#Retool (trope)

[hislittleraincloud]

If I ever needed a Harlequin Romance-type of cover for UVC.... I'm dying. Bing, how dare you. I didn't ask for this.

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

During Lynda Bellingham’s run as the Inspector,

the programme turned more into a soap opera, even being broadcast twice a week.

[mixelation]

wait i've been rotating an original fiction idea. hear me out it's 80% things i came up with for fandom reasons

the main character is just lady han solo. i have been calling her hana duo in my head and randomly laughing over it. she swaggers around pretending to be cool but-- and this is very important-- she's A Loser. she's a petty criminal and comes with a sassy robot

one day hana is stealing an alien tree (link is literally a star wars fic premise i came up with for an ask meme). while she's planetside having a Bad Time, local evil space empire's favorite assassin boards her ship. not 100% sure why yet-- maybe she had some checkered past that's catching up with her; maybe she's pisse doff the wrong person. who knows. but he's here to kill her

the empire assassin character is scifi minato knock off character but retooled from whatever i posted before. i decided i wanted to sort of play around with the "sexy green pheromone alien" trope but it's a man so i'm very clever. his species is a brood parasite, so they're incredibly good at mimicking chemical scents. also maybe he has minor shape shifting abilities? pheromones don't work on humans but he has a Complex about wanting to be liked by everyone so he intentionally looks like a mostly human hot person.

the stolen tree introduces some sort of Biological Weirdness so they end up stuck together, and they kidnap a low budget scientist to solve their problem. low budget scientist is disgraced and can no longer work in academy, for fraud. she also fulfills the "kooky alien biology" trope. i'm still rotating what she physically looks like, but i'm basing her on tardigrades & bdelloid rotiers!!! she can shrivel up and survive the vacuum of space. her species reproduces entirely clonally. she is filled with random chunks of stolen DNA (her: technically i'm 17% human--)

together, they're the worst people you've ever met....!

[bonefall]

What roles are Willow Tail, Quick Water, and Fern Leaf going to be like in your rewrite? I hate most of DOTC but I do enjoy a lot of the side characters, especially them

Willow Tail I know what I'm doing with, Quick Water and Fern Leaf I'm less sure of.

BB!Willow Tail -> Willow Flayed Bare

Willow is a young molly from the Wind Coalition who fought at the First Battle. Her first name was Tabby, and she earned her title for presenting a large, weaved willowbark basket to the Wind Runner. She's an artisan with a useful talent.

Since I completely overhauled Moth Flight's Vision into Moth Flight's Vow, which has a NEW origin for how the Cleric's Vow occured, I'm still reworking the Bunny Bones plot that I'm fond of.

I'm unsure if it's going to be a novella or a catalyst for the conflict of another book. It might be a good way to create an opportunity for Quick Water to run her rebellion

Willow has a petty dispute with one of Clear Sky's kittens; Tiger Sky. It's a TINY bananas squabble. She doesn't like seeing her rude ass sunbathing on the moor, so she starts leaving bunny bones on the border and accusing her of stealing to get her banned from the area.

Skystar, being the man that he is, takes the accusation that one of HIS warriors, his oldest (remaining) DAUGHTER no less, VERY personally. What started as a mean girl moment quickly exploded into total war.

I LIKE the way that the original plot was so unjustified and avoidable it's painful. I just wish it was framed as the miserable, violent moment it should have been. I'm planning on keeping Willow's blinding, but it's the final straw for Tiger who can't stomach this any longer.

Willow is likely going to end up in the River Kingdom, exiled for starting the conflict. She might still get retooled; in a later draft she may become a ShadowClan Mountain Cat.

Quick Water

Aside from a brief moment in Sun Trail where they give her the trait of being 'vain' and being woman 34 that Clear Sky smacks around to relieve stress in Forest Divided, she's suuuuper neglected in the main arc imo.

I haven't read past the part where they unceremoniously kill Sun Shadow in Shadowstar's Life, so I hope to revisit it before retooling Quick Water more. I hate how DOTC takes every opportunity to shit on Tall Shadow when she doesn't fucking do anything.

(Side note: it's kinda why i cant see Shadowstar as the girlboss ppl want her to be. Wind Runner is the girlboss. Canon!Tall Shadow is absolute girlfail. In BB, Tall Shadow is less girlfail but she still has the pervasive energy of... this isnt going to make sense to anyone but me BUT BB!Tall Shadow is SO girl obama to me. Well-spoken high road liberal who gets steamrolled by dirty fighters.)

So BB!Quick Water,

For one she's going to be part of a full family. It's either going to become the Water Family OR her name will change and she'll become Quick Tail.

I think she's going to become good friends with Shatter Frost, as Shadow's Clan early "conservative" types who think Clear Sky has a point.

They might end up with kittens, because DOTC is supposed to be about. Like. Ancestors. It's bizarre that they gave the Quiet Rainkin like 20 surviving descendants while everyone else dies off. Not cool actually.

