#No seriously when will they make a crossbones anime
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I like sans.
And here's the [comic-sans-squad] that made me burst out of laugh!!!!!!
I REALLY like them!!!
Even though they also have some issues in their mind,
they are still so funny and,,,,,, somewhat,,,,, hot.....!!!!!!
(I like when sans is depicted as older....
.....as a mature, responsible bro/sis with a great sense of humor
.........those are who i like.........)
1. Sans from undertale
I really like him.
Whenever i explore the internet,
i can easily meet him as a meme lord or something... XD
also, he is really cool & funny!!
2. Comic from under(her)tail
Seriously? Yes. She is adorable & C U T E.
And also really a cool sis that really makes me laugh!!!
Really, impressed....♡
I LOVE HER
3. Crossbones from ts!underswap
How can you resist the temptation to be a big fan of this great hero?
I couldn't.
Crossbones!!! The Starlight Savior!!! (*Loud noisy screaming)
4. Sans from Reversetale
Why isn't there any translation for this AU??? (It is written in Korean.)
If you want,
and if you have the determination to use a translator to read this AU,
*Here's the link: https://posty.pe/ponwdw
It is completed, and not only sans, but also all the main characters of undertale are appearing in this AU!!!!
Actually, my favorites from this AU are dreemurr families....
yes, all of them are really GOAT in this AU.........
If you are interested, please give a shot.
Really, this AU is really amazing and listed in one of my favorite AUs!
5. Lt.sans from Inverted fate
The best date ever.
The one who made this....would be definitely a genius.
Or a really amazing OTAKU who likes anime so much! XD
6. sans from Gigachadsans or Undertale wrestling
all that....gigacahadsans muscular sans just makes me burst out laugh!!!! LOL
I.....I can't resist........!!!!!XD
Every time I see those muscluar skeletons, I just can't stop smiling!
I really really like them.
kekekekeh XD
#undertale au#undertale#sans#ts underswap#crossbones#undertail#reversetale#inverted fate#gigachadsans#undertalewrestling
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Tucker Mills
Name: Tucker Mills.
Gender/Pronouns: Male; He/Him.
Age: 38.
Birthday: August 17th.
Nationality: American.
Birthplace: Raleigh, North Carolina.
Current Residence: Gibsonton, Florida. (In alternate realities)
Occupation: Army veteran.
Height: 5 ft. 11 in.
Sexuality: Bisexual.
Fandom: Triple Frontier.
FC: Lucas Till.
Brief Background: Growing up the middle child, Tucker’s life was fairly drama-free. He had loving parents, and he grew up super close with his twin brother and younger sister. Where there was one of the Mills children, you would always find the other two close by.
When he was fifteen, he realized he was bisexual. Chase and Heather were the first to find out, and they always supported him, eventually encouraging him to come out to their parents before he left for college and joined the military. It was a little awkward for awhile, for his parents to adjust to the news, but they never hated or exiled Tucker from the family.
After getting his bachelor’s in business, he joined the army alongside Chase. The two were actually deployed to the same base in Iraq. They had the option to request a transfer but steadfastly refused. Sadly, only Chase would be the one to come home.
A week before his death, he half-joked with his brother once they were finished with their tour, they should go on a trip to Disney World with Heather and told him about his plans to maybe move down to Florida, open up a video game bar.
He was buried in his childhood city of Raleigh, North Carolina, leaving all his belongings to Chase and Heather. In his will, he requested his brother to look after Heather and take her on a trip to Disney World.
Personality: Sarcastic, playful, a shameless flirt. He loves to joke around and have a good time with people he's fond of. He is very loyal, hardworking, and stubborn. He can be a bit impulsive, act first-think later kind of person, but he is not completely reckless.
Likes: Spicy food; Alternative rock/metal music; American football; Margaritas; 80's action movies; Star Wars; Roller coasters; Vanilla, sugary scents; Sugar cookies; Racing and fighting games.
Dislikes: People falsely taking credit for things; Keeping still; Broken promises; Red wine; Cheaters; Strong fishy smell; Artificial cherry and strawberry flavoring for medicines.
Random Headcanons:
-He is the younger twin, and he is one inch shorter than Chase, much to his annoyance. He loves his brother, but the two can be a bit competitive with each other, and they're both protective of Heather. He does call her his "baby sister" only to tease her.
-He has five tattoos. 1) A matching tattoo on the left side of his chest of two lion paws. 2) His first tattoo, on his upper right shoulder of a skull and crossbones he got to try and impress his first girlfriend during his freshman year of college. Later on, he added embellishments to it to make it similar to Jack Sparrow from POTC. 3) On his left side, there is a light green heart with a "H" inside and a blue star with a "C" to represent Chase and Heather. 4) "May the Force be with You" on his left thigh with a X-Wing outline. 5) "Do or do not. There is no try." on his left forearm with a lightsaber hilt.
-His favorite color is black cherry red, his favorite animal is a penguin, and his favorite food is hot wings.
-Although Tucker is a giant flirt, and he really enjoys flirting, he is much more selective on those he seriously dates or sleeps with. Sex is a very intimate thing for him.
-He has a big sweet tooth.
-He is not the best singer, but he really enjoys karaoke for the fun and will purposely pick obscure songs.
[Other established verses below cut]
MAIN-ALT VERSE
This follows the main verse save for the fact both brothers return home from their combat tours. The pair took their little sister to Disney World for vacation. He is also the one to talk Chase into them moving to Florida.
Tucker became friends with a couple of soldiers within their battalion named Alex and Cameron, both who lived in Tampa, Florida. The three friends discussed opening a bar, and Tucker honestly thought it would be a good business venture for them. Plus, Heather was getting married! Their little sister would be looked after, everything would be good...
Until one night when she called up her brothers crying. The twins had no idea their brother-in-law was abusive. But once Heather confided to her them he was, they immediately went back up to North Carolina to pick her up. Tucker almost put him through a wall, but Chase called him off. He did let him go--with one last threat that if he ever touched his sister again, not even the “Hounds of Hell will keep me from ripping you apart”.
After getting her stuff and getting her out of the house, they immediately brought Heather down to Florida. Chase’s ex Ariel had a cousin down in Florida who was a divorce attorney, who helped Heather to file the petition to divorce her husband; Tucker reached out to a couple of buddies, found out a local urgent care clinic was in need of nurses and helped Heather to get an interview.
The three live together in an apartment, along with Oreo, Heather’s puppy. He currently works both as a security guard at Heather’s clinic and as a part-time bartender, saving up for his bar.
MARVEL/MCU VERSE
He joined S.H.I.E.L.D. along with his brother after being in the army. He is a field agent, preferring something more stimulating than a desk job. He gets results, even if he is a little messy. He works best with his twin brother. Prior to moving to New York for S.H.I.E.L.D., he did threaten Heather’s ex-boyfriend with a baseball bat. He didn’t hit him with it, but he did break the headlight on the man’s car.
PACIFIC RIM VERSE
Chase and Tucker enrolled into the jaeger pilot program after being in the military, moving to Hong Kong along with their younger sister. He was co-pilots with his twin before one kaiju attack left their jaeger destroyed and Tucker with a broken back. Thankfully, he survived and recovered, but he couldn't keep up the physical demands of being a pilot, so he 'retired' and became an instructor instead. He sometimes has to use a cane for support. When Chase and Tucker first came to Hong Kong, they were in a mandatory quarantine period...that was near the harbor. Tucker grew sick of the intense fish smell after a couple of days.
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Super Robot Wars V is spectacular.
A while ago I briefly spilled some word soup about Super Robot Wars, and mech anime in general, and one day I'd like to dig in deep and write more about giant robots because oh snap do I love giant robots. But for now I'm going to talk about Super Robot Wars V because I am still playing this game and loving every minute of it. Hours, really. Stages are taking an hour or more to complete now and it's eating my life away.
So, what makes V in particular so great is that it has an English translation. Bandai has been doing a thing lately where a lot of their series that would otherwise never get localized have been getting English subtitles for their SEA releases, which is fantastic if you're not adverse to paying crazy import prices. Quality of these translations has been a bit rocky, another SRW game “Moon Dwellers” wasn't the best in terms of translation quality, but V's translation is generally decent. There are a few names that are mistranslated such as the Doven Wolf from “ZZ Gundam” being hilariously called the Dooben Wolf. Generally, however, the translation is fine. It's refreshing to be able to play through an entire SRW game where the whole story is translated, as prior to these releases there were only a handful of complete fan patches.
Gameplay-wise V is much like any other of the recent SRW games with a few streamlined quality of life changes. Now you can use Spirit skills directly from the pre-combat screen whether you're attacking or defending. On one hand it's nice to be able to save a unit if you're the victim of an unlucky one-percent hit that nearly wipes them out, but on the other hand it does make the game a bit too easy when you can ensure that every character that gets attacked can always protect, evade or heal to survive an attack.
The only other major change from the typical SRW Format is a fairly large one; pilots don't earn skill points anymore. Before you would have to level up each individual pilot and teach them skills and enhance their stats one by one and it was all very tedious and rather uninteresting in all honesty. That has all been replaced with the “TAC” system, you gain TAC Points by killing enemies, meeting certain requirements (usually events based on the canon-storyline of the stage) and then spend them how you see fit. They're used to buy extra parts for your mechs, such as boosters to add more mobility, or to customize your pilots. And boy howdy has pilot customization been expanded.
Previously you would just upgrade your pilot's stats and that was that. They would learn skills as they leveled up, but nothing too involved went on. Now with the TAC system you can do that by spending your TAC points to level their raw stats. Or you can spend those points on pilot skills. These skills range from the more simple ones such as “Proud Ace” which lets you earn the Ace and Great Ace titles ten kills earlier, and “Save Energy” which lowers energy consumption by a small percentage based on how many ranks you put in. To the hilariously broken like “Attacker” which adds twenty percent to your attack once your pilot gains high enough focus, and “Full Counter” which always lets your unit attack first. You're given more than enough slots per-pilot that customizing them in almost any way you see fit is possible, the only limit is how many TAC points you can save up and spend. Whether you want to dump all those points on your specific favorites, or spread the love to the whole team is up to you.
Otherwise gameplay is largely the same. Each mission you're given an objective, a failure quota and a bonus objective. You gain bonus money for meeting the side objective but it's not required, and you're tasked with hitting your objective whatever it is. Usually it's just to kill all the dudes that show up. Sometimes it's just to kill one dude, and any others that show up are bonus cash and TAC Points. You're given a list of available mechs and choose who to launch and have at it. This game heavily favors the UC Gundam cast, and I love it for that. You quickly get the “Crossbones Gundam” stars Tobia and Kincade and eventually build up a star cast of Judeu (Zeta Gundam), Hathaway (from the novel series Hathaway's Flash), Amuro (Mobile Suit Gundam, ZZ Gundam, and Char's Counterattack) and even Kamille (Zeta gundam) as well as Banagher from “Gundam Unicorn”. Meanwhile the cast of Getter Robo: Armageddon make an appearance as well with Ryoma in his Black Getter serving as an excellent unit for a third of the game before being replaced by the amazing Shin Getter and later the Shin Getter Dragon rears its head as well.
Stealing the show, however, are the Mazinger Z units. Starting with designs straight out of “Mazinger Z: The Impact!” you have the famous Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger which later upgrade into the Mazinger ZERO, from it's own titular manga series, and the Mazin Emperor G, a new mech created just for this game which they went so far as to produce new figures of timed with the game's release for some boost in marketing. Visually speaking a lot of the game's effort and budget went into designing and animating these two monsters alone, and it shows with how fantastic they look when doing their special attacks.
Other series that make appearances are Martian Successor Nadesico (based on the movie rather than the excellent series), Cross-Ange, Space Battleship Yamato 2199, Full Metal Panic, Neon Genesis Evangelion (The rebuilds, rather than the original series) and surprisingly Brave Express Might Gaine.
There's not a whole lot to say about the plot, for the most part it's an adaptation of a few core series' plotpoints with a decent focus on Cross-Ange, Gundam Unicorn and Space Battleship Yamato while the other series slot in when and where they can. But one really interesting thing this game in particular does is that it improves the endings of several of them vastly. Without spoiling it, I'm just going to say that it doesn't end on the dreary would-be teaser that the Nadesico movie does, and Unicorn doesn't just end on a lame note with the villain vanishing into dust because he was literally nothing but a ghost. Even Evangelion gets a better ending because it doesn't leave players hanging on for a sequel that might never happen for a few years. So in some ways, it's incredibly satisfying to see better endings for series, and especially a few key characters, than the original series ever bothered to.
As a final note I'd like to say everyone should go watch Getter Armageddon because it's amazing, it's second opening theme is spectacular and it plays every time one of the getter machines gets into a battle and I love it. If you at all like Super Robot Wars or have ever been interested but found the lack of localization difficult then this is an excellent chance to hop in feet-first. It's got all of the series mainstays, a ton of good music, the gameplay is pretty peak and there's just no going wrong with any of the cool mechs and characters on display here.
#nerdshit#SRWV#Super Robot Wars#Crossbones anime when#No seriously when will they make a crossbones anime
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Not professional
Pairing: Brock Rumlow X Reader
Word count: 698 words.
Summary: It was your first interview as an Avengers’ member, maybe you said a secret from Brock that he didn't want anyone to know.
Warnings: Mentions of smut, nothing explicit, bad words.
A/N: This is my entry to the @xbuchananbarnes‘s Dani’s Awesome Writing Challenge Mix Vol. 1 with the prompt #3:
“Quit smiling, you idiot. You’re supposed to be a professional”
Also my entry to the @barnesandco‘s Ayesha’s 1k+ Writing Challenge! With the dialogue prompt #19:
“__. I swear to God, if you do that again, I’ll feed you to Tony’s stupid robot”.
In this fic Brock is not HYDRA, he is also part of the Avengers.
My native language is Spanish so I wanna improve my writing skills in English if you notice any mistake please let me know and I will correct it.
I don’t give any kind of permission that my fics be posted in other platforms or languages (I translate myself my work) or the use of my graphics (my dividers are included in this), I did them exclusively for my fics, please respect my work and don't steal it. There are some people here who make dividers that anyone can use, mine is not this type, please look for the other's people. The only exception is the ones I gifted 'cuz now belong to someone else. If you find any of my works on a different platform and is not one of my accounts, please let me know. Reblogs and comments are always welcome.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Marvel's characters (unfortunately), except for the original characters and the story.
