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lemonlushff-iy · 4 years

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Summary: Kagome comes home to Montana from her new life in California…only to be greeted with hostility and the demons of her past. Some mistakes can never be forgiven. She just hopes that maybe this one can.

RATED M / NSFW

Story inspired by Clearwillow’s “New Moon Ride”, written with permission and for the March 14, 2020 White Day celebration…and slowly uploaded much sooner…

Read parts 1-7 here

One Last Ride - Part Eight

His tongue felt fuzzy and it was far too bright in the room. A pounding headache drilled through his skull, and he wanted to just roll over and die.

Fuck...what had he done last night?

He wanted to try and remember, but his splitting headache was making that far too difficult right now. God damn! Who the hell was turning on a blender at this ungodly hour?

What time was it anyways?

He rolled over with a groan and just barely pried open an eye to grab his phone and wake it up.

9:00 am

Why did he feel like he was running late?

Something in the back of his head told him he needed to get up.

Right now.

Wait.

FUCK!

Souta's graduation!

Inuyasha pushed himself out of bed and stumbled around his room, rummaging through drawers to find a nicer pair of his jeans and a button down, white tank top, and undergarments. He rushed to the bathroom, turning on the water and jumping in...even though the water was still freezing.

He was almost worried his balls would never recover from the shock factor, but he needed to be a man and suck it up.

In and out.

That was the goal so he wouldn't smell like whatever the fuck he smelled like. He gave himself a quick once over with soap, only hitting all of the necessary areas before he was throwing the shower curtain open and tripping over the bathmat. His head smacked into the mirror over the sink across from the tub, and he let out an embarrassing whimper.

God dammit all to hell!

When the fuck had the bathmat bunched up?!

Fuck!

His head was already throbbing. He didn't need this shit too.

Inuyasha placed his hands on either side of the sink, trying to take deep, calming breaths and not tear the bathroom to pieces. Ma would never forgive him. And then he'd be down a bathroom.

Showering out back in the open wasn't exactly something he wanted to do.

Then again...he wouldn't mind it if he had an appreciative audience…Someone with black hair and stormy, blue grey eyes...

His eyes widened. Where the hell had that come from.

He didn't have time to contemplate it. He needed to down half the bottle of Advil in the medicine cabinet and like, four god damn gallons of water. Why the hell did he drink as much as he did yesterday? He remembered playing the drinking game with Kikyo, but that alone shouldn't have caused this.

Fuck, did it even matter right now?

He pulled the bottle of pills out of the medicine cabinet, opening the top and popping a few into his hand before throwing them back and swallowing. He did his best to towel off, shave, and get ready before running down the stairs.

Coffee. He needed coffee.

And all the goddamn water in the fucking kitchen.

"Well!" his mother greeted, seeing him enter the kitchen like a bull in a china cabinet. "Would ya look who's finally awake! I take it you had a grand ol' time last night!"

"Great time," he groaned, looking for a coffee mug and she moved to stand in front of the coffee pot.

"Oh no young man...You better not be thinking about getting coffee...I know you know better than that…"

She wasn't...oh you had to be fucking kidding right now.

"Ma...I ain't seventeen anymore."

"No...but you sure as hell act like it! Do you know the kinda scare I had last night? Seeing Kagome dragging your drunk ass home?"

That gave him pause. Kagome? Why the hell did she take him home? She was out with her friends. He was out with Kikyo...Come to think of it...How the hell did he get home last night? It hurt too much to think about that right now.

God fucking damnit he needed some godamn coffee!

"Ma, I don't have time for this," he rumbled.

"And you do not use that tone with me!" his mother scolded, crossing her arms over her chest, and he heard his father's near silent chuckle come from outside.

"I'm sorry Ma," he ground out through his teeth, "but I have a really bad hangover and I really need some coffee before I go to Souta's graduation.

His mother arched her brow and picked up the coffee pot, pouring the last little bit down the sink, and he paled.

"If you're going to behave like a delinquent, then you can suffer through the consequences of your actions. Maybe you'll learn now since I clearly failed to raise you right!"

She was digging in deep today huh?

"I cannot wait until I’m done building my damn house so I can move outta here!” he snapped, a low growl rumbled out from his chest, and his mother sent him out to the front porch, yelling at him about manners and respect and he honestly stopped paying attention, the sheer volume of her anger only making his ears ring. His headache wasn't any better and he didn't get his fucking coffee.

Fucking fantastic.

He slumped down into a chair next to his father who only smirked at him, holding out his coffee cup.

He glanced at it wide eyed before grabbing it and downing the remaining coffee in a few deep gulps.

"Thanks Pops," he smiled weakly, handing the cup back to him.

"You're welcome," he replied, a smirk still tugging the corner of his lips. "I take it you had fun last night?"

"I'm sure I did - I just can't seem to remember how much fun and what kind right now."

"If you can't remember, maybe you had too much fun."

"Not you too," he groaned.

"Nah," he chuckled, "I think your mother already did a fine job. And...don't tell her...but I'm not upset. Disappointed that you mighta been a little reckless...but you're a hard working man, son. You're allowed to blow off a little steam every now and then. I'm just surprised ya did it on your date."

"It was Kikyo's idea," he groaned, resting his head in his hands. "She wanted to play a drinking game."

"Huh. Liking the girl more and more. Just don't tell your mother. She wouldn't approve."

"And she's all for this...I know."

His mother had been ecstatic when she had first heard that he and Kikyo were talking. She loved her for reasons he didn't quite get. Not that there was anything wrong with Kikyo, but she hadn't reacted this way about one of his prospects since...not since Kagome.

His ears swiveled towards the road as both men heard a car approach, and his father stood with a groan, patting his son on the back.

"Don't get into too much trouble today, ok? I can't take another night of calming your mother...No matter how sexy she gets when she's angry."

"Pops!"

"Have fun now!" he chuckled, going back inside and Inuyasha sighed as the car pulled up. Kagome was in the driver's seat, her mother next to her.

That put Souta in the back with him.

Great. The back.

This would be fun.

He opened the door and slid in, trying to look cheery, but he wasn't quite sure he hit the mark.

"Morning sunshine," Kagome greeted chipperly as he buckled himself in, glaring at her. "Don't give me that look," she chided, picking up a thermos from the cup holder and handing it back to him. "I brought you something."

He raised a brow in question before opening the canister and groaned as the sweet...or rather bitter...smell of coffee floated up to his nostrils. He inhaled deeply, sighing.

"I love you...thank you."

He didn't realize what he had said and who he had said it to until after he had drank some of his sweet, sweet coffee and he saw Souta giving him a bewildered look.

"I—"

"—Don't worry about it. I know what you mean," Kagome smiled weakly, turning around to regard him with a soft look in her eyes. "You had a hell of a night and I figured you might need it. Your mother wasn't thrilled when we came home."

"She wasn't that thrilled this morning either," he muttered, slumping down in his seat, and he heard Kagome giggle...the sound and her gesture tugging at his heart strings, drawing an unbidden whimper from his throat.

Fuck. Today was going to be a hell of a day.

Why had he said that?

Fucking fuckety FUCK!

He didn't even love her anymore, but it had flowed off of his tongue so easily. Like an unchecked habit.

The rest of the car ride had been painfully awkward despite Kagome's mother doing her best to diffuse the tension. Between his hangover and that hell of a blunder, his day was off to a great start.

And he still couldn't remember much of the night before.

He remembered a lot of making out with Kikyo…

Maybe some pool?

But nothing more concrete than that.

Inuyasha glanced over at Kagome as they sat in the auditorium, listening to their old principal give some long, boring speech about the future and starting a new chapter of their lives and blah, blah, blah. He was pretty sure the guy used the same damn speech at their graduation.

He couldn't have mixed it up a little, could he?

"So what exactly happened last night," he whispered nervously, and she tilted her head to the side towards him.

"You mean you don't remember the hot, hot sex we had?" she whispered back, bewildered, and his brain completely shut down as his throat went dry.

...They...What?!

"We...I…"

How the hell had that happened?

The fifteen year old in him was snarling that he had gotten so drunk that he couldn't remember his deepest teenage fantasy becoming a reality. She had been the star of his every "dirty" dream. For years she was the woman he had imagined touching...caressing...fucking...making love to…He had imagined her screaming his name in pleasure as their bodies slid together so many times...but he couldn't remember it when it actually fucking happened for real?

Yeah. The teenager in him was beyond pissed.

The adult in him, however, was mortified that he would do something so completely and utterly stupid. This woman had destroyed him. Left him hollow and broken and miserable for years. She had left a shirt in his room unintentionally after they broke up...he was ashamed to admit that he had clung to it at night for months after until her scent finally disappeared and he tucked it into a box under his bed.

A box of Kagome. Photos and ticket stubs and little things that reminded him of her had been abandoned there, left to rot away and forever be forgotten.

What really puzzled him was the lack of "sex" smell when he had woken up. Sure, he smelled like shit...but shouldn't he have still smelled some trace of...that on him?

"I'm kidding," she snickered, and he relaxed a little...but his heart still grew oddly heavy and bitter.

"That wasn't funny," he hissed, and she raised an eyebrow at him.

"No? You don't think so?"

"Not even a little. Can't you be serious for one goddamn minute?"

"I thought we were trying to be civil?"

"Yet you're the one jerking me around!"

Kagome took a deep, calming breath before fixing him with a hard look.

"You want to have at it again? Fine. We can do it again. But not here, and not now.

No. I don't know what you did last night.

I just know that you and Kikyo were in no shape to be driving so I left the girls to take both of your sorry asses home so you wouldn't crash and die. So you're welcome," she snapped.

His jaw twitched before he forced himself to grind out a barely audible thank you through clenched teeth.

They sat through the majority of the ceremony in silence...but he didn't need to talk to her to know what she was feeling. He could feel and smell the pain and frustration and guilt radiating off of her in nearly tangible waves. He felt this old, long forgotten, yet familiar desire to comfort her and apologize bubble up from the pit of his gut...but what the hell did he have to apologize for? She was the one fucking with him!

She was always the one toying with him like he didn't fucking matter...

"Do you still have a hangover," he heard Kagome whisper, and he told her he did. He watched her silently reach into her purse, taking out a small reusable bottle of water and a ziplock baggie with a handful of pills.

"Here," she said handing them to him, and he felt his heart ache again as he accepted her peace offering.

"Thanks," he whispered, throwing some of the pills back before handing everything to her.

"Keep it for a while," she advised, nodding towards the water bottle. "You need to re-hydrate. I brought it for you anyways."

"Ok," he smiled wanly, and she weakly returned it.

Soon he heard the closing music start to play and the graduates walked back down the aisle, ready to meet their family outside of the auditorium in the warm June sunshine.

He stood, following Kagome and her mother outside to find Souta, where they all shared rounds of hugs and 'congratulations', and 'we're so proud of you's.

Inuyasha happily volunteered to take photos of the small family, a strangely content, honored, almost paternal feeling washing over him as he did.

"Inuyasha dear, why don't you come take my place? You should be in a few photos too."

He was about to refuse, but thought better of it. Mrs. Higurashi wanted him in a few photos. He couldn't say no to her...so instead he swallowed, nodded, and took her place to the left of Souta. His fingers accidentally grazed Kagome's arm as he wrapped his around the young man's shoulders, and he noticed her straighten in surprise, clearly restraining herself from shooting him a questioning look. Instead, she moved her fingers from Souta's back to his arm, giving it a gentle squeeze.

He could feel the heat from her skin radiating through his shirt, burning him. Scorching everywhere she touched.

He didn't know why...or what the hell came over him, but his hand left Souta's back to give her arm a light squeeze, and her scent changed.

Remorse.

His eyes flitted to her face and he was surprised to see her looking at him, her eyes pained.

What he wouldn't give to ask her what she was thinking now...What he wouldn't give to comfort her...

His breath caught in his throat.

No.

He didn't care.

He just had to last the week, then she was gone. Off to her life in California, just the way she wanted it.

Unless her boss let her stay. Which was highly unlikely.

"Inuyasha...Kagome...Smile! It's a happy day," Mrs. Higurashi encouraged, and he watched Kagome turn away from him, shooting the older woman a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

He followed her lead, and a few minutes later, they were done.

A friend called out to Souta, drawing his attention from his family, and one of the teachers came over to speak to the proud mother, leaving him alone with Kagome.

He felt the heat of her eyes on him and he awkwardly glanced at her again, confirming his suspicions.

"Yeah?" He asked a bit more roughly than he intended, and Kagome snapped her attention away from him.

"Nothing."

"I don't think ya'd be looking at me like that if it were just 'nothing', Kagome."

She turned to regard him again, her lips pressing into a thin line as she told him, "Honestly? When you shave, you just look more...you. The you that I remember, at least. It just...everything is taking me back to our graduation day. "

He remembered it well. It marked the beginning of the end. One last summer together.

"Huh," he muttered, and she rolled her eyes.

"You and your damn 'huh's."

"What...you don't like 'em?"

"I never have."

"Huh," he smirked, doing it intentionally this time, and a small smile graced her lips before she turned her attention elsewhere. "I was just thinking that maybe I should grow it back out if that's what this makes you think of," he explained rubbing his chin, unsure of why he felt the need to.

"You look handsome either way, Inuyasha," she disagreed. "You always have. You should do what makes you happy. You don't look like a boy if that's what you're worried about. I don't think you could. I was just...I guess I was just feeling nostalgic."

"So...I look like a man now, huh? A handsome man?" He drawled, and she rolled her eyes again.

"Don't start."

"I didn't. You did. You started this whole conversation about my facial hair."

"And if I would have known that it would lead to this I would have kept it to myself."

"Mhm…" he agreed. "Maybe. But you didn't. And now I know you still think I'm handsome. Gotta say, it's kinda nice knowing you still think I'm attractive after all these years."

"I've always been attracted to you, Inuyasha...but you've always known that, haven't you?"

Yeah. But that hadn't been enough, had it? In the end, she still left him. Why hadn't he been enough? What was he lacking that made him not good enough? What was so wrong about him that...that she didn't want to be with him anymore? He had told her he'd wait...and he had fucking meant it! It didn't matter how long it took. He'd still be here for her.

That was part of the problem, wasn't it?

She never had any intention of coming back.

Even for him...the man she "loved".

"Inuyasha?" Kagome whispered, pulling him away from the dark turn his thoughts had taken. "What's wrong."

"Nothing," he growled, startling her, and she straightened, confused but prepared to fight him again.

"Inuyasha!" a light, airy, feminine voice called out, and he watched Kagome's face morph into a mask of indifference as Kikyo waved.

"You should go to her," she encouraged.

"Kagome…"

"Inuyasha!" Kikyo called again, and Kagome waved him off, leaving him to stand by her mother and join in the conversation with their former teacher. He knew a dismissal when he heard one.

He spun around on his heel and greeted Kikyo, smiling as she shyly took his hands.

"The set up looked great...Thank you again for all of your help."

"It was my pleasure," he replied, trying to smile, but his conversation with Kagome and his previous dark thoughts hadn't quite loosened their grip over him yet.

"Listen...last night…"

"Was fun?" he supplied, and her smile only brightened.

"It was," she agreed. "I'm sorry for making you drink so much though...I didn't mean to let things get that far out of hand."

"It's ok...I'm still here ain't I? Somea last night is a little hazy still...but I'm glad you're ok."

"Me too. Glad you're ok, I mean. And that I'm ok," she blushed. "I guess we have Kagome to thank for that…"

"So I'm told," he mumbled. Damn. He wished he could remember what happened.

"We were that bad, huh?"

He could only shrug. "I guess it's been awhile since I drank that much," he admitted.

"I wasn't very nice to you during that game. I learned a lot of interesting things about you though…"

His eyes widened nervously.

"What kinda stuff."

Kikyo's face turned bright red as she stood up on her tiptoes to whisper into his ear. "Little things...like your favorite position for sex. Maybe we can try it out soon?"

He swore he turned bright red as she leaned in to kiss him, and he heard Souta catcall in the background.

"Damn!"

He smirked when the boy yelped. He couldn't confirm it...but he was pretty sure Kagome had smacked him upside the head.

She was jealous.

He'd be sure to give her something to be jealous over then...and he deepened the kiss, pulling Kikyo closer and sliding his hand into her hair. When they parted after several long minutes, her lips were swollen red, her pupils dilated, and her hair only slightly mussed up.

"I gotta go," he murmured apologetically, and she swallowed, nodding. "Call me later when you have a minute? Maybe we can set up another date...to try out that thing you talked about."

"Yeah...ok…"

___________________

That’s better right? Lighter? I thought it was lighter. One and a half more parts guys and then that’s it! I’m posting all I have for chapter 10 for white day too...because I want people should feel like it’s ok to post those, and lead by example, right?!

Wall of tags! Let me know if you want in or out!

(If you get tagged in this post after requesting tags, it’s because that’s how I’m keeping track of them. If you requested a tag and aren’t there, I might not have seen it so please ask again!)

@clearwillow, @keichanz, @dangerouspompadour, @nartista, @kaze-ranna, @superpixie42, @sticky-llama-perfection, @pinkpigeonstudio, @mcornilliac, @itzatakahashi, @zelink-inukag, @juliatheanimelover7, @csim28, @smmahamazing, @the-lucky-ones311, @cyncyn981, @animemomma96, @ayari17, @underwater0phelia, @sailorbabydoll92, @l-taisho29, @clearwillow, @animelove1313, @littlemissinukag, @gofoulpuppycollector, @umacaking, @chanin29

#Inuyasha White Day #inuyasha fanfiction #inuyasha fanfic #inuyashafanfic #inuyasha #inukag #DAMNIT CARRA #Ode to Carra #Clearwillow #rancher #cattle rancher #western #romance #angst #one last ride #lemonlushff

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percysbluepizza · 4 years

Text

Oh we ARE impertinent

okay since @annabetncnase asked for it, my big ole post, UNEDITED about the Lightning Thief Musical on Broadway. good luck to anyone who attempts to read this shit

ACT 1

Prologue/Day I Got Expelled

Alright so there is big boom lightning at the very very beginning of the show because Of Course there is? But it also comes with a huge flash of light, which startled liTERALLY everyone in the audience. Very fun, good use of technical effects. First guy on is James Hayden (Luke + Some) and he opens with the line. Then KRISTEN FUCKING STOKES (whom I have grown to ADORE) and the rest of the ensemble (Sally, Claiese, and Grover) come on and have this AMAZING choreography. They’re singing and all and then these curtains (which have been up and are on my pic) get pulled away from both sides by the whole onstage cast and CHRIS runs up and does this slide thingy to the very tippy top of the stage, where he sat for a moment, then turned to the audience and started. I about screamed and I’m not joking, he’s so expressive and such a great Percy (god I’m in love with him great work). As the song progressed, I was impressed by the ability with lighting use and all these cool stage tricks to have the Mrs. Dodds and also the pen/sword thing! Jorrel plays Grover so well, he’s so empathetic and caring toward Percy and I!!! So the whole story of him getting expelled is explained and god it is so fucking sad. Percy’s voice cracks. Percy’s fucking upset clearly and doesn’t understand and ouch…. ‘So if you think you are a half-blood’ is said so gently, and then THE DANCING. Chris can dance. Like well. Very well. So during ‘THis ain’t Odyssey’s Odyssey” he did a big ole kick and danced his heart out. SO good.