In any case, I want to boost Quick's role significantly. Let her be one of Tall's key cats, either a hunter or a fighter. Something that isn't surprising when she eventually tries to toss Shadowstar out of power

Shadowstar actually survives this coup. She's one of the longer-lived founders in BB!DOTC, unlike canon where she was the first to go. Quick, meanwhile, is one of the VERY FIRST Dark Forest demons, which I can hopefully have a lot of fun with.

Fern Leaf

(CW: Canon!Slash and the racist trope he's written as that includes physical and sexual violence)

She is VERY up in the air currently, because I'm rejecting Slash as a villain completely. It was SUPER fucked up of them to make TWO stinky, born-evil native villains and then write one of them the way they did. Not only is it thematically RANCID, but it's also LAZY writing.

They have to make Slash a lustful creep so that Clear Sky looks better, because they DIDN'T WRITE A REAL REDEMPTION WHERE HE FACES ACTUAL CONSEQUENCES.

Like... I'm sorry, we understand that the way they wrote Slash is a really old trope, right?? "The natives will kidnap our women and hurt our children if we don't unite, and that's why the colonization of this land was totally cool" Warrior Cats is no stranger to xenophobia, but this time it went so far it invoked an outright racist trope.

(And then they just... totally gloss over that Star Flower is "young" compared to Clear Sky, who was less than 3 at the time, meaning she must be around the same age as the son he is actively abusing and EURGH Forest Divided makes me want to throw up)

SO.

Now that I have screamed about how ROTTEN this part is to stress WHY I need to gouge it out with a rusty spoon;

First of all, Slash has an updated name to help separate him from canon a bit. The Mountain cats call him Dashes for his leg markings, the Park cats call him The Silver Pelt for the color of his fur, his real name is Star-shine. Just "Star" in a casual context, his birth name. "Shine" is a leader suffix.

In-canon, Fern Leaf's purpose is to be abused by Slash enough that she reveals information to Gray Wing, and to contrast Beautiful Boy Clear Sky who beats the shit out of women and kids for good reasons so his abused underlings still wuv him.

So... no. Not keeping that. Lol, lmao even.

While I'm not totally against allowing Star to remain some type of harsh or even abusive towards his cats, IF that remains, I need to stress how much it is influenced by the constant stress and violence the Forest Cats are surrounded by. Harsh times don't cause abuse, but they do contribute, and even important, protective people can still abuse a victim.

Doesn't make it okay. Doesn't even make it easier to heal from. It robs you of the simplicity of it all-- being hurt by someone you desperately want to remember fondly.

Still, it's a very fine line to walk when I already have a big problem to fix here. I'm dealing with an egregiously racist trope, even if I HAVE already removed the MOST awful parts related to Canon!Slash's behavior (it's not appropriate for the tone I'm setting or something im comfortable writing).

But the physical abuse is a huge part of Fern Leaf. So, do you see my conundrum? I am confident handling the nuances of abuse, but this part of the story could use bleach.

I have a few ideas, one I'm leaning towards, but I'm still open to suggestions

Idea 1: Fern Leaf is one of Misty's kits

This was an earlier thought I'm moving away from, but it's worth mentioning. I already have Birch and Alder I'm doing this with, with Alder Claw eventually defecting from SkyClan, so adding Fern Leaf to the litter might be redundant.

In any case, Milkweed was mates with Misty. If this idea stays, Fern could be the one kitten she managed to escape with, forced to leave the other two behind. But then I wouldn't keep Fern's abuse, y'know?

(Plus Milkweed has so many kittens to pick from that I already need to shave some down. She's got like 6 in canon; I've gone over it before but a massive reason why WC's family trees are so tangled is because of "superqueens" like this. They tend to give one parent a lot of kits instead of giving a lot of parents a few kits.)

Idea 2: Fern Leaf is Star's daughter

Either with or without abuse, this is the one I'm leaning towards. It would mean she can show up a lot through the story as his ""lackey"" until Thunder and Bright learn that her and her dad are just like them.

If I nix the abuse (which seems wisest at the moment, honestly) then Fern can still be covered in her iconic scars, just from tangling with Park and Mountain cats constantly. Naturally she's at the forefront of battle patrols, she's fighting alongside her dad.

Plus, there's lots of opportunities for overhauling the dynamics from canon. Her mom didn't "abandon" them, she was probably attacked by the settlers. Star can be a good parent or just one with more complexity, instead of whatever canon was trying to do with Slash and this unrelated kid he hits.

(Re: very strange they refused to acknowledge that sometimes biodads are not worth forgiving or coddling. Interesting that Tom the Wifebeater and One Eye are sympathized with by the narrative for having kids. Curious they decided Canon!Slash of all characters would NOT be a father.)

Idea 3: Shuffle Fern into a Mountain or Park group.

AKA: prioritize the portrayal of intense physical abuse and her recovery, while avoiding tying it to the Forest cats entirely.

I feel like this one is the least interesting, but I'm keeping it on hand just in case. Like it says on the tin, she'd get any association with Slash/Star removed. I'd try to keep her developing a bond with Bright Storm though, since one of Gray Wing's... okayish moments was his interactions with Fern in trying to encourage her to leave.

