’s character description (i still didn’t draw them in the most recent one because i forgot lol)

i do still like lea’s alchemy belt and the little bottle hanging off their other belt, too. i just wish i could remember what i was thinking with their pants. at least they’re not purple..... and they don’t even have their hooves yet :/ i remember drawing them with their hair down a lot because i couldn’t figure out how to draw a bun lmfao. rip to their eyebrow slit (but at least we have their beauty marks now... a fair trade i think)

noel’s design is the weakest in my opinion and i remember struggling the most with xem, too. not really sure what i was going for.... still have xir white boots tho 👼 and i do like xem with the longer locs in a ponytail. i cringe that i didn’t properly color his palms, i’m assuming i didn’t since i just did flat colors on all of them but i definitely still should have colored xir palms. and most obviously here is that noel started out pretty small. i think i drew this and almost immediately wanted to change his design (there are a few older pieces from this time where i Did try to make xem bigger) but i didn’t have a lot of practice drawing different body types. i’m glad that’s one thing i’ve definitely improved on since then.

it’s nice to have this to compare to the newer art and actually be able to see how much i’ve improved, and also the evolution of everyone. i remember i tried to make bases with the original lineup and i messed up every single one and couldnt use any of them again lmfao and this time i have successful bases for everyone so i can play dress up doll hehe

i also think everyone looks way warmer now and like they wouldn’t freeze their asses off in blackwater...

i also clearly went back to a more illustrative style - back in 2020 i was looking at a lot of animation and drawing my characters in that way, with flat colors and not really rendering anything, and now i’ve started moving back into a more painterly style. anyways. pretty cool! also i just realized i even coincidentally lined them up in the same order 🥺

[kriimhild]

Im asking as anonymous because im have social angsiety and this is the only way i feel i can remotly do it i have debated around a month of how to just go about talking about this and today i tryed to join the security breach show server on discord and imiditly left cause of how scared i got i havent posted my own stuff on my blog bevause im scared and just wanted to know....how the heck do you do it how the heck do you have the courage to do what you do? Heck im trying to write i fan fiction only to scrap it like once every two days....

It's something that artists have to learn (if they want to). In order for people to remember you, they have to know you. And the easiest way to do that is to publish. I see a lot of people afraid to publish, and mostly because they're afraid of disappointment. The negative feedback they might get. All I can always say is think about what could happen. I've never written next to my drawings that I am in a developing phase, because I'll always be in a developing phase. Even now. But if you feel safer that way, Feel free to make a fine print stating that you are a beginner. But never write something like "I know I'm suck. Don't look at it, I'm so terrible." If someone still says it sucks, give a big, thicc shit. As long as they can articulate what they don't like about our art, we should be happy with that, because it smells like a constructive criticism, which is very important in development. And if all you get is "lol you suck, your art's suck!" kind of message, then…well…what do you do with that? Delete the hell out of it and ignore. Someone's not paying attention to what their kid's doing again. At the first hand, you work for your own entertainment. There'll be people who love you and protect from any bully. You know, one of the hardest things about being an artist is learning to hold up your middle finger when you need to. I'll tell you smth. My partner's one of the most serious critics I know. He looked at my recent animation and said it had little to do with the lyrics. Ngl, I felt like shit. It wasn't the art the main problem, but the fact that I can't English properly and I'm listening to the rhythm, because I'm an instrumental person. For almost two weeks I've been trying to figure out how the two are related. If it doesn't work out, I'll just do it the way I originally planned. The audience will decide if they like it. If not, I'll think about my next clips. Do whatever you want, it's your imagination, your hand, your pen.

(I found this on Twitter, and I love it) We try to keep the server safe and clean, and the whole staff puts a lot of work into making sure that everyone's comfortable and has a good time in the community. It's not easy, because every day more people join and it's harder and harder to keep an eye on everything. Nevertheless, we're trying. If someone behaves rudely, we'll look at them with an angry-mom looking. I think the server is a safe place for a young, fresh newcomer to get to know people. We can't look after artists one by one, but we try to give out support and advice as much as we can. I don't know how much this message has helped, but I hope that I've encouraged you to share whatever you have with the world.

[flightless-rising]

Made a new Flight Rising iceberg and also wrote an explanation.. man, this took way longer than it should have.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy :D

Iceberg explanation

( If there are any mistakes please let me know and I’ll edit this asap. Also, English isn't my first language so please forgive me for any grammatical errors)

EDIT 28/06: Added some new info! Thanks to everyone who tagged and responded with new stuff to add, I really appreciate it!

The Sky

Naomi

Back in the day, whenever you bought or sold something on the auction house a message would show up in your inbox confirming the transaction. These messages were sent by one of the dragon couriers: Pearl, Spitfire or Edgar.

On January 2016, a strange glitch occurred that replaced the images and names of couriers with the ones of a female fae named “Naomi”.

It goes deeper than that, though: if you looked up her name in the user search menu, a clan would pop up with over 15 million dragons.

It was quickly discovered that all exalted dragons had somehow become part of her clan. Naomi herself apparently didn’t exist, and clicking on her page redirected to an error page. This was later fixed and the original Naomi page can be now visited.

What exactly caused this glitch is still a mystery and today Naomi is still a well-known piece of Flight Rising history.

Missing Tidelord

In the official lore, the deity of the water flight disappeared in early 2018, as described in the short story “Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow”.

In the follow up story (Mixed Elements) posted in April of the next year it is confirmed that the Tidelord is still missing, but alive. This coincides with the fact that the Tidelord account hasn’t made any forum posts aside from festival announcements.

Emperors

Emperors are a type of unobtainable dragon that are formed when several Imperial corpses are left in close proximity to each other, which then fuse forming a multi-headed chimera.

Emperors are described in the lore as having an animal-like behavior and destroying everything in sight. They are extremely difficult to kill, which is the reason why in-universe Imperials have such strange burial rites.

An emperor named Luminax is first described in the Raising a Family short story, and their sprite can be seen walking around on the world map.

The Surface

Old color wheel

Originally, there were only 67 available colors for dragons. On June 8th 2016, 110 more colors were added, meaning that currently there are a total of 177 colors available.

When making a custom progenitor dragon, it is only possible to choose among the 67 original colors because it would be otherwise unfair for those who made their account before the new colors were added.

Imperial breed scrolls

Imperial breed change scrolls are one of, if not the most, rare type of item on the site. They were given only to those who pledged 30 dollars or more on the original Flight Rising kickstarter.

At the time, this was the only way of obtaining an Imperial dragon, which meant that the breed as a whole was pretty valuable. Now that Imperials are abundant this is no longer the case, but First generation Imperials are still extremely sought and probably the most expensive type of dragon on the site.

There were also other items that were only given to Kickstarted backers, namely Skycats, Bonefiend, Golden Idol and Cogfrog familiars, and those are also pretty much impossible to obtain.

Baldwin breed change

When Baldwin was introduced in 2015 he was originally a Pearlcatcher. On September 14th of 2016 however his site art started to gradually change, until his transformation was completed five days later.

In-universe, Baldwin started to change after a lightning strike hit his cauldron during an experiment, which made him slowly mutate into the breed we now know as Bogsneaks.

Trans Fiona

When Fiona was added as a trading post dragon people speculated that she was trans, because the female pose for Skydancers only displays two antennae, while the male one has four.

Since Fiona has four antennae in her site art, many wondered whether it was an oversight or actually intended. Aequorin later confirmed in a forum thread that Fiona is indeed trans.

Boolean

Speaking of rare items, the Boolean familiar was only given to a handful of Flight rising beta testers and as such is extremely rare and valuable.

Plaguebringer coli team

On the Plaguebringer’s page she is listed as being part of a coliseum team.

As of now we have no clue as to why this is, and even more strangely she is the only deity that does this.

Boston & Hope

This story is a bit complicated. I’ve scoured the forums in search of info but it seems like there are still some pieces missing. I’ll try my best to explain anyway.

So, for a long while the Lightweaver was the only deity that had other dragons aside from herself in her lair: these dragons were a Spiral named Boston and a Tundra named Hope. Strangely, they were both Earth dragons and apparently have been there since the beginning (?). When asked why (this happened back when deities would interact on the forums) the Lightweaver responded that they were having a dinner party together.

In August 2014 during a pretty heated dominance battle between Shadow and Light Boston and Hope disappeared from the Lightweaver’s lair.

The Shadowbinder now had them, and both their elements were alsochanged to Shadow. The two deities acknowledged this and changed their broadcast messages accordingly.

If I had to guess this was some kind of inside joke that the admins had, although some people got angry that the Shadowbinder now had both Hope and Boston. Some time later(?) Boston was returned to the Lightweaver and for some reason his element was changed to wind.

I don’t have any more info on the matter but if some of you do I would appreciate it if you tell me.

Shallow Waters

Eyepocalypse

On June 8th 2018 eye type variants were introduced. This update was pretty controversial for a bunch of reasons, and the topic is still discussed today. The majority of people(?) seemed to be upset by the fact the “best” eye types (primarily goat, primal and multi-gaze) could only be displayed on dragons that were born with them, and the fact that every dragon born prior to the update couldn’t have these eye types at all displeased a lot of users.

Another problem was the fact that most of the non-special eye types (i.e the only ones that could be applied to already existing dragons using a vial of Scattersight) were not clearly visible on the grand majority of adult dragons.

A smaller(?) complaint was that two of the primal eye types, Shadow and Plague, were seen as kind of disturbing by some people.

Three years later staff attempted to fix this issue by adding Eye type vials for every available eye type. This resulted in a market crash for special eye typed dragons, as now these eye types could be applied to any dragon. The value of Scattersights also tanked, and the people bought them and hadn’t used them yet lost money as now they were infinitely less useful.

EDIT 28/06: Goat isn’t actually obtainable via breeding, faceted is. Bad mistake on my part.

Also, Scattersights were given away freely by Galore on Flight Rising’s fifth anniversary in 2018 and could not be bought afterwards. I admit that I thought people could be able to buy Scattersights due to how upset people were that the value went down, but whatever.

Courier Breed

The courier dragons (Edgar, Spitfire, and Pearl) are part of an exclusive dragon breed that is currently unobtainable. Even though their eye color still reflects the flight they were born in, in-universe they are considered to be “neutral” and they are granted free access to all domains. This raises the question as to which deity created them, as every other dragon breed (Bogsneaks being the only exception) has been created by one of The Eleven.

Multiaccounting

According to the site’s terms of service, no one is allowed to have more than one account. This is pretty standard for pet sites, as having multiple accounts grants unfair advantages and can mess up the site economy. This doesn’t completely stop people for having more than one account, and the practice as a whole is called “Multiaccounting” or “having multis”.

Some people only do this to have multiple clans or reboot their account without deleting their old one. They mostly do no harm but it is reasonable that the site wouldn’t allow this because of how easy it is exploit.

The real harm of multis comes from a practice called “funneling” which is when someone creates multiple accounts only for the purpose of giving items to their main account. This practice violates the game’s rules and can result in a ban. Funneling is not limited to multiaccounting though, and having an account only to feed another is against the site’s rules whether or not the account in question belongs to another person or not.

Some people fear of being banned for multiaccounting even if they haven’t done so, especially if they share a computer with other people.

Purble

“he purble” is probably among the most famous Flight Rising memes.

In 2016(?) a rant was submitted to the original Dramarising blog by a very angry user that wanted to buy an XXX Purple Ridgeback back when triples were pretty expensive, but got beat by someone else.

I’m not going to copy paste it here because in my opinion it’s one of the funniest Flight Rising related posts ever and I don’t want to spoil the experience of reading it for the first time. You can find it pretty easily by searching it up.

Tert Picking

This is something that refaced recently, even though I’ve seen people talking about this for a while. Some people vividly remember being able to pick their custom progenitor’s tertiary color, even though the developers have made it clear that such thing would be impossible. This is without a doubt just one of those weird situations where a lot of people somehow remember the same thing wrong.

Still, it’s fascinating just how many people claim to remember doing picking their tert.

Swiftwings

Swiftwings were a dragon breed that was scrapped in development. The design was rejected because it didn’t fit the 2 arms 2 legs 2 wings format that every dragon design had to follow before the introduction of ancient breeds.

The reason for this rule is that otherwise it would mess up apparel placement. Although the concept was scrapped, echoes of the design were scattered throughout the site: for example, the empty dragon slots that were present prior to 2019 had the silhouette of a Swiftwings dragon. They are also mentioned in the April Fool’s update of 2018.

“Real” Lore dragons

Most people don’t know that some of the dragons featured on the lore stories are actually real, and you can visit their pages. This is the case for Tetra, Cracklinne, Velya, Liefa, Garote and Mirth, which are currently chilling in Aequorin’s lair.

All of the other dragons in the developers’ lairs are not canon and are used to test bugs and features on the site.

The Middle ground

True deity names

When the site first started the deities used to have actual names instead of titles. Some of these names were based off of the site founders’s usernames on other sites.

The names are the following:

Amogayvhi - Gladekeeper Xhaztol - Arcanist Rhenik - Tidelord Akiri - Flamecaller Thrage - Stormcatcher Undel - Shadowbinder Jhortanas - Plaguebringer Ghurab - Windsinger Artaios - Earthshaker Rhiow – Lightweaver

As you can tell, Xhaztol, Akiri, Thrage and Undel are the usernames of some of the admins of the site, and the flight they are a part of corresponds with the previous name of their deity.