Strong

So obviously there’s some talking in between the first piece and this one, and there was a scene change when the lights went out and now they’re in Percy’s apartment with his mom and Gabe. Gabe is like… god you seem him and you loathe him bc he’s played so well. Percy sprays a chan of ‘aerosol’ at one point bc Gabe smells. And Chris just captures Percy’s compassion so well… He tells his mom that she doesn’t have to stay with Gabe and doesn’t deserve that and ugh so good. There are genuine blue marshmallows. and the way they did the little fire with the fog in the bucket and Percy’s mom’s comforting him hhh.

The Minotaur/The Weirdest Dream

The transfer to this scene/piece is very quick, Grover comes running in with a trash can over his head and he asks if Percy told Sally about the field trip and she said no and it was just a big mess of miscommunication. He basically gets to the point where he says the Minotaur is after Percy and holy shit. This boy is massive. And the design of it is insane and it’s got red eyes and wow. ‘I hope you’re really a SWORD” and he fight and it’s all just great. Sally goes away, Percy kills the beast and then ‘Don’t pass out…” Poseidon is in a tank top and a open Hawaiian shirt as well as flip flops and just “oh look, a man in a Hawaiian shirt’ He takes the seashell and is just the most confused. And then they bring in Annabeth, pushing her on one of those dolly things and she’s ‘floating’ and the whole thing is a big dream. Up until she tells him “You drool when you sleep” right and the thing is… the banner for CHB unfurls and the lights come back up and all of that and just it’s a true rude awakening. Then he looked around the camp and was so confused, Annabeth (beautiful, amazing, badass Kristin) started explaining what was happening and he had no clue. She then calls for Mr. D

Another Terrible Day

I don’t think you guys realize how good Jorrel is. Maybe you do but we stan Jorrel. But he comes out dressed in not matching clothes with a bright button up (pink) and plaid shirt, suspenders. He’s angry. Percy explains that he has no clue what’s going and everything’s getting explained to him with the other demigods. The other demigods are so cute and I love them so much. And he’s yelling through a megaphone. Jorrel can do so many roles so well and he did a great job. “You’re a horse?!” also he just clops. Like it’s human legs. Clip clop bitch. With a tail.

Their Sign

Again the transition from the first song to this second one is really fast. Chiron’s comforting but god is Percy angry. I love that tbh. Chris is clearly upset and he feels for Percy. And he shows it. He’s upset and then Percy’s voice goes all soft… Love that. Luke starts being buddy-buddy and showing him that it’s gonna be alright. Supposedly.

Put You In Your Place

Fucking. Sarah. Goddamn. I can’t believe how good she is. We stan so hard. Her fit? Great. Her voice? Belted. Awesome. Annabeth truly out here though. SHe’s intimidating as fuck and she knows what she’s about. There’s so much cool battle choreo in this scene and it just looks great. There’s blocking and stabbing and it looks awesome. Also that guitar riff that she comes in with is rad. And then the bathroom thing. Great. Percy’s cornered and it clearly shows that his powers came as a last resort with stress and the way they flashed the blue lights is just great I love that so fucking much. And they’re asking about the way he figured out those powers and they’re freaked out. Cool shit. Also “The plan would have worked either way.” Holy fucking shit. Annabeth is fucking scary as hell. She gives zero fucks about Percy at the beginning

The Campfire Song

The way they made the campfire is so cool! Very techy. And I didn’t realize they’re sitting around the campfire eating dinner together as a camp. Very family much love I’m a big fan. They’re putting the food into the fire and then complaining and I love it. Percy’s so sweet trying to talk about his mom and then come back around once they tell him what’s going on. Also they have a cute dance they do together. SO unified and lovely. And then THE FUCKING SIGN COMES. Percy’s sign. The whole thing. They’re looking and he’s like “Is that a fork?” “I’m the Son of Poseidon? sweet!) Everyone freaks out when they’re sure he’s a son of Poseidon. Percy is told to go see the “Mummy in the attic” “That’s old people talk for Mom, right?” Cue the Oracle.

The Oracle

This sounds so dumb but kinda like… found the Oracle impressive. Spooky. 10/10 Also… side note… Chris plays Percy with a lot of random mannerisms and movement and it’s really quite fun to watch. Anyway the Oracle is big spooky and she’s in a huge dress and she’s pointing to him and it has all the people who are in the next scene sitting there underneath and moving the dress. Big cool. And the vocals! Sis can sing. And it’s just beautiful bc then Percy has to see Mr. D and Chiron, the first of whom wants to turn Percy into a dolphin. “Percy you have no choice.” “You’re expelling me again?” Basically Percy is getting kicked out of camp bc of his unwillingness to do the quest. And there’s the transition to Good Kid my friends.

Good Kid

Guys oh fuck. Oh shit. Chris just really came out here to kill with the vocals tonight. And My heart? He kinda does a fist thing toward what would be the Big House and walks off to sulk, starting the song and walking around being angry ugh. He climbs up the back of the stage (which is essentially scaffolding) and sits at the end to deliver the sad part of the line when everything goes piano-y and soft and essentially that’s him sitting at the docks at the lake and watching the water. Luke later finds him (“If you’re a son of Poseidon, don’t hide at the lake, that’s where everyone will look.” and talks to him about the quest, where they figure out his mom would be in the Underworld if she was anywhere. Also there’s a trident where Percy is the middle prong and the other two are blue and shine on him UGH yeah

Killer Quest

“Yeah I’ll do it!” Was delivered so well, so sweet and innocent. This kid just misses his mom. Also since when did Luke and Percy get a bro handshake? Grover shows up with a bunch of bags and says he’ll go too (Luke’s chilling in the background) and he gives him the official questing backpack. I think Luke leaves at this point to get some shoes. Annabeth is there with a bag telling him that she’s going too and that her mom will be excited and they’re all dancing together and god I’m so emotional. They dance and they all work as a team so well great work you guys. And the lights turn out with them starting their quest!

Lost

Return from intermission with a literal bang, as there are three demon triplet math teachers on the bus, with Percy on top and Grover and Annabeth inside. The driver’s screaming, they’re screaming, Percy hops off the top and then fights the fury outside and eventually… The bus explodes, with confetti raining over the audience. Awesome. The piece of paper is in Annabeth’s bag pocket actually. And Percy’s trying to be a reassuring friend to Grover, who’s freaking out, and he’s trying to keep Annabeth safe too… ugh great stuff. They move all together when they say “We’re lost in the woods” for the first time. Their priorities really become clear later in the song when they talk about what they’re wanting. Grover could not be more enthusiastic about the squirrel. Also this is the first time we see Annabeth laugh at Percy “I think that’s kind of nuts” is the line and she turns around to laugh into her hand. PURE AS HELL. Wandering aimless through the forest occurs for a minute longer until Percy decides. This point in the musical made me realize that these kids are young. Like 11 or 12. I love that. I felt that in this one. The kids go into Auntie M’s art studio. Annabeth’s asked to take a picture and she’s checking her hair in her dagger, meanwhile Percy’s getting a bad feeling now and Grover’s looking more and more intently at Uncle Ferdinand. Percy is then asked to join in. No camera you say? MEDUSA REVEAL. They do a big battle and Grover ends up picking up Percy and swinging him around to cut off Medusa’s head. Which gets thrown in her own fridge for the time being. Grover leaves.

My Grand Plan

Bitch. This was the moment I teared up a lot. She sat down and started singing and I felt. I FELT. I’m depressed as fuck at the moment and I started feeling things bc of this damn song. Kristin Stokes I love you. Anyway, she’s singing and Percy intently watches, and she’s telling the gods to Wise Up by pointing directly to the sky. SHe’s saying BITCH YOU WILL NOTICE ME. And the pain in her voice when she explains her family situation. The soft part? She’s talking directly to Percy and looking at him, telling him what’s going on. Dear god did I feel. I’m so proud of her my queen Annabeth Chase. She finishes explaining and Percy says: “No more fighting” and she says “Not between us anyway” and they shake on it. I love that. Then Percy decides to have a little fun with the gods and boxes up Medusa’s head. “THey’ll think we’re impertinent Percy.” “Oh, we are impertinent.” He writes both Annabeth and his own name on that box and ships it via the Hermes express. Grover comes back in. “While you guys were in here not solving all our problems, I found these!” “Three Amtrack tickets!?”

Drive

We boarding the train. WE singing. Life is dandy again. Percy sticks his hand in a dog cage and it bites him. They take a tractor which is scaffolding tied to a wheelchair which a guy pulls. They meet Bianca and then they meet Ares after arguing with each other. Cool guy. Also Percy looks so free and proud of himself when he’s on the back of the motorcycle “I mean, look at where I am!” He’s so PROUD holy shit. Also they all put one foot forward during the different lines god the Choreography so fucking cute dear lord. Anyway they’re going and going and they meet Bianca who’s got braids and then they move on!!! I love them! I’m proud. They take another bus. “This time we just won’t blow it up.” They’re sitting on the bus (or train not really sure) and all asleep. Percy’s dreaming now. And Annabeth and Grover are also sleeping. Each is on a chair and it’s kind of cute tbh.

The Weirdest Dream (Reprise)

Percy’s standing there in his dream and he’s very confused. This is ‘scary” and I love that. He’s standing and listening to the these people in his dream talking. Kronos is so fucking scary they literally make him scary. His voice is so deep and spooky and fuck man. Luke’s talking to him (downward, into a pit, technically on the top of the scaffolding) and he’s in a cloak and Kronos says Percy’s name and the lights flash all sorts of colors and then he’s back in his seat. Chris does a bunch of spins until he gets back to his seat and Grover’s shaking him awake, saying he was screaming. Annabeth can’t sleep either. Everyone’s on edge. Thalia’s name was mentioned in the dream and Grover sits up straighter and says he hasn’t heard that name in awhile.

Tree on the Hill

Oh shit this was so emotional. So Grover explains that he didn’t tell Percy this any sooner because he was afraid Percy might not want him to come. Big sad. But he starts the song and let me tell you I never felt like crying more. So Grover’s narrating this story and Percy’s listening on the train and above them, like with the main bridge, Annabeth, Luke and Thalia are slow mo acting out the details of the story until Thalia becomes a tree. Thalia is the same girl that plays Clarriese, and every other character almost omg. But when he’s explaining her turning into a tree, Annabeth and Luke stand behind Thalia and become the branches. So symbolic and so beautiful. Percy comforts Grover and then it’s the last stop.

DOA

THis song. At first I didn’t like it on the soundtrack. Skipped it. But goddamn what a bop. The sparkly dress, the funky tunes, the control of all of the kids so they all dance together. Also dying in a really big bathtub. Yeah. Real. The way they did the elevator with the lights moving in the background was actually super convincing and I Loved that. The dress sparkles all over and all the other background people are in cloaks are dancing too, including James who makes this beautiful jump I love it so much. But they’re all scared and cornered against the light and then have to reconvene together. They all get up from the ground frazzled and then Percy’s shoes start doing something weird. His feet start flying away from him and he’s confused and freaking out and all of a sudden they’re in front of the pit. Oh god the pit was so cool. I thought the feet were shaking and it’s so cool and and the pit literally looks like a pit. I know they’re looking into a light but it’s so scary! The shoes go down into the pit and the tartar sauce joke is made. I love this. SO scary. AND BOLT REVEAL. The line that Percy’s says “betrayed by a friend’ that accuses Annabeth after she pulls the bolt from his bag. I gasped. And then Hades comes around and he’s in a sparkly jacket and says he’ll have his friends and his mom back if he gives him the bolt and then gives them a chance to decide. Everyone walks off stage and he stands there and debates.

Son of Poseidon

Percy’s mom comes out and tells him that what belongs to the sea can always return. She does a little loop around him and he spins in a circle and follows her for a moment. He starts singing and GOD CHRIS. He’s realizing that he has the shell and all that. He blows the conch and a blue light shines on the right side of the stage, the PORTAL. They jump through the portal and they’re all excited that they survived. Standing on the beach and Percy pulled new shoes out and starts putting them on. He tells them that they’re his two best friends and he hugs them close and fuck man the original trio feels. They summon Ares. Ares comes out and he’s fucking ripped and got a pipe. A literal pipe. They start fighting and it looks like they’re losing, Annabeth lost her dagger (which was strapped to her thigh goddamn) and Grover’s down, Percy’s lost his sword. “Percy get to the ocean” He runs to the stage, Kristin and Jorrel run backstage and deliver the blowers with TP. “How about a lot of it!”He yelled and theres the music and he’s relishing the moment, Chris is just giving it his fucking all and there’s a lot going on and I just.. Was amazed beautiful. Great work cast. Ares is washed away and then Percy says: “You can escort us, back to camp.” They’re escorted back.

Last Day of Summer

Percy is standing there and he’s stunned essentially. What does he do now? He gets a letter from his mom with her newest sculpture and that she’s going to school. Annabeth passes him and talks to him about going home and she calls him Seaweed Brain. He and Luke battle when he accuses Luke of being the lightning thief. Luke fucking says yes right and then STABS HIM after trying to convince Annabeth to pick the right side (his side) and she disarms him but he takes a knife and stabs Percy. He runs away, Percy’s on the ground, Annabeth’s at his side and holding him. She’s giving him emergency ambrosia as he’s dying and he looks like he’s gone but then he comes back. She says Seaweed Brain and he says Wise girl and hugs him to her and SHIT man.

Bring on the Monsters

Percy motivates the camp. Tells them it’s real, shits getting real and they need to get ready. He’s got his sword and his fresh stab wound and he motivates them to get going, all of them sing and then Chris does his beautiful solo thing and stands in front with his sword and they’re all singing in the background. When he maintains his line on the bottom people are passing back and forth around him and touching his shoulder as they pass him and he yells excitedly back next summer at one point. And they all stand together in the back and the spotlight hits him as he says he’ll be back next summer and the guitar ends. damn.

The curtains come up and they’re all there taking bows and I love them. Main points: these boys flexible, they’re all doing kicks and all sorts of shit like that, jumping up and down and dancing as well as singing, I’m very impressed. also Chris plays Percy so well. He’s got all the things that were in my head for Percy for all the quirks and ADHD and UGH I love that. Kristin rocked my fucking world and Jorrel played every character so cleanly and had such great vocals. I love them. I love them all. The end.

If you made it to the end of this fucking long ass post send me an ask or a message bc I’m proud of you and you deserve a reward

#julz talks #tlt musical #I am very emotional and in love with every single on of them #also... I wrote this right after the show so I was just FEELING my dudes

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trans-earthworm · 5 years

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please tell me about gay cabbage

okay so I haven’t looked at my inbox in like a million years so apologies for the late response but I do remember what tags this is about.

So the story goes my best friend Grace @ohsoshiftyswifty is super allergic to a bunch of stuff, mostly important to this incident is cabbage. Her younger sister geeks for their town’s farmers market hard every week because this one guy there sells egg rolls and they are absolute fire. So myself and the sister (I’m gonna refer to her as Moose for the this because I call her Moose since she’s taller than me and it upsets me) get ourselves a big ‘ol box of egg rolls with some sweet and sour sauce and are having a grand time. Grace can’t eat them because they have cabbage and she will die so Moose and I are making fun of her for being some kind of nerd who has allergies.

At the time this took place I had braces and as it turns out, cabbage likes to get caught in braces so after Moose and I finish eating, Grace gets back at me for bullying her about her allergies by bullying me for not being able to get all the crap out of my braces. One of her jabs was that I had to make sure anyone I kissed wasn’t allergic to cabbage because then I’d kill them but “wait haha you don’t have anyone to kiss you single loser”. (Not important but Moose was also bullying me with Grace which shows that she has no loyalty to a cause, the cause is oppressing the allergic). And we could have just gone back to Grace and Moose’s house and I could have taken tweezers to my braces to get the cabbage out but we couldn’t actually because we were trying to get to the movie theater cause we bought tickets online for Spider-man: Homecoming. I have always and will always love spider-man more than most things in this life so I was not willing to let us be late.

So we get to the theater and we have this system where one person buys the tickets and the other buys the popcorn, which we all just share, and the other provides the coupons that incentivized us to want to go to the movies in the first place. I don’t remember what Grace and Moose brought to the table on this particular summer afternoon a couple years ago but I remember that I was in charge of buying the popcorn, which is important. I go to the counter and since it’s like 3 pm on a weekday the theater’s dead so I have some friendly conversation with the cashier. And he was cute. I mean like he was way cuter than a kinda crappy theater in a tiny ass town in south eastern wisconsin has any business employing. It was even more amazing that I didn’t already know him because I went to school in that tiny ass town for three years so I pretty much knew everyone close to my age (and most of them are conservative pricks who made me transfer to a school in the town over so I could safely come out as trans so I do a lot to actively avoid those people).

So I’m talking to the cute guy and Grace and Moose are like waiting for me to just grab the popcorn and soda so we can go sit down since I was the one who was kind of up Grace’s butt to get us to theater on time when she was driving from the farmer’s market. I am ignoring them. That leads Grace to more or less physically drag me away while also saying something - that the cute cashier definitely heard and probably was super confused about - about there being no time for cabbage.

We go sit down and enjoy the movie (we all immediately picked up on the trans coding for peter and discussed it at length, spider-man is trans) and forgot about the cabbage thing for two hours, except for the one specific shirtless tom holland scene that Moose saw me gawking at and she just whispered “cabbage” to me which made me lose my shit. When the movie ended and we waited for all the end credits scenes, I wanted to go back and find the cute cashier cause he told me that there were no end credits for the movie and I was like “bet” and he literally said “sit and wait for them then come back and tell me I’m wrong”, like hello that’s an opportunity. HOWEVER, by the time our movie got out the theater got all busy and there was a line for concessions.

This is where Grace and Moose turned over their mlm wlw solidarity cards (they’re gay and bi respectively). They were whining on and on and on about how they wanted to go back home because we were all planning on doing something there right after the movie. (I forget exactly what it was but knowing what we were like at the time this took place, it probably involved dying Grace’s or my hair). And I was practically begging them to just let me refill the popcorn on the way out so I could talk to the cute cashier again and maybe get his snapchat or something plus we take home a giant thing of the good movie theater popcorn. Did they care about my wants or the wants of the collective? [insert john mulaney screaming no! image].

They made me LEAVE before I could talk to this guy which I am still PISSED about. But I’m over it. (I’m not). And then after dragging me away from my shot at love in this cruel world they had the AUDACITY to keep making cabbage jokes to the point where we just started calling both the cute cashier and the entire situation of me wanting to talk to him “cabbage”.

How this meme between the three of us has persisted is that anytime we see someone hot that one us us wants to talk to or if any of us have a crush (not celebrity crushes though), it’s cabbage. We called the object of our affection cabbage, we would say that we are in a cabbage, we cabbage this individual. Basically its a shorthand that would allow us to discuss any degree of thirstiness while making it impossible for someone whose eavesdropping to figure out what the hell we’re talking about. This came up most recently with the cabbage situation at work that I was talking about it the tags of some post a while back.

I was cabbaging my coworker enrique for a little while (I got over that cabbage and we’re actually really tight friends now) at the same time he was cabbaging some dude who worked at the Taco Bell right next to us (enrique got over that cabbage and has a boyfriend now, they’re super cute together) all the while he noticed that a guy who was kinda young for me was cabbaging me in the store (I would say that he’s probably over that cabbage by now but how could he be? I’m stunning).

That’s the explanation for the cabbage thing and also an example tutorial for how to drag out a short anecdote into a long pointless story. Use this cabbage shorthand wisely, if you so choose.