My other media where I publish: Wattpad, Ao3, ffnet.
If you like it please vote, comment, and give me feedback to improve my skills and reblog.
Tags: @sinceimetyou @navybrat817 @angrythingstarlight @shield-agent78 @saiyanprincessswanie @charmed-asylum
You enjoyed watching Brock train with each other, in the end being part of the Avengers wasn't so bad, not to say that he had been the one who convinced you to join them.
“Y/N!” Brock called you.
"What?"
”This is the fifth time I've called you, okay?”
"Yeah, I was just distracted.”
"I've noticed," Brock replied while he rolled his eyes. “I was asking you if you're not going to train too.”
"I prefer to see you or... another kind of ‘training’," you said approaching him to kiss him.
"Don't forget that this afternoon we have an interview... am I interrupting something? Steve asked, entering the gym.
"No Cap, that's just what I was reminding Brock," you responded by showing a smile.
Brock winced and went to the locker room to change.
"Nervous about your first TV interview?” Steve questioned you.
"A little bit. Do you do this very often? I mean being interviewed.”
"At least about six times a year, Tony says it's for the team to have public relations and promote us.”
"What kind of questions do you ask?”
"Sometimes personal questions, sometimes about what you think of the other members, as it's your first interview they'll ask you too many questions, I'm sure they'll also be interested in your relationship with Brock.”
"I can already imagine the headlines tomorrow: Crossbones has a relationship," Brock said, going back into the gym after changing his clothes.
"I'll be the star of the interview this time and honey, you'll move on to the background.”
"My fans are going to get sad," Brock joked with a smile.
"Well I wouldn't like that, so we broke up," you replied as seriously as you could, you didn't want him to realize you were joking too.
"I was joking, forgive me," he approached you, putting on a scolded puppy face.
"I was joking too, fool.”
You looked yourself at the mirror for the last time, they had just told you that in five minutes the interview would begin, you had never been to a TV studio before, let alone appeared on television.
The questions had been simple and some even funny, it was just like Steve had told you.
"Well Y/N, it's been a very nice night, I'd like to thank you for agreeing to interview you, now the last question, your relationship with our dear Crossbones has been part of the headlines in recent weeks, but we don't know much about it, what's their relationship like?” the television host questioned.
"Well, Brock may look like a tough guy, but he's very sweet, he even has a stuffed German shepherd dog, he says it's the same as he was when he was a kid," you responded nervously.
"Really? That's very sweet.”
“Y/N...”
You could tell how Brock's face had turned completely red and he was making a great effort not to show his anger, but you had to take revenge before you left the Compound you realized that he had eaten the cake you had baked for the next day, especially for Wanda’s birthday.
"Brock," you called him when you came off the set.
He turned and made his way to you.
“Quit smiling, you idiot. You’re supposed to be a professional”
"I was, I could have said something worse, and you weren't supposed to have eaten Wanda's birthday cake," you counterattacked.
The next day the interview appeared on all the newscasts both televised and written, not to say that it had caused a stir on social media, Brock furiously turned off the TV in the room after hearing what his fans were saying about it.
"Come on, Brock, I could be the president of your official fan club, they loved your stuffed animal, they're even posting drawings about it on Instagram," you showed her your cell phone.
“Y/N, I swear to God, if you do that again, I’ll feed you to Tony’s stupid robot”.
"Brock, we know your life would be very boring without me, you can't deny that you love me, don't be angry, today is Wanda's birthday, at night I'll give you anything you want," you replied as you winked at him, he shook his head and laughed.
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Medea Plays Animal Crossing New Horizons: Part V
Don’t mind the face. I’m in the middle of allergy season. Our car looks like 500 bees just exploded all over it, that’s how bad allergy season is.
So last Saturday was the fishing competition.
It started one hour after my shift began at work and it ended two hours after I got off.
FUCKING JOY!
The best I could do was earn a bronze prize with a bunch of swag stuff. Including wallpaper, rugs, backpacks, a fresh cooler...
That acts as a closet!
Thankfully when the next fishing tournament arrives, there won’t be fucking eggs in the sea to screw up your fish-count.
Speaking of...
Yeah. It’s pretty obvious that many of us hate that hippity-hoppity, dancing, bunny bastard after 12 days of finding eggs. How does that Bunny Day song go again?
ON THE 12TH DAY OF BUNNY DAY, THIS COCK-SUCKER GAVE TO ME.
12 WOOD EGGS
11 FISH EGGS
10 TREE EGGS
9 MORE FISH EGGS
8 SKY EGGS
7 MORE SKY EGGS
6 MORE FUCKING FISH EGGS
5 TIMES I BANGED MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL
4 EARTH EGGS
3 ACTUAL FISH IN THE SEA
2 MORE FISH EGGS
AND A BUNNY I’M GONNA CALL THE COPS ON!!!
It’s April, there are new fishes to be caught. BUT NO! YOU CAUGHT AN EGG!
What is that, a new fossil? NO! IT’S AN EGG!
I need some more wood to craft that new DIY, I got. FUCK YOU IN THE TITS, IT’S EGG-TIME!
Oh look, a flying present. PSYCH! MORE EGGS!
FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
Isabelle got me like .05% excited. Only because it’s Isabelle. But after these 12 days, I don’t even want to eat scrambled eggs for a while because of that bastard.
Daisy Mae: STRANGER DANGER!
Jokes on you, you satanic pedophile, I crafted all of those DIY’s you could throw at me.
I HATE THIS FUCKING THING!
Dude, I’m in my mid-thirties. Fuck, I’m probably older than you.
Thankfully it was like two more recipes and I was done for the day.
So I’ll just torment this fucker by checking out his backside.
One thing I found cute were all the villagers dressed in the egg costumes.
What really puzzled me was that the entire day, I couldn’t find Raymond or Bob. I searched the entire island at least five times and they were nowhere to be found.
Turns out they had other shit to do on Bunny Day.
Like elope.
Pfft. Kidding. This was just a photo-shoot I did on Harv’s island.
I seriously don’t blame these two for hiding out during Bunny Day.
Spending five seconds with this serial killer and/or rapist drove me nuts.
The next special day (I think) is Earth Day with Leif. And thankfully Leif is a sweetie-pie and not a sadistic pedophile in a bunny costume.
Let’s move away from this train-wreck and check in with the Able sisters.
I do love these moments with the sisters.
Once you’ve spoken to Sable enough times, she starts giving you things.
Speak to Sable every day afterwards to get more fabric samples you can use for different items with the ability to be customized.
I’m gonna have to put the skull and crossbones fabric to good use.
Today, I got a visit from Label and learned a little something...
That’s pretty neat. In all the games I’ve played leading up to this, she’s always referred herself as Labelle. So it’s nice to see her go by Label again.
Now for another edition of, “Insects are the Devil’s Pubic-hair” (Blathers edition)
This has been another edition of “Insects are the Devil’s Pubic-hair”.
Meanwhile in the neighborhood...
I got a surprise visit from Bam.
And...um, female Louie!
I visited Celia’s home...but Celia wasn’t there.
Another glitch in the matrix. Lord knows I could use a good laugh right now.
Julia moved in.
Nicknames are back.
(So far Celia and Louie are calling me Pumpkin)
Just like in New Leaf, I find myself delivering gifts from one villager to another.
Seriously, I think these two fucking eloped on Bunny Day.
And I’m doing a little remodeling around the island. I made a little park in the hopes my villagers will appreciate it.
That’s more like it.
So there are a few things I haven’t done in this game yet. I can finally cross off visit a friend’s island as I got to do that this morning.
One of my best buds let me on her (5-star) island.
We hung out at the local diner.
Paid my respects to the dead.
Hail Eevee!
And making an Inazuma Eleven reference because, WHY NOT?!
Fun times! Plus finally got the two fruits that have eluded me so now I can have an abundance of cherries and apples!
Now I’m going to try and shape Pallet into a respectable island that is worthy of a 5-star rating...
Or I’ll just have the Mooninites flip people off!
I’m a real class act.
To be continued.
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CHAPTER 1: THE PROLOGUE.
I always thought I had a good relationship with Fates. They have always been somewhat kind to me. My life, one might say, is not of an avarage one. But for me, it’s quite normal and with all honesty sometimes tremendously boring. I lived in a castle uppon the Moon Hill, where the last rays of day fell and my Mother – Nyx- began her rule. She was one of the most beautiful beings that had ever been created by Kronos. With milky-white skin, long and dark as ink hair and eyes that reflected the rays of stars she put up to the sky at every sunset. My Father – Hypnos, stole her from the dephs of Tartarus and for that, he was severely punished. Even though he remained a beautiful being, he never spoke a word. Only in their sleep, one might find him, wondering the ups and lows of dreams. And there’s me, Thanatos. As a part of my Father’s punishment for snatching my Mother from Tartarus, I was obliged to live in the Underworld until I came of age. My duties were to keep the souls peaceful and calm, even when they were desperate to escape their doom.
One day, I was feeling particularly moody. I never liked that place and the thought of having to live here for the next three years made my skin prickle with anxiety. The only thing that made my day more bright, was meeting my best friend – Melinoe. Concidering where she was living, she was one of the most joyful beings I have ever encountered in my life. And maybe that’s why I liked her so much.
I remember when I first came to the Underworld. It was a scary and unfriendly place, full of souls and faul creatures who guarded the pits and gauges in which a slimy substance was bubbling. At the main entrance stood Charon, the Soul Carrier. He was very tall, skinny, hooded and cloaked. His skin was wrinkled and stained. He turned his faceless hood my way and said: ‘ Ah, young master Thanatos. Lord Hades and Lady Persephone are awaiting your arrival.’
He stretched out his hand and pointed to a very shabby-looking boat at the the banks of Styx. I slowly went up to it and got in. It wobbled, when the hooded man had entered and a few moments later, we were crossing the River. I looked around carefully. The view awed me so much, I barely could blink. Solid rocks formed tunnels that led towards a castle on top of a hill. My uncle’s home. Although Hades was not very closely related to me, I have gained some of his traits. The Soul Carrier stopped the boat and said: „We are here.”
I got off at the shore and gave him two golden drachmas, which were customary to give as a totem to the Carrier. He snatched them and hid underneath many layers of his coat. He bowed with respect and got back to his duties. I stood for a moment and stared and the castle that towered over the hill.
Beneath it, there was a road leading to the tall gates made of burned ebony bones. On top of the entrance there was a sign: „ There is no other certainty than death”.
‘Yeah, you can say that again...’ I murmured to myself as I crossed the first gate and entered a wide courtyard. I saw some creatures wondering here and there like shadows. I did not fear them, but I felt I slightly uncomfortable around them. There was tall door in front of me now. I looked up and saw sculls and crossbones ornamented from top to bottom. I reached for the door knocker but they suddenly opened on their own accord. I walked inside slowly. It felt like I’ve entered a grave. I went up a long corridor and stopped at the entrance to, what I supposed, was the Audience Hall. There were two guards on each side of it. Tall, dressed in black and dark blue armours. The lights were also in those colours here which felt like the whole place was blues, grays and blacks. The door opened and I stepped inside. The Hall was quite impressive. Tall ceilings, supported by carved columns. A blue and black carpet that led towards a place where two thrones were placed. But those weren’t thrones you’d expect in an Audiance Hall. No. They were made of skelletons and skulls. Both tall, pale white just like the figures which sat in them, though their faces were covered by skull masks. The taller figure had stag like horns placed upon their head and around them there were black diamonds and saphires. The antlers were curved a bit at the end and were gleaming like they’d been covered with wax. His robes were long and exquisit, also black, blue and gray with a tall collar, that nearly reached the antlers on his head. Next to that figure, stood a shorter one. Also dressed in the most exquisit dress I have ever seen. It looked as if someone had taken down the nightsky and sew this beautiful outfit. Her face was covered by the same skull mask as her partner’s but I knew, who she was. It was Persephone. The goddess of Spring. Beautiful as she can be, but there was something vile in her posture right now. She had a long spear in her hand, ended with a black diamond as big as a child’s head. I looked at the man at her side, who came down from the platform and swiped his mask off his face, showing a stunning man. His angular jawline and high cheekbones made him look nobel and raw. His eyes were almond-shaped in colours of dark blue and black. His face showed no emotion. And , I dare say, he was the most intimidating person I have ever met in my life. I took a step back and kneeled.
‘ My Lord. My name is Thanatos.’ I said in a low voice. Hades smirked at me and bowed back.
‘ I greet you in my kingdom, Lord of Good Death’ he said in a mocking tone. ‘ I hear you are as skilled as your Father in sleep magic, am I right?’
‘ I do not use the sleep magic, My Lord. That’s the treat of my Father. I ease the pain of passing for all those who come to your kingdom.’ I aswered, looking straight into his eyes. His face was still but I found some sort of amusement in it.
‘Ah, you ease the pain of passing. Well, then I will have a perfect spot for you, My young Lord.’ he answered, turning his back to me. He stood by his queen.
‘You will be sent to Tartarus, where your skills will be most useful. There is, indeed, a lot of pain there that deserves to be taken away.’ he added. Persephone turned her head to him and swiped off her skull mask.
‘ How can you send a child to Tartarus? He does not deserve to be punished that severely.’ she said. Hades looked at his Queen and his face was like stone.
‘ This is no child, my Queen. This is a gift from his parents. His skills will surely be far more useful here than in the mortal realm. And he will not go alone.’
With that said, he snapped his fingers and right next to him a figure emerged from the mist. Few moments later a beautiful girl appeared in the place of the figure. She was tall, with pale face and bright, star-like eyes. She wore a long, dark dress and had a crown of black thorns on her head.
‘Melionoe. My beloved child. Come. I want you to meet your new apprentice. This is Thanatos, son of Nyx.’ he said, pointing to me. I bowed in respect. ‘ My lady.’
‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Thanatos. Come. Let’s not waste time’ she said and she took me under her wing. Taught me all what I needed to know about Tartarus and from that day forth, she became my friend.
I was sitting at the bank of the River and looking at the new flow of souls. It always smelled the same. With rot, fear and blood. I didn’t mind the smell. At this point, I didn’t mind anything. Days turned to months, months to years. I didn’t even know, if my duty was over or not. My mind went blank and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not even to Melionoe.
‘ Always the grumpy one, ey, Theo?’ she said with her joyful voice, dropping to sit right next me. For as long as I remembered, I have never seen her sad or dull. Which was quite unusal.