No leg coatls

On January 16, 2015 an iconic thread was posted in the flight rising discussion forum, which displayed a photoshopped image of a coatl with its legs removed. Quickly the thread devolved into a general photoshop thread were people took official site art of dragons and modified it.

The thread was eventually locked due to spam and quote pyramids, but spiritual successors of the original “phoatlshop” thread still exist today.

Dress slot unlocking

A thing that a surprising amount of people don’t know is the fact that when buy an additional apparel slot, the slot opens for every dragon in your lair and not just the one you bought it on.

This is something I also discovered very recently and it’s kind of funny that so many people that have been on the site for very long don’t know this.

Clanbound scatterscrolls

I think the wiki explains it best, so I’ll just copy paste this here:

“Tri-Color Scatterscrolls suffered from an issue where they would only scatter a random range from colors 1-47 (white through sunshine) rather than 1-67 (white through rose). They have been fixed and are now functioning correctly with a random range within the 67 color set. The affected timeframe was from August 15th, 2013 until September 22nd, 2013. The admins allowed users who were unsatisfied with their bugged Tri-Color Scatterscrolls to receive the same amount of them back in the form of Clanbound Scatterscrolls to try scattering their own dragons again with the full color range.”

Beta Mirrors

Ever wondered why they’re called Mirrors?

According to Undel, the main artist of Flight Rising, mirrors originally were supposed to have every part of their body “mirrored”, meaning they had two sets of eyes, two pairs of wings, two tails, and so on.

This design ended up being too cluttered and looked weird shrunken down. The name was kept the same, even though the only mirrored part of the design are the eyes.

Dragons are evil

If you read the “Beastclans on the rise” lore bit, the dragons come across as… very evil, stealing territory from the beastclans when they have been living on Sornieth way longer than the dragons have and killing them for loot.

Furthermore, in the Bounty of the Elements lore bit the Beastclan rebellion guided by Talona is seen by the dragons as unreasonable and wrong even when in canon Beastclans are framed as the innocent party.

The Depths

Scroll of Divorce

In the alpha stage dragons were supposed to be monogamous and could only breed with the dragon they were “paired” with. To break their bond you had to use an item called “Scroll of Divorce” which even featured broken marriage rings in the art.

If I had to guess, this item and the concept as a whole were scrapped because the idea of dragons having “weddings” and needing to divorce before breeding with another dragon felt kind of weird, especially in a game targeted towards teens.

First Festival

The first Holiday festival in Flight rising history was the 2013 Brightshine Jubilee. The items that were available for this festival only are incredibly rare, particularily the Light Sprite which is one of the most valuable items on the site. Apart from that and the fact that the skincent contest only had 6 winners, not much is notable about it.

Offsite drama

Flight Rising has had its fair share of drama both on and off site, but due to the fact that it’s against the site’s rule to discuss user drama on the forums most of the notable drama happened off site (mainly tumblr).

Egg rot

Egg rot was a very early mechanic that was pretty quickly removed from the site. If you forgot to incubate your eggs, they would “rot” and no longer hatch.

It’s the reason why in the nesting grounds the text reads “Eggs healthy” and also the reason why on the stats section of the Account settings it says “Eggs discarded”. The mechanic was removed because it heavily punished casual players and the frequent downtimes of the site meant that even if someone logged in every day they could still have their eggs die.

Also, the images of egg rot look extremely cursed.

Pablo

From what I could gather, Pablo is a dragon which became somewhat popular after user “Desmondtiny” wrote a very long and detailed backstory of them being the Arcanist’s lost boyfriend.

I’m pretty sure it gues deeper than that but I couldn’t find any further information. As usual, if you know something more let me know.

Latest News

On November 12, 2014, a glitch(?) occurred that let anyone post in the Announcements thread. Anything that was posted went directly to the front page, which resulted in quite a bit of chaos.

This was fixed only half an hour later, but the screenshots people have from that time are extremely funny.

Lameforger

On the 2014 Flameforger’s festival announcement Undel accidentally misspelled “Flameforger” as “Lameforger”, which prompted the official account of the Flamecaller to respond aggressively. Lameforger is still jokingly used by users, even after the typo was fixed.

Festival of one (1)

On the first day of the 2014 Greenskeeper Gathering a glitch occurred which switched the site banner for the Starfall celebration banner instead of the Greenskeeper one.

It didn’t end there, in the coliseum Magical shards dropped instead of Bladed Flatleaves, even though skin chests dropped as normal(?).

The weirdest thing about it all was Joxar’s Space inventory, which didn’t display any items at all and had glitched dialogue.

The event was nicknamed by the fanbase “Festival of 1” and even the deity’s official accounts acknowledged the incident.

Vape Juice

As far as I know the original forum thread as been lost, but the vape juice fiasco will always remain cemented in Flight Rising History.

A company called Vape Daugz was making vape juice with Flight Rising dragons plastered on their packaging, completely violating the site’s policy.

The company’s site still exists, and browsing through their products I found that the products that previously had Flight Rising dragons on them still exist, but now feature completely different packaging.

I have no idea whether they changed the packaging spontaneously or staff did something about it.

I think there’s a potentially interesting story buried down there, but we’ll likely never the truth behind the Flight Rising vape juice.

The Abyss

Humans

There’s been some speculation over the years as to whether or not humans are canon in the Flight Rising universe. Some people believe that the “Mages” of the second age in the official lore are actually humans, but we can’t be sure because they are depicted with long robes that cover their whole bodies.

The idea of humans existing in canon has spawned a couple of memes, most infamously Thomas.

Plague healers

Again, I think the wiki explains this one better:

“According to Aequorin, Plague healers are an interesting bunch because rather than administer treatments that counter illness, they use a mixture of magic and contagion that stress the affected dragon further, allowing them to reach a stronger, healed, and resistant state faster than other elements. Plague healers will treat physical injuries with sutures, bandages, and braces, but they won't clean the wounds or apply ointments."

Akitla

As described in the original thread, Akitla was a dragon that user “qunii” saw on the front page, but noticed that she wasn’t accompanied by the username of the person owning them.

After clicking on her, an error page loaded. It was discovered that putting her color combination or ID in the search bar would result in an error page. This was later fixed, and both Akitla and her mate were now displayed as being exalted to the Arcanist. T

here are some theories as to what happened to the Akitla’s user, some think that she belonged to a deleted account, others that it was the result of an incomplete account creation.

As with a lot of things on this iceberg, it will likely remain a mystery forever.

Arcane sprite book

“what is the arcane sprite reading??” is probably one of the oldest still active threads on the forums.

On September 25, 2013 user “Kaadashi” started a joke thread were they wondered what exactly is the arcane sprite reading, and playfully suggested that it could be erotic fanfiction. People went crazy of course, and started to wonder what kind of juicy secrets were hidden within the pages of that book.

I don’t want to say too much because I really don’t want to spoil the experience of reading through this very cursed tread.

Sunshine

Sunshine is one of the most… interesting lairs on the site, and certainly one of the most well-known.

They(?) have a lair (almost) completely full of triple basic sunshine dragons, most of which are Tundras. So far they have collected about 320 triple hundred Sunshine dragons, almost all of which are also named “Sunshine”. They’re not all the same, some of them have apparel, some of them are gened and some have unique art and descriptions.

They’re dedicated and I respect that.

EDIT 28/06: Apparently some people seem to think that the sunshine-dedicated lair is based on a meme concerning the announcement of the color wheel expansion, which became so discussed that the itself site broke. The two things are unrelated however, as the Sunshine lair has been around for much longer.

The announcement of the color wheel expansion was cryptic, with only a few post showing off differently colored coatls and then 3 pages of reserved posts, with no explanation whatsoever.

Simple Farmer

Another very famous thread is the “I am but a simple farmer” thread started by user “someKindOfGenius”. It’s not really about anything specific, it’s just a rather silly thread were people photoshop flight rising dragons onto various crops.

Still, this thread is iconic so I had to include it.

Dragon Deaths

Way back in 2014 former flight rising programmer Thrage revealed on a forum thread that way back before the beta, dragons could actually starve to death if left unfed.

Yep.

Obviously they had to remove this mechanic because it would have been extremely harsh to casual players and make people frustrated with the game.

Zalvador

User “manojalpa” became fairly well-known for the extremely dark lore they(?) had written for their Clan, it was so dark in fact that every single one of their dragon’s bios had to moved to their tumblr where they couldn’t be easily seen by the site’s mainly underage usebase.

Their lore centered around their progen dragon, a tundra named Zalvador, which behaved and had the same powers as a flight rising user: buying dragons off of the action house, having “breeding projects”, exalting dragons, etc.

These things seem pretty normal when done by a player, but when taking them as actual real things that happen in universe… yeah, it was way too morbid for the site.

The Pit

Black linen neck wraps

For some weird reason, the apparel piece “Black linen neck wrap” when put on a male pose Coatl wraps around the dragon’s throat instead of it’s neck. It’s kind of subtle and hard to see, but if you compare it with the female pose the difference is clear. This is probably just an art error, although it’s weird that it hasn’t been fixed yet, since linen wraps are a very old piece of apparel.

Another weird thing about linen wraps in general is that the wing wraps just sort of… go through the membrane? This is not possible. These dragons are in pain.

Icewarden ears

Another very remarkably popular thread is the Icewarden ears thread.

In 2014 user “Llanai” simply makes note of the fact that the Icewarden has teeny tiny ears.

As we have come to expect from these threads, it quickly devolved into nonsense.

Forbidden Snapper lore

Snappers used to have a way different lore section that was changed because it deemed too similar to the lore of another petsite.

This is what the original section read:

"Snapper dragons do not sleep, but exist in a constant state of reverie. They receive and catalogue all experiences and stories told within their dreams. This persistent state of awakened dreaming awards them the longest memory of any dragon species. They are living encyclopedias, and any dragon who is seeking difficult-to-obtain information will have the most luck unearthing it from a Snapper clan - provided they have the patience for it. If you want two dozen quick answers, talk to a spiral. If you want a fully developed answer, camp out around a Snapper. These dreamers move at their own pace, which varies from dragon to dragon. For some, the awakened dream can prove to be more interesting than their surroundings. This leads to a focus upon the dream, and the waking world as filtered background noise. Interacting with these sleepwalkers can be a trying and repetitive task. Other Snappers may be fairly lucid, with a focus upon their surroundings and the constant hum of the dream pushed aside."

Bee movie script

I’ve seen this story around the forums a few times but I’ve never been able to learn the details.

From what I’ve heard someone copy pasted the entire bee movie script into their clan bio in a drop down text format, which completely broke the page for anyone who visited it. This was fixed, apparently, although I have no clue as to who this user is.

EDIT 28/06: Zeus

Zeus is an XXX gold g1 permababy imperial that used to belong to user "happywing".

Their account is now locked because Zeus was created with the use of a duplication glitch on an imperial breed change scroll, which is obviously not allowed (although I've heard some people say that the dragon was hacked in altogether). Before the account was locked, people speculated that Zeus was the most valuable dragon on the site, because an XXX g1 imperial is impossibly rare.

Wegg shaming

On July 2017 user “Dreamnorn” made a thread were they(?) claimed to have a dream where everything was the same except people used the term “wegged” when two dragons would lay only one egg in a nest.

Ex. Aw man! I’ve been wegged again! = Aw man! I bred two dragons and they only had one egg!

The dream ended up being prophetic, as the term catched on and people started to use it unironically.

The practice of “Wegg shaming” I think refers to the trend of people posting pictures of the dragons that “wegged” them in order to “shame” them.

Plague nest skull

The site art of the plague nest features an unique dragon skull that doesn’t match with any currently existing dragon breed or creature: It appears to have two sets of eyes, like a mirror, but also long and curled horns.

It’s probably just for decoration and it likely doesn’t have any significance whatsoever, but personally I believe it would be pretty cool if when they eventually release plague ancient it at least somewhat resembled this skull.

EDIT 28/06: On second thought, the skull doesn’t seem to have two pairs of eyes, It just has the generic shape of a carnivore.

Rock bottom

CAPTAINPLANET

…this is CAPTAINPLANET. Somehow, user “Decres”' managed to overlay a Fae skin on top of a Tundra, creating this horrifyingly fascinating abomination.

I have no idea how she did this, and she seems pretty adamant to tell.

EDIT 28/06: People have pointed out that this skin overlay glitch was actually somewhat common (although I still haven't found another dragon like CAPTAINPLANET). What you had to do was breed change a dragon while attaching a skin to them in another tab.

This glitch has been patched and such thing is no longer possible.

Lair 46264

A cursed lair.

Dreams

I’ve seen a lot of people, both on forums and on Tumblr, sharing dreams they had about Flight Rising.

A lot of people dream of just being on the site, while occasionally weird things happen.

I’ve read of people who dreamed the distribution of a new breed, buying an exclusive item, a new Fiona feat or Swipp trade, or just browsing the forums.

The most common type of Flight rising-associated dream I’ve seen however is being caught multiaccounting and having their account banned.

I’m no psychoanalyst, but I think it’s pretty clear that these nightmares stem from the paranoia of being banned from their beloved petsite instead of showing any actual intention of doing the “crime” in question.

Anyways, I think it’s fascinating how so many people dream about this site, and it reminds me of the dreams people claimed to have about Mario 64 where completely new levels were added or a scary monster appeared.

Dragon Slime

Dragon Slime was an infamous thread which was supposed to be start off point for an ARG.

