#wanted to make this post episode but there were too many sets to make and then forgot about it

[adultemophase]

A VERY LONG ARCANE S2 REVIEW (Not spoiler free below page break)

Firstly, these are all my opinions and everyone is entirely entitled to their own. If you hated S2? That’s fine but I didn’t. So, I will be doing a kind of general breakdown of my thoughts on each act below but first my general review is that I think in terms of overall story telling, season 1 is better.

To ME, S2 seems like more of what they initially had in mind for the show, and they just really nailed the exposition of S1. This is what I think made S1’s pacing feel a lot better - it’s all exposition for S2. Season 2 had to fit a climax and resolution for all of these characters in the same amount of time that they took to set up all of these story lines in the previous season. I genuinely think that each act could have been it’s own season but w/ how expensive the show is to make and the amount of time production took between seasons, I see how that’s not practical. Especially if they want to explore other regions sooner than 15 years from now.

TBH I really enjoyed this season. I understand some people are hating it because of the parts they don’t like but it’s still a visually stunning show with great characters. Do I think there were areas where the story fell flat? Yes. I also think given the time constraints and restriction of this being the last season, the visual story telling was very well done and a great way to move along the story without sacrificing time. I genuinely think it’s such a phenomenal feat of animation that characters expressions convey thoughts and emotions that feel real without dialogue. I still am blown away that it’s a LoL show because despite my love of league lore and characters, I never would have expected that Riot could produce such a heart wrenching show about the tragic nature of love and loss, the things we do for love, and the flaws of our own humanity.

I also think some people set their expectations WAYYY too high for the social commentary aspect of the show after s1, as far as I’m aware there was never any claim made by any part of the prod or writing team that it would be one. Idk overall, I thought it was a lot of fun and still an exceptional show. Not what I was expecting but I’m not upset about how it ended. I think it was conclusive but also not so finite that it leaves zero room for interpretation of the characters implied futures.

It is a little disheartening to see so many immediate negative reactions to it but, again, people are entitled to their own opinions and as much as I complain about people not using critical thinking skills or passing grade 9 literature - art is subjective. Animation, ESPECIALLY at this scale and complexity, is a form of art. I, as I’m sure many other’s did, found it a fulfilling end to one of my favorite shows. Yes, I wish there was more but I can’t bring myself to be disappointed with what we did get.

Below is my (again PERSONAL and NOT SPOILER FREE) 1-10 rating and my thoughts on each act (not really going to analyze anything because I need about 3-5 weeks to scrub through every episode so only my little reviews) :

ACT 1 (7/10) : I think this act is the one with the worst pacing, but I said a whole back in a previous post that I believe to some degree it was intentional. There is suddenly a war happening so I think it’s supposed to feel chaotic a bit chaotic. However I can concede to part of it just being, well, bad pacing. This act is definitely one I wish could have taken up more episodes if there were more seasons since I would prefer flushed out development as opposed to music videos at the beginning of each episode. However, for what it was, they serve their purpose narratively and relay the information that the viewer needs to know. Otherwise, as heartbreaking as the act is, I gotta put myself on blast and say that I LOVE the end sequence of ep 3 when Ambessa makes Caitlyn commander. Like it’s so daunting and cool. Ep 1 fight scene at the memorial? super sick. I also loved the development of the dynamic between Sevika and Jinx. You can feel the characters devolve into a version of themselves that truly is worse and I think that’s so fun. Most of my drop in rating is from how fast it feels.

ACT 2: 9/10

I simultaneously have so much and so little to say. I won’t talk about Isha’s death because to me it was fairly evident that she was going to die from act 1. Anyways, for me this was the most tragic act and I’m still trying to decide between this and act 3 as my favorite. I love them both, in different ways. Seeing Jinx and Vi be brought together and Vander was so touching and sad. You get a real look of how much they still care for each other despite the fact that they’re perpetually ripped apart. I’ve already made a post about the scene between Caitlyn and Vi, so I won’t just say the same thing I’ve already said. I also honestly am not upset that Vi’s “six-ish months of going insane” wasn’t drawn out. Again, I don’t LOVE the music videos, but narratively, it tells you virtually everything you need to know about what’s happened to her and where she is mentally. It’s literally a montage of her life for the past several months. As a recovering addict and someone known to self destruct, I would much rather they condense that like they did rather than draw it out and not handle it well. If you’re going to be cynical, you could say they didn’t anyways but, recovering addict, so I was more worried before the act 2 release that it would be triggering rather than handled poorly.

Jayce coming back and tweaking out was also such a fun touch when it wasn’t explained until the next episode why he was acting that way. Like I figured it had to do with the hex crystal now fused with his body but it was still so interesting.

