YAP-SNAP

like “ohh, your little real job is stressing you out?? ohh, balancing college and work is to hard for you?? You need to be lazy again, huh? the real world is just to much for you??”

I regularly repeat that one meme “i’m such a fat fucking chud” whenever i’m going through it

“it’s battle bond!” “but it looks like Ash!” WRONG

it existed long before Ash, as seen here in episode 6 of XYZ, when Ash and the gang are in the ninja village, there’s a room with a bunch of old painting. including this one.

there it is 🎉 Mega Greninja

Additionally, it literally emits mega evolution energy. Mega Evolution energy starts to peak on Alain’s Mega Evolution energy detector as seen in Episode 13 of XYZ

If it doesn’t need Ash to reach that form

and it emits Mega Evolution energy

that’s a Mega Evolution

They’re just reaching it with their incredibly strong bond and without a stone. It has been said SO many times that to regulate Mega Evolution the pokemon and trainer need a strong bond, and it’s especially shown in the episode Team Rocket takes Sycamores Garchomp and try to Mega Evolve it.

Long story short, make Ash-Greninja Mega Greninja X and the new Mega introduced in ZA Mega Greninja Y

they even follow the patterns of Mega Evolutions looking like/ embodying either an X or Y

“No Place like Home." is a side-quest given to the player by Claptrap, and it has you going on a fetch-quest gathering bits and pieces from previous Borderlands games like a portrait of Moxxi, VR-0N1CAs voice processor, and a Psycho Mask from Borderlands 3. While playing this quest, I thought "oh cute, we're gonna see how stuff from the old game ties in, or get some closure." only for the end message to be to forget the past, burn it down, and move on.

This is a disgusting treatment of the game's history and its fanbase. Not even in the way of “Old games Good and New Games Bad, Wah Wah!” wallowing in nostalgia way they frame it to be (given that you find Claptrap next to a shack called the Wrecks of Nostalgia). The assumption and labeling of fans as people with a Nostalgia Bias is 1. rude- but it's nice to know how Gearbox sees us- and 2. it's wrong. This isn’t nostalgia, this is the universe we’re playing in. New saga, yes, but still the same universe, we should expect to be in it.

They wanted it to be this big "Gotcha" Moment and really stick it to the haters, telling them to grow up and move on, we're not in 2012 anymore, but it also failed on that part. They didn't get rid of Moxxi- she's still here. They didn't get rid of Psychos either- they just have different masks now, and who even remembers VR-0N1CA? All of these were small pieces no one complains about or points back to in a quest that could have been used for much more. It could have been as I thought it would be, a way to see how this new world ties into the old ones we’ve played through before. It could have gone beyond that and made Claptrap just a little bit more than the annoying robot side-kick that you wish would just shut up. He was in the same position all of us were, in a new and strange land far detached from anything we expect from this series, and instead of helping us plant our feet and see how this is still a part of the universe we know, it makes us blow it all up.

If they wanted it to be valid criticism of the actual people with Nostalgia Bias (Because they are real, they're just not all of us like Gearbox seems to think) they're so many better ways to do that. Instead they didn't demonize nostalgia or people with nostalgia bias, they demonized the foundation of this series.

This quest isn't any kind of clever story telling or a way to bring 2 worlds together, it's a way to shoot down criticism of this game and the decisions it makes. We can’t say anything bad or- god forbid- compare it to games in the same series- because the Gearbox can just tap the No Place Like Home sign and blame it on Nostalgia Bias

This quest also speaks to a greater problem Gearbox has, which is they don’t want to grow from their mistakes anymore. They had a strong and stable foundation built up by Borderlands 1 and 2, the addition of the Pre-Sequel made it a little wobbly, but they took the weak points of that game and reinforced it, and then continued to strengthen the foundation with Tales from The Borderlands. Then Borderlands 3 came in, again, it was a little wobbly. So instead of reflecting on the mistakes made and fixing them, they decided to nuke it all. Bang, new planet now, new story, move on.

For example, Ava. She was a poorly written and annoying character that no one liked, but instead of improving her writing, letting us see her after a year of growth, she’s just not here anymore. I would have much preferred seeing a better Ava than no Ava at all.

This game builds on nothing that was good from the previous game either. The gameplay loop is about the same, the map is infinitely worse- the 3D map was one of the best things 3 had and they sacrificed that for a pretty bad Open World. They can’t even have a mini-map with how hard they nuked the foundation, only a shitty compass and a shitty enemy-only radar you can turn on in settings.

Borderlands 3, even with all its faults, was an improvement upon Borderlands 2. What it lacked in storytelling it made up for in satisfying gameplay and ease-of-life features like auto-pickup that make playing through older titles a little bit of a drag. The only problem was we had The Calypsos in our ears instead of Handsome Jack.

Borderlands 4 isn’t even bad, it’s just so painfully obvious why they’ve gone so far off the beaten path and why they’ve changed so much, so they can pretend they’re mistakes never happened. The gameplay loop is fun, the added mobility of the double jump, glide, and grapple makes traversing this large open world entertaining, and exploring an all-new world isn’t all-that-new because we explored way beyond Pandora in Borderlands 3. I just wish the same amount of effort was put towards improving upon the weaker parts of the past instead of refusing to reflect and improve, because we’re in the same place that’s behind where Borderlands 3 left us. We have a fun gameplay loop with a story that’s lacking. At least 3 tried to do something with the material of previous titles.

Borderlands 3 had seeds of potential, and Borderlands 4 dug them up and didn’t even turn it into compost, it just went straight into the trash

TL:DR it’s late and i wanted to read some fics before bed, and the gods did not shine down on me. They kicked me in the teeth and said “cope and start interested in Yandere”

the lack of really any kind of fics about Date Everything characters is sad, and what’s even sadder is that the ones that are there are smut.

- Jacques has 5 /reader fics right now, 4 are smut

- Hector has 53 /reader fics, 33 are smut

Yes, i counted

Secondary rant: Hector and him being a stalker

this is a personal opinion I guess, but stalking is really gross, and I’m sick of seeing it applied to Hector.

Imagine me, reloading the hector/reader tag everyday, in hopes of finding some fics about my insecure lover boy, only to be greeted by more and more non-consensual voyeurism every time.

Stalkers are not fun, wasn’t it a whole thing when people said they want a stalker, they really just want a secret admirer? Can we please bring Hector back to the secret admirer territory? It’s not his fault he was born a vent that cannot communicate with you unless you communicate with him first

I know we’re still in the early days, but most of the time that only means we’ll get more quantity over quality and the flanderization only gets worse as time goes on. I mean nothing to you fic-writers but i hope i can stop Hector from become one of those characters a fandom ruins

except this shit is canon.

like what? All this lore we’ve been piecing together? ERM. IRRELEVANT.