(Even then, i really cant stand how the narrative concludes through Gray Wing that Slash is super evil because he doesnt feel love. And that he just decides to not tell Tall Shadow there's an evil group of cats spying on her and planning to invade because... Wisdom idk.)

If I do this, I will probably put her into WindCo. Their "homestead" system where individual families own mini-territories is a ripe situation for abuse to occur in, and the very structure of WindCo means that there's no one around to stop it or seek out for help.

Plus, maybe I could find some way for her to help out Thunder's crew as a WindCo insider. It's not a total wash, I just find Idea 2 more interesting.

[summerongrand]

I believe that Tim wronged Lucy and took away her agency. Love is a verb and we act this verb out through our actions and decisions. What Tim did to her was not love. It was out of a selfish need to protect her because he thinks he knows what's best for her better than she does. He doesn't.

Chenford has a long and difficult, uphill road ahead if they want to be together again. Tim is gonna need to come to terms with a lot of things, starting with how he treated Lucy. And he's gonna need to be willing and determined to change for her and for him if any healing were to happen. It's gonna be rough for him because he's gonna need to unlearn a lot. He'll need to treat her better. And the writers will need to do Lucy better because this whole "using WOC as plot devices for their male counterpart" trope needs a retool.

Nobody - actors included - knows if they'll get back together in canon. I'm hopeful they will but I'm also not going to get my hopes up.

[ilikekidsshows]

Do you think Marinette in s4-5 is OOC or a product of retooling? I've seen many people said pre s4 Marinette won't do anything that hurt cat noir either physically or emotionally since she care for him and is the real marinette. But then again I also see people said s1-2 Marinette is the real Marinette.

---

Yes, but no. Marinette's character has been altered, but it's almost completely based on things that have been there from the start. They just didn't used to be a problem. It’s called Flanderization on TV Tropes, when a character gets stripped of their nuance so that the writing can focus on some aspect of them and make that aspect more extreme. But this process doesn’t usually involve inventing new things for the character, unless the writers try to make their simplified version more complex again.

Marinette absolutely would and does hurt Cat Noir in the pre-retool show. However, it wasn’t nearly as consistent, constant or extreme back then, and Cat Noir wasn’t made to apologize for being upset about it. This unequal part of their relationship has been exaggerated and goes unquestioned far more.

Even before the retool, Marinette hurts the people she cares about. However, before the retool, Marinette could come down from her occasional high horse to admit she’d been in the wrong and would often work to make up for it. After the retool, Marinette stays on her high horse constantly and just goes: “I had good intentions/I didn’t mean to/I was correct, actually" or whines about how bad she feels until her victims coddle and console her.

Chloé used to be basically Marinette’s shadow archetype in the early seasons. She was a a reflection of what Marinette could become if she let her selfishness and entitlement get out of hand, which was showcased in Animaestro when they actually teamed up to bully Kagami just because she was bitchy (in their minds) and too close with Adrien. Marinette doesn't go out of her way to hurt others, but she often doesn't care that her attempts to get what she wants hurt others until she actually sees that someone is upset.

Post-retool Marinette has started to resemble early-series Chloé, with her high social standing and tendency to treat others as lesser. The only difference is that, for Marinette, that mistreatment isn't the goal but the result of her pursuing some other goal, usually getting with Adrien. But the audience can’t see this similarity because Chloé has also been flanderized into what should be a parody of her mean girl archetype, but we’re expected to take seriously as a threat.

[facewithoutheart]

Thanks for the tags @martsonmars, @forabeatofadrum, @ileadacharmedlife & @rimeswithpurple ❤️ lovely to see you all today.

I’ve been in a bit of a writing hole since finishing my last fic, so I’ve been plotting and organizing and retooling and trying out a few new WIPs here and there. Nothing too substantial.

From a new WIP where I’m trying to return to my roots (snowbaz, established relationship, crack with smut):

I’ve gotten the drop on Simon Snow and he absolutely knows it. I lead him toward our bedroom, my hips the swinging bait on which he’s hooked.

Except… wrong metaphor.

From an old WIP where I’m trying to apply what I’ve learned since last year’s nanowrimo failure (original story, strangers to nuisances to lovers, other tropes unknown):

“Anna…”

“Bryan.” She drags out the vowels.

“Permit me my peace.”

“But it’s Friday.”

“Counterpoint: we’re not twenty.”

Give Life Back to Music switches over to Ain’t it Fun and Anna’s grin widens. “Aren’t we?”

“No,” Bryan drawls, pulling over an onion to start chopping. Part meal prep, part defense. “My liver doesn’t benefit from the same feature as your playlist.”

“Having remained functionally the same since our first year of college?” She walks over to the fridge, pulls out a Shiner and pops open the top. “Don’t I know it.”

I’ve been having more fun making playlists for my original story than actually writing but some words have happened!

I need to get back to my published WIPs but I just can’t find the energy. Maybe soon.