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steve0discusses · 5 years

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Yugioh Ep 23 S3: Always Put Guns on Your Satellites

Ah, I’m finally back at my home computer after a little hiatus there. In case you are curious, I went to San Fransisco and then spent about 2 weeks trying to find a single parking spot. But, I’m back in my normal place now, where trash trucks aren’t driving around, breaking the speed barrier at 3 AM and where I don’t have to parallel park at a 45 degree incline. I got my fill of good food, chilling out, getting completely rained out by a freak storm in May, and walking about a mile vertically to go three feet horizontally, it’s time to sit back, relax, and talk about an anime that came out 20 years ago.

Y’all...what were even doing 2 weeks ago? It really does feel like three years.

If memory serves, we are currently in the midst of not one, but 3 Apocalypses. Lets just place em down in case you forgot

1.) The Millennium Item Apocalypse, where if one person gets all 7 (or was it 10?) of the items, the world freakin ends. This is briefly on hold because Bakura, our Millennium item enthusiast, hella died about 24 episodes ago and none of these people have brought it up or tried to contact any sort of governing authority even though Yugi and Tea both witnessed the murder about 7 hours ago (which, for Marik’s credit, did take place over international waters, touche). So, for now, Bakura’s spirit is kinda holed up in Pharaoh’s puzzle necklace so he’s just...chillaxing.

2.) The God Card Apocalypse, where if one person gets all 3 God Cards, the world freakin ends. Briefly on hold because everyone got stuck in a VR universe, and Marik felt like staying on the blimp instead because I dunno maybe he wanted to take a nap or something.

3.) The Matrix, where Seto’s Dad is going to launch a bunch of machines to trap the entire human race in this VR zone against their will and become a slave to the machine overlords. Somehow this is a thing that has been happening in the background this entire series but has only been revealed like...last episode.

Bro is reminding me that I forgot to mention that all these duel monsters are becoming slowly more and more real but like...eh.

There’s three concurrent Apocalypses right now. Don’t forget. There’s three of them.

Anyway, Seto Kaiba has decided it’s about time he deal with his Daddy issues/prevent the Matrix.

While Kaiba has decided to confront his Father, the rest of the people on this show have no freakin idea what to even do so they’re just arguing with eachother in Domino square and getting no where.

Also, I nearly forgot, Joey can’t even beat up Noah currently because Noah switched places with Mokuba, because this isn’t Yugioh unless we start switching brains like it’s as easy as turning your T-shirt inside out.

Of course, in this case, Mokuba didn’t exactly *switch* places with Noah--Moki’s brain is just...floating around this world somewhere. I don’t know if he got stuck in a Monkey or if he’s just...dead...but it just makes absolutely no sense to me how your soul can get sucked into a VR game and now lives tron-style in VR while someone else steers your body which isn’t any more connected to the machine itself, so I’ll just assume he’s dead. It’s just easier to say Moki died, it’s happened so many times to this kid at this point.

Basically, Mokuba is here, but in not-spirit. In every way but spirit.

And about those brain pods--does Yugi’s pod take up 2x the RAM because he’s got two people in that bean or has Noah seriously not noticed this like at all? because there's two dudes in one pod and Noah has just acted like that’s a completely normal thing that can happen.

(read more under the cut)

Anyway, the A team has sort of all turned into the B team because only Kaiba’s can really have any active involvement at this part of the arc, so Yugi decides to take a break and enter brain fort. Which, I assume he does just whenever he’s bored. It’s just kind of weird when he decides to do this, without warning, in front of a large group of other people.

Anyway, it’s Yugi, so he somehow turns what is so clearly Kaiba’s problem into this selfish need to carry the torch by himself for no reason.

Like, Yugi is the main character--I get that--he’s gotta be some sort of moral standard because this is a protagonist in a kid’s show, but it is such a stretch for him to still think that there’s any good left in Noah after all the events of this arc. It just comes off that every time Yugi tries to see good in Bakura, or Marik, or the Kaiba family even, he’s maybe doing it out of guilt.

Like Yugi isn’t naive at this point - he set a guy on fire once with Russian Whiskey in a freakin burger diner, and even if you don’t consider Season Zero canon, he also set PaniK on fire and left him to die in the woods (and that nut ABSOLUTELY died), so it just doesn’t make sense to me that he’d helplessly fall victim to a thousand evil assholes who pretended to be his friend. Instead, it’s sort of like Yugi’s trying to overcompensate for the amoral weirdo residing in about 98% of his brain right now.

Overall, TL;DR, Yugi is kind of a weird guy.

Love him, but he’s sort of a walking disaster with some very selfish motivations and I forget. Not about the walking disaster part of course, that part is like clearly very obvious, especially when we find out his grand masterplan.

Also, this happened,

Again, I would be absolutely fine if Tristan just remained like this, talking like the librarian out of Terry Pratchett, taking Serenity to prom just like this.

Anyway, these guys had absolutely nothing to do, so the show invented something on the fly.

If you could copy-paste any card, why not just copy-paste 24 Exodias? Like I get they don’t have God cards here but they have all the other ones, right?

Like I don’t understand the danger here, you can just keep playing cards infinitely because there’s no rules when you’re outside the game. Just keep slapping stuff on your duel disk like it’s that fanmade Yugioh game that they made for real life VR headsets. Youknow the one that was so bad that it became like a viral video, where everyone is a really low poly Yugioh character but they only have like 4 character models, and for some reason one of the four is Yugi but as a girl in a miniskirt? And they’re on the blimp for some reason, and none of them can stand up straight so they kind of duck walk everywhere? That one? The one with Joey saying “It does what it do!”

Like I feel like if even I saw that video show up on my twitter, everyone else has seen that video of just this really bad VR game and I don’t remember what it was called but feel free to google it, it’s a fun 10 minute ride.

Anyway, the mayhem of that viral video is kind of what this entire VR arc is turning into. More and more as we break reality and completely ignore the rules, to the point where now we’re just slapping whatever cards on our duel disk--cards we shouldn’t even freakin have because we identified at the beginning of this season that no one has a deck here.

But anyway, back to the only person who got out of the VR zone, lets see what Noah’s up to. Ah, the real world, where all we ever had to worry about was magic.

This password was so obtuse even Noah, who is literally a computer, forgot it. Wow.

So now that Noah has escaped the computer, he decides to walk down the hall to log onto yet another computer so he could use his hands instead of...however he was using computers in the digital zone.

He could have done this from within the Orb, right? Like this part didn’t really require him stealing Mokuba’s body? We know he’s already connected to Kaiba’s network so he could become ascended and open the Door of Truth, so I’m assuming it would also have the ability to just log onto this computer in his own ship?

Noah does seem to be just winging it through this entire arc, but he could have done this sequence, and THEN stolen Moki, and THEN hightailed it out of there. It would have saved him some problems later. But wtv, lets hack a satellite, that good ol Kaiba pastime.

Also, fun fact, Kaiba went through all that work to get rid of all the weapons and then forgot about his space stash?

Like was there just SO MANY weapons that he overlooked it, or is he just keeping this here, just to have? Just in case, youknow? Like why does Seto Kaiba have access to The Bomb? Why would we leave a horrible nuclear missile in the hands of a teenager who freaks every time he plays cards? This child who is so unstable, that he knows he was married to a paper card in a previous life but doesn’t feel like talking about it? That crazy kid?

Like usually we have a set of two keys for this type of thing and two different people turn the key at the same time, we don’t just leave them in the Seto Kaiba headquarters with the kid who turned all cards into guns. Are all of Seto’s handlers actually just spies from other countries trying to keep Seto from nuking the planet? Is that the real answer to who the hell Roland is? Is he just a nice spy that makes sure Seto plays enough cards to forget that he could blow up the world if he sneezed too much and pressed the wrong key loading up Duel Disk Myspace?

The implications.

Meanwhile, Kaiba is the only one on this show smart enough to just walk into Gozaburo’s office, where I assume this guy has just been hanging out the entire arc.

Yep, that’s right, they’re going to do a card duel with a chess champion because this show has to shoehorn in those cards. Just one more card fight. Just cuz. Just one more completely pointless card fight between these two people, to show...that Seto can beat his Dad? Seto’s beaten his Dad like every opportunity he’s had to beat his Dad I don’t...exactly know why this was necessary. Would’ve been a much bigger emotional beat for Seto to have just walked away, but that would have also been a much different Seto than the Seto we have.

So basically, if Seto loses, Gozaburo threatens to erase Seto’s mind entirely, which we’ve already pointed out has been so wiped at this point that it would be all of 700 KB and it would just be a single corrupted pixel picture of a dragon.

Anyways, Marik finally conquers his greatest enemy.

Oh. OK. This is a thing he can do now. Welcome back to the show, Marik.

Anyway, Marik has decided it’s high time for him to just go flippen spaz and start breaking stuff. For no reason. I don’t think he fully comprehends that he’s underwater and should not blow up the boat.

Or maybe he FULLY comprehends that? Either answer for him would feel correct.

Also, while I don’t cover cards here, Kaiba’s Dad has decided that the only way to beat his son was to pretend he’s Yugi Muto and reenact the pilot.

It was weird. It was sort of like watching someone audition for a role they don’t have.

Lets go back to Noah.

I knew this arc was going kinda long but how did they end up in freakin Guam???

Marik, who has no concept of technology because he grew up in a tomb and is currently possessed by an ancient force of evil, is still able to recognize a good countdown clock when he sees one. Before he bashes it to pieces because of course he can.

Marik almost saved everyone else’s ass, but unfortunately doesn’t understand that the monitor is not actually attached to the workings of the computer. Much like my Mother.

Bro brings up that this a very Metal Gear thing to only use helicopters to travel over the ocean and hot damn we got yet another Metal Gear reference in just before this arc closes. These weird war crime children.

Ps I like that they drew in the shadow of the bangs across Moki’s eyes as if that would somehow make Moki look sinister. lol.

But, much like the Grinch, Noah’s heart grew...well, it grew.

I wouldn’t go as far to say it grew even a full size, but youknow it...kinda made a weird little fart and bloated a little bit.

So like with Tristan turning into a monkey, it does seem a lot like Noah is just turning into Mokuba and that’s why he’s decided to save everyone. Least in my mind that’s what it looks like. Maybe if he really did take Yugi’s body, Noah would have lasted maybe 5 seconds before being doubled over with endless anxiety and guilt. Would’ve solved a lot of their problems.

I’ve been watching a cat while commuting 4 hours a day and this is actual footage of what my charger cable looked like after the cat went Marik on me and decided the cable deserved to die at 3AM after the freakin SF garbage truck went supersonic and woke up the entire neighborhood.

(the cat is fine, btw, we went and hid all the other cords, dumbass cat)

So what does Noah do? He decides...it’s time I fessed up. And he does it in the worst way, during a time when literally everyone else in the VR world is fighting multiple card enemies/their Dad.

Way to be, Noah, way to be. On the other side of town, Yugi was visibly sweating and had this facial of expression of like “Wow, maybe Noah is just a freakin psycopath?” Which, I dunno, kind of seems like the sort of thing we figured out 23 episodes ago, right at the same moment we met Noah.

Anyway, that’s all for this episode. Really seems like the only person who actually DID anything was Noah who just...decided to throw a bunch of missiles directly at himself because he can’t think things through. I guess Marik did some stuff too, but honestly, I have no idea if Marik thoroughly understood that he just guaranteed that he was absolutely going to be destroyed by rockets. That Loki.

Hey if Noah DOES manage to destroy everyone on this boat, he prevents 3 whole apocalypses and that would default him to hero status. He’ll kill off like 3 major villains and maybe even Shadi. And who doesn’t want Shadi to die (who I assume is already dead but wtv) I mean that’s not going to happen, but like...way to try and save the world Noah, you’re doing your best life.

Anyway, if you just got here, here’s a link to read these recaps from the very beginning, fair warning, there’s 2.5 seasons.

#Yugioh #episode recap #photo recap #yugioh recap #ygo #s3 ep23 #Noah Kaiba #Seto Kaiba #Yugi muto #Gozabura Kaiba #Tristan is now just fully a monkey but still a robot #so he's gone from robot monkey to monkey robot #Tea gardner #serenity wheeler #joey wheeler #duke devlin #So Kaiba just didn't feel like mentioning the huge ass rockets he has #and has had all of S1 and S2?#Marik Ishtar

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iveonlyeverseenliketwoanimes · 5 years

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Manga Spoilers ahead :)

So when the new chapters came out I, like many others, was a little annoyed at this whole concept of Deku magically having a bunch of new quirks. I understand that it's been established from the beginning that One For All works as this whole ‘passing on of power’ - but I always understood it as more of an energy than actual individual quirks (and the content given thus far seemed to support this). That said now that is turning out to be the latter, it isn’t something that's caught me off-guard and it very much does make sense and I don’t think it’s ‘Lazy writing’ on Hori’s part, it just hasn’t been explained up until now and if we had learnt how One For All worked all in one single episode at the start of the series I think it wouldn't be as fun of a journey.

One of my main concerns with what's happening is this whole idea of Deku becoming some all-powerful God that no-one can beat, because, lets face it, as powerful as characters like Bakugou and Todoroki are, i don’t think even they would be able to compare to a guy that has a combined total of like 7 quirks, all of which have been cultivated into one massive super-quick that has been held by the former number 1 Pro Hero, so is clearly very powerful.

So that got me thinking. Why would this happen? Why would a show, that up until now, has been very good with balancing the power levels of its quirks suddenly do a full 180 and just be like ‘Oh yes lil broccoli boi and his rabbit costume can now become God and just breathe in the general direction of his opponents in order to win’?

So, I have a couple points I’d just like to discuss. Feel free to add on anything or challenge my views, im just doing this because im bored and trying to rationalise the decisions in a show made for teenage boys.

So first of i think some people are being a lil bit dramatic about this current arc, sure it’s not perfect and I too wish that some things had played out differently, but at the end of the day it’s not my show/manga and tbh if the guy who made me fall in love with this show to begin with decides he wants to take it in a new direction then let him, he has every right to do what he wants regardless of what i, or anyone else, think and i put my trust in his hands and hope that he can pull this off. Furthermore, are we forgetting that Todoroki exists? The guy has not one, but 2, of the most powerful quirks i think i person could get. His dad is the current number 1 hero and HALF of Todorki’s power is the same as his (sure his maybe works a lil different but my statement stands). Now Ice and Fire, in my opinion, are two very powerful quirks, i mean at like 15/16 the kid took down a dozen or so villans and nearly stopped Nomu (With half his power and with no real training from UA). We compare that to what Deku has and i still think Todoroki has a fighting chance in a match against Deku because these quirks Deku is getting aint all that to be honest, some people are acting like Deku now has; super strength, super speed, telekinesis, can see into the future, mind control, laser eyes, the ability to fully heal on the spot etc. spoiler: He doesn’t. He’s getting some pretty average quirks that will still probably make him top of the class, but not unbeatable. I think some of you are a lil dramatic, and hey i get it, i said at the start i was too, so i feel ya. So, i guess my first point is that some of us need to calm down and maybe just wait until we get more details on the whole situation before we get out our pitchforks and start burning down the fandom over a couple chapters that haven't been fully explored yet.

My second point that actually has more to do with the plot and less about fandom drama is going back to Bakugou and Todoroki, so my initial thought when everything was happening was “ Bakugou and Todoroki are the other strong members of the class and Deku is now way more powerful than them, how will they ever beat him?” but now actually thinking about it, what does that have to do with anything? Like sure the show is centred around the whole school system and the magical friendships we’re making along the way, but like, Deku’s end goal here isn't to send Todoroki and Bakugou to their graves, they’re just class rivals, and while they do fight, it’ s not to actually kill each other - its to train. Now i’m just going to make a big ol’ assumption here based on basic human nature, but when you train with someone vs when you are actually fighting a villain in a life and death scenario, i don't think you’re going to be fighting at the same effort level. Todoroki vs Deku and Bakugou vs Todoroki were great fights (or at least they were in my opinion) but you compare them to the UA kids vs Stain and you have two very different circumstances and the fights we’re very different for obvious reasons. One was to win a silly little medal and bragging rights. One was to save a friend from literally being murdered by some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle lookin’ dude with no nose. I don’t really think Deku’s new powers will affect the class stuff too much, it’s been established that both Todoroki and Bakugo are more powerful and Deku already and the three of them will never go all out vs each other anyway. So basically my point here is that Bakugou and Todoroki aren’t Deku’s endgame - they’re Deku’s rivals and they’ll be around the whole time, but they’re not Deku’s Villian. So this idea that Deku is now the Number 1 is the clas, while true, really doesn’t matter because Deku is still... Deku and he wants to save people more than he wants to kill them or prove he is the best.

Now children, who is Deku’s Villian? any guesses? Oh yeah, it’s my boy Shiggy (AKA Tomura Shigaraki, AKA Tenko Shimura, AKA Crusty, AKA Get this man some lip balm). Now then. So we have our lil Deku, a young boy of just 16 who has been blessed with 300 new magical quirks (well it's more like 6/7 but that's beside the point here). But who else do we know that probably does actually maybe, kinda, definitely, literally, but also i don't really know, but i think, DOES HAVE 300 QUIRKS?!? It’s none other than Shigaraki’s Master, Mr suit, tie and no face, All For One. Now in one of the recent episodes of the Anime, All Might questions why All For One wants/needs a successor, to which he gives a lil giggle, chats some shit and basic says he wants someone to pass on his legacy to, in the same way that All Might has with Deku. Now I couldn’ t find this exact conversation in the Manga so it might be that the Anime went a lil off script here for drama and whatnot, but when i heard this i was convinced that this meant All For One is going to somehow transfer his quirk into Shigaraki (or maybe take over Shigarakis body or some other nasty stuff - in this world anything is possible), this is also kinda supported by All For One giving a lil giggle to the concept of him being ‘ locked up for the rest of his days’ - the guy clearly thinks he is going to get out and i highly doubt that his current state will allow for him the fight Deku, i certainly do not want to see the lil green troll doll fight a crippled elderly man, but i would like to see him fight a handsome, young, slightly anti-social, gamer nerd.

So we make it to the end of my lil tale, Deku needs to have all these quirks because his Endgame is Shigaraki and Shigaraki might also be getting a power upgrade in the future and it makes sense, as i don't think some green lightning sparks will defeat some grand-evil mastermind with the powers of all that's evil in this world.... but some black beams that can wrap around stuff might...?

Anyways, i wrote this over the span of two hours, its midnight and i did minimal research into this theory... BUt HEY ITS JUST A THEORY! A GAME ANIME THEORY! And im probably wrong about all of it and also im so sorry for all the sarcastic comments throughout this, i couldn’t contain myself. Im now going to sleep for the next 10 hours because this stressed me out :)

If you’d like to see more of my rambles then heres one on Hori’s female characters

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tracle0 · 5 years

Text

TIME TO TALK ABOUT SUS

This time, by ‘sus’ I mean Glalis. I’ve done posts like this twice before, one about the masks in Glalis and the other one about the radio station in Sonder which you can check out if you want.

'Hey Trade what even is Glalis it sounds like a made-up word’ well you’re correct, it is. But aren’t most town names made-up words?

Glalis is an underground town, situated under Sonder. Sonder looks like this:

And Glalis is underneath that, up until the bit labelled ‘farming area’. It’s bigger than Sonder, obviously, and a hell of a lot darker. Because... underground.

‘Oh hey that’s neat and all but uh why are they underground if there’s a liveable island right there’ this goes into history buckle up kiddos.

