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momomoon · 11 days

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"Oh man! I can't believe I got to have a gym battle with Ash Ketchum!"

Ash could swear he saw heart eyes in the challenger's eyes as he ran out with a badge and an autograph. He waved goodbye with a laugh, Pikachu on his shoulder.

"You go easy on another challenger? You're going to ruin my reputation."

Ash grinned as he turned around. "Paul! You're back!"

"Pikachu!"

Ash grazed his hand over the panel to lock the front doors of the gym. He jogged up to Paul with excitement.

"When did you get back?" He hugged him tightly.

Paul patted his back lightly as Pikachu jumped off Ash's shoulder and onto Paul's before hopping to the ground. It ran off and called behind him.

Ash pecked Paul on the lips still grinning.

"I hear you've been giving away my badges again." Paul raised an eyebrow.

"Well, he was trying so hard you know?" Ash laughed.

Paul shook his head. "My gym is the most challenging in the region for a reason."

"Come on, Paul. We've gotta let some through!"

"And having just anyone think they can waltz in here and beat me? You must be joking." Paul scoffed and turned to make his way down the hall.

He held out his arm slightly and waited. Ash took the offer, lacing their fingers. "How was Reggie?"

"Fine. As always."

"What did he need help with?" Ash asked as the gym lights turned off behind them.

"It was more of a job for you, but I now have a spirit tomb."

"A spirit tomb? Why?" Ash asked as they made it to their yard. Ash waved as all their pokemon greeted them along with some client pokemon.

"That's why I said it was more of a job for you. The Spiritomb had been abandoned on a ranch for a few decades. It was so lonely that it attacked anything even remotely close to the ranch."

"Oh no!" Ash frowned. "Maybe Gengar can talk to it."

Paul removed a pokeball from his belt and tossed it. "There you go, oh Great Pokemon Whisperer."

Ash flushed and unlocked their hands. "Stop! You know I hate that."

Paul pulled Ash back to him and set a hand on his waist. He placed a soft kiss on his cheek. "You mess with my reputation, and I run down yours."

Paul grinned and ruffled Ash's hair, knocking off his hat. Froslass placed it back on Ash's head appearing due to interests in the newly caught ghost pokemon.

"You're so annoying." Ash patted the dirt off his hat.

"That so?" Paul smirked.

"Yeah, it is." Ash shot back.

"Have you fed the pokemon yet?" Paul asked.

"No, I was gonna do it now." Ash muttered

"I'll help."

"Thanks, but you don't have to. You're tired, aren't you?"

"Have enough energy to help my boyfriend feed our pokemon."

Ash rubbed his nose in embarrassment and felt his face heat. It wasn't often that Paul laid claim to him with labels. It always made him giddy and excited.

"Okay!" Ash hooked their arms and led them to their storage unit. "We just got a new shipment of Brock's pokemon food!"

#shinsato #comashipping #staticshipping #ash ketchum #paul #shinji

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momomoon · 12 days

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Kuwameshi Play-by-Play: The Chocolate Shake Date Scene!

Folks, I can't even begin to describe how HILARIOUS this canon scene is, coz each character in the scene is in such a different headspace from each other that it's basically a romantic comedy of errors! 🤣🤣🤣

In a nutshell: Yusuke had phoned Kuwabara for a 1-1 date before he bumps into Keiko, Keiko crashes his date with Kuwabara without realizing she's the third wheel from Yusuke's POV, then when Kuwabara thinks he's the third wheel and tries to leave, Yusuke pounces on the excuse of the tailgating thugs to escape from Keiko without having to admit to Kuwabara that Yusuke wants to be with him alone, and when Keiko realizes that Yusuke's trying to shake her off, she persists in sticking with Yusuke until he pulls out his last resort of the porn buying excuse to shake her off so he can finally get Kuwabara alone! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

It's HILARIOUS!!!

Don't quite follow how the above happened?

Let's break it down!

First we find out that Yusuke didn't contact Keiko at all in the month he's been training with Genkai, and she only bumps into him through sheer chance. This tells us yet again that Yusuke is not in love with Keiko although he obviously cares for her deeply as his found family. (Sidenote: We've already seen this via Yusuke's outraged reaction to Keiko nearly kissing his "unconscious defenseless body" in Episode 4. I also wrote about this in Chapter 4 of The Good Fight if you want more meta in fic form!)