Tagging @bookish-bogwitch, @cutestkilla, @sillyunicorn, @you-remind-me-of-the-babe, @whogaveyoupermission, @stardustasincocaine, @thewholelemon, @onepintobean, @larkral, @aristocratic-otter. @artsyunderstudy, @fatalfangirl, @captain-aralias, @raenestee, @moodandmist, @confused-bi-queer & @shemakesmeforget

[scienter]

Why do people hero worship Klaus?He barged into Mystic falls to murder a bunch of kids.He actually did murder Tyler and turned him for his selfish experiment.He stripped him off of his freedom and murdered Tyler's last living family.Tyler simply led a liberation movement by helping unsire other hybrids like him who klaus had enslaved.Klaus yet again went after him and did everything possible to ruin his relationship with Caroline.He threw him out from his own home and threatened to kill him if he was in the same vicinity of his own girlfriend.On what ground was Klaus playing the victim card when he destroyed Tyler's entire life for sport?

It's the Draco in Leather Pants phenomenon.

As TV Tropes explains, "Draco in Leather Pants is when a fandom takes a controversial or downright villainous character and downplays their flaws, often turning them into an object of desire and/or a victim in the process. This causes contradictions with the established characterization, and fanfic writers have to openly retool the character to fit this demand."

Draco in Leather Pants occurs in every fandom. It's especially prevalent for characters the audience considers physically attractive though.

[tyrantisterror]

Team Flare sucked so hard from a narrative standpoint that Game Freak retooled the “evil team” trope into just being a wacky group of lovable weirdos that are, like, barely antagonistic.

[the-girl-with-the-glass-heart]

My friend and i had an idea for a intrulogical/Prinxiety horror themed au.

It's 1985 and in the middle of nowhere, and Remus and roman are the twins from a very texas chainsaw massacre kinda family, they live on a rural farm, their house has tons of dead animal bones hanging everywhere as decor, they eat roadkill stew, they kidnap random drunk teens off the side of the road and murder them, all the typical things a murderous hick family would do.

Roman though finds himself falling in love with some one very very unlikely, a good distance away from their farm house there is an abandoned haunted victorian mansion that dumb teens go into to lose their virginities but they always either come out horrifed and scarred for life or don't come out at all. Roman discovers there's a whole family of ghosts living there, evil spirits who bring an ungodly amount of flies everywhere they go, write messages on the walls with blood and make sure every cabinet in the house spontaneously opens at the same time. Roman finds himself drawn to the youngest member of the family, Virgil, and the two bond over how territorial their families are and how fun it is to make a bunch of teens run for their lives.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago a couple cheerleaders and jocks accidentally killed a dorky teenage boy named logan after a mean prank. Suddenly, Logan just popped out of his grave completley fine but hungry for revenge. Remus finds him and upon Logan telling him his story he has a very mundane reaction and offers to train him to be a great slasher for 5 dollars and stick of gum. As the training begins though and Logan becomes accustomed to all the shitty slasher tropes we all know and love, remus and logan soon discover there may be more in the air than just blood lust.

If you couldn't obviously tell already this au is meant to parody slasher tropes and retool them forna romance plot, Remus and roman being the hellbilly, rob zombie, wrong turn kinda killers, Virgil being a stereotypical angry ghost like from the amnityville horror and the shining, and Logan being the victim back for revenge killer like Carrie, Tamara, and Jason.

I might add more sides (there's lots of potential) to this au but for now i think this is a pretty fun cute au idea for october.

[mayordeas-clone]

if yanderedev was ever able to take a joke about his game then yansim could have been retooled into a dumb shitpost that actually played into the absurd anime tropes it deploys. but no alex is like "this game is very serious and dark so please take it seriously" while in the same breath being like "no i can't rename the characters that just have random nouns as names, they've been like that since the beginning"

[chuckletons]

here's me talking (or rambling) generally about the jb comics in cn starring/cartoon cartoons and block party. i'm not a huge fan of most of the stories. some of this is also more series bible talk except with a focus on bunny, johnny and suzy as opposed to just johnny and carl. also longg post underneath the cut. some scattered trivia and notes at the end too if you're interested in that sort of thing

the most notable instance of bunny making johnny do chores is the beginning to "i, fly." we never really see it happening otherwise. however, this is a reoccurring theme in the comics. it also matches up with the pre-retool bible stating that johnny gets an allowance from bunny each week.

in most of the comic stories, bunny has a low tolerance for johnny's behavior and often threatens to kick him out and otherwise fully embodies the "aggressive nagging mom" trope. this is even noted by "charles d. brown," a fan that sent in letters. there's also a running gag in a few stories of bunny chasing him with a bat? that is completely absent from the show (and likely wasn't allowed even if they wanted to.) bunny instead takes the role of beating the tar out of any man that threatens her son. van's bible and the retooled version seem to be similar in the way bunny uses guilt to get johnny to do what she wants. that specifically was not a retool invention. although s1 bunny wasn't very fleshed out, nor did she appear a lot, van was planning to do more with her before he got fired. the retool was going to harness a much more edgy identity, so it makes sense.

back on topic: comics also feature certain panels such as bunny asking who would be stupid enough to give johnny a driver's license.