ACT 3: 9/10

Maybe unpopular but I LOVED this act. Everything was so visually intriguing that on my first watch I wasn’t even fully locked in just because I was focused on how good the imagery/animation is. I thought I was going to hate ep 7 because, unfortunately that leak was real (no I won’t be changing my pfp to a clown like I said I was bc I’m stubborn) but the implication to me of that episode was not “Vi dead so everything good!” it’s that they saw a kid die because of the crystals Jayce had and, in brevity, saw what the tension between the undercity and Piltover was doing to people. I am curious what happened to THAT universes Jayce but I imagine he was probably imprisoned.

Obviously, I have to address the sex scene, and honestly? I don’t mind that it’s in a jail cell BECAUSE of the very obvious parallel to how they first met. It was also done in such a wonderful way that it feels like a legitimately intimate scene between the characters and not just a “man well I suppose they need to fuck, huh.” or male gaze-y “lesbians 🤤” way.

I will be honest and say I don’t like multiverse stuff since it kind of kills the whole “arcane is cannon” thing. I also just don’t love it in general because in recent years it’s been just a cop out for companies to make more money off of IPs (see Marvel) but it makes me want to go back and rewatch s1 again to see if this has always been the plan. I don’t mind Viktor being the wizard that Jayce sees when he is a kid since they tied that up in a way thats really cool. I do think it’s an episode though that, after seeing it a couple of times, is easily skippable since it doesn’t really do a ton for the main plot. Like Ekko gets his Z drive, heimerdinger (i think?) dies, and Jayce discovers the damage hextech can do. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the episode, unfortunately it is just one that I feel like viewers can skip over upon rewatch because of the AU stuff.

Also MEL, I love her storyline with the black rose and I really hope that her putting on the Noxian clothing in the end is an indication that we will get more of her if Riot does a series based in Noxus.

[hayden-christensen]

Incorrect.

HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN as DARTH VADER Ahsoka - Part Five: Shadow Warrior (2023)

[parfaitblogs]

can I ask a blurb of post prison spencer and sunshine reader? She works in the BAU as the media liaison and when she rescues him in the episode 300 he looks at her and is like angel? Am I in Heaven?

spencer reid x sunshine!reader. fluff/hurt/comfort. also angst if you squint. i should’ve just slapped smut in here to make it a quinfecta! 0.5k words. gn!liaison!reader. set during '300'.

a/n: thank you for sending me back into orbit by getting me to rewatch those two episodes. i need spencer reid biblically. unfortunately that's not what this blurb is about. but i was audibly barking every time i pictured him. i am terribly sorry for keeping you on edge about when this was going to be posted </3 i wasn’t sure how happy i was with it for the longest time. thank u for the request ♡

spencer reid who accepted his fate the second he was taken hostage. because honestly, the likelihood of his team finding and rescuing him in time was slim to none, and he had lost wars to hope too many times before.

spencer reid who tried to stall his death with a speech, trying to dull the uncomfortable ache in his chest thinking nobody was coming to save him. maybe he could lie his way into believing his team had found him, and he would picture their faces before he inevitably died.

spencer reid who definitely did not expect the awfully loud gunshot — one, then two — ringing throughout the air, followed by panic and yelling. who wished he could've been relieved to see each face of his team slowly appearing in his view, followed by more gunshots, and the promise that he was safe.

he had already accepted death. 

but, spencer reid who's entire facade changed the second you came into view. no gun in hand, because you never were expected to need one, which was even more horrifying to him than the fact that he had been milliseconds away from his own death.

spencer reid who stared at you like he was but a planet and you were the sun he was orbiting, something he knew he'd get teased for later. but right now you were here and he was watching you attempt to unbuckle each leather strap holding his limbs into place, strained laughter escaping him every time you failed because your hands were shaking so hard.

spencer reid who's face fell when you finally met his gaze to get the leather strap holding his head in place, and he could see the tears brimming your eyes and he could hear the sniffles you were intaking to keep your emotions at bay. an achingly painful contrast to the facade he was used to seeing on you.

spencer reid who asked "what's wrong?" and who's heart ached when your response was "i thought i was going to lose you". spencer reid who's heart probably shouldn't have then stuttered like that in his chest at your admission, and he definitely shouldn't have allowed the rush of hope at your words.

but, worse than that, he realised he had accepted his death without thinking, and if he died, he was leaving you and perhaps that was worse than any situation he has been in before, in all fifteen years he's at the bureau.

