[ChicletPrime]

Live Slug Reaction: Caleb Beach Edition

• what timeline in this in? "i rush back to the old house..." "renovation of the old house..." he's still in the DAA i'm guessing? but he has is own place in Linkon that he uses instead of just coming home? if this is after Lucid Dream (post-Colonel Caleb), then that implies they... rebuilt their old home? that makes no sense, girlywhirl lives in an apartment block with Xavier
  
• fantastic, meimei has her own biometric access to his front door because why wouldn't she
  
• "WHERE ARE YOUR CLOTHES?!"  this is off to a FANTASTIC start, no notes
  
• "if you were the same height, I'd make you wear my Hunter uniform so you can cover my shift for a few days."
  
• /immediately sidetracked on imagining Caleb trying to squish into her little blouse and harness setup
  
• this is ... kinda adorable. we're totes hanging in the bathroom doorway while Caleb is deshabille in a little terrycloth number, trying to shave and not even the plushies are batting an eye. they must do this a LOT.
  
• freak4freak frequency
  
• Caleb is the best big bro in the business
  
• "can you drive a dune buggy?" i am pretty sure Caleb could drive anything, anywhere. the boy is kind of overachieving when it comes to machinery that goes fast.
  
• gold star to all the NPC voices so far, they are doing a really good job!
  
• they... they used the word 'schadenfreude' in a sentence. properly. egads, i'm impressed.
  
• uh.
  
• um.
  
• hello, nurse! lemme just.. scrub off.. this really tough... bit... with my soft little... hands.
  
• less talking, more rinsing! yeah Caleb, get wet, wouldja?
  
• omg hawaiian shirt! and a lei! this is so trope, i can't stand it.
  
• "Maybe i didn't wanna get covered in ice cream. And have you wash me. Again."  /choke
  
• nice little sidecall to Zayne with a penguin popsicle.
  
• definitely on our honeymoon, thanks for noticing! i was just going to pretend it was all in my head to keep from making waves, but phew, its all out in the open now.
  
• OMG she didn't correct the guy AND NEITHER DID CALEB
  
• freak4freak frequency operating in sync, all systems at max output
  
• "I ran into a... small... problem.. during a mission and had to make emergency landing near an island. i ended up staying there for a few days."
  
• translation:  all four engines in his top secret prototype fighter jet cut out at once and he had to bail into the open ocean during a hurricane. after drifting for three days, surviving on fish speared from the ocean using a broken landing strut, he came upon a spit of sand with one (1) coconut tree and three weeks later he was rescued with a mild case of sunburn and a perfected backhand volley.
  
•   i know, i know, they're all so pretty but my god, Caleb is pretty
  
• good LORD, his VA is giving 110% on this entire card. that was premium sarcasm deliverance.
  
• did she... did she just rub her entire face over his face? oh, got her hands all over his face. wow.  i have got have to messed up my time placement right? because if this is their pre-explosion dynamic... phwoar.
  
• now they're cuddling and taking a wee nap on the boat. why am i not surprised.
  
• hyper competency is my favorite kink
  
• clutch the Caleb-floatie, girlfriend! don't let this opportunity to snuggle during a crisis pass you by!
  
• yeah, phew. i have the timeline wrong, the "old house" references threw me off. this is definitely after Lucid Dream / Painful Signal (which i still have yet to watch)
  
• interesting. same beach as Rafayel's card(s), only wet, blue and raining.
  
• oh, wow. now there's an innuendo that came out of nowhere. caleb, you sly dog.
  
• girlfriend: "?"
  
• I THOUGHT WE WERE PAST THIS
  
• stardate: 08122025-446:  duplicate cave discovered, appears to be a Philosian origin based on rock crumble patterns. does not appear to contain either Tree of Life or Tree of Gem-Grade Death. venturing further into the darkness. tell my mother i love her.
  
• okay, even the girlfriend makes mention that there's a lot of thunderstorms around Caleb.  please highlight that on the conspiracy index card with the GOOD yellow pen.
  
• woooooah. woah nelly. i should WHAT?
  
• HE should what?
  
• /shakes head a few times.  wow. okay! i didn't realize it was gonna be THAT trope, but i am here for it! freak4freak, go!
  
• ohhhh. we need warm CLOTHES. and out of the WET ones.
  
