#going to rb with an explanation of everything i included :)

[bytedykes]

[ID: A digital collage based on Kim Dokja from Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. His head is cut out from a black and white paper texture, which cuts off below his eye. He's looking to the side as if in thought. There are various objects fanned out behind his head, including:

A lit cellphone with a nebula, a burning forest, and pages of writing spilling out of it. A filled out library return slip. An arch of many open eyes that begins at the phone's edge.

Stars, and colorful spotlights cut out to resemble stars. Three kinds of flowers: Hibiscus, Cornelian Cherry blossoms, and Red Azalea. A brick wall cut out in a jagged shape.

Colorful fungus, from behind which spouts a pair of bloody hands, one holding the other's wrist. A sword. A large spotlight angled so it shines in KDJ's direction. A large, round, cracked mirror.

A door with a star-shaped peephole. A picture of concrete cut out in a rough shape. Grasshoppers. A large chunk of an amethyst cluster. The bottom of a white coat.

On the front side of his face there is an array of gold coins, some of them layered over KDJ's head. By his temple is a vertical line of teardrop rubies, as if he's bleeding.

In the middle of the image there's text reading "[3 ways to survive in a ruined world]"; it has been put together from colorful individual letters. Similarly the text "tls123" is over the phone screen, in smaller cohesive black and white fonts. Behind the entire collage is a newsprint background, roughly outlining it. The second image is identical but with a black background behind the newsprint instead of transparent. /end ID]

“in other words, what if the genre of my life had been different?”

#kim dokja #orv #omniscient reader's viewpoint #omniscient reader #nik art #collage #I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS ONE !!! im proud of it djkasdk #misc #going to rb with an explanation of everything i included :)

[beebopboom]

I was originally going to add this to the rb I did in response to @gallup24 in the first post - which thank you - but I felt it was getting to long so I we are just going to do a part 2 - go read that first one though

We are going to be diving back into the title sequence

So let me expand on these walkways

I think for this title sequence we are seeing Heavens timeline/plan for when Armageddon was supposed to happen if they won

Looking back at s1 title sequence - which I believe was Hells timeline/plan for Armageddon if they won - something that stood out in comparison to s2 is that the way they are walking is always forward, never on unsteady “ground”.

Which would make sense because from Hells perspective it’s not until the very end that Armageddon gets all fucked up. This would be represented by the rock towers crumbling right at the end.

But back to s2 title sequence let’s follow this Jesus figure around for a minute

The first time I can find him is right before we go into the theatre - very prominently in the center

so what could this mean? Has Heaven been planning the details of the Second Coming since 1941? Did they send Jesus back down to Earth in 1941 because the dead were resurrected? Since this area of magic tricks is more reminiscent of s1 magic tricks was Jesus there in s1?

I don’t have a clear answer for this but I thought I’d share some of the questions that have been floating around in my head

But the next time we see him we are up in space and the walkway is split

If this is the end of s1 represented by the body swap - things are left up in the air (up in space) afterwards. Heaven’s planned timeline is on unstable “ground” and has been cut in half - they can’t move forward with their version of Armageddon anymore - because Adam has reset it (i’ll go more into detail about the right side further down)

So Heaven pivots this plan and throws it in the garbage which leads us the next time we see him

it is quite literally going into the garbage - yes I know the tartan hills are a reference for a scene in the show but you know what it also reminds me of - land fields - even down to the uncovered trash records.

But not even 2 seconds later he is back again

Everything seems back to normal including the things they seem to have left behind (tank and pickled herring) - they are walking on the ground going forward once more.

Aziraphale and Crowley are not apart of this line anymore - haven’t been since the Bullet Catch. They are sitting above Soho in their own little world with hearts all around them - god they are so in love

I see this scene as the era (is 4 years an era?whatever) of bliss - of being openly a duo and not associated with Heaven or Hell. In the background though you have the implication that Heaven is planning something during this time that is then brought back to the attention of the screen when they have this new altered plan

but begs the question has Jesus been to Soho?

back to following him around though - we now see him in the back of the line

a weird place for the literal main character of the Second Coming. Unless something is wrong? Lost track of him perhaps? I mean he is quite literally hidden behind the tank. But who is leading this line now?

Aziraphale and Crowley, who have now been brought back into the fold - fitting that this is the scene we see Gabriel coming down the elevator. But you know what has entered the line as well? First of all Saraqael which makes sense they’re a new character in s2 and seem to be the one that is truly watching Aziraphale and Crowley. But also the Coffee has entered the chat and stays.

Now the next time we see Jesus is interesting

he’s right up front with Aziraphale and Crowley - big difference from where he just was.

This could mean a lot of things. Aziraphale and Crowley are the ones to find and bring him forward. Jesus has been chilling out in the background - perhaps wanting to get in contact with A&C. Or maybe it’s a simple explanation of it’s just getting closer to his time to shine.

He pretty much stays up towards the front for the rest of the time - here he is in the theatre

Interesting that they are back on this unstable path again that we then have a jump into the next part - which seems even more unstable

but it also reminds me of something else we seen earlier

that left over walkway still connected to a gold walkway (I told you I’d come back to it)

Is this a reference to Adam still getting his happy ending? Have some people already made it to the Holy Land only to have it taken away maybe?

I’m not quite sure what to make of this but I wanted to include it.

but back to them going towards the throne room - we are back on this unstable ground that is hazardously sat upon what might the remnants of the old plan - we can literally feel this with the shakes on the screen because we are in a first person shot

then we go back to the normal 2Dness and everything looks fine - if we ignore the giant ship sticking out of the side of the pile - a ship our characters can’t see

So maybe the Second Coming plan isn’t as stable as Heaven would like you to believe and the pile, the walkway, the whole plan is about to be crumbling down

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens title sequence #good omens meta #good omens analysis

[fyodorkitkat]

Can I ask you about shipping? Do you ship every ship you rb to your blog? Is there a reason you don't tag ships? Are there any bsd ships you don't like?

Sure. No I don't. Yes there is. And yes.

Extended explanation (warning: long)

I will pretty much rb most fanart I find something I like about or looks nice irregardless of the ship or intention of the artist (whether it is ship art or not). I also don't care about a lot of ships (more in a "yeah sure whatever floats your boat" or "that could be fun, sure" type of way), or have such a casual attitude towards them it doesn't matter to me.

For fic, if the tags match up with what I like or think would be interesting, don't include any of my hard no's, and the summary catches my attention I will read whatever if I feel like it. Though for mutuals or ppl I talk to sometimes I have tried to read things that I wouldn't usually, sometimes it has been a happy surprise, other times I can't really get into it or there is something about it I just can't fuck with even though their writing is good. With art it matters even less though.

I have also been "sold" on ships by other people through fic and art as well. Because I will consider *mostly* anything, at least for a moment.

I decided early on to not tag ships. This is for multiple reasons.

1. My tagging system is detailed and organized but tagging ships makes it more complicated.

2. I would have to determine if the art was intended to be ship art or not before tagging just because of how I am. This is an extra step which gets more complicated if I am rbing from someone else because it means I have to click through every time to see the OPs original tags assuming they exist.

3. I never have the desire to search my own blog by ship. Only by character.

There are bsd ships that don't exist to me, ones I don't like, and there are bsd ships I am completely indifferent to/don't get it. I'm not going to list everything, I don't know every pairing that exists, I am surely forgetting things, and you didn't ask for specifics. So I will keep this part shorter than I could but me not listing something doesn't mean I like it or actively ship it. It just might fall into the "doesn't exist to me" or "have never thought about/don't really give a shit/forgot it existed even" category.

Any ship involving underage characters (or underage versions of characters who are presently adults) do not exist to me. As in, I'm pretending it doesn't happen for my own peace, and if I have the misfortune of seeing it I block with the quickness.

I don't like Morizai or Dazaku (in any interation including Beast version).

I am not okay with Fukuran at all.

I am not a fan/don't understand Kunichuu or Kunichuuzai or Kunichuuwhatever Kunikida and Chuuya polyship of the hour is.

I'm really mid on Kousano though I will rb art of them because I am always happy to see art for bsd women. Would probably never read fic with them though specifically/intentionally as I don't understand the pairing much.

Odazai is not something I ship but when he dies he is 23 and Dazai is 18 so I don't understand ppl who give others serious flack for shipping them in dark era (when Dazai is an adult though), or shipping Beast Odazai or AUs where Oda lives and they are both adults.

I mention this because this one I have seen just get thrown around a lot with a bunch of moral outrage with it, and I personally don't get it.

#my filtered tags list is long and ever growing and sometimes it feels like i have half this website blocked so i mostly don't see what i #dont like. and i highly encourage everyone to do the same. #including blocking me if you read this and something about it bothered you or pissed you off #-Lue asks

[yeritos]

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ༜𑜞𑇓࿐   𓇻゜𐬹   🫧 *.⊹

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ © ⠀ roller⠀ coaster

roller coasters are quite unpredictable, charged with quick turns and sudden slopes. you can easily compare them to emotions, one second you’re at the peak of life, the next you’re distancing yourself. and yet, even if we’d rather pass over the rather unpleasant moments in life, those moments are what makes everything thrilling, because without these downs, ups wouldn’t be as sensational in contrast. in this event you’ll be mixxing the both of these worlds, expressed in form of a moodboard.

this is based of ‘mixxpop’ , a unique musical identity built upon group nmixx, separating their sound from other peers. most of these songs are seen as experimental paired with a switch up. (sme did it first but we all get it right!!!!!) nowwww enough of beating around the bush and let’s get right into the details!!

⠀ ͏✿ reply with joining down below, rbs are appreciated but not required

⠀ ͏✿ spin the wheel here, you will be required to make your moodboard with that idol! its up to you which colors to use & respin if needed. all of the idols included are my ults so i can get to see more pretty people on my feed teehee⠀ idol

⠀ ͏✿ your moodboard should include two different aesthetics, representing mixxpop and it’s different colors fused in one song, switching it up a little from usual mbs :o my explanation is REALLY vague so here are two examples of how the finished product could be looking like ♡ (black & pink) ♡ (cottage & red)

⠀ ͏✿ refrain from copying and if it remains unnoticed, good for you i guess

⠀ ͏✿ mention me in the moodboard or in the replies and make sure to include the tag #roller coaster : event

⠀ ͏✿ the deadline will be on the 3rd of may, we’ll see if it needs to be extended

⠀ 🥇 ⠀ ᯓ★ ⠀ a follow obviously, one blog theme of their liking, 100 reblogs, two moodboards, shoutout and three dividers!

⠀ 🥈 ⠀ ᯓ★ ⠀ a follow 2️⃣, 75 reblogs, a mb, shoutout and three locs!

⠀ 🥉 ⠀ ᯓ★ ⠀ a follow 3️⃣, 50 reblogs, a mb, shoutout and users

⠀ a participation prize of 20 reblogs is included, i know the prizes aren’t extravagant but we’re here for the fun not prizes

⠀ 🏷 ⠀ @p-oisn ⠀ @obrigados ⠀ @koosuvi ⠀ @dojeoies ⠀ @iluvrei ⠀ @jaes1lvr ⠀ @gigittamic ⠀ @y2jiz ⠀ @b-ubbleberry ⠀ @i-kyujin ⠀ @haenxn ⠀ @baesol ⠀ @rkivefr ⠀ @y2qi ⠀ @aegsll ⠀ @bambicito ⠀ @ujitoon ⠀ @fairytopea ⠀ @h-ao ⠀ @y-ves ⠀ @jnssite

OKAYYYY WE ARE SOOO BACK likeeee it made click as soon i saw that ningning mb so here we go.. and thank you for pulling up for the sake of my 7k party.. i fw you guys heavy btw…

cgs for reaching the end of my post, hope roller coaster brings smth new to the table not like flame rises W-EO** MADE ME DO IT 😭🙏 i planned an event based of representative colours but wanted to respect her opinion omg… ??? also, after writing the first paragraph i realised roller coaster has zero mixxpop i’m so EMBARRASSEDDDD BUT once it starts, there is no going back anymore 😆 a round&round inspired one with the 4 seasons and solar system eats though..

⠀ — ⠀ signing off, yeritos

#⠀ © ⠀ by yeritos #roller coaster : event #loc by v6que #WHO IS UP FOR PARTICIPATION PRIZESSSS

[kanmom51]

I have shown Jikook and bts to my family and friends and they've told they feel like they are a couple. But then after many months where they watch different types of bts content they are saying they don't feel like they are a couple. My friends told no matter how they look they can't feel a couple vibe between them. Not because they are y/n, they are in a relationship or because they are other shippers. They told it unbiased. Similarly my family too. They after watching a lot of content are now saying they all love each other equally right... they also don't feel there's something special between jikook anymore. I wonder if we are feeling this romantic connection between them because we are surrounded by jikookers who thinks like us in sm platforms. Here on tumblr or Instagram or Twitter when we follow jikookers and reads their stuff and watch jikook contents primarily all along with people who thinks exactly like us we may continue to stick to our thought of them being a couple. But when we watch them and different bts from outside point of view without any jkkrs influence and our own bias it maybe clear there's nothing romantic between them ? I've seen a jkkr on tumblr saying this exact reason. On how they become a jkkr because her friend told her so and she watched contents with that lens but now as she's been army for sometime, she really don't think so as she feels every bond being almost equal. Now she changed her Jkk blog to ot7 blog. Will it be the case ?

How do I answer you anon?

Do I take this ask at face value, that you are innocently asking me this, or do I go with my gut feeling there is nothing innocent about this ask?

If all you do is watch compilations, and that's what got you to believe they are a couple, well I'm sure you'll find some moments with and between other members that you could use to erase Jikook.

Compilations are cute, they highlight some moments (not everything gets into said clips), but some are misleading (including some Jikook clips).

Have you watched full BTS content anon? Has your family and friends sat for the hours on end it takes to watch said content and then said what they did (if they did) - I truly doubt it.

Have you read their interviews, seen their fan sign content, including things they have said about each other, to each other?

Have your friends and family?

Have you seen JK's creations? Have your friends and family?

Tell me anon, factually, has any other of the members ever sucked on the other's ear the way JK did on JM's at the end of their RB concert in 2019?

Has any of the other members marked the other? As in given them a hickey?

I'm assuming you are ignoring JK's tattoo, going with the ridiculous explanation, anything except for face value JM tattooed on his hand for all to see.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything anon.

You are free to believe as you wish.

What I'm saying is that well formed conclusions should be based on the full picture, and not particles of it.

There is so much more to those two, and I'm not going to get into it right here, you can find it in my masterlist.

Here is just one of my many posts explaining just how different JM and JK are with each other, how different their dynamic is than with the other members:

This is a relatively old post of mine, pre memories 2020, MOTS ON:E dvd, and of course the LA, Seoul concerts and whatever we can call what's going on in LV right now.

There are many more posts on the matter you can find in my masterlist.

Like I said, everyone is free to feel as they wish, as long as they are respectful towards the members. All the members. And that means highlighting all the members bonds. What I've seen the past few days, so called ot7 accounts highlighting moments between the members, well all except for Jikook moments, well that's not being respectful towards the members. That's erasing JM and JK's bond.

And that, well, that tells me just how much they DO think that Jikook are different and are kind of spooked by it. It either threatens their ot7 agenda or it's outright homophobic. But no matter what the reason, they are trying to erase Jikook's bond, and if that's the content you are now following, the content you are showing your friends and family, well then, no wonder you think they are all the same.

#ask #anon

[abigail-pent]

TLT Theory Redux: Secret Doors and Heists

gather round the fire, children, for I have finished my third reread and I have theories to spin. they are interconnected. they will also take the form of "a listicle, kind of". This is not as tightly written/cited as I hoped it would be, many thanks to tumblr for eating the first version of this post.

THEORY #1: HARROW WAS RIGHT

About what? Probably lots of things, but specifically about the secret door. You remember Harrow's "secret door theory," right? On GTN p. 303, Harrow and Palamedes are having an argument about what is going on in Canaan House. Harrow makes fun of Palamedes' idea that there is such a thing as a Lyctoral megatheorem. Pal lightly mocks Harrow's "secret door" theory, about which she says:

"But all this is more than unsustainable, Sextus. The things they've shown us would be powerful -- would bespeak impossible depth of necromantic ability -- if they were replicable. These experiments all demand a continuous flow of thanergy. They've hidden that source somewhere in the facility, and that's the true prize."

The action picks up pretty quickly after this, and you just sort of forget about Harrow's theory since Pal's theory is so quickly proven correct. It's set up to make you think these theories are competing, but they're not. Harrow and Pal are both right.

Proposition 1: An entrance to the River -- or perhaps the part of the River on the other side of the stoma -- is hidden under Canaan House.

Evidence for Proposition 1:

1A) On GTN p. 191, Teacher says, about Silas siphoning Colum in the facility: "He cannot empty anybody here, lest they become a nest for something else!" This is highly reminiscent of HTN p. 98, when Mercy says: " A Lyctor's body, empty, with its battery intact but nobody in the driver's seat? Do you know what could take up residence? Anything could get inside you -- any horrible or evil or lonely thing, any miserable revenant, or worse." These two places are described very similarly; they may well be the same.

1B) I'm missing the citation, exactly, but I'm pretty sure it's textual that the first time the Lyctors + John ran from RBs, they ran by dropping into the River. Quite possibly from Canaan House itself.

1C) Teacher. We know he hates the water (GTN p. 325), we know he was created for the "sole purpose of safeguarding the place" (GTN p. 373). Of course, the whole place is surrounded by saltwater.

1D) When Ianthe and Cytherea are fighting and Canaan House is disintegrating, "brackish water from the fountain spattered across the floor and trickled into the cracks" (GTN p. 418). It's been well established already that 'brackish' is the word used to refer to River water. It's also the word used to describe the water that emits from Colum's mini stomae when he dies (GTN p. 393). Why is the fountain water brackish when other water in Canaan House -- for example, the pool -- is saltwater? Seems like a clue!

Proposition 2: Whatever is behind the secret door is the source of John's power.

Evidence for Proposition 2:

2A) During the big confrontation with John in HTN (p. 478-479), Augustine's suspicions echo Harrow's from GTN p. 303, when she's describing the secret door theory. He says:

"You've offered us explanations for everything over the years. But -- some of them didn't hold up on examination . . . It was the power I could never get my head around, you know? I follow power back to its source, John. It's the skill you asked me to perfect. And the longer I looked at yours, the less things added up."

Leaving aside for now the fascinating question of why John would ask Augustine to cultivate this skill, he goes on to ask:

"You're God, John. But -- as the Edenites are fond of pointing out -- you were once a man. So whither that transition? Where does your power come from? Even if the Resurrection had been the greatest thanergy bloom ever triggered, it would drain away over time. And then Mercy said to me -- in a moment of true Mercy vileness -- she said, What is God afraid of?"

Proposition 2.1: The source of John's power is not exactly Alecto, but is Alecto-adjacent. Alecto is from the space behind the secret door.

2.1A) Alecto is called a saltwater creature (HTN p. 328).

2.1B) The oldest parts of Canaan House are where the power emanates from (citation needed, but I’m sure it’s there). They are also the parts closest to the sea. As Teacher says (HTN p. 110): "The base of Canaan House dates back to before the Resurrection. We first built upward, to get away from the sea; then we built outward, to strive toward beauty."

2.1C) The Sleeper is identified with Alecto. Like Alecto, she carries a weapon, she sleeps in a coffin, she can’t be killed, and the River bubble crew is warned that the worst and most cataclysmic thing in the world would occur if she were ever to wake up (HTN p. 112, 185). Since the Sleeper is so clearly identified with Alecto, and is also identified as the presence that’s haunting the River bubble version of Canaan House, it suggests the connection between Alecto herself and the physical version of Canaan House.

Proposition 3: John has dammed the River underneath Canaan House by trapping the Earth Resurrection Beast there.

3A) Per HTN p. 43, we know there's one missing RB, since 9-5=4>3.

3B) Abigail thinks something is messed up in the River and it's dammed, and spirits cannot get across. On HTN p. 396-397, she says:

“A spirit can be trapped, trapped as every spirit in the River is trapped . . . I think there is a whole school of necromancy we cannot begin to touch until we acknowledge its existence – I think these centuries of pooh-poohing the idea that there is space beyond the River has stifled entire avenues of spirit magic, and I believe the Fifth House is waning entirely due to us reaching a stultified, complacent stage in our approach . . . Something has gone terribly wrong in the River, Harrow, and I wish you’d find out what.”

She’s describing a dam in the River that traps ghosts there. This is extremely consistent with what Teacher tells Harrow about what’s down in the facility (see 3E).

3C) On GTN p. 213, Cytherea suggests that "something has been lurking [in the Canaan House facility] forever", and when Harrow insists that "[A spirit] cannot sustain itself", Cytherea replies: "But what if one could?" We know that Resurrection Beasts are revenants, and a revenant is a type of spirit; and if any spirit was going to be self-sustaining, it would be an RB.

3D) HTN p. 172: "The card up the sleeve of the revenant, and the Resurrection Beast, is that it can inhabit anything it's got a connection to. Anything thanergetically connected with their death." So what killed Earth? Climate change, plus a massive nuclear fission chain reaction. Historically, early nuclear fission chain reaction tests took place underneath the ground (see, for example, the facility at the University of Chicago). So an underground or underwater facility could very well be thanergetically connected to the death of Earth.

An RB may very well be a continuous source of thanergy; and if this is the case, John may want to kill or neutralize the other RBs to keep other people from rivaling his power. Or better yet: harness the other RBs the same way Earth's RB was harnessed.

3E) On GTN p. 152, Teacher literally tells Harrow that the ten billion are haunting the facility. Harrow says she is “repeating exactly – to the word—what Teacher said to [her]”:

“Down there resides the sum of all necromantic transgression. The unperceivable howl of ten thousand million unfed ghosts who will hear each echoed footstep as defilement. They would not even be satisfied if they tore you apart. The space beyond that door is profoundly haunted in ways I cannot say, and by means you won’t understand; and you may die by violence, or you may simply lose your soul.”

For those of you following along at home: ten thousand million = 10,000 x 1,000,000 = 10,000,000,000 = 10 billion, or the exact number of people who died in the Resurrection. This is of course completely consistent with the Earth RB being down there, somewhere in or under the facility, because the revenant of a planet includes the spirits of every living thing on it when it was murdered.