and you, who's vision was awful from the tears you were attempting to keep at bay, yet you stared at him for a beat, taking in every graze and bruise on his face the best you could to commit them to memory, before wrapping both arms around him and pulling him into you. spencer reid who sobbed in your arms; a scenario you had never even considered the possibility of because spencer reid did not cry anymore, and prison had fractured him in ways you cannot even begin to comprehend. but he was here, and he was crying again, and sad sight or not, he was feeling.

spencer reid who thanked you over and over again for finding him, because no, he really didn't want to die. 

your reblogs and replies are always appreciated dearly ♡

[fictionismyreality3]

Pretty in Pink

Warnings: romance and everything that comes with it, bimbo!reader vibes

Notes: omg a semi-decent length fic? And I just posted yesterday?! 😱 guys I’m actually gonna-

The alarm was set, pink, hello kitty shaped. 30 minutes left on the timer until the first pizza was done. John would be home in 45 minutes. That was, like, a long time to set the table and everything. It wasn’t often John let you cook dinner. Usually you were relegated to sitting on the couch and watching your shows while John rolled up his sleeves and got the frying pans out. It wasn’t that you couldn’t cook.

It was just that, like, John said he didn’t want you miss your shows and stuff.

Tempted, your eyes drifted to your usual spot on the couch. The warm, fuzzy, chunky knit blanket sat invitingly against the soft cushions, the remote looking at you as if to urge you on. You would just watch half an episode or something.

The sounds of the tv blaring wasn’t something that was unusual for John to hear coming home. Overdramatic, lilting voices echoed through the door of your apartment even before he had the key in the lock. His back ached, tired from years of service and sitting at a desk all day to reports Kate had forced him to finally look at.

But it was worth it.

Worth the headache dealing with new recruits, worth it sorting through the legal papers trying to clear the squad for a new mission. Worth the bullet holes. Worth it because he got to come home to you.

His pretty little bird.

He’d kept you all tucked away the moment he saw you fumbling with your umbrella at the bus stop, too distracted by the music in your headphones to notice the strap was still buttoned. He’d added you to his military papers and his will after your first date later that week.

John opened the door wordlessly, kicking off his boots being careful not to get dirt on the carpet, your pouting voice still in his head. It was warm. A candle lit in the entryway, the sweet scent of strawberries coating his nose.

“You here, sweetheart?” He called out, gliding through the apartment towards the living room.

“Baby! I missed you so much!” You squealed, hopping up excitedly, the blanket around your shoulders falling to the floor. You were just where John had expected you to be, the light from the tv dancing across your face.

So fucking pretty.

Two large hands held your cheeks as you bounded up to him. Pressing a kiss to the top of your head, he pulled your smaller body flush to his. With a deep breath, John inhaled the sugary smell that seemed to seep out of your pores, running his rough hands down the silk nightie you were wearing to cup the flesh of your ass.

“This f’me?” You giggled in response. God, he loved that fucking giggle.

“Thought you’d like it, daddy.” With a chirp, you leaned up on your tippy toes and pressed a kiss to his scruffy jaw.

Taking the opportunity, John snaked a hand up your throat, gripping the tender flesh and forcing his tongue into your mouth. There was something soothing, as twisted as it was, to have something pure and naive to come home to. To him, you were like a reminder that a world existed outside of his work.

And you made such pretty noises.

No matter how many times John had kissed you before, you always seemed to react like a lamb just learning to walk. All flushed cheeks and stumbling words. And it was even better since you were so obvious in your lust. After just a few seconds, you were already pawing at the corded muscles of his shoulders, demanding more and more.

But it wasn’t your fault when he was, like, so hot and stuff. You know?

Your legs hit the back of the couch, John forcing you onto your back, putting a pillow under your head before attacking your neck with kisses. The scratchy burn of his beard against your skin had you pressing your hips up, searching for that friction you needed.

“That’s it, luv. Just got home an’ you’re already needy, huh?” The words had your head spinning, a mewl slipping past your lips.

“Make those pretty noises, sweet girl. God, you’re such a-”

Blaring, high pitched beeps rang out, grating against your ears. John froze for a moment, his body automatically positioning itself to future cover yours, as if to protect you from an unseen threat.

Furrowing your brows, you tried to figure out where the noise was coming from, which was kinda hard when John’s hands were on you and-

Oh, right!

“Oh my gosh! My pizza!” Before he could react, you squirmed out from under him and ran into the kitchen, frantically opening the oven door.

Smoked billowed out, tainting the air and making you cough. You could feel the warmth of John coming to stand behind you, taking the oven mitts from your hands when you went to reach for them.

“Let me do it.”

“But, like-”

“Hush, sweetheart.”

Pulling the now ruined pizza out of the oven, he didn’t even have to look at you to know you had a pout on your face. After cracking open a window, John came back into the kitchen to find you examining the damage done to your beautiful creation. “I was trying to make a heart.”