my biggest problem with these stories is how frankly miserable some of them feel. johnny and bunny's relationship is a big part of that. in the beginning to the smarty pants story, we see bunny pouring a super-sized box of antacid into her mouth as soon as she sees johnny hitting on a random woman, telling him that she's the "eighth 'betty' [that] week [he] decided [was] 'the one [for him].'" she then gives him genuine good advice that he doesn't follow, a la suzy.

overall, the amount of awareness bunny has just makes me feel terrible for her. what makes bunny work in the show is her pretending (or being blissfully unaware) that her son isn't as bad as he seems. like the rest of the cast, she's a very flawed person. the show works because johnny's friends are also fucked up in different ways without being the exact type of cynical that he is. characters like pops can be very, very mean to johnny, but characters like bunny carl and suzy have their mean moments as well. but some comic stories take this to an extreme and i think the show achieves a specific vibe of mean that mostly worked.

the world revolves around whatever johnny subjects his friends to, but they are his only support system. they feel like a group of horrible people that work well together, united by one idiot. i like that a lot about the retool, it's a huge reason why i got this into it in the first place. but, i love that there's a balance between, say, episodes like "johnny's guardian angel" that acknowledge how the status quo is johnny's fault or episodes where his friends don't care as much about him, and ones where they do and they pay for it. it's not too static. if you don't love one, you have the other.

retool bunny is notable because of the heart she brings to the table. again, she loves her son and will fight to protect him, she's way too clingy and longs for the past when he was still a child, she makes plenty of mistakes as a mother, but at the end of the day, you know she wouldn't threaten to kick johnny out on a daily basis or treat him like a total freeloader. either the retool or the comic writers misinterpreted what "bunny guilts johnny" was supposed to mean. for meaner jokes with her or carl etc., you could at least go "that's kind of funny in a dark way" or at worst "this feels ooc" and move on to the next episode. when we get the gist in the comics that bunny is always suffering this much, what joy is there seeing them interact?

the majority of the stories were not written by the show's writers, but there is a difference between comics and tv censors— comics seem to get away with more. some examples of comic writers taking advantage of this were funny, some were not. one example is in the "you cast a spell" story. i'll let you guess which panel. very S1 in nature, honestly.

(left) this one-page comic where it's obvious a woman hired actual hitmen to kill johnny after he stalked her is like... the show didn't do this because 1. again, i doubt they were allowed to and 2. it's uncomfortably realistic. the stalking part. i feel weird criticizing a one page gag like this, but the concept of hiring hitmen to kill johnny IS funny— and that very well could've worked in the retool's world, don't get me wrong— it's how it's executed. the bollywood movie did a better hitman/assassin type concept.

(left and right) much like bunny, johnny feels uncomfortably self-aware in ways he shouldn't be. "'sides, it's full of stuff the babes can throw at you!" this should not cross his mind. he'd likely tell you anywhere BUT some place that tongue-in-cheek. it's a very easy joke. "always be a gentleman on the first date, save the real you for later!" johnny doesn't play dumb or polite to deceive women, he's just a jackass. "charm school johnny" and "tyler perry's guide to love" are the main examples of this, as johnny can't be a gentleman (or pretend to know what one is) without someone guiding him along. CSJ is a cel-era S2 episode. johnny isn't smart nor devious enough at any point in the show to say something like this. his everyday self is wildly inauthentic as it is.

to me, it feels like these lack what really makes johnny funny when he IS funny. i can't tell if this is a misunderstanding of his character or if the bible was a bit off in terms of what retool johnny became. kupperberg's stories seem to have this problem the most, however... all in all, it kind of feels like an exaggerated parody of the retool and what could be viewed as its worst qualities

one of the other comics i found interesting was "go cart go," a story about suzy building a go cart for a derby and asking johnny for help. johnny uses a nickname for suzy as opposed to forgetting her name and otherwise acts nice to her. he kind of sees himself as a role-model to her, and he has a "tooth or consequences" style change of heart when he sees how sad she is after he enters the derby with his own cart. he cheats his way to get her to win. it's arguably the sweetest official johnny and suzy story i've ever seen and it was very likely an episode premise in the bible that got reworked into the aforementioned tooth fairy ep. johnny is completely selfless and it's played straight even when he gets beat up at the end. is it in-character? is the tone accurate to the show? not really, but it's really nice to see. i like it! retool johnny WAS supposed to be a "jerk with a heart of gold," it's just a shame we barely got that.

other random notes:

johnny uses a lot of "flirty" food nicknames. "pop tart" he uses at least twice. very much the same type of thing as "etruscan honey bun" from the gladiator short. definitely toned down in the actual show

like the s2 model sheets, master hama is referred to as 'master hong,' something that was likely changed early in production to lessen possible complaints of racism / (over)stereotyping

only two of the comic stories were written by one of the show's crew members (john crane.) partible pencilled for a comic / covers but wrote zero of the stories, even post-retool. retool-era storyboard artists such as dave schwartz (the man with the idea for a suzy spin-off / "the great bunny book ban," whom unfortunately passed in 2021) and neal sternecky pencilled a few comic stories. lovely work

unlike "johnny bigfoot," a john crane story, miss williams/winkleman is referred to as "miss butterworth" in "to sea or not to sea." further confirmation that she's the retooled version of ms. babe (suzy's teacher in S1), complete with johnny trying to woo her repeatedly— something he only does twice in the retool as she appears three times with two different designs and last names.