Proposition 3.1: Alecto is one of the physical anchors for the Earth RB.

3.1A) HTN p. 454: “The only sure way to banish a revenant is to destroy the physical anchor it inhabits before it can escape the shell.” If John’s cavalier is the physical anchor for the Earth Resurrection Beast, which is the source of his power, then this would justify the characterization of Alecto as the “death of the Lord”: if she’s a physical anchor and she is destroyed, then so is the source of John’s power.

3.1B) She was the first Resurrection, and it’s plausible that she would be thanergetically connected to the death of Earth.

3.1C) HTN p. 495: Pyrrha notes that the stoma “must think [John] is a Resurrection Beast.” Which is a super interesting mistake for the stoma to make! But if John’s cavalier is a physical anchor for a RB, this mistake becomes more understandable.

Proposition 4: The other side of the stoma is not a trash space, and John actually can access it. He uses it as a battery for his necromancy. It’s a storage space for RBs, and now I guess for Lyctors too. (this is the most galaxy brain proposition, and evidence is slim)

4A) On HTN p. 340, John says: “It is a portal to the place I cannot touch -- somewhere I don't fully comprehend, where my power and my authority are utterly meaningless.” But this is the kind of shit John lies about on the reg, so take what he says and apply opposite day rules.

4B) if the other side of the stoma is related to the River Beyond, it would be to John’s advantage to keep the Fifth House scholarship from treating the River Beyond seriously (see 3B). If they don’t take it seriously as a branch of scholarship, they can’t learn anything about it, and they can’t let the RBs out from where John is keeping them.

4C) this could be why John condemns soul siphoning (GTN p. 340). If soul siphoning sends the cavalier’s soul to the other side of the stoma, and the power that floods into the empty body is from the other side of the stoma, then soul siphoning threatens John’s monopoly on use of power.

This brings me to Theory #2, born out of a delightful discussion with @mayasaura: the heist in ATN is not going to open the Tomb at all. Instead, it’s going to open the part of the River underneath Canaan House, and the goal is to free the Earth RB. After all, the Tomb has been open for seven years already.

Extant questions:

1) Mercy seemed so sure that the RBs were coming back and targeting Alecto in particular. But Alecto stayed in the Nine Houses, and didn’t get eaten by any RBs, and the Ninth House is still there. So why does Mercy think Alecto is a target, or makes the rest of them into targets? If she was lied to, what is the purpose of this lie? 

2) Why does John want Augustine to hone the skill of following power back to its source?

3) If RBs eat Lyctors and both RBs and Lyctors are in the hammer space on the other side of the stoma, then, like… hey Augustine and Ulysses… are you guys ok??

#tlt meta #tlt spoilers #locked tomb spoilers #locked tomb meta #gideon the ninth #gideon the ninth spoilers #harrow the ninth #harrow the ninth spoilers

[aftgficrec]

Idk if y’all do this but I don’t know who to ask but your favorite aftg SPOTIFY playlists? I like the “Andrew in clubs” by rb and the “andriel/AFTG” by sunellix but so far my favorite has been “untitled 1” by palmettofoxden because they made a tumblr post that went with it and I loved how they included the reason to each song. So if you can find playlist AND post related like that one I’ll love y’all more !!! Thanks

Oh, friend, you have no idea what you just got yourself into here.  You want playlists?  We’ve got playlists (and a little personal commentary from us).  A number of fics have amazing playlists to go along with them, so we’ve included little bits of info and links to those fics; then there are playlists for characters, and some general ones for the books.  We didn’t really find Tumblr posts to explain song choices, but we hope you enjoy this collection anyway! -M

NB: Fic links go directly to AO3. You can click on ‘recced here’ to see the trigger warnings that we’ve previously listed.

Playlists Based on Fics 

Red Rabbits Universe series by bloodydamnit, Jeni182, SeaBear13, windeavesdrops [Rated M-E; 647408 words in 3 works; 2 Complete 2019/2020, 1 WIP] (recced here)

If you’re unfamiliar with Red Rabbits then you’ve probably been living under a rock. From the very beginning the team behind this true crime themed fic have been excellent at providing a playlist for the characters, for the story, and for the highly interactive blog that can also be found here. If you’re looking for explanations as to why some songs are on the lists, check out the Tumblr asks and read the fic - there are many layers to this one but you can discover a lot in both Seasons. 

TFN by The Foxhole (2019) - Short and sweet (just like our favourite characters) this is a great list and sits perfectly alongside Season 1. 

TFN Minyard by The Foxhole (2019) - Africa is really the only song you need to listen to on this playlist but this is the list designed to represent Andrew in Red Rabbits. Sit back, listen, appreciate how very very well done this list is: emo bangers sit against indie bops, Lykke Li and MISSIO clash against Explosions in the Sky and Pink Floyd.  

TFN Seth by The Foxhole (2019) - Oh Seth, our sweet baby DJ, whose journey is honestly one of the best in fanfic. Here you’ll find Childish Gambino, Jay Z and Kanye, City Girls and The Weeknd. 

TFN Dan by The Foxhole (2019) - What a queen, it’s Dan Wilds with a mix of Beyonce, Frank Ocean and many more r&b, hiphop and pop tunes. Upbeat and powerful.

Neil Josten’s Music + Mathematics / The Calculus of Nocturnes by fuzzballsheltiepants [Rated M; 7863 words; Complete 2020] (recced here)

Like everything by fuzzballsheltiepants, this playlist is as well thought out and perfectly rendered as the story itself. The fic centers around Neil Josten, a high school math teacher with a secret obsession: the classical piano he hears music teacher Andrew Minyard playing every afternoon. Eventually his secret is found out, and his world begins to open up. This playlist can be listened to along with the fic, giving you an immersive layer to the story. 

Slinging Mozart Sideways / Slinging Mozart Sideways  by justadreamfox [Rated T; 9962 words, Complete 2020]  (recced here)

Some fun facts about this one - firstly, the working title was “gay pianists need to eat” (which I love) and secondly it was part of the 2020 Gift Exchange for Willow_Bird. Excellent fic. Excellent prompt. In which Andrew is in the music business, Neil is a classical cellist (with a British accent) and they bond over Nils Fram. It’s super pretty and the classical music choices are sweet, subtle and sometimes heartwrenching. 

One writer in particular, scribbleb_red, has been prolific in creating playlists for all their longer fics, and some of their Twitter hc fics.  There’s overlap in themes and genres across most of them but here are some of my faves:

Playlist: L'amour parle en fleurs / l’amour parle en fleur by scribbleb_red [Rated M, 61919 words, Complete 2019] (recced here)

Also known as The Lavender AU, this fic is set in the lavender fields of Provence in Southern France and deals with loss and recovery, grief and hope - and that’s exactly what the playlist lays out as well. Intended to accompany the reader through the fic, this playlist is a journey just like the story itself. 

Playlist: (don’t fear) the reaper / (don’t fear) the reaper by scribbleb_red [Rated M, 73111 words, Complete 2019] (recced here) 

for the fic of the same name, in which Andrew and Neil don’t meet in life but in limbo. Andrew is a grim reaper and Neil is the soul he’s meant to be helping cross to the other side. There’s just one issue: Neil isn’t really dead.  

Playlist: monster (under my bed) / monster (under my bed) by scribbleb_red [Rated: M; 1262 Words; Complete; 2020] (recced here)

In which Neil is the monster hiding Andrew’s bed and this changes everything.

not your homeland anymore (2020) for the fic of the same name, inspired by Taylor Swift’s folklore, this angsty fic is still being written and asks the question: what if Andrew hadn’t been there after Baltimore? 

NB: We have not recced this one yet. Please refer to the fic for TWs.

Playlists Based on Characters 

Oh yes, there are some highly creative folks out there exploring their headcanons via the spotify playlist. Here are five of our favourites: 

THE FOXES DEADLIEST INVESTMENT by realpeachy (2019) - Their ain’t no rest for the wicked and this playlist is as relentless, beat-heavy and secretly instigative as Andrew Minyard himself. Some familiar themes with Billie Eilish, Ruelle, Halsey and the like, but some quirky additions like badflower and tedy as well. 

NEIL JOSTEN by Arizona Kestler (2019) - A curious collection of songs on this one, ranging from Kendrick Lamar to Radiohead, AJR to Jack’s Mannequin. It definitely leans into the new-wave emo that many associate with AFTG but it always comes back to the high octane energy we associate with our favourite starting striker. 

yes or no? by jmoriartty (2018) - Could there be a more iconic playlist for andreil? well ok, maybe that’s just this contributor’s taste but having been steadily built through 2018 to 2019, it’s one of the most followed playlists on spotify for AFTG. Two Feet, MISSIO, Twenty One Pilots and grandson are all big hits on this bluesy, gritty, alternative playlist. 

you can call me king by scribbleb_red (2019) - As if any list was complete without a villainous inclusion, like with most of scribble’s lists this one deliberately lays out a journey for Riko Moriyama, his rise and fall. Maybe you’ll also feel Sympathy for the Devil. 

Double Trouble by an.fouda (2019) - Yes, it’s a twinyards playlist and it’s full of absolutely exquisite artist choices and emo hits. Try listening to Night Knuckles by Cavetown or Plastic Joy by Raw Fabrics. It’s a whole new level to this most complex of sibling relationships. 

Playlists Based on the Books 

Some of these are classics - they’ve set the tone for AFTG playlists all over the internets - and it’s fascinating to see how even now people come back to similar tones: alternative rock, grunge, hiphop, the high energy songs that mix a sense of hope and fear and danger. Plug in your headphones and prepare for a ride. Others are more recent and you can very much see how the themes of the music line up over time. If you want a playlist to remind you of the original series, here are some great places to start:

The Foxhole Court (Nora Sakavic) by pjofangirl2  (2017) 

You Are A Pipedream by lokisarmyismydivision (2017)

This is the moment you stop being the rabbit by Warren Vipod (2020) 

#ask #music #iayhifbigyakwiltbsywps

[inventors-fair]

Club Decks: What We Play

Fifteen decks, fifteen archetypes, fifteen strategies. For my students, not everyone can make a good deck, and/or they don’t necessarily have the resources to make what they’d like. Commander and stuff is the most difficult, but they enjoy Oathbreaker with the inexpensive and more or less accessible planeswalkers, and they don’t usually worry about Standard, Modern, or Pioneer. 

Club decks have a number of cards of different rarities that I use to model them off of my first starter decks, back in Alara. There’s a fair amount of repeats and a good chunk of power, and they’re easy enough to model so that students can make their own.

Depending on the year (2020-21 being pretty disruptive), there are different criteria for “leveling up,” which means beating a number of students and then beating me to get a booster pack and a level in my ledger. There’s no limit, except you can’t level up more than once a week. Hey, I make enough to make kids happy, but not enough to give them a zillion packs.

Below the cut are my club decks, some notable cards, and why I made them the way that I did. Enjoy this little slice of Magic! If you’re looking to start similar programs or you’d like details as to how things are run, let me know and I can provide extended decklists and explanations.

1. White Equipment Voltron

Notable cards include:

Healer’s Hawk

Taj-Nar Swordsmith

Strata Scythe

Little things turn into big things. With a little bit of destruction and a whole lotta keywords, this deck is all about building up to a single aggressive Voltron creature that wrecks shop. It’s good about teaching different card types and keyword interactions, and hey, it feels good to swing with an 11/11 creature that started off as a 1/1, right?

2. Blue Tempo Control

Notable cards include:

Pestermite

Everdream

Tidespout Tyrant

This is the deck for advanced players. The big blue comes out with a lot of disruption, and this is the deck that often gets described as either “unfun” or “my favorite deck.” Bounce it, counter it, bounce my land to cycle, return your threat, disrupt, and so on and so forth. Not every deck has a difficulty curve like this, but it’s satisfying to say the least.

3. Black Sacrifice Everything

Notable cards include:

Butcher Ghoul

Whisper, Blood Liturgist

Priest of Forgotten Gods

“Synergistic” is an understatement. The number of death triggers and sacrifice triggers can easily win someone a game if they know how to interact properly. Forcing decisions upon your opponent and exploiting some awesome stuff from your side of the field makes this deck easy to play if you want to have things die and VERY easy if you know how to manipulate the board.

4. Red Discard into Madness

Notable cards include:

Spinehorn Minotaur

Dragon Mage

Glint-Horn Buccaneer

I’ll admit, this deck is a bit of a pet project and one of my favorites. Ditching cards to draw cards feels great to me! I love madness, I love looting, and I love throwing a bunch of stuff away to make big things before getting it all back later. As much tuning as it needs, this deck is another advanced joy for people that love to make niche ideas work to the best of their ability.

5. Green Lands & Boys

Notable cards include:

Timbermaw Larva

Howl of the Night Pack

Kalonian Twingrove

Sometimes you just want an easy ramp deck. The small end of this gets lands and has some landfall, and the big end just wrecks shop with the big and powerful creatures that we all know and love from green. It’s easy to play and it’s easy to win with and sometimes, stomping is all you need to do. A great card for the Tim-Tams of the world.

6. UW Fliers Beatdown

Notable cards include:

Squadron Hawk

Watcher of the Spheres

Windreader Sphinx

I recently got my butt handed to me with this deck, and it’s not to be trifled with. Each deck has its own kind of evasion and whatnot, but this deck has got the early-game down and the late-game? Unstoppable. It’s designed to massacre you in the air and that’s what it does. Pumps, beats, and more. One of the first decks the kids loved.

7. UB Surveil Control

Notable cards include:

Notion Rain

Price of Fame

Thief of Sanity

“Really?” Yeah, well, here’s the thing: I built this deck when I didn’t have a whole lot of spare cards sorted, and that’s why I did it. As a block mechanic, though, surveil really is fun, and as a control player, the deck is pretty darn sweet. It’s beefy, powerful, and great flavor for the city. Fun fact: the Thief of Sanity I had is actually a misprint! It’s missing the rare sticker.

8. RB Goblins Snarl Rage Win

Notable cards include:

Goblin Instigator

Fodder Launch

Weirding Shaman

And this is another deck that the kids absolutely love. Fast fun, and furious, Goblins is a great tribal introduction that people go to when they want to show how easy and cheeky it can be. Burn ‘em out, make ‘em attack, turn ‘em sideways. This isn’t necessarily an easy deck, but if all you know is attacking, then you’re golden. Or, you can kill someone only through noncombat damage!

9. RG Monsters of the Jungle

Notable cards include:

Ruination Wurm

Footfall Crater

Mina and Denn, Wildborn

This is, surprisingly, the deck with what I feel is the lowest barrier to entry. You give big things trample. Now, there IS a fair bit of complexity in the number of combat tricks, with some buffs and some bloodrush cards along with it, but everyone knows that big things are big. The difference is in the variety of strategies available to you with access to red mana. 

10. GW Token Swarm

Notable cards include:

Raise the Alarm

Selesnya Guildmage

Growing Ranks

If you can be fast with this deck, then you can run someone over faster than they could ever react. If you can be slow with this deck, you can build up enough life and army power that you literally can’t be beat. There’s a lot to love about this deck and it’s not as easy as it might seem. Tokens are popular with a subset of MTG players, and I’m glad that they have lots of support.

11. BW Ghosts of your Past

Notable cards include:

Pillory of the Sleepless

Vizkopa Guildmage

Ethereal Absolution

Basically, this is in the same vein as the surveil deck, but like the surveil deck, this has been modified so you get the best out of the deck. There’s a little nasty sacrifice, some draining, lots of good stuff. This is a deck for players who want to be mean, but with the option to beat down as well. After all, the best games are one you play in good spirits!

12. GB Elves Reclamation

Notable cards include:

Eyeblight’s Ending

Shaman of the Pack

Immaculate Magistrate

Everyone loves elves. Except for the people that hate elves. You get them out, go wide, or go narrow. Either way, you’re beating in face. This deck can be impossibly fast and I love it, but without breaching the barrier of being overpowered. Heck, I’ve won and lost with all of these decks, but elves put up a struggle, and I love that for them.

13. UG Defenders and Butts

Notable cards include:

Axebane Guardian

Assault Formation

Feed the Pack

I’ve been 100% blown out by this deck before by a student who I underestimated. That’s fantastic. This is the kind of deck that students don’t understand until they see it being played, and that’s honestly great. It’s fantastic to watch them learn and I love watching them pull out all the stops to get the biggest butts possible. Can’t beat seventeen angry wolves!

14. UR Spellslinging Recursion

Notable cards include:

Thermo-Alchemist

Thoughtflare

Call the Skybreaker

Flashback, Jump-Start, and Retrace: people love to cast spells. There’s so much fun stuff that can happen in a stormlike brew, and though it’s definitely not storm, it encourages playing spells, and that’s what makes it fun. It appeals to burn and control players alike and makes them feels skillful to the max. It’s Izzet in everything but perfect flavor.

15. RW Combat Control

Notable cards include:

Thatcher Revolt

Intimidation Bolt

Citadel Siege

I actually let my kids down with this deck before. It was an underpowers Firesong and Sunspeaker deck, and it just wasn’t working. What else can you do? Blow things up and make ‘em big. This deck is a powerhouse of unimaginable proportions and I love playing with it. Smart combat makes for some tricky strategy, and it’s humbling for the reckless opponnent.

That’s all for now! Ask me about questions and I’ll tell you no lies. And hey, if you know any kids, play around with ‘em and see how they engage with MTG. What do they lean to? How can you use that to teach them? It’s an amazing game and I’m glad to be sharing it with you, too.

—Abelzumi

#mtg #magic the gathering #inventor's fair #tuesday blog #student judges #education

[captainmianite]

Alright, well, I've set everything up, so here we go! :)

Hello, my name is Jordan! Call me Captain. I am a fictive in a system (quick explanation on systems + info on me) and I figured I would make a blog, not only to force myself to work through more source content, but hopefully to help spread better information on plurality and give us a better reputation.

If you like the Land of Mianite, CaptainSparklez, MCYTs in general, and watching people (affectionately) bully their friends, in theory, you'll like this blog.

It's going to hold me liveblogging stuff about Land of Mianite, which I'm rewatching in an attempt to get my memories back, which by association includes content of CaptainSparklez and also me bullying my friends (but especially Tom, because oh my gods) and Minecraft content.

Feel free to rb this, or come say hi. I hope to see you soon! o7

#land of mianite #captainsparklez #jordan maron #youtubers #minecraft #mcyt #mcyts #gods i hope this gets to the right side of the mcyt community #minecraft youtubers #plurality #fictives

[chibisquirt]

You don't have to answer, but if you wouldn't mind. What are some things you've learned about ADHD from Tumblr that are applicable to you, or others you may now? I've been reading more on it and how it manifests in girls/women and was curious when I read your rb on that post about Grammarly

I don’t mind at all!  Fair warning:  this is gonna be LONG.

I’m going to start by repeating something I mentioned in that post:  I was diagnosed in third grade, which was over two decades ago.  I had my diagnosis halfway through elementary school, much less high school and two rounds of college.  So a lot of the old information about ADHD I learned as a young person, and those things are worth exploring, too.  

Example:  It’s not that I’m not listening, Mrs. Nock, it’s just that if I try to keep my hands still, then the only thing I will retain from the lesson will be keep your hands still and not the things you trying to teach, which are supposedly important! 

(Mrs. Nock was the one who said to me, “I believe you believe you’re paying attention.”  Yes, it’s been fifteen years.  Yes, I’m still mad.  If you can’t have basic respect for your students, don’t teach.)

I figured out half on my own, half because of the counselling that if I had a fidget tool that didn’t require words I would pay better attention than if I tried to sit still.  (I still remember being mocked by my dad for fidgeting well after making that discovery, though.  Apparently diagnoses should only inform compassion when they’re his.)  On the same lines, I also figured out that music in the background wouldn’t work for me if it had words, and television is too distracting for me to use at all.  (I have a friend, though, whose ADHD works the opposite way:  he has difficulty focusing if there isn’t a television in the background.  Yes, both are valid.)

So, the Classics:  

I always had trouble with organization and cleaning, had trouble with schedules and calendars and managing my time.  Those are the things they’ll warn you about, the things they’ll tell you in counselling are natural and normal things for people with ADHD to have trouble with.  Trouble paying attention, sure.  Trouble sitting still.  Procrastination.  Got it.

But if you turn those traits around and re-frame them, they become a new set of symptoms.  Adaptations for these new symptoms are more personal and universally applicable in my life, and therefore, to my mind, more useful.

Take Procrastination.  (No really: please take it.)  That just means “putting it off until tomorrow,” and there are lots of reasons to do it:  “don’t have the tool I need” is one of the biggies, “want to conserve steps” trips me up a lot, “I still have time to get to it” is HUGE for me...  But a lot of times, these are just superficial reasons.  The re-framed symptom is, Trouble making yourself do things you don’t want to do.  

ADHD is an executive function disorder.  That’s a phrase I first learned on Tumblr, by the way; it may have been mentioned by one of my earlier counsellors, but it definitely wasn’t taught.  

This is why soooo many of us have struggled with the perception (including self-perception) that we’re lazy!  But no one tells the kid in the wheelchair he’s just lazy for not playing basketball.  (Okay, they totally do.  People are terrible.  Ignore that, stick to the point.)  I reframe this the way I do because acknowledging this as a symptom, taking the blame out of it, makes it easier to find adaptation.

Now, this is a personal post.  YMMV.  But I have an easier time managing my conduct if, instead of calling myself lazy a procrastinator, I say, “I keep not doing that --> oh it’s because I Don’t Wanna --> how can I con myself into doing it?”  (Strategies include bargaining, making it easier, powering through but then allowing yourself to stop afterwards, just acknowledging that I Don’t Wanna and allowing that to be valid...)  Procrastination is an action, but “executive function disorder” is a disease and “I Don’t Wanna” is its trigger, just as much as an allergy and a clump of ragweed are.  “Procrastination” is a powerful sphynx against which I’m helpless, but “I Don’t Wanna Disease” lets me start cultivating my metaphorical catnip and researching the answers to common riddles.

And while we’re talking about procrastination--and trouble with deadlines, and schedules in general--let’s talk about Time Insensitivity.  Missed deadlines and perpetual lateness (perpetual) are external actions, just like procrastination, and they can have all sorts of explanations.  