It was deleted because it was considered too “spammy” and also because ARGs are banned from the forums. The thread has been lost, unfortunately.

EDIT 28/06: Thanks to @randompurple-fr for providing screenshots of the dragon slime tutorial! You can find them here

Cucumber

Cucumber is the only dragon ever to have been exalted with a skin, which is something that should not be possible. This raises some questions as to what exactly did the person that exalted them do to achieve this, but we have no way of knowing who Cucumber belonged to.

EDIT 28/06: Actually, we do know who used to Cucumber belonged to! Its owner was Osiem: an official flight rising artist. I couldn’t find the thread where they(?) acknowledged the glitch though, if someone has it please let me know!

[leggerefiore]

I read the volo ver of escaped au and my mind wouldn’t shut up because of togepi baby

SO I DREW TRUCK/READERS BABY IN A TOGEPI DIAPER (along with doodles of ideas I had, some of them I forgot to draw-)

I’ve thought about other characters becoming readers new s/o, the characters being cynthia, grimsley and steven (I FORGOT HiM)

I don’t know much about Cynthia but I let her mother my kids knowing that they are in good hands. She seems like my kind of woman. I never realized how attractive Pokémon girls are like I never liked fictional girls UNTIL NOW, they are always written so weird and but Pokémon is just different??

I don’t know how grimsley would take this though, would he even help Reader if they have a child??? I think he will but…

Also imagine Readers kid goes through an anime phase like the twins and watches Jojo

The next time he sees his dads and he doesn’t even recognize them he just thinks it’s a “jojo”

I forgot to put this in but I thought about what is Readers kid makes his own Twitter account?

TruckandPichu: I just made a Twitter account. (12 minutes ago)

TruckandPichu: Nevermind I’m deleting my Twitter these weird old men keep telling me they’re my dad (3 minutes ago)

ALSO ALSO I feel like I’m adding too much but I remember my original ask that started the whole Twitter thing, the idea that reader right after escaping with their kid is to tell everyone on Twitter is hilarious. It wasn’t what I meant but it was 10x funnier

(Would volo even have Twitter?)

You know Volo hunted those Togepi diapers down. Is he proud of himself? Yes and no. He also bought blond hair dye because what better way to disguise the kid. (Totally not trying to hide the subway man parentage.) I imagine Volo has a twitter to keep up with everything, but he's not a poster. Ingo and Emmet assume he's a bot mocking them because the username is not normal and everything is like basic stuff when you make an account. He sends Ingo one DM and it's just the kid vibing in some Hisuian style clothing. Ingo knows what's going on instantly.

Poor steven lol. Cutely, I think since Volo is like probably Cynthia's ancestor, she would come visit her like long list of 'great's adopted uncle and become a third parent. Cynthia definitely seems like mom material haha

Grimsley is like "oh ew child, I'll help but they better just call me uncle". He doesn't want kids, but if his partner already has them then he'll either grow into a 'fun uncle' role permanently and or a distant father.

Fucking Ingo is heartbroken when his son sees him and just yells, "Jotaro????" before posing at him. Not only is he not recognised, he is mocked. Emmet is proud, at the very least.

lmao first post from kid is liked by s/o so that's how the twins find it. They go 'OH WE CAN TALK TO HIM' and proceed to send him multiple replies and DMs explaining how they are his fathers, how much they love him, and begging him to come see them. Kid blocks them which makes the twins cry. He also goes up to s/o like, "I'm being cyberbullied, I think??"(Elesa later DMs him like "Heyyyy, did you know you're adopted?" and like tries to make Ingo and Emmet sound way more sane than they are.)

S/O, in a public library, creating a twitter account: "Ayo those Subway men are nuts. Do not meet, do not date, and really do not fuck them" before running away because Elesa is checking out the place. (Bab is just sitting in their lab while they post)

[demetriandelibinaryboyfriends]

Wake up, babes! New gay little road trip chapter just dropped! By god I am determined to get through at least Chapter 6 of this bad boy before S5 drops. My original plan was to try to get through Chapter 13, but like. That was when I was under the impression the S5 release was scheduled for December. Not, you know, fucking September O_____o

I mean. I’m not complaining. BUT my posting schedule (what I have of one anyways) is going kaput XD Hope y’all will continue to read this as it inevitably becomes wildly canon-divergent.

HUGE shout-out to @xgardensinspace for helping with Spanish translations, local wildlife, toll road info, and Mexican slang! Honestly the whole reason I got the idea for this chapter in the first place was because we were chatting about street food in Mexico and I was like “wouldn’t it be funny if Eli tried to stomach extremely spicy taco sauce purely to show off and had a much worse time of it than he planned?” XD

Read on for a healthy dose of Demetri-Miguel friendship angst (it’s back, baybee!!!), a surprising reveal on how S3 Demetri spent many of his Friday nights, and Demetri and Eli continuing to annoy every customer service worker in Mexico!!! These boys are a menace.

***

“I’m telling you. These toll roads are bleeding us dry, Eli! Dry!”

“Demetri, you paid less than $2.”

“It’s highway robbery is what it is! By the time we get to Mexico City, we’ll have just enough cash to sustain ourselves on durito wheels for the rest of the trip.”

Eli groans. Demetri hears the passenger’s seat squeak as his friend throws himself back into it, slumping down like a wounded animal.

“Was that—was that a pun?”

Demetri clicks his tongue. “It was the best you’ve heard all day.”

“You and your bitching are the only things I’ve heard all day. I have no basis of comparison.”

“So my puns win by default.”

Eli only snorts. “I guess. But they don’t deserve it.”

Demetri gasps. “Next, you’ll be saying you don’t like my graphic tees and my quirky and charming socks!”

Eli sighs. “I was waiting for the right moment to tell you. They’re—they’re very dumb.”

“How could you?”

Demetri slaps the back of his hand against his forehead. He glances over to glower at Eli, who is still slouching in his seat like Demetri’s theatrics are physically paining him.

The taller boy wrinkles his nose. “Well, I’m sorry you don’t appreciate art, Eli.”

“I’m not sure how you define art, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a shirt demanding I ‘say banana.’ Or a cat on a piece of bread.”

“You gave me that one!”

“I thought you’d have more dignity than to wear it.”

“Then you must not know me very well.”

“I know you far better than I’d like.”

“Would you like to know me less?” Demetri taps the steering wheel. “I can do some research on how to induce amnesia.”

“Pass. That’ll just give you an excuse to re-tell me all your Doctor Who theories.”

“They are good theories!”

Eli scoffs. “Still way too canon-compliant, if you ask me. Season 9 was a mess. You can’t theorize your way into the inconsistencies making sense.”

“Wait.” Demetri squints ahead, unfocused gaze settling absentmindedly on a line of palms on the horizon. “You actually remember my theories?”

“Obviously, dumbass. You talked like one of those conspiracy guys on YouTube.”

Despite himself, Demetri smiles. All those months of being a grade-A Cobra Kai asshole, and Eli Moskowitz couldn’t bring himself to delete the “Demetri Nerd Shit” folder filed somewhere in the back of his brain.

Eli huffs, like a little kid being forced to apologize by some adult. “Okay, and not all your shirts are stupid. The cherry pi one is pretty funny.”

Demetri smirks. “You loved the cherry pi one. I remember you wanted us to get matching ones, but you said you’d be too self-conscious to actually wear it.”

“Ugh.” At the mention of this, Eli sounds like he’s eaten a teaspoon of sewage and is attempting to recover. “Imagine if we’d showed up to school in coordinated outfits. As if we weren’t being bullied enough.”

“Oh? You think Kyler would have taken issue with us having better fashion sense than him?”

“Kyler took issue with us being alive.”

“Biggest tragedy of them all that I didn’t get to pound his ass in the All Valley.” Demetri shakes his head. “But anyways, what about now? Would you wear matching shirts with me?”

His smirk widens, and his friend gives him a surly look.

“Place we bought it went out of business,” Eli mumbles. “It was some niche, kitschy site, and the link’s defunct.”

“Oh!” Demetri crows in triumph, reaching over to jab Eli’s side. “So you have looked into it!”

“Okay, fine, so what?!” He can’t help but laugh at how defensive Eli sounds. “It’s a clever shirt! Besides, now I can just kick the ass of anyone who talks shit about it.”

A flash of black and white catches Demetri’s eye, and he looks up just in time to see a tiny, white-spotted animal darting into the road. He shrieks, slamming the brakes and swerving several feet across the yellow line to avoid the thing.

Eli grabs his arm, matching his scream almost exactly. The brakes squeal, car wobbling and jerking about as he maneuvers it back to safety.

“What the fuck, Demetri?!”

The iron grip on his forearm does not loosen, even after the danger has passed. If anything, it grows tighter.

“We almost hit something,” Demetri says, trying to sound nonchalant. He gives Eli’s still-fastened hand a couple reassuring pats. “And my mom throwing fits about dents in her car aside, I’d rather not exile any of the local wildlife from this mortal plane. What was that little gremlin, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Looked like a skunk or some shit.”

“See? This is what we’re paying for!” Demetri gestures furiously at the open road. “Inconsiderate mustelids!”

Eli snorts. His hand begins to loosen around Demetri’s arm, but doesn’t fully let go.

“Still can’t believe you didn’t know about the toll roads. You told me you researched everything.”

“Okay, so I had one oversight. And it cost me half a fortune!” He wiggles a finger at Eli in what he hopes is a very commanding manner. “Let that be a lesson to you to always double and triple-check your trip plans.”

“I guess it was kind of short-notice.”

“Maybe so, but that’s no excuse for being financially irresponsible. Honestly, you might well have saved our behinds last night by convincing me to opt out of a hotel room—even if I am still slightly shocked we didn’t get murdered in our sleep by desert ne’er-do-wells.”

“Ha!” Eli’s grip finally loosens enough that his hand retreats—only to promptly return and give Demetri’s arm a triumphant slap. “I told you! See? Your know-it-all ass isn’t right all the time.”

“Yeah, yeah, fine. You win this round, Moskowitz.”

A lush green cornfield sweeps out on the side of the road, long leaves seeming to stretch for miles. Demetri’s eyes trail over the tall stalks as they pass, mind filling with fresh-baked tamales and shredded beef wrapped in tortillas. His stomach grabs at him painfully.

“God, we’ve barely eaten all day,” he complains. “I’m starving.”

Eli snorts. “What, 3 bags of Cheetos and a side of candy and soda weren’t enough lunch for you?”

“Unfortunately not.” He heaves a resigned sigh, holding a hand up. “All right. Executive decision: We are stopping for a real lunch. Check what the next town is, will you?”

“Sure thing, boss.” Eli spits the last word out, and Demetri imagined his friend rolling his eyes. Typical stubbornly rebellious Eli.

Nonetheless, he hears Eli still typing away at his phone. “Um…the next decent-sized one is Guasave.”

“Guasave it is! I’m sure they’ve got a taco truck hidden away somewhere in there.”

“You know they’re gonna look at us weird for ordering lunch at like 4:00, right?”

“Better late than never! I promise you my stomach is not going to care.”

***

“What?! No chimichangas here?”

Demetri whimpers miserably, frantically looking over the faded menu. He starts to regret stopping for the first taco truck they saw—a run-down little thing in the middle of a narrow parking lot.

The dingiest of lunch stands had always proved to be the most lucrative—until now.

Eli snorts. “Who are you, Deadpool?”

“They’ve had them at every other food cart we’ve been to!” he retorts.

“Yeah, well.” Eli rolls his eyes. “The further south we go, the less they’re gonna be into that Americanized shit they sell near the border. You should’ve anticipated this.”

“I’m failing to anticipate a lot of things on this trip, huh,” Demetri grumbles.

He scans the menu again, looking for a suitable second choice. A trickle of unease slithers through him.

He takes a breath, resisting the urge to grab Eli’s hand to steady himself. This is no time to get overwhelmed.

Okay, start with the things you know. Taco. You know the word taco. Also salsa.

Demetri Alexopoulos, exemplary student ranked within the top 10 of the West Valley High junior class, is not about to get an anxiety attack over ordering his goddamn lunch. No matter how Spanish and how incomprehensible his meal options are.

“I can’t make out what half of these words mean,” he complains. He does his best to sound casual—and like he’s not slowly being eaten by all-consuming despair.

“Translate on your phone, dumbass. Use WordReference or something.”

Luckily Eli is none the wiser. He continues pondering the menu, oblivious to Demetri’s ever-building—and very stupid—distress.

Demetri takes another breath, pulling his phone from his pocket and plugging each of the mystery taco types into the internet. Though the menu has pictures of a few, Demetri would rather know the full extent of what he’s putting in his mouth.

He hums thoughtfully, thumbing through a translation website. Tripa is a no-go—he isn’t particularly keen on eating cow intestine. Bistec and barbacoa seem like safe options—the pictures look good, anyways, and they’re only steak and barbecued beef, essentially. A few words he can’t find a translation for, so those are probably best avoided.

One taco variety looks particularly strange. Demetri types it into his phone and lets out an alarmed squawk.

“Wire tacos?!”

He spins around and seizes Eli’s shoulders, shaking them with urgency. “Eli, why are they putting wires in the tacos?!” he asks frantically.

Eli frowns. “What are you talking about?”

Demetri removes his hands to use one to shove his phone in Eli’s face and the other to gesture insistently from the ‘alambre’ written on the menu to the ‘alambre’ translated on the phone. His friend only scoffs.