‘ You’re cheerful for the both of us, Mel.’ I answered and picked up a stone from the ground. I had the urge to just toss it into the slimy water of Acheront, but it would most definitley fly right back at me and knock me out.
‘Ah, come on, Theo. Don’t be so grumpy. Life in this place is already dull, don’t make it worse.’ she added, poking me with her shoulder. ‘ I have something fun for you. Come on’ she said and took off to the nearest boat. I went after her, not really understanding what she was trying to do. Mel sailed onto the River and set the course to Hades. I began to wonder if this was a good idea to begin with. But I trusted her more than I trusted myself and I knew that she would never do anything that would angry her Father. Melionoe, you see, was very fond of Hades. Even though, he never showed that he cared for her and left her in charge of the worst part of his kingdom, she always was loyal. We were passing another turn, when I saw Cerberus running straight towards us.
‘ Bad dog! Sit!’ Mel shouted and the dog stopped at the bank of the River and growled with disapproval. ‘ Go find astray souls, you dumb dog’ she added, when the animal disappeared from sight. Finally we stopped at one of the entrance gates to Hades. I looked at her,frowning.
‘You once told me, your only dream was to leave this place and have a chance to live a normal life. So I’m giving you a chance to do so.’ she said with a smile.
‘What?’
‘ I said, I want to give you a chance to live among mortals. I will give you a month among them. If it won’t be, what you desire, you will come back and stay in Tartarus with me. If you manage to find your goal in life among the mortals, I will grant you the freedom you so desire.’ she answered more seriously. I only once saw her make that face and it was when she disappointed her Father.
‘ But… Why are you doing this, Mel? Why you want to break your Father’s order?’ I asked, taken aback by this claim. She was willing to risk everything to make my dream come true.
‘ Because you are my best friend. And the one I have loved dearly for many years. Since you came to Tartarus, my life became happier. So I want to grant you this choice. Find your goal among mortals and if you won’t succeed, come back to me.’ she said, coming closer to me. She rose my chin and kissed me. And then, the gates of Hades disappeared…
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May I have headcanons for when a S/O asks the more artistic skeles to draw on their skin if they comfortable with it.
You get more then you ask for but…
Sans (undertale)- He’s probably going to draw on their stomach if they’re laying across his lap while the two of them watch tv. It was a rerun of an episode, so when his s/o offered for him to draw on them if he was bored, he decided to do so. He may draw a little bottle of ketchup, or maybe the moon and a few stars, nothing very artistic, but his s/o seems to encourage him. Huh, he may have found a new past time he likes, despite not being very artistic or skilled.
Papyrus (undertale)- He is pretty good at doodling! So when his s/o ask for him to doodle on them, well, you better believe he’s going to take this opportunity! He’s more then likely going to draw on their arms so they could see what he was doing, and if they give him the go ahead, he’d draw on the back on their shoulder blades, when they’re wearing a loose tanktop, of course. He’d doodle himself on them, as well as his s/o, the two would be more animated then anything. Expect a few details that are off, but other then that, it looks adorable.
Blue (Underswap Sans)- Being excited is an understatement, Blue is hyped that his s/o offered to allow him to draw whatever he wanted on them! He may go a bit overboard drawing over their arms and legs, drawing a little animated head of him and his s/o, his favorite flowers as well as theirs, tacos, ice cream, you name it! He would also allow his s/o to draw on his bones, though realizing that the ink from markers could stain his bones for a while was quite the drawback to this whole thing. Whatever, he still had fun, and so did his s/o!
Stretch (Underswap Papyrus)- Stretch’s s/o is trusting him to draw on them? Huh, that’s a bit strange, but okay. He’d maybe write a few things on their arms instead, his handwriting looks nearly like calligraphy, so that likes word art, right? Maybe he’d draw a bee or two, as well as a honey pot, because his s/o is his “honey”. The two may crack up after that.
Red (Underfell Sans)- This came out of nowhere, honestly, Red did not expect his s/o to offer him this. Well, he’s not very good at drawing, and he isn’t one to think of things on the spot, so he may hesitate. He may draw a rather grumpy looking him, on his s/o’s hand, though he would immediately stop after that, despite his s/o saying that it looked wonderful. Maybe a few bones as well?
Boss (Underfell Papyrus)- Wha- why would his s/o even tell him that he could do this? He has better things to do! Though at the end of the day, when there is nothing to do, he might take up the challenge of drawing on his s/o. He is surprisingly careful and attentive to details, drawing things such as villains, or something of that sort. Don’t tell anyone that he drew those on his s/o, or he won’t do it again!
Black (Fellswap Sans)- Seriously? He has so much work to do, why would his s/o even suggest that he can draw on them. He’d most likely tell them later, quite a few times before becoming annoyed with his s/o’s constant asking. He’ll draw a small skull and crossbones on his s/o’s cheek, before shooing them off so he could finish what he needed to finish. However when he is not busy, he’ll probably do a bit more drawing. Ever since his s/o had told him about a certain holiday in Mexico, he’s been fascinated with it, so his s/o should expect some Day of the Dead drawings on them.
Rus (Fellswap Papyrus)- Are they sure they want him to draw on them? Like, positive? He may just doodle little hearts on flowers on their arms, but that’s about it. He’s not too confident in drawing, so don’t expect a lot from him.
Sinister (Horrortale Sans)- He may or may not draw sugary food, because his s/o is just “too sweet”. Yeah, expect some small jokes while he draws on them, he may even draw stalagmites and bats. He kinda like the whole light and dark themes blending in, so expect a little drawing of a cave on his s/o’s stomach wile the sweet drawings are on their chest.
Paprika (Horrortale Papyrus)- He might draw some dinosaur bones, to be honest. He’s fascinated with paleontology as well as human anatomy, so he knows a lot about dinosaurs and medical stuff. He’ll probably draw a actual dryosaurus on his s/o’s stomach, so, uh, yeah. Prepare for some dino facts, because he’ll be going on about them.
Ink - He’d never though his s/o would ask this of him. And they’re allowing him anywhere? Well, I hope his s/o doesn’t have anywhere to be in three hours, because he’ll be drawing whatever he could think of on every part of his s/o. Expect intricat patterns, flowers, fish, colors, skeleton related stuff, and more! His s/o will be fully inked out at the end of this, but they’ll look wonderful! If his s/o ever asked him to design a tattoo for them after this experience, he may go all out yet again!
Error (Error Sans)- His s/o is asking him, of all people to draw on them? Look, he may love them, but being so close to them, he feels as if it may make them both uncomfortable at most. But after much begging from his s/o, he’ll draw maybe a puppet, as well as a few things from the only au he actually enjoys, outertale on their arms and legs. I guess he enjoyed it, but he won’t admit it! This may also be a way to help him with haphephobia. So please ask him to do this more?
Lust (Underlust Sans)- Oh god, what made his s/o think it was a good idea to ask him to draw something on them? He’ll probably draw something dirty on their thighs, that’s also funny. Like dickbutt. Yeah, you expected something even dirtier? He wouldn’t embarrass his s/o like that- no, the only way he’d embarrass/fluster his s/o is with too much PDA and flirting. Nothing more to worry about other then dirty memes.
Romeo (Underlust Papyrus)- Oh, he’s flattered his s/o wants him to draw something on them! He’ll most likely stick to drawing flowers that have meaning behind them, drawing on their arms and chest. The flowers were surprisingly good, so if you ever want an intricate flower tattoo with meaning, ask him to design it!
Dream (Dreamtale Sans)- Is his s/o sure they want him to draw? He may not be the best at it, and it made him a bit nervous to possibly disappoint his s/o with his drawing abilities. But he’ll draw something he feels like he’s good at drawing! He’ll draw
Nightmare (Dreamtale Sans)- Really? He may seemed annoyed at his s/o for telling him that they could draw on them, and being insistent would cause him to give in with a frustrated sigh. Though he actually ends up enjoying drawing on his s/o, he mainly draws on their back so they can’t see what he is drawing. He mainly doodles little monsters, and maybe a few birds. Birds were pretty interesting.
#undertale headcanons#adorable ask#sans#papyrus#underswap#us sans#us papyrus#uf sans#uf papyrus#underfell#fellswap#fs sans#fs papyrus#horrortale#ht sans#ht papyrus#error sans#underlust#ul sans#ul papyrus#ink sans#dream sans#nightmare sans
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Bloom (5/?)
Here’s another chapter of Bloom! Sorry for the delay in posting. I’ve been busy wrapping up my CSBB. But after this weekend, I will be mostly free! Once again, many thanks to @unfolded73 .
In this chapter, Regina and Snow throw Emma a shower, and Emma has a heart-to-heart with Zelena.
[Ch.1][Ch.2][Ch.3][Ch. 4]
You can also read on AO3!
Chapter 5: Daughters
Her mother's farmhouse could only be described as a rainbow explosion. Multi-colored streamers hung from the ceiling, the cupcakes were iced in a variety of bright colors -- hot pinks, yellows, oranges, and blue. Snow and Regina had really outdone themselves with the baby shower. Not only were the decorations wonderful, but so was the food -- cupcakes, donuts, mini grilled cheese sandwiches -- basically everything Emma could want.
Emma only had one rule regarding the shower. Well, two. The first was not to have any weird or gross games, which Regina had thankfully backed her up on. The second rule was to avoid an over-abundance of pink. It wasn't as if she was opposed to her daughter wearing pink or dresses, she just didn't want that to be the only option for her.
So far, both of her requirements were being met.
"We're celebrating the birth of a new princess," Snow commented when Emma expressed her awe, "and most importantly, were celebrating my new granddaughter."
"Please don't go all Jurassic Park on me and say you 'spared no expense'," Emma teased as she loaded her plate with more mini grilled cheeses. They were heavenly. "Actually, I take it back, these are fantastic. Don't spare any expense next time."
"Next time? You and Guyliner are already talking about baby number two?" Regina asked from her station in the kitchen. She was mixing mocktails, though Emma was sure that her friend had spiked her own.
"Oh God, no. I just meant in the greater ‘next time’ sense, for whomever has a baby next. Or any birthday parties."
In fact, Emma was fairly certain she didn't want any more babies after this one. She already wasn't a fan of the toll this pregnancy was taking on her body, and she doubted it would get any easier with age. Besides, she imagined she and Killian were going to have their hands quite full soon with this one.
Any further line of questioning was cut off as guests began to arrive. Emma had been half-convinced that her mother was going to invite the entire female population of Storybrooke, but she was pleased to see the women arriving were those she was already friendly with.
"It was watching him with Alexandra, wasn't it?" Ashley asked with a wink shortly after she arrived. "I knew those gears in your head had to have started turning when you saw how sweet he was with her."
"It may have nudged me along a tiny bit," Emma answered. Not too seriously, as she had been convinced she was going to die at the time. But the sight of Killian jovially interacting with the young girl had reminded Emma about the future they could have had, if she were not bound by fate.
The future they were sharing now.
"It's still shocking to me to see you two married," Aurora admitted, her cheeks turning pink at her confession. "I mean, it's obvious that you and the Captain both truly love one another, but I never would have considered it when you first met and he was working for Cora."
Emma couldn't blame Aurora there. Even though Killian had made an effort to protect the princess' heart, he had also helped steal it in the first place. Besides, even though she felt a connection with Killian when they first met, she never envisioned it blooming to this.
"If it makes you feel better, neither did I," Emma assured Aurora.
"Me either," Snow added. She reached over to grab Emma's hand. "But I'm glad we all were wrong. I couldn't imagine our family without him now."
From across the room, Emma could hear Zelena mimicking a gagging noises. "You lot keep talking about how you never expected Storybrooke's golden couple to get together, and I've spent my whole time here trying to figure out why it took her so long to climb him like a tree."
"Zelena!"
"My mother is right here," Emma emphasized, waving her hands toward Snow. She just knew she was turning the color of her favorite jacket.
"What? Regina is technically your step-grandmother, and I know you've mentioned sex things around her."
"Be that as it may," Regina cut in with a severe tone, her voice all Evil Queen, "this party is to celebrate the baby, not to debate just which position made her."
"Someone kill me now." She buried her face in her hands, shaking her head as a few of her friends snickered.
"Well how am I supposed to know what happens at these events? I never got the chance for anyone to host me one. Someone decided to speed up my pregnancy."
An awkward silence descended upon the room, and Emma felt very much like she had been punched in the gut. It was a deserved verbal gut punch, in her opinion, because what she had done as the Dark One had been cruel, but she hadn't expected it and wasn't prepared for the barb. Emma tried to think of words to say, but they died in her throat.
"Zelena, can you come into the kitchen and help me whip up some more drinks?" Regina's voice was like ice.
"Fine. But I was just stating the obvious. No need to be so touchy."
And then Zelena was gone, pulled into the kitchen to surely get scolded in some manner. Not that Emma was entirely sure she deserved it; maybe a lesson in tact, but that was probably fruitless with the Wicked Witch.
The mood at the party was still awkward. It was Belle who broke the silence, clapping her hands together, and announcing, "How about we play a game?"
Emma wasn't in the mood for games, but she acquiesced because she wasn't about to further sour the mood of the event, especially after all of the hard work everyone seemed to put into it. Granny was already glaring daggers at the doorway through which Zelena and Regina had left. Emma didn't want to make it worse.
Belle had left the room shortly after her inquiry, only to come back with a rather large stack of children's books. She handed them out at random.
"Now, Emma, prior to the game, everyone sent in their favorite children's book, or one they thought every child should have. Only we didn't tell each other the book we were bringing. So, the point of the game is to try to pair everyone with their book. I also threw in a few extra to make it more difficult," Belle explained. Well, the game wasn't gross, but it was a little on the strange side. Emma wondered if this was the type of game Belle would have wanted to the play at the shower she never had the chance to receive. "At the end of the game, you get to keep all of the books, so you'll have your own little library!"
Yes, yes it was.
Admittedly, it was a really entertaining game, and more difficult than she expected. Some were easy. Belle clearly had submitted Her Handsome Hero into the game, but the others through her for a loop. Aurora, of all people, had submitted Go the Fuck to Sleep.
"Sometimes you just feel like saying it," she explained, blushing. Emma had a feeling she wasn't normally openly crass. "And besides, it's a bit of a joke between Phillip and I with the whole sleeping curse."
Surprisingly, there were few fairy tale stories, and none about the people they actually knew.
"Why confuse her with the wrong versions?" Snow explained with a shrug. Emma refrained from telling her that number one on Henry's "To Do" list for his younger sibling was to show her Peter Pan.