• (i know where my brain went. i had a whole montage of The Blue Lagoon flash before my eyes)
  
• "The fluttering emotions that stirred inside of me quickly dissipate. i pout."  OH MY GOD.
  
• aaaand Caleb's exiled himself to the far side of the cave while i slip into this kinky little tarp number.
  
• "Are you afraid of what I might do to you?"
  
• whiplash. i'' m having cognitive whiplash. i was NOT expecting this much innuendo AT ALL.
  
• "Are you hoping I might do something then?"
  
• ba-wah. oh my. okay. mr VA, you officially have my attention for the rest of your time with Infold. that was * delicious *
  
• i am so naive. you go girfriend! keep up that tattered tarp of plausible deniability until you're old and gray.  this has to be before the birthday card.
  
• for the record, if anybody had ever held my hand like this or anything even three football fields close to this, i would have absolutely exploded with hormones on the spot.
  
• Caleb's on board. on island. down for stranded, no questions asked.
  
• "We can also do... other things. if you want."  i am going to die. wow.
  
• wow, that was such a look of sad disappointment, fleeting and then gone.
  
• no no no no you guys, don't let it die like that! tell him you've changed your mind and you'd be very down for a crustacean diet for an indeterminate length of time.
  
• this is why we have fanfic. oh, that was kinda painful to watch. Caleb damn near blender'd his heart and intentions for easy consumption and she just ... augh.
  
• time to escape on a paraglider!
  
• "Caleb, I think you look more handsome and reliable when you don't talk."  :D
  
• Caleb looks soooo happy when he's flying.
  
• ohhhhh. interesting! that's what you meant about the evol. she can hijack it!
  

that was really good. a little angst, a little sweet, a little Caleb trying to learn to not hold so tightly. but again, MC, you are a dolt at times. i thought we were absolutely past this, if this is after Lucid Dream but pre-Birthday.

further note, i was pleased to see, even with the repeats on some of the backgrounds, there were more new ones AND Caleb changed his clothes five or six times for variety. it was nice to see!

[Coldsaturn]

"then that implies they... rebuilt their old home?"
He was in the process or rebuilding their old house during the wedding banner card. That's why I was saying that for both Raf and Caleb we were clearly after that event. The cards won't just reference each other in terms of "Oh we did this last year, remember?" they will also establish plot points that will be given as present from then on, like the house he rebuilt.

- "OMG she didn't correct the guy AND NEITHER DID CALEB"
THAT'S WHAT I'M SAYING

- "because if this is their pre-explosion dynamic... phwoar."
Ok she was handsy even before (his last 10 days with you card which takes place when she's still in high school), but the difference is that before their...explosion, he used to stop her when she crossed a line or two or ten. Now instead he just waits for retaliation time.

- "Are you afraid of what I might do to you?" "Are you hoping I might do something then?"
That was my "oh god Caleb" "oh GOD Caleb"

- "this has to be before the birthday card."
I think necessarily after because they started their relationship in the birthday card, they were in a relationship for the wedding banner where he started rebuilding the house, and now the house is complete. So the push&pull we're seeing is half them still getting used to being a couple, and half their usual dynamic they grew up with and definitely won't give up now that they're also lovers.

- "We can also do... other things. if you want."
Caleb needs to stop being horny on main if he doesn't want company. He does want company though, doesn't he.

- "she can hijack it!"
YEs! Since WHEN can she resonate and TAKE CONTROL of someone's evol??????

[ChicletPrime]

okay, straight up, i did watch the birthday card and i thought they had sex. like, okay, yes, start the relationship but also they finally did the horizontal tango off screen at the end. which is why i was setting this BEFORE the birthday because while girlywhirl might be five steps over any given line in every direction and Caleb is not stopping her, the whole vibe in this beach card is that they haven't quite gone there yet and Caleb is really trying to make it super clear that he wants to and that she only has to ask.

which she doesn't. and is bambi-in-headlights about it.

we need a thread somewhere entitled "Horny On Main" full of screen clips of the best lines for everybody :P

hijacking evol is fascinating, that could impact damn near every scenario you can think of, if she actively does it and even if she only subconsciously does it. the possibilities of that alone are delightful.

-----

ps: lost the pull in my quest for shorts and got something on the regular pool for Zayne, suddenly can't remember what. alas.