“You’re so dramatic. It’s probably a local slang term or something.”

“Eli!” Demetri lets his voice drag out into a pained whine. “This has to be a violation of at least seventeen health codes! Should we even be eating here?!”

The shorter boy heaves a deep sigh. “They’ve had alambre at every other place we’ve eaten, Demetri. You didn’t notice because you were too busy stuffing your face with fried beef-and-cheese wraps.”

Demetri paces back and forth, head in his hands. “So they were putting wires in the tacos too?! Were there wires in my chimichangas, Eli?”

Eli only arches an eyebrow. “You tell me. Did you bite down on any thin metal?”

“No,” he admits. “But I wouldn’t know if they ground them up small enough.”

“Don’t you think if there was ground-up wire in Mexican street tacos, we’d have heard about it by now? It’d be kind of a huge news story. And anyways.” Eli rolls his eyes. “If it was part of some grand plan to…I don’t know, gradually turn anyone who likes street tacos into a cyborg, they wouldn’t just advertise it on their signs. It probably means something else.”

Demetri crosses his arms. “Then what the hell does it mean?” he demands.

“I don’t know! Ask the guy!”

Eli gestures to the beleaguered taco salesman behind the cart, leaning on the counter and looking as though every word of this exchange is draining more from his stamina bar.

“You ask him!” Demetri shoots back, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “I barely know any Spanish!”

“Well, neither do I! I can’t speak Spanish for shit!”

“Then how do we know there’s not—”

“Demetri.” Eli cuts him off, putting firm hands on his shoulders. “I promise there’s no wires in the tacos. If there are, well…” He sighs. “I’ll sell the bike to pay your hospital bills, okay?”

“You’ll sell the bike?” Demetri arches an eyebrow. “Well. Now I’m kind of hoping there’s wires in the tacos. Maybe I should order—”

“Yeah, no.” Eli shakes his head. “No way in hell are you ordering alambre. You’ll do it to show off, and then have an anxiety attack all the way to Mazatlán.”

“Fine.” He lets out a defeated sigh. “I’ll just have to think of some other way to persuade you to get rid of that death trap.”

“Good luck with that.”

“I will do it someday, Eli! Mark my words!”

He gives Eli the “I’m watching you” finger signal before turning back to the menu. He’ll admit that some of the taco pictures, non-chimichanga and metal-filled though they may be, don’t look half bad.

He starts to trudge over to the truck, Eli following behind. “Just so you know, I am absolutely holding you to what you said if I find so much as half a millimeter of wire,” he grumbles.

The taco salesman is slouched against a shaded metal counter, looking tired. It’s as though there’s a finite amount of energy in the parking lot, and Eli and Demetri have already sucked up a fair bit of this man’s with their loud American squabbling.

“Uh…barbacoa tacos.” Demetri smiles meekly. “Cuatro.”

Cuatro. I know cuatro. His smile widens to a beam. That’s something.

The salesman nods. “Salsa?”

“Oh! Um…”

Demetri hesitates. He’d forgotten about sauces.

The man’s eyes bore into him impatiently, and he quickly assesses the pictures on the menu. “Green,” he decides. “Verde.”

See, look at me! I’m not half bad at this! I know colors too!

The taco salesman turns to Eli. “Y usted?”

Eli ponders for a moment. “Mmmmm…carnitas. Cinco.”

Demetri turns to arch an eyebrow at him. Trying to one-up me, are we?

“Salsa?”

As the salesman asks the question, Eli slides across the counter and leans on his arms, breaking into a gigantic, shit-eating grin.

“Deme la mierda que este más picosa pa que amarre!”

The taco salesman gives Eli a look indicating the man thinks he is a complete idiot. He exhales, face scrunching up like he’s putting all his concentration into not passing judgment.

“Habanero esta bien?”

Eli nods, still beaming like he won the lottery.

The taco salesman shrugs, although he still doesn’t look like he approves. “Diez minutos,” he says, sliding them a scrap of paper with the number “7” written on it.

It’s odd, considering they’re the only people in line. Demetri figures this must be the taco man’s revenge for having to watch them bicker over whether to give him business.

He turns away from the taco truck, walking over to lean against the wide, shaded trunk of a palm tree. When Eli joins him, Demetri rolls his eyes at him.

“‘Can’t speak Spanish for shit,’ my ass.”

Eli shrugs, clearly trying to seem nonchalant and not succeeding in the least. “You’re around Miguel enough, you pick some stuff up.”

Demetri winces. He forgets sometimes that Eli has nearly two months on him on the “Miguel Diaz Rubbing Off On You” track.

He hated that summer. He hated how busy Miguel always was—either going on dates with that mean Cobra girl with the constant scowl on her face, or locked up in a strip mall dojo letting the psycho with the snake tattoo slowly fill his head with poison. The texts from Miguel came less and less, and the distance in his eyes at their video game nights made it feel like he was slipping from Demetri’s grip as quickly and silently as a water moccasin.

The same video game nights, of course, that they’d had to stop inviting Eli to.

Demetri knows Miguel and Eli did stuff without him, too. And that was fine—he never wanted to make Miguel pick sides in something that wasn’t his fight. That, and Miguel might have been the only person Demetri trusted to pull Eli back out of the Sith, if he wandered in too far. If Miguel wasn’t there to protect him, to keep his head screwed on straight…

He shudders.

The months that Miguel was in the hospital were bad enough. Demetri’s stomach churns at the thought of what might have happened if Miguel had abandoned Eli much sooner—calling off their friendship as soon as he heard about Eli threatening Demetri at the mall. What might have happened if he chose Demetri sooner, and left Eli and his darkening path to the mercy of the wolves.

Or, cobras, rather.

Demetri saw what Eli was like, trying to show off to that Rickenburger guy and Tory Nichols and their whole rotten little clan. They seemed to know exactly what he wanted to hear, telling him he was strong and brave and tough and utterly invincible. Seeing every terrible thing he did and nudging him to do even more.

He followed them around for a few months longer and he would have ended up behind bars. Demetri’s certain of it.

In any case, the hurt of Eli pulling away had been a category all on its own—the subject of what felt like dozens of tearful nights. The first real heartbreak Demetri had ever known. But Miguel pulling away…

Kind, steadfast, annoyingly optimistic Miguel, who gave loyalty for no other reason than because he wanted to. Who stuck around at the losers’ lunch table when he had every reason to believe he could do better. Who saw Demetri fall and crouched down to touch his shoulder, smiling and saying he knew Demetri could get back up and keep going.

When Miguel started to build a fence between them, Demetri didn’t know what to believe anymore.

Not a wall, at least. Miguel Diaz is much too nice to shoot an entire wall up in the face of his friend. Nonetheless, he built something—something that made it feel like you were wandering through a deep, foggy, confusing wood to try and reach him.

And by the time school started again, Demetri was getting lost in the trees nearly every time.

And Eli got to have Miguel a little more that summer. For better or for worse, Eli had Miguel in a way Demetri didn’t know how to. Not even a year of friendship, and the two Cobras painted a world of their own that Demetri just couldn’t seem to slot himself into. And it hurt.

He can’t say which of them he envied more, to be honest.

“‘Metri?”

A hand closes gently around Demetri’s shoulder and squeezes. He almost starts, but Eli’s touch holds him steady.

Suddenly he’s back in Sinaloa, gazing into the concerned blue eyes of his best friend. “You okay, Demetri?”

“Wh—” He forces a smile, chuckling. “Oh, yeah. Just spaced out for a bit.”

He shakes his head to clear out the hectic, miserable thoughts. “Anyways. Habanero?” He looks at Eli and raises his eyebrows. “You used to cry when I gave you pieces of my Panda Express orange chicken because it was ‘too spicy’ for you. What gives?”

Eli scowls, concern dissolving. “That was years ago. People change. I’m not some little sniveling, weak-mouthed pussy anymore!” He rolls his shoulders, loudly cracking his knuckles for extra effect. “I can handle anything.”

Despite himself, Demetri snickers. “What, you thought Sensei War Criminal Kreese was going to award you a blue ribbon for downing a ghost pepper?”

“It’s not about that!” Eli snaps. “It’s about the stamina! The mental fortitude!”

“It’s about intentionally trying to make your mouth experience the heat death of the universe for no reason.”

Eli scoffs. “You’re just jealous. You accidentally bite into a jalapeño and you scream like a little girl.”

“Maybe I enjoy not having my gums feel like they took a vacation to the deepest pits of hell, Eli!”

“Wimp.”

“Dumbass.”

Eli bristles, clenching his fists. “I got it hammered into me every day for months that losing a fight was the worst thing that could happen. And now you think I’m about to let a pepper get the better of me?!”

“Well, now you’re Miyagi Do, and we get to pick our battles,” Demetri counters. “And Mr. L would say deciding on an opponent that’s a vegetable that literally evolved to not be eaten is idiotic. Not very badass.”

Eli crosses his arms. “The fact that it evolved against this is all the more reason not to let it come out on top!”

Demetri sighs. “And what, pray tell, do you hope to gain from asserting dominance over a zesty taco sauce?”

“Bragging rights!”

“To whom? I don’t think Kyler’s going to be quivering in terror when he hears. ‘Oh no! This kid can eat habanero sauce!’”

Eli scowls. “I can kick ass and tough out hot peppers, Demetri. And sometimes I run out of ass.”

“Still. I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove. Aggressive masochism really isn’t the power move you think it is.”

“There’s no masochism involved. I love the burn!”

Demetri clicks his tongue. “And that, my friend, is the masochism. I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t natural to want your oral cavity to feel like the Valley during wildfire season.”

“Please, please never call it an oral cavity again. Anyways, I still think you’re bitter that I’m tougher than you.”

“Siete!”

Demetri is opening his mouth to reply when the voice rings out across the parking lot. His stomach twists painfully in on itself, and he’s once again reminded how long he’s gone without nourishment.

They practically sprint to the counter, all but throwing their pesos at the poor man who has already had to endure enough today. Eli eyes the thick orange sauce drenching his carnitas like he’s won the lottery.

They wander through a wrought iron gate into a nearby park, meandering their way to a thatched roof gazebo shaded by palms and lush summer trees. Eli admires his meal the entire way, and Demetri can practically feel the waves of hubris rolling off him already.

“So when exactly did you start craving Scoville toppers?” Demetri sits on one of the gazebo benches, taking a bite of a barbacoa taco (which is, admittedly, probably just as good as a chimichanga). “Did you automatically absorb 5 levels of spice tolerance as soon as you got that crazy hairdo?”

Eli shrugs. “I started ordering the hot shit when I went out to eat. You know, with all the peppers next to it. Built up some decent resistance.”

“Okay, then.” Demetri smirks. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

“Gladly.”

Eli raises a taco to his lips, orange sauce dribbling down scarred knuckles. He takes a bite and chews.

At first he seems unbothered, even humming in mild approval. It takes a moment before the color drains from his face, eyes widening with a terror Demetri hasn’t seen since the days of Kyler and his goons harassing them in the library.

And this is all before the noises start.

Eli lets out a muffled “mmmmmph!”, lips squeezing tightly together and entire face tensing. What follows is a sequence that looks like a small frog is trying to escape Eli’s mouth.

His lips twitches in every direction, looking as though they’re fighting the urge to let loose a scream. His breath comes in quick, shallow puffs, like someone tired out from fleeing a serial killer and trying not to pant too loud. Demetri can even swear there’s a wet film forming under his friend’s eyes.

Eli lets out a series of pained grunts, trying to hide each one more than the last. The fist not holding the taco clenches and unclenches, nails leaving red marks in pale skin. His entire body is twitching, and his skin glistens with bright sweat. Whether it’s a buildup from the late afternoon sun or a new addition from the habanero sauce Demetri really can’t say.

Eli whines, the pain apparently so great that he’s bothering less and less with disguising it. Demetri smirks.

“You okay there, buddy?”

“Yeah!” Eli gives him a stiff thumbs up and the most strained smile Demetri’s ever seen in his life. “It tastes great!”

“Does it?” Demetri takes another bite of his much-more-pleasant-tasting barbacoa. “Because you kind of look like you’re suffering.”

Eli’s terribly-watering eyes sear into him. “I am not! I’m handling it like a damn champ.” He flexes a bicep to prove his point, face twisting the entire time.

At last, little puffs of breath cease to be enough to rid Eli of free-floating pepper molecules. His mouth opens wide, releasing a hot cloud of sharp-scented air.

“That’s…okay, that was a little more intense than I expected.” His voice is tight, still attempting to conceal quite a bit of agony.

“You want to trade?” Demetri offers him a taco. “I’ll take one for the team.”

“Oh, please.” Eli curls his lip. “Demetri, if you so much as sniffed one of these, you’d pass out.”

“You underestimate my power.”

“I perfectly estimate your power, Anakin. Pretty sure this sauce would kill you instantly.”

Eli takes another bite of his taco, and the cycle of pain begins anew. He attempts to disguise the anguished groans as mumbles of pleasure, but Demetri knows better. Eli will fake badassery until he has burned his entire mouth off, and then some.

Demetri sighs. “Do you want me to get you some milk? There’s a bottle in the cooler.”

Eli frowns, temporarily distracted from the ever-raging destruction of his gums. “When the hell did you buy milk?”

“At the last Oxxo.”

Eli gives him a judgmental look, and Demetri scoffs. “What? I don’t trust hotel coffee creamers! Do you know what kind of preservatives they put in those? Besides, milk has less calories.”