Eventually Zelena and Regina returned, the former looking somewhat surly, but holding her tongue. Emma felt another pang of guilt, but pushed it down. Later, she told herself.
There was another round of games, the second one involving cupcakes and a hidden baby that Ashley won, before everyone gathered around Emma as she opened gifts.
Growing up, Emma rarely received any presents. Having everyone gathered around her was oddly foreign, and she tried to mask any discomfort she felt. This was everything she had wanted as a child -- a loving family and encouraging friends -- but now that she had it, she was still unsure of how to react. A small part of her, the little lost girl she doubted would ever fully disappear, still doubted she even deserved all of this attention.
"You guys really didn't have to do all of this," she said, eyeing what could only be described as a mountain of carefully wrapped gifts.
"We did," her mother insisted, placing a hand over hers and squeezing it encouragingly, "and most important of all, we wanted to."
"It's about time we had something to celebrate other than defeating the latest villain," Granny commented gruffly, causing an outbreak of laughter. "I'd much rather have my catering services go toward you rather than another 'we didn't die today' party."
"And since you were the one who did a lot of the almost-dying to save us, it's the least we could do," Ashley added sincerely.
Emma felt tears welling, ones she couldn't solely attribute to pregnancy hormones. Even if she totally was going to anyway. Willing them down, she laughed uneasily. "Well, if that's the case..."
Gifts were soon passed over to her, and Emma opened them with care. She was surprised when she opened a rather large gift from Belle. She had been expecting books, but instead it was full of tiny pirate-themed baby items -- onesies with anchors and skulls and crossbones, pirate socks and bobs, and --
"Is this a stuffed crocodile?"
"Rumple thought it would be amusing," Belle answered with a twinkle in her eye.
"Leave it to the Dark One to have a strange sense of humor," Zelena commented, as Regina did her best to hide a snigger. "Though you might want to check to see if it's cursed."
"He would not curse it!"
"I'm sure he wouldn't curse a stuffed animal," Regina said, casting a significant look to Emma that said yes, she would be checking for curses, even if she wouldn’t admit to doing so in front of Belle.
Emma set the crocodile to the side. She would leave it to Regina to figure out if it was safe, though she doubted Gold would be cruel enough to curse a her child's stuffed toy. But Emma had learned to err on the side of caution. (And even if it wasn't cursed, she doubted Killian would want the thing anywhere near their kid.)
She gasped when she opened a gift from Granny, a knitted blanket not dissimilar to her own.
"It's beautiful," she said. She clutched it closely to her chest. "Really, thank you."
"It's my honor," Granny replied, and much to Emma's surprise, it appeared that the older woman was dabbing her own eyes with a napkin.
Eventually Emma came to the end of the pile of gifts. At some point, Regina had magicked in a lovely rocking chair as a present, telling Emma how Henry had loved being rocked to sleep. Though Emma had muddy, fake memories of Henry's infancy, she appreciated Regina's explanation and pulled her into a tight hug.
"Thank you," she whispered in her friend's ear, not sure if she meant more for the gift or the way she raised their son.
The party dissolved into idle chatter and snacking after that. Granny had catered a lot of food, and no one was willing to let it go to waste. Especially Emma, who was helping herself to her third plate of an assortment of mini grilled cheeses, cookies, and vegetables. Adding vegetables made things healthier, right? As Emma was trying to decide if she could get away with eating another cupcake, she overheard Regina telling a story of Henry’s first attempt at changing baby Robyn’s diaper -- a memory that never failed to make Henry turn bright red -- Emma realized that she hadn’t seen Zelena since they finished with gifts. She glanced around the room, and sure enough, Zelena was missing.
Another wave of guilt crested over Emma, and leaving her cupcake forgotten, she decided to seek out the Wicked Witch. Emma knew how it felt to see others get what she never had. And since she was more or less the root cause of Zelena’s shortened pregnancy, she felt an obligation to apologize to the other woman, or at the very least attempt to make her feel comfortable.
Emma found Zelena on the back deck, leaning against the wooden railing with a glass of amber liquid in her hand.
“Hey,” Emma greeted. She felt somewhat awkward approaching Zelena. They weren’t exactly friends, but they weren’t just acquaintances either. Emma walked to stand next to her, and tapped her hands against the wood. “Is is bad how much I miss drinking booze? I have no idea what that says about me.”
“It says you are exceptionally terrible at small talk,” Zelena replied with a bitter laugh. “Shouldn’t you be inside celebrating? All of those people are here for you, you know.”
“I think they can deal without me for a few minutes,” Emma said. She took a deep breath before continuing, “Listen, Zelena, I want to apologize for everything I did while I was the Dark One, and how it affected you and Robyn.”
“Feeling guilty, are we?” Zelena asked. She took a long sip of her drink. “It’s no matter. It’s not like you lot would have done anything for me or her then. I would have been locked in the prison until delivery.”
While that was probably true and honestly deserved at the time, Emma thought this was neither the time nor place to bring it up. Instead, she went with the other truth, “It doesn’t make what I did right.”
“No, it really doesn’t.” Zelena looked down at her drink, and swirled the remaining liquid. “It’s a little bit strange, isn’t it, how many terrible things we’ve all done to one another. We both know each other’s sins. Regina cursed this entire town. Your husband nearly killed Belle, and her husband’s fucked over us all more than once. And here we all are together, celebrating a new baby.”
“I think that’s called being a family.” That sounded like something her mother would say, and it felt right in a weird sort of way. They weren’t a traditional family by any sort of definition, but Emma had grown to love how her family wasn’t exactly cookie-cutter.
“God, what a mess we are.”
“Yeah, but it’s our mess.”
“It makes you wonder what we brought our children into,” Zelena muttered before finishing her drink. She laughed before saying, “Apologies. I was warned not to make things too dark today.”
“You’re not wrong, though. And sometimes the truth is pretty dark and twisty,” Emma mused, thinking back to her fears when she first discovered the pregnancy. They hadn’t abated completely, and she doubted they ever would. “But I take comfort in the fact that I’m bringing her into a family that would raise hell to keep her safe.”
“Literally, in some cases.”
“We’d do the same for Robyn, you know. She’s one of us,” Emma replied, to which Zelena gave he smile. “Honestly, I’m grateful for Robyn.”
“Everyone should be grateful for her. She’s a gift. But why say that now?”
Emma gestured to her stomach. “Her.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” Emma replied, not sure how to articulate her feelings on the subject. “I never really had a family growing up, and I was even worse at making friends. I had Lily, I guess, and it was great, but even that fell apart. And, I dunno, I’m not saying that they have to be friends, I mean I want them to be, but I like that there will be another girl there who understands this mess of a family. God, I’m not saying this right--”
Zelena cut her off. “I’m glad Robyn has a family too, as strange as it is. And, you know, another girl to hang around. I’m already sure those boys will be handfuls.”
“And our girls won’t?”
“True. I’ll honestly be a little disappointed if she doesn’t turn out a tiny bit wicked.”
“I was a thief and Killian’s a pirate. I think being a hellraiser is in this kid’s blood,” Emma said as she placed her hand lovingly on her stomach. A part of her was already dreading the teenage years.
“I pity the fool who tries to stand in either of our girls’ ways,” Zelena commented, completely oblivious to her reference. Emma had to bite down a laugh. Now was not the time to point out a missed pop culture reference, especially now that things between her and Zelena were slightly on the mend.
“Speaking of standing in people’s way, the last I checked, there were a ton of cupcakes left over. What do you say we go back to the party, and get them before they’re gone?”
“That is a terrible segue,” Zelena said. Despite her comment, she shrugged, and headed to the door. “I need more whiskey anyway.”
When they reentered the house, true to form, Zelena made a beeline for the kitchen and her mother’s stock of alcohol. Regina cast Emma a concerned look, stopping her before she could forge her own path to the dessert table. “Did she say anything to you? I told her--”
“Relax, it’s fine,” Emma assured her friend. “In fact, I think we bonded.”
“You bonded with my sister?” Regina couldn’t keep the skepticism out of her voice.
“Hey, I’ve always heard babies have a weird way of bringing people together. This is another example of that,” Emma replied with a smile. Turning her attention away from Regina, she said, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m growing a baby, and need a cupcake.”
And get a cupcake, Emma did. As Emma surveyed the party, from the food Granny provided, to her mother talking animatedly to Ashley and Aurora, to Regina watching the room like a hawk, to even Zelena with her whiskey now laughing with Belle, she felt thankful for the family her daughter was being born into, and the community she was inheriting. And as cheesy as it sounded, that truly was the best gift possible.
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Check Out These Sweet Super Robots
So I finished Super Robot Wars V, finally. I thought it was very good and above and beyond all other cool things it does, know what I loved most about it? It really did make the plotlines, and ending in particular, way better than the original anime and OVAs it used as its sources did. Like, spoilers and all but having Full Frontal not just turn out to be a space ghost of char and burn into ashes was actually really cool because he resolves to become his own person and leaves on a journey of self discovery after coming to terms with the reality of who, and what, he is and that he doesn't -have- to be Char. Then comes back and bails your ass out. Cool Guy Frontal is a really cool moment, and it's way better than anything Unicorn delivered in his arc! That's not the only moment, but this isn't about SRW, and I'm going to have to stop myself there because; Super Robots are still awesome and as a brief companion to my word soup about Gundam last week, I'm here to talk about Super Robots, what they are and why they're rad and then tell you to watch them.
So lets start with something I'm certain I haven't covered covered yet; subegenres!
Super Robots tend to be more split than Real series. There are three major types of Super Robot shows. Traditional Super Robot shows are your Mazinger Z's, big chunky robots that fight off their villain of the week and whatever else the plot may have in store for them.
Transforming Robots, a middling sub-genre that's often forgotten, is best represented by the ever spectacular Getter Robo, tend to feature one or more headline machine that can change its form for different abilities. In Getter's case it has the Getter-1, a very traditional Super type that wields axes and over powers its enemies with its Getter Beams. Getter-2 is a more streamlined machine that wields a large drill on one arm and a claw on the other with a heavy emphasis on speed and motion, often capable of firing off its drill as a missile. Finally Getter-3 is a big, solid tank-machine that makes up for its limited mobility with long stretching arms and a multitude of long-range missiles. Transforming Robot series typically rely on teamwork dynamics and villains that necessitate the various shifts in form.
The third and often well-known and popularized is the Combing Robots sub-genre. Best summed up by shows like GaoGaiGar, a combining robot show features machines that, well, have robots that fuse together to make bigger and better robots. GaoGaiGar not only has its titular machine but most of its supporting cast consist of teams of smaller robots such as EnRyu and HyoRyu who can fuse together to form ChoRyuJin. Typically in these shows they feature a series of progressively bigger, and stronger villains that require progressively more, and more powerful, fusions or powers to beat.
Sub-genre malarkey aside, Super Robots are the mirror to Real Robots, the second half of the Mecha Genre and generally they are the stereotype people tend to imagine when they think about mecha in general. While Real series tend to have the mechs simply act as tools within the setting, no different than any other vehicle, in a Super Robot series the robot its self tends to be the heavy focus. Some series take it further and make the robot an actual character, other times the robot is merely the device which the plot revolves. More often than not a Super Robot will be unique in some manner, rather than mass-produced military tools and they tend to wield more unconventional weaponry such as swords, drills or even transforming their very bodies into weapons.
Narratively Super Robot series tend to differ from Real series as well. Super series, more often than not, tend to be about the tenacity and strength of humanity. About the spirit and ingenuity of mankand in the face of adversity and whatever mysterious force it is that drives us to be whatever we are. Antagonists in Super Robot series also tend to be mirrors of the protagonists. Unlike a Real series where the antagonist is often an ideaology, a nation or a mind-set in Super Series you're often shown a dark, warped perception of humanity or society. An evil organization, an oppressive alien government or ancient super beings from below the earth's crust! But as the series goes on you're given more in-depth looks at these beings and what drives them and you see that they aren't different from humanity. Often, they literally are humanity – just divergent at some point in time. A Super Robot is less about showing how people communicate and ideas in conflict and more about showing the raw drive of mankind, and the conflict of man versus man on a more primal, almost even tribal level.
So all that being said, let me talk about why I love Super Robots more than Real Robots. On the most basic, shallow levels I like the designs for Super Robots a lot more. A gundam, like the Crossbones Gundam for example, is cool and I love it. But there's just something that I will always love about the huge chunky designs like Mazinger Z, Getter Robo or Big O. Even more than that, the more grounded and believable weapons of a series like Gundam will always have their place in my heart. But no matter how cool a gundam's beam rifle is, it just can't compete with the excitement of a mecha beast being blown to pieces by a rocket punch, or those radical pile drivers in the Big O's arms. Super Robots -feel- cool and exciting. Real Robots, by comparison, don't feel that much different from a jet fight or a car chase. They're still cool, but it's not the same to me.
On a less, but still somewhat, shallow note I will admit that grand spectacles appeal to me. In a show like Gundam, or even Martian Successor Nadesico, the grand finale isn't some rousing speech about how awesome everyone is. It's not going to be a world-ending battle to protect the earth. In Gundam the climax features two pilots desperately fighting for their lives, completely ignoring their broken down machines! While Nadesico features very little in the way of dramatic space battles, but rather tense diplomatic action. Then you take a series like The Big O, where the climax calls reality, identity and everything into question while the protagonist fights for his life against the man who stands against everything he stands for. That's not to say that Gundam or Nadesico weren't amazing in their own rights, in fact you should go watch them if you haven't, but that I am just heavily biased in terms of flash and style.
So, in the end what series do I like, and do I think you should watch?
Well lets start with Mazinger Z. There's a fancy new CG movie in the works and “Mazinger Edition Z: The Impact!” (often referred to as “Shin Mazinger Z”) is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the grandfather of the Super Robot genre. It also features one of my personal favorite anime openings.
Mazinger Z is a story so old, iconic and told so many times there's a good chance you know it already even if you don't know the names and fine details. Koji Kabuto is a young, if somewhat rebellious, teenager living with his young brother in absolute normalcy until one day he discovers his creepy grandfather is dead and left him a weird giant robot, telling him to fight off the sudden onslaught of robots known only as Mechabeasts sent by a strange and mysterious Dr. Hell. It's a very simple story, Mazinger is not known for it's depth or complexity. What it does have is a giant robot with rocket fists. Watch it.
Getter Robo: Armageddon.