Glalis was founded in the 13th century. Know what else was happening in the 13th century? There was some climate change, some soil exhaustion, minor things. More importantly, the Bubonic Plague was destroying Europe. This includes England, where Sonder is set.

Some people - the founders of Glalis - did not like having this disease, so (after checking they were all clean and good and not going to infect the others) they up and left their town, trying to find another new clean place to live.

Fun little fact - people in those days used to believe that diseases were carried via bad smells, hence in the nursery rhyme ‘ring a ring a roses’ there’s ‘a pocket full of posies’. Glalis founders were no different and were looking out for strong but sweet smells to overpower the stench of disease.

O hey this cavern down here has a bunch of glowing blue mushrooms that - woah, they smell really really sweet heck man let’s just set up camp down here.

So they did. And that’s how the grand little underground town of Glalis was born.

These glowing blue mushrooms are deadly - their spores, if you breathe them in, grow in your throat and suffocate you. But the spores are too heavy to be efficiently airborne, so you literally have to stand next to them and breathe heavily to be infected. They’re harmless as long as you’re wise about them. So they still grow there to this day, carefully sanctioned off and controlled.

Until I decide on an actual entrance, please assume this image from Undertale is the entrance to Glalis because art is dead and I’m not original sometimes.

‘They’ve only been underground since the 1300s? But you said that they have white hair, evolution doesn’t happen that quickly’ oh hey cool you read my comic sans powerpoint that’s very cool of you. You’re correct in all aspects of that: if they progressed through time like all of us, I don’t know how quickly they’d get white hair.

Good news for me, Glalis (and by default, Sonder) does not follow linear time. The way I described it is that they’re stuck in a bubble, which bounces through time (and space, but only in the UK, primarily England. It did show up once in Ireland, actually, but let’s just assume England). One day it could touch down in the 1400′s, the next in 2200. As long as there’s land to... land on, it could appear anywhere. And no, the land does not need to encompass where Sonder/Glalis would fit. It could appear on the little patch of grass outside your house. Space is weird.

As a result of the time issue, Glalis citizens could have been underground for thousands of lifetimes already, so I’d say the white hair has reason to be there and it’s not just me making up reasons for my antagonist to have white hair because I couldn’t decide on a hair colour.

‘Alright, whatever you weeb. You said Glalis was founded in the 1300′s - what about Sonder?’ wow, you’re really asking good questions today, reader, thank you, you make my job easier.

Sonder came later, in the late 1800s - the era of the Industrial Revolution and stuff. These kids were escaping the horrific working conditions (a bunch of those damn proletariate) and happened to stumble upon Sonder. They went ‘ehhh alright’ and set up shop.

Obviously, outside time means nothing to Sonder, so maybe they’ve been there for thousands of years - but they arrived after Glalis citizens had started to commonly have white hair.

It still took about six (nonlinear) months for Glalis and Sonder to first have contact, which was instigated while a party of Sonder people was setting up a farming location and a party of Glalis people were going above ground to harvest some of their crops. It was a big !!!!! fest, but eventually, the two towns sat down and talked through things.

One major thing they decided on quite early on was the splitting of food. Sonder would grow crops above ground because they enjoyed it and weren’t scared of the germs of the open air and also they had sunshine which is kinda needed for crop growth, and Glalis would rear animals (adding the animals that Sonder bought with them), as there’s a lot more room underground for the animals, and although they like it, animals don’t need sunlight to survive. They would share the food between the two populations, as organised by Sonder. So if one town underperformed in terms of producing food, they’d still get the same amount as the other town, and both would go sort of hungry for a year but wouldn’t starve.

‘Wow you put a lot of thought into that Trade - why?’

Sonder is a big meanie sometimes.

Also, fun fact, Sonder was a perfectly normal start-up town until Glalis made contact with them. They infected Sonder with the Weird, and Sonder did not know how to react so had to learn from Glalis.

Glalis was very kind and taught them how to survive the Weird, but they also threw in a few pranks. Rain is illegal in Sonder because Glalis said it was dangerous. It’s not dangerous, but Glalis isn’t going to tell them that anytime soon because it’s hilarious.

‘Well that’s interesting and all - crows? You mentioned crows? I like crows’ I also like crows they are very cool and also very smart.

Glalis, coming along in the 1300s as an escape from the Bubonic plague, is a town full of superstition. I’m sure one image you all know from the Bubonic plague era is that of the plague doctor:

What a cool mask. Well! Glalis saw that and went ‘huh that kinda looks like...’

‘Well, we better be nice to them and they’ll protect us from this terrifying plague.’

So they did. And crows, being the smart little nuggets they are, recognised that people in this area, and eventually, people with white hair, feed us, so we like them.

They’re semi-tame to citizens of Glalis at this point. If you’re in Sonder and you hear a crow, there’s probably an underground visitor nearby. Even in more recent years when Glalis has been struggling with food, they still bring a little bit out for the crows each time.

So yeah - the crows like Glalis people. Or people who feed them. Or both.

(awh look he’s smiling for once what a happy kid)

‘That’s pretty neat man. You mentioned masks underground - how did they come to be a thing?’ I have two answers for you, but we’ll go for the one that’s relevant to the story.

Masks are cool. Next question.

‘Trade you have to answer it you can’t just put stuff in your book for no reason’ I can and I will so don’t try me.

‘Alright, fine, whatever. You also mentioned ice skating?’ I vaguely mentioned ice skating in this post yes you are right. Ice skating is quite a big thing underground.

As seen in the map that yes, was painted, and no, I’m not the best painter but it was fun, there’s a big ol’ lake underground. It’s shaped like a whale and that is deliberate. Does it have meaning? No. I just like whales.

Anyway, underground = cold place. Cold place = water freezes. Water freezing = ice lake. The lake freezing is a hugely anticipated and celebrated event for Glalis, and midwinter is a time of great joy. Meanwhile, Sonder celebrates midsummer as an indication of the harvest about to start.

As a result of the freezing lake being so crucial to the culture, most people are good at travelling on ice, because, in winter, it’s a lot quicker to travel across the water than going around it. I would say that soldiers even train on ice because if you can win a fight on the ice you’re a lot more likely to win when not on the ice.

It’s never a big deal though dw dw dw it never comes into play within the book, not even once. Nuh-uh.

‘Okay so Glalis was cut off in the 1300s roughly - I’ve seen pictures of Andy with a gun and also red hoodie? What’s up with that, that’s too modern and also your book is set in England how did he get a gun’ are you referring to this picture

Yes? Yes. Cool.

So yes, Glalis/Sonder jump through time. As a result, people from all different time periods have stumbled onto Sonder. Not many, but a few. Mostly they’re deposited back into their own time when they leave. Sometimes they’re not.

When they do stumble into Sonder, all dangerous items they have are taken away. Mobile phones are included in this list, due to the fact they literally explode when in Sonder. These items are often stored underground because, once again, more room.

Sonder and Glalis also rarely visit each other. So although Sonder goes ‘hey don’t touch this stuff okay’ and Glalis goes ‘alright’ they still do it and they know they won’t get caught out. So Andy gets a snazzy hoodie. No, that’s not me reaching for an answer because I gave him clothes before I gave him a home, shut up.

Also in regards to the gun - they were banned in 1997, after the 1996 Dunblane school massacre. There’s every chance that the towns popped down before that point and someone wandered in who happened to have a gun. Heck, farmers are still allowed guns in England, the just have to be careful. Maybe it was a more recent find.

‘Wow you’ve really put a fair bit of thought into this, you nerd. Can we get one for idk Sonder itself?’ no, the summary for Sonder you get is the actual book. Sam - our narrator, the cool kid feeding the crow in one of the above pictures - spends a lot of time in Sonder and not enough time in Glalis. She records everything she finds out. You can find out with her.

Fun fact: I only like crows as much as I do because of this book

Tag last: (holy heck I have one of these now that’s exciting) @joyful-soul-collector

#writing #am writing #my writing #worldbuilding #writerblr #writeblr #writingblr #sonder #glalis #this got a lot longer than I thought it would #school shooting #school shotting tw #it's only a minor mention but uh #I'd rather be safe than sorry #also can I just say I'm very pleased with how I drew those crows #in the picture with Sam and Andy #like wow #nice job me

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aj-vincent-roleplayer · 5 years

Text

Prank War of Epic Proportions

Written with the help of @thotymusprime It’s pretty long, kinda N/S/F/W, and involves our fallout 4 ocs. It’s a ball of fun. Put under a tag so no one has to read it if they don’t want!

Sally looked at the basket of sweets on the table. She noticed a note, written in an unknown handwriting. She picks up one of the cookies and looks at Jonesy, “Who are these from?” she asked curiously.

Jonesy looked up from his book and shrugged, “I don’t know. They were here when I got home. I haven’t tried them yet,” he says and stands.

She hands one to him, “Well, let's try them together,” she says and smiles.

He nods and grabs one from her. They both take a bite of the cookies, at first it seemed fine, then Sally’s face twisted and she spits the cookie bite into the trash can, “Oh gross! What the hell?”

Jonesy soon followed suit, “Ewwww, someone put way too much fucking salt in these,” he says and goes to brush his teeth.

Sally groans, her day now ruined from the disappointment of not having any cookies, “God damn it, I’m going to kill whoever did this!”

A few days had passed, and Jonesy and Sally were planning a light-hearted and fun prank. Well. It was a fun prank for them to play out, not for Minerva and Abby, though. Sally had been absolutely sure that it was Minerva and Abby pranking the two, so she suggested setting a stack of cups of water onto a doorway for one of them to walk into.

It had taken a little while to set up the cups, fill them all up, stack them up, and for the cups to be transferred onto the doorway. Hell, not even a chair was enough for the height, so Jonesy had to lift up Sally so that she could get up to place the cups in the doorway.

And now, the master part of their plan was about to occur. Jonesy had set up a camera in the hallway to see whenever someone walked through the door. Sure enough, hours later when Minerva and Abby came home from a romantic and spicy dinner date, Minerva was the first one to walk through the door, the cups falling down, spilling water all over her. As Sally and Jonesy began to laugh their asses off, Minerva screamed in fury. “FORREST, I’M GONNA COME KICK YOUR ASS!”

Sally high fived Jonesy as the pair laughed their asses off. “Whoooo! We didn’t even get caught!”

Minerva was fuming, had been for a couple of days now. Abby found it cute but helped her plan out something simple. They had to get Deacon to help for it, but they managed to get a lot of cardboard cutouts over the span of a week and began fiding them around Forrest and Phoenix’s home. They would watch the events unfold from the fields that were right next to the house.

They giggled as they set up the last one, a shark cut out in the bathroom. They got to work in the tato plants, being as unsuspicious as possible.

When they heard Phoenix scream like a little girl, they couldn’t help but giggle delightedly. Forrest came out of the house, he looked a bit pale and just as pissed as the fuming Phoenix right behind him. They storm over to AJ’s and Jackson's place, leaving the girls laughing loudly.

Now, of course, AJ and Jackson had no hand in the prank pulled on Forrest and Phoenix, and they were none too happy to be yelled at by the two angry men. Jackson devised a simple plan with the help of his brother while AJ was away on a job. Together, Jackson and Jonesy came up with a simple plan. It took awhile for Jonesy to make the small device that would beep loudly and at random times, making it impossible for whoever was in the house to find or shut off. Jackson’s plan was a bit simpler, he snuck into Forrest’s bedroom one day and replaced the mans larger condoms with ones that were incredibly small. He snickered a bit and left the room. He knew he wouldn’t be able to see the aftermath of this one, but it was still pretty funny to him.

Jonesy went to work placing the device. It was hidden under the bed, it looked like a small beetle, not something you’d know was there without looking for it. Jonesy grinned and left it there, hearing the loud beep that lasted about 15 seconds. He left the house, satisfied with his work.

Forrest and Phoenix returned home after a date of theirs, just like Minerva and Abby had. First of all, the beeping noise. “What the fuck is that?” Phoenix asked, confused and wondering whether he was just going batshit. Forrest only shrugged before unwrapping the condom left on the dresser.

“Ey. Waitaminuteeee.” Forrest put his hands on his hips. “This shit is like, way too fucking small, Phoenix, did you put yours on my-” Phoenix gave him a look. “Alright, nevermind.” Phoenix scoffed. “Great! We have that fucking beeper thing, someone did that, and those fucking cardboard cutouts! Who’s doing this fuckery?” Forrest put a hand on his face. “We might not find the people who did it, but for one, the cardboard cutouts were definitely Abby and Minerva.” Years of hanging around Minerva would tell you that, anyway. “And for the beeper and uh.. The other thing, probably multiple people. So why not kill two birds with one stone here?” Forrest grinned, causing Phoenix to laugh. “Alright, you’ve made up for that already.”

As the two guys masterfully planned their prank, Forrest went to go bake cupcakes filled with toothpaste while Phoenix set out to wrap literally everything Abby and Minerva owned with cling-wrap. Everything. The bed, the dresser, the chairs, hell, even the tables were all covered in cling-wrap. Phoenix grinned. “Hell yeah.” Then set off.

Forrest baked the cupcakes, only to fill them with toothpaste instead of frosting. It was a hell of a mess, and took like, four tubes of toothpaste, but soon, Forrest’s little creations were done and smelled pretty good. Placing them on a nice plate and adding a little note that said, “Here! Thanks for helping us with that a few days ago..” then the handwriting switched to something unreadable. Lastly, he set the cupcakes on AJ and Jackson’s doorstep, and some on Minerva and Abby’s as well.

Now, of course, living in between Jackson, AJ, Abby, and Minerva, meant that you could hear the screeches as they for one, bit into some good ol’ toothpaste cupcakes, and two, hear their reaction as they come home to everything wrapped in cling-wrap. Alas, for the next few hours all Forrest and Phoenix heard was that shrill noise of cling-wrap being ripped off of furniture.

Abby was angry now. She was annoyed. Minerva wasn’t much better off and wanted revenge as much as Abby did. Abby stormed to an old factory, wanting nothing more than to find something that would give the best revenge on AJ and Jackson, who she was sure who caused this. Minerva was left to clean up the entire mess.

When Abby returned, she had a wide grin on her face and a large bag of jars. Minerva looked at the jars of glitter and grinned, “We need Jonesy’s help for this,” she says and stands.

Abby nods in agreement and they walk over to Jonesy’s workshop to explain what they wanted.

Jonesy was more than happy to help prank his idiot brother with some glitter bombs. So the three of them got to work.

It a long time, nearly 2 weeks to get all three bombs working properly. Minerva and Abby hid them in plain sight, one in the fridge, one in the bedroom, and one on a table, but they made sure that they would be a few days apart.

The first one, the fridge one, went off when Jackson went one night looking for a snack. Took a few hours and a grumpy AJ to get all the glitter up. The second one, in the living room, was actually set off by AJ’s cat, so AJ and Jackson came home to a terrified and glitter covered cat and glitter all over their living room. Again, hours of cleaning.

The third one was the most satisfying. Abby personally delivered it via an open window and set it off while AJ and Jackson slept. Then added fuel to the fire by spreading the extra glitter all over their bathroom.

AJ and Jackson were pissed. And rightfully so.

Forrest and Phoenix were feeling awfully funny lately, and who better to try and test their new plan on Jonesy and Sally? After, Phoenix and Forrest were sure it was them who planted that machine, Jonesy was the only one smart enough to do that, anyway.

Once Sally and Jonesy were gone one evening for whatever reason, Phoenix and Forrest snuck in, arms full of Wonderglue. The pair spent the whole night gluing down every single piece of furniture that was moveable upside down. The chairs, some tables, and even the bed was flipped. The two laughed their asses off as they ran off, high-fiving and giggling like a bunch of middle-schoolers.

The very next day Forrest and Phoenix awoke to very confused yelling, screaming, and loud bangs of furniture being ripped off counters and such. “Who the FUCK did this? I will personally kick everyone’s ass!” Sally yelled as she flipped over the couch. “Jesus.. How long did this fucking take them-” Jonesy muttered before Sally cut him off. “Jonesy? We’re getting back everyone for this.” Although Forrest and Phoenix were too busy laughing over Sally dropping another piece of furniture on top of Jonesy earlier, the two would never be prepared for what was to come next.

AJ was fuming from the glitter. She still had glitter in places she never thought she’d ever have glitter and Jackson was in a similar state. She wanted to get those girls back and harder than they got them. AJ grinned and remembered a stash of balloons she found while out one day. She grabbed them, some flour, and some food coloring. She explained to Jackson what her plan was and they set off to work. It took a grand total of three and a half hours to get all the balloons filled with the aid of a bike pump. AJ and Jackson filled several dozen of them with various colors of flour.

The taped them all over Minerva and Abby’s house, on doors, the ceiling, on walls, on counters anywhere they could. It was wonderful. And the next morning when the sound of loud pops and screaming filled the air? 100% worth it for AJ.

While the glitter fiasco was being set up, Abby had found some googly eyes in the factory. She came up with a brilliant prank for Jonesy and Sally. She and Minerva got some glue and began gluing the eyes on anything they could find. On the dishes, food containers, tv, bed, everywhere. Of course, Jonesy and Sally did literally nothing, Minerva and Abby just thought it would be funny to see them freak the fuck out. And that they did. The evening Jonesy came home with Sally was a night that wouldn’t be forgotten. Seriously! There were googly eyes everywhere. Like, fuck man, did anyone NOT care about their furniture being ruined? Seriously, some of these guys were very inconsiderate, atleast Jonesy wasn’t causing permanent damage, but fuck, all of that glue would leave some marks.

It was time for the final, the most harmful prank of all. If these thots wanted to destroy furniture, Sally and Jonesy were going to destroy them. Grabbing two condoms, Jonesy went to go put a little bit of hot sauce inside of them, then putting it back. Sure. It was an asshole move. Sure, he’d literally be beaten the fuck up after, but by God was this going to be great.

While Jonesy worked on putting the condoms back, Sally had slid into Minerva and Abby’s house, making sure to put hot sauce in every single open jar of food, or every open bottle of water or milk, then set off.

Forrest and Phoenix were the first to discover the hot sauce. They just wanted a relaxing night when Phoenix complained about a strong burning sensation. Forrest had felt it too. The burning didn’t go away for nearly three hours.

Abby and Minerva found it next, while they were cooking. Abby had started nearly crying as she ate because of how spicy the food was. Minerva, being concerned for her girlfriend, tried the food as well and nearly choked. She and Abby tried to soothe the burn with milk, only for that to be spiked too. They had to throw literally everything out.

AJ and Jackson were the last to discover it, but they got it the worst out of them all. Since AJ had been gone on a job, they didn’t discover the hot sauce until it had been sitting for a very long time. AJ didn’t have it too bad, but Jackson, Jackson was damn near in tears and had to see a doctor only to be told it was hot sauce in the condoms. Jackson was fucking pissed and AJ was more concerned than anything. And there sat Sally and Jonesy, laughing their asses off, literally crying. The two shrieked and laughed like hyenas while everyone around them crumbled before them.

The next day, however, wasn’t too much fun. It was short to say that Jackson, Forrest, Phoenix, and Minerva found out about what mostly Jonesy did. And no, he didn’t want to talk about how he got a broken nose, and yes, that gash on his forehead was stapled together, and no, of course he didn’t tell Sally.

