Everything in the Bulbagarden is rosy

[ii kanji]

Welcome to my blog, which is basically me writing about whatever random crap I feel like splurging about Comments/complaints/splurging back welcome.

Post Directory:

1. On Vulnerability
2. On Superstition
3. On COVID-19
4. On Romance
5. On Pre-Wedding Jitters
6. On Familiarity (Breeding Contempt)
7. On Never Being Enough
8. Quack
9. On A Meeting and A Parting
10. On 15 years at BMGf
11. Inside Out

 

[ii kanji]

BMGf did something really unexpected for me 10 years ago: it taught me how to make friends.

The lesson? Be vulnerable.

It’s not that I didn’t have any friends before these forums, but these were childhood friends who I’d fallen together with because we went to the same school or lived in the same neighbourhood. Funnily enough, I’m still friends with some of these people but as I grew up I subconsciously remodelled those friendships with what I’d learnt from here.

I actually joined the forums in summer 2008 to view this mystery attachment:

Well worth making an account for, I’m sure you’ll agree.

I admired many of the people who posted on the forums, especially those in the old Rocketshipping Club where I eventually summoned the courage to post myself. The girls there were funny and clever and terribly intimidating to a 15-year-old me, but even though I was the group baby (in age and maturity) I quickly became friends with them all.

Except one.

She was nice enough but we weren’t friends (she didn’t even reciprocate my BMGf friend invite!), and that was what I really wanted from this older girl who I looked up to like anything. She was generally closed about herself and tried her best to make sure we stuck to matters of business in the Rocketshipping thread, so I knew very little about her as a person until she made a blog post alluding to some problems she was going through.

I was so drawn to this small demonstration of humanity that I couldn’t help but write an undignified response spilling my guts about my teenage troubles. Suddenly the floodgates were open and within a few messages we were the best of friends.

After that, it became my stock friend-making tool to be the first person to express her vulnerabilities. 8 years on, my close group of friends from university is the same group I sat with on my kitchen floor on day 1, telling a humiliating but humorous story about having lopsided boobs. Back then I did it intuitively, unconsciously. It wasn’t until I started work that I recognised that sharing my world with people, uninvited, was how I best made friends.

I had qualified as a doctor at a small, rural, tight-knit medical school and newly returned to The Big Smoke to start my first job. I was tender because my grandfather, who’d had a major role in bringing my sister and I up, had died just a few days prior after a long illness. When I turned up at induction I felt a total misfit. Yes we were all new doctors, but everyone I spoke to had studied somewhere fancier and was posher and prettier and more confident in their ability to doctor than me.

I was not in a position to project a confidence I didn’t possess or to expose my vulnerabilities. I didn’t make any friends so I just existed for a while, and got on with the job at hand. Months later, once I had settled in and parked my personal grief a little, I found it easier to be real with people and suddenly making new friends was easier again.

It’s been a few months now since it occurred to me that I have really been a closed book on BMGf for years now. I don’t have the excuse of being a shy newbie, in fact, I might well be that bigger, older, intimidating fan now to someone who wants to talk Rockets! There are a couple of reasons why I withdrew from self-disclosure. A little was guilt for leaving the fandom at the end of DP when other fans could have done most with the emotional support. But it had mainly been fear.

Fear that someone from my other life would find me here. So what? It’s not a secret that I like Pokemon. Sure I don’t really want the whole world knowing how deeply and inescapably entrenched my emotional state is to the Rocket TRio but what would anyone do with that information other than judge me?!

Dumbest of all was this irrational fear that someone here would read all 635 pages of the old Rocketshipping thread, figure out my identity from the liberal personal information I shared there as a child and report me to the UK’s General Medical Council. What for? Liking a kids’ TV show is not a crime and it certainly does not impair my fitness to practice medicine!

(Hell, my boss was telling me that she screened a job application recently from someone who the GMC makes declare that he once carried out an operation he wasn’t trained to do, made the patient bleed, left their wound open, tried to cover all this up by lying and by his actions brought the whole fucking medical profession into disrepute. I think my governing body has more to worry about than a doctor who spends her free time shipping anime villains.)

So here I am, abundant warts and all. If you want to be friends, I’m down for that.

 

[hanecco]

Although I do think that sharing your true thoughts, interests and feelings is a great way to make friends, it can also result in people being unnecessarily harsh towards you if you reveal something they don't have a high opinion of. Maybe it's because opening up suggests that you trust them, so they decide to respond by teasing you about it? I often wonder then, am I just too sensitive, or is giving them the benefit of the doubt, and assuming they're being nice, just gullible?

