#so many options not enough decision making skillz

[seagullcharmer]

got an upcoming con and i'm trying to decide what my third cosplay should be..... i'm hoping to bring fi skyward sword and puppet!raine from the owl house, but idk for another... i can always do link, but i have 3-4 options for which link (wind waker / albw, hyrule warriors, botw vai, blue link) or i could bring back luke's dragon buster (even though it's not particularly recognisable), or or or

[wanderleave]

For tumblr user @stoprobbers​, who is one of the best people to know for many reasons, some of which include: procurement of whisky whilst one is extremely jet lagged, photoshop skills on top of photoshop skillz involving a certain Swayze movie, and generally being all around wonderful. Happy birthday, friend! 

In hindsight, Joyce realizes, she should have seen it coming.

She hadn’t questioned Nancy coming with them to the cabin, only realizing weeks later how tightly her older son had clung to the girl in the frantic moments of heat and terror. Joyce had had other things on her mind, like Will, and dealing with the lab, and pulling down the veritable miles of paper lining the house.

And Will.

Nancy being around constantly had felt like a natural progression, welcomed into their family with one stab of a poker.

Jonathan had never said the words to her, “Mom, Nancy’s my girlfriend now,” but Joyce has eyes. She can see what’s going on, even if it ends up being too much for her to handle both her younger son’s recovery and her oldest’s first relationship at the same time.

Something had to give. And Jonathan had always been independent, she tells herself.

But now that the days are warming even as the nights are still cold, Joyce finds herself with a moment to stop and breathe. To lie flat on her back in her bed, stare up at the ceiling, and not worry, even if only for a matter of minutes.

And that’s when she hears it.

She’ll give them credit, it’s soft. But the high pitched giggle coming from the other side of the wall most certainly did not come from her son.

Joyce edges closer to the wall, pressing her ear up against it, even as the thought crosses her mind that she may not want to hear what follows the giggle. But it’s just murmurs, the hint of voices, low and warm.

But even without the distinction of words, she can tell.

They’re happy.

Joyce can’t take that away from them. At least, not now.

She shuffles back down the bed, throwing a hand up to switch off the lamp, and just in case, pulling a pillow over her head, to block out any other giggles. She’ll leave them to their happiness.

Until tomorrow.

    She’ll be kind about it. She knows what her own parents would have done—had done—slam the door open, catch them in the act, send Nancy scrambling out the window into the night.

Joyce knows what will come of that, from experience. More sneaking, more lying, and it’ll be the first step in a journey that leads to her losing Jonathan, maybe forever.

Instead, she’ll get on their level. A heart to heart.

She’ll be their friend.

Make them understand. That she understands them. That she knows what it’s like.

They’ll see it from her point of view, she knows it.

It’s a foolproof plan.

        Joyce wakes earlier than usual, and spends most of the morning taking care of the little things that usually fall to the rushed moments—she finds her keys, shoved deep inside her coat pocket. Does her usual customary check on Will, her heart jumping into her throat when she finds his bed empty, before she remembers he spent the night at Dustin’s. (Suppresses the urge to check up on him. They’d call if something was wrong.)

And then she sits at the kitchen table, sets her coffee next to her. And waits.

    It takes longer than usual for Jonathan to emerge, even for a Saturday morning.

Joyce hears the murmurs first. Then a laugh—Jonathan this time—followed by a shushing noise that must be from Nancy. A low rumble, and then the door opens.

“I told you, no one’s ho—”

Joyce coughs.

She can see Jonathan’s eyes widen, as he stops mid-stride, catching sight of her. He reverses course, stepping backwards, pushing the door closed with a snap.

There’s only silence.

Joyce sighs.

“Jonathan, can I talk to you out here?” she calls, folding her hands.

“Just a second, Mom!”

She can hear scurrying, frantic whispers. The window opening, hitting the top of the frame.

“Nancy, you too.”

The scurrying stops. Joyce can almost see them, frozen, the wordless conversation they’re having, trying to figure out if she’s bluffing or not. The whispers start again, more forceful this time, before the window slides slowly shut. The door opens again, just a crack, Nancy’s eyes peering around it this time.

Joyce takes a sip of her coffee.

The door clicks shut again.

It’s ten minutes later when it opens for the third time, Jonathan edging into the hallway, his eyes on the ground, his hand entwined with Nancy’s, who seems to be dragging her feet.

Joyce smiles benevolently, gestures to the two chairs in front of her. “Have a seat.”

The two teenagers walk slowly down the hall, not meeting her eyes. Joyce feels a little pang of hurt—surely they don’t think she’s about to yell at them—and then remembers her own terror, echoing through the years.

They don’t know that she’s on their side.

She’ll set their minds at ease.

As they settle themselves across from her at the kitchen table (they never let go of each other’s hands, not once, Joyce notices), she takes one last sip of coffee, then pushes the mug aside, examining their faces, Jonathan’s gaze on the table, his face contorted, Nancy watching her warily.