#Fallout 4 ocs #Fanfic #slight n/s/f/w #Fun #Pranks

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jinshexedupworld-blog · 6 years

Text

Kdrama actor and Kpop artist confession. If you’re a fan of any Kceleb PLEASE READ ALL THE WAY THROUGH

Edit: I was pretty direct in my original post but after some thought I have gone back through and censored the actors and artists names just a bit. I have a story to tell. Not sure anyone will hear it. Not sure they will believe it or even care but I’m going to tell it anyway because I have to get this off my chest. I studied for a couple of years at uni abroad in Korea. Koreans for fucks sake are some of the most antisocial bunch if you’re a foreigner I have to say. But thats not what this is about. I happened to make friends with this one guy, Andrew. He is part Korean but also had lived in Britain somewhere or other too so he was more welcoming to me. Seeing as he was almost my only friend there we quickly became close. Nice guy, a bit on the quirky side and didn’t talk much about his personal life to the point it was a little odd. He was very, very secretive. In fact the only really personal things he talked about was his job, school and the fact that he was a member of the LGBT community. When we would hang out it was always at my dorm or we would meet at a coffee shop or someplace. He never invited me to his place. I even got a wee bit frustrated with it and confronted him about it one day. He got more than a little nervous at that and made all these lame excuses about his room mates being busy and he didn’t want to disturb them or that we wouldn’t have much fun there. I was a bit annoyed at this but I let it slide. He was still a nice guy after all and my only close friend there and I enjoyed him. We had fun together. He was constantly getting texts and phone calls from people he called his friends or room mates. He even had a boyfriend that I knew literally nothing about! I felt a little left out. I would ask about them or about meeting them and there was always some vague explanation about them and some excuse why we couldn’t meet. At this point I had known him almost a year and still didn’t even know their names! Not even his boyfriends name! Then one day I asked to borrow his phone and he was unnecessarily protective of it. Yea I get it we’re all weird about anyone else having our phones but come on geez I was having transportation issues , had a dead phone battery and just needed to make a quick call. Long story short I get his phone and make my call. When I clicked end his contact list pops up and theres names in it I recognize. K-idol names. A mix of actors and Kpop artists. I just figure maybe hes some kind of fanboy and maybe he and his mysterious friends use celebrity name handles. Sorry but Kpop fans can be weird and obsessive sometimes, ya know? And he’s just a college boy. Who is he going to know really? Meanwhile Andrew had been distracted by someone he knew who had approached him and they were busy talking away. So my curiosity got the best of me and his screen hadn’t gone black yet, I still had access. So I go on a little snooping spree through his phone trying my best to not look suspicious. Yes I know I’m a bad person but I’m human what can I say? I kid you not, this guy has selca pics out the ass literally probably hundreds of himself with several Korean actors and idols. I couldn’t even mentally take in all of them. I know there were many many with E♦♦ members. I saw at least one with P♦♦♦ H♦♦♦♦ S♦♦ I think his name is? The actor and Z♦♦ guy and I think there was another Z♦♦ member in one of them too if I remember right. There were many with P♦♦♦ B♦ G♦♦, a few with N♦♦ members, one with who I think was a B♦♦ member and quite several with Y♦♦ S♦♦♦♦ H♦. Even several completely random mixed up ones. I was nervous and hurrying faster than my brain can process but I specifically remember one of Andew, B♦♦♦ B♦♦♦ H♦♦♦, B♦ G♦♦ and S♦♦♦♦ H♦ and someone else I didn’t recognize sitting on a couch laughing like they were having a grand ol time. I’m not even much of a Kceleb person but that one shocked me. He had another of K♦♦ J♦♦♦ D♦♦ and B♦ G♦♦ together. And thats just the ones I seen before I got nervous about getting caught. I have to say I was officially intrigued by him though after that. And they didn’t seem like fan pics! That’s what got me most. They looked too comfortable. And they didn’t look like they were taken at any sort of event, concert, fanmeet etc. They were all in normal clothes and sans makeup, in some they even had drink glasses and looked like they could have been in the comfort of their own home. Over the next few months, Andrew did finally start talking to me about it more. He happened to be a childhood friend of a K celeb. Somehow it all snowballed from that. Now he lives with a few of them and is dating one. I won’t go so far as to say which one but he has been for almost 3 years now. I found out he hides behind a “fan” account on Twitter under the name Guksu or JongdaesByuns … or Byunz maybe or some shit like that. Or thats what it used to be at least, I can’t say for certain now. I followed him for a bit before I deleted my Twitter account. I always found it funny he hid behind a fan account for all the people he actually knows. He explained to me that he does it more so for the purpose of supporting those he knows personally and for defending them and speaking out against wrongdoings {I’ll get to that shortly}, and from what I seen he really does. And of course when you’re in uni theres always boredom and the need for time passing. And though I was never much of a Twitter person either, it certainly passes time when you’re bored to death. He’s had several stalkers on there try to expose him. Fuck knows how they even knew because he always denies or is vague from what I’ve seen. And I even got to visit his house and meet a couple of these people . Those I mentioned above, maybe some others even I’m not sure, are all associated with him. I’ve never been a huge fan of K idols myself but I was around uni enough to recognize many, many of them and know some of their work. It’s still kind of weird finding out celebrities are friends with other idols you never suspected they would be. Made me laugh myself a bit at all the stupid fuckin fanwars I would overhear at uni. Fuck if people only knew. I’m not going to say a lot of shit on here because I know how crazy Kfans are and no one will probably believe this shit anyway. Fuck I saw it for myself and I still am in shock so I wouldn’t even blame anyone. But for what its worth, I’m putting it out there. Believe it or don’t, it’s whatever. Doesn’t really change my life any either way except hoping I will feel better having put this out there. Now onto my reasoning A few months ago I had to go back home and Andrew and I had a bit of a falling out before I left . Not going to get into that but we haven’t kept in contact since. But some of the things he told me still haunts me. About the Korean entertainment industry, both music and drama. The way these people are treated. I even heard it from two of them firsthand. There is so much I want to say but I have heard horror stories about what Korean entertainment companies do to people who speak out against them. I don’t really want to risk that. But if any of you watch Kdrama or listen to Kpop I hope you will keep in mind the amount of suffering those idols go through for your entertainment. The working until they pass out or sick, then being pulled up off the ground and told to get back to work. {side story: I was at Andrew’s house one night when one of the above mentioned people called another asking for a ride home from a set because he had worked 70+ hours straight and passed out several times. } Caking on more and more makeup to hide the fact that they are deathly exhausted. The physical, mental and sexual abuse. Yes sexual. And I’m not talking about isolated incidents. I’m talking about these things being the daily lives of K actors and Kpop artists. And absolutely everything that gets said about them publicly are lies. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G-. If it’s in any way personally related to them and you hear it , then its a fucking publicity lie. Where they live and their homes are lies. The cars they drive are lies. All set up. I mean considering how crazy and stalkery Kfans are and the fact that so many of them don’t know their boundaries or respect privacy, because yes I have seen this for myself so this much I can understand. But it goes much deeper than that. They don’t date who it is told to you that they date. This is probably the biggest one. Their real dating lives are kept creepily under lock and key and the relationship rumors all of you hear are always fake. A.L.W.A.Y.S. Sometimes even marriages and family lives are fake and set up. More so if its an LGBT idol. It’s seriously crazy on the verge of psychotic how far its taken to control these idols lives. And its because everything is considered a scandal in Korea. And fans go crazy over absolutely everything and drop and shit talk their idols over the most ridiculous shit. So these places they are contracted with go to extreme measures to have complete control over what the public knows. Some of them are gay, maybe a lot of them. But hey guys in the entertainment industry are much more likely to be gay I will tell you that now. I was in theater in middle school, high school and uni for close to 10 years and I probably knew less than 5 males in it that whole time who were NOT gay, or claimed they weren’t anyway. Gay men love the arts industries. Not trying to be stereotypical but its kind of a fact. And they’re good at it! So there ya go. I know how anti-LGBT Kfans tend to be so let me tell you, get yourself the fuck over it cause you have gay idols. Probably many. You being hard on them over that is just making their already miserable lives even worse. My only real reason for posting this is to just get all that shit off my chest. I’m not doing this for attention because honestly I couldn’t give two fucks in space what Kfans think. I don’t listen to Kpop or watch Kdramas and since I am no longer in Korea I’m not really exposed to it much at all so I don’t give a flying fuck what the fans of it think of me. And I don’t care to or have time for dealing with their crazy asses. I do want people to know what their idols go through for them just because I think its really fucked up and you all should know if you actually do care about these people. I won’t be responding to any replies or answering questions so don’t waste your time. I needed to get this out there, simple as that. I have lived carrying this with me for awhile now. It gets heavy guys. Really fucking heavy. It just makes me sick that human beings have to endure slave-like lives for those companies and theres really nothing we can do about it. Fuck its 2018 and this shit still goes on. I doubt this post will even get anyones attention but I guess in the very least I got it off my chest. Edit: Yea I know I maybe just exposed him myself but I don’t even know that he’s still active anymore. I haven’t had my Twitter account in quite some time. And he doesn’t use his full name or say much on there personally anyway so I’m not too worried. And like I said, we had a falling out so take that as you will.

Also a final side note for anyone who read this all the way through and isn’t too busy bitching me out: I have seen some of them scrolling through his Twitter profile/feed/whatever before. Several times actually. So yeah they do fuckin see the things you post.

#kdrama #kpop #korean celebrities

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mysmetheatre · 7 years

Note

Since you are familiar with all the Cheritz games, how would the Nameless boys react if Eri found herself in the same position as the MC from mystic messenger? Like Eri goes to the apartment and joins the RFA suddenly without a problem.

This may be one of my favorite asks. Like? This is hilarious. This is a crossover now btw they’re all interacting with the mm boys

LANCE

“What do you mean she’s trapped in an apartment?!”

Completely blown away by how stupid Eri is

How does she always manage to get herself into such obnoxious situations?

Lord let him rest

Honestly?

He doesn’t know where to begin with this

He’s not even sure if he should go help you get out of this situation

He just wants to take a nap, honestly

But he tags along with the others because i guess he cares about you or something

When they get to the apartment because Eri gave them the address Lance just stands off to the side

MC is still there too, sitting with Eri

They look like they’re having a grand ol’ time

Saeyoung hacks into their phones and adds the messenger app on them

Then it’s just a mess of confusion and nonsense

Lance very rarely puts his two cents in

Pretty soon the boys are all put into the RFA as well

He just wanted to take a nap

Lance and Jaehee get along very well

Lord let them rest

YEONHO

He has no idea what’s going on

All the boys are like arguing and yelling at each other

Lance looks incredibly frustrated

Soon they’re all leaving and he still has no idea what’s going on

Then he notices

“Where’s Eri?”

There’s a collective groan from the group

Lance ends up explaining

No!! His precious master!! She can’t be missing!!

They get to the apartment because Eri gave them the address

MC is still there too, sitting with Eri

They look like they’re having a grand ol’ time

Saeyoung hacks into their phones and adds the messenger app on them

Yeonho just keeps sending question marks or cute messages to Eri

Really, he just sends a bunch of nonsense that doesn’t help the situation

At least it makes Eri smile

Yeonho and Yoosung get along great of course!

Yoosung teaches him how to game

Yeonho is very much a casual gamer they find

YURI

I can’t believe I have to drive all these stupid kids to this stupid apartment bc my (stupid) princess got herself trapped or whatever

He would much rather go rescue her by himself

Of course, Tei would never allow that to happen

So they go as a group because then Red didn’t want to let them go without him and Yeonho wanted to follow and Lance didn’t want to be left home alone without Eri

It was a whole ordeal

When they get to the apartment because Eri gave them the address

MC is still there too, sitting with Eri

They look like they’re having a grand ol’ time

Yuri enters the apartment dramatically

“Are you okay my love?!”

Tei gently rips Yuri away from Eri

MC looks at Eri “You have a group of lovers too?”

They bond for a long time

Saeyoung hacks into their phones and adds the messenger app on them

Yuri starts off with good intentions (getting Eri home)

He ends up arguing with Zen over who’s more handsome

It becomes a selfie-off

They grab a beer together some other time

RED

His Heroine’s in trouble!!

Wait… why are Yuri and Tei trying to make him stay here…

He won’t rest until Heroine is safe!

“I won’t rest until Heroine is safe!”

Tei and Yuri sigh and concede

Then Yeonho and Lance tag along

Red leads the way despite not knowing where they’re going

They’re going to the car, Red. The apartment is far, Red

When they get to the apartment because Eri gave them the address

MC is still there too, sitting with Eri

They look like they’re having a grand ol’ time

Red is no longer worried

Red is happy Eri is having fun ^.^

Saeyoung hacks into their phones and adds the messenger app on them

He explores all the chats features

Wow! Emojis!! How cool!

Once everything is settled, Red begs Saeyoung to make him emojis like the others have

Saeyoung concedes because it doesn’t take long

Red sends his happy emoji and proudly announces he’s the Defender of Justice

Saeyoung immediately spams the chat with emojis

“No way?!?! So am I!!!!”

They’re best friends now

TEI

What a mom

He’s the one Eri told about her situation

Tei tells Yuri he needs a ride

Yuri insists on knowing what for

Tei reluctantly tells him

And then they’re all piled into Yuri’s limo

God why are they like this

When they get to the apartment because Eri gave them the address

MC is still there too, sitting with Eri

They look like they’re having a grand ol’ time

After Yuri does his standard dramatic entrance

Mom Mode: Activated

Tei makes sure Eri’s okay

Saeyoung hacks into their phones and adds the messenger app on them

Soon they’re sucked into this RFA business and Tei suddenly wishes he didn’t have today off

It’s bad enough he has to share Eri with the other dolls he doesn’t wa–

Oh they have their own shared girl

He’s fine now

Sensing this kid has a taste for the finer things in life, Jumin takes Tei under his wing

Tei and Jumin both relish in some civil company

God what pricks (jk I love Jumin Han w all my heart and soul)

#Anonymous #nameless req #nameless hc #nameless #nameless the one thing you must recall #yuri #tei #lance #yeonho #red

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sanfranciscoyoginigypsy · 7 years

Text

im living the dream, the climax of my life 7/25/17

today was amazing. so liz slept over and it was the best. we vibe so well together and she is super pure and influential and real and just in my eyes a perfect human being to be around with. she likes jazz she plays instruments she paints- she’s very in tune with herself and everything around her. she painted me a beautiful portrait and love on a canvas i gave her. it is amazing. she wanted me to share my stories about my spiritual interactions with carlo so she can record it and she remembered i mentioned that there is a song i imagine playing when i see him in a field of grass, and she added the notes to it in the painting . she is just so great and influential and we experience and think much of the same things. i like being around her. lots of good music and laughing. she liked the songs i showed her. then i went home and was feeling poopy until i went outside and decided to write how i was feeling. i put anxiety and lack of confidence and just negativity then just didnt feel any better so i decided to meditate and i did for like 20 /30 min. i went from lotus to just hanging my headd down while i sat. it helped tremendously . i felt three billion times better. i felt like my parents were the sun and moon. creation of all creation. they are the creators of every single thing in my life. they created me thus creating everything around and within me. my mom also symbolized the sun for me, and just recently i felt my father as the moon. i shared that with them and shared a lot with my mother. just after meditating i was so high on life. i thought about who this is it this is now i am experiencing this now and everything is good and life is good and this is real this is what I'm seeing now this is real life this where I'm at just realizing this is where i am right now everything here makes sense and is normal it was like i was reborned actually in a way bc everything seemed brand new and i was confused to what i was seeing!! it makes so much sense tho bc i was just in my head and i cleared it and now I'm seeing everything as it is and realizing I'm ever so grateful for this consciousness. sundown. sunset. i shared with my dad the day i missed my flight that i like sunsets, i feel my brother the most during them.and he shared it with my mom. he invited me to go inside and see a movie with them but i shared to him i like the nature and stuff more and it helps me feel better and that sunset just has a huge impact for me and my soul feels the need to be outside during its energy of the sun passing. and today when i was in my tummy mood or not a clear head i went outside and was just writing down how i felt and he saw and asked if i wanted to spend time with them inside and i was upset so i gave a little sass and said i cant the tv makes me depressed and it just drains my energy and i feel unproductive but I'm glad everything happened bc it happened for a reason and i feel great now and after that time to myself i was the best i can be with my parents i watched tv with them and cracked jokes and just had a lot of fun and t was all pure and sam sent me a song and it was amazing i felt the singers emotion and i just felt every emotion i felt throughout the song. everything just how it was. i was fast with my thoughts and feelings.and i helped my mom with cleaning and it was great- we shared alot and she said she was thinking of me today and is aid oo like what and she said what kind of advice to give me before i leave and said that she just wanted to tell me to keep doing what I'm doing with handling my emotions and being smart and spiritual and she tied that together bc she said she was thinking about all my growth and everything and also gave me the advice to do research in everything i want to do and to do it like she noticed i had a hard time sticking to being vegan and so she said to do research and find some motivation for it and to do that everything i wanna do she is just the best and sweetest i love her so much i love us literally i felt so pure with her after meditating like when i sat next to her on the couch i was kissing all over her face her cheeks her nose and her forehead a bunch of times it wa amazing I'm going to miss her so much but we shared how people become closer to their siblings after carlos funeral like gabe and koen and liz and manuel she opened that up to me but it was good after meditating i felt exactly aligned and myself and it was just enlightening and awakening moment then i told them about how i felt good bc i was not confident in most things especially planning things bc I'm anxious about not ppl having a good time bc it would b my fault but i finally did it and all my freidsn are going to pinballz and i picked up brendon and showed him so many cool songs like the mosquito by the doors and a lot of other cool ones and he said u know so many cool songs and how do u know so many and i told him that when i find an artist and song i like i just listen to their other albums and it grows and we got to pinball and it was just fun for me and him we got quarters and did the quarter machines bc the electronics were too expensive and it was so so so fun we played like 9 rounds and i lost each one but it was so fun and i felt so great playing an old 80s arcade machines game it was so simple there was ike 3 buttons i defiantly want to go back and play on those old pinball and 90s machine games t was so fun and then john kiersten sam and brennon showed up and sam looked so damn good god damn i couldn't take it in he wore khakis and a black shirt and vans and his hair looked good and his face looked beautiful as always and i tried not to express or show any of that in person so i kept my distance but overall it wa so funny with everyone and we went to kerbey lane a 24 hour diner and nit was so fun jorge was there too it was a grand ol time and when i was saying by to everyone it was so beautiful john picked me up two times and we hugged like four times and in front of his girlfriend it is so cool he can do that and brennon gave me a nice one and jorge smacked my ass after which i totally hated and took in account that he did that and to realize it made me uncomfortable and omg me and sams good bye will always be my favorite we hugged and he just said to let him know when I'm in town again and that we have dos ee each other again and it wa sa nice hug and i got in my car and he was getting in the seat and we looked at each other and i did the like post up pose like square lets fight and he got out of his seat in the car and opened my car door and i said okay lets do this and slapped his arm and he grabbed my head and gave me a long noogie and it made me laugh so much and when he was done i gave him a huge giant wedgie it was so funny he didnt seem too uncomfortable but god damn i pulled that underwear so high-up literally like half way up his torso and he texted me later saying he lost his watch trying to untuck the wedgie haha i love sam i just hope one day our time will come and we can be intimate together and i can wake up in a bed we slept together in and wake up to him playing piano and I'm naked in his bed like i just want to be so sweet and lovey to him he makes my legs when he looks at me and he just creates and turns something on in me and i like it i like his being he is a beautiful creation i want to treat him so well i want to paint for him i want to shower him in kisses and gifts and loves and songs i want to inspire him like he inspires me all these love songs i sing for him . i want to be able to share one day all the love songs i sing to him- they're so important , each one. they all bring me back to him. driving back i go to jaremys with brendon and we see élena and kevin aka my favorite ppl ever and elena opens the door and i see kevin and run to him and give him a big hug then elena sees us and i give her one but its unusual i went to him like out of my way to hug him but i hope he feels that like my love for him bc its so special and pure and just love like i love them so much and we all sat around the wooden floored apartment and sat on these psychedelic 70s couches and started tossing out of the air dumb jokes and elena looks at kevin and says you're just a totally different person with mary and laughs and says she's the same way bc we spent a few days togeth then she hung out with her friend and kept saying dumb jokes and they just didnt get it and she had to explain that she was with me and i got that too literally being with them i feel more intone and grounded to myself bc I'm just my dumb self which makes me the same to other people i literally love my life and everyone here and now i have a flight in like 8 hours to colorado to see alea and road trip to san francisco and get dropped off and continue my life at the ashram and as a yogi and a farmer and pure and back to mediating and yoga and I'm going to practice so much music and have a kick ass job being ana astronomy tutor i am ever so grateful for this summer its been the best and i really hope i can feel this way again when i get back with the same exact people

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carina-debayle · 7 years

Photo

Serick’s Friendship

Log Date: 12/3/16

OOC Note: The text in these logs are strictly for the readers enjoyment. Anyone using the knowledge displayed within this text without the participants knowledge risks the potential of blacklisting from future communication and roleplay. Please do not meta-game!