(Shoutout to Mrs. Pollack, who looked around a classroom containing thirteen-year-old me, and, knowing full well that I was chronically tardy, declared that “anybody who’s always running late, deep down, they just doesn’t care about anybody else’s time.”  Great job with calling the thirteen-year-old a heartless bitch, Mrs. Pollack!  As you can tell, I definitely forgot it very quickly, and didn’t at all have a self-critical breakdown about it, periodically revisiting the question of my own inherent selfishness for years!!!)

But ignoring the external actions, let’s take a compassionate look inside the head again.  Executive function includes regulation of, and awareness of the passing of, time.  Again: you can’t play the basketball with no legs.  We literally do not realize what time is doing.  Sometimes we do--if we devote enough of our attention to it, which may be a large amount for some, a small amount for others, or a variable amount for the same person.  But our brains literally don’t process it the same way.  

But hold on a minute--let’s go back to that analogy.  Because actually, people with no legs can play basketball!  It’s just that you have to use the adaptation of wheelchairs to do it--and that’s an adaptation for the game and for the players.  

I use alarms.  I’ve recently seen a post about audio memos as alarms.  There are people who just slap clocks everywhere.  When I was forced to work in a kitchen with no clocks, I used the multi-setting timer and set it for like four hours so I would know if I was keeping on schedule.  I also chose a job environment where much of my shift is the same as itself, and rigid punctuality isn’t enforced--that’s adapting my environment, instead of myself.  There’s all kinds of adaptations.  But you have to know you have the condition before you can compensate for it.

Here’s a fun little story:  when I was... oh, eleven?  Twelve?  My Quaker Meeting’s youth group (#7 whitest phrase I’ve ever written) went to the museum together.  One of the stops was in the children’s section, there was a... a pegboard, I think?  With some kind of problem on it.  A puzzle.  Me and a couple others sat down at it, and it took me a while, but eventually I solved it, and I looked up.  

I blinked.  “Where is everybody?” I said.

“They left,” said my mom.  “Half an hour ago.”  

I was stunned.  “Half an hour ago?!  But I couldn’t’ve spent more than ten minutes on this!”

“I promise you, it was half an hour.”

“Why didn’t you call me??  Why didn’t you say my name?”

“We did.  Several times.”

To this day, I will swear myself blind that I never heard a thing.

Hyperfocusing.  They’ll tell you about the problems focusing; oh yes.  They’ll tell you allll about that one.  But they won’t tell you about the flip side of it.  They won’t tell you about the times when the rest of the world falls away, and the only two things in the world are you and whatever problem you’re trying to solve.  

D’y’know what, I bet that’s the reason I test well.  I just realized this now, phrasing it like that, but--I’ve always tested well, even when my actual practical applications of things are mediocre I do well with the classroom testing on it.  I scored a 39 on the MCAT, back when it was out of 45 and not whatever it is now.  (To those with the plain good sense not to want to be doctors:  that’s pretty good.)  And I just bet it’s because, once I get focused on solving the problems, the other problems--nerves, intrusive thoughts, anxiety--just don’t have room to get in.  Hyperfocusing can be a superpower, if you can harness it.  

But it can also blind you to everything else.  And it works in smaller ways, too:  once I think I understand something, it is very difficult for me to perceive information that contradicts that understanding.  I still get the map of the Elflands backwards every time I read The Goblin Emperor, just because I pictured it one way, and every indication in the text that it was the other way just fell on deaf ears.  

And this one leads right into the next, which is Rejection Sensitivity Disorder.  RSD is hyperfocus, but it’s hyperfocus on how everyone must hate you.  It’s delightful!  I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, as well, and I do have both of those things, but for my money, I think that this one symptom of ADHD--which no doctor has ever even mentioned to me--has hurt me more than both of those conditions combined.  

The last one I’m going to bring up is Auditory Processing Disorder.  Now, I’ve gone and gotten re-diagnosed twice in my life, and the last time was just a few years ago, so they actually used this one in the test.  The psychologist told me about it, she just didn’t use the phrase Auditory Processing Disorder, and she didn’t tell me that it was its own symptom--she just used it for the test.  

What she did was, she gave me two hearing tests, one to test whether or not I could hear, and then the other a list of words that all sounded alike, and I had to mark which one I was hearing.  The second part of that was very long, and very boring, and despite scoring perfectly on the first test, I got several wrong on the second.  I was actually surprised by that; I at no point suspected I had heard any of them wrong.  When she gave me the test, told me this was proof by contradiction, that we were ruling out hearing loss as an alternative explanation for my difficulties.  It was only after the test was done that she explained that the pattern I showed was actually part of the diagnosis of ADHD; that we get bored, and stop really paying attention, and that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

...Okay, but you couldn’t have mentioned the part where I also do that every day in real life, lady?!?!  It’s not just when we’re bored, it’s not just for long processes.  I do this all the time.  I actually tell people now that “I actually have a neurological condition that makes it hard for me to hear; I can tell that you’re speaking, but I can’t tell what you’re saying.”  

This is 100% true.  It is a neurological condition.  

We label this a condition, but as a society, we don’t treat it that way.  Society treats it as yet another excuse.  It’s not.  You’re not lazy, stupid or crazy.  Neither am I.  

I have a condition.  Acknowledging that is the first step of treatment.  Not five thousand sticky notes, not binders or filing systems or even taking all the doors off the cupboards (although I definitely plan to do that one as soon as I possibly can).  Not counselling sessions with so many different people I can’t even name them all, for the love of god please understand that you can’t just fix it with pills.  

(Although mad props to the people who thought Concerta would magically solve me at the age of nine!  Spoiler alert:  it did not do that!  But it did mean that my parents felt comfortable blaming me for all my failures again, so it did at least some of what it was designed for, I guess. :) )   

I have spent the last few years re-understanding my ADHD it as is:  a neurological condition, a disability, and a simple fact of life.  A starting place, instead of yet more proof of my own inherent insufficiency.  And you know what?  When you take the blame and self-hatred out of the diagnosis--when you stop cursing it as the cause of all your problems and start trying to work with it, instead--it gets a lot easier to manage. 

#laexploradoraaa

[heathneycanon]

okay so i ranked 113 total drama/ridonculous race ships based on how much i like them with explanations below the cut.. fair warning that i’m a lil mean to some of the ships lower on the list.

also i forgot to include dwayne senior and that one girl’s mom from rr because i literally forgot they existed until now, and i don’t want to manually add them in so i’ll just say that i think they’re cute but not super interesting.

EDIT: this has been updated post-roti-rewatch. i switched around the order of a couple ships, and added a new one. if i ever rewatch rr or pahkitew i’ll probably edit it again, but the likelihood of me rewatching either of those seasons any time soon is... ok i was about to say it was slim but it’s probably not

also i’m not ever adding in dwayne and the mom because i like it being a part f the description lmao. an afterthought. as it should be.

enjoy!

113. stephanie/ryan - i HATE the daters/haters. they’re like a weird, shitty mix of tda gidgette and duncney. like, they’re either annoyingly all over each other, or they’re toxic and fighting. tbh, they’re pretty toxic all the time. they stuck around for way too long imho.

112. jacques/josee - I CHANGED MY MIND IGNORE THIS

111. tom/jen - tom is canonically gay, and i hc jen as a lesbian. so i’m not a fan of this ship.

110. nemma - yeahh, knowing me, this is also a predictably low ranking. i hc noah as gay and emma as a lesbian, so again, i don’t vibe with this one.

109. coderra - i can only deal with this ship in rewrites. i’ve seen super well thought out rewrites of coderra and sierra’s character, but as it stands, i really don’t ship this at all.

108. davesky - dave is an incel lmao. anyway yea this ship initially seemed like bootleg zoke, which was kind of bootleg gwent, but then BOY did davesky get worse. i can’t stand dave and i can’t stand pairing him with sky, either.

107. leonard/sugar - why. i hate both of these characters. no thank u.

106. ella/dave - ok so u know i don’t like dave. i also hc ella as a lesbian, she hasn’t realized it and is dealing with comphet. i don’t like this ship.

105. topher/ella - i hc both of them as gay. they are friends tho.

104. macarthur/brody - in case you’re noticing a trend, i do in fact hc macarthur as a lesbian. i also don’t really care about her at all lmao. anyway, not a fan of this one. i really don’t understand why fresh thought this was a good idea.

103. noah/katie - again, i hc noah as gay, but this ship is more funny to me than anything else because these characters were shipped together so often early on, when they both a) barely had any characterization and b) had never interacted? anyway yea i don’t ship it.

102. cameron/sierra - this one’s weird? literally sierra had a crush on him or whatever because he reminded her of cody even though they’re… nothing alike? dude please get sierra some therapy oh my god

101. heather/justin - i knew someone who really, really shipped them once, which is why i’m including it. anyway i cannot see this ship at all, next.

100. amy/rodney - i guess this existed? i barely remember pahkitew, and i know rodney had a bunch of crushes, but this is the main one i remember so it’s the only one i can be bothered to include. anyway this relationship didn’t seem healthy at all.

99. max/scarlett - i don’t like max and i don’t really care about scarlett, but i also hc both of them as gay, so this is a no from me.

98. gwody - creepy and bad. i don’t trust people who ship this or davesky.

97. dashawn - shawn can do better. that one scene where they look at each other when dave has to kiss the person next to him is kinda funny tho.

96. topher/dave - marginally better than all other dave ships just because topher is there and i like topher. again tho, topher can do much better.

95. malejandro - why does this ship exist.

94. ezekiel/bridgette - not my thing at all. i don’t care about zeke too much, and i have a lot more ships with bridgette that i prefer over this one.

93. cody/beth - i only care about cody in certain contexts, and i practically never care about beth. i wouldn’t click off of a fic if this were a background pairing or whatever, but i definitely wouldn’t seek it out.

92. ezekiel/beth - again, don’t really care about beth or ezekiel that much. but in certain contexts, i can see why this would be cute.

91. courtney/jose - the only way this is cute is alongside aleheather, so that courtney and heather could marry into the same family. but also, why is this a ship that exists?

90. scourtney - i love both scott and courtney, but no thank u. they had absolutely no chemistry, and courtney was using scott both in the competition and as a rebound. not a fan.

89. gwen/cameron - is this a thing that exists? i found a screenshot of gwen kissing cameron on the cheek but is that edited? if it is real, i probably blocked it from my mind.

88. courtney/cameron - now i know this one exists in the weirdest, stupidest way the show could’ve gone about it. barely even qualifies as a ship, and it’s definitely not a good one.

87. duncan/zoey - i kind of see why others would like this one, but at the same time, it doesn’t really appeal to me.

86. alejandro/courtney - i love alejandro and i love courtney. but i can only see them as friends, tho i can see them like. kissing just because they’re bored. or to fuck with people. they did that in the show, right? kind of? i forget the specifics.

85. chris/blaineley - while i guess i can see why people ship this, chref is canon and blaineley is a lesbian.

84. katie and/or sadie/justin - why would katie or sadie date justin, when they’re in love?

83. gwuncan - maybe could’ve been good, but literally everything about how they got together and their relationship in canon has tainted my view of this ship. i definitely preferred them as friends in tda anyway. there’s a lotta cute gwuncan fanart out there so i do rb it sometimes tho. i see why people ship this, i get the potential, but for me it’s soured by world tour.

82. laurie/miles - who?

81. mary/ellody - yea ok they’re smart gfs, but also i literally don’t give a shit about either of them.

80. pete/gerry - they’re definitely dating but again i don’t care about them.

79. mike/cameron - not a horrible ship by any means, i just don’t really like cameron that much.

78. alejandro/justin - there are so many superior alejandro ships. and a handful of slightly better justin ships.

77. carrie/devin - wow they didn’t have a storyline that was original in any way! they’re pretty cute tho.

76. sanders/macarthur - would be higher but acab.

75. macarthur/josee - i really like the whole rivals to lovers thing, but again, acab. this is higher than sanders/macarthur because of the rivals to lovers, but mostly it’s because there’s only one bastard cop here rather than two.

74. owen/alejandro - i don’t really mind this one, but i see it as more of a one sided crush on owen’s side.

73. lightning/cameron - i don’t really care about cameron, but the jock/nerd dynamic is kinda good.

72. rockspud - they’re definitely a couple, but as the trend indicates, i really can’t bring myself to care too much about rr ships.

71. lindsay/beth - best beth ship, worst lindsay ship. i like one this better if lindsay is also dating tyler.

70. lindsay/lightning - a crackship i made up when i was eleven. i just think it’s really funny.

69. noco - not a bad ship, it’s just not my thing. i definitely see why other people ship it, i just ship both of them with other people.

68. ella/sugar - i see why people ship this as well, but i just really don’t like sugar. i can bring myself to see past that because this dynamic is genuinely good.

67. sierra/heather - i’ve seen this in au’s and rewrites of sierra’s character, and i see the potential. not bad.

66. bawn - they’re cute i guess? i just never really saw the appeal. they’re not bad by any means, it just seems kind of bland.

65. dakota/zoey - okay so i’m adding this one in as i’m reordering stuff because i rewatched roti. i didn’t have this here initially but their friendship was cute until zoey was all “she’s scary” and voted her off. just saying, if zoey wasn’t written as a hypocrite and was actually written as a COOL character that lived up to the potential of her concept, this would’ve slapped. also i love any combo of dawn, zoey, and dakota, because they’re cute. i’m not including poly ships on here because that’d make things wayy complicated, but i’d be here for a poly ship of these three.

64. scott/zoey - UPDATED. was originally “yea something about this rubs me the wrong way. i feel like if i rewatched roti i would remember what, but i’m not going to do that just for this list. maybe someday.” i ended up rewatching roti for unrelated reasons the next day, and honestly? this one is not that bad. could be cute, potentially.

63. dj/katie - i guess this one’s pretty cute? i don’t really remember them interacting, but i guess i can see why someone would like this.

62. dunhar - i see why people ship this one. i kind of like it? i feel like it would work really well in an au or a rewrite.

61. dott - UPDATED. was originally “i used to kind of like this ship, but now i really don’t. i do love the idea of dawn and scott as best friends who bully each other in the friendly kind of way, though.” but i rewatched roti and... this has potential. i kinda like it. still prefer the bullying friendship tho.

60. scott/mike - again, i see why people would ship it. i’m not sure if people actually do? but it seems like the sort of thing i might have shipped in middle school, so someone probably likes it. but meh, it’s not really my thing anymore.

59. topher/shawn - i don’t remember if these two interacted but i guess this could be cute? maybe?

58. sky/ella - yea it’s cute i guess? i don’t really have an opinion on this one beyond that.

57. dawn/dj - i mean… i get where this comes from. i fully understand. i personally see them becoming close friends, but i also see why people would ship them.

56. dawn/brick - again, i see them much more as friends, but i get why people would ship them.

55. geoff/gwen - this ship kinda interests me because it was originally going to be canon in camp tv, but because of that one gweoff friendship episode in island i see them as unlikely friends.

54. dj/bridgette - maybe you’re sensing a trend here, but i see them as friends. i could probably get on board with shipping them, though.

53. deather - i like them as friends more, but i do think a relationship between them could be fun.

52. ella/dawn - i feel like i’ve seen this ship? it’s not bad! i’m not the biggest fan of ella but this is pretty cute.

51. zoke - i really want to like them, and i wish they were written better. as is, i kind of ship them? there’s nothing wrong with zoke. but both as characters and as a ship, they could’ve been so much better.

50. noah/justin - this one’s interesting! i’ve never actively shipped it, but i can see it for sure. it’s cute!

49. owen/justin - again, not something i’ve actively shipped, but i like it!

48. carrie/kitty - i think they’re both in their late teens? like 18ish? appropriate ages for each other? if so, i like this one. they’d be cute

47. josee/jen - yea i like this. i feel like they would get along pretty well. they’re both successful in their own right. power couple for sure.

46. tom/jacques - again. power couple. i also think they’d go on double dates with jen and josee, which i like a lot. honestly both of these teams are the epitome of mlm/wlw solidarity. i like this one.

45. alecody - i like it! i don’t have much to say about them at all, but i like it.

44. brody/geoff - good ship! putting the romance in bromance. i like this one more when it’s combined with gidgette though.

43. anne maria/vito - originally i put “what is the appeal of this ship? genuinely asking.” as the description, and then an anon sent in this reply: “You wanted the appeal of anne maria and vito? Well here it is; they are both so dumb. Not a brain cell between the two of them. Imagine them trying to do anything domestic like. They could not assemble a bookshelf or make a pot of spaghetti without it turning into a horrible, but memorably fun, mess. They’re soft for eachother but would kick anyone’s ass for so much as looking at the other. Sorry im rambling lmao i just think they are so funny together”. i get the appeal now, so i’m moving this one up.

42. lindsay/courtney - lmao their dynamic is so funny. i don’t know how well a relationship between them would go, but i can see court realizing over time that lindsay is a lot smarter than she initially seems to be. idk courtney’s observant and lindsay is actually pretty smart. i can see it happening.

41. trent/justin - best justin ship, worst trent ship (that i can think of. i’m sure there are more trent ships but i can’t think of them lmao). i can see them getting along pretty well! i bet in universe a bunch of drama brothers fans ship them, because of course they do. i can see the potential here.

40. lindsay/heather - yea this one could be good. i’d like to see a post world tour version of this ship, or an island au where they get together. either way, i like the idea of this one.

39. lindsay/gwen - again, this ship is pretty good. gwen was kind of rude to lindsay at points, but i think after she stood up to heather, gwen gained some respect for her. idk i can see it happening.

38. lightning/scott - is this jock/farmer? jock/asshole? i’m not sure, but i really like it.

37. harzeke - tumblr user harzeke has opened my eyes. their posts are enlightening. the reason i kind of like ezekiel. harzeke is a good ship.

36. sadie/lindsay - remember in phobia factor when they were hyping each other up? yeah. they’d be cute together.

35. dundie - you know, i really didn’t expect them to make this one canon, but total drama dundie came outta nowhere. i wasn’t sure i was going to like them together, but fresh pulled together it’s first coherent plot in years and created a beautiful love story. very well done.

34. chref - chref is canon and u can’t tell me otherwise.

33. katie/sadie - after they got over their comphet, they realized they were in love and they end up having a really cute wedding.

32. ozzy - this ship is cute! they’re both bi and i hc they talk about cute people together because of course they do. also they would be so much fun to be around. i like them.

31. dj/geoff - djeoff? yea i like this. i think they’d both go out of their way to do sweet things for the other, but of course, they’re still geoff and dj. dj would probably bake a lot for geoff, but at least once, he’s gotten nervous and dropped it by accident. and geoff practices pick up lines and jokes before their dates but they’re like. the bad ones. dj loves them. anyway! this ship is good.

30. courtney/trent - i really, REALLY love them as friends, but i like them as a ship too! honestly i just love them getting along in any capacity. i think they’d be cute.

29. dawn/dakota - i made this up five minutes ago and i love it. i have no idea if people actually ship this but they should. just… think about it for a second. think about it and then try to tell me i’m wrong. u can’t.

28. alenoah - noah had a crush on alejandro during world tour, and u can quote me on this. i think they would be a power couple for sure. i like this one.

27. gidgette - season one gidgette is amazing. gidgette in the context of the killer bass five is amazing. season two and three gidgette is kind of meh to me, but not horrible i guess! i like geoff and bridgette and i think they’re cute together.

26. duncan/dj - i like the idea of this one. remember when duncan found dj a bunny? yea. they’d be cute.

25. jock - jock is good. rivals to allies to lovers. that’s the path i see this ship going down. i really like picturing them in any sort of au where they can kick ass together.

24. gwourtney - i used to like this one a lot more, but it’s still very good. i love the idea of them both mistakenly attributing their feelings for each other to duncan and accidentally ruining their friendship in the process. and by love i mean hate but also think is a good interpretation of the love triangle. i can see them together in an au, or after seriously reconciling in the future. or, honestly, in any universe where sundae muddy sundae doesn’t exist.

23. leshawna/gwen - did i hear u say best friends to lovers? no? well you’re getting them anyway. leshawna and gwen would be amazing i’m telling u. it’s a good ship.

22. tyler/alejandro - this is the third time i’ve said someone had a crush on alejandro during world tour, but. tyler had a crush on alejandro during world tour. i think they’d make a cute couple.

21. jashawn - this is a relationship built on respect and trust and i am here for that. they’re both a lil weird but neither of them mind, and they care about each other so much… i’m soft.

20. jasammy - i like this only marginally better than jashawn. honestly, i like all three dating the most. but anyway, jasmine was the first person who saw sammy as more than an extension of her sister… she stuck up for her. she was sammy’s first real friend. can i just reiterate… i’m soft.

19. evzy - they would light your house on fire together just cuz they were in the mood. eva bench presses izzy every morning. do not try to challenge them to any sort of competition, they will win by any means possible. eva picks izzy up at every opportunity. whenever they cook anything, they burn it. is this by accident or on purpose? i’m not sure. izzy likes lighting stuff on fire and eva likes eating burnt food for some reason, so it doesn’t really matter. i love their dynamic so much.

18. jomaria - if u were talking shit about either one of them, they would both get together and beat u up. they’re both legends and i love them.

17. gweather - total trauma comic has truly opened my eyes… i really like them in a future setting where they’re both more mature and can understand how they were both in the wrong at times during total drama, and ended up hurting people and were hurt themselves, and work through that together. so basically… in the setting of the total trauma comic.

16. heather/leshawna - rivals to lovers…. au where leshawna and heather get together during tda… i’m telling u it’s a good ship.

15. nowen - imho, this is both the best noah ship and the best owen ship. they complement each other so well. world tour nowen is just. the peak of their dynamic. i think enough has been said about nowen that you can understand why i would like it, so i’m just gonna move on.

14. trody - this one came outta NOWHERE a while back, i’m telling u. but i love it?? i liked their friendship in island, and i just. i love the idea of cody having a crush on both gwen and trent during island, misunderstanding that and thinking he just has a crush on gwen, and realizing after island at some point that he also liked trent. and then trent developing a crush on cody after the breakup with gwen and just… dijfalsfjla honestly i like them in so many contexts. thank u tumblr user gothcody for bringing the trody hype. anyway they’re a good ship!