The frown of your face sent a pang through him, and he could already see the tears welling up in your eyes the more you looked at the blackened and misshapen rock of dough. “S’alright, princess.”

Tugging you into him, one hand went to your hip, the other running through your hair.

“No it’s not. It was supposed to be a surprise for you. Hearts are supposed to be red or.. or, like, pink or something.” Your voice hitched, your bottom lip wobbling. “Not black!”

Trying to hold in his chuckle, Price nodded in sympathy, tucking your head into his burly chest.

“Yeah, but.. I’ve got a good enough heart right in front of me, luvie.”

Squinting your eyes, you looked around, trying to follow John’s gaze. There was the heart shaped salt holder, the dishtowel with hearts on it, the heart on the card next to the flowers he got you last week, the blackened heart shaped pizza, the-

“Luvie.” You blinked up at him. “M’talking about this heart right here.” John cooed at you, pinching your cheek.

A bubble of confusion popped in your head, and you looked from him to the blackened pizza and back again. Silence hung in the air for a second before it was punctured by your giggling.

“Oh, like, um..” He smiled down at you. “Like mine?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. Just like yours.”

[thankskenpenders]

Happy new year, everyone! Welcome to 2024, the year that will mark the 10th anniversary of Thanks Ken Penders. I'd like to go over my plans for the blog for this year.

First of all: in the very near future, I'll have a post with my thoughts on Sonic Dream Team, and I'm sure I'll write one last Sonic Prime review once the final episodes drop on the 11th. I've also been sitting on an unfinished piece about the Sonic LEGO sets. I wanted this to be longer and more detailed piece that not only reviewed the sets but also went into the weird disconnect between homogenized image of Sonic the Brand and the actual fiction it's based off of, but it'll probably end up getting cut down a lot just so I can put something out. Let's just say I did a fun little thing with one of the sets.

Second: yes, I would like to return to regular TKP updates this year. As I've said many times, I wanted to do this in 2023, but I've been suffering from creative burnout after finishing SLARPG and have generally been unable to focus on any of my creative goals this past year. I'm hoping that this year will be better and I'll be able to get back into the swing of covering Archie Sonic issues. Even doing one issue every week or so would be vastly preferable to continuing the hiatus. I'm still only halfway done!! But aside from burnout, my other main hurdle is that I need to reread my own archive to refresh myself on all these things after nearly three years away. This will take some time.

The thing is, though, this year I'll have an extra incentive to go back through my previous writing and brush up on all things Archie Sonic. Because you see...

I've decided that I want to make a video essay about Penders. The comics, the copyright battle, The Lara-Su Chronicles, everything.

The why

I've thought about doing this before, but I never committed to the idea. I was too busy with gamedev, or I thought it'd end up being too long, or I figured that there were already enough videos on the subject, or I just lacked confidence in my ability to put together a video essay. So I told myself it wasn't meant to be, and let the multiple YouTubers who have cited me as a source on their own Penders videos fill that void.

Recently, though, a few things have happened that have convinced me it might be time. For one, YouTube video essays/media retrospectives/etc. are just getting longer and longer. When Quinton Reviews is out here doing 21 hours of videos on Sam & Cat, a subpar Nick sitcom that only lasted one season, I don't feel so crazy for wanting to make a video about several hundred comic books and two lawsuits that'd be at least an hour or two long lmao. Admittedly, I've also been self-conscious about doing a long video essay like this as a trans woman who has yet to do any vocal training. But these days I feel like I see a lot more transfem YouTubers who have done little to no vocal training, and that's given me more confidence on that front.

But the big one was Hbomberguy's recent plagiarism video. As I sat there watching it, I kept thinking about the time I found a CBR article that was just a crude 800 word summary of my two previous articles on Penders, published by a CBR writer who's put out over 4000 articles since 2019. If I've already been plagiarized before, and my writing is so frequently passed around as a go-to source on Archie Sonic drama, then I wouldn't be shocked if there were YouTubers out there straight up just plagiarizing me. I don't watch other peoples' videos on Archie Sonic, so I'd never know! So if people are just gonna paraphrase me when covering these topics anyway, why not take matters into my own hands and make what I would consider to be the definitive video on the subject? If hacks like James Somerton and iilluminaughtii can churn out these shitty video essays and people will still watch them, surely it can't be that impossible to make my own, right? (And also, uh, Hbomb literally told me I should make the video lol. If you're reading this, thanks for the encouragement.)

The what, how, and when

So here's the plan.