Tags: @lightsinshadows

After the Grand Alliance I returned home to my apartment. Well… our apartment. Our home. I suppose I was still feeling uneasy after Armont and I’s… could it really even be called a spat? Our disagreement. I mostly felt discouraged, unsure of what to do or how to go about expressing myself to him. Sitting alone within our living room, the air felt dry and suffocating. And I was left to my dreadful thoughts… well, at least for a moment…

Serick Burwani kicks the door open, a brow perked as he glances about the room. “Shit. Living fancy again aren’t you?” he spies a hat on a rack and knocks it off. Replacing it with his own, more superior hat. Across his back is a large package, larger at the bottom and narrow at the top, bound in black leather with clasps holding it shut on the side.

Carina Roussos: “What in seven- Serick?! You can’t just barge in like that!” she huffs. Perking a brow toward the man, Carina inspected him some. “What brings you here…?”

Serick Burwani: “Ha! You need sturdier doors for that, girlie.” he pauses at the use of a familiar nickname, letting out a low growl. “Chasing someone down. Shitlord of a bandit. Targets caravans with women and children so they put up less of a fight. Gonna feed him his own guts when I find him.” he had a couple of daggers strapped to him, and at his leg was a pistol.

Carina Roussos: “I see… so then you’re here because?” she waves her index finger up some, a small smile spreading across her lips, “this does bring back fond memories I suppose,” she laughed out gently, taking her hat out, “does that box contain this man’s guts you intend to force feed him?”

Serick Burwani scoffs and slings the package off his back, setting it on the ground. “No. It doesn’t. Ain’t found ‘im yet, so I can’t exactly cut his guts out.” he looks up at the cake and his tail flicks to the side. He reaches up to it. “Was gonna crash here. Didn’t think you’d be here.”

Carina Roussos: “Didn’t think I would be in my own house?” she laughs with a sigh, “fortunately my daughter is out with her uncle for tonight and Armont is well… not here,” she sighs, “you’re more than willing to sleep on the couch though if you need a place to stay the night.” Carina narrows her eyes toward him as he reaches his hand toward her cake, "no touching. I’ll get my axe, don’t try me.”

Serick Burwanu stopped just before his fingertip swiped a portion of icing. “No shit huh?” he sneers at her and narrows his own eyes. “We haven’t fought in some time have we? If we ever did. You weren’t out of your sorry self-pity pile of shit state by that time were ya?”

Carina Roussos waves her hands up, “I think you may find that some things never change. Were you looking to fight?”

Serick Burwani: “Ha. Not until after I get this job done.” he waves it off and looks around for a wine rack or something similar. “Afterwards, though. We’ll see if you’ve toughened up any.” he hops up onto the counter and peers around. His boots were filthy.

Carina Roussos: “Serick! Come on, I cook food here!” she scoffs, shooing him off the counter, “you’re just like a cat,” she stuck a tongue out at him, “tell me what you want, and I’ll get it for you.”

Serick Burwani hops back and just gives the most shit-eating grin. “Booze if you got it. Ain’t had a drink in too damn long.” he takes up his package and hops over the couch, kicking his feet over the sidearm.

Carina Roussos: “I try not to carry too much 'booze’… Armont is a bit of a heavy drinker,” she mumbles, digging through her wine rack to pull out a bottle, “this is one of my own… only because I know Armont would be annoyed if I gave someone one of his wine. He is very protective of it,” she says, walking over to place it on the Miqo'te man’s belly. “This seems like a familiar sight…” she laughs.

Serick Burwani rips the cork off with a grin and spits it back over the couch. “Aye. Old times. Hells girlie, how long 'as it been?” he takes a deep swig, scrunching his nose at the taste, wine was always too fruity for him. “Least we don’t got a bunch of lizards sittin around the house, eh?”

Carina Roussos sits beside him, scooting him back farther into the back. “Yeah… I suppose. The diversity wasn’t bad, but most of the Au Ra we knew had some… issues. Not that we didn’t have issues of our our,” she sighed out with a shake of her head. “It has been a long time… I was reminiscing recently on a time since past.”

Serick Burwani: “Reminicing eh? Usually folks drink to avoid shit like that.” he grins and takes another sip. “And here you are. Married and with a kid. Lookin like you’re going to a beach. Living the life.” his package is sat across his lap, and he drums his fingers against the lid to make a hollow sound.

Carina Roussos: “Right…” she said out softly, “if I said otherwise, I’d sound ungrateful. I made Armont upset with such a statement. This new life, it’s secure. That is good. see you’re still mixed up with trouble. Must be exciting.”

Serick Burwani: “Ha. Nearly got my guts scooped out myself not long ago. Big ole ugly fucker swung an axe at me, caught me off guard.” he pats his side and drains a portion of the bottle before holding it out to her. “It’s the only thing what doesn’t bore me to tears. I’m good at killin folks, what can I say?”

Carina Roussos takes the bottle back from him, staring down at the dark green glass. “We were similiar in that aspect… as much as I hate to admit it, I am not built for a still life. That makes me ungrateful though…” she says out plainly, “I don’t pity myself though, I do feel fortunate. Security is good. I am happy you’re not dead. I don’t think you quite understand how relieved I am to see you every time… I fear every time I see you will be the last.”

Serick Burwani: “Eh, if I die I die and the buzzards get a meal.” he shrugs and flips open a few of the clasps on his case, closing them afterwards. “Wait till your baby girl’s older. Take her everywhere. Show her the world. You get your adventure, she gets to learn.” he shrugs like it was an easy decision. “Don’t settle for anything less than what you want. Gotta take it. Remember?” Serick casts her a sidelong glance, flipping the clasps open and closed.

Carina Roussos: “Yeah… you’re right,” she smiles lightly, “I just, have to be patient. It will be good I’m sure,” she glances over to him, poking a finger to his head, “I consider sometimes just going away a bit on my own, I think perhaps that will help quell my idle-unrest.”

Serick Burwani: “Ha, yeah. Leave the hubby to watching the girl. Go crack some skulls and have some fun.” he whaps her hand away and undoes all the clasps on his case. “If you ain’t careful you’ll get fat and lazy. That just ain’t you, now is it?”

Carina Roussos: “Pssh… please, I practice swinging my axe everyday. Armont has only beaten me once of six times. His brother I have beaten as well. I will say though, I have gained some weight since having Hestia…”

Serick Burwani glances her over, entirely unabashed. “Aye. That you have. Not bad weight, though. Looks to be muscle.” he nods and flips the case open. “I gotta say, though. Lots of free time when all you do is run around chasing people.” he plucks one of the strings inside the case and it lets out a nice twang.

Carina Roussos glances inside the case, “you… you’re not wrong. I do miss that…”

Serick Burwani: “Got into woodcarving. Learned to play this.” he pulls out the old lyre and pushes the case to the ground with a clatter. “Got good at knives again. Mostly I try to drink the time away, but fuck if that doesn’t get expensive.” he smirks and starts plucking idly at the strings. “Ain’t no piano. But it stands in well enough.”

Carina Roussos smiles happily, her elbows resting to her knees as her cheeks went into her palms, “easier to transport as well I’m sure…” her eyes drop to the strings, “have you gotten lots of practice in? I am not doing much at the moment if you want to play a song,” she grins.

Serick Burwani: “Practice. Ha.” a chord sounds and he leans his head back, closing his eyes. “you’d be surprised how many hunters got songs they want to share. I can’t sing for shit, though. Not since this.” his chin tilts up to show off the old scar on his neck. “Not that I ever did before, mind you.” still, he starts strumming up a song.

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Carina Roussos scoffs, “yeah… I understand. I sing for Hestia sometimes but… it’s a bit embarrassingly,” she snorts, “I have a lousy voice, smoke inhalation does that to you…”

Serick Burwani: “You don’t smoke. Could always potion yourself up a fix, too.” he shrugs and goes into the song, his voice gravel and stone as he muttered out the phrases.

Carina Roussos: “I am sure I inhaled enough to have a lasting effect… Calamity you know,” she glances down to her bare belly, scars running down all of her skin. Humming along some with the song, Carina smiled contently, “it’s nice… I like it.”

Serick Burwani stopped singing, but kept strumming on his instrument. “Heard it from a couple of other hunters. A couple what shot down any who hurt them. We teamed up to go after a bandit clan in the shroud.” his brows knit into a glare. “Had to shoot one of 'em. Wasn’t no saving them after those arrows hit their chest. Ruined their lungs.”

Carina Roussos: “I see… that is the sort of life some choose to live. A hard choice… but not for you I’m sure,” she placed the bottle down on the wooden floor, “were you friends with them?”

Serick Burwani: “Nah. They were both right pricks. Thought they were better'n me.” he scoffs and strums out a few chords. “The guy. He looked like he was about to rip my throat out with his bare hands after I killed his wife.” he shrugs and flicks a ragged ear. “Parted ways. I kept the bounty.”

Carina Roussos: “I see… that too is hard to avoid,” she stays silent a moment, her eyes moving toward the fire, “your sentiments… they start to ring through me. At times… I wish I had just decided to cut myself off from others and stayed alone.”

Serick Burwani: “ha. Too late for you now, girlie.” he shakes his head and stomps his foot on the ground, making a steady beat for a shift in chords. “Got yourself a family. Wouldn’t have done that if it weren’t something you wanted to fight for. That baby girl’s your life now. Least until she can take care of herself.”

Carina Roussos: “My daughter means everything to me… but I can’t just strap her to my back and go adventuring… I wish I could, but it’s too dangerous.”

Serick Burwani: “Then wait. Bide your time. Someday she’ll be grown and you’ll be free. Unless you got yourself another brat by then.”

Carina Roussos: “I don’t like to think of her as a burden… she’s not. I just don’t want something bad to happen to her. Unfortunately, being selfish simply isn’t an option.”

Serick Burwani: “It is. But if you pick it you’re a worse person than I am.” he looks over with a sneer. “And that’s really shitty.”

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Carina Roussos: “You’re not as bad as you think you are Serick… you’re never as bad as you think you are. If you were, well I think you would have finished me off sooner.”

Serick Burwani: “You weren’t worth the trouble before. Now? Maybe. But I’ll be damned to the seven hells before I take a momma away from her baby girl. Everyone else? Fair game.” Serick scoffs out a low laugh, tapping his boot to the floor.

Carina Roussos she laughs some, “well I guess I appreciate it. I suppose. You do know I consider you to be my friend… even if you don’t consider me to be yours, yeah?”

Serick Burwani: “Yeah yeah you’re sappy and sentimental. I know. Picked that up some time ago yeah?” he stops and drums his fingers against the side of the guitar. “Nice to know there’s someone out there what don’t hate my guts though. Even if it’s you.” his nose scrunches up into a sneer.

Carina Roussos laughs at his reaction, “gee, thanks!” she snorts out, poking her elbow against his arm, “still hate the water?”

Serick Burwani grumbles and shoves her back. “Aye. That ain’t something you get over. Least when I was with the pirates they didn’t swim either.”

Carina Roussos: “I guess… I mean I couldn’t swim for the life of me either until Hito taught me… I’d say some things are surmountable.”

Serick Burwani: “I don’t do enough growing. Let me drink and smoke and fight and enjoy the shit I enjoy without trying to drown me.”

Carina Roussos smirks, “yeah… I suppose that’s just who you are. Oh well… so long as you don’t end up dead too soon, I’m happy with how you are. Not that I know you care,” she leans back against the couch, playing with her jacket, “guess Armont’s isn’t coming to get me tonight… probably got caught up planning for his House’s expeditions…”

Serick Burwani leans forward and sets his guitar into the case, snapping it shut and pushing it forward with his foot. “I don’t got any plans to die. Too much fun.” he sneers and slips off the couch himself, kicking his feet up onto the couch cushions. “Sounds like your man’s too busy playing with that stick up his ass.”

Carina Roussos: “I wish I knew what to do to remove it… even for just a bit,” she grumbles.

Serick Burwani: “I say you kick him right off that high horse he’s sittin on. Or let me do it.” he laughs and folds his arms over his stomach. “Imagine the look on his face. Gettin his racist, noble Ishgardian ass handed to him by a fuckin homeless, bounty-huntin cat.”

Carina Roussos: “Oh please Serick, he already gets beaten by me,” she snorts, “I just wish I knew what I could do to interest him… I know his work is important to him, but I’d like his attention as well,” she crosses her arms, sinking into the couch seat.

Serick Burwani is quiet for awhile, his eyes closed. “Like what I used to give.”

Carina Roussos opens her mouth some, before shutting her mouth choosing to not respond to that. “He’s just a busy man…”

Serick Burwani chuckles at that. “Remember. Gotta take what you want. If that’s his attention, gotta take it from him.”

Carina Roussos: “Yeah… yeah, guess the who self-deprecating aspect of me makes that hard. Not very good at being you know… persuasive like that.”

Carina Roussos: “Oh come on!” he growls out, smacking his metal knuckles to the ground. “No more of this self-pitying crap! You’re better than that Carina. What the fuck have you been doing all this time to go back to being a piece of shit like that again?”

Carina Roussos winces some, frowning, “it’s a scar of mine that can only be covered… never really fully healed. You of all people, should understand that,” she leers toward him, “I’d say it’s gotten better, but I still struggle. I try not to let it win though,” she laughs softly, “at least you’re honest about it, I respect that.”

Serick Burwani just grumbles and flips her off. “Yeah well it still pisses me off. You keep saying crap like that and I WILL fight you.”

Carina Roussos: “Fight me then! Perhaps just the thing I need for a pick me up is a good spar,” she winks to him.

Serick Burwani taps one of the hilts of his dagger. “No holds barred. Beat the shit out of each other until we’re both satisfied that you’re not gonna dig yourself a pity pile.”

Carina Roussos: “I’m willing if you are, sometimes you just need the pity beaten out of you.”

Serick Burwani: “If I win I get that cake,” he had the most serious look he’s ever had.

Carina Roussos sighs, "fine… and if I win, you have to come and visit me again some time before Starlight.”

Serick Burwani pushes himself up and hops up and down a few times, peeling off his gloves. “We going outside or do I got permission to fuck this place up?”

Carina Roussos: “Outside,” she said plainly.

Serick Burwani: “No fun.”

Carina Roussos: “I’d rather keep my home in one piece, thanks…”

Serick Burwani: “Noooo fun!” he calls back over his shoulder, stuffing his gloves into his pocket. “We going fists, or weapons?”

Carina Roussos: “Probably safer with fists.”

Serick Burwani: “Aye. Don’t need to be bleeding each other out. It’ll get all over my cake.”

Carina Roussos: “Oh hush about the cake…” she rolls her eyes, leading them out.

Serick Burwani pulls out his knives, throwing them into the dirt a ways away. His gun is tossed next to them. “Aight. Here we go.”

Carina Roussos tugs at her gloves some, the leather squeeze as she closes her fists, “ready as I’ll ever be,” she grins, digging her heels into the grass.

Serick Burwani launches himself forward, throwing a swift right hook to her jaw.

Carina Roussos more or less eats shit as he knocks her to the side with a swift fist to her face. Breathing uneasily from the rather sudden hit to the face, spitting some blood that she tasted from her teeth more than likely cutting the inside of her mouth, Carina swiftly swung a muscular leg up toward the side of his head.

Serick Burwani let out a laugh when his first strike connected. “COME ON, I THOUGHT-” his words were cut short by a kick to the head, stumbling back while the world spun around him. He blinks and shook his head to settle his vision before hopping forward, grabbing for her hair to distract while he brought his knee up to her stomach.

Carina Roussos brings a fist back, stepping back to avoid his hands before launching her fist forward to him back in the jaw. “Best not be talking shit before the match is even over! Three hits, Serick!”

Serick Burwani was off-balance from the failed attack, trying to bring his arm up to block the strike. Seems he’s gotten slow in his time away. The fist connects and knocks him to the ground, bringing a loud laughter from him as he un-crumpled himself from the ground. “Atta girl! Now you got some fire back!” Legs coil beneath him and he launches towards her, shoulder aimed at her diaphragm in a shoulder tackle.

Carina Roussos topples back as a loud crack was heard. Seething through her teeth painfully, Carina’s eyes lit up in ferocity as she fought through the burning pain in her shoulder to bring her legs up to kick Serick harshly in the chest to send him back.

Serick Burwani was indeed sent flying back, his own ribs cracking in a couple of places from the rage-fueled kick. He coughs and sputters, laughing on his back in some twisted, pain-laugh combination. “Fuckin hells. Thought we were tryin’ to avoid killing each other.” he rasped out, staring up at the sky.

Carina Roussos: “You aren’t dead are you?” she grunts, “I win, besides… you know you like this sorta stuff,” she groans out painfully as she sat up, staring up at the sky, “fuuuuuuck!” she yelled out, taking a deep breath and exhaling it out noisily, “that was… that was good…”

Serick Burwani coughed out another laugh. “Ain’t dead yet, girlie. Gotta try harder than that. He waited for a time before trying to sit up, wincing and twisting his lip up into a snarl, showing off his chipped fangs. "Now. Don’t pull this shit again you hear? You got too much business to take care of to whine and cry to yourself.”

Carina Roussos: “Yeaaah… yeah… you’re right,” she takes a few deep breathes, looking up at the sky, “you know.. dusk is my favourite time of day… just between day and night… it gives me such a strange feeling and it feel so fleeting.”

Serick Burwani looks up to the sky, one arm held to his side, the other scratching at the scruff on his chin, sliding down his scars. “Like taking just the right shot. Only got a moment and it’s gone. Aye. I know how ya feel.”

Carina Roussos: “It’s nice… I wish it lasted longer. Seems the good moments in life are like that. Come and go so fast…” she exhales again before painfully standing to her feet, “well probably broke my collarbone some, but that’s not something a potion can’t fix,” she smiles toward the Miqo'te man, “thanks, Serick.”