His friend snorts, spice apparently forgotten. “Since when do you care about preservatives and calories?” He lets out a long groan. “Moon’s been rubbing off on you, hasn’t she?”

“So what if she has? Have you had her acai smoothie?”

“Oh, god.” Eli made a face. “She made you the weed one?”

“It’s not—it is free-trade hemp oil, Eli! There’s a difference!”

“When even did she make it for you?”

Demetri shrugs, trying to seem nonchalant. “Girls’ night. Sometimes she, Yas, and Sam would invite me.”

Eli snickers. “You’re not a girl, though.”

He rolls his eyes, unfazed. “You can be an honorary girl for one night. I promise you your dick doesn’t vanish. Besides, Moon has the best weed in town. And the best face masks.”

“Yeah, checks out you’d be finicky over skincare.”

Eli shakes his head, taking another (admittedly hesitant) bite of his taco. As he chews, he lets out a quiet, pained whimper, sweat on his cheeks parted by a barely visible tear streak. He grabs one of the gazebo poles, clutching so hard his knuckles turn white.

Demetri sighs. “All right, that’s it. I am getting you the milk.”

“Wai—Demetri!” Eli’s efforts are in vain, fingers snatching at open air long after Demetri is out of grabbing range. He knows Eli will probably complain this is the pussy move, but so be it.

Seeing Eli Moskowitz in distress has always been his weakness, it seems.

When he returns, Eli is pressed up against one of the gazebo poles with his teeth clenched. He looks like he escaped a torture chamber.

Demetri decides he definitely made the right call. He pops the cap and offers the milk to Eli.

“Okay, drink up. I know you’re a man of few words, but I still wouldn’t advise destroying your mouth. You might need it for something.”

Eli raises an eyebrow, teeth still clenched. “What, like sucking your dick?”

Demetri’s cheeks grow hot, and he mentally curses Eli’s ability to eternally throw him off-guard. “Are you offering?!”

His friend scoffs. “You wish I was.”

“Just drink the damn milk.” He thrusts the beverage into Eli’s hands. “I’ve had plenty of watching your dumb ass be in immense pain and pretend like you’re not. I saw enough of that while you were in Cobra Kai.”

Eli scowls at him, but nonetheless snatches the milk away with the speed of a particularly determined raccoon trying to nab an appealing piece of garbage and make a break for it before flashlights illuminate the dumpster. He downs half the bottle in one gulp, and Demetri places a cautionary hand on his arm.

“Slow down there, tiger. You have to make that last through three more tacos.”

Eli shoots him a white-rimmed glare. “Don’t tell me how to live my life.”

He laughs, raising conceding hands. “All right. Your funeral. I don’t have the best track record of preventing you from making poor life choices, anyhow.”

His friend puts the milk down to take another ill-advised bite of taco. It isn’t long before he’s picking up the bottle again.

“I can’t believe Moon gave you the weed smoothie,” he mutters. “She told me that was only for ‘really special people.’”

“It’s not weed, it’s free-trade hemp oil!”

“Yeah, whatever. Anyways.” Eli growls out the words as he starts to fan himself—something he’s sure to blame on the summertime sun, but is also coincidentally only doing near his mouth. “Not that I care, because it’s lame, but…why wasn’t I invited to girls’ night?”

“That was during your villain arc.”

“Oh. Right.” He bites his lip, looking away.

“And I’ll have you know it was not lame!” Demetri crosses his arms. “And we didn’t need spiked smoothies to get high. Moon’s home-grown backyard cannabis was plenty potent on its own, believe me.”

Eli perks up, suddenly interested. “She still has that weed greenhouse?”

“Oh, yeah.” Demetri laughs, shaking his head at the memory. “One time, Yas got so high that she wouldn’t stop giggling and hitting on Sam and Moon. That was my first inclination that maybe she wasn’t straight.”

“Holy shit.” Eli leans forward, grinning. “Did she kiss either of them?”

“Not while I was there. Mostly she was just getting real cuddly with them—slung an arm around Moon, tried to hold hands with Sam, the works. But when I went to the bathroom?” Demetri whistled. “Who’s to say?”

“Wait…so…she might have cheated?” Eli frowns as the realization seems to sink in. “And that doesn’t bother you?”

“Oh, please.” Demetri rolls his eyes as he takes another bite of barbacoa. “Whatever we had going on back then hardly had enough of a label for that to count as ‘cheating.’ Yas didn’t want anyone to know we were even messing around for a while.”

“Really?” Eli gives him a skeptical look. “Seemed like she was crawling all over you as soon as we started hanging out again.”

“Right. Well…” Demetri laughs uneasily, running the hand not currently covered in taco grease through his hair. “Her mom…kind of went through her phone over Christmas break. Saw some texts with Moon about how she might like girls and flipped out. Yas told me later the only way to get her to back off was by insisting it was all a dumb phase, and she had a steady, committed boyfriend. As soon as school started up again, she leaned pretty hard into the whole ‘relationship’ thing. To keep up appearances and all.”

“Ouch.” Eli grimaces. “That’s rough. Poor Yas—well, poor both of you.”

Demetri shrugs. For whatever reason, the thought of Yasmine preferring girls almost the entire time they dated doesn’t bother him much.

“To be honest, I suspected for a while,” he admits. “Before she came out, I mean. She was always feeling up my chest when we made out, but like…in a way that made it seem like she wished there was more there.”

“Oh my god.” Eli snorts out a laugh, nearly choking on a hunk of carnitas. “Dude. She was legit pretending you were a girl.”

“I mean hey, if it gets me some action, I’ll take it.”

Demetri really can’t judge. There were plenty of times when he imagined the hands crawling across his skin were just a little rougher, the knuckles a little more calloused. There were plenty of times when he imagined the waist bumping against his own had a bulge in the middle. Or that there was a thin ridge of stiff skin just to the left of Yasmine’s nose, right above her top lip.

Eli shakes his head, taking another bite of his taco in between chortles. To Demetri’s relief, his next sip of milk is much more subdued.

So he is trying to make it last after all. Thank god. The last thing Demetri needs to see is his best friend writhing in agony all the way to the next Oxxo.

Unfortunately, Eli’s next bite of taco is what really kicks off the problems.

The blatant cry of pain is Demetri’s first clue that things have gone amiss. After an entire meal of sealing suffering away like a pest in a trap, such an open display of torment is not to go unheeded.

“Eli?” He frowns.

“Fucking hell.” Eli speaks around a mouthful of carnitas. He spits out a chunk of food, and Demetri catches a glimpse of something bright orange in the dirt. “This asshole really threw a whole-ass piece of pepper in there. Right in the middle of the meat. God.”

He breathes hard, frantically switching between fanning his mouth and rubbing his (probably burning) cheek. Like that’s going to do anything.

Despite himself, Demetri laughs. He puts his lunch on a gazebo bench and strides forward, placing a comforting hand on Eli’s shoulder.

“Well, you did say you could handle anything.”

“I thought—fuck—I thought it would be fine.” Eli wheezes out the words like someone’s performing an exorcism on him. “Oh, god. Fuck. My entire mouth is burning.”

He buries his face in his hands, hunching over. His head bumps into Demetri’s chest, and the taller boy tries not to blush.

“Fuck, it hurts so bad! Make it stop, Demetri!”

He pleads in a choked wail, like he’s imploring someone not to take all his loved ones to the firing squad. His hands slide to the side, and Demetri sees thick tears streaming down his face. He lets out a muffled sob, any attempted image of toughness long gone.

For a moment, he doesn’t look any different from the panicking 12-year-old who couldn’t handle Chinese fast food, breaking down weeping in the middle of a mall food court. The whole thing had been a nasty spiral, the frantic tears only coming faster as he grew more and more terrified that he was making a scene. Demetri covered him up the best he could, blocking Eli’s chair with his long body and faking a loud argument with his mom to draw the attention away from the crying preteen.

At least it was mostly funny to think about now.

“There, there.” Demetri pulls Eli into his arms, holding him tight against his chest. Eli doesn’t fight it, melting into him like a soggy popsicle. His hands latch onto Demetri’s shirt as he caterwauls his woes.

Demetri rubs his friend’s back, and Eli’s wails soften to mere pained moans. “Owwwww…”

Demetri chuckles into Eli’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I’ll protect you. The peppers can’t hurt you anymore.”

Eli snorts in response. His hands shove into Demetri’s chest, but not hard enough to push him away. “You’re a fucking dork.”

“Uh, I’m not the one who tortured myself with hot sauce to win a dick-measuring contest that was never actually declared. So you might be the fucking dork, Mr. Moskowitz.”

Eli grunts disapprovingly, but doesn’t actually contradict the statement.

Once he seems to have cried most of the spice out of his body, Eli pulls away and takes a breath. He gives Demetri a strained smile as he wipes watery eyes with the back of his arm.

“Okay. I’m cool. Everything’s cool.”

The offending taco finds its way into the garbage can outside the gazebo. Demetri would usually never advocate wasting food—starving children overseas, etc etc. In this case, however, sacrifices must be made for the survival of Eli Moskowitz’s mouth.

“So.” Demetri throws a comforting arm around his friend as they walk back to the gazebo bench. “Other than nearly burning your mouth off, how are the carnitas?”

Eli shrugs as they sit down. “They’re good,” he says around his newest mouthful. “Not as good as the ones Miguel makes, though.”

“Wait, wait.” Demetri gives Eli a skeptical look, arm suddenly dropping. “Hold the phone. Miguel cooked carnitas for you?!”

“Well…” Eli’s face scrunches in brief concentration. “Actually, he called them fritadas. So no.”

“Wh—no! Not the point!” He huffs, glaring at Eli. “You’re telling me Miguel Diaz cooked a meal for you?”

“It’s not a big deal!” Eli turns and glares at him. “We were hanging out after practice and it got late, so he offered to make dinner. His mom was working a graveyard shift, and Rosa was at her book club—”

“Rosa?” Demetri gawks at Eli. “What, you and Miguel’s grandmother are on a first-name basis now?!”

Demetri can’t believe this. He went over to Miguel’s house loads of times sophomore year—some trips with Eli, some without—and never once did Miguel saunter into the kitchen and whip him up authentic Ecuadorian cuisine. The most they ever did was walk to the convenience store a block away and grab some chips and candy. And now he’s meant to believe Miguel was cooking full-blown meals for Eli while he was out of the picture?!

He flings his hands in the air, so emphatically that several pieces of barbacoa fly out of one of his tacos. “How many times did this happen?” he demands.

Eli shrugs, frowning in slight confusion. “I don’t know. A few? We’d start bingeing TV and lose track of time.”

“A few!” Demetri scoffs, shaking his head.

Absolutely unbelievable. While he was busy painting all of Mr. L’s ridiculous fences in the scorching summer heat, Eli was getting spoiled with home-cooked food and probably repeatedly being told by Miguel that he was the coolest guy on earth. Maybe sometimes Aisha and Miguel’s terrifying Cobra girlfriend came along too, and they all had a grand old time eating Miguel’s cooking and making fun of pussy nerds who couldn’t do karate.

Eli gives him an utterly perplexed look. “What’s the problem? It’s just some stupid fritadas.”

Demetri lets out an exasperated sigh. “It’s never just ‘fritadas,’ Eli. It’s one of the truest shows of camaraderie there is.”

“What, is there some niche cultural thing about it in Ecuador?”

“No!” Demetri slaps a hand to his face. “You don’t—you don’t waltz into the kitchen and throw together a meal for anyone.”

“Oh. Oh.” Eli breaks into a shit-eating grin as it dawns on him. “You’re jealous.”

Demetri snorts, glancing away so Eli can’t see his cheeks turn red. “Am not! What do I care if Miguel made you dinner a few times?”

“You jealous little shit.” Eli leans in close, smirking up at him. “You’re pissed Miguel didn’t cook for you.”

Demetri huffs, refusing to meet his friend’s eyes. “I’m not pissed about anything. I’m just trying to figure out why Miguel only started doing this when we weren’t coming over together anymore.”

“I don’t know.” Eli shrugs again. “Maybe it was a convenience thing. And it was summer, so he wasn’t busy with homework or anything.”

“Oh, sure!” He rolls his eyes with dramatic flourish. “He suddenly has time to feed you substantial meals, but he never bothers with me!”

Eli lets out an exasperated sigh. “You forgot when he came back to school? He picked you over me when it really mattered.”

“Yeah, but he never made me carni—excuse me, fritadas!”

“He just made me food a couple times, man. It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal!” Demetri gasps, clutching a hand to his heart. “What—does my souvlaki mean nothing to you, sir?!”

“Your souvlaki?” Eli raised his eyebrows. “You mean the souvlaki you tried to make with your mom and argued over how to do the whole time?”

“We did not—”

“‘Demetri, fos ton mation mu, you must add more olive oil! Your souvlaki will be as tasteless as Mrs. Hasapi’s décor!’” Demetri groans as Eli mimics his mother’s shrill, overbearing tone.

Eli turns up the tip of his nose, voice turning nasally. “‘But mom! The recipe called for ¼ cup, and you put 1/3! The flavor won’t sink in like it’s supposed to. The kebabs are ruined!’”

“Come on, I do not talk like—”

“‘Oh, god! The oregano!’” Eli goes on ruthlessly. “‘You poured it in without evening out the teaspoon! What have you done?’”