one penciller, anthony williams, was particularly on-model / used plenty of model sheet poses and expressions in the stories he illustrated. since none of carl's model sheets have been shared online yet, the williams-drawn comics are the closest thing we have to those.

besides the short bursts of "HUH?" bible-influenced moments with carl, he's written pretty decently in the comics. consistently. i like the majority of his appearances a lot.

in a car story, suzy gets jealous of a woman johnny persues. that sort of thing is absent from the show entirely— instead, she uses johnny and women to persuade him to take her places. suzy seems to have no hard feelings toward the women, not even in "rashomoron" (where carl is used to fulfill that purpose instead.)

john q bravo???

[addgg-taylor]

Today In Card Design [13]: Don't GOUGE!

As more and more time goes on, card games seem to forget what rarity should actually be used for. I've decided to coin this problematic form of high rarity card design GOUGE design, which is an acronym for:

Generic: The effect is generically powerful in any deck that can run it, and chances are, a lot of decks can run it. (I.e. Magic's The One Ring; Yu-Gi-Oh's Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring)

Overpowered: The card is made high rarity because it does too much good, and making it harder to get theoretically makes it appear less often and do less damage. (I.e. Magic's Sheoldred, the Apocalypse; Yu-Gi-Oh's Divine Arsenal AA-ZEUS - Sky Thunder)

Undercosted: The card itself isn't strictly overpowered, but the resource cost is so low that the effect is suddenly extremely potent. (Magic's Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer; Yu-Gi-Oh's Diabellstar the Black Witch)

Glue: The card is a potent support card for a major archetype, not explicitly required but practically necessary for power level reasons. (Magic's Ulamog, the Defiler; Yu-Gi-Oh's Bonfire)

Effective: The combination of all of these elements to create a desirable chase card at very high rarity. (Quite a few cards already mentioned fit this category, but to add some more examples, look at Magic's Fury and Yu-Gi-Oh's Super Starslayer TY-PHON - Sky Crisis)

While a card leaning into one or even two of these tropes of GOUGE design doesn't automatically mean it's a no-go, you should consider a rarity downgrade so more players can get their hands on it. If downgrading the rarity would suddenly make the card much more problematic, then you've accidentally made a GOUGE card. That's fine! See if there's a way to retool the idea into something that still has the sort of flare you're going for, just without GOUGE'ing. If you can't, however, consider a replacement that's strong, but make sure it's not as strong and/or has more hoops to jump through for its use. If all else fails, just remember to avoid making your highest rarity cards the best in the game; it's okay if they're getting played in the main meta, but you should avoid any Mythics you'd anticipate could warp the game around them.

[zukkacore]

i can't. remember if i sent in numbers for the writer's ask already. if i did, crying ignore this but: 11, 12, and 30?

11. a wip you'd like to finish someday

Oh god i started so many just w/in the past few days. Jace hireling au obviously. jaceporter first time. Actually, the true honest to god earnest answer is i always felt terrible abandoning my multichap danganronpa talentswap. It's so old i really don't think its indicative of my current skill level but it was so much fun and it means so much to be and its so long and i did have a whole ending planned out but im just not that good at writing detectivework. I do think there's some good shit in there still tho.

The other answer that's kinda cheating is i have a fantasy based Taming of the shrew retelling i've been like retooling for like a goddamn year. It's such a fucked play but i have so many mixed feelings abt it. My feelings on taming are very similar to del toro's on pinocchio in that it's very pro domestication of the human spirit that i think is kinda depressing. Like im very centrist abt whether the play is irredeemable or whether its not meant to be taken seriously, but the themes are interesting. In my mind, there's like. all this stuff abt performance and palability and. Individiuality vs community. Acceptance vs ostracization. This tension between vulnerability n connection vs. power and control and how those are competing needs w/in people. Like. Kate n Petrucchio are both outsiders and petruchio could choose vulnerability and connection w/ his wife and instead he chooses social approval in a patriarchal society which he gains through proving how good he is at subjugating his wife. The themes are INTERESTING it's just the fuckin CONCLUSION (aka its morally good and just to gaslight your wife actually) are fuckin DIRE. On the other hand. Kate and Petruchio have mad chemistry and is it so wrong to think they should fuck nasty?

12. a trope you're really into right now

... 4 jaces? I feel like i have a weird stance on the clonefucking joke poll that goes around every few months (in that its not the same as masturbation b/c the minute their consciousness is different from yours thats like. a full person but not a person i would be compelled to be with but maybe im to arospec for that) so its never particularly compelled me before, like i thought that shit in Loki was kinda cringe. but just bc i don't find the idea particularly compelling for myself doesn't mean Jace can't be a little obsessed w/ himself. Tbh the idea of being a xerox of a xerox of a xerox in general is very interesting for me tho.