^^; I'm not somebody who takes "banter" very well, as you can probably imagine. somebody give me social skills pls

Bulbagarden is also a great place to practice talking to people, as somebody who is rather shy in real life. It helps me to practice not being affected by other people's opinions, and to learn to handle different situations in tactful ways instead of freaking out about it.

 

[ii kanji]

Although I do think that sharing your true thoughts, interests and feelings is a great way to make friends, it can also result in people being unnecessarily harsh towards you if you reveal something they don't have a high opinion of. Maybe it's because opening up suggests that you trust them, so they decide to respond by teasing you about it? I often wonder then, am I just too sensitive, or is giving them the benefit of the doubt, and assuming they're being nice, just gullible?

You're right. It is really important to be careful, and to acknowledge the risk the opening up puts to you. It's not just that the odd nasty person will try and exploit it, but that even well-meaning people don't judge how sensitive they should be about certain topics sometimes.

As with everything balance is the key. Too open and you leave yourself dangerously vulnerable, too cautious and people just assume you're aloof and won't touch you with a barge pole.

Bulbagarden is also a great place to practice talking to people, as somebody who is rather shy in real life. It helps me to practice not being affected by other people's opinions, and to learn to handle different situations in tactful ways instead of freaking out about it.

The best thing about written communication is that you're allowed to take your time to respond, so can wait out some of that instinctive, initial emotional reaction. Honestly though, I am much worse at this online than in real life I think it's the anonymity you know?

I have to work very hard to mask my shyness when I meet new people (and often fail miserably lol). Do you feel more confident in your real world interactions post BMGf?

 

[hanecco]

I'm not sure if I've become genuinely confident, but I worry less when I share my opinions with other people IRL now. Before, I used to stay quiet because I was worried people would tease me about it or outright say that it's weird, wrong or uninteresting. But, there's not much you can do on Bulbagarden if you decide you don't want to share how you feel about a topic, and that made me realise the best way to actually have conversations IRL is also to do just that after I enjoyed the time I spent here.

Too open and you leave yourself dangerously vulnerable, too cautious and people just assume you're aloof and won't touch you with a barge pole.

That's so true! I often run into this problem as a quiet person myself. I do prefer email since it phases me less than face-to-face conversations, and I get my points across much better in writing since I'm less stressed.

 

[ii kanji]

VK is my parents’ cleaner. She comes once a week and helps out with hoovering, dusting, wiping windows and so on. She’s excellent fun to have around: always smiling and a little cheeky, and absolutely impossible to communicate with as she speaks only Punjabi.

My room is the smallest and I reckon it’s the easiest to clean. It’s sparsely decorated: a vase and two photo frames on the windowsill, and on the desk a light, a fan, my teddy and a smallish Sonansu plush.

I know every week when VK has been because she likes to make a small change to my décor.

Sonansu has always been turned to face the wall.

Why she does this, I have no clue. Rosebud Jr., my teddy, appears untouched. It’s also pretty obvious which side of Sonansu his face is (tail notwithstanding), so she can’t be doing it by mistake. I am barely able to explain to her the whereabouts of the mop so asking her directly is out of the question.

The assumption I have come to is that she just finds Sonansu’s face inauspicious and doesn’t like him to watch her clean.

I get that. Not specific to Sonansu of course. But I’m afraid that for all my scientific background, I am a horribly, terribly superstitious person.

Maybe because of the scientific background, I am very into numerology. I have three numbers I consider lucky.

The third of these is the magic number 117. Now, I don’t know if you know this about me, but I am a Rocketshipper. The number 117 first took on significance to me after DP117, you know, the one where they promised to spend eternity in the afterlife together. I used to live for seeing the 117 bus and imagine my excitement when I found out that there was a sign en route to my university saying ‘117 miles’ next to the city’s name!

Years later, I found out something AMAZING. The Japanese have a wordplay system called goroawase where different numbers are assigned different sounds. So one can write Koji as 54 and Musa as 63. Now go ahead and add those up—OMFG THEY EQUAL 117 ISN’T THAT MINDBLOWING?!

Recently I’ve been seeing the number 117 everywhere. Whenever I look at the time it seems to be 1:17. I was recently charged £117 for some subscription fees. At work every patient’s systolic blood pressure seems to be 117, and even numbers that shouldn’t be 117 are (heart rates, creatinines, cancerous nodes 1.17cm big .etc). Most shockingly, last week the 117 bus driver actually smiled at me because I gave her way.