13. bridgecourt - my favorite bridgette ship! idk i loved bridgette and courtney’s friendship in island, and i can see them having a best friends to lovers type of deal. i just think they’d be cute together, and their relationship would be really healthy and balanced.

12. gwoey - u can try and tell me there wasn’t a little something between these two in all stars, but u would be wrong. their designs compliment each other really well, they’re cute together… i’m a fan.

11. lesharold - SO valid. harold drinks his respect women juice every morning, except for that one time he rigged the votes in island to vote out courtney because he was mad at duncan smh. anyway this is a relationship built on RESPECT and CARE. they’re very cute together, and i love them.

10. dawn/zoey - the superior doey. listen the only reason these two weren’t friends is because fresh decided that zoey was going to think dawn was “weird”? but what if zoey just said that because she didn’t know how to deal with the fact that she found zoey cute… zoey is the epitome of that “i had a crush on a girl and i didn’t know how to deal with it so i sent her a letter that said ‘get out of my school’” tweet. n e way they would be such a good couple.

9. samkota - dafjlsflkaakf i think about samkota and i freak out i’m telling u. like is there anything. ANYTHING. better than a guy loving and respecting his girlfriend unconditionally? and mutual love and respect? … well i mean there are several more entries on this list, so okay, maybe a couple of things, but this shit is galaxy brain right here.

8. aleduncan - ok so apparently something i like slightly more than partners who are soft and even softer for each other is total assholes who care about each other. like alejandro is a gentleman… but he’s a manipulative jerk too. and duncan’s a fucking asshole and i love him for it. anyway when they teamed up in world tour, especially in that episode where they hunted ezekiel (??? what is total drama??) i really liked their dynamic.

7. lyler - ok back to love and respect. tyler and lindsay are so good!! tyler got so excited when lindsay remembered who he was right? and lindsay never stopped asking ppl if they were tyler ok. like she knew she cared about tyler enough to want to be with him even when she didn’t know who he was?? i feel like we don’t talk about the implications of this enough. honestly… i feel like people overlook how much the period in between tyler’s elimination and slap slap evolution must have sucked for both of them? like it was played for laughs but… that shit’s sad :( ok i’m done being sad they’re cute and they love each other and i love them.

6. gwent - yea u got me i still care about them. tdi gwent was really sweet! there was a lil pining. a lil outside meddling. and a lot of cute. and GOD during the finale when trent ran alongside gwen with that boulder? he cared about her so much!! of course action ruined it with the shitty portrayal of ocd and a healthy portion of not fucking communicating with your partner, but before that it was good.

5. truncan - you got me, i like the idea of trent serenading duncan with his guitar and duncan liking it a lot more than he anticipated. i think they’d have a dynamic that’s a little more turbulent than most other trent ships, but less so than most other duncan ships. they’d be a lot more balanced i think. i’m a fan of that.

4. scuncan - okay so u remember how i said i like to ship two fucking assholes together? scuncan is peak asshole/asshole rights. all stars totally missed their chance to have these two team up by dumbing scott down, whatever they did with duncan, and of course, introducing scourtney, i’m just saying. scott was actually playing the game pretty well in roti, and duncan was a veteran of the series. the two of them could’ve dominated the game. those fuckin assholes.

3. aleheather - okay now this ship was like, the only central ship that started out good and ended good in this entire series, except maybe jashawn but they don’t count because they were literally only in 13 episodes. anyway they did rivals to lovers right here. also, they simultaneously gave heather a great character arc and wrote alejandro super well. so the characters as individuals were great at the time they got together, and the couple was great together, so what i’m trying to say is… aleheather was and still is amazing.

2. duncney - in case u couldn’t tell from how high gwent is on this list, i am a fan of the tdi ships. another thing you might be able to tell from this list- duncan and courtney are two of my favorite characters in the series. so of course duncney gets a high placement on this list. not only that, but they go from disliking each other to really liking each other, which is something else that i really like. tdi duncney is opposites attract in the best way, where they compliment each other each other instead of clash. beyond that… ugh. eughhh. i don’t even want to think about that. but duncney in tdi alone earns itself number two on the list.

1. heathney - yes i love girls. yes this ship is pretty fucking basic. and no, there are no heathney fics on ao3. i will be attempting to remedy that. anyway, i could see them pulling a rivals to friends to lovers as well, which is one of my absolute favorite tropes. i think they’d be a total power couple. and to top it off, i love them both. a lot. so much. thank u for ur time.

#total drama #i also did this for all of the characters so lmk if anyone would like to see that #confessional

[gay-country-fangames]

please lets not be shitty

tws for talk of racism, eugen/cs, n*zis, slavery, genocide, etc. read at your own risk but please be aware this message is important. so this isnt specifically related to hetagames but its related to hetalia and i think its important that everyone hear it again just to be sure. im going to shelve my rabid persona for a minute because this is super important and a super serious thing.

making hetalia OCs or 2ps or personifying characters based off of problematic time periods from their history is not okay.

some examples include: -n*zi germany this is so wrong for so many obvious reasons everyone should know by now but for the sake of the post im gonna go into detail a lilbit. so many people were killed and both physically and mentally tortured during this time period, a large group being jewish people. during this time period german schools taught eugen/cs to their children which was a  h i g l y  racist concept. n*zis basically hated everyone that wasnt a blonde blue eyed ‘pure blood’ german. everyone else deserved to die according to them, and thats just.... not something that you make an anime boy about? like no. please. -civil war era america/the confederacy/the confederate states of america this one some people seem to think is okay for??? some goddamn reason??? no??? okay i know a lot of non-americans might not understand what exactly the civil war was so here we go heres a very watered down explanation. once upon a time there was slavery in america. we all know that. but at one point the public opinion shifted to thinking ‘hmm, maybe slavery is actually really fukin gross and bad? hey lets pass a law to ban slavery.’ and the southern states went ‘wait no we like slavery.’ and they went and said ‘this law would violate our constitutional right to states rights. we should be able to choose whether or not each state has laws against slavery!’ which is bs by the way they just wanted to keep owning slaves but they called it a violation of states rights so they could start a war over this shit. so then the south decided to form the confederacy and then they declared war on the north to try and break away n have their ‘right’ to own slaves. by the way this wasnt just a buncha racists fighting for their right to own people a lot of them also made their slaves fight in the war. so black people were being forced to fight for their own enslavement. lovely. spoiler alert they lost hella bad and the emancipation proclamation was signed which helped pave the way for black people to be free. the confederacy through its entire short life stood for nothing but slavery and racism and that is  n o t  something that its okay to make an anime boy out of okay please stop this.

-Communist Russia okay look. look. stop what youre going to say and read this. okay? okay. yes i know himaruya kind of wrote about this already. no that does not make it okay. hes human just like anyone else and hes realized his problems and faults and doesnt write that shit anymore. and even if he hadnt thats no excuse. even if he had kept making it that wouldnt make it okay. creators arent perfect and everything they do isnt automatically moral. popular people do stupid insensitive shit all the time and they have to be held accountable for it. anyway if you really need to be told why communist russia isnt good ‘uwu anime boy’ fodder then you really need to read a history book. but in short; genocide. mass starvation of their own people. imperialism. etc. bad shit. lets not.

-Mafia AU Romano okay this isnt really a time period perse but it felt like it belonged on the list so i put it on. its my list i can add what i want. so anyway ive seen southern italian people express blatant discomfort with this before, and from what i remember it stems from both racism and classism to a certain extend and thats just.... uncomfy. i get the appeal of a mafia au ok some people find crime hot but if its blatantly making people uncomfortable then id suggest you stop. other peoples comfort is more important than your fanfic. just make some generic crime lord au or summ instead idk it dont have to be the mafia all the time an it dont have to be romano all the time. if anyone who has a better feel for this wants to expand on it be my guest.

anyway im sure theres many more but these are the things i see the most. feel free to rb and add your own “please dont”s to the list. an before anyone gets on me about “why is this stuff bad but things like ancient rome arent” look ancient rome did about as much bad shit as england did but we dont all cancel mister arthur monster brows do we? the difference is these examples are narrowing a character down to one specific problematic period of their history (or in the case of the mafia thing one single small problematic part of the countrys history) and ancient rome represents the entirety of the countrys existance which did more than just imperialism and murder and shit. ok mun lei out now.

#hetalia #hetagame #hetalia fangames #Hetagames #hws hetalia #aph hetalia #aph #hws

[dio-theshitpost-brando]

This will be a massive list that’s basically, in order: DNI/DNF, About, Rules, Main AU description, Muse List.

Sorry it’s so long. I’ll be editing the pages again, but it is kind of important to have a pinned post since pages aren’t viewable on mobile.

(I will likely edit things off and on and I may make temporary posts referencing to here when I do that; particularly with the muse list. Aka, working on adding George even tho he’s baby...)

Do NOT interact/follow me if you:

 Fit the general criteria (Anti-LGBT+ (including excluding any part of the community), Racist, Sexist, Etc. If your shit can be seen as hate speech Don’t Follow.)

If your blog is mostly NSFW/Kink. If I can skim your blog and not know, I don’t really care.

If you mostly rb discourse/drama. Like the above. Doesn’t matter if I can’t immediately tell, but once it’s a majority of your blog content it makes me anxious.

If you ship incest (J0/na/D10 ESPECIALLY COUNTS WITH THIS), because that shit is a huge trigger. Yes. Legitimate trigger. Don’t argue this with me.

If you ship underaged and adult characters, too. Please don’t. There’s people out there who like these things or don’t care, follow them instead, not me.

About:

First off, this is kind of a mashup shitpost/ask/roleplay blog, though... I do usually tend to roleplay with very specific people (and my format is weird, but has an on blog reason to be), and tend to still use images in those. I’d rather not have a bunch of blogs so I kind of push it all into a couple, so feel free to come at me with anything! I try to be as inclusive as I can be. Though there are a few rules that weren’t covered in DNI.

Also, all blog “canon” overlaps with my Jotaro blog! (jotaro-hoards-belts) They both stem from the same AUs.

Rules: 

Obviously, no asks about ships that would be included in the above list.

While heavier content asks aren’t forbidden, I’d say to handle them with care. (Please consider the muse in question when considering how to bring up trauma. Aka I’d rather a “good” Dio not be taunted with his mother’s death; I’ve some headcanons that make that especially bad.)

Know that any triggering content in my stuff will be tagged and even if it’s of a certain variety I will not romanticize it. But I have some heavy headcanons and AU developments.

While muses can have a bit more freedom in reacting to muses on assumption, I’d rather muns and anons be openminded. For example, muses can be shitty about traumatic experiences, muns and anons cannot do that; however, anything that would relate to muses’ gender/orientation/race, I’d rather not deal with from muses OR muns.

AU Explanation:

With the rules out of the way, time to explain the AU situation. First thing’s first, is that actually all of this is kind of a multiverse situation. Think like Spiderverse or something like that, yeah.

I ALWAYS tag my AUs, now. I don’t have a list of which tags are for which AUs, but just clicking them and skimming them SHOULD clear some things up; if that doesn’t help just ask! I’m aware I do kind of a lot and it’s not always chronological, so I’m always A-Okay explaining things!

Fateswap:

Fateswap is basically a Jonathan-Dio roleswap. Though, slap it with a heavy dose of butterfly effect and it basically means “oops everything’s different!” Granted, there are kind of 2 timelines, but I use completely different tags for those muses, so it should be easy to tell which is which. The one I usually use is also referred to as “Fateswap-B”, and it’s essentially the “main” timeline, now.

The general gist of the AU is Vampire Jonathan and Hamon User Dio. There’s other changes too, since I refer to it as “Fate” swap, not “Role” swap. Dio has George in the AU, for instance. There’s lots of changes, but instead of making this longer, I will just say that there’s always sending asks to muses. (Or to me, but it’s a character ask blog for a reason, yeah?)

This blog will stay more focused on Part 1 of the AU, outside of events. If you’d like to ask about other parts, my ‘Jotaro’ blog is at part 6 in the AU!

Muse List:

Name: Dio Joestar Display name: Ham!Dio Age/DOB: 25 // April 20 Height: ~5'10"/178cm AU: Fateswap-B ;; fateswapSCRATCH.exe AU Overview: Dio turns Jonathan into a vampire, learns hamon, then- wait. Oops Time traveled, learned life (more like death) spoilers and decided to apologize instead of go for the kill. Extra info: By the power of unexpected time travel and universe hopping he was set on a path that basically can be summed up as “Fateswap but mostly everyone lives.” Has since bettered himself and, to split all associations with a certain man, has just taken his adoptive family’s last name. He avoids fighting as best as he can. He lives with Erina who helps him take care of his son, George. He also has been adopted by or adopted various JoJos. Give him the chance and he’ll adopt more. Also, did I mention? Dude fucking hates moose.

Name: Erina Pendleton Display name: FS!Erina Age/DOB: 23 // March 18 Height: ~5'10"/178cm AU:  Fateswap-B ;; fateswapSCRATCH.exe AU Overview: [See Dio’s entry.] Extra info: Lives with Dio to help raise George; only slightly regrets it. With her around you can’t roast Dio in any way that matters, she’s got it covered. She takes no shit and is always prepared to fight, and isn’t scared of much; regularly tussles a hungry vampire. Loves moose only because Dio hates them. Despite that, and other ways in which she harasses Dio she’d consider him her best friend at this point. If you care for your life don’t imply they are anything more in front of her. She helps Vampjo hunt for food; or rather, does it for him. Definitely considers Jonathan to be another dear friend, and truthfully nothing more.

Name: Jonathan Joestar Display name: Vampjo Age/DOB: 24 // April 4 Height: ~6'5"/195cm AU: Fateswap-B ;; fateswapSCRATCH.exe AU Overview: [See Dio’s entry.] Extra Info: Despite needing to eat people to survive, he’s quite hesitant to kill. With Erina’s help he eats anyway, to stop from attacking innocent people, or the few people he cares about. He definitely has a lot bottled up, though doesn’t like to speak much until he warms up. He also tends to try to stay to himself, though is slowly becoming more comfortable around people since completely isolating himself proves to just be self destructive. As such he goes from staying at Windknight’s Lot, to staying in the manor, moving between the two depending on how he feels. He is far from completely trusting Dio again, but does his best to be at least moderately friendly. Mostly for Erina and George’s sakes.

Name: Dio Pendleton Display name: ??? Age/DOB: 23 before death. // April 20 Height: ~5'10"/178cm AU:  Previously Fateswap-A ;; fateswapDisk1.exe         Currently lives in between universes ;; withinTheFurthestRing.exe AU Overview: Turned JoJo into a vampire, tried to kill him but only destroyed his body, married Erina, had George, then got killed and body snatched. Basically Hamon Dio without the cross universe stuff. Also is now a dullahan, of sorts. Nice. Extra info: His head will come off if his ribbon is removed. Also, since he’s a really busted ass ghost who is NEVER invisible he drains the energy of the surrounding area like a bitch, making places he goes cold. Used to use Joestar-Brando as last names but after finding the rest of his family he took Erina’s last name like mostly everyone else did. They just chill in between universes, now. Also the best way to describe how he acts is Hamon Dio but if the only thing he felt bad about was disrespecting Erina and not All Of The Bullshit He Did. Has been recently given a bit of a gift...

#ooc #figure seeing blogs i'd like to interact with and gettng more traffic is a good time to make this all a lil more clear #i need to work on thos requests then i can get to a few more content related asks!

[nozomijoestar]

Instead of following this meme as a list of ask prompts I love the idea so much I want to do everything in one go myself

The Bowl of Embers - What would be the title of your trial listed as in the duty-finder?

The Endless Dunes  - named this because of the fight location being in a secluded area deep in the Sagolii Desert at night; significant since thats where she was born and raised

Thok ast Thok - Write a brief flavor-text about your trial one would find as a listed description in the duty-finder

At the end of your winding road awaits a figure shrouded in the sands. Life has ceased to be in this barren land; there is but one path forward. The figure meets your gaze unshaken and expectant. The night winds howl in rage. Silence the Warrior of Light. 

Cape Westwind - What is the setting of the battle? Where will it take place?

Deep within the Sagolii Desert in Southern Thanalan, past her birthplace of Forgotten Springs. She used her power in anger to raise earth into a platform surrounded only by towering dunes and some of the locale’s rocky sand filled ravines. Its extremely difficult to enter and life threatening to leave if you aren’t careful. 

The Howling Eye - Write a description of the opening cut-scene preceding the fight

The questline leading up to this fight would involve the player discovering the WoL has gone rogue and wants to renounce the world and herself as Hydaelyn’s instrument. She’s been driven to her breaking point and despairs over the future and freedoms she feels were robbed from her when she was given Echo without consent; thereby made to endure pain and suffering she never asked for. 

Because at this stage she’s been unable to find a cure to get rid of Echo, all her hidden negative emotions have made her snap into a mass of destruction. The  player must fight her to make her come to her senses, which involves killing her multiple times only for her to be revived more pissed than before (due to Hydaelyn continuing to reconstruct her body to reinsert her soul upon any events that would kill her physically- this is my personal explanation for how the Echo buff in gameplay would work lorewise)

---

Player(s) enters the battle area at midnight and looks around to find only the stars and dunes they can’t see past. The entire land is swept by an unnaturally strong wind and sandstorm they shield their face from and as it ends the compact platform in front of them has Vaste standing with her back turned. She’s staring at the sky as you approach and unarmed, then closes her eyes hearing you. She’s known you, or something like you, was coming. When you reach almost halfway she sighs before opening her eyes and reaching her right hand out beside her. In a flash of energy that looks and sounds like lightening and thunder her spear is summoned. The player stops in their tracks, shocked. Slowly she turns appearing furious and assumes battle stance. Cue the traditional FF pan out then zoom in as the frame blurs white.

Thornmarch - What would be your character’s opening dialogue(s) upon the start of the battle?

Approaching party: “You should’ve let me stay gone.”

As players initiate their openers: “There is nothing here but your grave.”

The Chrysalis - What would be your character’s final words upon defeat?

As she falls to the ground: “I see it clear...a world of light.”

The Final Steps of Faith - How would some of the mechanics of the fight operate? Include as many as you want and specify whether it is for hard-mode or extreme (if applicable)

I’ll describe only the EX version but any lower difficulties would roughly the same just not as intensive

Initial phase she’ll hit the MT with enhanced damage Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust combos combined with the Heavy Thrust and Blood for Blood buffs; a special version of the Wheeling Thrust combo called Dragon’s Spin is a tankbuster with massive crit because it has Life Surge effect applied to its damage on final hit, this will come after 20% of total health bar is gone, due to LS 10% of her HP is restored from her damage dealt

As the MT activates their mitigation two cone AoEs will appear behind her diagonally shooting out Geirskogul attacks before alternating position to be two cones facing front of her and repeating the attack, finally the cones will become a pair of rectangles from her sides, she will then perform a centered circle AoE with Dragonfire Dive

The next mechanic sees her use Mirage Dive to chase the party around the arena with rapid small circle AoEs that fan out in position from the center to the edge of the platform before returning to neutral battle stance and using a platform wide AoE that starts at the center and which players will have to run to either the southeast or northwest corners of the arena to take the least damage, this is Dragonsong Dive

From here the arena is shattered and there’s an Active Time Maneuver to get yourself on a stable piece of debris as everyone is tossed into the sky, as the pieces crash back down they form a massive crater that hits down to the rock beneath the sands and the entire area is surrounded by a massive sandstorm 

All party members will gain a Buffeted debuff that does 150 damage constantly until the end of battle due to the environment and can be healed through to deal with but not Esuna’d away

She will land and target the MT with Spinshatter Dive, at this point she’ll buff herself with Battle Litany and enter red Blood of the Dragon to charge Nastrond

As she charges the attack adds will appear called Fragments of Agony that must be destroyed or they will charge her Agony gauge and the Nastrond will instant wipe everyone when it goes off, if everyone successfully kills the Fragments the Nastrond won’t wipe but deal massive damage

There is a brief resting period as she becomes untargetable and creates shades of Yugiri, Estinien, Lyse, Y’shtola, and Haurchefant from memory using leftover charge from her Agony gauge when it was prevented from being filled, players will then have to prioritize all adds in a dps check as they shield her and each has their own AoEs to look out for

After all adds are down she will rejoin the fight with Jump as a large centered AoE, then repeat her initial mechanics before the phase change until brought to 0%

Urth’s Fount - Would there be any mechanics that when ignored would result in an instant wipe?

Failing to stop the Agony gauge from reaching full or failing the dps check will be instant TPKs

The Royal Menagerie - Describe your OC’s techniques or special attacks that the party will have to avoid or be cautious dealing with

Players will need to be on the lookout for Geirskogul, Mirage Dive, Dragonfire and Dragonsong Dive whenever they appear as they’ll hit fast and hard, the entire first phase will also have her in Blood of the Dragon which will increase her attack potency

The Singularity Reactor - Will your character summon adds and companions throughout the encounter, or would it be a single-target fight?

The second phase will have shade memories of her closest NPC friends as adds

Akh Afah Amphitheater - Will your trial be a single-phase fight or will there be different segments to the encounter?

Two phases

Battle on the Big Bridge - What would the battle theme sound like? Will the music shift when the second phase of the fight begins?

The opening music for phase one will be something in the same vein and tone as Ramuh’s Rolling Thunder theme while the second phase shift goes into something closer to Shiva’s Oblivion theme; in both halves of the theme theres an undercurrent beat akin to Revenge Twofold

The Navel - How easy would it be for a DRG to fall off the edge of the stage in your trial?

Since she’s a DRG herself, pretty hard for another to fly off the side since there’s a lot of room just for her attacks to go off well

Castrum Fluminis - Would your OC drop any loot at the end of the fight? If so, describe them (tokens, tomes, weapons, crafting reagents, mounts, etc.)

Her completion reward is two chests with orchestrion rolls for both fight phases respectively, a minion of herself, and rarer a copy of Alba her chocobo mount alongside whatever gear is the current standard ilevel and 50 tomes of the current highest grade

Emanation - Name someone else’s OC you would like to see as a trial boss. Be sure to tag them

@uss-edsall @m14-mod3 and @aethernoise ! You guys don’t have to or you can just rb the meme list up top if you don’t want to do everything at once like I did

Ultima’s Bane - On a scale of 1 to 10, with ten being the most extreme, how would you rate the difficulty of your trial?