Part of this video essay will be an adaptation of my Medium article on the recurring themes of Ken's Archie Sonic run, with its content touched up and expanded upon. There were a few things I skimmed over in the article because I didn't want it to get too long, but again, people are out here watching ten hour videos about bad Nickelodeon sitcoms now. I can get away with elaborating a little more. I can add a few paragraphs talking about the Chaos Knuckles arc, or throw in a little more historical context I've discovered in the years since.

After covering the comics, the back half(-ish?) of the video will be dedicated to the copyright battles and their ensuing controversies, trying to give an accurate picture of what actually went down, the sheer scale of how bad Archie fucked up, and what our takeaways should be. This will have some similarities to my New York Magazine article on the subject, but I'll be rewriting it from scratch. I REALLY had to keep things short for that article because I was already way over the expected word count, and my tone was a little more straight-laced than normal because I was trying to keep things Professional. I can riff more and insert more of my own opinions this time, like I normally would.

I'll inevitably have to touch on some of Ken's Bad Tweets when discussing things that have happened after the lawsuits, but I don't want the video to just devolve into a list of times people got mad at him on Twitter, so I'm gonna try to keep that to a minimum in favor of focusing on his actual work. Things like the Scourge the Speed Demon incident and his continued statements on certain characters' copyright statuses probably warrant mentioning, though. And finally, assuming that the book really does come out this summer, I would like the grand finale of the video to be about those first couple chapters of The Lara-Su Chronicles.

I don't currently know when this video will get done, but it'll probably be in the back half of the year, especially with me waiting for the book to either drop or get delayed yet again. But I've actually already started writing a bit of the script, and will keep chipping away at it for a while.

So, uh, yeah, look forward to that? Wish me luck?

[woso-dreamzzz]

Gone II

Hardersson x Child!Reader

Part of the Big Adventures Universe

Summary: Your mothers deal with your separation anxiety.

After your breakdown from Pernille's absence and a bit of research, your mothers quickly came to the conclusion that you were experiencing a bit of separation anxiety.

It made sense, sadly.

Pernille had been your constant since birth, with Magda popping in as often as she could but being restricted to the phone screen for most of your life.

It makes perfect sense that Pernille's absence makes you worried.

Which was why, though heartbreaking, they were doing this in the first place.

You're sat on the carpet, having some supervised Lego play (Magda worried incessantly that one day you would put a brick in your mouth when they weren't looking).

"I don't know," Pernille says, chewing on her bottom lip as she watches you.

Ever since your little episode, you had been relentlessly clingy and sweet but she didn't exactly want you to go through what you went through last week all over again.

"It's for the best," Magda says, though there's a waver in her voice," She can't just stay like this. What happens when she starts going to school?"

The question lingers for a moment before Pernille sighs and goes to put on her shoes. You perk up when she passes you, thinking that she's come to play Lego with you but she doesn't. Your brow furrows in confusion.

"Momma?" You call as you watch her slip on her shoes. "Where you going?"

They'd established through this past week that your anxiety only flared up when your routine broke. You were happy to abandon Pernille at training or to go with Magda to the park or shopping but if Pernille was anywhere different to where you'd left her then you'd burst into tears.

Her putting on her shoes to leave at this time of day very much broke your routine.

"Just out, princesse," She says, trying to act blasé about it, to not worry you further.

Your worried crinkle appears regardless though. You stand on your feet and wander closer. You spy your shoes sitting neatly next to Morsa's. You sit by Momma and put your feet out to her, to get her to put your shoes on.

She picks you up by your armpits and sets you back on your feet. "No, princesse," She says firmly but not unkindly," Momma's going out. Not y/n."

Your next question comes out in a quivering whine. "Why?"

"Because Momma needs to grab something from the post office." It's not a lie. There was something waiting at the post office but Pernille could have easily just had it redelivered to the house if she really wanted to. It's about twenty minutes there both ways plus however many minutes it took to actually get the package.

It wouldn't be as long as your separation last week but certainly the longest you've been separated since.

You seem to realise something similar as your chin wobbles and your crinkle gets deeper. "I..." You look around at Morsa, who hasn't gotten up. You tap your chest. "I go too. Shoes. Please."

Momma laughs and strokes your cheek with a finger. "Silly y/n," She says," You need to keep Morsa company."

You tap her on the arm. "Keep you company."

"Oh, princesse. I think-"

She doesn't get to finish though because you're scooped up and placed on Morsa's hip. You hadn't even seen her move and suddenly you've no escape.

Momma moves to kiss you on the cheek a few times, pulling away wistfully. "I love you," She says, looking into your arms," I love you so much. I'll be home very soon."

Your worried eyes follow her to the door, staring longingly at it seconds after it has been closed. You look between it and Morsa and then you promptly burst into tears.

Morsa bounces you. "Okay," She says," Okay, princesse. Come on."