An OVA series from the 90's with a distinct flair for ultraviolence, a spectacular OST and a distinct artstyle that I have no doubt held influence over the creators of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (series I'm not fond of but is somewhat of a fan favorite among mecha fans.) You don't even need to be familiar with the greater Getter Robo mythos to dive in to this one as it's a stand-alone story in its own continuity;
Famous Getter Ray professor Dr. Satome is murdered and notable Getter Robo pilot Ryoma is unjustly accused and arrested! Meanwhile a new menace threatens the earth in the form of the Invaders – space faring shapeshifters that seek to wipe out all life on earth.
I'm not going to get into it more to avoid spoiling it, but seriously; it's an amazing show and you can practically pinpoint specific scenes that future Super Robot series would all but ape straight off of it. Also it has my absolute favorite opening.
The Big O
I thought long and hard about this, since I only wanted to write about three series. I almost gave it to GaoGaiGar, but Big O deserves it. The Big O experiments more with the art, the tone and the style of a Super Robot series than the vast majority of others. It's wholly unique and it's something that I think absolutely must be seen, whether you wind up liking it or not, simply because of how utterly singular it is. The soundtrack is outstanding, the art style is amusingly directly influenced by the long-running DC Animated Universe cartoons (Specifically “Batman the Animated Series”.) Meanwhile the character designs, the mechs in particular are incredibly distinct. There are no hotblooded heroes here, no courageous young heroes to save the day and the titular machine looks more like a humanoid steam train with lots of solid, flat surfaces and heavy plates rather than the more rounded, chunky designs of most Super Robot series.
Story-wise it follows Roger Smith, professional negotiator and slow steeping mystery of Paradigm City, a place with no memories and where identity is a fleeting thing. Gradually Roger finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into a strange conspiracy and the mysteries around him start unraveling.
Honorable mentions;
So without going into too much depth I'd just like to say you should also watch the following;
GaoGaiGar (peak 90's anime with a radical opening theme and a fun cast), Giant Robo (The OVAs, they're stylish and surprisingly dark.) and even though it's not a Super Robot series; Macross Plus for one of the coolest dogfight scenes in anime.
#nerdshit#I have strong opinions about Gurren Lagann and do not like it#Also SDF Macross is a very good non-super robot anime#Neon Genesis Evangelion is also good but is in that weird middle-ground between Super and Real#Seriously watch Getter Robo Armageddon
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Fandom: One Piece
Written in 2016/2018
Summary: A girl from our world literally falls into the One Piece world. Seventeen years old, without the usual One Piece absurd physical capabilities, she... does her best.
Warnings: Canon-typical violence, implied/threatened sexual assault
Part 1
Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.
In a horrifically anime-esque beginning, I was late. Not to school, though; to my part-time after-school-and-on-the-weekends volunteering job at the hospital. Because I was gonna be a doctor. Yeah. In ten years once I’d finished all of the schooling and my residency, anyway. Volunteering at the hospital was practically a requirement, because, with all of the competition I knew I’d have getting into medical school, I needed my résumé to be the best it could be.
But it had been storming hard last night, which had knocked out the power at my house, which had reset my alarm clock, which had caused the alarm to not go off. So it was obscenely early on Saturday, I was late, and I was running through the rain to get to the train because I didn’t have a car. I was going to be soaked when I got to the hospital – at least I wasn’t wearing my scrubs yet, so I could change when I got there.
That was about the only even marginally good thing about the day so far.
And, ugh, there was a puddle in the way. It was in a large dip in the ground, far too wide for me to go around and too long for me to jump. I’d have to go through it. It didn’t look too deep, but it was probably deep enough to submerge the entirety of my feet, which would make my shoes and socks all soggy. I didn’t even have any replacements.
Ughhh.
There was a certain way it was supposed to go: I slosh my way through the irritating puddle, continue to the hospital, and have to deal with squishy socks and shoes for the rest of the day.
Because karma hates me, that was not what happened.
Instead, my first step landed in the supposedly shallow puddle – and kept going. With me unable to stop without steady footing – which, with one of my feet still falling, I certainly didn’t have – my momentum carried me face-first into the puddle. What might have been a very painful meeting between face and ground instead found me fully submerged in the dirty rainwater.
Down, down, down, I went. It must have been more than my own height deep. I knew that these were a thing, ‘puddles’ that were actually water-filled holes deep enough for people to disappear into them – there were videos of it happening on the Internet, after all. I just hadn’t expected it to ever happen to me.
Keeping my eyes closed to avoid getting who-knew-what in them, I thrashed my way to the surface. Once I broke the surface of the water, I took a deep, grateful breath of fresh air, then, my eyes still closed, flailed around in the puddle in the hopes of finding an edge. Half a minute, far more swimming than the relatively small in diameter sinkhole should have allowed me, and the realization that I was being moved around by a current later, I opened my eyes regardless of whatever might be in the water.
What I saw was definitely not the city I had been in previously. It wasn’t even a city. It wasn’t even land!
There was water as far as I could see. It was stormy and raining like it had been before, but I was in a much larger body of water. There were large waves splashing around me, dragging me around inside them. It was a miracle I hadn’t been submerged by one of them while my eyes were closed.
What?
I spun from side to side frantically, confused and bewildered and panicking and all of those other synonyms to the same thing: I had no idea what was going on. In most directions, there was just more of the same, more wave-filled water.
Finally, after spinning around almost completely, I saw something different: a ship, sailing towards me, and land behind it. The ship was kind of odd, wood instead of metal, and it had actual sails. A small, distant, oddly calm part of my mind wondered if there were actually still ships with sails. I had thought that we’d mostly moved on to engines, but apparently not.
Too relieved to question it further and too confused to care, I swam in the direction of the approaching boat, keeping a tight grasp on my messenger bag as I did. Everything I’d had in it was probably ruined, but I didn’t want to lose it.
After a couple of minutes of swimming towards the ship as it sailed towards me, wherein it was doing the majority of the getting-closer, I noticed something… odd. Well, odder; it was already pretty odd. The ship was flying a black flag.
But isn’t that…?
Once I got a little closer, I was able to distinguish the flag a little better. It was, in fact, a black flag…
…with a skull and crossbones on it.
I stopped swimming, startled.
Pirates?
But that was ridiculous; even if pirates were still a thing, the skull and crossbones flag (a Jolly Roger?) hadn’t been used in hundreds of years. It couldn’t be real pirates.
…That was a lot of work to go to for a cosplay, though.
As I got even closer to the (pirate?) ship, I noticed that there was a weird, white line around the skull. Kind of like the outline of a half-circle, disappearing off the bottom of the flag.
That was weird, too. Not an important kind of weird, but weird.
Well and truly wigged out, I stayed where I was instead of continuing in the direction of the ship. To my chagrin, however, it continued getting closer at about the same speed. My swimming had apparently not been effective at all.
As freaked out as I was by the weird ship, I didn’t actually have a choice. It was either the ship or the land I could see behind it, which, judging by how quickly I’d been swimming before, would take quite a while to get to. Plus, I’d just fallen into a puddle and ended up in the ocean. The weirdness of the ship was nothing compared to that.
It turned out that I didn’t have much choice either way, though. The pirate ship continued sailing in my direction – very perfectly in my direction, and I scrambled to get out of the way before it hit me. I didn’t know what would happen to something hit by a ship in water, but I didn’t want to find out.
I did manage to get out of its path, thankfully. As I’d moved, the sailors on the ship had apparently noticed me, and a giant uproar started on the ship. Somebody dove off the ship into the water and swam up to me.
He didn’t bother with words or anything, merely grabbed me around the waist with one arm and started swimming back to his ship. His one-armed, dragging-a-person speed was faster than my alone, using-both-arms speed.
Too overwhelmed by the WTF-ery of the situation, however, I couldn’t handle his brusque, potentially pirate-y behavior. A small, logical, calm part of my brain noted that his briskness could only be because we were in the water, I probably seemed to have been drowning, and he wanted to get back to his ship quickly. All logical reasons.
The majority of my brain, illogical and far from calm, screamed that this was a kidnapping, he was kidnapping me, I should be freaking out, freak out!
So I… freaked out.
“What – what are you doing?” I asked, well aware that I was being loud and shrill and unable to help it. I started squirming and thrashing, kicking and shoving at him in an attempt to get free. “Let me go!”
But the (pirate!) man just ignored me, not responding to my words or my actions. His one arm was apparently stronger than all of me, as my attempts to get free accomplished exactly nothing.
Relatively quickly, we made it to his ship, and the others threw down a rope. Rather than scale it one-handed while carrying me as I’d been a little afraid of, the man tied the rope around my waist. Still ignoring my verbal and physical protests while doing so, of course. As soon as the rope was secure, I found myself being lifted out of the water.
I yelped despite myself and stopped trying to untie the rope in favor of holding on to it for dear life. As it turned out, the weird, wooden, old-timey, Jolly Roger-flying, actual-cannon-possessing ship was actually rather tall. Being lifted that high by nothing but a rope was really scary, okay.
The men on the ship dragged me on board and untied the rope from my waist. There were a lot of men on deck, all of them big, muscular, grimy, and particularly ugly. Seriously, they all had disproportionate limbs and other features; they were ugly in a way I’d never seen before. I was dimly aware of them dropping the rope back over the side as one man, as ugly as the rest and with a relatively impressive, unkempt, beard stepped right up into my space. He grabbed my chin with one hand before I could back away.
“Well, well, well, what have we here?” he said, disgusting, rancid breath right in my face.
The man didn’t seem to expect a response, continuing, “An attempted escapee, hmm? Hah!” With that sharp bark of laughter, which caused me to flinch, he stepped back. “I, Captain Getsu of the New Moon Pirates, have never allowed anyone to escape, and that has not changed! This little drowned rat will meet the same fate as the other inhabitants of Royal Peaks Island!”
The crew cheered as Getsu drew a sword from his waist and pointed it at me. The tip of it brushed against my throat, opening a thin cut. Ow! I clapped my hands against the wound instinctively.
Wait, what?
I shrieked and stumbled backwards away from him. Heck no! I was not going to get stabbed. I’d rather take my chances with the ocean despite my crappy swimming ability. I didn’t make it very far, though, before I bumped into the guy who’d retrieved me from the water.
He grabbed me before I could flinch away. Even with one hand, he was stronger than I was – annoyingly enough.
“You know, Captain,” he said idly, drawing a hand through my still-wet, scraggly hair. I tried and failed to squirm away because wow creepy. “She’s not too bad lookin’ underneath all that drowned rat.”
Oh no. No, no, nope.
He was a creep. I felt severely creeped on.
“Let me go!” I said again, thrashing and fighting to get away from him. It was to no avail, however, as his grip didn’t budge in the slightest. “Let me go!”
Getsu gave me a contemplative look, sweeping his eyes down and up my body lecherously. I was suddenly glad I was wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt rather than anything more revealing. “That’s true, hmm,” he murmured, lowering his sword. “It’s not too common to find a looker like this ‘un in East Blue.”
East Blue? He’d said it like it was a place, but I’d never – wait. I had heard of it; it was just… fictional. It was one of the oceans of the One Piece world. But that was ridiculous; One Piece was an anime/manga. I couldn’t be in the East Blue of One Piece.
But then again… puddle-portal. Plus it would explain the pirates and their old-timey pirate ship.
Well. All right then.
It didn’t even matter what I was in anyway; whether I was in my world or the One Piece world didn’t change the fact that I’d been captured by pirates. Even worse, pirates who were apparently actual bad guys, rather than the mostly-good-guyness of, say, Luffy’s crew.
What do I do? I wondered silently, panicking.
And ohhh, crap, crap crap I hadn’t been paying attention and I’d missed the end of their conversation. Now I had no idea what was going on because I was an idiot. My attempts to get away failed utterly as one of the other crew members tied my hands together at the wrists with rope.
“Stop it! Let me go!” My continued protests fell on deaf ears as they tied my ankles together. I couldn’t protest anymore after that, however, as they shoved a piece of horrifically dirty cloth in my mouth and tied it around my head, effectively gagging me.
The guy who’d retrieved me shoved me forward, and, my ankles tied together and unable to separate, I had to hop a couple awkward steps forward to stay standing. Thankfully (?), rather than spend the time forcing me to do that to get wherever he wanted me, the guy just picked me up under one arm. He then dropped me into a corner made by the design of the cabin, where I collapsed unceremoniously onto my side.
The crew then proceeded to ignore me.
What the…?
I struggled to get upright. With my hands and legs tied as they were, however, the best I could manage was to get to my knees. But, since it was more dignified than being on my side, I stayed in that position. Surprisingly well-protected by the walls of the cabin as I was, at least I wasn’t getting sprayed with sea water anymore.
But I was far from safe. The pirates had just been planning to kill me, had just been commenting on my physical attributes; I didn’t trust for a second that they’d suddenly had a change of heart. Plus, the fact that I was tied up made it rather obvious I was a prisoner.
Since I had the time, I quietly had a panic attack. Because what was going on how had I fallen into a puddle and landed in a different world why was I kidnapped by pirates what.
When I could breathe again, I forced myself to think. There was no point in freaking out; I needed to figure out how I was going to get out of this. With my arms and legs bound, I couldn’t exactly just jump off the ship. I could probably make it to the edge, true; however, since I wouldn’t be able to swim, I’d just drown. If they didn’t fish me back out first.
Belatedly, I realized that I still had my messenger bag. They’d never taken it.
…
Idiots.
Not that I was complaining, of course. I had a knife in my bag. Of course, I still needed a plan for after I cut the rope tying my hands and legs. It wouldn’t help anything if I couldn’t actually get away. But at the same time, I really didn’t like being unable to fight back. Not that I could with my hands and legs free either, though…
I was pretty close to the cabin door. It might be possible for me to hide in there and lock them out. Except that wouldn’t really help; it was more of a stalling method. And stalling for what, exactly? I had no guarantee anyone would come. But, even so, it might be better to have something to do when they stopped ignoring me, even if it wasn’t quite an exit strategy.
With that in mind, I maneuvered my bag into my lap so it hid my hands, then went hunting through it for the switchblade I knew was in there. Once I found it, I flipped it open. The locking gear to hold it open clicked loudly into place, and I froze for a moment. None of them seemed to have heard it, so I continued.
I awkwardly twisted the knife around so that I could slide the blade against the ropes around my wrist. Hopefully I wouldn’t accidentally cut myself, since I couldn’t see it. The rope was very thick, it turned out after a couple minutes of attempting fruitlessly to saw through it. I couldn’t even tell if I was making any progress at all.