I’m in the process of buying my first flat and my encounter rate with this magic number seems to be increasing in line with that. I can’t help but feel it’s a blessing from the imaginary idols of my heart, the champions of hard work and never giving up, the Rocket TRio.

If all goes well, I might not be living at my parents’ house that much longer. This means I have limited time to find out the answer about VK and Sonansu. Maybe next time I see her I’ll just have to show him to her to get a response. I’ll be careful to keep him facing me – he might be unlucky to her, but I’m pretty sure that face is guiding me to a white tomorrow.

 

[ii kanji]

The widespread use of military metaphors to talk about the coronavirus pandemic has been grating on me. If I wanted to "fight" on the "frontline" against "a deadly enemy" in a "global war" I would have joined the army. As it is, all I ever wanted was a steady existence in which it would be implicit that I was not risking the stable structures of my life or my own neck.

Fast forward to now. I have had to move away from my family (thank heavens I was right in prophesying my luck in completing on my flat purchase or else I'd be living in the hotel which has become the equivalent of an army barracks for staff at my hospital!) My face is bruised from long stints wearing a protective mask and my hands are burnt from constant hand-washing. Yesterday I visited an equally young, fit colleague in hospital (no longer looking very fit) who was taking over from me at the end of a set of night shifts when he contracted the virus.

I'm sorry to say I have had definite bouts of self pity. Don't laugh, but I partly chose emergency medicine as a specialty for the lifestyle - work hard, but then leave on time and leave the work behind.

So, making the decision to totally self-isolate from my family to protect them was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

But this week a slight change in the wind. Finally people are taking it seriously, and let's be real, have been forced to take the precautions I started taking weeks ago. I'm no longer alone in isolation, hah. Everyone I know has been calling or messaging to check I'm ok and have food in the flat, and to tell me how proud they are of me. Of course, I don't like to wreck my heroic image so I don't tell them I've cried every single day before work, but I think a lot of those tears come from by knowing I am loved.

I am now one of the lucky few who is allowed to leave my home and go to work. There are a lot of real heroes who I work with and it cheers me up to see them and talk to them in person. This week I got woken before a night shift by a thunderous round of applause, cheering, stamping, the banging of pots and pans; a national effort to celebrate NHS and other care staff.

Also, maybe you've noticed, it's kind of a scary time where everything seems to be outside of our control. I have the satisfaction of knowing that every day I get up, wipe my eyes and go to work I am helping combat that. Being a doctor is my vocation. I can gladly risk my comfort, and yes, even my own, cowardly neck for that.

 

[ii kanji]

These blog posts I wrote are kinda weird, 'huh? I guess it's not easy talking about real life on a Pokemon forum, when I'm so used to just talking shop.

Hah, just wrote ship there instead of shop - Freudian slip or what?! Because, basically I am going to talk about shipping

It sometimes feels like the world is divided into those who ship and those who think shippers are the weirdest fuckers to walk the earth. You know, I forever hated Dogasu of Dogasu's Backpack because he wrote this comment in his review of the Godforsaken AG147:

The anti-Rocketshipping bit where Kojirou imagines (in horror) his life if he was married to Musashi is also really nice because I think fans' obsession with this whole shipping crap is beyond ridiculous. I'm glad something like this came up to finally put an end to all this nonsense...one ship down, approximately 8,302.870 more to go.

Over the years I realised that it wasn't Musashi and Kojiro's relationship he was dissing, just... shipping.

As someone who has shipped since first memory, how can you explain to a non-shipper what it is, and why? It's not just that you think two people look cute together, or have fun banter, or would make hot p0rn together. It's a desperate, heartfelt need to see them find love and happiness in one another. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes, LOL.

I'm not exaggerating when I say I have been shipping since I can remember. I remember shipping the Gods in the Hindu mythologies my mum used to tell me as a toddler, and I never stopped. It's not that I wasn't serious about shipping before, but discovering the internet around the age of 11 gave it a name. At the time I was obsessed with two characters from an Australian TV serial called Neighbours and for the first time ever, I found that other people also dreamed about them as a couple. Can you even imagine the elation of discovering forum shipping threads, spoilers, fanfiction, music videos and fanart for the very first time?! Those were heady days.

Then, off sick from school aged 13, I rediscovered the Pokemon anime.