“She was so imprecise,” Demetri grumbles, crossing his arms. “Recipes have specific ingredient amounts listed for a reason. The guy who wrote that recipe probably called for 2 cloves of garlic because he tried with 3, and the whole thing was a repulsive disaster! Other people write these cooking instructions so you don’t have to figure all this nonsense out yourself and set your kitchen on fire in the process.”

“And yet.” Eli gives him a crooked half-smile. “The souvlaki always turned out fine. Even when you and your mom didn’t do exactly what you were supposed to. Or, god forbid, let the oregano go over the rim of the teaspoon.”

Demetri feels his cheeks heat up in a blush. “You…actually liked it? You’re not just saying that?”

“Nope.”

“Was it, uh…” He looks away, blush deepening. “Was it as good as Miguel’s fritadas?”

“Hmmm, well…” Eli scrunches up his face in concentration before turning to give Demetri a wide smirk. “I wouldn’t go that far. Nothing’s as good as Miguel’s exclusive specialty fritadas, apparently made only for me.”

“You asshole!” Demetri shoves Eli so hard that he nearly dismantles what’s left of his tacos. Eli breaks out laughing, bracing himself with his arms as he falls on the bench.

“Lighten up,” he snorts. “Soon as we find Miguel, I’ll let him know you’re a huge baby and you’ll never recover if he doesn’t make you fritadas. I’m sure he’ll be happy to do it as a favor to a fellow traumatized ex-Cobra.”

Demetri swats a snickering Eli.

“Still can’t believe he likes you better than me,” he mumbles.

Eli rolls his eyes. “I promise you he does not. He likes us the same.”

“But—”

“If anything, you’re the golden child. He never asks to use my study guides, or copy my class notes when he falls asleep. I think it’s because, uh…” He rubs the back of his buzzcut, smiling meekly. “You’re not the one with a history of…irresponsibility? You’re the consistent one.”

“Yeah, the one consistently not cooked for.”

“Hey, c’mon.” Eli throws a loose arm around his shoulder, guiding him up from the bench. “I’ll tell you what. When we track this fucker down and drag him home, we’ll all have a huge game night, and I’ll tell him to make more fritadas than you can eat. How’s that? Then are we even?”

Eli jostles his shoulder, and Demetri sighs in defeat. It really is very difficult to say no to Eli when his arm’s hooked around your neck like that.

“I’ll accept it,” he grumbles. “But only if you don’t eat any of the fritadas. That would give you a one-up.”

Eli laughs, squeezing his shoulder as they walk toward the car. “I think I can go without for one night.”

Demetri tosses his empty taco wrap into the trash can, a reluctant smile finally tugging at his lips.

“All right, Eli. Let’s go find Ecuador’s best expat pork chef.”

***

First a pissing contest, and now a dick-measuring contest??? Will the genitalia-related competitions ever end with these two???

Most of the Spanish translations I feel like aren’t super hard to extrapolate BUT, if you’re curious, “Deme la mierda que este más picosa pa que amarre!” roughly translates to “Give me the spiciest shit you got and tie it!” “Tie it” is Mexican slang relating to “tying up loose ends.” Miguel probably picked it up from the Latino kids at school, and then Eli picked it up from Miguel XD

Also “fos ton mation mu” means “light of my eye” and it’s a common Greek endearment! Never let it be said that I don’t strive for cultural accuracy in my gay fanfiction XD

Credit where credit is due to @xgardensinspace for suggesting Eli should get a hug after being traumatized by spicy tacos and being absolutely correct.

ALSO yes, I know it can be kind of annoying for fic to reduce the canon female love interest(s) of an mlm ship to “mean lesbian bestie” SO I’m trying to give Yasmine the depth canon continually refuses to! Like I do unironically think she’s lesbian--that’s not just a “now she can’t get in the way of Elimetri” thing, I promise--but I also think she deserves better than to be a 1-dimensional “queer-coded mean girl” type stereotype. So here, have some Yasmine backstory angst! Also I REFUSE to believe she was randomly all over Demetri in S4 because she suddenly got super obsessed with a guy who annoyed her not 5 seconds ago, I just REFUSE, that is TERRIBLE WRITING and very icky treatment of women and I could go on--

(tfw you don’t even ship Samsmine but by god, you are going to commit to Raging Lesbian Yasmine, and also Sam LaRusso is a dang catch, like who wouldn’t want her??? No one, that’s who. Having any teen lesbian character not be at least a little into Samantha LaRusso is simply unrealistic. This requires no elaboration.)

Yes, Moon’s rich family (including a mom who gave her high-quality weed for her birthday) has a home-grown weed garden. Also yes, Demetri gets invited to Girls’ Night with the ladies and gets spoiled with face masks. It’s what a fancy lady like him deserves, and he deserves to shamelessly hang out with his female besties without being embarrassed about it!

Also ALSO credit to @baldwinboy5ive for giving me the idea of Demetri being way too anal about cooking ingredient amounts in her fic “Fermentation” XD

As always, moodboard pic credits available upon request! (Tfw you’re rapidly running out of pics of Buzzcut Eli not in a gi to use, so you have to resort to cropping the ‘hawk to get him a pic of him smirking like a little gremlin like you want XD)

Chapter 1: Here Chapter 2: Here Chapter 3: Here Chapter 4: Here Chapter 5: Good news! You have already found Chapter 5, and are currently looking at it!

The first four chapters are also up on my AO3 page, SummerPhlox!

[lilakeels]

Fundy x Elk Hybrid Reader

Heyo! I was working originally on something else for my first post but me not knowing how to work Tumblr, accidentally deleted the post. So have this small story. This story does include fluff, so if you are uncomfortable with it you are free to leave.

Snow. It could either be a blessing or a curse most a curse, but not to the inhabitants of the tundra. The large plains of the tundra were far, far away from the rest of civilization, Y/N of course was fine with that. She had no need for communication with others of her 'kind' she could handle herself just fine alone and honestly, she preferred the quiet of her lonely cabin in the middle of nowhere. Today there was a heavy blizzard enveloping the isolated place in sleet and fierce winds. Y/N of course didn't mind the harsh temperatures due to her long time of living there. She was too busy anyway, long hazel-colored fur on her elbows, cheeks, and legs commonly kept her warm from the freezing cold temperatures.

Being part moose indeed has its perks she commonly didn't even need layered clothes due to how thick her fur was in certain places, but she would always wear a coat just in case. Today was supposed to be like any other, Y/N commonly left mid-day, the warmest part of the day, to go trade with a village beyond the Tundra. It was almost impossible to grow any kind of plant in the desolate place so she commonly had to find other methods to match her diet. Soon she learned of a 'nearby' village, now it has practically become a routine to leave at noon, trade, then get back home before dark fell.

She sighed continuing her hike through the harsh weather occasionally brushing the small snowflakes out of her fur, it was sometimes kind of annoying. She hopped onto a large boulder pulling out a compass, silently taking a seat she gazed at the small contraption, 'alright so the village is west and my house is east, come on Y/N remember, remember-' her head shot up at the sound of a small whimper. She arched a brow slightly at the small noise, a hurt animal?

Not many animals stay around outside all day especially in weather like this, this was terrible even with their usual weather. Animals despise coming out in the middle of large storms, it was in their instinct. She hopped up into a standing position glancing around in search for the source of the noise. Her ears perked up at the sound of the same call although this one seemed more desperate.

She jumped off the large rock into the snow, making a satisfying crunch noise when her boots hit the ground. She glanced around for any sign of life quickly noticing a shaking ball of orange and brown. She started approaching the blob of color soon she noticed it was in the shape of a human. A trench coat covered most of their body as they shook and shivered in the harsh conditions, two pointed pastel orange ears with tips of brown sprouted from curly caramel-colored hair.

Y/N stared blankly at the hybrid, they clearly weren't from around here due to their coloration, so just what were they doing here? She shook her head determination now prominent on her features as she shook off her large coat, get them warm and safe ask questions later. She approached the figure rushed grabbing their arm gently, they let out a surprised shriek as their head swiveled to stare up at her with clouded baby blue eyes. They stared at her as she shoved her coat around his shivering figure providing at least a little more warmth.

She quickly without even thinking hoisted one of their arms over her shoulder allowing some of her body heat to the shivering fox. They practically melted into her touch their breathing slowing slightly as Y/N began the trek to get them out of the cold. She would slip on the sleet a couple of times causing her to almost drop her new companion multiple times. Once she finally saw her cabin in the distance she let out a sigh of relief.

"Don't worry bud, we are almost there. Just a little more," she encouraged the other she was starting to feel quite tired herself her legs practically jello. The hybrid next to her could only let out a groan in response.

She trudged through the snow back towards the structure, 'just a little more,' was all she could think as she stumbled towards the front door. She finally reached the door fumbling with the knob for a moment before she finally heard a satisfying, 'click!' She practically kicked open the door it almost coming back to hit her in the face but thankfully didn't. She glanced around for a moment looking for a spot to place the shivering hybrid. Soon she just settled on the floor in the corner of the room.

She set them down gently propping them up against the wall, wrapping the coat around them so they were warmer she turned around and rushed towards her bed. When she reached her mattress she ripped off the blankets rushing back to her new guest throwing them over them to give them more warmth. She narrowed her eyes as they cuddled into the quilts, they looked still cold.

Suddenly an idea came to her, soup! Soup always helped her when she was younger and had a cold, she could only hope it would help her new companion as well. She rushed over towards her furnace quickly finding and grabbing as many mushrooms as she could. She searched her chests for some bowls and water bowls, she let out a triumphant snort. She shoved the ingredients into the bowl pretty rushed and shoved it into her furnace for a couple of seconds. She sighed in relief when she pulled it out now searching her place for a spoon, successfully finding a wooden spoon.

She put the spoon into the broth and started to carefully make her way back to her new friend. She crouches down noticing that they were conscious, large curious eyes glancing around until they landed on her. His ears perked up slightly as he looked at the soup in her hands. She offered him a gentle smile as she placed the food on the floorboard in front of him and turned around to lay against the wall as well.

The fox hybrid cautiously took the bowl into his hands staring at it for a moment before taking a tentative sip. His tail audibly started to thump against the floor as he continued to drink the broth. He finished it quite fast oblivious to the stare of Y/N next to him. She watched as he looked over at her with heavy eyelids, she watched in surprise as he leaned against her shoulder melting into her touch.

"You're warm..." he mumbled. Y/N let out a small chuckle at the statement grabbing him gently putting the smaller male on her lap wrapping her arms around him providing more warmth. He snuggled up against her letting out a quiet purr as she set her chin on the top of his head.

"My name-" he was cut off by a yawn for a moment before he continued, "-is Fundy, what bout you?" Y/N let out a quiet snort responding with a short, "Y/N."

"Well, Y/N-" another yawn cut off his half-asleep mumbles, "thank you."

[shihalyfie]

Kizuna itself vs. the two versions of the novel

Written on request from a friend who wanted to remain anonymous. This is more of an editorial than a meta, and while I usually have a policy of “this is an analysis blog, not a review blog” it goes into more of my personal impressions and opinions than usual, but it’s something I write hoping to be helpful.

There are basically three “official” full versions of Kizuna: one being, of course, the movie itself, one being the Dash X Bunko version of the novel, and one being the Shueisha Mirai Bunko version of it. While it’s certainly not to say that any of the three is an “incomplete” version of the narrative, if you really want as full of a picture of the story as possible, somehow, each of all three versions of the story happens to have really important information that the other two do not. If I had to pick only one of these three versions to recommend to people, I would of course pick the movie itself; it’s obviously the base story everything else is based off of and was the one the production centered around as a priority, but the novelizations have a surprising amount of info that provide a lot of insight into the movie’s story and themes.

I get the impression that the creation of Kizuna involved making a lot more story and background details than could fit in a 95-minute movie, so these novelizations, which were based directly off the original movie script, ended up being an outlet for a lot of these details (and as much as I could be harsh on the movie itself for being a bit “reliant” on extra material, I have to admit that Adventure and 02 were both like this too -- a lot of our current understanding of the series comes from the Adventure novels and drama CDs -- so frankly I’m thankful we at least got this with a 95-minute movie instead of a yearlong series). On the flip side, while I'm not going to say that the novels are completely and utterly inaccurate representations of the movie, in a perhaps too-close approximation of Adventure and 02's writing style, this is a movie where even the nuances in a single line or split-second moment carry heavy implications, which become much blurrier or harder to identify when they’re presented differently (or not even presented at all) in the novel’s context, especially when they emphasize very different things from what the movie itself was emphasizing.

The short version of this is that I believe the Dash X version contains the greater amount of “plot and story” information but significantly misses out on the emotional themes and presentation, whereas the Shueisha Mirai version abridges and cuts chunks of content but is much better at conveying the intended message. More on this below the cut. (Note that the following post spoils Kizuna’s plot events.)

The movie itself

Since the following parts are more “in comparison to the movie”, I’m not going to go too much into this in this section, but one thing I will say is that the official English subtitle translation for the movie is really not great. Even if you take out nitpickiness about the fact it misses several significant nuances (the difference between “unchangeable fate” and “changeable destiny”, or the fact that Gennai refers to partnership dissolution as a “case” and not like it’s something that happens overall) at really plot-important moments, some lines (thankfully, usually not plot-important ones) are just straight-up incorrect. And worse, there’s evidence the official English dub was based on that translation! (I’m not faulting the people in charge of the dub for this, but whoever handed them that translation to work with.)

