Grace

Now he starts every phone call with a Pokemon update. He gets all the names wrong and asks me what a Dragonite is called every time he brings up the “fat fighting orange dragon”

“I have a cool pineapple head now!”

“I was down to my last stripey ball trying to catch the blue dragon snake. I told him if he ran away I was gonna be so mad.”

“And the gym had one of those big fat orange dragons!” (he still can’t remember what a Dragonite is called)

BUT THEN. but then. he’s also like, OUTRAGEOUSLY into it now? He’s level 27 and talks about how “the gym wars are brutal, babe,” and how long it takes to take down a level 10 gym? (LEVEL T E N)

And a couple weeks ago he called me to talk about the merits of the old-style Gyrados (which he pronounces guy-rad-os sorry I can’t stop him) that has the dragon breath move, versus the new ones that don’t because Niantic made a change. And he has like 6 Gyrados because his work is by a Magikarp nest or something? HOW MANY fucking magikarp do you catch for 6 gyrados? He’s about to evolve two more. H E L P.

and he says shit like, “Learning about individualized values really radicalized my thinking.” and he means it. Before he evolves ANY pokemon he googles CP estimates and has a pokemon calculator??

This morning he called me because he finally has enough Dratini candy to evolve a fat fighting dragon and wanted to talk about which Dragonair he should evolve. (One with high CP but bad IVs, one with medium-high CP, but okay IVs, and one with the lowest CP of the 3, but A+ IVs) And at this point he’s so far beyond my skill with the game (he’s been higher-leveled than me for months now) that I don’t even know what to tell him. I literally can’t advise him.

Team Instinct. I told him I was Team Valor when I first told him about the game and he was like, “Okay I’ll join your team babe!”

And then idk he forgot?? And when his account crashed after a week he did a Pikachu restart (that should have tipped me off about the impending obession tbh) and he picked Instinct again.

I ain’t even mad bruh. He so clearly belongs in Instinct. He’s happy there. It’s his natural habitat. Before work he goes and meets up with some other Instinct people to take the Georgetown Cupcake gym in DC. It’s super cute.

Then he goes to work and keeps the game open so he can grab Magikarp every couple minutes. Apparently his work is like ON a friggin nest.

He keeps his Pokemon Go habit a secret at work. Nobody knows. On his lunch break, he says, “hey I’m gonna go for a walk” and goes on a 12-pokestop loop. He makes sure to hit up the local Dratini and Pikachu nests (the presence of which is UNFAIR AF). He also take a few minutes to reinforce ‘his’ gym, by which point has been under attack a few times.

At work, he keeps his phone on data instead of wifi (he has unlimited data. For some godforsaken reason he went through 30GB/mo BEFORE Pokemon Go.) because that means his avatar jumps around a bit more?? He says he opens and closes the app a few times to reset it and get the GPS connection to reset and nab him a few pokemon.

He has 114 Pikachu candy. I hate him. Apparently he’s watching the anime almost every night. He’s on season 2. I think he’s just gonna go through and watch it A L L which is a prospect so terrifying it needs no explanation.

Out of the 6 Gyrados he’s evolved, he’s kept the top 3. He sent me some screencaps the other day of his current top-contender Magikarp and the pokedex entry, where you can see he’s caught 585 of them.

Five hundred eighty five. Who tf has TIME for that??

Apparently he still hasn’t decided which Magikarp to evolve.

He has started wearing yellow shoes for #TeamInstinct pride lol:

He’s still wearing the shoes. He loved the keychain because he’s a DORK.

He’s level 34 now. 1.12 million xp. 1.25 million to level 35.

He estimates he’ll make level 35 by the first week of July. He joined on July 13 last year and would like to be at 35 by then. He still hasn’t spent a single penny on the damn game and is very proud of that.

His favorite from gen2 is Blissey, who he says is his “best gym defender” and he’s 8 candies away from powering up another high cp Chancy, so then he’ll have 2.

Another gen2 fave is “Hounder” along with “Umbrreon” and Espeon. He’s got a steelix, politoad, “the other slowbro type” and “multiples of those metal coat sunstone kings rock upgrade stuff”. Recently he got “that feriligator” and a typlosion. Not gen2, but he has a “really nice chariZard”

He was SUPER mad about the gym update since he had like 7 pokemon in gyms when it hit, but it hasn’t staunched his fervor. He’s just been buckling down and doing his best. He’s been saying stuff like “I have one raid pass waiting for a raid alert to pop” and I literally don’t know what that means??

But I know what you really want to know. What’s his magikarp situation??

He’s caught 1885 Magikarp.

That’s why he has so many gyrados and over 2k worth of candy. He says he has 5 “really nice” carp he could evolve if he wanted to. But… he doesn’t need to. I mean, look:

He described this as his “navy” and I think it’s pretty well stocked.

Also yes he caught a shiny: (older screencap so that’s why there’s fewer candies)

Wow.

Does he have a red Gyarados??

eeveez

Poster Posse’s tribute to “Wonder Woman”

Reviews for Tom Cruise’s The Mummy reboot are out and they’re, to put it lightly, not great. It’s been dubbed “an irredeemable disaster” and “the worst Tom Cruise movie ever,” described as being “crippled by a failure of imagination,” and criticized for its terrible treatment of women.

But if there’s a silver lining to the existence of this reboot, it’s a reminder that at least one good Mummy movie already exists.

Just to make it clear, The Mummy (1999) isn’t necessary a cinematic masterpiece. It has a 57 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has all of the marks of a summer popcorn movie. But it has something that 2017’s The Mummy—according to reviews, anyway—is missing: fun.

In his 1999 review, Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars called it “good trash.”

“There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it,” Ebert wrote. “I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased. There is a little immaturity stuck away in the crannies of even the most judicious of us, and we should treasure it.”

These Muslim women are using their hijabs to transform into superheroes.

It’s called hijab cosplay, inspired by Japanese costume role-play and it’s making waves in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

Nuzaru is one of a growing number of hijab wearers embracing this world of comics, film and video game characters.

She spends weeks planning her costumes.

Today Nuzaru is competing at Malaysia’s first event dedicated to hijab cosplay.

Saakira co-founded the event.

Hundreds are here to watch acts and learn tips from cosplay pros.

Nuzaru’s hard work pays off as she nabs top prize.

I was thinking earlier about gender bends in cosplay - because I’m in the preliminary stages of working on one (need more money, need to buy a wig for Mrs Peel first dang it).

Which may seem irrelevant, but one of the things cosplay gives us is the ability to not look like our character, but make our character look like us. (Not saying I don’t respect the skill of people who choose characters they look like and can walk on a stage looking like they stepped out of a panel or a frame, but…)

Like you can tell exactly what character they’re going for, I’ve seen some really amazing hijabi cosplayers and Lolita girls (I remember a lot of positive reception from Japanese twitter too, of hijabi Lolita) too!!

I really love the ones who use colourful scarves to convey the character’s hair colour, it’s so cute???

This is a really tiny picture, but this creative little TARDIS was too cute not to share!!!