Serick Burwani scoffs and flips her off. “Well fuck you. You broke my ribs.” still, he breaks out a grin and turns back to the apartment complex. “If I don’t take one'a your potions, can I still get the cake?”

Carina Roussos: “You can have a slice of cake and a potion, how about that?”

Serick Burwani: “that’ll do girlie.”

Serick Burwani: “Your potions still taste like fried marmot asshole?”

Carina Roussos: “Yeah, pretty much.”

Serick Burwani: “Fix that.”

Carina Roussos grabs two vials filled with a light green substance, returning back into the main area, “afraid they have their purpose,” she tosses him one of them, “will still probably have some bruising, but it will heal anything broken.”

Serick Burwani had a knife out, nearly to the cake, “Oh yeah. Should wash it down with this.”

Carina Roussos narrows her eyes toward Serick, “I will cut your cake, I am sure your idea of a slice is half the cake,” she scoffs.

Serick Burwani scoffs back and snatches the potion from her hand, downing it with a scrunched nose. “Fuckin hells that’s awful.”

Carina Roussos: “Yeah well, that’s medication for you,” she moves over to the cake, cutting him a decent sized slice with a nearby knife. Placing it on a plate for him, she offered it to the man, “want to take Hestia’s bed since she’s gone for the night?”

Serick Burwani takes the cake and goes over to the fireplace, laying down with the cake balanced on his chest. “Naw. I’ll sleep here…

…Hey.”

Carina Roussos: “Yeah?”

Serick Burwani: “Remember that time I hadn’t slept in like, a week and passed out in the main room. Some big fight broke out and I woke up all bruised up?” He was eating the cake with his hands. Like an animal.

Carina Roussos: “I suppose… you got into a lot of fights. Why, were you thinking about it?”

Serick Burwanj: “Naw. Just sleeping in front of a fire reminded me of that. What a pile of shit eh?” He sneers over at her. “I’m gettin old.”

Carina Roussos: “Oh hush up… if you’re getting old then I am too…” she spat back in annoyance, “it’s not like I was much better… remember when I’d sleep under my desk instead of in a bed? We weren’t that much different you know…”

Serick Burwani: “Ha. Yeah. What a child,” Serick knocks the plate off onto the ground, lucky to not have it break, and pulls his hat onto his face.

Carina Roussos brings her boot up, pressing it to his head, "what’d you say…” she asked through grit teeth.

Serick Burwani grumbles something and waves her foot off. “Said you come a ways since then.”

Carina Roussos: “That’s what I thought,” she 'humphed’ removing her boot from him as she reclined against the couch cushion quietly, “there were a lot of places you probably could have gone to… did you at least come here to see me?” she asked softly.

Serick Burwani didn’t say anything. Didn’t think he’d have to.

I think… things would get better. No. I believed they would.

#journal #serick burwani #rorick aster

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Loki Episode 2 Holds Out for a Hero and a Villain

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This review contains spoilers for the second episode of Loki

Loki Episode 2

“Up where the mountains meet the heavens above. Out where the lightning splits the sea. I could swear that there’s someone somewhere watching me.”

When Marvel’s Kevin Feige discussed Loki’s evolution recently, he noted that “putting Loki into his own procedural series became the Eureka moment for the show.” This became a talking point between fans because Loki was simultaneously hyped as another “six-hour movie” and the two concepts seemed to clash a little. Would Loki’s overarching story blend well with elements of a crime procedural?

The first episode of Marvel’s latest small screen project gave us a little good-cop/bad-cop stuff, with some interrogation room tactics weaved in as Owen Wilson’s Mobius M. Mobius went down the “get inside the mind of a killer” route, and the second episode of Loki continues to embrace the procedural vibe.

A fairly traditional teaser sets up episode 2 as C-20 (Sasha Lane from American Honey) and her squad of TVA Hunters arrive in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in the mid-80s to investigate a reported Variant on the loose at a renaissance fair. The team is ambushed by the Minutemen-murdering Loki Variant mentioned by Mobius at the end of the last episode, and Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” accompanies the rest of the scene in what may or may not be the most extremely online deep cut I’ve ever seen.

TERRIBLE MISS MINUTES IMPRESSION: Hi there! You may be asking yourself what a “teaser” or “cold open” is! Let me get you up to speed. A teaser is a narrative technique used at the start of a TV episode to intrigue the audience just enough to stay tuned. In crime procedurals it’s usually the first building block of that episode’s mystery. A good cold open makes us feel compelled to stick around and find out “whodunnit,” why, or how!

Back at the TVA, Loki is learning – or half-learning – about what happens when a Nexus Event passes the red line and they can’t reset it: the destruction of the Sacred Timeline. During the lesson Miss Minutes acts as a Gal Friday who Loki has little appreciation for despite her enthusiasm, and she ends up calling him a jerk. Which he absolutely is. Nevertheless, the scene is delightful. If there has to be a Who Framed Roger Rabbit? remake in our future, put Tom Hiddleston in there as Eddie Valiant and you could craft a sturdy bridge out of my suspension of disbelief.

Some specific temporal energy has informed the TVA that the Loki Variant was indeed responsible for the ambush on C-20’s team. The Hunters are used to dealing with Loki Variants – apparently they prune Lokis “almost more than any other Variant.” Slippery little bugger though he may be, this stands out as fairly important information. Are these Variants like raptors unwittingly testing the fences? Also, can we take a guess at who might be leading the pack when it comes to Variant numbers if Loki is in second place? Keep checking the background at the TVA! We’ve already seen a Skrull and Peggy Carter.

Our Loki is being teased with the possibility that he could snag an audience with the Time-Keepers if he’s useful enough, leaning into the tried and true cop show “you could get immunity or a reduced sentence if you cooperate” trope. Loki buys it, but it seems incredibly unlikely that this is anything other than manipulative bullshit on Mobius’ part.

We also get to spend a little time alone with Mobius and Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) in this episode. The pair have clearly known each other for a long time but Renslayer now has the unenviable task of riding the line between boss and pal. She’s steady and calm, but you can still envision her as Loki’s own police chief: laying down the law with Mobius, calling him a “loose cannon” for allowing Loki into the fold, and asking him to turn in his badge and gun – or whatever the TVA equivalent is.

His interactions with Renslayer are perhaps supposed to be charming but they’re actually kinda unsettling, though I can’t quite put my finger on why just yet.

Mobius emerges from the meeting even more determined to see Loki pick up the pace. He tries to out-manipulate the manipulator with his firm but soft-spoken psychology by telling him that the troublesome killer Variant is a “superior version” of Loki. Our Loki is just a “scared little boy”. I mean, why are you booing him? He’s right.

Loki is put to work in the bowels of the TVA on the research beat, poring through case files and having a fun interaction with a live-action Roz from Monsters, Inc. The stakes are high here. Loki’s life pretty much depends on him finding a breadcrumb or two, and luckily he manages it during an emotional montage during which he processes that Asgard, the home he grew up in and then abandoned, is gone. And he didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.

He digs deeper into the destruction of Asgard and finds that there was no variance energy detected at ground zero and has an epiphany (mmm, we’ll come back to that, no one here is ready for more of my Miss Minutes shtick yet, least of all me) that the show seems to be hoping you don’t ask too many hard questions about.

Loki reasons that he’d hide in zero variance energy apocalypse events if he were evading the TVA, and is excited to prove himself right. Mobius is dubious, but they try out Loki’s winning theory in Pompeii just as the city is being destroyed. The buddy cop energy is strong in the scene, with Loki acting as the mischievous rookie who won’t play by the rules and Mobius as his older, weary partner.

Hiddleston and Wilson’s banter remains effortless, and I can admit that it works a lot better than Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan’s in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Maybe it’s that Wilson’s “bird noises” bit truly feels like improv being done by someone who’s good at improv – the kind of thing you’d usually see end up in a Marvel gag reel. There’s a lot of fun stuff in this episode, but just passively watching Hiddleston and Wilson’s undeniable chemistry even when they’re having an existential chat about life, the universe, and jet skis has proved to be enough for me honestly.

Speaking of which, Loki uses said chat to plant a much-needed seed of doubt in Mobius’ mind about whether the Time-Keepers and the TVA are really the good guys. I’m on his side here: all that Variant killing and near-religious predetermination has left a whole lot of blood on their hands. ATCAB – All Time Cops Are Bastards! No, wait, that’s Jean-Claude Van Damme erasure. I won’t have it.

Anyway, ding-ding, maybe these two mismatched detectives have more in common than they thought, and it all leads to Mobius having his own Kablooie epiphany.

EVEN WORSE MISS MINUTES IMPRESSION SOMEHOW: A sudden epiphany during an episode is often called a “Eureka!” Moment. The protagonist has some good evidence and the case is almost cracked! All it will take is a little bit of inspiring information to help them cross the finish line. If you’ve ever seen an episode of House, you may already be familiar with these moments, and the look on Hugh Laurie’s face when he finally works out that it’s not lupus or sarcoidosis. Come back soon!

Mobius’ “Eureka moment” places the murderous Variant in 2050 Alabama, so Loki, Mobius, Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku), and a bunch of other Minutemen eventually find themselves inside a slightly futuristic shopping haven called Roxxcart. I love that this show could go anywhere and do anything but will just as happily cut to a file room or a barely-disguised Walmart as it will to apocalyptic fucken Pompeii.

The Roxxcart mission indeed unveils the mystery Variant: it’s Sophia Di Martino! And the credits identify her as Sylvie aka Enchantress and not Lady Loki as we may have expected.

Depending on your grasp of Marvel lore, this reveal will be quite surprising, thrilling, and perhaps confusing. Pros: we didn’t have to wait as long for this unveiling as we did for WandaVision’s Agatha Harkness reveal. Cons: no catchy theme song. But the fact that this reveal has come so early on in the series is pretty exciting – it probably means bigger surprises lie ahead.

But it’s here that the episode subverts our procedural expectations somewhat. It’s not Sylvie who is revealing her grand plan upon being discovered, it’s Loki. And she’s way ahead of him. “This isn’t about you,” she tells Loki, somewhat echoing the Ancient One’s dying words to Doctor Strange.

Again, this feels very significant. Ol’ Tilda spent a long time protecting our reality, and her successor is about to deal with a multiverse of madness in his upcoming sequel. And lest we forget how the Ancient One set that truth bomb up: “Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all.” It feels like Sylvie knows something very important that we don’t, and her own “glorious purpose” goes beyond selfish aspirations.

Loki might be a little closer to shrugging off his self-absorbed nature than Sylvie realizes. In my favorite part of the episode, he checks to make sure B-15 is okay when she’s left unconscious by her possession. This is a guy who just killed a bunch of people, just absolutely has nothing but contempt for people, and he’s concerned about the wellbeing of a Hunter who has shown him nought but derision. Loki isn’t holding out for a hero. He might just be on the path to becoming one.

Or maybe he was just lifting a weapon off her body and I’ll have to take it on the chin next week.

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1inawesomewonder · 4 years

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It was my first time in a rink since the finish of last season, back in March. I looked around the rink and took note of ‘Old Glory’ hanging on the wall, just to make sure I was where I thought I was.

Drinking coffee posed a minor inconvenience on a cool morning in the last week of summer here in New Hampshire, you know, with a face covering and all. Thankfully, I managed. Then I grabbed my camera and proceeded to do what I usually try to do, which is to capture the beautiful development of kids through sports while a stitch of unadulterated innocence may still remain.

Mostly though, it was awesome to see our hockey family, all together again. It was even better to see a team from Rhode Island playing a team from New Hampshire, in New Hampshire, on the ice in competition, with fans in the building. You will see a picture (below) that may just support the sentiment I share here. It was a really good game, and Providence scored an empty net goal in the final minute to skate away with a 5-3 victory.

Gavin Petrie (aka Rooster Peartree) scored for the Flames and the kids celebrated the goal. Oh, and they just happened to be looking in the direction of the empty seats in arenas around the country, only to find the smiling, adoring eyes, of family and friends.

Please enjoy the gallery of pictures below. The captions are not too serious usually, and I hope you like the coverage of a bunch of kids playing a kids game. Click on the pictures to open them up and zoom in if you wish. Smile, and have some fun.

Between The Pipes

#gallery-0-7 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-7 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-0-7 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-7 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

This is a story of Travis and number one two, two young players with nothing better to do, than playing at the rink, skating by, and breakaways too.

Travis in his crease to defend his castle, Number one two took the puck and run…Travis makes his livin on other people’s backhands, Number one two slipped in and put this puck away…

Travis left pad save.

Travis right pad save.

The inspiration for all of the Travis pad saves. https://youtu.be/AjtKx6BUaH0.

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Ahhh yes, good old face-off pictures. And there is no way that puck is frozen.

Everything is just a little better when the Grand Ole Flag is in the picture. And of course when the International Man of Mystery lets a shot rip, folks run for cover.

This game was so tight that players sometimes shared the same shadow.

The Flames crash the net and score a goal as a result.

The referee signals that there’s a puck in the net and a Pear Tree.

Colby was so excited that Gavin scored that he couldn’t wait…

…to drop him just for old time’s sake.

After a nice play from Jax and a Soucy shot, Teddy poked the rebound in to the net for a Flames goal.

Teddy and his opponent are baffled by the wizardry of the official playing the old “disappearing puck trick”. Works every time.

Soucy leans into a shot in a crowded section of the ice.

Cam works hard around the net but couldn’t get this one to go.

Logan “The Freight Train” McCain lets a shot fly into some traffic out front. Meanwhile, the official’s legs remind me of my early attempts in penmanship.

The Flames pulled out all of the stops trying to tie the game late in the final period.

They came so very close but could not get the tying goal.

Despite battling intensely for 45 minutes up and down the ice, the teams lined up to salute one another in lieu of shaking hands.

If this were a map, the blue line held by PHC would be Rhode Island. Center ice would be Massachusetts, and Ian would be the NH state line.

The Flames return to the ice at JFK on Saturday morning (9:50am) before an afternoon game at West Side Arena on Sunday (4:10pm).

2010 Flames Fall Short In A Battle With Providence It was my first time in a rink since the finish of last season, back in March.

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ddrkirbyisq · 6 years

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You'd think that being unemployed I'd blog more often instead of less often...but I guess it's more just that the days of me feeling like i NEED to say something about =everything= are past. I definitely remember that stage in high school where I just found it really nice, theraputic even to just type everything out as a way of processing it and to distill any of those leftover thoughts and feelings that I had. I'd like to (?) think that I am a little bit better at being able to acknowledge my thoughts and feelings as they happen and "let them pass", so to speak. Kind of like meditating, you know? Where you don't necessarily feel obligated to act upon every single thought or feeling. Speaking of which, I think I'm really feeling a lot better so far about (not) stressing out about things in general. Of course there is still an internal alarm bell (or whatever metaphor you want to use) that starts going off whenever I haven't gotten to one or more of my responsibilities for a long time, but I think it's been easier to not stress out about that alarm going off (and trust that I will be able to get to it). Perhaps more importantly, it's also been easier to manage that alarm in the first place, since I really feel like I am doing a better job of keeping up with things in general now, with letters, music, etc. Things will never be perfect and my plate will never be fully empty, but as long as I'm making forward progress I'm happy. I did some tai chi for the first time in forever the other day! It felt nice, just went out to the park after doing some stretching and such at home. I'm super out of shape of course, but actually not =as bad= as I thought, so that was nice. It didn't take a ton of time either, so hopefully that's something I can start doing randomly a bit more often. Though it is a bit less fun doing it alone compared to when it was with others. But it's sort of fun to be alone in its own way, too, I guess. Worked on a bunch of music stuff today! Got started on an interesting request to remix Gliding Dance of the Maidens, which took quite some tries to get started on, but I think I'm making headway there, yay. Also did OHC today, in which I tried to emulate puru's progressive sounds. I was eh...about halfway successful I think. I managed to get pretty tight drum sequencing, which I think worked really nicely -- I'm going to have to push this "clean" style of drums more in the future. I really stumbled on making the proper trance pluck sounds though, something which I feel like I used to be able to do but I guess I've gotten out of practice with it. After OHC ended I spent some time experimenting with that, trying to get the hang of it not only with the classic 3xOsc synth, but also with Harmor and Sytrus. I actually might start trying to use Sytrus a bit more often for this type of supersaw sound, as it's fairly easy to get a good unison saw sound out of sytrus and the filters actually work pretty nicely. Harmor can do it too, of course, but...I dunno, the UI in harmor just feels more clunky and confusing, really. Both Sytrus and Harmor are capable of doing subtractive synthesis, even though Sytrus is built for FM/ringmod and Harmor is built as an additive synth. So maybe more Sytrus is in my future when I want to play around with synth stuff...? Anyways, it felt good to be doing so much work on music. It's just as well too, since I already have a commission lined up for next month too! Xmas letters are progressing smoothly! I've gotten 25 of them done, and also took care of some birthday letters along the way as well. Only 6 more days left! I still have some of the longer ones left to do though, so hopefully I can schedule them in at good times. I still have to do my Japanese letter too, which will probably take a while, haha. Once all the letters are done I have to make sure to not relax -- need to get all the gift shopping done early otherwise deadlines will sneak up on me before I know it... Progressing further and further in Dark Souls, which has been keeping my interest pretty well! I've also started listening to the Bonfireside chat podcast (that, the "Analog" melee podcast, and Limited Resources for MtG are my 3 podcasts to listen to while driving) alongside my playthrough, which...well, I wouldn't say it's the =greatest= podcast in the world, but it's enjoyable enough, for a drive. Anyways, the main cleric character (Sayuri) has a bunch of points into Faith and uses lightning spear in addition to the Jagged Ghost Blade (currently reinforced to +4), which fortuitously dropped from one of the ghosts in new londo ruins. It's just as well too, because we spent a LOT of time down in those ruins fighting those ghosts wayyyy before we were supposed to...we ended up clearing the ENTIRE area out and got confused because there was nowhere else to go (turns out I had just completely missed the door to the lower undead burg, argh). Anyways, it's been serving really well, as it's got really nice base damage AND procs a nice bleed effect as well. The only thing is that it doesn't do too well in narrower spaces or against short or flying enemies as it mainly has horizontal slash attacks, so occasionally we'll switch to the good ol mace (one of the better weapons in the game actually) and use those vertical attacks to smash things. The jagged ghost blade doesn't have much scaling, so eventually we'll replace it with some sort of divine or just regular reinforced dex scaling weapon. Our scimitar is currently a divine scimitar although we haven't needed it yet (once we go into the catacombs, I guess?), and we just picked up a falchion so that could be a candidate. Some sort of katana would actually be great -- apparently there is an Iaito somewhere in blighttown that you can get to by jumping to a platform, so maybe that, if we end up going back there. I might just do some backtracking through blighttown (ugh) anyways, as I'm sure I didn't get everything there. I actually also should go back to the lower burg since I apparently completely missed Griggs there, lol. Anyways, we actually made our way all the way through the depths, through blighttown, and beat quelaag, rang the second bell to presumably unlock sen's fortress (?) and are now near the ruins of chaos. There are quite a few different directions we can explore go at this point, though I guess sen's fortress is the next real progress area (?). There's no shortage of unexplored areas, at any rate, as there's the bridge in valley of drakes that i don't know where it goes (shortcut to somewhere?), there's the crest of artorias door which I don't know where it leads to, and a bunch of stuff in blighttown probably. There...is certainly a lot of stuff in this game, lol. Also, we accidentally killed the Chaos Servant guy guarding Quelaag's sister, whoops! Didn't see the option to talk to him since I was holding my shield up. Fortunately that doesn't really matter all that much in the grand scheme of things, just sort of unfortunate. Wish somebody had left a message there that indicated something about that dude though. We also missed beating Kirk in the sewers -- didn't realize he was an NPC to be beaten. Whatever, there's no way to expect to get everything right on the first playthrough. My second character is a sorcery-focused int build, which is a drastically different playstyle, as she gets to really nuke things with hard-hitting magic attacks, but it requires a different set of tactics as she's sort of fragile and the magic takes time to cast, so it's tricky sometimes to find a good window of time to fire them off. I've beaten the Gaping Dragon with that character, so next is to head down to blighttown. Third character is sort of a lolzy one, just focusing on strength and two-handing huge weapons. I haven't played with that one very much at all, I think I only beat the taurus demon so far. Don't know if I'll continue, though it does seem funny to just hold really huge weapons around haha. Cleared a Space Alert mission successfully for the first time in about 3 years, which was fun! Really gotta keep your wits sharp to succeed in that game...it's still fun though. I've started playing through Hollow Knight as well! In earnest this time, as the last time I tried I didn't get very far at all. Currently just got to the Fungal Wastes...man, a LOT of attention and detail went into the art for this game, it's pretty insane how fully-featured all of these environments are and so far the different feel of all the areas is coming across really well. It's been fun so far. Things that are coming up (a.k.a. things that I have to get done, lol)...besides stuff that is not really worth mentioning (getting my flu shot at some point), I actually still might want to do a short post-mortem for Bath Time, lol. Speaking of which, there's a pretty annoying touchscreen bug, so (sigh) I probably will try to fix that up and make a new mobile build for it. At SOME point I'll have to try to actually get back to development on Rhythm Quest, though it is certainly intimidating since there is so much that needs to be done there. Besides all the content, I want to redo how the map screen works entirely if possible, maybe the main menu as well, but also have to make a calibration screen of some sort, etc etc etc. For anime, Inuyasha (lol) is on hold at the moment, but I finished off Evangelion for reals (yay). I didn't expect the ah..."change of direction" at the end of the series to be so...SUDDEN...but thinking about it, it makes sense. For some reason I expected that to start happening earlier, but it really was compacted into the last little bit. Anyways, now I'm making my way through the latter parts of Onii Sama e...which has had some quite nice episodes. I don't really know what to say about it without having to explain a lot of other things about the anime, so I won't really bother, but it has been good. Not much melee these days, but one thing that is exciting is that Rishi and KJH made it into summit! Woot! Should be a good lineup! That's pretty exciting. Also been catching up on going through random music that I've got backlogged on my drive, including Chronology (jazz rearrangement album of Chrono Trigger, it's pretty nice!), as well as Harmony of Heroes (super smash bros giant rearrangement album) and the Final Smash extension (those two didn't have that much that was to my liking, but a few things here and there were nice). As I said, it just feels nice to be making progress on things. I even went through all of my accumulated deviantArt notifications the other day, haha. I'm actually trying to get back into my habit of using my little batch script to open up a bunch of websites every morning for me to check for updates! Anyways, all of these things feel great to be going back to. I should also be putting out my "Monthlies" release for this month relatively soon too!