The dialogue in the Dash X Bunko version is transcribed effectively word-for-word from the dialogue in the movie (or perhaps vice versa, given that the novel is based on the original script), so I highly recommend checking that version as a reference for dialogue or if you want to do any intimate analysis on it. I don't want to go as far as to suggest not supporting the official version of the movie because of this, but at least please be aware that the translation used there is not entirely reliable.

Dash X Bunko

If you talk about “the Kizuna novel”, this is the one that people usually tend to be referring to, for two reasons. Firstly, it was translated shortly after the movie’s release, and due to the unfortunate circumstances of Kizuna being delayed in accessibility outside Japan for several months, this basically served as the only comprehensive source of info about the movie outside Japan for a very long time. Secondly, in Japan, this one was marketed as “the one for adults” in contrast to the Shueisha Mirai one being “for kids”, which meant that a lot of people assumed that the latter one was just an incredibly stripped down version that was otherwise disposable or replaceable. (This is very, very much not the case, and is extremely ironic when it comes to a movie that partially centers around the dangers of looking down too much on things associated with childhood.)

When it comes to “plot and story info”, this is the one that probably serves as the best reference (especially for fanfic writers or those who need a refresher on certain plot events or to look up something quickly), and probably has the most “comprehensive” listing of plot events surrounding the movie. The dialogue in it is a word-for-word recreation of the movie’s script, and actually includes more scenes than the movie itself does, including two that I suspect to be deleted scenes (a detailing of the specifics behind the initial plan to pursue Eosmon, and a conversation between Koushirou and Tentomon) and adaptations of the first and second memorial shorts within their context in the movie. It also contains some interesting background details and extra context for some things in the movie that you might think would normally be animation flair or something, but take a very interesting implication of story importance if they’re going out of their way to write this in the script. (There’s a scene where Agumon and Gabumon appear in front of their partners when they’d been behind them a minute before, and it’s easy to think this might be an animation error, but not only does the surrounding context make this unlikely, the novel itself actually directly states that their positions had changed.) Given that, I think it was very fortunate that this novel was available to us for those outside Japan waiting for the actual movie to come out, because this level of detail was very important to have on hand rather than fragmented spoilers on social media.

However, the part where I think the novel is significantly deficient in compared to the actual movie (and also to the other version of the novel) is that it describes the plot events in too blunt of a manner and doesn’t bring out its themes very well. (It’s kind of like having a long and very detailed Wikipedia article plot summary; it definitely got all the hard facts down, but the emotion is gone, which is still a pretty significant issue when media’s all about the feelings and message in the end.) While “considering the movie to be more cynical than it’s probably meant to be” happens regardless of which version someone’s working from, I’ve talked to perhaps an unnervingly high number of people who started with the novel and were absolutely convinced that the movie’s message was about adulthood sucking and needing to just accept it, until they saw how the actual movie pulled it off and the surrounding atmosphere and realized it definitely was not. (I think one really big factor here is that a lot of the visual imagery makes it extremely, extremely hard to miss that Menoa’s mentality is completely screwed up and her way of seeing things was dubious to begin with; prose descriptions really just don’t capture the way they slam this in your face with visual and musical cues during the climax of the movie.)

You can figure this out from the novel itself, but you have to really be looking closely at the way they word things, and on top of that it’s hard to figure out which parts you should be focusing on and which parts aren’t actually that important -- in other words, the “choice of priorities” gets a bit lost in there. Even the little things lose a lot of value; it’s theoretically possible to use the novel to put together that Daisuke is wearing his sunglasses indoors during his first scene, but you have to put together the context clues from completely different paragraphs to figure this out, none of which compares to the actual hilarity of visually seeing him wearing the thing in a very obviously dimly lit restaurant because he’s our beloved idiot. (For more details, please see my post with more elaboration on this and more examples of this kind of thing.)

I wouldn’t say that the movie itself isn’t guilty of (perhaps accidentally) having some degree of mixed messaging, but I would say this problem is rather exacerbated by the novel’s way of presenting it due to its dedication to dropping every single plot detail and event without much in the way of choosing what to contextualize and what to put emphasis on (as it turns out, treating practically everything in the movie as if it has equal weight might not be a great idea). So, again, for that reason I think the novel serves as a good reference in terms of remembering what happened in it and knowing the movie’s contents, but I also feel that it’s really not the greatest deliverer of the movie’s message or themes at all.

Shueisha Mirai Bunko

The second version of the novel was not translated until several months after the movie first released, and shortly before the Blu-ray and streaming versions of the movie itself came out anyway, so my impression is that on this end a lot of people don’t even know it was a thing. On top of that, even those who know about it often dismiss it as the “kid version” -- and to be fair, it did baffle quite a few people as to why this version even exists (Kizuna is technically not unacceptable for kid viewing and its plot is still understandable regardless of age, but since the movie is so heavily about the millennial existential crisis, it’s not something kids would really relate to). So a lot of people tended to just skip over it...which is really a shame, because it contains some interesting things that actually aren’t in the other two versions at all. For instance, did you know that, as of this writing, this is the only thing that plainly states the specific explanation for why Yamato decided to become an astronaut, for the first time in 20 real-life years?

While there are still some things that weren’t in the movie proper (mainly the Eosmon initial plan and the adaptation of the second memorial short), for the most part, the actual events are somewhat abridged compared to the movie and the Dash X version, and other than a few stray lines, there’s not a lot of extra information that would be as helpful for referencing the events of the plot. The version of the novel here is rather broadly interpretive of the scenes in the movie, so several things are condensed or taken out (and, amusingly, because it’s assuming that the kids reading this don’t actually know the original Adventure or 02, it has to describe what each character is like in a quick one-liner).

However, interestingly enough, it’s because it’s so heavily interpretive that it illuminates a lot of things that weren’t really easy to glean out of the Dash X version. For instance:

Some scenes are described with “other perspectives” that give you info on someone else’s point of view. (For instance, we see more of Yamato’s perspective and thoughts when he has his first phone call with Daisuke, or a bit more detail in the process of how Eosmon kidnappings work.)

We get a lot more information on what’s going through everyone’s heads during each scene, and what emotions they’re feeling at a given time. (This is something that you could at least get to some degree in the movie itself from facial expressions and framing, but would often be a lot blurrier in the Dash X version; here, it’s spelled out in words.)

When things are abridged, you get a clearer idea of what the intended point and theme of the scene was because it’s stripped down to include only that part. In one really interesting case, the scene with Agumon finding Taichi’s AVs has a “censored” equivalent where Taichi’s pushed to a corner because he can’t find anything non-alcoholic in his fridge -- so when you look at the two versions of the scene and what they have in common, you can figure out that the point isn’t that it was a lewd joke for the sake of it, but rather that Taichi’s forcing himself into boxes of “adulthood” that are actually meaningless and impractical.

Some of the descriptions of the characters, scenes, and background information make it a lot more obvious as to their purpose in the narrative (it outright confirms that Miyako being in Spain means that her personality is getting overly enabled there).

The scene where the circumstances behind Morphomon’s disappearance are revealed makes it significantly less subtle what the point is. In the actual movie, a lot of this involved visual framing with Menoa seeming to become more and more distant, but in this version of the novel they basically whack you over the head with the final confirmation that Menoa is guilty of neglecting her own partner, which contradicts her own assertions that “they were always together” (maybe not emotionally, it seems!) and helps clarify the commonality between her, Taichi, Yamato, and Sora in what exactly led to their partners disappearing.

Bonus: this version of the novel really wants you to know that the ending of the movie is about Taichi and Yamato fully having the determination to turn things around and lead up to the 02 epilogue. (The movie’s version of this involves the extended version of Taichi’s thesis and the credits photo with Yamato obviously next to a rocket, while this novel’s version involves more detailed fleshing out of how Taichi and Yamato decided to use their experiences to move onto their eventual career paths and what kind of hope they still have at the end. The Dash X version...didn’t really have a very strong equivalent here.)

In other words, while this version of the novel isn’t the greatest reference for plot or worldbuilding, it does a much more effective job being straightforward about the intended themes and message of the movie, and even if the scenes in it are much more loosely adapted, it’s much better at adapting the emotional nuances of the things that would normally be conveyed via visuals, expressions, and voice acting. (Although I would still say that the movie itself is the best reference for that kind of thing, of course.) If you just want lore or plot ideas, I don’t think it’ll help you very much, but since this series is so much about characters that had their ways of thinking fleshed out in such incredible detail, and about strong theme messaging, this is all still very valuable information in its own way.

[cayenne-twilight]

Professor Layton Iceberg Explanation

As I said in the tags of the original, the iceberg I made was a meme consisting of both real theories and satire/parodies/fandom memes. If anyone is interested, I can work on an unironic version that only has real theories.

Buckle in because this post is LONG and heavily saturated with lore and information.

Actual theories

Parallel universe 1960s where the world wars didn’t happen. There’s an unused file in Curious Village that shows the year as 1960 and the time machine from UF is set to 1973, ten years into the future. The series canonically takes place in an undefined time period (hence the technological inaccuracies and fantasy elements), but it’s based off the 60s. There’s more evidence but we don’t have time to go over every little thing. I linked my “no wars” theory below but TL;DR the outdated airplanes and underdeveloped medicine in the Layton series imply that the world wars may never have happened. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632205992162099200/outofcontextdiscord-timegearremix-zonosils-war

The real meaning behind the statue in Future London. In UF, the purpose of the statue is to spark Layton and Luke’s conversation about their friendship. Luke is stressing out about moving overseas and sees himself and the professor in the story behind the statue, but in the bigger picture, Clive must have been the one to commission it. Some theorize that the little boy is Clive and the man is either his father or the professor. One idea I’ve seen is that Clive wishes he could be Luke for real, while another is that he wishes he died ten years ago, and another is that he’s literally terminally ill explaining why he doesn’t care about consequence. Personally, I think “the boy succumbed to his illness” refers to his mental illness seeing as he wanted the professor to save him from his madness as he saved him all those years ago.

True location of Monte D’Or. there are no deserts on the British isles to my knowledge, so it makes the most sense for Monte D’Or to be in Southwest USA where English is the default language, they have a desert, and there exists a city famous for flashy hotels, casinos, and entertainment. What makes it odd is that nobody ever mentions overseas travel, and all the major characters are from England.

Loosha’s origins are not explicitly explained if I remember correctly, but the implication was that her prehistoric (supposedly) species was sealed away along with the garden, allowing them to survive all the way to the time of LS until Loosha was the only one left. The garden provided a good habitat and protection from predators, and it’s logical that they’d slowly die out anyways, but there’s no explanation of any specific factors that led to Loosha being the last.

Beasley is not a bee I wrote a post about this one as well, but TL;DR Beasly lacks several defining bee traits whilst having several human ones. He is not human, yet, by definition, not a bee. It’s possible that he is the result of Dimitri’s testing, but whatever his untold story is, he remains an enigma of nature. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632381715250282496/theory-beasly-isnt-a-bee

Subject 2’s identity is currently unknown. There is a subject one (parrot) and subject 3 (rabbit) so there has to be a second. For a long time, people suspected Beasly to be him seeing as he’s a bit of an amalgamation and definitely not a regular bee (see above). After the release of LMJ, though, people began to suspect Sherl, the intelligent hound who could speak to certain people but not others. That being said, it’s possible for one to be subject 4. Sherl’s memory of a bright flash matches up with subject 3’s memory of being electrocuted. They never explain why the animals were being experimented on, but it was probably Dimitri making sure the conditions of his machine were safe for humans before reliving the incident from ten years ago.

Lady Violet died from the plague from DB. There’s no evidence for this or anything, it’s just an idea. People say she died from the flu but I don’t remember them saying that in the game, at least the US version. Extending off my “no war” theory: it’s theorized that the Spanish Flu was spread by the travlelling soldiers, so if that’s true, it’s possible for the epidemic to have been averted for some decades. Maybe the Spanish Flu reached England later than in real life. The hole in this is that DB’s plague must’ve been close in time to 1918 while Violet’s death was much later, so it would’ve had to stick around.

Bill Hawks is working with Targent and Arthur Cantabella. There was a force in the shadows buying the time machine technology from Bill. Someone with a ton of money who helped him cover up a freak accident and get away with it completely, a feat that involved shady means like violence by hired thugs. Some theorize that it was Targent, seeking power over time in exchange for a little mafia magic. The Labarynthia project was sponsored by the UK government, so as the PM, Bill must’ve known about it. He probably supported dubiously ethical, high stakes (witch pun) psychological experiments like Cantabella’s and helped him stay in the shadows.

All the NPCs in St. Mystere and Folsense are dead. I make fun of this type of theory later, but they’re admittedly captivating. I’m pretty sure the canon in CV is that the villagers are Bruno and Augustus’s OCs that they made robots of and built a town around, but it’s more interesting to think that the village was there before, and the townspeople died of a plague and were replaced like Lady Violet. In Folsense, there really was a plague and they never explain the NPCs there. They’re either real people who appear way younger than they are due to hallucinations (even the ones who already look old ?), or they don’t exist at all, which is pretty spooky. This part of the story is a gaping plot hole. In a similar vein to CV, the edgy yet plausible theory is that they used to live in Folsense but died of the plague and now live on as hallucinations.

Hershel seeing everything as a puzzle is a coping mechanism for all his trauma. This was a joke but I thought about it for more than five seconds and it makes way too much sense.