[Coldsaturn]

Yes it is heavily implied that they have sex in his birthday. But if you think about the wedding banner, Caleb is still talking about wanting more from their status quo like they're still negotiating their relationship. The line he says in the cafè when he has his wedding outfit on is about wanting to be every role in her life, embracing the gege role that he was so conflicted about in the past. So my idea is that birthday-wedding-beach happen one after the other and in close proximity, so they 100% know about their reciprocal feelings, have also had sex etc, but they're still navigating the logistics of what it means for them to go from siblings/childhood friends to this. There's a kind of awkwardness (especially from MC) like she sometimes forgets that the boundaries have changed between them.
Caleb's suggestive lines to me confirm that we're after the first time they've had sex. They're still awkward about it, but Caleb sounds to me very much like "I wouldn't mind doing that again like now. Just saying"

Hell yeah to the horny on main thread. What are the rules? Do they need to be in public?

I'm still debating whether evol hijacking is retconning previously established lore. I think I remember Raf (and then Sylus obviously) implying that resonating needs two willing participants. But this banner seems to imply that we don't need the person's explicit consent in that moment, only a generic positive attitude toward MC that allows the resonance, and then she can guide it on her own.
Or maybe this is a level up in power for MC compared to the beginning of the story, which would make sense.

[ChicletPrime]

re/timeline -- yeah, i would argue back that Caleb exiling himself to the other side of the cave while she stripped out of her wet things to hide under the tarp would more thematically put the order as wedding-beach-birthday. if they had already had sex with each other, that would have definitely played out differently with less body-shyness and less innuendo / more straight up language. if they'd already "done it" by that point, Caleb would have been more hands on as an excuse to touch her in a sexual manner and it would have been more out in the open about his offer to lay her down next to the fire (if she wanted).

the whole vibe in the cave really felt to me like he was just waiting for her to finally pony up to the inevitable but giving her the space to work up to it on her own. the fact that some of the dialogue responses to his casual flirting was still "?" i think is the telling clue.

EDIT: also, i will play the trump card here - are you trying to insinuate that once meimei finally nails her gege, she WOULDN'T be all over that like white on rice at every opportunity, including the ones she has to manufacture on the fly??? she's VERY touchy-touchy here but at the end, she actively ignores what he's offering. i mean, he even still stays awake just to caress her face while she sleeps. i submit to you: he's still on the other side of the door in this banner.

re/evol - just thinking out loud here -- you can't force a resonance bond, MC *has* to allow it or it won't happen. about three minutes after we meet Xavier, she offers to use her evol and Xavier apologizes before using it, completely obliterating the Wanderer threat. i've always interpreted that as he knew it would be an ice pick to the chest for both of them (i am slightly exaggerating, sure, but i will clutch that visual to my chest to my dying day) with how strongly it would engage even on first meeting. when MC explicitly denies resonance to Sylus, he can't force it out of her at all in comparison. even when she agrees to actually try properly, it still won't because her heart isn't in it - until it finally snaps into place so strongly, she chains him with it (i assume that is what is happening at the end of Revelry when they physically cannot part due to the manifested shackles).

this beach banner seems to imply that once a resonance bond is established, its a two way bridge. she gives strength to it, but its leash they're holding on both ends. Caleb seems to be the one in master control of it ("no freebies for you!") but i think its okay to assume that as long as Caleb doesn't actively wrench control of it from her, she could use his evol as if it was natively hers.

so, at the end of the day, drift-compatibility bay-be!

re/ Hell yeah to the horny on main thread. What are the rules? Do they need to be in public?

nah, let's not trammel ourselves here. i think any seriously loaded flirt should be in contention, whether its in front of Jeremiah or not :P could make a sticky thread in each of the boy's areas and could give you moderator access to it (i think) so we can just throw stuff in there as we feel like it so could build up a collection over time. or just make a regular "master" post and just chuck everything into one spot for everybody.

[Coldsaturn]

"if they had already had sex with each other, that would have definitely played out differently"
I'd agree without question if I wasn't used to all the c/j/k dramas where before a proper marriage there's still palpable awkwardness around the theme of naked bodies, unless the dynamic is already established as fully sexual (see SylusMC) or fully domestic (see ZayneMC).
Your argument is sound, my only reason to doubt it is that the wedding banner implies there's already been a romantic development between them, and that happens at his birthday. But if you recall, I already complained about the birthday and wedding cards being in a nonsensical overlap of when their relationship starts (because if they're together after the birthday, Caleb's doubts at the wedding fake thing don't make much sense and vice versa), so I wouldn't be surprised if this was once again Caleb's writing team losing the plot a bit because they need to include Caleb in these multi banners but at the same time have to fit all this into some semblance of a timeline.