There's also something I think i keep returning to abt like. Having to renegotiate or reclaim power and love in a relationship that should otherwise be fucked and heartbreaking. By all intents and purposes, there should be one break at the heart of this that ruins everything, a moment at the beginning that should have ruined everthing from jump. but if we're stuck together, I'm determined to reconcile w/ myself that there's love there. It's very Jaceporter. It's very Kate n petruchio. Very hades n persephone I have another very old school ship that actually has something very similar happen. If you can figure it out based on this text i sent my friend then you were probaly on tumblr when a certain webcomic was updating.

30. share a fic you're especially proud of

I feel like me giving so many answers to these is a total copout. The truthful answer is that I have like a 10k togakure (hiro n togami for those curious) pwp fic thats on my google drive somewhere that i've never posted bc ive been too embarrassed and the ship is NOT that popular so i think like .5 people would read it. But it's like my favorite thing i've ever written. I might post it eventually. If i pluck up the courage. I have sent it to like 2-3 people in my lifetime. I'd cite a scene i like, but I like all of it. And also most if it is smut.

The half-hearted answer is my talentswap bc i am fuckin proud of it im just embarrassed bc i abandoned it. I'm legit so sad. I'm such a Hiro n Mukuro should be proxy siblings truther and im glad their scene was the last thing i posted but now it will never come into fruition.

So i guess. My default answer is my Sky High AU for It chapter 2. It's called Welcome To the Loser Track and it's reddie and in it Richie is the kid who glows and Eddie is the kid who turns into a guinea pig. I actually really like the movie Sky High a lot, I think it's a really good kids movie and it's got a lot of fun setpieces and cool design components and even some of the camerawork is pretty neat and cute stuff in it that's rly underrated. Its like one of the main Things i feel like ppl who are my friends or have been w/ me a long time know about me, and the silly thing abt me is that i really do earnestly like Zack/Magenta as a ship, but mainly bc i just think Zack gives off baby butch dyke vibes (and. I hate to use the phrase. but it's kinda black cat x golden retriever vibes). I actually like it so much that Sky High reddie is probably my favorite version of reddie, and i do think the other Losers in that mode are also very fun (Bill is strong n can fly, Mike controls plants, Stan melts, Bev is pyrokinetic, and Ben is a technopath). The main thing abt it is that it's COMPLETE (i have so many abandoned wips), but i am geuinely proud of it. I don't think the writing is like always the most polished but i think there is a lot of interesting queer subtext in that movie (in that there is basically a coming out scene even if the conclusion of the story is that he was straight the whole time lol) that i kinda picked at and did a good job elaborating on. There's actually a lot of underutilized subtext in that movie that isn't rly interrogated that i think is fun. I just think there's very romantic abt two people with "useless" powers seeing the beauty in each other.

I feel like some old school mutuals from my IT days already know this, but this is probably my favorite scene from the fic:

[seancamerons]

Let's talk about Caitlin Ryan!

When I watch Degrassi Junior High, I remember falling hopelessly for Rick and Caitlin. I know everyone loves jaitlin, myself included, arguably the stronger power couple that ended oddly. Most fans kind of forget about them who are short-lived Klareesque, but I'm not surprised. I saw some old jaitlin just a few minutes on my dash, and it got me thinking.

Would it be controversial to say that Clare with KC is the equivalent of Caitlin and Rick and Claudr, similar to Eli, I guess that would make Drew a bit of Joey? Not really the same but if I could I would say and suspect, now correct me if this is too hot of a take, but early Caitlin and Rick are espys for Sean and Emma, respectively apart and together perhaps their entire relationship is based on them retooled and tweaked for a "new generation" but the similarities are there.

It might be a stretch, but consider this! There was a throwaway line by adult!Lucy in 2.12 white wedding part 1, "when are you going to add a mini Spike and mini Snake to mini Caitlin over there?" Implying Emma is similar to Caitlin back in the day or coded Caitlin is intentional.

The facts are both are environmentally conscious, trope of granola girl, the girl has a big mouth and can't mind her own business or stay in her lane, crusades and causes, controversial editorial pieces that manage to ruffle feathers and a pechant for bad boy characters. Joey was more a funnyman musician type but he wasnt Mr. Academics had trouble in school, could fall into the bad boy category, and was held back a grade in high school.

For example of a similar thing, Caitlin fought for Spike to stay at Degrassi while she was ironically pregnant with Emma when the school was intending to expel her with added pressure from pta, angry parents, and school board. Who would've thought that Caitlin would be this influence on her years later. Emma was shown to know exactly who she was and even liked her and sought her (bad) advice. Emma similarly wrote that nak editorial, which offended Sean’s brother and let's not forget about the vicious rumor Emma accidentally started and then humiliated herself and Liberty. There is alot to unpack with that such as seeing Armstrong and Liberty could've triggered her trauma regarding Jordan (the pilot love interest who was a pedophile predator) she is suspect of an adult being close and hands on with a teenager no matter how preposterous it all manifested.