I feel like I probs went a little overboard so a 7-8, if I were to actually run it she’d beat me into the ground lol, gl trying to kill her cuz she’s no pushover

#final fantasy xiv: a realm reborn #also aethernoise if its not ok to tag you in FFXIV stuff at random for example like these memes just let me know or ignore it idl #*idk

[minijenn]

Universe Falls Chapter 63

Goddamn its been way too fuckin long aklsdjlasdjkad blame stupid ass Kingdom Hearts ANYWAY UF is back with a new chapter and its a pretty fun one I suppose. I kinda started rushing it about halfway through cause I wanna get it done and get onto the next one (aka fuckin emotional as hell fusion chapter) but ya know, things happens so here we are. And with that outta the way, I’ll leave ya to it. Enjoy!

Chapter 63: Bot Battle

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“Ahem,” Peridot loudly cleared her throat, garnishing the attention of the group gathered before her. After leaving the Kindergarten, the green Gem had made sure that Garnet, Pearl, and Ford, the only three who were uninformed about the Cluster after their latest misadventure, were all congregated together in the temple, Amethyst and the kids along with them to help in her explanation if need be. “As it seems I have no other options, I have conceded to reveal some important information to you about the Cluster.”

The Gems and the author said nothing to this, instead simply exchanging a dubious glance as they wondered whether or not Peridot had any intention of actually telling them the truth or not. Amethyst assured them that she was, however, by offering them a small nod, her expression gravely serious, even if the green Gem’s method of demonstrating exactly what the Cluster was to them was… less than serious.

With a snap of Peridot’s fingers, Steven shuffled forward, his entire body covered by a large cardboard box with a crudely-drawn Earth upon it. Dipper and Mabel walked alongside the young Gem largely to guide him along, since his vision was obscured by the box entirely.

“Behold!” Mabel exclaimed with a dramatic flourish, tossing a handful of glitter over the box as an added touch. “The Earth!”

“Hey!” Peridot snapped, glaring at the girl. “I was supposed to say that! Now… Behold, the Earth!” she began again, slapping the box with the flyswatter she was using as a baton and causing Steven to stumble back a bit as a result. “At the very center of this planet lies… the Cluster! Rotate,” she ordered, and with a little help from Dipper, Steven managed to turn himself and the box around to show another drawing, this time of the Cluster buried far beneath the Earth’s surface. “This is the Cluster. It’s a massive, artificial fusion composed of millions of Gem shards. It has laid dormant for thousands of years within this planet’s crust. When this Gem activates and takes its form, the result will be catastrophic. Now!”

Peridot hit the box once more, cuing Steven to begin shaking the box to build up suspense. Garnet, Pearl, and Ford all leaned forward in quiet dread, all three of them quite alarmed by what they’d already just heard about this Cluster. However, their worst fears were confirmed, albeit in a bit of an overexaggerated way when a rather silly, snake-like sock puppet burst through the drawing of the Earth on the box abruptly.

“BWAAAAA!” Steven growled loudly, thrashing the sock puppet around in faux violence, much to Peridot’s annoyance.

“What is that?” she asked with a scoff.

“It’s the Cluster!” Steven said through the puppet.

“I made it myself!” Mabel chimed in brightly. “I’ve been a bit of a sock puppet expert ever since I tried putting together this whole musical with them a few weeks back. It didn’t really turn out being exactly like I hoped it would, but… at least I was still able to make a good Cluster puppet with what I had left! Do you like it?”

“No!” Peridot huffed, swatting the puppet and Steven’s hand away. “The won’t look anything like that! B-but it is real,” she turned back towards the others. “And it can activate at any moment, destroying this planet and everything on it in the process! Including all of us!”

“And there was probably a much easier way to explain all of that that didn’t involve using a box and a sock puppet,” Dipper remarked somewhat dryly, sending the green Gem a critical glance.

“They’re called visual aids,” Peridot countered coldly. “And yes, they were necessary in getting the point of the Cluster across to these clods! They certainly never would have understood it without them, I can assure you.”

“Believe me,” Garnet spoke up, her tone and expression both grim after everything they’d just learned. “We would have.”

“What a Cluster, huh?” Amethyst asked, somewhat sarcastically, though there was still a hint of dread in her tone.

“And I thought Bill’s intentions for the Earth were bad…” Ford muttered to himself, his eyes wide with concern. “But this is arguably even worse. Who could have ever guessed that Homeworld could be so… vindictive over losing this planet all those years ago?”

“We should have…” Pearl whispered so quietly that none of the others heard her as her hands quickly slipped up to cover her mouth.

“This abomination must be stopped,” Garnet said, standing with firm resolve. “Before its too late.”

“B-but how?” Pearl asked, regathering her bearings. “We’d need to build some sort of machine to take us to the center of the Earth! It’ll have to-”

“Hey!” Peridot snapped impatiently, lashing her flyswatter out at the white Gem. “I wasn’t finished speaking yet! What we need is to build some sort of machine to take us to the center of the Earth.”

“Um, that’s literally what Pearl just said,” Dipper pointed out, crossing his arms.

“Furthermore,” Peridot continued, staunchly ignoring both him and the pointed glare Pearl was sending her way. “It’ll need to withstand up to 360 gigapascals of pressure and temperatures up to 9800 degrees.”

“And,” Ford cut in, adding his vast knowledge onto the discussion. “It’ll likely need to be outfitted with an advanced hyperflux engine in order to-”

“In order to cut through the Earth’s crust and get us down to the Cluster in a reasonable amount of time, yes of course,” Peridot rolled her eyes. “Anybody who has any inkling of intelligence at all would know that. Which is why I’m surprised that such a primitive creature like you would be able to figure it out.”

“Oh, I’ll show her ‘primitive’…” Ford growled, rolling up his coat sleeves a bit to give the green Gem a piece of his mind. At least until Pearl put up an arm to stop him just in time.

“Well, we mustn’t waste any time,” the white Gem concluded. “We need to start finding parts for this machine immediately.”

“Yes, obviously,” Peridot huffed, still irritated. “You all certainly do have a knack for stating what’s very plain to see, don’t you? Either way, we can start by dismantling all devices inside of this dwelling.”

Before anyone could object, Peridot hurried over to the kitchen, jumping up onto the counter and grabbing the microwave so she could pry it off of the cabinet it was connected to. “This simplistic radiation concentrator should come in handy!” she exclaimed, yanking it down with a heavy shout before it ultimately fell past her and onto the floor, breaking instantly.

“Whoa, wait!” Steven exclaimed, shaking the box off of him as he watched the green Gem with newfound alarm as she grabbed the phone lying on the nearby coffee table.

“This baseline vibration transmitter could possibly serve a function!” she cried before smashing the phone itself down onto the table to open it up and reveal its inner components. From there, she ran up to the loft, hoisting up Steven’s television, despite how heavy it was for her. “T-there’s a remote chance something useful could be inside this primitive image cube!”

Everyone down below flinched as the TV came crashing down to the ground, though fortunately, Steven was quick to finally put an end to Peridot’s frenzy before she could go on to break any more of his possessions. “Wait!” he exclaimed before evening things out. “I have a better idea that doesn’t involve destroying the house!”

While most of the others were still largely wrapped up in their concern over the Cluster, Amethyst couldn’t help but crack a smile over this, knowing that even when the rest of them were at a loss over what to do, the young Gem usually wasn’t. “Classic Steven.”

The so-called “Universe Family Barn” had been largely untouched ever since the last ill-fated engineering project took place there. Despite the fact that Pearl’s space ship had been an abject failure, fortunately, there was still a large abundance of leftover junk and scrap materials to be found within its spacious wooden haul. Which was why, upon Steven’s suggestion, the others were all quick to agree that it would be the best place to build their planned drill, hoping that with the space and materials allotted to them, they’d be able to construct what they needed to in whatever amount of time they had left. Which, for all any of them knew, might not be very much time at all.

“Hm… well its no Helusian-9 hyperdronics scrap yard,” Ford remarked as he looked over what they had to work with alongside the kids. “But I suppose it’ll have to do. After all, I’ve made do with much less than this before.”

“It should be adequate enough for us to get started, at least,” Pearl noted thoughtfully. “First, I recommend we organize the component types available to us.”

“And while you’re working on that, I can assemble a rough schematic based on what we have!” Ford finished, adjusting his glasses.

“Wow, it seems like you guys already have this whole drill thing fully figured out,” Dipper said, thoroughly impressed by their smooth organization.

“Well, my boy, I’ve always found it wise to plan ahead, especially when dealing with a massive mutant geoweapon,” the author concluded with a knowing grin.

“Oh, I completely agree, Stanford!” Pearl exclaimed, clasping her hands together. “You know, in a way, this will be a bit nostalgic considering our days working together on that portal way back when.”

“Yes, but unlike that disaster,” Ford frowned, though he quickly perked up upon realizing he was righting a wrong with this project. “This is going to save the Earth rather than nearly destroy it.”

“It certainly is a much more noble cause, I’ll say that much,” Pearl chuckled warmly. Her smile quickly fell, however, upon noticing the rather cutesy, simplistic drawing of the drill that Steven and Mabel had collaborated on on the chalkboard just outside of the barn. “Um... sorry, kids, it’s a lovely drawing, but it won’t look much like this at all…”

“Aw…” Mabel pouted as Steven stopped spinning around on his stool, frowning. “And I thought we hit the nail on the head with it too!”

“Hm…” Peridot finally spoke up, her ongoing silent musing coming to an end as she nodded complacently. “Good. Yes, this is adequate. Thank you, you can go now,” she said to Pearl in particular.

“Uh… what?” Pearl raised an eyebrow, exchanging a confused glance with Ford.

“Hm?” the green Gem paused, confused herself until she clapped lightly, waving the white Gem off. “Um, that will be all?” Pearl let out a small, incredulous scoff at this, realizing exactly what Peridot was playing at with her dismissive attitude, and deciding she was going to have none of it. Still, Peridot persisted as she leaned over to Steven and whispered to him rather obviously. “How do I get her to leave?”

“Excuse me, I’m not leaving,” Pearl said, her hands on her hips as she looked down to the green Gem critically.

“Ugh… very well then,” Peridot rolled her eyes. “I suppose you can stand here and hand me supplies as I call for them, even if that’s not what you’re supposed to do… Same goes for you, you… oddly appendaged human,” she said to Ford, barely sparing him a second glance.  

“Pardon me?” Ford remarked somewhat harshly, crossing his arms as he scowled down at the green Gem. “Neither of us are simply going to stand around passively while you do all the work on the drill, Peridot. If we want to get this project done right, then we all need to-”

“Oh, no, I have it covered,” Peridot assured succinctly. “After all, I don’t want a Pearl and some basic human getting in my way. Really, you’d both only slow me down.”

Needless to say that both Pearl and Ford were quite offended by the green Gem’s haughty remarks, yet before they could say anything to challenge them, Steven interjected instead. “Peridot, that’s not fair,” the young Gem shook his head earnestly. “Pearl and Mr. Ford are two of the smartest people I know! They just gotta help us build this drill thingy; they’ll do a great job on it, I’m sure!”

Peridot only let out a small, snide snicker at this, not taking Steven seriously whatsoever. “No, no, you must be confused. A Pearl can’t build a thing like this. And a human certainly couldn’t.”

“And why is that?” Dipper asked rather caustically, starting to take offense to what the green Gem was saying himself as Steven and Mabel were too.

“Well, isn’t it obvious?” Peridot asked plainly. “You humans are simple. Your society and your very understanding of the physical properties of the world around you is lightyears behind, at best. And don’t even get me started on your painfully primitive technology. If your engineering skills can’t even match up to the most basic of Homeworld’s tech,” she said, turning back to Ford and offering him a smug, satisfied grin. “Then how in the stars could you possibly expect to design and construct a machine this advanced and complex?”

“Oh, I have a feeling you’d be very surprised by what I know when it comes to engineering…” Ford muttered quite angrily, knowing he had much to draw on thanks to his 30-year stint traveling the many diverse, often futuristic landscapes of the multiverse. “In fact, I’d almost be willing to wager that I have even more knowledge on that front than you do.”

“Ha! Don’t make me laugh,” Peridot chuckled coldly. “As if your weak organic mind could even compare to the lowliest of Gems! Speaking of lowly Gems…” Her teasing smile only widened as she turned to Pearl, who was already quite incensed herself. “You should know better than anyone that you Pearls aren’t even for this sort of thing! You’re for standing around, and looking nice, and holding stuff for higher ranking Gems! Right?”

“Ugh! That’s enough!” Pearl snapped fiercely, refusing to hear any more, even though she knew it was true. By Homeworld’s standards, at least. “If we’re going to work together, Peridot, then you’re going to have to listen to us. Both of us.”

“Listen… to you?!” At this, Peridot broke down into another heavy gale of laughter, one that only served to irritate Pearl and Ford even more. “Did you teach her to talk like this?” Peridot asked Steven with an incredulous smirk. “Because that’s just rich!”

“Uh… what are you talking about?” the young Gem asked, still not following.

“Uh, duh,” the green Gem said, as though it was obvious. “She’s a Pearl. She’s a made-to-order servant, just like the hundreds of other Pearls being flaunted around back on Homeworld!”

“Wait…” Steven mused, his eyes wide as Mabel let out an awed gasp beside him. “There are… hundreds of Pearls?!”

“W-well, yes,” Pearl admitted with an embarrassed blush. “But-”

“And she looks like she’s a fancy one too…” Peridot remarked, examining Pearl’s sash before the white Gem snatched it away from her with an appalled gasp.

“Hundreds of Pearls…” Steven repeated, still dumbfounded by such a fact.

“I wanna meet every single last one of them!” Mabel quipped, jumping up and down excitedly. “Especially if they’re anywhere near as cool as our Pearl!”

Despite her ongoing mortification, Pearl couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle at this, touched by the sentiment despite the green Gem’s cynicism. “Well…”

“So,” Peridot interupted once more, looking over the white Gem expectantly. “Who do you belong to anyway?”

“NOBODY!” Pearl shouted harshly, refusing to allow herself to ever return to the simplistic, servantile mindset she was created with again.

“Then… what are you for?” the green Gem asked, baffled. Pearl gave her no response, instead swiftly turning away in the hopes that it would curtain this uncomfortable conversation, but of course, it didn’t. “Well… you can belong to me for now,” Peridot concluded. “And so can the human,” she nodded over at Ford, who was rather shocked by the implication. “After all, I’ve always wanted a pet of my own. Ha! A Peridot with a Pearl and a pet human! What would they say back home?”

“Oh, absolutely not!” Ford exclaimed hotly, his hands clenched into tight fists. “I am nobody’s pet! Especially not yours, you… you egotistical, impudent little brat!”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Pearl spoke up before Peridot could even try to get a word in edgewise. “Listen here, you tiny twerp! In case you’ve forgotten, you’re on our turf now! And I didn’t fight a thousand-year war for this planet’s independence to take orders from the likes if you!”

“Excuse me?!” Peridot gasped, appalled by their brashness. “I’m a natural technician, and a certified Kindergartener.”

“Well she sure does act like one…” Dipper remarked to Mabel with a small, amused grin as his sister chuckled to herself.

“I was made for this!” the green Gem continued insistently. “You were made to wallow around in the dirt your planet is made of,” she said, shooting a hard glare up at Ford. “And you were made to take orders, not give them!” she finished, snapping at Pearl relentlessly. “Which is why you’re both going to stop your incessant, rebellious behavior and listen to the Gem in charge here, at once!”

“Oh really?” Pearl countered as both her and Ford leaned in forward towards Peridot amidst the palpable growing tension. “We’ll just see about that…”

“Whoa, whoa! Hang on, guys!” Steven cut in, jumping in between the pair and the green Gem before any sort of violence could break out. “Now, we can all agree that all three of you are good at building things, so… why can’t you try listening to each other?”

“NO!” Pearl, Ford, and Peridot all exclaimed in staunch, harsh unison, each of them refusing to reconcile over their incredibly vast differences.

“Ford and I are just as good at building things as you!” Pearl hissed down at the green Gem angrily. “Better even!”

“Together, we could easily prove everything you said about us completely wrong,” Ford added just as intently.

“Ha!” Peridot scoffed, still not taking either of them seriously, despite their adamance. “Name one thing you two can engineer better than I can. Go on!”

“Advanced lighter-than-air spacecraft!” Pearl asserted boldly.

“Trans-universal, interdimensional portals!” Ford added with just as much passion.

“Robots.”

“Huh?” the trio all turned to Steven as he let out a softly whispered suggestion.

“You should build robots,” the young Gem continued, stars in his wide eyes as he stepped forward, an excited smile growing on his face. “Giant robots! I see a race. A giant robo-race! With prizes! Giant robo-prizes!”

“Oh! Oh! And cheerleaders! Giant robo-cheerleaders!” Mabel added enthusiastically.

“Uh, that might be going a bit too far, Mabel,” Dipper pointed out, though even he wasn’t able to avoid the building excitement for too long. “Still, a huge robot battle sounds like it’d be so cool!”

“You mean like a competition?” Pearl frowned, confused.

“Yeah!” Steven nodded. “To see who’s better at building things. It could be you and Mr. Ford vs. Peridot in the ‘Robot Rumble of the Ages!’ I came up with the name myself!”

“What are these ‘robots’ you speak of?” Peridot asked, not following.

“Oh, they’re sorta like those cute lil’ marble guys you were sending here,” Mabel grinned. “Only these are gonna be way bigger! With lasers! And huge grabby hands!” To prove her point, she playfully imitated a robot, making fake beeping noises as she waved her arms around Peridot until the green Gem waved her away in annoyance.

“Ha! Give me an actual challenge here,” Peridot remarked haughtily. “Building one of these ‘robots’ will be easy!”

“W-well, we can build one faster!” Pearl proclaimed with daring zeal.

“I’d like to see you try!” the green Gem shot back, not wasting anymore time in rummaging through the parts the barn had to offer. Pearl was just about to leap in and do the same, yet before she could, Ford unexpectedly stopped her.

“Pearl, wait,” the author began evenly. “As much as I really hate to admit it… Peridot could be right after all. Even our shared mechanical knowledge might not be enough to counter the experience she’s had with all that advanced Homeworld technology… It pains me to say this, but… I think we might just be out of our league here…”

“Oh, what?” Pearl scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Come on, Stanford, don’t tell me you, of all people, is admitting defeat to a cocky little… for lack of a better word, clod, like her?”

“Oh, believe me, Pearl, I’m as far as humanly possibly from admitting defeat,” Ford smirked, his hands behind his back. “But I do think we’d do well with a little extra help on our side. And fortunately for us, I just so happen to know someone with a rare and brilliant knack for robotics in particular.”

“Um… and who might that-” Pearl gasped, her eyes widening with alarm as she realized exactly who the author was thinking of. “Oh, Stanford, please don’t tell me you’re talking about-”

“That’s right,” Ford nodded, his smile finally fading into slight apprehension as he briefly thought back on the past. “We need Fiddleford. H-he… wouldn’t happen to still be living here in Gravity Falls after all these years… would he?”

“Uh… I guess you could say that…” Mabel spoke up with a small frown.

“Um… Mr. Ford?” Steven said with a sympathetic frown. “Mr. McGucket, well… he’s…”

“He’s… not exactly like you remember him anymore…” Pearl said softly, looking down with remorse. “Let’s just say that…”

“B-but… he’s still… around, isn’t he?” Ford asked, growing steadily more concerned with the unknown fate of his old friend.

“Yeah, he is,” Dipper nodded. “But… its been a few weeks since we’ve seen him. I wonder what he’s been up to since that whole Blind Eye thing…”

“Blind Eye?!” Ford exclaimed, aptly alarmed. “Those robe-wearing freaks are still around?! They only just started popping up around here right after our portal went wrong, what could they-”

“They were still around,” Pearl interjected, crossing her arms. “Until we took care of them once and for all.”

“W-well then… what of Fiddleford?” the author pressed anxiously. “Is he alright? Where can we find him?”

Pearl and the kids exchanged something of a worried glance, knowing that Ford would certainly revile the truth once he learned it. Not that they intended to keep it from him anyway, since his desire to reunite with his old partner seemed to run deeper than just wanting another hand in helping them beat Peridot at her own game.

Which was why Pearl stepped forward, carrying plenty of regret of her own as she decided to take the author to exactly who he wanted to see, no matter what might happen as a result. “You’re not going to like this, but…”

“I-I… I can’t believe it…” Ford shook his head, the shame in his tone unmistakable as they all stood before the entrance to Gravity Falls’ dump. Pearl and the kids had spent the entire trip there explaining McGucket’s rather disheartening story to the author, who could only really react to it with shock and guilt that he was far too ashamed to hide. “I… I knew that Fiddleford had taken his… horrific experience with the portal harshly, but I could have never imagined he would have used that infernal memory gun to…” Ford trailed off, letting out a sad sigh as he shook his head and looked back to the ramshackle shack Pearl and the kids had told him McGucket now called home. “If what you all have told me really is true… then this is all my fault…”

“Oh, Stanford…” Pearl frowned, placing a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t your fault. There’s no way you could have known; there’s no way any of us could have known… Because believe me, if Rose and Garnet and Amethyst and myself had known, then we certainly would have done everything in our power to help him…”

The most Ford could offer in response to such a solemn sentiment was a small, but weary smile. However, upon noticing the palpable remorse between the pair, Steven was quick to step in to try and alleviate it. “Maybe you guys weren’t able to help Mr. McGucket back then…” he began with a frown that soon turned into a reassuring smile. “But the good news is you can still help him now! Heck, we already have by helping him get back his memories!”

“Yeah!” Mabel chimed in enthusiastically. “Which is why I’m sure he’ll totally down to help you guys out with building your super-cool giant robot!”

“Wait, that’s why you clods dragged us all the way out here to this disastrous waste depository?” Peridot asked, baffled as she finally tuned into the conversation. Since the green Gem still needed to be watched carefully lest she run off on her own again, Ford and Pearl agreed that they had to bring her along with them to the junkyard so they could keep an eye on her. Of course, the green Gem had protested, especially when they more or less forced a leash on her to keep her from escaping. Still, she ultimately had no choice in coming along, and was clearly appalled upon learning exactly what the point of this outing really was. “I can’t believe you’re wasting my valuable time that I could be using to build my machine that will no doubt pummel yours into the ground just so you can find this ‘McGucket’ creature! This is completely asinine!”