Magda picks her way back to the sofa, careful to avoid your scattered Lego bricks. She slouches in her seat, propping her legs up on the ottoman and leaning you back against her folded knees.

You're still sobbing but not quite hysterical just yet. You keep looking back at the door pitifully as fat tears roll down your cheeks. Your Morsa's calm look and the rhythmic way she's rubbing your tummy makes your sobs quieten until its only short bursts of sucking breaths in.

"How are you feeling, princesse?"

Morsa's a little slow sometimes, you think. It's pretty clear how you're feeling.

"Wan'-Wan' Momma."

"I know." She's completely sympathetic and sweet and it distracts you slightly from your want for Momma. "But she'll be home very, very soon."

Your tummy clenches at the reminder that your Momma isn't here. It almost sets off another wave of tears. But Morsa keeps talking.

"You know, before you two moved here, I missed you and Momma so much."

You blink away tears and say shakily," Really?"

She nods. "Uh-huh. I missed you both with every little bit of me. But I found ways to cope." She gasps like she's just remembered something. "Do you know what? I think I can make you miss Momma a little less. Would you like that?"

You nod pitifully.

You're back on Morsa's hip again and you rest your cheek against her shoulder, completely limp against her as you stare blankly ahead.

Morsa takes you to her and Momma's room and she grabs a nice-looking wool jumper from the top of the dresser. It looks warm and it's a nice dark green that's not exactly Christmas tree colour but close.

She sets you on the Big Bed and you whine when you're out of her grip. Morsa crouches in front of you.

"This was Momma's from way back when we used to play with each other at Linköping. When I left, I took this with me because it smelt like Momma and it helped me when I missed her."

She holds out the jumper to you and you sniff the fabric.

She's right. It does smell like Momma.

Morsa bunches it up and pulls it over your head. The arms are floppy and it fits you like a dress, almost dragging on the floor. But you don't really care. It's like being wrapped in a nice blanket of Momma even though she's not here.

"Now," Morsa says," Every time you're missing Momma, I want you to close your eyes and take a nice, deep breath of Momma's jumper and think about how much she loves you, okay?"

You do as she says and relax marginally.

"Now, Momma will be home very, very soon. What do you want to do while we wait?"

You feel a little bit teary but you manage to squeak out," Lego." You poke at her chest. "With you."

When Pernille comes home just under an hour later, it's not to carnage. You're sitting with red-rimmed eyes on the floor, telling Magda where to put each brick, wrapped up warmly in Pernille's ratty old jumper from years ago.

You don't look completely at ease without her, especially when you spot her and abandon Magda completely in favour of barrelling towards her like a charging rhino, going limp in her arms as they wrap around you (and then refusing to leave them until dinner). But it's better than nothing.

It's still progress and that's all the really matters.

Besides, you look extra cute and cuddly in your stolen clothes.

[weaselandfriends]

The Making Of: When I Win the World Ends

(For my previous Making Of post, see The Making Of: Cleveland Quixotic.)

I. 1999

It was the year of the cubicle movie. It was the year of Fight Club, of Office Space, of Being John Malkovich, of Three Kings, of The Matrix, and of American Beauty. It was the year of suburban malaise, of eternal sunshine, of ceaseless normality. A year of United States hegemony; a year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.

Before the millennium turned and the towers fell, there was an initial challenge to this order, a completely inconsequential one made consequential by a newly minted 24/7 news media machine running out of noise to fill dead air now that people were sick to bursting of the Clinton impeachment. This challenge came not through war, revolution, or violence, but through entertainment. Children's entertainment.

And I was a child. Unaware of any cultural context, I knew only one thing: I loved Pokémon. I really, really loved Pokémon.

I owned Red Version, Blue Version, Yellow Version, Pokémon Pinball, Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Snap, Hey You Pikachu, a Pokémon Tetris sort of puzzle game, even the Pokémon TCG game for Gameboy. I had ten to fifteen strategy guides for the games, an encyclopedia of the 151 Pokémon, a choose your own adventure book, an I Spy-style book. I had Pokémon figurines, Pokémon plushies, toy Poké Balls, toy Pokédexes. I had Pokémon stamps and Pokémon stickers and a deck of Pokémon cards. Not trading cards, just a standard 52-card deck with Pokémon pictures on it. Of course I also had the trading cards. A complete set of the first three runs, plus a special Mew card you could get from I dunno Toys R Us or something as part of some promotion. I had a guide for the card game that explained which cards were good or bad even though I didn't even play the card game. I had a Pokémon Tamagotchi and Pokémon pencils and Pokémon erasers and Ash Ketchum's hat and I dressed up as Ash Ketchum for Halloween. Of course I watched every episode of the anime, and in notebooks I drew doodles of existing Pokémon and came up with names for new Pokémon. My father had died that year.