#Blogger

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oselatra · 6 years

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The magic of curry paste

Or: How lawyer-turned-Thai food evangelist Richard Glasgow learned to stop worrying and cook Thai food.

One of Little Rock's best restaurants serves authentic Thai food made by a white guy from North Louisiana who's spent the majority of his professional career practicing law. There's no sign in front of kBird to announce itself to passersby — not that anyone would pass by an otherwise residential stretch of western Hillcrest in search of a restaurant. The building once housed a general store and several other eateries, but with clapboard siding and a fenced-in backyard, it still looks more like a house than a restaurant. Look closely and you might see an open sign — if it's lunchtime on a weekday or a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday evening — and a painting of a flock of chickens on the front door.

Inside, you'll find mismatched tables and chairs, a parquet floor that, like many of the homes in Hillcrest, tilts noticeably and is held together by duct tape in spots. On one wall, someone has handwritten a Mark Twain quote in marker — "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness" — under a map of Thailand with a hand-drawn rendering of the Malay Peninsula taped to the bottom of it. A handful of people work in an open kitchen — chopping, grinding out curry paste with a giant mortar and pestle, or working the stockpots and woks on the stove. The lanky guy — a flurry of motion — with glasses and tattoo of a large black bird (a Mississippi kite) peeking out from under his T-shirt is Richard Glasgow, the corporate lawyer turned Thai cultural evangelist.

Glasgow treats Thai food with reverence. He's assiduous in his devotion to making it like they do in Thailand. That means always finding the best and correct ingredients — never substituting onions for shallots, brown sugar for palm sugar or ginger for galangal. It means finding flavoring agents like dok ngiew, the dried flower stamens of the red cotton tree. It means pad Thai with Chinese broccoli, longbeans and kabocha squash and no sweet peanut sauce. It means curries with enough layers of flavor to suggest mystical powers.

Some of that deliciousness might owe to the fact that kBird's curry paste gets made every day with all the ingredients mashed together with a mortar and pestle, which takes about an hour and a half. There are no electrical appliances, aside from a fridge and deep freeze, to be found in the restaurant, even though a food processor could knock out the paste in seconds.

Brandon Brown, who owned the late, beloved Hillcrest Artisan Meats and is a longtime friend of Glasgow's, has worked in the kBird kitchen for the past eight months. He said he's spent time working in nice places that made a lot of things by hand over the course of his more than 30 years in the restaurant business, but never to the extent on which Glasgow insists. "Every day I tell him to get a fucking Cuisinart and a spice grinder," Brown said. But Glasgow refuses to take shortcuts. Doing so, "for a white person making Thai food, would be disrespectful," he said. Besides, he says, a food processor slices ingredients into tiny pieces; using a mortar and pestle to pulverize ingredients causes them to bind together to create more flavor. "It's very incrementally better, but better," he said. "Hard fucking work and paying attention" is one of his mottos. (That's a Guy Clark quote about legendary Texas singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt's genius: "Everybody thought it was magic. That's bullshit. It was hard fucking work and paying attention.")

Before he started kBird, which began as a food trailer, Glasgow worked as a lawyer for Dillard's. It was a dark time for him. He bottomed out, to the point that leaving the corporate world to sling Thai food out of a trailer hidden in an alley in Hillcrest seemed perfectly reasonable. That was 2012.

Glasgow said he initially hid for two reasons: 1. As a white guy endeavoring to cook Thai standards like a grandma might in Thailand, he wanted to make sure that people came to him because they'd heard good things about the food, not because they'd seen a sign or seen a social media post. 2. He was scared he'd get overwhelmed and freak out and run away if too many people came. That plan worked out. He turned customers into evangelists themselves. The food truck now gathers cobwebs behind the restaurant, which opened in late 2014 at the corner of Tyler and Woodlawn streets. It's not unusual to drive by kBird a little after 1 p.m. and see a "sold out" sign in the window.

In 2015, Glasgow hosted his first khantoke, a reservation-only dinner featuring more than a dozen Northern Thai dishes that aren't on the menu. Each year since, he's increased the number of khantokes he hosts. In 2016, he hosted six, then nine in 2017 and he plans to do 10 in 2018. Each dinner accommodates 30-40 people. Glasgow takes reservations for three khantokes at a time. In an effort to be as fair as he can in the process, he requires people to make their reservations at 2 p.m. on a designated day. In May, on the day reservations were due for the three khantokes scheduled for the first half of the summer, the nearly 100 spaces were filled by 2:07 p.m. 'How I'm Learning to Stop Worrying and Cook Thai Food'

Glasgow grew up in Ruston and Oak Ridge, La. (he says he claims "dual citizenship"), among a family of farmers and cooks. He got an economics degree from Louisiana State University, spent nearly a decade working for a title company in Washington, D.C., and then got a law degree from Catholic University in D.C. In 2001, he and his wife, Aimée, who he met in D.C. but who is from Monroe (or "Mun-row," as Glasgow says), La., saved up enough money to travel around the world. They spent two months in Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia and fell in love with the region.

"It's like a bizarro-world American South," Glasgow said of Thailand. "The same veneer of civilization exists. You wave at everyone; they wave back. You smile at someone; they smile at you. You're constantly rewarded for being nice. You say 'ma'am' and 'sir' and 'please' and 'thank you,' and let older people out in front of you. If you try to speak Thai and you're horrible at it, people will tell you you're great. It's the same small-town kind of stuff, but just a different world. ... You ever been somewhere where you felt like you belonged, but you didn't really belong, but you were treated like you belong? It's like that."

Glasgow sees a deep connection between Thailand and his native Louisiana. He calls it his unified theory. There are distinctive regions in Thailand, just like Louisiana. Northern Thailand is just like North Louisiana, he said. It's full of rednecks, which Glasgow identifies as. "They're pork, pork, pork. They fry in lard and eat pork rinds in sauces." The people in Northeastern Thailand are "ethnically Lao, they speak Lao, but live in Thailand. They eat the hottest food. They're the poorest. They eat bugs, snakes, crickets. They have the most fun and are great partiers. They're the Cajuns." Central Thailand, the broad alluvial plain of the Chao Phraya River, where the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom was based for thousands of years, produces two rice crops every year. It's Baton Rouge in Glasgow's telling. Bangkok, the country's capital, sits mostly on former swampland. The Chao Phraya River runs through the city before emptying into the Gulf of Thailand. It's, of course, New Orleans. Southern Thailand on the narrow Kra Isthmus is like Grand Isle, La., the narrow barrier island in South Louisiana.

When the Glasgows started thinking about having kids, they picked Little Rock, a place about which they knew little, because it was closer to home, but not too close. They had a daughter, who's now 11. Her nickname is kBird.

After working for a couple of years in private practice, Glasgow spent five years at Dillard's. That company is "as much to thank for the existence of kBird than just about anybody," Glasgow said. After spending that much time in the business world, the idea of kBird was a thumb of the nose toward the corporate and restaurant establishment and conventional notions on how one starts and runs a restaurant: "You've got to have a bunch of money to open a restaurant. You gotta have a wait staff. You need to advertise. Those are all reasonable things, but," Glasgow said, that route "wouldn't have been me."

Instead, if fine dining is arena rock, a genre associated with bands in the '70s, '80s and '90s that brought big stage shows to large arenas, kBird is punk rock, Glasgow said. In his metaphor, with arena rock (fine dining), "you gotta have a big ol' band and have a loud sound, and it's gotta look good from a long way away." That all costs a lot, and means, among other things, expensive rent and a large staff, which translates into higher prices for the concertgoer or diner. "Punk came as a reaction" to that, Glasgow said. D. Boon from the punk band Minutemen said, "Our band could be your life." "They said, 'Start your own band,' " Glasgow said. "That's what I did. It just wasn't a band; it was a restaurant."

Glasgow describes kBird as "egalitarian — everybody gets the same plate of food. It's reasonably priced. It's a lot of food. Ingredients are way better than what you'd expect they are. Some audience participation is required." That means customers order at the counter that divides the dining room from the open kitchen. Though Glasgow and his staff are humping it, sometimes it takes a bit for your order to come up. The hours — 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. on weekdays and 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. Monday through Wednesday — aren't designed for peak dining-out times; they're what Glasgow can do while still spending time with his family and not working himself to the ground. Though he concedes he's "a control freak," the idea of delegating to others to run the restaurant when he's not there doesn't appeal to him. "I didn't quit a pretty well-paying job to start something out of absolute nothing to bring it where it is to not be here."

The other unique thing about kBird is that it closes for about a month from mid-January to mid-February for Glasgow to travel to Thailand. He's been seven times since 2001. He visits the Naan province in Northern Thailand, where he's made a number of friends over the years. His itinerary is to "not walk fast, talk to little old ladies and laugh," he said. He also cooks a lot and watches people cook. Last year, Glasgow got to be one of the first farang (white people) to stay overnight in a remote Northern Thailand village thanks to a Thai friend who works in tourism. Several years back, during one of his trips, Glasgow went to the market one morning to buy supplies for breakfast. He's somewhat conversant in Thai. When he was paying, he said he told a woman selling groceries at a booth, " 'Today, I'm making rice curry.' She said, 'No pay.' It was like, 'You understand this; you can have it.' That's why I'm so excited and excitable [about Thai food and culture], and also why I'm so very worried about not being respectful. I want to do right by these people. It's not a question of my integrity. These people changed my life. I've learned so much about myself and my life in this adventure." If his life were a movie, in a nod to "Dr. Strangelove," Glasgow joked it might be called "How I'm Learning to Stop Worrying and Make Thai Food."

"All of this is an effort to become integrated into Thai culture, so I'll begin to understand their mindset and somehow it will rub off on me."

On his left arm, Glasgow has the phrase "baaw bpen yang" tattooed in Thai letters. It's a country dialect version of a common Thai phrase, mai bpen rai. "In Thailand, it means everything from 'you're welcome' to 'I forgive you for your actions.' It goes all the way across the board. If you're in an embarrassing situation or you've fucked up, more often than not, the Thai person will look at you and say, 'mai bpen rai.' It means it doesn't matter, what are we going to do about it now? A car wreck? Spilling some lady's stuff? Mai bpen rai. It doesn't matter. I grew up in a house where everything mattered. To have a group of people say, don't worry about it — for me, excited and anxious all the time — when another person tells you that, it means a lot." Glasgow says baaw bpen yang identifies him with the country people of Northern Thailand. "It's the 'it's all good, y'all' version."

That's not to say that philosophy has fully taken root. "Fear and anxiety" have always fueled kBird. Though he concedes that, based on the restaurant's growth, "an objective person would say, 'You're probably going to be able to continue to do business,' " he says he's still "scared to say something like that out loud." Every Monday, he remains a nervous wreck, fretting that no one will darken his door that week.

He knows he could do more business being open even for lunch on Saturday, but that would get in the way of one of the highlights of his week: shopping at Sam's Oriental Store every Saturday morning. The venerable Asian grocery on South University Avenue is teeming with essential items for all sorts of far-flung cultures that make the market, especially on Saturdays, when a new shipment of produce arrives from Dallas, as diverse of a gathering place as you'll find in Little Rock. On a Saturday in early June, Glasgow talked to or stood in line with Hmong, Viet, Korean and Filipino people. An African priest had traveled several hours for fufu powder. The owner of La Bodeguita in Hot Springs was there, making his weekly stop to buy mangoes. Jose, a longtime Salvadoran employee, greeted Glasgow: "Hey, Rich-ee."

Glasgow's list was long and different from usual because the second khantoke of the year was happening later that day. Among the items on his list that you're probably not going to find at Kroger: galangal (in the ginger family), banana leaves, Chinese broccoli, Kaffir lime leaves, kombucha squash (aka Japanese pumpkin), water spinach, quail eggs and pig's blood. Amid his shopping, Glasgow stopped to show the owner, Sam Choi, a picture on his phone of a maeng da, a giant water bug that's commonly used as a flavoring agent in nam phrik sauces. It's sold around the world packaged in plastic. Choi was sure he could get them.

The khantoke dinners give Glasgow a chance to cook Northern Thai dishes that otherwise would not appear on the menu, aside from a special here and there. For this dinner, Glasgow and Co. started preparing almost a week earlier, boiling and scraping fat off pig skin and dehydrating it to get it ready to be turned into pork rinds and crackling. Sour pork (naem heung) spent days fermenting in the sun; it's tasty and safe enough to eat that Glasgow and a reporter take bites after it's finished fermenting, but hours before the dinner, it gets steamed in banana leaves on the grill to make doubly sure it's ready. Brown doesn't work on weekends, but the other full-time staff, Chris and Jessica Shippey, come in around midday to help with prep. So does Joe Sithong, a friend with a catering background who volunteers his services. His father was Lao, but he died when Sithong was young. "I have all the cravings, but none of the culture," he said. Cooking and eating Thai food "is almost like church," he said. "It's satisfying and makes you feel better about yourself."

He mashed roasted green chili peppers, shallots and garlic in a mortar and pestle to make nahm phrik noom, a popular Northern Thailand dip that pairs with pork rinds and other meats. Meanwhile, Glasgow chopped up 12 pounds of river catfish Sithong picked up from Love's Fish Market on John Barrow Road. "I grew up trotlining," Glasgow said. "I've been knowing about this a lot longer than I've been knowing about Thai food." The fish goes outside into a giant gas cooker filled with oil — "way more than anyone would ever tell you to put in at one time." There's so much water in the fish that has to evaporate, and the frying takes almost an hour.

Five hours later, the feast is prepared and plated and the lucky dozens start filing in with bottles of wine in tow (it's B.Y.O.B; kBird's zoning prevents it from selling alcohol). Glasgow offers some quick greetings in Thai and explains what all the food is before retreating to the kitchen for beer. He'll need one and a half and prodding from Sithong before he can go mingle and answer questions.

The diners consider the feast with big eyes and big smiles. Glasgow encourages everyone to pull out their phones when the full spread is on the table and then it all gets passed family-style. There's the equivalent of about three meal-sized portions per person on the table: Sticky rice, which is steamed in woven baskets, rather than boiled. A vegetable plate with steamed pumpkin, bok choy and chayote squash and fresh cabbage, Chinese broccoli, chives, long bean, cucumber and water spinach. A meat plate with the steamed and fermented pork, the pork rinds and cracklings, fried chicken wings and muu thaawt makhwaen, fried strips of pork loin seasoned with makhwaen seeds from the prickly ash tree. Two chili dips, the green chili dip Sithong made and nahm phrik ong, a pork, tomato and chili combination that Thai folks often eat with vegetables. Two salads — one a smoky grilled eggplant topped with steamed quail eggs and the other fried catfish topped with fried basil and lime leaves. Then there's a bowl of hanglae pork curry with ginger and peanuts and a pork rib curry made with pork blood and dok ngiew, the dried flower stamens of the red cotton tree. A tower of steamed rice with pork and pork blood tastes a lot like rice with boudin rouge, Glasgow tells the crowd in case anyone knows about the Cajun delicacy. For dessert, there's coconut milk custard cooked in a tiny Asian pumpkin and a sticky rice cake topped with palm sugar caramel.

Glasgow has regulars from Thailand. One invited friends from Northern Thailand who live in the U.S. to fly in for a khantoke. Glasgow overheard someone ask her if the food was like what she got at home. "She said, 'Sort of, but with all this stuff, it's like a double birthday!" He took that as a high compliment.

But he's quick to deflect praise for the food. "I didn't make any of this up. This ain't mine. To the extent I can take what people make in Thailand and make it here, I'm good at that. I'm not a chef." If he has a skill, it's as a "food Xerox," he said. "I have a really good taste memory. I'm able to eat something and fix it in my mind and replicate it."

Going from the corporate world to opening and running kBird has been a journey, he said. Does he feel like he's arrived? "No, but I feel like I'm a lot closer than I was. I'm now in a position to get there. There's a lot of self-doubt that takes years to build up. There's an episode of 'The Simpsons,' where at some point Homer does something really great and nice and makes himself look good. And Bart looks at Lisa and goes, 'I've got this really strange feeling.' And she goes, 'Pride?' I'm still at that point. I don't ever want to be there. I don't think you're ever going to be there. That's a metaphysical question. I don't think you're ever going to be there. That's the answer to the Big Question. But you can set yourself up to make yourself happier."

The magic of curry paste

#The magic of curry paste

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