Joyce takes a deep breath.

“I want you—”

Jonathan cuts her off. “Mom—”

She silences him with an outstretched hand. He glances over at Nancy, then back at her. Joyce smiles, again. She’s their friend, she reminds herself.

“I want you both to know how happy I am for you,” she begins. Jonathan’s face becomes less of a grimace, and his eyes lift slightly, flicking up and back down, as if he’s tentatively hopeful about what she’s going to say.

Nancy remains wary.

It’s a start.

“I care about both of you. And I want you two to know that I’m here.”

Nancy’s face relaxes a little, and her head turns ever so slightly toward Joyce, as Jonathan begins to calm, his eyes meeting hers, with only the slightest hint of trepidation.

Taking heart from these encouraging steps, Joyce keeps going.

“I know what it’s like to want to spend time together. And Nancy, you know I love having you around. You’ve been such a help to Jonathan—to me.” Joyce watches as the panic starts to fade in Jonathan’s eyes, and knows she’s on the right track.

“But.”

The panic returns, and Joyce rushes on.

“We need to recognize that there are certain rules, rules that I haven’t really needed to lay out until now.”

Jonathan blinks. Nancy coughs.

“But with your help, I think we can have a dialogue about building a respectful environment where we can all trust each other. Specifically, in this house.”

They both look confused, Joyce notes. Perhaps she’s gone too high? She decides to bring it back down—to their level.

“I know how hard it can be. I was a teenager in this town once too, remember. And trust me, we didn’t have half the options you kids have now. The Hawk wasn’t there, Benny’s—or whatever they’re calling it these days. We had the woods.”

Jonathan frowns, ever so slightly.

“And don’t think I don’t know what goes on at the quarry. It had only just opened in my day—”

“Oh my god,” Jonathan says.

“—so when I say I understand, I really do.”

“Mom.”

Nancy’s eyes are wide, but she looks like she’s fighting a smile. Joyce can only assume that she gets it—that she understands that Joyce is there to be their friend—and plunges onward. Nancy’s on her side. She’s on Nancy’s side.

“And I know you two want to be together. And I won’t be like my parents, I’m not here to yell, or scream. But I think that we can all work to have a conversation about boundaries, and respect, and what it’s like to be an adult. You’re growing up. I can’t stop that. But I know we can get through this. Together.”

She extends her hand across the table with an inviting smile, nodding at Jonathan to take it.

“I’m gonna take Nancy home now,” he says abruptly, standing in one swift, decisive movement, pulling Nancy with him. (Their fingers are still intertwined, Joyce notes with fondness.) “She won’t come back ever again, I promise.”

“That’s not what I’m saying!” she exclaims after their retreating forms. “I want us to have a conversation! A dialogue!”

“Oh my god,” Jonathan says again, tugging on Nancy so that she’s forced into a little bit of a run as he reaches the front door.

“Thank you, Mrs. Byers,” Nancy calls lightly as she’s dragged along.

The door slams behind them.

     It’s late by the time Jonathan comes home, late enough that Joyce has already shut her door, already looked in on Will, making sure that he’s tucked into his bed. She thinks about getting up, knocking on his door, trying to continue the conversation, and then dismisses the thought. He’s had enough for one day.

She can hear Jonathan shuffling around his room, but he seems to be alone, and Joyce smiles in the knowledge that the conversation had been a fruitful one.

But as she pulls back the blanket, she hears the window slide up.

A thump.

And murmurs.

Against her better judgement, Joyce reaches for the empty glass of water at the side of her bed, and places it against the wall.

“—are you doing here?”

“Your mom never actually said I couldn’t come over. She just said she wanted to have a conversation, whatever that means,” Nancy says, sounding slightly out of breath.

“It means you’re not supposed to come over.”

“Well, I disagree.”

The window slides shut.

“Nancy, I don’t—”

“Jonathan, I can handle your mother. What I can’t handle is what would happen is if my mother caught you in my room. Imagine that conversation.”

Joyce almost laughs, despite herself.

“I just . . . I know you sleep better with me here,” Nancy continues, her voice quieter. “I know you think you’ve all gotten over what happened in November, but I see what you’re like when I don’t spend the night. And . . . well. I sleep better with you too.”

There’s a long silence with no response from her son, but eventually Joyce can hear blankets rustling, the sounds of settling.

“Plus,” Nancy says, sounding closer, “if you’re worried about your mom catching us, I can promise you there’s no way we’re having sex tonight after climbing through that window, I’m exhausted. Next time you’re sneaking me through the front door like usual.”

Jonathan laughs, and then exhales. “I feel bad, though. After all she’s been through, and now she’s got . . . us to worry about.”

There’s a short pause, and then Nancy muses, slowly, “I don’t think she’s worried. I think she’s your mother, and she has to . . . well, be a mother. But I think she’s on our side, I really do.”

Joyce smiles to herself.

“Now,” Nancy says, sounding muffled, “can we please go to sleep? I’m going to have to wake up early to get out of here before your mom notices me again.”