This scene is from Keiko's POV, and since she's in love with Yusuke, we hear a romantic background music when she first spots his figure walking down the street in a bright blue light, before the figure resolves into Yusuke looking heroic and dashing to Keiko's eyes:

Guess what? The last time we saw a similar scene with the SAME BRIGHT BLUE LIGHT and the SAME ROMANTIC BACKGROUND MUSIC, it was from Yusuke's POV in Episode 13, when Kuwabara's spirit saved Yusuke from the demon fish!!!

Do you see what I'm saying here? Yusuke was already in love with Kuwabara back in Episode 13! Look at how heroic and dashing Kuwabara looks to Yusuke's eyes!

OMG I can't contain my glee!! The storytelling through the subtextual cues of lighting and background music is so masterful!

(Sidenote: I've already screamed in my Undercover Love Story meta that Yusuke actually fell in love with Kuwabara in Episode 3 and has been falling deeper in love with Kuwabara since then, so this is yet another proof point of that!)

Back to the Chocolate Shake Date! After Keiko's POV scene, it cuts to the park where we see it's 3.10pm, and Yusuke is now showered and changed and he's slicking his hair back into his usual style on the park bench with Kuwabara.

First of all, this is the 90's where no one has a mobile phone. If you wanted to meet someone, you had to call them at home a few days beforehand to arrange a date/time to meet. You can't just call them on the day itself, because people aren't necessarily at home or they may have made other plans!

The fact that Yusuke and Kuwabara met up on Yusuke's first day back means that even though Yusuke didn't contact Keiko at all in the month he's training with Genkai, Yusuke called Kuwabara while he was still at Genkai's, to arrange a meet-up with Kuwa!!!

Do you see the difference in Yusuke's behavior for Keiko his found family / sibling, versus Kuwabara his romantic love interest?

What's more, he was so eager to meet Kuwabara that he rushed to the park without styling his hair, probably coz he was running a bit late after bumping into Keiko!

No one arranges a meetup at an odd time like 3.10pm, you'd meet at 3pm! The fact that they showed us the 3.10 time on the clock and then Yusuke slicking his hair back tells us Yusuke cared so much about meeting Kuwabara that he rushed there before he was fully ready!

Suddenly we have more context to understand why Yusuke looked so chirpy and spirited when he was walking home earlier on! Yusuke was looking forward to what he thought was his 1-on-1 date with Kuwabara!

And here I just have to scream a bit about their body language! Look at how happy our boys are just catching up with each other! How their bodies are angled towards each other! How they connect with less of their emotional armor when Yusuke indirectly tells Kuwa the real reason he doesn't wanna brawl Kuwa is coz Kuwa's only just recovered from horrific injuries, and Kuwa responds by indirectly admitting to Yusuke the reason he asked for a brawl is coz he really wants to see Yusuke's new moves!

If you listen very closely to the original Japanese audio track, you can hear birds chirping in the background when Kuwabara and Yusuke are talking to each other!!! Birds are our audio / visual analogy for Kuwameshi romance! 🐦🐦🌈🌈❤️❤️

Our boys are connecting emotionally even without life-&-death fights, and I love it so much!

And here's where the hilarity kicks up a notch! Keiko's so happy that Yusuke's back, she doesn't realize that she's the third wheel from Yusuke's POV!

She crashes his conversation with Kuwa, and we see Yusuke make the classic anime hand gesture when characters are peeved at something undesirable happening:

Then we see Yusuke cover up what he and Kuwa were really talking about with the movie excuse, taking the chance to touch Kuwa with his elbow while pointing at Keiko with the peeved anime hand gesture. Here's where Keiko looks surprised that Yusuke is drawing Kuwa back into the conversation, being physical with him, and seems to be saying that he wants to watch a movie with just Kuwabara:

Keiko persists in sticking to Yusuke by joining them for the movie, so Yusuke has no choice but to agree reluctantly, since he doesn't have any legit reason why she can't join them. Yusuke still has his emotional armor on, so he doesn't wanna outright let Kuwabara or anyone else know that he actually wants to be alone with Kuwabara.