“Well, its not any more ‘asinine’ than you thinking you can actually take Pearl and Great Uncle Ford on in an inventing battle and win,” Dipper remarked with a rather sarcastic smirk that succeeded in eliciting a frustrated growl from Peridot.

“Well… I suppose we should head inside…” Pearl said with a hint of apprehension in her tone. Without any further deliberation, the group approached the hillbilly’s shack as Mabel went on ahead to knock on the door.

“Old Man McGucket! You in there?” she called. “We have something we need to…. Ask you…?” she trailed off as the brittle wooden door slowly creaked open on its own accord, allowing everyone to peak in to see the rather ruinous state the shack had been left in.

McGucket’s home wasn’t usually the cleanest, given its spot right in the heart of the junkyard, but now it certainly seemed to even more of a wreck than it usually was. What few actual possessions the hillbilly had were strewn and scattered all over the tiny shack in a chaotic, disorganized mess. And even more mysterious than the hectic state before them was the fact that McGucket himself was seemingly nowhere to be found within it.

“Whoa, it like a hurricane blew through here…” Dipper noted with a worried frown.  “I wonder what could have happened?”

“Its strange…” Pearl nodded fretfully. “It almost seems like the place has been entirely abandoned, and in quite a frantic rush at that… But if Fiddleford isn’t here, then were could he-”

The white Gem cut herself off as a sudden clamor sounded from the small window on the far side of the shack. Startled, everyone tucked away behind a rather large pile of garbage to see exactly who was apparently breaking into the shack for some unknown reason. Though, ironically enough, said perpetrator just so happened to be the very hillbilly that called it home.

McGucket let out a loud cry of alarm as he haphazardly slipped in through the open window, landing hard on the other side of it into a pile of miscellaneous scraps. “Aw, conswarnit!” the hillbilly huffed, clearly exasperated as he picked himself up off the ground and began hurriedly picking through his scattered possessions. “Now where’d I put those darn things? They’ve gotta be around here somewhere! I can’t spend all day ‘round here lookin’ for ‘em! I gotta skedaddle outta here again before that confounded portal blows this whole town sky high!”

“The portal?” Ford whispered with a concerned gasp as he leaned out from behind their hiding spot a bit. However, in doing so, he accidentally happened to knock over a stray empty can from the pile, which of course, garnished McGucket’s attention the instant it hit the ground.

“Whazzit?! Who’s there?!” the hillbilly exclaimed fearfully, swiping up a nearby frying pan off the ground and brandishing it as threateningly as he could. “I got me a cast iron skillet here, and I ain’t ‘fraid to use it! I’m warnin’ ya!”

“Whoa, hey, its ok!” Steven assured as him, Dipper, Mabel, and Pearl stepped out first. Ford nearly joined them, but decided to hang back at the last second, both to make sure Peridot was restrained and out of fear as to how McGucket might react to him after so many years. “Its just us! L-long time no see, huh, Mr. McGucket?”

“Oh!” McGucket gasped with apt relief as he lowered his pan. “W-well howdy, kids! A-and howdy to you too, Miss Pearl…” he said, inclining his head in respect for the white Gem.

“H-hello again, Fiddleford,” Pearl greeted somewhat awkwardly, mostly since she know fully remembered the rapport herself and the other Gems used to have with him. “How have you been since… well, since your memories were returned to you?”

“I… gotta admit I’ve seen better days…” McGucket frowned, scratching the back of his neck as he looked down fretfully. “B-but I’m afraid I don’t got time to stand around here and catch up. I only came back here to get my handy dandy whittlin’ spoon,” he said, holding said very old, very bent up spoon up. “I gotta hightail it back to the bunker in the woods, and I reckon ya’ll do the same! It’s the only place where any of us has a chance at bein’ safe once that darn portal opens up and-”

“Uh… actually… the portal sort of… already opened,” Dipper pointed out.

“…W-what?” McGucket asked, his eyes wide with growing fear. “B-but… but that’s impossible! If that confangled portal opened up, t-then none of us would even be standin’ here right now! It would have blown us, this town, maybe even the whole entire world to smithereens! It would have started the end times, the apocalypse! And worst of all, it would have let that… darn, dastardly demon out to terrorize us all!”

“W-well, then, we certainly were lucky. It didn’t destroy everything and it didn’t let him out, thank goodness,” Pearl clarified with a sigh of relief. “But… it did bring someone else back instead…” At this, the white Gem glanced over at Ford, who still really had no idea how exactly he intended on facing his old partner, much less what to even say to him. Still, the author knew that it was either now or never, which was why he took in a deep breath to steady himself before finally stepping out of hiding to face his former friend for the first time in over 30 years.

“H-hello… Fiddleford,” Ford said with a small, bittersweet smile as he took in just how hard the passage of time had apparently been on the once youthful inventor before him. “It… certainly has been a long time… hasn’t it?”

The very moment McGucket saw Ford, his spoon and his pan instantly fell to the floor in a crash that seemed to rattle the entire shack before things quickly fell into a heavy silence. For what seemed like ages, the hillbilly simple stared at the author, his jaw dropped in apparent stunned shock and also hints of confusion, as if he was still trying to process exactly who his old friend was. None of the others really thought to interject, not even Peridot, who simply stood by the kids, completely uninvested in the ongoing situation entirely. Even so, the atmosphere between the author and the inventor was tense, yet unreadable, neither of them really knowing what to say or do next. That is, until McGucket slowly, cautiously, decided to break that silence and his own shock.

“S-Stanford…” the inventor whispered, his voice barely audible as he placed a ginger hand against his head. “I… It… it’s all comin’ back to me now… T-there were still a few gaps left in my memory b-but now… seein’ you… I… reckon they’re startin’ to fill in again…”

“Oh, w-well, then that’s good!” Ford said with something of a forced smile, one racked with hidden guilt over the fact that McGucket had lost those memories in the first place. “I… I’ve heard… Pearl and the children told me everything. A-and I’m…” The author trailed off, glancing down as if a sudden conflict had filled him before he shook his head, almost as if to clear it. “It’s… a shame what happened to you, Fiddleford, truly it is. B-but I am glad to know that you’re on the steady road to recovering from it all.”

McGucket flinched upon hearing this, his surprise filling in with something else. Something that seemed akin to hurt rather than shock. “Is… is that all?” he asked, arcing an eyebrow.

“I… yes?” Ford frowned, confused. “I suppose it is. Why do you ask?”

The inventor simply let out a small, almost harsh chuckle at this as he shook his head sardonically. “You haven’t changed a bit, have ya, Stanford?” he asked. “Looks like you’re still ridin’ on that high horse of yours’, just like you were all them years ago.”

“Wha—high horse?” the author repeated with a baffled scoff. “And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, you’re still just as full of pride as you ever were, Stanford,” McGucket remarked, his tone turning a bit sourer. “Even after all these years and everythin’ that happened, you still won’t admit that you were wrong about that gosh-darn portal of yours! You still won’t admit that you made a mistake!”

“Now, that’s where you’re wrong, Fiddleford,” Ford countered evenly. “I-I will admit that the portal was a complete and utter disaster in retrospect. It was something we never should have built which is why I fixed it by dismantling it altogether. At the very least I did my best to right the wrongs I had caused, unlike someone else I happen to know.”

“W-who, me?” McGucket asked, caught off guard by this accusation.

“Yes, you,” the author clarified, crossing his arms. “After our mishap with the portal, you were the first to rush out without even sparing a second thought towards helping me stop the damage it could have potentially caused! Even Rose came back to lend a hand after she quit, but you never did, Fiddleford! From what I heard, you were far too busy essentially burying your head in the sand by using that awful invention of yours to wipe your own memories than to help fix a problem that you were just as responsible for as I was!”

“I would’ve never had to do that if your cockamamie plans hadn’t gone as far off the rails as they did!” McGucket shot back just as harshly. “I tried warnin’ ya that portal was gonna end in disaster, Stanford, we all did! But the only ones you ever listened to were yourself and that confounded ‘muse’ of yours! You were as stubborn as a springtime mule back then, and you’re every bit as stubborn now since you still can’t see just how wrong you really were!”

“I’m stubborn?” Ford gasped, appalled by such a claim. “You’re the one who’s stubborn, Fiddleford! You had so much talent, so much potential to make a name for yourself, but you always held yourself back, even as far back as when we were in college! You could never see beyond just yourself, you never dreamed of anything greater, and that’s where you always fell short! You were content to spend the rest of your days toiling away in mediocrity, and look where that’s gotten you? Even lower than that! You may blame me for the sorry state you’re in now, but as far as I can see, you did this to yourself.”

“Alright, that’s quite enough from both of you!” Pearl suddenly interjected, quickly placing herself in the middle of this brutal confrontation. Likewise, the kids also stepped forward, none of them wanting to see such an intense fight between such close former friends, even if none of them really knew how to intervene in a situation none of them really had any parts in. “Believe me, I know just how upset both of you are over this… mess. We were all very upset over it too but… its over now… Like Stanford said, the portal is gone now. M-most of our worries from all those years ago are over. We need to move on. We have to move on. After all… we have much bigger things to worry about now.”

“Yeah, like the Cluster!” Mabel exclaimed boldly.

“And the drill,” Dipper added, a bit more seriously.

“And finding out who’s going to be in charge of building said drill,” Peridot spoke up haughtily. “Which, just in case you all forgot, is going to be me!”

None of the others bothered to argue with the green Gem at this point, knowing that they had more important matters to attend to at the moment than trying to deflate her obviously massive ego. Instead, Ford collected himself, letting out a long sigh as he calmed down to address McGucket evenly. “Ah yes, that’s right. Fiddleford, the real reason why we came here was-”

“We need your help,” Pearl cut in, deciding that this would likely turn out better if she was the one to ask McGucket for his aid as opposed to Ford. “We have to construct a robot for this… competition, so to speak, and Ford and I thought we would ask you for your help on it. After all, Fiddleford, if I recall correctly, you do have quite a knack for engineering projects of this scale, and certainly your vast skill and talents would be invaluable in helping us-”

“I’m sorry, Miss Pearl, but I’m gonna have to stop ya right there,” McGucket shook his head, holding a hand up to interrupt. “I love buildin’ me a giant, rampaging robut as much as the next feller, and if it was just for you, well, I reckon I’d be more than happy to help. But I just don’t think I’m willin’ to work on another lil ‘project’ with Stanford again, ‘specially after how the last one turned out.”

“Oh, why am I not surprised?” Ford huffed crossly. “There you go, limiting yourself all over again. So much inventing and mechanical talent, and for what? For it to all go to waste while you hunker down here in the middle of a literal dump? We’re offering you a chance to assist us with what would most likely be the first worthwhile thing you’ve done in years and you’re just turning it down out of spite?”

“Believe me, Stanford, you’d know if this was outta spite,” McGucket rolled his eyes as he walked past the baffled author. “I’m turnin’ ya’ll down ‘cause I think I’ve wasted enough time puttin’ my inventing skills towards your hairbrained schemes. I reckon my so-called ‘talents’ would be better used elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere, hm…?” Peridot muttered to herself, having become gradually more intrigued by this conversation as it went along. While the green Gem still didn’t put much stock in humans and their technical abilities, she couldn’t help but think that perhaps this McGucket human could be some use to her after all, even if it was for nothing more than the sake of leveling the playing field in her favor. “In that case, I might just have an interested proposition for you, you… McHuman or whatever your name was,” she began with a knowing smirk.

“Huh? Peridot, what are you-” Steven was cut off as the green Gem suddenly shoved him back by his face so she could approach McGucket herself.

“Well, golly, take a gander at you!” the hillbilly exclaimed in amazement upon spotting the green Gem. “And who’re you supposed’ta be? Some sorta lil’ green space alien?”

“Ugh, why do all of you simple-minded humans insist on calling me that!?” Peridot huffed, annoyed.

“Probably because you actually are one,” Dipper remarked with a bit of a wry smirk.

“Ugh, Fiddleford, this,” Pearl interjected, nodding over at the miffed green Gem. “Is Peridot. She’s supposed to be helping us with this drill project, but she’s so hung up over who’s going to lead the project that she insists that we compete in some sort of… ridiculous robot battle!”

“But I thought the robot battle was your idea, Steven,” Mabel whispered over to the young Gem aside.

“Huh, you know, I thought it was too…” Steven frowned, confused.

“W-which is why,” Pearl interjected evenly. “We came to came to ask for your-”

“Which is why I’m asking for your… assistance in helping me build my own ‘robot’ device, y-you… human,” Peridot interjected quite awkwardly and completely unexpectedly at that.

“What?!” just about everyone else in the shack asked in completely baffled unison as they all turned to the green Gem with wide eyes.

“W-what do you mean you want his assistance?” Pearl asked, looking down to Peridot with apt shock. “Just awhile ago, you were claiming that human technological skills were ‘inferior’ to your own. So why would you suddenly want to team up with one now?”

“I recall saying no such thing!” Peridot huffed, putting on a front of appalled innocence really only for McGucket. “And besides, according to you two, this one is quite adept at building one of these robots, so why not have him on my side?”

“Huh, you know, she does kind of have a point…” Steven noted. “After all, 2 vs 2 is much more fair than 1 vs 3 when it comes to just about anything, from fun little minigames, to huge, intense robot battles!”

“Y-yes,” Peridot agreed staunchly as she turned back towards Ford and Pearl. “And besides, he’s already made it very clear that he has no intentions of working with you, isn’t that right…. You?” she asked, glancing back over at McGucket.

However, before the hillbilly really had a chance to say anything for himself, the author was quick to intervene. “Please, don’t be ridiculous,” Ford scoffed, crossing his arms. “Even if he doesn’t want to work with us, there’s not a single, solitary chance in the multiverse that Fiddleford would ever team with the likes of you. Why, the very thought of it is-”

“Isn’t as plum-crazy as ya’ll might think it is…” McGucket spoke up, his tone surprisingly thoughtful, though rigid determination filled it as he turned to address Peridot. “Ya want yourself a robut buildin’ partner, greenie, well, ya got one.”

“YES!” Peridot cheered, completely ignoring the hand McGucket was holding out for her to shake as she heralded her victory over Pearl and Ford. “Ha! In your soon-to-be-very-upset-because-you’re-about-to-lose faces!”

“What? Fiddleford, tell me you’re not serious about this,” Ford said, pressing his way past the green Gem to address the inventor, who simply turned away from him crossly. “You can’t work with Peridot, she’s not-”

“‘Not to be trusted’?” McGucket finished, giving the author a critical glance over his shoulder. “Well, golly, Stanford, ain’t that the pot callin’ the kettle black. Still, just ‘cause I lost just about most of my memories doesn’t mean I lost all of my senses. I know what I’m doin’ here. Do ya think I’d go around dressin’ like this if I didn’t?” he asked, adjusting his large, hole-ridden hat.

“Does he really want us to answer that?” Pearl muttered to the kids, cringing somewhat.

“Augh! Enough talking!” Peridot interrupted with an impatient groan as she broke her way into the conversation. “The sooner we get these robots built, the sooner we can decide which one of them is the better one! Which will of course be mine.”

“I think ya mean ours,” McGucket corrected firmly before sending Ford a rather knowing look as he passed by him. “Unless you’re thinkin’ you can actually keep up, Stanford. Iffin’ I recall correctly, which I’m hopin’ I do what with the whole memory erasin’ tomfoolery I went through, ya never really did have a knack for robuts like I did…”

“O-oh yeah?” Ford retorted challengingly as he followed after them, flustered. “Well we’ll just see if your so-called ‘inventing prowess’ are really just as sharp as you think they are, McGucket! Come along Pearl, children. We have a robot to build…”

“Oh my…” Pearl sighed to herself, sending a concerned glace over at Ford and McGucket in particular as they left along with everyone else. “I have a feeling this is going to be a bit of a-”

“BOT BATTLE!” Steven and Mabel cheered in excited unison, already running on ahead so they could prepare themselves for the aforementioned, no-doubt spectacular bot battle that was about to take place.

For the next several hours, the barn was alive with the sounds of buzzing saws, pounding hammers, and whirling drills. Both of the stalwart teams had plenty of materials to work with amongst the various scraps and scroungings the barn had to offer and Pearl and Ford and Peridot and McGucket alike made sure to utilize just about every piece they could get their hands on to their respective advantages. Pearl and Ford were already more than used to working together on projects such as this, though their usual team rapport was somewhat shaken by the author’s intensive drive to beat his former partner at his own game. As a result, Pearl was quick to pick up on the hectic, almost frantic pace Ford seemed to be working it, disregarding any sort of careful planning in order to complete their bot as soon as possible, a sentiment that the white Gem adopted herself whenever she so much as entertained the thought of Peridot goading her possible victory over their heads.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Peridot and McGucket were a rather scatterbrained team themselves. The concept of “teamwork” was all but lost on the pair as they each carried out their own respective tasks in their own respective ways. The green Gem was methodical in her approach, her expertise in Homeworld tech giving her an advantage as she adapted to what she had at her disposal to build with. The hillbilly’s approach, however, seemed much more random and all over the place, to the point that it frustrated his Gem partner several times over. Needless to say that several small arguments broke out between the pair throughout the construction of their robot, yet even despite those skirmishes, progress on it carried on steadily, even if the technical vision behind it was rather mixed at best.

All the while, Steven, Dipper, and Mabel hung out around the entrance of the barn, all three of them eagerly watching the dazzling array of inventing at work before them. The kids were all unanimously excited to see what the outcome of this contest would be, even if they were largely rooting for Pearl and Ford to win. Still, they knew they were going to have to be the impartial judges of the competition to come, and together they had already thought up several challenges to put both bots through to see which team would come out on top.

“This robot contest is gonna be so cool!” Mabel exclaimed, gripping the side of the barn tightly. “Oh my gosh, you guys, you know what would be even cooler? If we built a giant robot just for us!”

“Oh, come on, Mabel,” Dipper rolled his eyes. “That’s… huh… you know what, that actually sounds like it would be pretty amazing, not gonna lie.”

“Yeah!” Steven exclaimed, enthused. “We could suit it up with all kinds of lasers and lights and we could paint it any color we want, and we could put a ton of stickers on it to make it look nice!”

“Yeah, like the one I gave Pearl and Grunkle Ford for their robot!” Mabel grinned, motioning over to the pair who was, ironically enough, fixing said colorful shooting star sticker to the side of their bot.

“Heya, kids,” Stan greeted as he, Garnet, and Amethyst made their way over to the barn. “I can’t believe you three and the ‘wonder nerds’ are still out here. What are you even doing anyway, working on building another rocket? Cause you better not be, if Pearl and Ford know what’s good for ‘em.”

“They’re not building a rocket,” Garnet clarified. “They should be working on the drill so we can stop the Cluster.”

“Well actually… we’re building robots now,” Steven shrugged with a small smile.

“Uh… why?” Amethyst asked, not following.

“We’re gonna have this huge robot contest so we can decide who’s gonna be in charge of building the drill!” Mabel informed brightly. “Its Pearl and Grunkle Ford vs. Peridot and Old Man McGucket in the Robot Rumble of the Ages! You guys gotta stick around and watch it with us!”

“Wait, what?” the purple Gem asked, still confused as she peeked into the barn. “McGucket? What’s he doing here and what’s he doin’ working with… Peridot? He used to be part of the Nerd Squad with Pearl and Ford way back when, what happened?”

“Um, its… kind of a long story…” Dipper said apprehensively. “Let’s just say McGucket and Great Uncle Ford didn’t really have the… smoothest reunion after what happened between them all those years ago.”

“Dang, I bet,” Amethyst crossed her arms. “Dude must be pretty miffed over that whole portal mess if he’s willing to pair up with Peri just to get back at Ford for it.”

“Aw, that can’t be why Mr. McGucket decided to work with Peridot,” Steven shook his head. “Can it?”

“I dunno, if I were ol’ whackjob and had a chance to take Sixer down a peg or two, I know I’d definitely take it,” Stan concluded, shrugging.

“We’ve all seen just how much McGucket went through because of Ford’s mistake with the portal,” Garnet added rationally. “In a way, I can see why he’d want to see some sort of justice for it, even if its in a small way like this.”

“Well that’s… kind of sad when you think about it…” Steven frowned as he looked back towards the barn. “If Mr. Ford and Mr. McGucket used to be such good friends, then they should be working together instead of fighting each other…”

“Don’t worry,” Garnet assured, placing a comforting hand on the young Gem’s head. “I’m sure they’ll patch things up sooner or later.”

Steven smiled halfheartedly at this, though before he could offer his thanks to the Gem leader, the sound of roaring engines rattled the entire barn. Everyone was quick to step out of the way as the first of the two robots, piloted by Pearl and Ford, gracefully rushed out of the barn and onto the lawn. The bot was sleek and elegant in its design, with thin, long metallic appendages, wheeled legs and six-pointed grips, and a small, repurposed, two seated cockpit forming its base. Overall, the machine seemed to built for speed and mobility as it swept a quick lap around the barnyard, with both the author and the white Gem controlling it in tandem before it made its swift stop before the amazed group still gathered near the barn.

“So, children,” Ford said as he stood within the cockpit, Pearl doing the same to show off her familiar blue spacesuit. “What do you think of our highly advanced automaton here?”

“Whoa…” Dipper gasped, awestruck as he stared up at the robot alongside Steven and Mabel. “So cool…”

“GIANT ROBOT!” Mabel squealed in delight. “And I love how the sticker looks on it! I told you guys it would be a nice touch!”

“Yes,” Pearl chuckled. “It certainly does pull the whole thing together, doesn’t it?”

“Ha! You think that’s a ‘robot’?” Peridot’s loud taunt sounded all the way from inside the barn as the ground began to rumble with uproarious footsteps. “Pathetic. Now… behold! My vision of ultimate power!”

With a thunderous crash, Peridot and McGucket’s bot stormed out of the barn, instantly showing just how much more bulky and sturdy it was. Its overall color scheme, dictated by Peridot, was green, and its appendages were stout yet strong, with massive pinching claws and a sharply pointed cockpit where the pair sat side-by-side to control it. Both the hillbilly and the green Gem let out their own rowdy, wild gales of laughter as they paraded their hulking machine around freely.