It's hard to pinpoint an actual moment when I fell head over heels in love with Rocketshipping, but I do remember sitting in front of the tv with my sister watching The Hoso and feeling the physical, stomach-drop sensation of falling from a height when I saw this:

Spoiler

And then the hard work started. I started scouring the internet for every screencap, art, fic that existed. When I realised the shipping was better (or the anti-shipping was less) in the Japanese version, I then had to familiarise myself with that and with a paucity of subs, start learning a new language. It took no less than 2 years to devour 10 years worth of the internet's Rocketshipping archive of images, texts and videos, but the TRio were still in the anime and I longed for more. And so, here I still am, all those years later.

I like to think of fandom as a sequestered part of my life, totally separate from my family, friends, job .etc. But if I'm really honest, it's impossible to keep totally separate the romantic feelings I yearn for between Musashi and Kojiro from my own romantic desires.

It's Valentine's Day next week. It's also mine and V's anniversary, since we first met on Feb 15th when all the decorations were still up and I was walking around like a Valentine's Day version on Ebeneezer Scrooge thinking that love was total humbug. I'm not normally the romantic type, but I'm starting to long for myself what I long for Musashi - that V will swoop me into his arms and declare his undying love for me. But I also know in my heart that both Kojiro and V will do such things only in my dreams. They're not the type. It's what makes them so wonderful really, true gentlemen who are reserved enough to retain a bit of enigma. If they were the charming types they'd be magnetic to women and Musashi/me would never stand a chance...

Am I conflating too much? Lol.

We're getting married this June though, and you know what I reckon isn't just an exaggeration? I have lived through so many emotional ups and downs with Rocketshipping that I believe I'm ready for all the tedium, fights and rock bottom disappointments that day-to-day marriage will bring. I also think those iridescent shipping goggles will help me make every precious moment count. After all, for 20+ years of airtime, the Rocketshipping Bulbapedia page is not that long, but its contents are enough to keep the flame of shipping alight in me after all these years, right? If he plays his cards right, V might yet be able to catch up... maybe

 

[ii kanji]

V and I are getting married on Sunday.

Sunday.

This Sunday.

I am getting married.



I wrote these words out and just stared and stared and until it felt like I was no longer inhabiting my own body. Is it normal to feel this overwhelmed? It's like all the happiness and excitement I had in anticipation have evaporated and been replaced by a big [keyboardsmash] of emotions. I feel like I'm standing on the beach, and every part of my life is a grain of sand at my feet. The wedding, which I'd thought was a small wave, is actually a big wave, on closer inspection is actually a tsunami of married life that is about to change my landscape forever.

I think it's a hating change thing. And this is a big change. V will never not be a part of my story after this, not just in a big-picture narrative sense but also in a day-to-day practical one. Which don't get me wrong does feel good, but still big.

It also means I can never just traipse back home and collapse at my parents' house, ignoring my responsibilities. I don't really feel adult enough to have my own family unit but that is what I'm signing up to.

You know what my mistake was? Taking 2 weeks off before the wedding. I finished all the prep work in the first week and now I am just sitting idle and stewing over the future and it suits me very badly. I need stuff to do. I wish it were otherwise, but reflection is not my jam.

I just need endless work to get me out of my head.

However... I hear nothing provides more work than married life. There will never not be bills to pay, phone calls to make, laundry in the basket, dishes in the sink and mouths to feed.

I guess it'll work out after all

 

[ii kanji]

Would you want your one true love to share the same passion as you?

For example, would you wish that person to be a Pokemon fan?

I would have said yes, but for an encounter with a certain tomato-nosed young man a few years back. (The tomato shaped nose is irrelevant to the story tbh.)

We ‘met’ on an app and went on a first date on a weeknight, after work, in the middle of winter. The date lasted just 20 minutes because we had literally nothing to say to one another. It’s pretty unusual for me to run out of chat btw, so this was a pretty weird one.

The only thing he was able to talk about was Friends, which I gathered meant to him something like what the Pokemon anime means to me. At the time I had seen only a handful of episodes which I’d found a little boring and dated. I told him I liked Monica because she was just like me, and he said she was his least favourite character, so… suffice to say the date ended around that moment.

Since then, I have actually binge watched the entire series of Friends and I wonder how that date would go down now. Something tells me even worse. He told me that his favourite character was Rachel because of ‘her fashion’, to which my reaction at the time was apathy but now would be full-on aggravation. Nothing wrong with liking Rachel of course, but because of her fashion?! That’s like liking Satoshi because of his success rate of something obscenely mundane like that!