“A ship!” came the sudden shout from the – what was it called? Eagle nest? Hawk nest? Whatever, the lookout position. “There’s a ship coming this way!”
The pirates all snapped to attention.
“They’re flying a Jolly Roger!” the lookout reported.
“A pirate crew, hmm,” Getsu muttered to himself. Then, louder, “Prepare for battle!”
Well, okay. That seemed rude. I hoped the other crew won. And were nicer. It would be just awesome to be saved from my captors only to be captured again.
The pirates all retrieved weapons – mostly guns and swords – and some of them got to work loading canons. Once everything was finished, there was a long period of waiting. To make sure the other ship was in range, probably.
After what felt like a long time, they started firing their cannons. Cannons were, it seemed, actually very loud in reality. By now, our ship and theirs were apparently close enough that I could hear the other crew shouting even over the cannons. I couldn’t see what was going on, though.
The first round of cannon fire ceased, and confused, angry muttering started up in the crew.
“What the f –“
“What just ha –“
“Did they just –“
Then Getsu spoke, sounding weirdly unnerved himself. “Don’t get discouraged! Keep firing! The New Moon Pirates have never lost before, hmm? We won’t start now!”
The pirates cheered in response, though it was much weaker than the last time.
The cannon fire resumed.
I wondered idly what had freaked out the pirates so much. Knowing the One Piece world, the other crew had probably knocked all of the cannons out of the air before they could be hit. Luffy’s crew loved doing that.
I kept sawing at the ropes with my knife. Hopefully, whoever won, I could get away while they were distracted. Unfortunately, I didn’t seem to be making progress very quickly, and I didn’t know how long this battle would go on for; it wouldn’t do much good if the battle ended before I could get free.
Finally, the other ship came into view. It was smaller than the New Moon Pirates’ ship, but newer-looking and cleaner-looking. It didn’t have a figurehead (that was what they were called, right?), and its flag was, obviously, a skull and crossbones. Theirs was apparently overlaid on a… spade? Like the card suit? And had a weird line horizontally across the skull, right above its eyes, with two blue… balls? Right above the line.
Well. That was possibly even stranger than the New Moon Pirates’ Jolly Roger – which, I now realized, was supposed to represent a new moon. It just didn’t work very well.
The ship continued its steady approach. The New Moon Pirates reloaded their cannons and fired yet again. At least I’d get to see how the ship was completely undamaged despite the barrage of cannonballs.
The cannonballs flew towards the other ship. People started jumping off the ship to attack the cannonballs, causing them to blow up midair and somehow not getting hurt as they did – not to mention the insane, impossible heights they had to be jumping to manage it. They did it at different times and places, so I couldn’t tell how many there were total. A couple cannonballs blew up without any visible interference. A long-range member, maybe? Or just faulty cannonballs – I didn’t know enough about them to know if that was possible.
I don’t know why I’m surprised, I thought. I really didn’t. At least it was all but confirmed, now, that I was in One Piece.
As their cannonballs continued getting destroyed, the New Moon Pirates got more and more freaked out and worried. The other ship continued approaching.
“Keep at it!” Getsu ordered. “They’ll make a mistake eventually!”
Spitefully, I hoped that they didn’t. Maybe the other crew would be worse and I’d regret it, but I wanted them to win.
In the meantime, I continued making no progress on cutting through my ropes. And my legs were starting to hurt from the way I was half-kneeling half-sitting on them.
The New Moon Pirates, for their part, continued getting more and more frantic.
“What the f –“
“What kind of monsters –“
“No way they’re human!”
“This is getting ridiculous, fu –“
In a climactic turn of events, three people from the other crew jumped off their ship, deflected the most recent batch of cannonballs – and landed on this ship instead of their own. They were all men: a huge man sporting impressive sideburns and, in place of a left arm, a machine gun; a relatively normal sized man wearing a domino mask and an open jacket with no shirt, revealing his not unimpressive abs; and another normal sized man, this one somewhat younger than the others, wearing a bright orange hat and a button-up shirt with none of the buttons done.
I squinted at the youngest, sure that I recognized him. He looked incredibly familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.
The New Moon Pirates got off a couple more cannon shots before catching up and turning to fight the three men. The cannonballs, however, all exploded mid-air; this time, I thought I caught bullets traveling through the air to hit them.
Horrifyingly quickly, the three men obliterated the forces of the New Moon Pirates. Within ten minutes – probably even less – all of the New Moon Pirates, with the exception of Getsu, were on the floor, the luckiest of them still conscious to groan in pain. Or maybe they were unluckiest?
Getsu and the youngest man started fighting; although it was definitely the longest fight any of the New Moon Pirates had put up, it seemed obvious that the young man was better. He had a wide, cheerful grin on his face as he dodged around Getsu’s sword strikes, occasionally dancing close enough to throw a punch. So far, Getsu had managed to block all of the punches with the side of his blade, but he was being overwhelmed quickly. Every time the younger man landed a hit on his sword, Getsu’s arms buckled, implying that the other man was a lot stronger than he looked.
The other two men didn’t interfere, instead standing back and watching. Both looked apathetic, and maybe a bit exasperated, as though tired of their crew member's antics.
Sideburns, apparently bored with watching the fight, glanced around and met eyes with me. He looked surprised, the first expression I’d seen on him, and hurried in my direction with surprising speed, skirting the edge of Getsu and the other man’s fight.
I panicked, stupidly and without reason. As Sideburns got close, remaining hand (not the gun) already reaching towards me, I reared backwards – ow, my legs – and dragged my hands from my bag, brandishing my knife threateningly at him.
He stopped in his tracks, switching to holding his hands out in front of himself harmlessly and backing away a couple of steps.
Belatedly, I flipped the knife around in my hands so that it actually pointed at him. My hands, I noticed, were already shaking, because I was a weak seventeen-year-old with too few muscles to hold the weight of my arms up this long. Or maybe it was because I was freaking out. Heck if I knew.
Also, the rope was actually most of the way cut. If I’d had a couple more minutes, I would have been able to cut it completely.
Behind Sideburns, Getsu went flying backwards as the other man finally landed a punch straight to his face. Getsu didn’t get up again, apparently out for the count after a single hit. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know exactly how strong the young man was.
“Hey, Aggie 68, what’s up –“ the young man started as he turned towards us. Once he saw, well, the situation, he cut himself off. “Oh,” he uttered.
The man with the domino mask turned too, and his eyebrows shot up into his hairline.
It was stupid to hold a knife on Sideburns, I knew; I didn’t even know if they were bad guys or not yet. Plus, if they were, it would probably just annoy them… It wasn’t like I actually had a chance of fighting them, anyway.
Yet I still couldn’t get my shaking arms to lower the knife.
The youngest man and Domino-Mask-Guy both approached. Domino-Mask-Guy stopped a couple of steps behind Sideburns, while the youngest continued a couple of steps closer than him. Almost without my doing, my arms turned to point the knife at him instead.
He crouched, holding his hands, open and empty, out harmlessly. “Hey there,” he said softly, carefully. I resented the treatment a little, but, well. With the way I was acting, it made sense. “I’m Ace. We’re not gonna hurt you, okay? You’re safe now.”
…Huh?
I stared blankly at him for a moment, the epiphany smacking me in the face that he was Portgas D. Ace. Luffy’s older brother! Well, adoptive – whatever. No wonder he looked familiar. So. One Piece universe. Definitely confirmed.
After another moment of glancing back and forth between Ace’s patient, expectant face and my knife, I forced my arms to curl in, lowering the knife. Ace beamed at me, looking unreasonably happy about something so small. He leaned forward, dorkily scooting closer without standing up straight when he couldn’t reach, and carefully took my knife. That – well. That was fair.
Then, still ever-so-careful – I was a little amazed the other two men hadn’t said anything yet – Ace reached to untie the cloth from around my head one handed, still holding my knife in the other. Once it was untied, I let it drop from my mouth – tossing my head so that it would land to the side of me.
Ace grabbed the rope around my wrists, his eyebrows raising a little for a moment before he cut straight through what was left, using my knife. I was a little jealous – he’d managed the same amount of progress in, like, a second, that had taken me several minutes. He gave my knife a funny look, then ran his thumb along the blade.
After examining his perfectly uninjured thumb, he turned back to me. “This knife sucks,” he said.
I let out a startled laugh. “Well –“ I coughed, realizing very abruptly how dry my mouth and throat were, and had to take a moment. “Well, I wasn’t really planning to have to use it, I guess.”
Ace grinned at me for a moment, apparently pleased with the pathetic retort. “What's your name?” he asked.
"Alyssa," I said honestly. My name didn't matter much. Hopefully it didn't, like, stand out as a name that didn't actually exist or something. That would be horrible.
Ace nodded. "Nice to meet you," he said politely. Somehow, it came across as rote, something he'd learned to say.
I supposed that made sense, given his backstory; hadn't Makino had to teach him to be polite?
"I wish I could say the same, but, well," I said awkwardly.
Fortunately, it seemed to surprise another laugh out of Ace.
"Yeah, no, I can see that," he said. He sobered. "What happened? Is there somewhere we can take you?"
I faltered for a moment. I flailed mentally - which direction did people supposedly look when they were lying? I didn't remember, so I just looked down. I couldn’t exactly tell him the truth, after all. But then, Getsu had given me the perfect lie, hadn’t he?
Thankfully, Ace spent a moment cutting through the rope around my ankles with enviable ease despite still using my knife, giving me time to get my story straight.
“I’m from Royal Peaks Island,” I said – lied, shifting into a more comfortable position. Ace nodded, and I continued, indicating the fallen crewmembers, “They… attacked us.” Horribly guilty about lying and just wanting to get the false story over with, I spoke quickly, “I – I tried to get away, but I couldn’t get to any of the ships in the port without going past them, so I – stupidly, I guess – just tried to hide in the ocean, but I guess I was unlucky, and they passed by me when they were leaving and they must have seen me, and…”
I took a breath, aware that I was rambling, and finished awkwardly, guiltily, “I don’t even know what happened to anybody else.”
That was true, at least. I really didn’t know what had happened to the real inhabitants of Royal Peaks Island. Getsu had implied that they were all dead, which was horrible. I didn’t want an entire island of people to be dead, but… if any of them were alive, they would know that I was lying. That just made me feel worse.
Ace nodded again, looking solemn. He stood and stepped back, offering me a hand. When I took his hand, he pulled me to my feet and calmly let me use his hand to steady myself when I stumbled.
“Well, we have to go check it out,” he said authoritatively.
Domino-Mask-Guy smirked. “And that has nothing to do with the fact that that’s where we were going anyway, right?”
“Of course not,” Ace sniffed with a baleful look at him. He turned to me. “Want to come with?”
Well, it was either go with them or stay with the New Moon Pirates. Huh. Hard choice, that.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding.
Ace nodded back, then turned and walked away without another word, obviously expecting me – and his crewmembers – to follow. We did.
Their ship had sidled up beside the New Moon Pirates’ in the meantime, and the fourth man I’d seen was standing at the edge of it. Ace and the two others jumped across the gap to it easily – which made sense; they’d jumped a lot further before. But it was a big gap, maybe ten or fifteen feet. There was no way I could jump it.
“Umm. I can’t… really jump that far?” I called to them, twisting the strap of my bag awkwardly. Ace never had given my knife back, I noted.
They turned back, looking comically surprised.
“Oh, really?” Ace asked.
He jumped back across easily. “Is it okay if I…” he trailed off, holding his arms out towards me in an obvious message.
I glanced from him to the gap and back. I sighed.
“It’s fine,” I said.
Ace grabbed me around the waist, and the next moment I found myself midair. I very carefully didn’t make any embarrassing noises.
We landed more lightly on the other side than I would have expected. I let out a quiet breath of relief for that as Ace stepped away to a more respectable distance.
I got my first look at the fourth member of the crew, the one who'd stayed to protect their ship. Another man, of course; that wasn't even a surprise, although I was personally disappointed by the lack of bad-A pirate women. He was very tall and thin and carried an awful, old-timey rifle.
He gave me a curious look, and I shrunk automatically to hide behind Ace. It seemed these ones were actually kind-of-good-guys like the Straw Hats, since I doubted Ace would have been the captain of ordinary evil pirates, but they were scary, okay. Except for Ace himself, who had a pretty normal character design thanks to being main character adjacent, they kind of had typical minor bad guy one-off pirate designs.
"What's going on, Captain?" he asked
Ace glanced at me. I didn't know what I looked like, maybe like a sad drowned kitten, but Ace looked surprisingly sympathetic.
"It seems that those pirates--" he jerked his head to indicate the ship of the New Moon Pirates, "-- attacked Royal Peaks Island. This is Alyssa, who they... abducted instead of killing."
I couldn't help but look down at my feet, unable to meet any of their eyes as my lie was repeated. Even though I had no other choice, I found myself wishing I hadn't agreed to go with them to the island. There, we would either find people who would contradict my story or we would find an entire massacred island.
It was awful, but I found myself selfishly hoping for the latter.
The tall man frowned. "How horrible," he murmured. He circled around Ace to get to me, but stayed a respectful distance away. "My name is Mihar."
"Oh yeah," Ace said as though just realizing something. I stepped away from him as he turned to face me. That was a little too close to bare chest for me. He gestured to Domino-Mask-Guy. "That's Masked Deuce--" a gesture towards Sideburns, "-- and that's Aggie 68. And I'm Portgas D. Ace!"
It was a little weird, he introduced himself last name first, which was the Japanese order, but everybody had spoken English so far. I would have thought the name order was just because the One Piece series was originally in Japanese.
Still, I couldn't help but smile. "You already introduced yourself," I pointed out.
"Well, yeah, but not my full name," Ace said with a shrug. "Is Alyssa your full name?"
I really had to think about that one. Obviously, I did have a last name, and usually I would introduce myself with my full name, including my middle initial, like Ace had, but. Did it really matter in this world if my last name was the same? It wasn't like any of my family was around for me to be related to.
Not to mention that, while it was fine in my original world, my middle name was Diane... which did, actually, make my middle initial 'D'. Here, that meant something, supposedly, which it didn't in my old world. So, I decided, might as well just leave it at first name.
"Well, it's the only name that matters," I said belatedly.
For some reason, they all looked very sad about it.
"Well, we should go to Royal Peaks Island to check it out," Ace said authoritatively. He sent me a softer look. "There might still be some people there."