“Now this is what I call a robut!” McGucket proclaimed proudly as he leaned out of the cockpit a bit. “What do ya’ll think about our lil’… whazzit?”

“Hey!” Peridot shouted, equally as baffled as she realized just how much Pearl and Ford’s bot towered over their own.

“Ours is taller!” Pearl quickly exclaimed, raising the robot’s hand. “We win!”

“Ladies and gentle-Gems!” Steven announced, stepping up onto a small box beside the chalkboard where a scoreboard was already set up for the oncoming contest. “Welcome to the first annual Robolymics!”

“Woo!” Amethyst cheered as her, Garnet, and Stan sat along on the sidelines to watch the competition unfold.

“Psst, Garnet,” Stan whispered over to the Gem leader. “You wanna place a bet on which one of these nerd teams is gonna take home the prize? The smart money’s on the munchkin and the hillbilly over there.”

“Hmph,” Garnet smirked, adjusting her shades before shaking the conman’s hand. “You’re on.”

“This competition will test our robo-engineers’ skills of robo-construction and robo-piloting,” Steven continued on in explaining the rules.

“There are several rounds you all will have to go through,” Dipper added. “And whoever wins the most of them gets to be in charge of building the drill. Understood?”

All four of the competitors nodded firmly, even if they were more focused on seizing up the competition rather than really listening to the rules. “Great!” Mabel exclaimed, holding up a checkered flag before throwing it down dramatically. “Then let the robo-games begin!”

And with that, the competition kicked off without any further delay. The kids made sure to spell out the rules of each successive round to the teams, each of which was conceived to prove which group was better at designing and building the more functional machine. The first several rounds were largely standard fare, testing various aspects of the robots including balance, jumping capabilities, weapon capacity, speed, and strength. However, in order to fully prove which robot was better and which team was more up to the engineering task, the kids had devised a few non-sequitur categories to see which bot was the more well-rounded of the two. The robots had a chance to test out their artistic sides when it came to the dance and painting categories (the latter of which Amethyst gladly volunteered to be a model for and the result of which ended up being subjective overall). Other rounds were a bit more random, from jumping jacks, to yoga, to tug of war, to a game of ‘robo chess’, yet each game was indeed completely designed to prove who was the best of the best when it came to engineering and inventing. However, by the time just about every category had been decided, it seemed as though the contest overall would be destined to end in a tie, even up to the final, supposedly deciding category.

“Alright, everyone, this is the final event!” Steven announced, still stationed beside the chalkboard with the twins as the robots approached the pair of trucks there were supposed to toss to test their strength even further.

“You got this, P!” Amethyst cheered, shoving a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

“Get it, girl!” Garnet added just as supportively.

“Uh, y-yeah, but try not to win too much out there, ya nerds!” Stan taunted, remembering the bet he had made with Garnet.

“Ok, ready…. Set… CHUCK!” Steven shouted, and on that command, both teams’ bots tossed their respective trucks forward as hard as they possibly could. The vehicles sailed swiftly through the air, soaring high and far before they both disappeared over the mountain ridge countless miles away. All of the spectators were aptly stunned by such a powerful, incredible display, even if it really gave them no indication as two who might have won this final challenge.

“Um… well, looks like you both get a point on that one!” Mabel decided, marking a tally down on the chalkboard for both teams.

“Hm,,,,” Steven mused, looking over the final results as both teams waited eagerly to hear the outcome. “Well, it looks like our final score is… a tie! That settles it; everyone gets to lead the project together!”

“Aw, man, well that’s anticlimactic…” Amethyst pouted, leaning back on her seat.

“Yeah, it is!” Stan grumbled. “If the stupid contest ends in a tie, then who wins the bet?”

“Just wait,” Garnet advised, nodding back to the bots themselves.

“NO!” Peridot suddenly shouted, enraged by these unsatisfactory results. “This isn’t over! I demand that we have a tiebreaker!”

“Y-yes, so do I!” Ford exclaimed quite suddenly.

“What?” Pearl asked, completely baffled by her partner’s impulsiveness. “Ford, why-”

“We need to have a definitive winner here!” the author quickly cut her off before glaring down at McGucket in particular. “We need to decide who’s right and who’s wrong…”

“Aw, conswarnit, Ford!” McGucket snapped in apt frustration. “It’s a dog-gone tie! Just let it go already!”

“Oh of course you would tell me to simply ‘let it go’, Fiddleford,” Ford scoffed coldly. “Just like how you let go of all your own memories just because you couldn’t find a better way to cope with them!”

“But I got ‘em back, ya stubborn ol’ fool!” McGucket countered every bit as harshly. “And I’m tryin’ to move on, which is what you oughta be doin’ instead of clingin’ onto the past just cause ya think there’s somethin’ back in it that’ll prove you didn’t build a machine that could’ve destroyed the world even though that’s exactly what ya diddly darn did.”

“Ugh, enough of this!” Pearl interupted sternly, tired of being stuck in the middle of this constant conflict. “Let’s all just give it a rest already! We don’t need any other final competition to decide anything. This is it, we tied. We’re the same, we’re all equals here. Let’s finally just move on already.”

“No!” Peridot cut in fiercely, gripping her robot’s controls tightly. The bot lurched forward and before McGucket could even make a move to counter the green Gem, its claws latched onto one of the other robot’s tall legs tightly, holding it in place. “You’re just a Pearl and a human! You both are beneath me! I’ll always be better than you, and nothing I’ve seen today will ever change that!”

“Oh, for crying out loud, not this again…” Ford groaned, exasperated.

“Well, have you ever seen a Pearl do this?!” Pearl exclaimed, suddenly taking full control of the bot as she swung it’s leg around to kick the other robot back hard. Peridot and McGucket’s bot landed hard and flat on its back as the others all gasped in shock, all of them quite intrigued and somewhat alarmed by the rather violent twist this contest had taken.

“Ohoh, so you wanna fight, huh?” Peridot asked challengingly as McGucket maneuvered the robot back up. “Good! We should have done this from the beginning!”

At this, their robot slammed into the taller bot, tackling it with an immense amount of force. Pearl and Ford managed to hold their own as they pressed it back, neither side making much edgeway as they struggled against each other.

“Whoa, looks like things just got a heck of a whole lot more interesting!” Stan grinned, perking up in his seat as he watched all of the action unfold.

“STOP!” Steven cried fretfully as Ford and Pearl’s bot landed a brutal punch on Peridot and McGucket’s. “Giant robots shouldn’t fight!”

“Yeah! Not unless its in some sort of cool action movie or cartoon or something!” Mabel added just as worriedly.

“Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” Stan and Amethyst cheered in delighted encouragement, thoroughly invested in the ongoing battle. Of course, their cheers soon stopped as Peridot and McGucket’s bot suddenly hoisted Ford and Pearl’s up and tossed it towards the spectating crowd, forcing them all to scatter away from the brutal crash landing.

“Pearl!” Steven cried upon spotting the damage done to the bot and the pair within it.

“Great Uncle Ford!” Dipper exclaimed, also quite alarmed.

“It’s alright, everyone!” Pearl assured as they pulled the robot back up. “We’ve got this!”

“Be careful!” Mabel urged fretfully.

“Kick ‘em in the butt!” Amethyst quipped daringly.

“O-or ya know, don’t do that!” Stan countered. “Especially since I’ve got good money on the line here…”

The moment Pearl and Ford’s bot was back on its feet, Peridot and McGucket wasted no time slamming their robot’s claws into it once more. Several more brutal blows were passed back and forth between the two bots, sustaining damage to both, but taking neither of them down in the process. Needless to say that tensions were high between both teams, especially as they locked hands once more, though it was clear that the brute strength of Peridot and McGucket’s bot was starting to win out against Pearl and Ford’s much more lanky, feeble one.

“Stanford, this is a bunch of cockamamie nonsense and ya know it is!” McGucket exclaimed over the din of battle. “Why can’t ya just admit that you were wrong and be done with it!?”

“Because I’m not wrong!” Ford argued, pushing the robot’s controls harder. “At least not anymore! I already told you, I fixed my mistakes! I’m still fixing my mistakes and I’m not going to stop until I’ve fixed them all!”

“Well, then I reckon, you’ll likely never stop then,” McGucket said with a bitter, hurt scowl. “Cause there’s still one mistake of yours that you ain’t even started tryin’ to fix yet!”

“W-what are you-” Before Ford could even finish, McGucket pushed hard against the controls of his and Peridot’s bot out of sheer anger alone, shoving Pearl and Ford’s back hard. In the back seat of the cockpit as he was, Ford in particular reeled back, his loose grip on the controls costing him as he ended up falling backwards out of his seat entirely.

“Stanford!” both Pearl and McGucket gasped in sudden alarm as the author fell out of the rather tall bot towards the ground below. Unfortunately, the white Gem wasn’t quick enough to maneuver her bot to catch him in time, and as a result, Ford landed hard, the blow easily sending him into a daze and greatly startling just about everyone present. Though, surprisingly enough, the one who seemed the most fearfully concerned was none other than McGucket himself.

“Ford!” the inventor cried, not even hesitating to leap out of the robot, leaving Peridot to control it alone and all but abandoning the battle entirely to rush over to the fallen author’s side. Still, the green Gem was hardly upset by this as she instead gained full control over the robot, ripping Pearl’s attention away from Ford as the robot’s clawed hands landed a brutal punch against hers.

“Good,” Peridot sneered challengingly. “I’m glad we finally got those pesky humans out of the way. This is between you and me anyway, you Pearl!”

Before Pearl could even say anything, the green Gem shoved her back again, keeping her from seeing if Ford was alright or not. Fortunately, McGucket was already on that case as he ran over to Ford and wasted no time in checking him over for any sort of serious injuries. “S-Stanford!” the hillbilly exclaimed, his tone rife with concern. “Ford, a-are you alright? W-wake up! Say somethin’ to me!”

Fortunately, the author wasn’t out of it for too long as he let out a small groan at this, placing a hand against the side of his head as he slowly opened his eyes to meet the hillbilly’s worried gaze. “Mm? F-Fiddleford?” Ford asked in rather bleary confusion as he struggled to sit up on his own. “W-what are you doing? What about the robots… and the contest? I thought you-”

“Aw, forget about that silly ol’ contest,” McGucket shook his head. “I needed to come over ‘n make sure ya didn’t knock that big ol’ genius brain of yours too hard after I… ya know, knocked ya outta your robut and all…”

“W-what…?” Ford frowned, still bewildered, especially as McGucket offered a hand to help steady him. “I… I don’t understand. You only teamed up with Peridot b-because… because of what I…” The author paused, trying his hardest to collect his thoughts and how he wanted to say them, only to fail completely. “I… I just… I didn’t think you still-”

“Cared?” McGucket finished with a small, but knowing smile. “Aw, hornswaggle, Stanford. I may have forgotten ya for almost 30 years, but deep down in my gut, I don’t think I could have ever stopped carin’ about ya.”

For a moment, Ford simply stared at his old partner in complete and utter baffled silence, unsure of how to even react to such a warm, kind sentiment after just how much he had wronged McGucket in the past. So, instead of saying anything, he simply let out a small chuckle of acceptance as he finally accepted the hillbilly’s hand to help him up and lead him to somewhere safer away from the bot battle still raging on behind them just as violently as ever.

“This is pointless!” Peridot shouted as she pressed her bot roughly against Pearl’s once more. “There’s no way you’re gonna beat me! You’re an accessory! Somebody’s shiny toy! Where do you get off acting like you’re your own Gem?!” At this the green Gem’s bot finally managed to get the upper hand over the white Gem’s, as its clawed hand completely pride one of the thin arms off of the lankier bot in a single, swift yank. “You’re just a PEARL!”

Pearl winced back at this, this singular reminder of exactly the kind of Gem she was made to be much harsher and more painful than she knew it should have been. The white Gem knew, and she had always known, that her lot, at least according to Homeworld’s standards, was to stand by and serve and little else. Her caste wasn’t meant to think or to act or to do anything for anyone other than whatever Gem they were given to. There had indeed been a time when Pearl herself had been exactly that; just another piece of empty, thoughtless property in Homeworld’s rigid, unfulfilling system. And yet… the Earth, humans, her fellow Crystal Gems, they had all shown her she could be so much more than that. She could go beyond what she was made for, she could be her own person, her own Gem. She could think and feel for herself and she could take pride in who she was and what she did and she had. And so, that’s exactly what she planned on showing.

“That’s right!” Pearl proclaimed, rising up a bit out of her seat as she faced Peridot fiercely. “I am a PEARL!” With that, the white Gem swung her first hard, striking Peridot squarely in the jaw and catching her completely off guard.

“WHOO-HOO!” Amethyst cheered loudly on the sidelines as everyone else gasped in amazement at such boldness on the Pearl’s part.

“Whoa, who knew Pearl could pack a punch like that?” Stan remarked, unable to hide the fact that even he was genuinely impressed with the white Gem.

“I think we did…” Ford remarked, exchanging a small smirk with McGucket as they both silently recalled just how resilient Pearl could be when she needed to be.

As a result of the white Gem’s blow, Peridot’s bot stumbled back a bit, allowing Pearl time to pick hers’ up off the ground to pick the fight right back up where it had left off. “What you’re saying may be true,” the white Gem said as her robot sprang high into the air above Peridot’s before it began coming down in what would certainly be a hard and heavy kick. “But it doesn’t matter! I’m still gonna kick your butt!”

By this point, just about everyone was cheering Pearl on as she came in for what would possibly be her final blow against the green Gem. Or at least it would have been if Peridot’s bot hadn’t managed to catch one of the long legs of Pearl’s bot at the very last second.

“…Uh oh,” the white Gem muttered, though she had no time to break free from the hold. Immediately, Peridot’s robot slammed Pearl’s hard into the ground, repeating the action several times over until she finally plowed the taller robot down hard, more or less completely breaking it beyond repair as its pieces went flying.

“Pearl!” the others all exclaimed in apt concern as they collectively hurried over to check on the fallen white Gem. Despite the harsh, defeating blow she had suffered, Pearl was only mildly stunned by it, even if she did look much worse for wear as she lay against the wrecked remains of her robot.

Peridot hardly paid them any mind however as she leapt out of her robot, her face still bruised from the punch Pearl had landed on her, though her expression was bright with the satisfaction of her triumph. “Victory is mine!” she proclaimed proudly. “Now I’m the one in charge! Praise me! Praise me!”

“Pearl, are you ok?”

“Huh?” Peridot blinked, caught off guard by the fact that the others were all surrounding the white Gem rather than her.

“A-ah yes… I’m alright…” Pearl smiled as she allowed Steven to help her up.

“Yeah, P!” Amethyst exclaimed, giving the white Gem a sudden congratulatory hug. “Aw, that was awesome! You were so hardcore!”

“Oh really?” Pearl chuckled, rubbing her arm with a flustered smile.

“Oh yeah,” Garnet readily agreed.

“Yeah, Pearl, you were the best!” Mabel exclaimed excitedly.

“Seriously, you were,” Dipper added firmly. “And you punching Peridot in the face like that has to be one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”

“It was indeed a very impressive display,” Ford nodded with a smirk.

“We couldn’tve done it any better ourselves, Miss Pearl,” McGucket said, tipping his hat in respect for the white Gem.

“Eh, it was passable,” Stan shrugged, unconcerned as he leaned over to Garnet. “So uh… you gonna pay up or what, shades? Cause it looks like greenie just won our bet for me.”

“Did she?” Garnet countered, her arms crossed as she smiled somewhat mysteriously.

“Uh… yeah?” the conman frowned, confused. “Pretty sure she did, right?”

“Y-yes, I did win!” Peridot spoke up, frustrated. “So why aren’t any of you listening to me!? I’m the natural leader here! She’s just a common Pearl! A-and those two!” she snapped, pointing at Ford and McGucket. “They’re just simple humans! I’m the one in charge here, not any of them!”

“You’re wrong!” Steven argued readily. “If Pearls are really like you say they are, then Pearl isn’t common at all! She trained herself to fight! She learned how to build things! And she works hard every day to be greater than she already is!”

“And while we’re at it, your pretty much completely wrong when it comes to humans too, especially when it comes to McGucket and Great Uncle Ford,” Dipper said knowingly.

“Yeah! Both of them are like total geniuses!” Mabel agreed earnestly. “They’ve built all sorts of crazy neat stuff like big huge futurey portals or mind-erasing laser guns, and yeah, maybe those things weren’t always used for good reasons, but they’re still pretty amazing on their own and so are the guys who built them!”

“Seriously, how do you not get it by now, Peridot?” Dipper finished as he smiled back towards the white Gem, the author, and the inventor. “There isn’t anything ‘common’ or ‘simple’ about anyone here.”

Needless to say that Peridot was just about completely baffled by such a thought, to the point that, for perhaps the first time ever, she was completely speechless.

“Come on, everyone,” Garnet said, turning towards the nearby wreckage. “Let’s clean this mess up.”

“Yo, Pearl, you should come wrestling with me some time,” Amethyst joked as they all began to walk away.

“Mm… I dunno…” Pearl frowned, rubbing the sore spot on her arm as they began to pick up the scattered robotic wreckage.

“You know, I bet if we combined the sturdy base of the robot you and Peridot built,” Ford began, speaking to McGucket. “With the speed and agility of our robot, then we could certainly build a force to be reckoned with!”

“Now you’re talkin’!” McGucket exclaimed, enthused by the idea.

“B-but I won!” Peridot argued hotly, not moving from her spot. “What about the rules?!”

None of the others so much as even acknowledged the green Gem, save for Garnet, who simply turned towards her and shrugged simply. “Welcome to Earth.”

Peridot was once again stunned into silence at this, the harsh realization hitting her that even though she technically “won”, she really had no victory to claim at all. After all, the possibility that she could have ever been wrong was something the green Gem couldn’t have ever anticipated and yet… her experiences during her brief time on Earth so far had already proved her wrong about more than she could have ever thought possible. So… perhaps, as ludicrous as it might seem, there was a chance she could have been wrong about Pearls and humans alike as well.

Though it took some doing, eventually everyone had managed to gather up all of the scattered pieces of Pearl and Ford’s robot and organize them back in the barn with the rest of the parts they were likely to use for the drill. Despite his best arguments against the Gem leader, Stan never did end up getting his money from his bet with Garnet, though considering the circumstances, he didn’t really mind as much as him and Amethyst were invested in asking Pearl about her defining blow against Peridot, something that still greatly amused them both. By the time the work was all finished however, the conman returned to the shack for the evening, leaving Ford and the twins behind to help the Gems out with the drill in whatever way they could in the following days of its construction. And though McGucket knew he wasn’t really obligated to stay either, he did hang back for a bit before heading back to his home at the dump, supposedly for the sake of analyzing the robot him and Peridot had made for any possible further invention ideas. Ford, however, had a feeling the inventor was sticking around for some other reason, and, picking up on that reason, he decided that now was as good a time as any to speak his piece to his former partner.

“Fiddleford?” the author began as he stepped up beside the hillbilly.

“Yes, Stanford?” McGucket asked with a bit of an amicable smile as he looked up towards his old friend.

It was a smile that Ford was hard pressed to return as he awkwardly averted the inventor’s gaze, taking in a deep breath as he tried to figure out exactly what it was he wanted to say. “I… um… well, you see I… erm… you know what? Here,” Ford took pause as he reached into his coat and pulled out a small, colorful square, which he handed off to McGucket, who took it with wide eyes of wonder.

“I-is… is this…?”

“Y-yes, that’s right, it’s a Cubic’s Cube,” Ford nodded. “I… remembered how much you used to enjoy working on them years ago, and… I just so happened to find one of your old ones lying around the old lab so… I figured I’d give it back to you as something of a-” The author cut himself off as McGucket presented the cube back to him, all of its scrambled colors perfectly lined up again in almost no time at all. “Well then,” Ford remarked, impressed as he looked over the cube. “Seems as though you really are just as sharp as I remember you being, Fiddleford.”

“Eh, its all that newfangled muscle memory or whatever it is the kids are callin’ it these days,” McGucket shrugged humbly. The pair shared a brief laugh before the author let out something of a small, sad sigh as he looked away from the inventor yet again.

“Fiddleford, I… I should have said this earlier but… I’m sorry,” he finally relented, hanging his head a bit in genuine shame. “I truly am. You were right back then and you’re still right now; I was wrong the entire time and I was far too blinded by my own pride and my dreams of grandure to see that. Honestly, if anything I should have apologized to you 30 years ago. Maybe if I had it would have spared you from… well, you know…”

“Aw, shucks,” McGucket shook his head. “Y’know, Stanford, I thought all I wanted to hear outta ya was an apology, but now that I’m actually getting’ it, I can’t help but feel as though you were actually right.”

“A-about what?”

“About how I up and did all this to myself,” the hillbilly said, sighing himself this time. “You weren’t the one who made me erase all my memories, I did that all on my own. I’ve spent so long forgettin’… Maybe I should try forgivin’ instead… C’mere, old friend.” With this, McGucket opened his arms out wide to offer the author a hug, and though Ford wasn’t often physical when it came to showing affection, it was an offer he couldn’t possibly turn down.

“Hm,” Ford grinned as their hug disbanded a moment later and their sights turned back to the robot before them. “You know, despite everything, this machine really is quite impressive… It’s sort of embarrassing to admit this, but… it looks like your engineering skills still far surpass mine. Which is why I’d be honored if you’d help the Gems, the kids, and me out with the drill. We’ll need someone adept at the craft as you to help us make sure the job’s done right.”

“Well, golly, Stanford,” McGucket smirked knowingly. “I think I’d be downright honored to work with ya’ll again, especially on somethin’ like this that’s gonna help people instead of hurtin’ ‘em for a change.”

“So it’s a deal then?” Ford grinned, holding out his hand to his former, now-returned partner.

“It’s a deal,” McGucket gladly agreed, shaking the author’s hand to solidify his desire to help.

As this touching exchange went on, Pearl couldn’t help but smile softly to herself as she watched it from afar. In truth, she had always enjoyed building and inventing alongside both Ford and McGucket back in the day, and the thought of getting the change to do so again brought genuine excitement and delight to the white Gem. But even more than that, she was glad to see that peace had finally returned between the author and the inventor, and with that peace came the chance to let go of the painful memories of the past and creature better, happier memories in the future.