My father was a sports fanatic. Traditional sports. He, too, collected. Sports memorabilia, baseball cards, figures of famous stars. When I was an infant, he drove me on a cross country road trip to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where I became a part owner of the Green Bay Packers. He had always wanted me to grow up and pursue professional sports. When I was born, the doctor apparently said to start looking for football colleges, a quote he saved in a scrapbook of baby photos. He had played sports himself, in college; he was a baseball catcher, until a hitter accidentally struck him in the head with a full force swing.

Almost everything I personally remember about him involves him dying. He was sick for a long time, and I remember hospitals and hospital beds and strange smells and gauze. And then one day my mother told me he died.

He was a charismatic man, very social and very popular. He had many friends and a lot of family, all of whom had constantly been around our house. Once he was gone, they stopped coming around. Then it was just me and my mother, who was not a fanatic for anything, except maybe her job as an elementary school teacher, which consumed her time as she assiduously prepared lesson plans and graded tests until late at night. When my father died, she got into some argument with his side of the family, the details of which I still don't fully understand, and afterward they no longer spoke. Her own family lived far away, out-of-state, seen only at Christmas. The house became quiet.

And I… played… Pokémon.

II. The Electric Tale of Pikachu

Toshihiro Ono was a mangaka primarily known for shotacon and futanari hentai. His credits such as Innyou Megami and Anal Justice made him a no-brainer pick for the officially licensed Pokémon manga, Electric Tale of Pikachu, as it too would feature a 10-year-old boy as the protagonist.

This manga would be the foundation for my conception of what Pokémon was, narratively. Though I also had the Pokémon Adventures manga that ran concurrently and which has by now long outlasted it, Electric Tale left a significantly deeper imprint on my memory.

In summary, Electric Tale is a retelling of the first two seasons of the anime. Ash Ketchum is the main character, he's accompanied by Misty and later Brock, his rival is Gary, and Team Rocket harangues him.

What sets Electric Tale apart is its tone, which is far more adult than Adventures and the anime. Obviously, part of this comes from the author's primary area of expertise being hentai. Even in the censored English version, there is a sense of sexual playfulness in how every single female character is an older woman who likes to tease Ash about his romantic interests.

But there are other elements that creep in unrelated to sex, due to the perspective of someone only used to speaking to adults who suddenly has to speak to children. Ono doesn't really get the childish fantasy of leaving at 10 being normal in society, so he introduces an element where Ash can only get a one year deferment from school and will have to return unless he hits it big. Team Rocket are former competitive hopefuls who flamed out and then, with no education or work experience to speak of, had no choice but to turn to crime. The Pokémon are depicted more realistically, often eschewing the toyetic mascot elements of their designs.

And the landscapes are often wistful, even apocalyptic in their presentation:

This more sedate, mature, realistic depiction of Pokémon became what I wanted Pokémon to be, what I projected onto an original Red and Blue version that left everything open to interpretation, and what would increasingly frustrate me with the series as it deviated more toward bombastic villain groups with goofy destroy-the-world plots. (Which was what put me off Pokémon Adventures.)

Amid all this, one panel stuck with me in particular. One panel I would think about ever since I first saw it as a child, that would turn around in my head and keep coming back. That panel would eventually—over two decades later—become the basis for When I Win the World Ends, the seed from which an entire story grew:

III. The Unkillable Demon King

But in the interim, the seed remained dormant. 1999 fell away. I grew up. I played later Pokémon games and increasingly lost interest by around Gen 4 and 5. Then I went to college.

That's when I started playing League of Legends.

I was something of a psychopath in college. I operated on a strict schedule and did not deviate. Wake up, read 50 pages of classic literature, write 2,000 words, go to classes, study, and then by about four in the afternoon all my obligations were done and it was League of Legends until midnight.

I wasn't actually interested in the League of Legends esports scene in its infancy. In 2012, I was actually invited to attend its World Championship in Los Angeles and refused. (When I received this invitation, I had just finished reading Homestuck for the first time, and was caught in a month-long haze in which I could do little but bask within what I considered the greatest artistic achievement I'd seen in my life. It was this month that inspired Modern Cannibals.) I only liked playing the game and watching Dunkey videos.

It wasn't until the next year, when a girl I was interested in recommended I watch, that I tuned in to my first professional League of Legends game, at the 2013 World Championship. It was there that I got to watch this new, hyped, upcoming Korean player who had apparently taken the pro scene by storm that season. That player was Faker.