“Stay as long as you want, Nancy!” Joyce calls through the wall.

She rolls over, and turns out the light.

[elyvorg]

I just beat Leon in Pokémon Shield despite my team being more than ten levels lower than his. I didn't use any (non-hold) items, either - the only advantage I allowed myself was playing with Shift on (although looking back on how the battle went, I might have been able to barely manage without it). I'm saying this not to boast about my epic Pokémon skillz, but to talk about how it felt awesome to manage to do that by using strategy. The reason I was so underlevelled is that my style of playing Pokémon games for the past few gens has been to train literally every Pokémon I'm interested in using, regardless of the fact that this gives me a team of way more than six. Because of this, I had so many different options for my strategy for the battle.

I did one test run first in which I knew I wasn't going to win the moment I saw his Pokémon's levels but then decided to flail around while spamming Max Revives just to see as much of his team as possible and scout out their moves, which managed to show me all his Pokémon except the Charizard I already knew about. Then I was planning to go and grind maybe five more levels on everyone to not be quite as ridiculously outmatched... except I couldn't stop thinking, what if it was already possible at this level? My Pokémon had pulled off some impressive KOs or near-KOs or tanking of big hits during the test battle, just enough to make me think I could just maybe do it if I put together the right strategy. I looked through my almost-a-box-full of options for Pokémon I'd been training to this level and carefully picked those that would be able to counter each of Leon's despite the level gap, maybe teaching them a couple of new moves and using some held items chosen specifically for the situation. This involved some nerding out checking each of his Pokémon's base stats to get a sense of roughly how strong they'd be and therefore how strong my Pokémon's relevant stats would need to be to tank a hit/outspeed/OHKO them.

Even then, it still took two attempts. The first time, things went mostly as I'd calculated, though I overestimated my Pokémon's capabilities just a little bit in some regards but managed to get through with some luck and some improvising, enough to get to his Charizard. And then... yeah, okay, I definitely underestimated his Charizard, and it destroyed the remainder of my team. (Tip: don't use a Drednaw; it has a Grass move. I thought it probably would, but it was worth a try on the off-chance it didn't, since Charizard was the one Pokémon whose moves I hadn’t managed to scout at all.) A bit more re-strategising was necessary for the next attempt with this in mind, the bottom line of which is that I still kind of hate the way Stealth Rock single-handedly makes a Pokémon's competitive worth hinge on its weakness to Rock and yet I sure took advantage of it here, but the more important bottom line is that Boltund is a very, very good dog. Even then, I still underestimated Charizard and spent the last few turns of the battle desperately improvising while not knowing if I would win. Putting together a strategy that I was pretty sure would work and watching it pay off felt awesome, but it also felt awesome to be frantically unsure whether my Pokémon could pull through in the end or not and then having them manage to do so!

(...I also partly won because Leon made some poor decisions while using Charizard. I guess I can headcanon that as being down to him also panicking because a challenger had never come this close to defeating him before. Throughout the whole game I was worried he wasn't going to live up to the constant hype of being supposedly unbeatable and would be anticlimactically easy to defeat, but nope, he lived up to it and then some.)

If you've been finding Pokémon games too easy lately, I highly recommend my playstyle! Don't just restrict yourself to a team of six; use any and all of the Pokémon you find cool or interesting! This is less of a hassle than it's ever been now thanks to the ability to access your PC boxes from anywhere (THANK YOU for this, Game Freak). Your team will be underlevelled, but you'll have so many options to pick from to try and strategise your way through a tough battle without just level grinding through the problem! Pokémon is such a fun strategy game when strategy is actually properly necessary, which doesn't only have to be in competetive PvP situations.

Honestly I kind of wish I'd had more battles in this game in which I'd needed to pull out all the stops and use such careful strategising to win. For most of the game I wasn't that underlevelled thanks to the the Exp Share-like function that can't be turned off in this game even though I'd usually do that, and the unusually high-levelled wild Pokémon you can easily grind against (making me frequently overestimate what levels the Gym Leaders would be). So there were only a tiny handful of other battles that also gave the same rush as this one due to me winning through strategy rather than simply using decently-levelled Pokémon with type advantages.

But still! I love and am so proud of my team who won me the battle, and all of their friends in the box who didn't happen to be suited for this particular battle but still helped get me through other important battles, and I couldn't have done it without any of them. I just love Pokémon, guys. The even better thing about this playstyle is that it means you get to use every Pokémon you want to use, with no "oh that one'd be cool but I've already got six/already got one of that type so I can't", and each of them is bound to get at least one battle in which they can shine and show how awesome they are. MOAR POKÉMON FRIENDS.

Sword and Shield aren't perfect games, but I'm never going to mention my gripes with them (it's not Dexit, though; I literally do not care about Dexit), because ultimately they didn't stop me from just having so much fun playing through this game and exploring Galar and discovering new Pokémon and making them my partners. POKÉMON.