Plot holes and unexplained questions that we like to overthink because it’s fun

The downfall of the Azran was vaguely explained in canon by people being so greedy that it lead to the civilization collapsing. It’s not a stretch to imagine that happening, but it would’ve been more interesting with a little more detail.

Layton and Luke are programmed to routinely forget how to walk. I didn’t know whether to list this in the joke section or not, but it’s odd that the characters actively participate in the walking tutorial (as opposed to showing a little memo to the player) as if they didn’t know how to before, especially when they go through this several times a year.

The truth behind Pavel. He’s simply a joke character who teleports, is a polyglot (sort of, at least he wants us to think he is) and is mega confused all the time. He’s a fun character to make crack theories about because of his cryptic nature that even he doesn’t seem to understand.

Miracle Mask deleted scenes. The first trailer for MM featured animations that were not in the final game. One was the Randall falling scene, except in a slightly different style than the one we know. Others were completely foreign, like Layton and Luke pacing across a theatre stage as if Layton’s about to expose someone with a dramatic point. Cut content and “could’ve beens” are always curious to think about.

Evan Barde: secret mastermind. Arianna and Tony’s dad is a mysterious character who died under mysterious circumstances. I think the canon is that his death was a genuine accident, but concept art of him making a creepy evil face suggests that maybe he originally had a larger role in the first drafts of LS than the finished game.

The secret to how Paul and Des pull off their disguises is unclear and will remain unclear. There is no plausible explanation for their shape shifting. Unless Paul is just a little dude wearing a human suit like that one Wizard of Oz species and Des is the best quick-changer ever and hides his naturally feminine legs under his cloak.

Alfendi’s mom. When LBMR came out people scrambled to piece together who Hershel had a kid with, but there’s no way alfendi is his biological son. This happened with Kat as well and her biological parents turned out to be brand new characters, so I’m sure Al will get an adoption backstory if his arc continues, be his parents old major characters or nameless, faceless NPCs.

Granny Riddleton and Stachenscarfen are omnipotent deities. Idk which section this fits best under, but these two characters have some serious power. At first introduction, they’re implied to be robots, but they appear everywhere in later games. They follow the Professor wherever he goes and assist him on his adventures, GR collecting puzzles and housing them by some odd magic, and Stachen teaches you how to walk. They both introduce and supervise the gameplay. By extension, I guess this idea could apply to Albus as well in the prequels. GR and Stachen even had the power to appear in LMJ, something no major character could do. I consider them akin to the velvet room attendants from the Persona games.

Clive’s kill count is a vague subject in the game for the sake of keeping it PG. I don’t know if anyone’s ever mathematically estimated the damage he caused, and I sure don’t want to try, but the game appears to push the idea that he didn’t kill anyone at all, saying they stopped him in the nick of time and things like that, even though we watch him raze the city. If they ever want to bring him back post-time skip, I can see them twisting it so that the mobile fortress cutscene wasn’t a linear sequence of events, but instead a compilation of scenes over the course of hours so that London neighborhoods around him could be evacuated and have it make sense. Knowing Level-5, it’s more likely that they wouldn’t think this deep and do something more lazy, though.

Memes and references

Post-time skip Flora is real references the famous L is real theory from Super Mario 64. Like Luigi in SM64, Flora was also a highly anticipated character who didn’t appear in a new game, in this case LMJ or LMDA. In the end, Luigi did become real in the DS port so hopefully Flora is real will be realized as well.

Hershel can’t read is a veteran fandom meme referring to how in the first few games, especially Curious Village, Layton asks Luke to read every document out loud for him. Perhaps this was an exercise to improve Luke’s reading skills and independent thinking, or perhaps he was just too lazy or preoccupied to do it himself, but this grew into the joke that our genius Professor was actually illiterate this whole time.

Layton’s smash invitation is hidden in PLvsAA. It’s no secret that the fandom would kill a man to get the Professor into the smash brothers franchise. In PLvsAA one of the puzzle artworks features a goat eating a familiar white envelope with a red stamp, sparking the joke that either Layton or Wright got the invitation their respective fans desired, but it got lost along the way.

The science board is the mysteriously vague organization Don Paolo got kicked out of for the crime of being evil. It’s the epitome of liberal arts majors and art school graduates trying to bs their way around not knowing any science and failing miserably. “He was very good at all the sciences, but then the CEO of science told him to stop because he was using the power of science for evil science”. They do this again when “Dr. Stahngun” describes his time machine what with the soolha coils and whatnot.

Hoogland is death cult initiation is a parody of “Mario 64 is Freemason initiation” which is ridiculous, just like the creepy human sacrifice subplot of AL.

You can see the reflection of someone watching you in Aurora’s eye references the famous, creepy Talking Angela theory. In retrospect it would’ve been funnier if I said Angela instead of Aurora.

Every copy of Professor Layton is personalized references the famous “every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized”

Clive’s fat ass in HD is a meme that originated from the announcement of UFHD, saying that half of the excited fans wanted to cry again while the other half were simply attracted to Clive. If we want to enter real bottom-section-of-the-iceberg-chart territory then let’s say Clive’s character has some sort of psychological siren properties that draw people to him like a magnet and/or Harry Styles.

Things I pulled out of my ass for shits and giggles

Infinite hint coin hack: I’m sure a tech savvy cheater could hack the game for infinite hint coins, but there’s no easy or interesting way. I don’t know why someone would do that though, considering a lot of the hints suck and there are puzzle guides on the internet.

Cringy, unused Randall villain monologue. This joke is derived from the actual scrapped MM content as well as deleted content being a popular element of iceberg charts, but it’s sadly not real. Would’ve been hilarious, though.

Last Specter Puzzle 031: Light Height tracks and records children’s intelligence level. It doesn’t, but it’s always fun to make fun of arguably THE most ridiculously difficult puzzle in the franchise. (Seriously, do they expect 7+ year olds to know trigonometry???)

Hershel struggles with tea addiction. Hershel from the games drinks tea in moderation, but the manga begs to differ. He has a tea set in the Laytonmobile, and an attempt at teatime while driving causes him to crash.

Folsense is a metaphor for Alzheimer’s. This is inspired by those edgy kids’ show theories where everyone’s in hell or something, but nobody has ever said this.

London Life is reality and the plot of the games is all in Luke’s head. That’s one way to fill every plot hole. How funny would it be if Luke made up crazy characters and stories based off his fellow townspeople Sharkboy and Lavagirl style. “This dude who lives in a castle and asks people to give him all their money for nothing in return is a vampire from 50 years ago involved in a tragic love story”.

Secret ending encoded into Tago’s Head Gymnastics. It’d be crazy if there was, and Dimitri would hound Tago for the secret to time travel. If you didn’t know, the Layton games started as an adaption of Akira Tago’s puzzle series, except they decided to add a story to make it more interesting and marketable.

Daily puzzles datamine your DS. I’m bad with technology but is it even possible to datamine a DS??? Idk, but I think my DS lite from 2008 is safe.

[ick25]

Net Navis and Backup data.

Uh...Rockman...

And didn’t you delete Plantman just a few episodes before?

Or are Darkloids not Navis?

Hear me out, this post is not to show how hypocritical Axess was compared to the first season ( even though it is), its to give one last look of how hardcore Rockman was back then, and how Navis can be revived with a backup data, as well as trying to solve the mystery of how Rockman came back after being deleted, because it didn’t made much sense if you think about it.

First, though, let’s see why these Navis count as deleted and how were they able to come back in later seasons.

Bombman and Stoneman.

The “Miracle Net Navis” could be able to fight using chips without the help of a human operator, but they can’t revive by themselves. True, in episode 21, Stoneman was able to regenerate himself with a program he had hidden inside of him, but if said program is also destroyed, then Stoneman can’t regenerate anymore.

Random fan: “But Blues couldn’t have deleted Bombman and Stoneman then because we see them again in episode 23 and 25.”

I said that they can’t revive by themselves. Meaning that if Blues DID delete them, Wily could’ve brought them back with a backup data and even used that same backup to make copies of them. It would be until Rockman used the new style change to delete them completely because they don’t come back until Stream, and it has been established in that season that Duo revives Navis who have been deleted by Rockman and friends.

 Airman.

Ok, the only reason I say Airman was deleted was because of the defragmentation effect after Rockman blasted him with the Heat Guts Style, which is something we’ve already seen twice, when Rockman was deleted and in the uncensored version of episode 24 when Gutsman got crushed under a boulder to save Roll. Luckily, Gutsman’s data was recovered along with the Scilab servers. 

This also means that Airman was brought back with a backup data only to be chow for Gospel, and I still think that’s funny. XD

Even though he came back along with the other Navis eaten by Gospel, Airman returning in Stream could mean that he was eventually deleted by something or someone else. Who knows?

Cutman.

One can not be sure about Cutman since we clearly see him disappear with the Log Out animation, but in episode 36, the elder Cutman says that Cutman was deleted by Rockman and we don’t see him again (canonically, at least). 

The brief cameo as an army of Cutman in Stream wasn’t because of Duo, it was because Shademan changed the past, and being a Navi without an operator technically makes Cutman a Darkloid, even though I still think Darkloid origins make NO sense. The Cutman we see in Beast was from a parallel universe, where he was ironically deleted again by Rockman with the help of a friend.

Napalmman.

It was never established if Napalmman had an operator or not, or if he was deleted, but there was no way he could’ve survived a direct Electric Royal Wrecking Ball attack to the face! (The defragmentation effect helps too). Napalman is revived by Duo as an Asteroid Navi, which was a clever way of paring him with his actual operator from the 5th game. BN2 postgame might not be canon.

Planetman.

Just like with Planetman’s origin, whether he was deleted or not is a real mystery. I just assumed he was deleted because his body turns into stone and it then crumbles away releasing what looks like a shooting star.

Wish I had more information about Planetman, but a program advance powered up by the Aqua Custom Style doesn’t seem like something you can avoid. Speaking of that...

Magnetman and Elecman.

The actual scene where Rockman deleting Navis is confirmed. After Magnetman was brutally kicking Rockman in the floor, Elecman fights him while Rockman recovers with the Extra Code, and the Style Changed Rockman starts beating the ever-loving c*@p out of Magnetman.

Obviously cut from the dub.

The bug affecting Rockman during this was interfering with his aim to finish off Magnetman, but Elecman steps in and holds Magnetman in place so that Rockman won’t miss. Both Magnetman and Elecman are deleted because the Count’s PET said Deleted on screen, meaning that Rockman deliberately deleted two Navis to save his friends.

Sometimes heroes have to make tough choices, not everyone can be spared, we have to remember that Navis are computer programs that can be brought back easily because we see Elecman and Magnetman again after this episode meaning that they must’ve had backups.

How does the backup data work?

Both the games and the manga mention repairing Navis with a backup data, every computer program must have a backup to prevent the loss of important information. In a Navi’s case, a backup can be used to restore defragmentation of limbs by using the copy of the Navi’s structure as a base.

However, we’ve seen in later seasons of the anime that many operators are against using a backup when a Navi is deleted, because humans can get emotionally attached to things, bringing a Navi back from deletion wouldn’t feel the same.

Its not confirmed in the anime that backup datas are a thing, but if they were, then why would they not use it to bring back Silk or Nenjiro who sacrificed themselves to save their operators? 

My theory is that their memories and experiences wouldn’t go beyond the last time the backup was made, so if a Navi was revived, it would have the same personality, but it wouldn’t have any memory about being deleted or of anything it had learned prior the deletion.

For something as important as a Navi, and the Net being established as full viruses, the PET should automatically copy the Navi’s data at the end of each day, so if a Navi is deleted, it would only have the memories of the day before. If this was the case for Rockman, then why wouldn’t Netto bring back Rockman with the copy his PET made at the end of the previous day? The only difference would be that Rockman would have no memory of his battle with Blues. One can argue that it just wouldn’t feel right because the Rockman that experienced everything along Netto until his deletion was gone forever and that he would only have a copy of his dear friend instead. It could be that, or that PETs just don’t save backups and it is something an operator is supposed to do, but knowing Netto, doing this would also feel wrong because he would never see Rockman as just a program.

I think there was an argument about Silk being corrupted by the dark aura and that it prevented her from being restored, but I don’t buy that, unless the PET was corrupted as well, the backup would still be intact. The anime was simply making an excuse for teaching children about moving on after the death of a love one, but that just doesn’t work for Navis knowing how computer programs function. 

The anime wanted to follow the end of Battle Network 3, when Rockman was thought to have been deleted and Netto had to move on, but in the games, Rockman was Netto’s dead twin brother back as a Navi ( Which I don’t like), and that made him unique and irreplaceable because he was basically human. Since that relationship doesn’t exist in the anime, they had to change things a little, the viewers had to see Rockman as a person so they made it that only his body was destroyed, his memories were placed in Netto’s PET, and for some reason he had other pieces of memories in his friend’s PETs. So Rockman’s personality and memory datas where still intact, and that all they needed was his structure aka his body which was a back up that Netto’s dad had, unfortunately, save in a Scilab server because Rockman was created there.

I personally dislike it when shows change the rules that were stablished in previous seasons just because they wanted a story that the viewers can relate to. To have a fantastic story have one idea and have it suddenly change because we need children to learn about real life topics, even if the show is not about that. So I want to know what others think about this idea and inconsistencies in a story, in the meantime, here are some images of Rockman possibly deleting security Navis.

I’m starting to think this is the real reason why Rockman doesn’t Style Change anymore.