Sean is a similar character to Rick, but somewhat similar to Craig, too, with the whole childhood abuse thing. I do suspect that this was intentional. Joey, too , is so instrumental in the season 2 opener with this plot point, and Craig's introductory plot makes a lot of sense, such as the whole thing with Rick and Craig. It also makes a logical writing sense kind of way with Sean cut from similar cloth to both Craig in the universe and his espy Rick Munro.

Semma though similar or based on Rick and Caitlin, right down to the end of Caitlin and Rick's relationship when he took up smoking cigarettes implied deviant behavior, similarly in dtng Sean was hanging with the deviant, "gangsta", Candy Bandits became his new friends and it pretty much ended Sean and Emma’s relationship in the third season.

In degrassi junior high, after the split Rick was sent to the Bermuda black hole after making him a satelite love interest territory, and of course, we see Caitlin later was paired with Joey, who was arguably a leading man in comparison. They shared a lovely relationship after that with major build up and were upgraded to power couple status, and we know the rest. Caitlin also dated the mysterious, environmentally conscious dark horse Claude who is arguably a bit more Eli Goldsworthy coded for a host of reasons which of course ended badly in more ways than one, and Caitlin and Joey got back on track after their split and Claude's untimely death by suicide. Caitlin felt guilty for the entire thing if I remember correctly and was comforted by Joey. If I remember right, I think this is what Claude had wanted, to hurt Caitlin for hurting him for not accepting his affections after their break up and moving on from him. Remember when Eli manipulated Clare in the conclusion of season 10 when he famously hit the wall inside Morty for the sole purpose of destroying the car for Clsre spelled the end of their initial relationship as we know it, was essentially a near death experience. Eli survived and manipulated Clare, and she finally left him after distancing herself, and then Eli did what he did. But they kind of subverted that a little bit obviously, but I think that was perhaps an initial plan.

So obviously Cailin has main character energy, similar to Emma her closest espy, Clare Edwards and perhaps even Maya Matlin, who are similarly cut in the same or similar cloth if there were some venn diagram there'd be quite significant overlap. Drama always follows for better for worse with these ladies. No stranger to drama, both in romance and friendships across the board.

It's kind of weird, though. Adult Caitlin is certainly aside from her rekindled relationship with Joey, a big ol' mess, and there is a lot to unpack with that. At this point, pretty heavily, it's implied she'd been through the ringer romantically (1.01 Mother Child Reunion). She is successful in her career, and it is a barrier for her. lkve glr her and mayve shes not over the her high school sweetheart and their ill fated engagement to her former flame joey who now is a widower with a child at this point in tjme working as a used car salesmen with a taxky commercial. Caitlin, as we know, began the "rebooted revival" series engaged to be married to an awful director, Keith, who had a wandering eye (Allison) and was condensending toward pretty much all of Caitlin's friends.

While Caitlin and Joey ended in a bittersweet fashion, (thanks alot Kevin Smith! </sarcasm) Caitlin resumed her career and ultimately left the series. When Caitlin eventually resurfaces in season 7's Jesse's Girl, where she hooked up with her mentees boyfriend, who is ironically named Jesse. Honestly, awful decision by the writers, and a disservice to her character who'd been around since the 1980's.

I can't believe Caitlin is the kind of woman who would get pissed at a boyfriend over cigarettes or vices when she was written to do something like that. Jesse was, at the very least, 10 or so years her junior. Cougar!Caitlin on the prowl isn't exactly what I expected to see for her future, and not really a flex for her character, a huge nosedive if you want to talk a fall from grace.

So there you have it. That's how I see it anyway.

[ooops-i-arted]

I realized all my comparing my own early writing to Filoni's current writing to drag it probably sounds pretty bash-y on that self-indulgent breed of fanfic, and you never know how many younguns are reading your posts and absorbing what you say, so just to clarify:

You write the HELL out of that self-indulgent fanfiction. You make your OC as overpowered as you like, you make your favorite character(s) fall desperately in love with them, you reuse your favorite tropes as many times as you please, you do ALL those things you're not "supposed" to do if you want to do them. You post it (or don't) and block people who are hateful. Because if you wanna be a really good writer someday, you have to start practicing somewhere. And if you don't? Having fun/stress relief/whatever your reason for writing is is just as valid.

Was my writing when I was a kid bad? Yes, in a technical sense. I probably committed every writing sin there is. But it was so important for my mental health. Every day after navigating school and peers I got to go home and write a character who happens to look like me and like everything I like be the coolest Jedi or Dunadan or whatever and adored by all the characters I loved, and that was important. And I got better! I always wanted to be a good writer in the technical sense and I've come a long way, and that's a good thing. But I also just had fun with it, and that's a good thing too. I still have a lot of saved art of those old "Mary Sue" self-indulgent OCs and they're still special to me. (Some have even been retooled into better-written characters - but again that's about the fun of writing and creating characters, doesn't mean either version is inherently more or less in value to me.)

Just, if you ever get to be the creative director of a huge beloved franchise, make sure you know how to write well. If I'm paying for it, self-indulgent OC fanfiction does not cut it, Feloni.