Actually, probably the reasons were far more complex but I put him on the spot. If someone asked me why I like the TRio I would need a platform to deliver an hour-long sermon to fully get the point across…

Well anyway, when V told me he didn’t know anything about Pokemon I thought he was pulling my leg. What was he doing in 1999, hiding under a rock? But, whilst he knows Pikachu, he identified Charizard as Bulbasaur, and genuinely doesn’t have a clue who the TRio are. He saw my drawing of them as the Schuyler Sisters from Hamilton (stuck above my bed at home, natch) and said he liked the Disney Princesses I had drawn Now tell me, does Sonansu look like a Disney Princes to you?!:

But you know what, this is easy. I just say ‘We’re rooting for those guys in the white shirts with the red writing, yes I know they’re trying to steal a bunch of sentient animals but trust me they’re the heroes’ and… He just goes along with it! No debate, no fuss, no dramz.

Just like that, when he puts the football on to watch the Euros he can just tell me to support the white shirts with the red writing and I will, even though I don’t give two craps about football otherwise.

So, well done England for a historic entry into the finals of the Euros! V and I will be rooting for you on Sunday. (Well, truthfully I’ll be at work, but V will be rooting for you LOL.)

 

[Insanish Danish]

I'm super late but aaaaaaa congrats on being married!! I guess it really is wedding season; I was actually just a bridesmaid this weekend for a dear friend of mine (who I actually met on these very forums!) and I'm still feeling all warm and fuzzy from it, haha. I wish you all the best in married life!

 

[ii kanji]

Thank you so much Dana But omg that is so amazing that you were a bridesmaid for a friend you met here!! Makes me feel all tingly…

Likewise it felt so special that I was able to share a livestream link with some of my PokeAni friends from all over the world. Doesn’t it make you think just how wonderful our ‘online’ friendships are?!

 

[Insanish Danish]

Exactly! I think that as annoying as fandoms can get, there's really something to be said for the friendships that can be formed in such a community (the friend in question is Paperhorse, by the way, if you remember her ). That is so sweet that you were able to livestream it for your own friends, and that photo is absolutely stunning!

 

[ii kanji]

No WAY!!! Omg I will have to drop her a line, that is such happy news. We used to talk constantly on the old Rocketshipping thread way back when I didn't realise you guys were also friends?! Or that you were local to each other! Such a crazy small world.

 

[Insanish Danish]

I remember you were both regulars in the Rocketshipping thread back in the day, so I figured you would remember her! We used to just be acquaintances, but we met in person for the first time back in 2013 and became closer from there, and since we don't live that far from each other we've made it a point since then to hang out several times a year (except last year for obvious reasons). I think it's a sweet coincidence that you guys both happened to get married so close to each other

 

[ii kanji]

'Wow, I am so bad at writing in this blog.'

... Was my first thought on opening it up to... write a blog about how I'm always mentally beating myself down for no good reason. Har, har, har.

Apologies if this is a very uninteresting blog to read (future me who rereads this: I'm looking at you buddy, please chill tf out - not everything you write needs to be worthy of a Booker Prize nomination), but I need to wrestle with my demons on paper or they might consume me. (Yes, I know the forum is not paper.)

It is Thursday today. Let me outline what I've been up to since the week began on Monday:

• Woke up early to make a delicious lunch for V to warm up (that I would not be eating, as I had to go to work).
• Started a new rotation in my job, in the paediatric A&E and treated sick children on Monday and Tuesday.
• Leant a listening ear to several children who had come in due to suicide attempts driven by things like parental death, the foster care system and child sexual abuse.
• Made time for laundry and cleaning (by cutting down on sleep).
• Did an elaborate kolam in the freezing cold yesterday morning for our family Diwali celebrations. Spent most of the day at the sink washing dishes, but also managed to get dressed and smile for obligatory family photos.
• Drove home at stupid'o'clock after fireworks and more washing up.
• Could barely wake up this morning but still made it to my 8am therapy group and a full day of lectures compulsory to my training.

When I look at that in black and white (quite literally - I use the Rainbow Rocket forum theme, natch), it reads like I've been working hard and I want to shake myself and say 'Don't you think you should be proud of yourself?!' But it's like part of my brain cannot allow me to take any credit, for ANYTHING! And only wants to focus on my failures.