That was very true. There could be. It didn't seem all that likely that a pirate crew would kill an entire island for no reason. If it was true, I was doomed.
So all I could do was clutch my bag close to me and give a short nod.
Fortunately, they didn't seem to think it was all that odd. They went about their business, surprisingly good at managing such a big ship with only four people. Before long, we were sailing closer to Royal Peaks Island. As we got closer, I noticed that it was aptly named; it did in fact have several tall mountains.
I stayed off to the side, as out of the way as I could get. Fortunately, they left me alone. I could practically feel them talking about me, but they kept it out of my hearing range.
We were on the correct side to land at the port town, but once we got close enough, it became apparent that it was on fire. Not the town itself, but the port. The dock, I thought it might be called? In any case, since we couldn't exactly dock (?) at the... dock, the others dropped anchor (?) off to the side, far enough from the flames to be safe.
I eyed the distance to the ground. It was... far. And scary. I was already getting premonitions of falling and dying.
Meanwhile, Masked Deuce, Aggie 68, and Mihar jumped casually off the side of the ship, landing easily. I was extremely envious.
Without so much as a by-your-leave, Ace scooped me up practically bridal-style and dropped to the ground. Startled, I could not restrain a shriek as the wind blew past me on the way down, wrapping my arms around Ace's neck in a death grip. Even carrying me, though, Ace landed just as easily as the others, smoothly enough that I hardly felt a bump at all.
I self-consciously unwound my arms from Ace's neck as he let me down.
Before I could apologize or anything, I noticed some bodies that were visible even from here, sufficiently distracting me. Horror rose up in my throat, but the instincts that had led me to want to be a doctor in the first place wouldn't allow me to leave them. I hurried over, checking each person.
They were all dead.
That led me closer to the main road through the town, revealing even more bodies further in. I started making my way through. In between checking bloody corpses for life, I noticed that the town was very pretty. It was all blues and feathers and other decorations. According to some signs, it was a tourist-y party town. A lot of the decorations reminded me of New Orleans and Mardi Gras.
It was marred, however, by the bodies and blood seemingly coating the town. There was a somber air as I walked through, Ace and the others trailing behind respectfully. That made me feel bad, too; they were giving me allowances I didn't deserve under the belief that I knew these people.
As we got further, it seemed less likely that we would come across any survivors.
There didn't seem to be any form of police station, I noted. A small island like this probably relied on the World Government, and therefore the Marines, for protection. But there was no Marine base, leaving them vulnerable.
This was my world now, too. What a horrible world it was.
Whether it was the thought of all of the people who'd died or the thought that I was stuck here, I felt tears prickling at my eyes. Unable to stand this horrid funeral march, I got faster and faster until I was all but running between each body. Finally, I'd made it through the entire town and circled around to be near the burning dock.
I was in front of a small doctor's office. Inside, visible through a broken window, there was an old man with a kindly face and a white doctor's coat lying on the ground, covered in blood.
Suddenly, the tears overwhelmed me and I choked and started crying quietly. It was so stupid, I didn't even know these people. At the same time, though, their entire town was dead. Possibly everyone any of them had ever known. Didn't they deserve to have someone, anyone, cry for them?
And maybe I was crying for myself, too. My home, my family and friends, all my aspirations to be a doctor, were gone.
The others were still there behind me, I could tell. Probably, they were keeping their distance now less out of respect and more out of awkwardness. After a while, Ace, brave man, approached. After a moment of visibly struggling for something to say, he patted me on the back gently.
"I was going to be a doctor, you know," I said for no reason. It just kind of fell out.
I couldn't help staring at the dead old doctor in the building. Had he had an apprentice? Were they dead, too?
"Was that guy your teacher?" Ace asked hesitantly.
I wouldn't have thought that Ace did hesitation.
Still, I had to hesitate, then. He wasn't, of course, but I couldn't exactly say no now. There likely wasn't another doctor on the island.
"Yes," I lied, shoving down the guilt. "I was apprenticed to him, but."
But he was dead. But now any hope I had of going to my world's medical school was gone.
I swallowed around a lump in my throat. I hated crying.
"Now I have nothing," I said quietly.
The tears were encroaching again, but I forced them back. My eyes were going to be uncomfortable and achy enough already.
Ace was standing in front of me now. Though I was looking down, at the ground, I saw as he looked over my shoulder at his crew, obviously communicating. I'd always thought it was cool how people (fictional ones, anyway) could do that.
"You're a doctor?" Ace said.
I flicked my gaze up to look at his face. "I was going to be a doctor," I said. It wasn't quite agreement; the difference was, in my opinion, huge. I was a year of high school and seven years of medical school away from being a proper doctor.
Ace, however, seemed to think differently.
"Okay, so, look. We can drop you off at the nearest island, which we need to go to for supplies anyway," he added this almost sheepishly. "You can... try to make a life there, I guess."
He paused long enough that I was about to agree, since that was my best bet at this point and it was actually pretty nice of them to even offer, when he started again.
"Or you can come with us," Ace finished.
I stared. That sounded... like an offer of piracy. Like something Luffy might have said if he wasn't such a rude person. It was kind of interesting to find that Ace didn't bully people into joining his crew like Luffy did.
"Come with you?" I asked, just to be sure.
Ace nodded, seeming more confident now that I was definitely not crying. "Join my crew."
The fan in me was screaming. The chance to be a pirate! On the other hand, piracy was obviously quite dangerous and I didn't actually want to die. But then, the people on Royal Peaks Island hadn't been pirates and they'd still died. Maybe it was actually safer to be on a powerful pirate crew.
Of course, Ace had to also know exactly how useless I was. Why would he offer that? I'd be dead weight.
"Why?" I said. When Ace's face crumpled a little like he'd been rejected, I hurried to add, "Why would you ask me? I'm not... I wouldn't be very helpful."
"We need a doctor," Ace said.
"I'm not actually a doctor yet," I said.
Ace shrugged. "Closer than any of us," he said, including his three crew members with a gesture.
And, the fan in me pointed out, you can keep Ace from dying.
Because he would. If I decided to become a civilian here, Ace would go on to be a pirate captain, join Whitebeard's crew - and die at Akainu's hand in three years. But I could change things. Maybe. Either way, it might be interesting.
"Okay," I said. "I'll join."
Ace was starting to look entirely too smug, so I added, "But I still think you'll be disappointed in my abilities as a doctor."
"Nah, that won't happen," Ace said with a snort. "You need to pick some stuff up?"
I thought about it. I did need clothes, which, given I didn't actually live here, I'd probably have to steal from a store (because there was no way I was going into a house and stealing a person's clothes). Plus, my lack of actual doctoral ability meant I should probably take some, or a bunch, of books with me.
"Yeah. I do. Umm." I paused, trying to think of a polite way to tell them that I didn't want them to come with me.
"We'll wait for you at the ship," Ace said.
I blinked. That was perfect. I decided not to question it. "Okay," I said.
They were already walking away. I didn't bother staring after them, turning to go into the doctor's building instead. It was an awful feeling, tiptoeing past his dead body and the blood on the floor and looking around to find all of his books, and trying to find some kind of bag to put them in.
Fortunately, I found both of those things easily, and fled back out into the street. Not that it was any better there. And I still needed clothes. I found the least tourist-y store I could and went looking for clothes (and another bag to put them in). It took some looking to avoid all of the blue, feathery, and otherwise themed clothes, but eventually I put together a fair spread. On my way out, I saw, under the broken window where the pirates had likely stolen everything on display, a mask.
It was kind of a masquerade mask, shaped almost like a butterfly with massive wings arching out to the top and bottom away from the center. It was mostly silver, with blue lining around the eyes and blue gems set in the wings of the butterfly. It bordered on gaudy, like much of the other stuff in the store and, honestly, in the town as a whole, but I liked it. On impulse, I added it to the bag.
Then I went to meet up with the others.
I hummed to myself quietly. Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.
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Novelty Birthday Cakes - The Themes Are Countless
ovocný dort
When you begin contemplating about themes for Novelty Birthday Cakes the options are definitely countless. Building a fantastic cake can really tie the full celebration concept collectively and is literally the icing on the cake, so take some time to brainstorm concepts.
The trick is to seriously permit the inventive juices move and not be intimidated by some thing that you consider could be too tough. There is a way all around every little thing so never restrict your contemplating at the begin. In reality if the concept you pick does seem way too challenging, there is usually probably to be some toppers or props you can obtain to place on a superbly iced cake. This is the most basic, but even now extremely successful way to make a novelty birthday cake.
So where do you begin? The first thing to do is take into account the birthday female or boy. Cautiously look at who you are making the cake for and checklist out all the factors they are interested in - hobbies, sports, crafts, animals, bouquets, foods, style etcetera. Also converse to them and establish if they are getting a social gathering and what the theme is. This could make deciding on cake concept very easy.
After you have some normal info to get started out on you can start off to brainstorm suggestions for the theme of Novelty Birthday Cakes. Right here are a number of ideas to get you started out:
Girls - Ponies, huge cupcake, handbags, jewellery box, princess, fairies, castle, Barbie, flowers, butterflies
Boys - Vehicles, bikes, rockets, dinosaurs, activity, trains, vans, hearth engines, browsing, skateboards, guitars, airplanes, skull and crossbones, pirates
Unisex - Animals of any variety (snakes, frogs, woman beetles, bugs, lions, tigers, monkeys, sharks, horses), birthday numerals, licensed figures (Dora the Explorer, Scooby Doo, Wiggles, Thomas the Tank Engine, Tweety Chook and many others), ghosts, farmyards and barns, audio, jungle, safari
Gals - Stiletto sneakers, purses, patchwork, jewellery, trend, tunes, food items
Guys - Golf, vehicles, bikes, fishing, computers, video games, music, food items, activity, soccer.
The above list is just a start of the numerous options that are out there. What ever concept you decide to use can be a starting off place for the concept of the entire celebration or vice versa - match the cake to the topic of the social gathering that has already been selected.
Consider of Novelty Birthday Cakes as a thing that is heading to enrich the birthday encounter and incorporate to the event. By having the time to consider the unique visitor and the occasion, the theme strategies you appear up with are probable to be unlimited.
Samantha has designed several Novelty Birthday Cakes for her relatives and buddies more than the years. Not only has she identified that the cakes are often drastically appreciated, they are a great deal of fun to make way too. She has learnt a good deal together the way about how to make remarkable cakes and presents plenty of ideas and methods for making novelty birthday cakes less complicated.
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Novelty Birthday Cakes - The Themes Are Infinite
dort fotbal
When you start off thinking about themes for Novelty Birthday Cakes the options are genuinely limitless. Generating a great cake can seriously tie the whole party concept alongside one another and is basically the icing on the cake, so acquire some time to brainstorm tips.
The trick is to seriously allow the imaginative juices move and not be intimidated by anything that you consider may be far too challenging. There is a way all over almost everything so do not limit your pondering at the start out. In reality if the topic you decide on does appear to be also difficult, there is usually probably to be some toppers or props you can get to put on a beautifully iced cake. This is the most straightforward, but even now very effective way to make a novelty birthday cake.
So where do you start out? The initially thing to do is think about the birthday female or boy. Thoroughly take into account who you are making the cake for and list out all the issues they are interested in - hobbies, sports activities, crafts, animals, bouquets, foods, style etcetera. Also converse to them and build if they are acquiring a occasion and what the concept is. This could make determining on cake theme quite effortless.
After you have some standard data to get began on you can get started to brainstorm suggestions for the concept of Novelty Birthday Cakes. Listed here are a handful of suggestions to get you started out:
Women - Ponies, large cupcake, purses, jewelry box, princess, fairies, castle, Barbie, bouquets, butterflies
Boys - Automobiles, bikes, rockets, dinosaurs, sport, trains, vehicles, fireplace engines, browsing, skateboards, guitars, airplanes, skull and crossbones, pirates
Unisex - Animals of any sort (snakes, frogs, lady beetles, bugs, lions, tigers, monkeys, sharks, horses), birthday numerals, certified figures (Dora the Explorer, Scooby Doo, Wiggles, Thomas the Tank Engine, Tweety Fowl etcetera), ghosts, farmyards and barns, songs, jungle, safari
Ladies - Stiletto sneakers, handbags, patchwork, jewelry, trend, songs, food items
Adult men - Golf, cars and trucks, bikes, fishing, computer systems, games, tunes, meals, activity, football.
The higher than listing is just a begin of the many choices that are out there. Whatever topic you make a decision to use can be a starting place for the topic of the full celebration or vice versa - healthy the cake to the theme of the occasion that has by now been selected.
Believe of Novelty Birthday Cakes as anything that is heading to increase the birthday expertise and insert to the occasion. By having the time to look at the exclusive guest and the event, the concept strategies you occur up with are likely to be limitless.
Samantha has created several Novelty Birthday Cakes for her family members and buddies above the several years. Not only has she located that the cakes are constantly significantly appreciated, they are a lot of enjoyable to make also. She has learnt a lot together the way about how to make incredible cakes and delivers heaps of tips and tips for generating novelty birthday cakes less complicated.
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Novelty Birthday Cakes - The Themes Are Unlimited
dorty pro děti
When you start thinking about themes for Novelty Birthday Cakes the options are truly endless. Building a excellent cake can seriously tie the entire occasion concept jointly and is basically the icing on the cake, so consider some time to brainstorm suggestions.
The trick is to genuinely let the creative juices flow and not be intimidated by something that you feel may well be too hard. There is a way all over every thing so never restrict your imagining at the start off. In truth if the theme you pick out does seem way too hard, there is always likely to be some toppers or props you can buy to set on a wonderfully iced cake. This is the simplest, but nevertheless highly effective way to make a novelty birthday cake.
So the place do you commence? The very first factor to do is consider the birthday female or boy. Very carefully contemplate who you are producing the cake for and checklist out all the items they are intrigued in - hobbies, sporting activities, crafts, animals, bouquets, food items, vogue and so forth. Also chat to them and create if they are getting a get together and what the topic is. This could make selecting on cake theme really easy.