“Ahem,” Pearl’s train of thought was interupted, surprisingly enough, by none other than Peridot. The green Gem had come to stand alongside her, an upside down drill in hand as she averted the taller Gem’s gaze sheepishly. “I-I have to admit, its… remarkable that a Pearl such as yourself could become such a… knowledgeable technician. Mm…” Peridot hesitated, still clearly swallowing her pride as she presented the white Gem the drill she was holding. “Why don’t we get started?”

Pearl couldn’t help but smile in slight amusement as she knelt down and took the drill from Peridot and turned it around. “You’re holding it upside down,” she informed before handing the tool back to the green Gem.

“Y-yes, of course,” Peridot remarked, flustered. “You know… those round appendages on your machine could be useful for something.”

“They’re called wheels,” Pearl said, still smirking. With this, the white Gem stood and led Peridot over to Ford and McGucket so the four of them could begin planning out their ideas for the drill together. Though the green Gem was still somewhat uncertain about the thought of working with a Pearl and a pair of humans, she decided that it was something she was just going to have to get used to for the sake of the greater good. After all, just about everything on Earth was strange to her, so how was the prospect of working with unlikely allies such as these any stranger than anything else she had already seen thus far?

As the four technicians met up and began throwing drill ideas back and forth, they were all largely unaware of the kids watching them from afar at their spot near the barn. Needless to say that all three of them were more than glad to see that peace and acceptance had won the day, even despite how intense the preceding bot battle had been. “Well, you guys,” Steven began, offering a smile to Dipper and Mabel. “It looks like we’re well on our way to stopping the Cluster.”

“Its about time too,” Dipper said with a bit of a grin as he crossed his arms. “The sooner we stop the Earth from literally imploding from the inside out, the better. And who knows? With Pearl, and Ford, and McGucket all working together, maybe building this whole drill thing could be kinda fun.”

“‘Grrrr, fun for me you mean!’” Mabel roared playfully, taking on a gruff tone as she held the Cluster sock puppet up.

“Oh no!” Steven cried in faux dramatics. “It’s the Cluster!”

Mabel kept playing along as she growled once more, this time pouncing on both boys and easily knocking them both to the ground, all three of them laughing all the while. “‘You think you can stop meeeee?!’” she taunted, more or less tickling both Steven and Dipper with the puppet by this point as a way of ‘attacking’ them.

“Aw, c-come on, Mabel!” Dipper laughed, struggling to get away. “Cut it out!”

Mabel simply roared through the puppet once more as the impromptu game continued, though needless to say all three of the kids were having a great time through it. “Ah! We’re doomed!” Steven chuckled breathlessly, even though they really weren’t.

And yet… if they failed to finish the drill and truly stop the Cluster on time, then there was no telling just how true that statement just might turn out to be.

Next: 

#jen writes #universe falls #steven universe #gravity falls #bot battle #steven #dipper #mabel #ford #mcgucket #peridot #pearl #garnet #amethyst #stan #goddamn looks like its finally done #only a month late.... #oy #sorry ya'll #crossover #fanfiction #back to the barn #keyword is robot

[husid]

Wednesday Morning Punter - Super Bowl LIII Edition

How have you been the last eight years?

I, like most blog writers am just fine and not at all wallowing in existential doom questioning my own self-worth. But this isn’t about me, this is about you, the beloved readers. So back by the popular demand of no fewer than two people, is a special pre-Super Bowl edition of Wednesday Morning Punter!

Just in time for the final game of the NFL season before real football gets started, today’s issue will tackle a Super Bowl LIII preview, the all important Legacy Stakes, missing prop bets, the unenviable existence of a Patriots atheist living in Boston, and some NFL hodgepodge.

So without further ado, Let’s Punt!

What to Expect When You’re Projecting

What I can guarantee about tonight is that there will be nearly universal disappointment regarding the Super Bowl commercials, Maroon 5 will bring out a halftime show guest singer that will appeal to neither millennials nor baby boomers, and Twitter will have a much needed night focused on something other than Donald Trump, Howard Schultz or AOC.

What I cannot guarantee is just about everything else, starting with the winner of the game. Anecdotal research leads me to believe that most of the experts are picking the Patriots, which is incredible for a team that No One Believes In (more on that later), but it’s by no means a slam-dunk. We know that both teams deserve to be here (Saints fans may disagree, but one call aside, it’s impossible to conclude that both teams aren’t at the very least among the top two teams in their respective conferences). The Pats quickly worked out of an early 1-2 hole to reel off six straight wins and finish at a respectable if somewhat human 11-5, good enough for the AFC’s two-seed. The Rams were even more dominant, busting out of the gate with eight straight wins en route to a 13-3 record and the NFC’s two-seed. Both won their divisional playoff game relatively convincingly before squeezing out dramatic overtime victories in their conference championship games, thanks primarily to resilient offensive play. The two teams didn’t play other this year, but did have five common opponents, including the entire NFC North, and the Chiefs. I don’t put much stock into common opponents as a means of assessing a head-to-head advantage – both because strengths and weaknesses versus one opponent aren’t necessarily transitive, and because the highs and lows every team experiences in a season mean that an opponent one week does not equate to that same opponent on a different week – but for those of you who do, both the Rams and Pats beat the Chiefs in tight regular season games (and the Pats again two weeks ago), and each went 3-1 against NFC North opponents, with the Patriots losing a demoralizing week 3 matchup in Detroit, and the Rams falling in week 14 to Chicago in a defensive showdown.

Frankly, the Patriots are easy to predict. They’re going to show up with a solid game plan, Brady is going to be accurate and minimize mistakes, and the defense will play bend-but-don’t break defense to keep the Pats within striking distance at any point in the game.

The Rams, on the other hand, are a bit more of a wild card, despite being the more consistent team during the regular season. LA only has one offensive star (Todd Gurley), yet finished the year in the top-2 in total scoring and yards per game, and the top-5 in both rushing and passing. But Gurley disappeared two weeks ago (literally and figuratively), starting quarterback Jared Goff is still pretty green, and the Rams D is very much a middle-of-the-road unit.

So what will ultimately decide whether the scrappy Patriots will finally be able to celebrate in Foxborough, or LA pretends like it actually cares about pro football for at least an offseason? My best guess:

• The Gronking of Over-the-Hill House: No one’s worried about his post-game performance tonight at the Gold Club (I know it’s gone, but my knowledge of Georgia strip clubs begins and ends with that fabled establishment), but my confidence in his elite on-field level is not what it once was. Despite his ability to still make a big play, Gronkowski generally looks like a shell of his former self, and my money’s on Sunday being the last day he plays an NFL game. Of course when he’s playing to his ability, he’s one of the most unguardable players in football.

• Aaron Donald Has A Show: Donald was undoubtedly the best defensive player in the NFL this year (an NFL positional record 20.5 sacks for a defensive tackle), but oddly he’s still not quite a household name (the NFL’s refusal to market any defensive player other than JJ Watt could comprise a whole other post).  Fighting through double-teams and keeping Brady on his heels could be the key difference in whether TB12 is able to pick apart the Rams secondary, or is too uncomfortable to get into a consistent rhythm. There’s a good chance the whole country knows his name after tonight.

• From Dusk Till Sean: I can’t remember ever seeing a Sean this hot, and I live less than a mile from Southie. But lost in last week’s questionable victory was the fact that Rams coach Sean McVay was a missed pass interference call away from dealing with an entire offseason full of questions about his game plan. Since we still haven’t heard any indication that Todd Gurley was injured, his benching for most of the NFC Championship game is baffling. Giving your (and arguably the league’s) best player five total touches with a Super Bowl appearance on the line simply doesn’t add up – particularly since Gurley’s backup, CJ Anderson, was no more effective with his 17 touches – and a similar utilization of Gurley on Sunday will make Bill Belichick’s job a lot easier. If the rushing attack remains stymied, will McVay have Goff ready to shoulder the load? McVay is like that cool, mysterious guy who transfers to your high school for sophomore year but no one knows much about him. He might be the man, he might just be a boring introvert, but his parents are gone next weekend and he’s about to throw the first party at his place. Will he have enough booze? Will he invite those weirdos he went to school with last year? Will he freak out when the first Bud Ice (is that still a thing?) spills on the carpet? Will he trust his buddies enough to take care of things while he shows his crush where he practices his guitar? The spotlight is finally on. Be cool, Sean McVay, because high school kids can turn on you fast.

• Master of Run: It’s no secret that Gurley’s production had tailed off a bit, even before last week’s unjustified benching. Gurley has now eclipsed 100 yards rushing just once in his last four games. Maybe last game’s light load was a gift, Todd, but if he starts the Super Bowl rushing like he has since late December, will Gurley be able to do enough through the air to make an impact? Given his overall season, it’s pretty shocking that this is even a reasonable question.

• A Series of Gameplanned Events: Beginning with his plan to take Marshall Faulk out of Super Bowl XXXVI, Belichick has earned his reputation as a master tactician, which shone through in the Patriots next two Super Bowls (both victories). His track record since then has only further solidified his status as the best coach in NFL history, reaching six more Super Bowls and failing to make the playoffs just once since 2002, when Brady was shelved for the season (and Matt Cassel still led New England to an 11-5 record). But he’s just 2-3 in subsequent Super Bowls, and in each of the three losses he was squarely outcoached in at least one major facet of the game: His failure to account for the Giants ferocious pass rush rattled Brady all game in Super Bowl XLII and forced him to play dink-and-dunk football in Super Bowl XLVI, which neutralized his big-play ability. In last year’s Super Bowl, Belichick’s defense couldn’t find an answer for journeyman Nick Foles, and his thoroughly mediocre receiving corps. We’ll never know if BB’s head-scratching decision to bench struggling but proven starting cornerback Malcolm Butler (a legitimate explanation for which we still haven’t received) would have been the difference in the game, but it’s nearly impossible to conclude that Butler would have made the Patriots secondary worse on that day. So the question remains, will Belichick have an effective plan in place to mask his team’s weaknesses (the secondary) and accentuate its strengths (steady rushing attack, relentless short passing game), or will he fall victim to an unforeseen Rams wrinkle, or worse, his own ego?

• Santa Clarita Quiet: When Jeff Fisher went to Jared with the first overall pick in the 2016 draft, there were more than a few skeptics, all of whom seemed vindicated by Goff’s rookie campaign. Since McVay took over as Rams head coach in 2017, however, Goff has been nothing short of a top-tier quarterback, culminating in a 2018 in which he finished with a 101.1 passer rating (8th among qualified QBs), 4,688 passing yard (4th), 8.4 yards per attempt (4th), and 32 touchdowns (6th, though it should be noted that of the quarterbacks with more TDs, none had a top-tier RB for the entire season). But the fact remains that despite how great a season the Rams have had, the media attention thrust on pro football players in Los Angeles has landed somewhere between “Sugarfish No Longer Finds Bluefin Tuna to be Ethically Sourced” and “Ponytailed, Meisner-Reading Papyrus Employee Doesn’t Actually Have Passion for Stationary,” allowing Goff, who has never lived outside of California, to live a relatively pressure-free life. Since the playoffs started, Goff’s numbers have gone down a bit, as can be expected against better competition, and that on the surface isn’t alarming. But he’s about to play the biggest game of his life on the biggest stage in American sports, after two weeks of the most intense media scrutiny he’s ever experienced. Some quarterbacks wilt under that pressure, some excel, and others are simply unaffected (see: Manning, Eli).  We’ll see which bucket Goff falls into.

My Pick: Rams 29 Patriots 27 Confidence level: 2 In the Brady/Belichick era, each of their eight Super Bowl matchups has ended in a one-score game, and most of them have looked a lot more lopsided on paper before kickoff than this one. I picked the Patriots to beat the Eagles last year, refusing to believe that Belichick could lose to someone like Nick Foles in a Super Bowl. But ultimately players play the games and I don’t see a clear improvement in the Patriots defense from the one that gave up 41 points to the Eagles last year. Now they’re playing a much better offense and likely a better quarterback than Foles,  so much like the Chiefs game, the Patriots defense will have their hands full.

On the other side of the ball, the Patriots have Tom Brady, so any argument for why the Pats will win could justifiably end there. His receiving corps, while far from elite, seems to be gelling at the perfect time, and could not have been more clutch than they were against the Chiefs. The Rams defense on the whole won’t strike fear into Pats offensive coordinator Josh McDaniel’s heart, but Aaron Donald will be the toughest individual force he (or anyone in the league) will have to game plan for all season. I think Donald and Ndamukong Suh will be able to minimize rushing success for the Patriots, and will get just enough pressure to force Brady to get the ball out quickly and allow the Rams’ back seven to sit on the short outs and crossing routes that have allowed the Patriots to move the chains all season long.

But ultimately, in a one-score game – which I’m betting this will be – one play can make all the difference, and all the pre-game analysis is worthless. I don’t expect a true shootout, but I do see an offensive battle that ends with the Rams defense getting that one crucial stop down the stretch that the Chiefs failed to get two weeks ago. That said, your guess is as good as mine.

Other Super Bowl Notes and Tidbits

• The Defenders: The Patriots finished seventh in the league in scoring defense, but much of that has to be attributed to the dreadful offenses of the rest of the AFC East. In their six games against the Dolphins, Bills and Jets, the Pats D allowed 6, 7, 13, 33, 12 and 3 points. In four games against top-10 scoring offenses on the other hand, the Patriots gave up 24, 40, 31 and 17 points, to the Colts, Chiefs, Bears and Steelers, plus another 31 to the Chiefs two weeks ago. You’d think this would be a bad omen for New England as it prepares to stop the league’s second-most prolific offense, but despite the gaudy numbers allowed to elite offenses, the Patriots are 4-1 in those games. Essentially, while we can be confident the Rams will put up points, the type of game that would dictate that flow wouldn’t necessarily put the Patriots at a disadvantage.

• Oldzark: “Experience” is always talked about as a factor in determining who wins a big game, but I’m not sure that has a ton of merit, given that players have to be able to win big games to even get to the Super Bowl. Looking at the last ten Super Bowls, eight featured quarterback matchups in which only one starting QB had started a Super Bowl previously. In those matchups, the team with the Super Bowl-experienced quarterback is 4-4. Looking beyond the quarterback, teams that had been to the Super Bowl in the previous five years (an objective number, but one that’s likely to incorporate the team having an experienced, returning corps) are 3-3 when playing teams that had not been to the Super Bowl in that same span. Draw your own conclusions.

• The Vinatieri Method: Both teams should feel very comfortable with their kicking situation going into Sunday. Stephen Gostkowski has established himself as one of the most reliable field goal kickers of his generation, while Greg Zuerlein just KICKED A 57-YARD FIELD GOAL IN OVERTIME TO SEND HIS TEAM TO THE SUPER BOWL. Zuerlein was unfairly robbed of national glory, due to a brutal combination of the refs overshadowing the Rams win, and Joe Buck, as he’s wont to do, delivering the call of an incredible feat in an incredible situation as if he was narrating his wife picking up her first alimony payment before leaving the house for good. “Meredith will attempt to steal my money along with my soul… she has the check, she’s getting into the Tesla of Miles, a 30-something brand ambassador… AND SHE’S GONE! We’ll see you later tonight at the country club gala so as to keep up the appearance that we’re amicable divorcees!” Zuerlein actually sprained his foot at halftime of that game, which is something to be aware of, but given how he kicked in the second half and overtime, it’s not something I’d be too concerned about.

• Big Mouth: I could not be less interested in Media Day or any of the PR shenanigans that go on between the conference championships and the Super Bowl. I get why the NFL does it, and I’m sure journalists appreciate that they get something to write about beyond another position-by-position breakdown, but wake me up when it’s time to clock the national anthem length. That said, it’s worth taking note of all the players who basked in the glow of the media attention, because a good chunk of them will inevitably blame the media for stirring controversy down the road. Like it or not, the media has as much to do with sports being as popular as they are (and player contracts being as big as they are) than the players themselves. If you’re going to use it to your advantage when things are going well, you can’t bitch about the negative coverage when the good times stop rolling.

• Lost in Grace: Living in Boston and not being a Patriots fan sucks. Not because they always win, or because the Celtics and Bruins can be in the midst of playoff runs and the Boston sports media’s top story will still be which flavor Coolatta Gronk is going to be drinking in his upcoming Dunkin’ commercial, but because of all the faux-narratives that the team puts forth and the fans eat up. There was the “Patriot Way” which preached loyalty and selflessness, just to see Belichick ship off beloved stars and community staples like Lawyer Milloy, Richard Seymour and Chandler Jones (side note: I’m not saying these moves didn’t work out or were uncouth, just pointing out the disingenuousness of pretending to view your players as anything other than football players). There was the myth of only valuing team-first players, then signing guys like Corey Dillon, Randy Moss, Aaron Hernandez, Albert Haynesworth, Chad Johnson/Ochocinco, Brandon Meriwether and Josh Gordon. There’s still the idea that the team should never give the media any controversy fuel, while Belichick writes a letter of support to Donald Trump (that he had to know was going to be made public) and Brady displays a MAGA hat in his locker.

And now we’ve reached a new one, and possibly the most infuriating one. I understand that every team, at one point or another uses “no one believed in us” as a rallying cry or source of motivation, and sometimes its true and sometimes its not. But Xerxes and the Persian Empire had a more viable claim to the “no one believed in us” mentality after Thermopylae (read a book) than the Patriots do now. Brady and Belichick have presided over two separate dynasties in consecutive decades (for what it’s worth, I don’t think a team can go ten years between titles and still be considered a single dynasty) and are about as far from being an underdog year-to-year as any team since the 1960s Celtics. My problems with this whole charade are two-fold. First, it’s flat out wrong. Until this year’s AFC Championship game, the Patriots with Brady starting had not been underdogs IN 69 CONSECUTIVE GAMES. The chart below (courtesy of footballperspective.com) reveals as much, with the blue dots indicating regular season games, the red dots indicating playoff games, and the empty dots showing the four games Brady was suspended for to start the 2016 season. 

So not only is the narrative flat-out silly on the surface, it’s based on no evidence whatsoever. Yes, there are a lot of people who like to root against the Patriots, and there are some corny studio analysts looking for attention who will make exaggerated but transparent claims like “the Patriots era is over,” but not a single one of them is surprised that the Pats will be taking the field in Atlanta tonight.

The second part of this argument that really grinds my gears is that among the actual Patriots doubters, the vast majority live in New England. Listening to Boston sports radio all season, you’d think the Pats were flirting with a .500 record, and wondering whether they should just start tanking to move up in the draft. Sports bars around the region were filled with people lamenting Brady’s fall from best quarterback in football to merely top-5, wondering if the defense could stop a good offense in the playoffs, and pondering whether Matt Patricia was really the brains behind the whole operation (that last one is an exaggeration, but only slightly). So in essence, Patriots fans are projecting their team insecurity onto fans of the rest of the league –none of whom actually doubt the Patriots’ ability to win each game– and then criticizing the straw men they’ve created while they themselves doubt their team privately under the cover of a New England winter. It’s madness.

Listen, I get it. Winning is awesome, and it gets less awesome when that’s all that’s expected of you. No one roots for the house at a casino, no one is pulling for the shark in Jaws, and no one outside New England wants the Patriots to win, because they always win. So if you have to convince yourself that you’re not going to win because that makes it more fun when you inevitably do, go for it. But leave the rest of us out of it. Because even when we don’t think you’ll win, we still kind of do think you’ll win. That’s should be a badge of honor, not a knock.

Legacy Stakes

I usually like to do a section about what’s at stake for each team and its players from a legacy perspective. Sadly, this combination of teams doesn’t give me much to write about. The Pats can tie the Steelers for the most Super Bowl wins of all time (six), but Brady and Belichick are already the best quarterback and coach of all time, respectively, so another Super Bowl win pads their stats, as it were, but won’t do much in terms of validation. Sure, if they fall to 5-4 all-time in Super Bowls, it will give a little extra fodder for the people who say they’d rather be 4-0 in Super Bowls  (a la Joe Montana) than 5-4, but those people are woefully misguided anyway, so it’s hardly worth debate.

On the other side you have a team full of young stars, including its coach. Obviously winning a Super Bowl is a form of career validation regardless of when you win it, but no one on the Rams is even close to “can’t win the big one” territory, so the feel-good storyline of the wily old veteran finally winning a ring that we’ve had in years past (Charles Woodson with the Packers, Anquan Boldin with the Ravens, Demarcus Ware with the Broncos, etc.) is noticeably absent this year. The lone obvious exception is Ndamukong Suh, but he’s kind of an asshole, so I don’t think people are rooting hard for that story.

The Prop Bets That Weren’t

For those without a true dog in the fight, the best thing about the Super Bowl, aside from the food (bar food is the best food, don’t @ me), is the betting. Much like Adam Silver and ESPN, the general Super Bowl-watching populace has embraced casual betting more in recent years, leading once-cheeky prop bets like which Gatorade color will be poured on the winning coach or how long the national anthem will last to almost be considered passé.

Sadly, the creativity on prop bets has waned, forcing me to take matters into my own hands.  Place your bets before 6:00 EST (Just kidding…)

Ndamukong Suh Personal Foul Penalties Called (includes declined penalties) O/U .5

Tom Brady Berates An Official After Getting Knocked Over O/U 4.5

Tony Romo Accurately Predicts A Play Call Pre-Snap O/U 8.5

Age of the First Guest Singer to Join Maroon 5 O/U 38.5

Times I Consider Subscribing to the WWE Network During Halftime So I Can Watch Halftime Heat Instead of Maroon 5 O/U 5.5

Shots of Rams Fans Wearing Sunglasses Indoors O/U 326.5

Decibels Jim Nantz’ voice drops during the first CBS promo for the Masters O/U 46.5

References to Sean McVay’s Paid “Hold Me Back” Guy O/U 1.5

Commercials With Thinly Veiled Criticisms of Trump’s Immigration Policies O/U 2.5

Commercials For Movies Starring Dwayne Johnson O/U 3.5

Jim Nantz Refers to Romo as “Partner” O/U 5.5

Rams Fans at LA’s Super Bowl Parade (if applicable) O/U 13.5

Welp, that’s all I got for you today, folks. Next week we’ll have recap of the Super Bowl and its inevitable fallout, some non-football sports thoughts, and a little  TV/Oscars talk. Until then, thanks for reading, and keep punting!