So what have my failures been?:

• I really struggled up the hill on my bicycle on the way to work on Monday and was 6 minutes late. (My fitness is in decline since I haven't been running regularly for a few months.)
• I failed to take blood from one wriggly 6 year old, 2 days into my first formal post-graduate paediatric job.
• I forgot the elders were supposed to rub oil into my hair before my bath on Diwali morning, thus angering said elders.
• I felt sad on the way back from my parents' house yesterday because I miss them and couldn't really talk and drive without bursting into tears, so stayed quiet.
• Allowed V to prioritise my pleasure over his last night. (I wasn't even in the mood.)
• Everyone else in the therapy group seems so put-together, and I feel like such a leech.
• Had to have a nap during one of the lectures this morning, and it was one I had been really looking forward to.
• Skipped breakfast and only ate lunch at 14:30.
• I'm still in my nightgown and it is getting dark, and I am writing this blog to procrastinate from having the shower I should have had this morning.

Omg. The failure list is actually longer than the success list. They're all tiny, irrelevant or even flagrantly unreasonable. My innate reaction to reading them is like 'Girl you are fucked up!', but that's not helpful either. Cuz it's just... beating yourself up for beating yourself up. Where does it end?

I want to be happy and proud of myself, and I feel there are so many reasons to be, but it is so hard to quiet the self-doubting voice in my head. What's bizarre is the double standards. When someone else shows me the barest consideration or kindness, or does the smallest job, I feel an unbounding sense of gratitude. I stay in my PJs for one day and it's like I've committed some sort of international atrocity.

Writing it out does help actually (although now that I sense I'm coming to the end of writing this, anxious thoughts about all the things I have left to do have started beating in my head like a drum).

Better go have that shower I guess!

 

[ii kanji]

Quack quack nya~

 

[hanecco]

I'm back on the forums and had to catch up... Congrats on getting married, ii kanji! And happy Diwali too! It's cool to see someone on the forums with the same cultural background as me. When you wrote about shipping Hindu deities, that felt extremely real to me lol.

 

[ii kanji]

That’s so sweet of you to check in @hanecco! I don’t think I knew that you and I shared a cultural background, so that’s pretty cool! It’s always nice to meet other South Asian peeps who just… get it lol. Hope you’re keeping well

 

[ii kanji]

Hit play to generate the appropriate emotions :



I’m writing this with a baby strapped to my front who I’m trying to get settled to sleep so I might not be able to say everything I’d like as coherently as I’d like but we’ll see haha.

It’s been 6 weeks since Baby M quit my womb and joined the party, and 6 weeks since Satoshi, Pikachu and the TRio’s journeys ended. It’s wild to me that these 2 significant life events occurred within 24hrs of each other. (If PokeAni was still a Thursday occurrence they would have literally occurred simultaneously!) I guess what’s more wild is that the former soooo much superseded the latter that it was almost an irrelevancy. I watched that final episode in 2-3 minute chunks on my phone in hospital over 3 days during middle of the night breast feeds! Not ever what I would have envisioned my final moments with the TRio being.

Life with a newborn is intense. People say it’s hard but I had no idea until he was here how helpless he would be - in the first 3 weeks feeding alone was a full time job. I’ve also become accustomed to thinking of 2 hour stretches of sleep as a luxury and a success. We’re getting settled now though and he is starting to play and smile at us for brief periods in between the feeding, changing and burping. V is also an amazing dad and watching father and son together just makes my heart burst. Now I really am like Musashi, surrounded by my boys!

I was reading what I wrote about shipping in a previous post in this blog, about how tender my emotions were in wanting the best for Musashi and Kojiro. Being a parent is like that but ramped up to infinity. I can’t describe the feeling in words, but when I look at Baby M sometimes I just want to put him back in the womb to keep him as he is and protect him from the world. It’s intense joy and a kind of sorrow melded together into the most painful love I’ve ever felt.

I don’t know if hiatus is the right word for it, but I am not going to be around the forums much if at all going forwards. It’s strange to say it because they have been such an integral part of my life since my mid teens. I was away for 2-3 years in the middle during BW and I never thought then that I’d have another 10 years of bulba-ing left in me so never say never. If life eases up and there’s something new to talk about the TRio then maybe I will have another spurt to go!

Either way though, I know neither my life nor the franchise are ever going to go back to the way they were before. However challenging the path to get here (I found both childbirth and that final saga pretty traumatising lol), it’s a step forward and there’s no choice but to embrace the change. I’ll miss the routine of visiting the forums every day but truthfully? That routine is being replaced by something so much more important that I can’t really grieve for it.

I’m heading off now to my white tomorrow (aka my bed, until the next feed…) Wishing you all the best, don’t be a stranger!