"are you trying to insinuate that once meimei finally nails her gege, she WOULDN'T be all over that like white on rice at every opportunity"
Not my meimei for sure, but infold's meimei might be shy enough. If you ask any Caleb main, they would have told you there was NO WAY in hell that Caleb could finally kiss and fuck MC without his chip being triggered, and yet there was no problem. Fans made up that his spring/birthday/wedding banners had to happen after he's already removed the chip or destroyed it because otherwise it contradicts what we know of the strength of his feelings for her and their collateral effects.
We're clearly already struggling trying to make everything look coherent.

I will add that the way the cards can be put in order follows 1) inside references (like Caleb's mention of the rebuilt old house which was a WIP in the wedding banner), and 2) seasons. Summer cards come after spring cards etc. This would either put the birthday a few months before the beach event, or an entire year after. But this would mean that the wedding (which is canonically established as precedent to the beach event) thing happens 1 year before the birthday, and it doesn't make sense because it would mean they're stuck in this limbo hell of "we're together but who knows" for close to 12 months.

- I can only say: we so need a Pacific Rim AU

- Yes to the horny threads then. I'll debate what to do with the smutty moments that I don't want to spoiler you with

[ChicletPrime]

there's always the option that Caleb allows the chip to trigger when he feels its advantageous to be sidelined for a couple of days, when he wants to punish himself for his feelings, or when he wants to show his compliance / make it obvious that he's still "under control" or any combination of the above.

because yeah, you're right to point that out - just having incredibly possessive thoughts about MC triggered a total breakdown in Lucid Dream (my GOD, what a myth, i will never recover) and in the birthday / wedding / beach banners, there was bupkis on that front.

so either it's out, or Caleb is a little more in control of its functioning than we think he is. orrrrrrr the devs can't keep it straight which is more likely. i prefer thinking about watsonian explanations because the doylist take is sometimes very discouraging.

---

i am really surprised there's no Pacific Rim AU out there already for all the boys. c'mon magic fanfic people, hop!

--

EDIT: i just started the second chapter of the summer event with Caleb and ... his solution is to make a tracking device for the bird? is this man going to macguyver a control device out of some handy tin foil and paper clips?! my god. muahahahah!

[ChicletPrime]

okay, i took So Many Screenshots, that i have to just stand here and own it. just a couple that I particularly liked of Caleb:

[Coldsaturn]

A sort of compromise between the watsonian and doylist could be the theory that anything going beyond the timeline included in the main chapters is a happy alternate timeline showing the life the characters would have after defeating Ever. After all we celebrated two birthdays with the OG3, and we're barely 7-8 months into the main storyline, all the while actively talking of the end of the world. That would explain Caleb not having to deal with the chip anymore, whereas Lucid Dream is canonically 1 month after Homecoming Wing.

Absolutely not surprised that Caleb can craft stalking devices out of thin air in the middle of nowhere.

I still have to watch Xav and Zayne's cards, but Caleb's kindle is the one I like the most with how much we see MC and the whole aesthetic of it!

[ChicletPrime]

yeah, i like that compromise a lot - unless something *clearly* comes across as embedded into the main storyline, simply treating it as an alternative timeline just dodges any and all inconsistencies, like Caleb's chip problems.

apropos of nothing at all, the recent text interaction with Sylus, Luke, Keiran and MC talking about the twins' bird disguises being mistaken for "sun protection gear" had me *howling*. my GOD, yes! especially when MC said maybe she should wear it too and one of the twins then asked how anybody would be able to tell them all apart.

like, can you imagine it? there you are, some high end crime boss who's not QUITE in opposition to Onychinus but there's some subtle jockeying going on and you know, through direct report and your own personal observation that Sylus' lieutenants are a pair and that its better to go around them than through them where possible.

and you're at some auction or gala or something and everybody is watching everybody else and keeping their hidden knives well oiled just in case and then suddenly, there's fucking THREE of them sauntering by, snickering and shoving each other and whispering louder and louder at each other and now you have to fucking account for the fact that no, they're goddamned TRIPLETS and now you're going to have to draw up a new flowchart of their estimated damage impact on any potential altercation and that if you only see two, you're going to have to start worrying about where the third asshole is.