Nonetheless, we start to see that our boys are mirror images of each other from this scene onwards (people who are attracted to each other tend to mirror each other)!

Look at how miffed Yusuke looks that Keiko hasn't taken a hint to let him be alone with Kuwabara!

And even though Kuwabara thinks Yusuke and Keiko are together romantically, he can't help sounding out how Yusuke feels by telling him Keiko must have been worried about Yusuke and is happy he's back, coz while Kuwabara's still in denial about his feelings for Yusuke at this point in time (and he also thinks he can't directly express how he feels about Yusuke for various reasons like Keiko having a 'claim' on Yusuke), he is nonetheless deeply in love with Yusuke so he's subconsciously and/or very subtly sounding out how Yusuke feels about Keiko.

Also, coz Kuwabara thinks he can't express his feelings for Yusuke directly, he expresses his feelings for Yusuke through other female characters like Botan and later on Yukina (this deserves another meta of its own another time, in psychology we call this Transference).

In this instance, Kuwa's Transference manifests when he indirectly tells Yusuke how he feels by saying Keiko must have been very worried about Yusuke and is now very happy Yusuke's back. Kuwa's actually telling Yusuke Kuwa himself was very worried about Yusuke and is now over-the-moon Yusuke's back!

Yusuke reacts to this with a blush for the first time ever in the series! Yusuke didn't blush when Botan/Sayaka kept insisting he likes Keiko romantically in Episode 4, he didn't blush when he seemed to be thinking about Keiko resuscitating him with mouth-to-mouth in Episode 5, so why is Yusuke suddenly blushing now? It's certainly not coz he's in love with Keiko, we've already established that. It's coz Yusuke can sense on some level what Kuwa's really telling him! At the same time, Yusuke tries to let Kuwa know equally subtly that he's not romantically interested in Keiko with his super non-committal comment of "Oh, yeah?" to Keiko being worried about him!

My god, there are so many layers of subconscious, semi-conscious and subtextual communication happening between Yusuke and Kuwabara in just this little exchange, underneath what they seem to be talking about on the surface!

And then when Kuwa still thinks he's the third wheel and tries to do the noble thing to leave early so Yusuke and Keiko can watch the movie alone, he nonetheless uses one last excuse to be close to Yusuke with his headlock! It was a very long headlock with both our boys prolonging it as long as they can! They did not want to leave each other's arms even after Keiko calls to Yusuke from ahead!

This is when Yusuke pounces on the excuse of the tailgating thugs to make sure Kuwabara doesn't leave, without having to admit to Kuwabara that he wants him to stay!

He then uses the excuse of urgent shopping to try to escape Keiko so he can be with Kuwabara alone, without having to admit to Keiko that's what he's trying to do!

LOL what can I say, Yusuke's emotional armor is real strong, he's just not comfortable admitting his feelings to anyone at this point in time!

Kuwa initially thought Yusuke was gonna ask him to run his urgent shopping errand for him (thus his split second of peeved look), then he looks so surprised when Yusuke tells him he wants Kuwabara to come with him! This tells us Kuwa just never thought Yusuke would pick him over Keiko!! Kuwa's eyes are on Yusuke 100% of the time throughout!! And look at Yusuke using any excuse to touch Kuwabara, this time with the back of his hand on Kuwa's chest!! Ahhhh these body language tells are CHEF'S KISS!!!

When Keiko realizes that Yusuke's trying to shake her off with the urgent shopping excuse, she persists in following (she is a go-getter after all!), and this is when Yusuke pulls out his last resort of the porn excuse so he can finally get Kuwabara alone to himself!! It's HILARIOUS!!!! Yusuke was so desperate to get Kuwabara alone, he straight out implies he's buying porn!!!

OMG this is such a good romantic comedy of errors!!! Is it any wonder that the entire scene at the Chocolate Shake stand started with such comedic background music??

Who says anime isn't sophisticated in its story-telling? This is a masterclass in Show, Don't Tell subtext!

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