When you have some standard data to get started on you can start off to brainstorm strategies for the theme of Novelty Birthday Cakes. In this article are a handful of ideas to get you began:
Ladies - Ponies, massive cupcake, purses, jewelry box, princess, fairies, castle, Barbie, flowers, butterflies
Boys - Cars, bikes, rockets, dinosaurs, sport, trains, trucks, hearth engines, surfing, skateboards, guitars, airplanes, skull and crossbones, pirates
Unisex - Animals of any type (snakes, frogs, woman beetles, bugs, lions, tigers, monkeys, sharks, horses), birthday numerals, certified figures (Dora the Explorer, Scooby Doo, Wiggles, Thomas the Tank Motor, Tweety Hen and so forth), ghosts, farmyards and barns, audio, jungle, safari
Gals - Stiletto footwear, handbags, patchwork, jewelry, style, songs, meals
Men - Golf, cars, bikes, fishing, computer systems, games, audio, foods, sport, soccer.
The earlier mentioned checklist is just a start out of the many opportunities that are out there. Whatever theme you come to a decision to use can be a starting up stage for the theme of the complete party or vice versa - in shape the cake to the topic of the get together that has by now been picked.
Assume of Novelty Birthday Cakes as some thing that is likely to improve the birthday encounter and insert to the event. By taking the time to contemplate the exclusive guest and the situation, the topic strategies you appear up with are probably to be countless.
Samantha has designed a lot of Novelty Birthday Cakes for her relatives and close friends more than the several years. Not only has she discovered that the cakes are often tremendously appreciated, they are a good deal of entertaining to make far too. She has learnt a great deal together the way about how to make amazing cakes and offers tons of ideas and tips for building novelty birthday cakes less complicated.
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Novelty Birthday Cakes - The Themes Are Limitless
minidezerty
When you start out contemplating about themes for Novelty Birthday Cakes the possibilities are really unlimited. Creating a good cake can really tie the total party theme collectively and is practically the icing on the cake, so take some time to brainstorm strategies.
The trick is to seriously permit the inventive juices flow and not be intimidated by one thing that you believe may possibly be far too hard. There is a way all over anything so really don't limit your considering at the start off. In reality if the concept you decide on does appear to be way too really hard, there is often probably to be some toppers or props you can obtain to put on a fantastically iced cake. This is the most straightforward, but nevertheless very effective way to make a novelty birthday cake.
So the place do you start? The initially issue to do is think about the birthday female or boy. Very carefully contemplate who you are building the cake for and list out all the points they are interested in - hobbies, sporting activities, crafts, animals, flowers, food items, manner etcetera. Also chat to them and create if they are possessing a occasion and what the topic is. This could make deciding on cake concept really uncomplicated.
The moment you have some common data to get started off on you can begin to brainstorm tips for the theme of Novelty Birthday Cakes. In this article are a several concepts to get you commenced:
Women - Ponies, large cupcake, purses, jewellery box, princess, fairies, castle, Barbie, flowers, butterflies
Boys - Autos, bikes, rockets, dinosaurs, activity, trains, trucks, fire engines, surfing, skateboards, guitars, airplanes, skull and crossbones, pirates
Unisex - Animals of any type (snakes, frogs, girl beetles, bugs, lions, tigers, monkeys, sharks, horses), birthday numerals, certified characters (Dora the Explorer, Scooby Doo, Wiggles, Thomas the Tank Engine, Tweety Bird etc), ghosts, farmyards and barns, tunes, jungle, safari
Gals - Stiletto footwear, handbags, patchwork, jewellery, style, songs, food
Guys - Golf, cars and trucks, bikes, fishing, computers, video games, new music, foodstuff, activity, soccer.
The previously mentioned listing is just a start out of the several opportunities that are out there. No matter what concept you decide to use can be a beginning point for the theme of the complete celebration or vice versa - fit the cake to the topic of the occasion that has already been chosen.
Believe of Novelty Birthday Cakes as one thing that is heading to improve the birthday expertise and incorporate to the occasion. By using the time to look at the special guest and the celebration, the concept concepts you arrive up with are very likely to be countless.
Samantha has made a lot of Novelty Birthday Cakes for her relatives and pals more than the years. Not only has she located that the cakes are constantly greatly appreciated, they are a ton of fun to make far too. She has learnt a good deal together the way about how to make incredible cakes and offers tons of ideas and tips for producing novelty birthday cakes easier.
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If I start looking at one book from my childhood, I can’t stop. If you can make it through this entire post, I applaud you. I had to seriously control myself while writing this one because I wanted to include every single book that I still cherish from my childhood. While not all of them made it in here, this is a pretty comprehensive list. I’ve highlighted a handful just because.
Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper
Cat, Duck and Squirrel all have their jobs in making pumpkin soup but when the Duck wants to switch things up, there’s a squabble and he leaves their cabin, which leaves the Cat and the Squirrel worrying about him when he doesn’t return. I refuse to read this book again for fear of losing the magic that I associate it with from the last time I read it, which was probably when I was seven or eight years old. Hands down one of the most memorable books of my childhood. I still remember all of the senses and daydreams I had when my mom would read it to me. I’ve held onto it forever and just the thought of it makes me feel warm.
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
Calvin and Hobbes always makes me laugh. I still have the page numbers of my favorite comics memorized. Tigers were my favorite animal when I was little and I loved to daydream of being alongside Calvin and Hobbes for all their adventures.
Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl was a staple of my childhood but this story was one of my favorites. It was probably one of the first books of his that I read and thought, wow. This is for ADULTS! It’s for all ages but younger me didn’t really know that. She just knew that it was more substantial than what she had previously read. I reread Danny the Champion of the World countless times and now that I think about it, I need to read it again.
The Complete Tales by Beatrix Potter
Every single one of these is an absolute masterpiece. I have to say, two of them gave me nightmares and even just the thought of them still scares me a little today. But I love all of these books regardless and they took up a significant chunk of my childhood reading.
The Real Fairy Storybook by Georgie Adams
This book of fairy tales told by fairies themselves is one of my favorite childhood books. I especially liked how the fairies conversed in between telling their stories. The illustrations are absolutely magical and now, even from the very first page I still feel transported into the stories.
The 39 Clues Series by Various Authors
I was the coolest kid in school when I showed up one day with a book with skulls and crossbones all over the cover. Thus began my 39 Clues journey. I read these at a speedy pace and was devastated when it ended, especially because I found the ending unsatisfactory. However, these books are incredible. I think every child can agree that family scavenger hunts spanning centuries, secret passageways and deadly alliances are interesting.
Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene
Good ol’ Nancy Drew should be in every child’s room. I’ve still got all of my Nancy Drew books. There’s sixty four books and I read a good chunk of them, many times over, but I wish I had read more of them.
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
I devoured this series and my mom did, too. It’s so creative and well written. It got me thinking and really spoke to my imagination. The second book inspired me to want to learn Morse Code (spoiler alert: I didn’t). Definitely recommend this book for adventure lovers.
May I Bring A Friend? by Beatrice Schenk De Regniers
The premise of the story is that a young boy is invited to spend the day with the King and Queen and they allow him to bring a friend. However, his friend is never who they’re expecting. This is just the cutest book for young readers. I’ve been an animal lover from day one so this book was right up my alley. I don’t know how many times I asked my mom to read this to me as a bedtime story but she was always pretty cool about it.
Rainbow Magic Series by Daisy Meadows
Best friends Rachel and Kirsty stumble upon the world of fairies and in each book, a fairy is either missing, has lost something or was kidnapped by goblins. It’s a similar premise for all the hundreds of books but I still ADORED them. I got started on the Rainbow Fairies first, of course, but from there I was reading Crystal the Snow Fairy, Stella the Star Fairy, Pearl the Cloud Fairy and countless other fairies’ stories. These books are the backbone of my compulsive reading habits. I recently gave my best friend’s little sister the first two books of the original series and hope to indoctrinate her, too.
The Magic Tree House Series by Mary Pope Osborne
I traveled a lot with my parents when I was younger and thoroughly enjoyed going on adventures with them but also with Jack and Annie, who were much closer in age to me. Their adventures around the globe were great and really fed my imagination.
“The more you read, the more things you know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss
Honorary Mentions:
(Some of) My Favorite Children’s Books If I start looking at one book from my childhood, I can't stop. If you can make it through this entire post, I applaud you.
#39 clues#a.a.milne#beatrix potter#bill watterson#calvin and hobbes#childhood#childrens books#daisy meadows#enid blyton#fablehaven#madeline#nancy drew#olivia#rainbow magic#roald dahl#winnie the pooh
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Many years ago in the mid-1990s, when I first started working in Berlin, Germany, we went for dinner as a group and one of my English colleagues tried to order a vegetarian dish at a nearby restaurant.
It was quite funny as the translated request from a grinning German colleague was first met with shock and disbelief; the waitress thought a bunch of foreigners were making a silly joke.
Finally, a little flustered, she said she can offer a bratwurst with some extra sauerkraut. My colleague insisted on ordering only the sauerkraut – but when it came, it had bits of chopped ham in it.
This old situation should now be contrasted with modern Berlin today, which is now considered one of the most vegan-friendly cities in Europe.
Practically every restaurant I went to recently had vegetarian or vegan options, and many of them were excellent. The Germans have a well-deserved reputation for being socially and environmentally savvy and the latest proposal is to raise the tax on meat, particularly beef, from 7% to 19% – this proposal is being taken very seriously by parliament.
So, a country that had every citizen eating an average of 80 kilos of meat a year 30 years ago is now looking to reduce meat consumption down to 30-35 kilos by 2040 (it is currently under 60 kilos a year).
Note that this is the country which had banned tofu up to 1990. There are now even vegan Christmas markets in Germany, a fact which would have made our waitress in 1995 swoon in shock.
Amazon fires
Directly, whether you like it or not, the huge fires engulfing the largest pristine rainforests left in the world in the Amazon are caused by human demand for meat. Land is needed to raise the livestock to satisfy global demand for meat (particularly beef) and this simply means destroying millions of hectares of the Amazon jungle to clear them for grazing land.
It also provides more land needed for planting crops used to feed cattle and other animals. In case there are any doubters, it is impossible for a tropical rainforest to catch fire by itself so the 72,843 fires there this year were deliberately started by humans looking to clear land.
In terms of destruction, the estimated area destroyed is around 259,000 square kilometres and rising. This is TWICE the size of Peninsular Malaysia which covers 131,587 square kilometres.
The future of food could include the possibility of consuming food created out of insects. Photo: Filepic
The irony of it all
The irony is the devastating tactics such as those applied in the Amazon currently is almost certain to destroy the meat industry itself eventually. The short-term gain in meat production will not be met by long-term increase in meat consumption. Let me explain.
Our planet is already at an inflection point. Either humans can continue to destroy our environment and certainly make our planet uninhabitable within the next few decades or centuries, or humans can decide to reverse course and change the practices and habits which are devastating to our world.
Climate change is not a vague peculiarity which can be ignored, despite what vested-interests media keep telling us. We are living through a period of very high sensitivity to climate-altering factors and it would be insane to ignore it. For more, please read my previous article Facing up to climate change .
The future of food
The actions of Germany and other Scandinavian countries are the start of a movement that recognises that our current food habits are unsustainable long-term, generally unhealthy, and simply need to change.
Despite modern medical advances which can sustain human longevity to record levels in most parts of the world, it is much less often mentioned by medical journals or the press that there is little point in living such long lives if one is always sick and in need of medication and healthcare.
It does not make sense to live in pain as long as possible just to pay vast amounts of money to pharmaceutical companies and medical practitioners.
So it is a matter of time before we all start to seek planet-healthy food which is also healthy for our bodies as well. Diet is the single biggest factor which all of us can control which affects our impact on the environment; our diets have much more influence on the environment than cutting down on using the car, or flying, or switching lights off early.
Eating one burger is roughly the same as driving a normal 1.5-litre petrol car for 750 km in terms of greenhouse gases (GHG). Note cattle produces methane, which is roughly 23 times more potent as a GHG than the carbon dioxide emitted by cars, and producing one kilo of meat can cost up to 1,000 kilos of GHG.
So our food will change, not only because most modern societies will want it, but because sooner or later, the economies of scale will tip towards producing such healthier foods.
In short, it will be cheaper to produce healthy non-meat based food than to raise a cow for beef. The resources needed to produce plant-based food will be less, the environmental footprint will be minimal and importantly, the production costs will be cheaper than for raising meat.
For consumers, one unstated benefit of plant-based foods is that, unlike meat, they do not contaminate kitchen surfaces with dangerous bacteria and they also keep longer in the fridge which helps to significantly reduce waste.
Plant-based burgers like the Impossible Burger have proven very successful. Photo: AFP Relaxnews
In terms of taste, there are already several extremely good plant-based burgers which most people cannot differentiate from real meat burgers. I have tried quite a few and I actually prefer the taste of some of these plant-based burgers. There is also plant-based “chicken meat” which tastes exactly the same as chicken, according to my daughter who sampled it recently in the US.
Beyond this, if human palates adapt just a little, then it is highly feasible that we will be dining on new foods and flavours created from algae, insects, plankton, fungi, etc, which may be introduced into grain or bean-based staples such as wheat, rice, soy and other beans.
Humans have been conditioned for decades to like sugary, salty, artificially-flavoured and synthetically-textured food. The same techniques can be applied to make non-meat foods palatable and desirable for humans. If it makes commercial sense, then I am certain the food industry can and will re-educate our palates as necessary.
Tracking food of the futureIt is feasible we may track our food consumption much better in the future as we become more aware of its environmental and nutritional impact. At present, some fast food restaurants show the calories in their offerings, but this is mostly a publicity gimmick.
If such establishments genuinely cared for their customers’ health, they would print skull-and-crossbones labels with “DO NOT EAT” against many of their dishes.
In the future, we may have apps on our phones which can determine the carbon footprint of our food, and list its nutritional properties as well. What I always wanted is an app to determine what nutrients are lacking in dishes and keep tracking such deficiencies until they are consumed.
An opinion
All the above is not at all unlikely, although it is mostly my opinion today. Humans have displayed an unconscionable lack of interest in proper nutrition in the past, resulting in outrageous increases in unnecessary conditions such as obesity, diabetes and other diet-related diseases.
However, humans have also displayed a remarkable resilience in the face of severe crisis and disasters and it is only a matter of time before we all recognise the disaster facing us. If a burning rainforest twice the size of Peninsular Malaysia is not a global disaster, then I do not know how people should define the word “disaster”.
Therefore, the probability is that the future may herald a wave of changes to our diets, which as mentioned, is the single largest factor every human can control in terms of environmental damage.
The only thing I cannot do is put a date when this change in sentiment towards our food will happen. It may occur within 10 years, or maybe 50, perhaps even later. I only hope it is not too late by then.
from Food – Star2.com https://ift.tt/2N3m9P2
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