It has seemingly become essential to the narrative of any sport that there is "the man who always wins." American football has Tom Brady, and the moment Brady retired, he was replaced by Patrick Mahomes. Basketball has LeBron James, picking up the mantle from Michael Jordan. It's as if someone being "the best" validates the skill-based promise of the sport, the fundamental top-down fairness of its premise, the idea that the person who wins is the best and deserved it. Faker would become the backbone of League of Legends esports and his ascendance correlated to that of the sport itself, from its humble roots at small-scale tournaments in places like Jönköping, Sweden, to max capacity arenas in the biggest cities in the world.

It's surprising, though, how the legend of Faker had already begun even before he won his first World Championship. League of Legends was designed as a clone of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a popular mod for Warcraft III that emphasized competitive play. In its infancy, the competitive scene was mostly dominated by players who had migrated from DotA to League. They were older, winning thanks to a fundamental conceptual understanding of the game that was superior to everyone else, and frankly not very good in the aggregate. As League of Legends esports exploded in popularity from 2013 to 2015, these old pros would get filtered out swiftly, with even the biggest and most popular names retiring after only a couple of years in the scene.

Even once the new generation of League-grown talent ascended, though, careers were nasty, brutish, and short. The best players only remained on top for a season, as game patches dramatically changed viable strategies. Internationally the sport was dominated by Koreans, with the Korean regional league sometimes being seen as more difficult to win than the World Championship, where Koreans often breezed through uncompetitive Chinese, European, and North American squads.

This possibly affected the demographics of the professional scene. South Korea has mandatory military service, and leaving the pro scene to join the military was basically the end of a Korean player's career. This meant that it was rare to see a Korean player older than 25. Retiring in your early 20s was and remains common. Korean organizations, which had an infrastructural leg up on other regions due to the popularity of StarCraft 2 esports in the country, became adept at scouting promising players at 15 or 16, building them into top level competitive pros, wringing them dry for a few seasons with brutal training regimens, and spitting them out.

Faker was the exception. Though he had been discovered young by SK Telecom, a major Korean telecommunications company that did esports on the side, and gone through the training regimen, he refused to be spit out. He simply didn't stop. He won in 2013, then with a completely new four-man squad around him won again in 2015 and 2016 before narrowly losing the 2017 finals in a nail biter. Given League of Legends esports had only existed since 2011, he basically accounted for half of the championships up until that point. Nobody else, except for his teammates, had won more than once. And it was like it was known he would be this juggernaut the instant he manifested ex nihilo. Like it was known, even in 2013, that he would always win.

Then, Faker stopped winning.

By 2017, League of Legends esports was a titan. Venture capital firms, seeing the millions of eyeballs, thought that this was the next NBA in its infancy, and decided to get in on the ground floor. Multiple millions of dollars were pumped into the scene as even mediocre players in weak regions like North America pulled seven-digit salaries. In China, where League of Legends had become the national pastime, the nation's richest oligarchs ran teams for fun and vanity, outbidding Korean organizations for top Korean players in pursuit of a trophy that had gone to Korea every year since 2013. Riot, the studio developing the game, pumped tons of money into creating a professional sports product, with skilled announcers, dedicated arenas for regional leagues, live performances by musicians like Imagine Dragons and Lil Nas X, and all the other bells and whistles one might expect from a program watched on ESPN.

In this milieu, it seemed like Faker had finally reached his limit. He was still good, but not the best. Even as an individual, while everyone still considered him the "greatest of all time," he was considered outmatched by newer pros like Chovy and ShowMaker. 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 passed with no championships. In 2022, on a team of mostly rookies, he reached the world finals, but was ultimately beaten. Korea's stranglehold over the sport had been shaken by China, which had finally strung together some championships. People wondered if Faker would retire, although he had managed to avoid mandatory military service by representing Korea in the Olympics-esque Asian Games. He'd dealt with wrist injuries and his level of play dropped year over year. He just didn't seem to be that good anymore, potentially holding back his team of talented young players rather than leading them to victory.

Then, in 2023—

And in 2024—

In the end, never count out Touchdown Tom. 11 years of professional play, 5 world championships.

From this longwinded explanation, you might have realized that after watching that game in 2013, I became a League of Legends esports fanatic, fulfilling the prophecy set before me by my father though perhaps in not the way he would have expected.

And the things I become a fanatic about, I want to write a story about.

IV. Modern Cannibals

There's a deleted scene in Modern Cannibals, as Maximillion is driving Z. and her friends through the Utah desert. He starts to talk about Pokémon.

"I bring it up because my university thesis was about Pokemon in particular how Pokemon has basically trained an entire generation of children to think in a completely different way than preceding generations my generation for instance our fad was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles now I don't know how much you know about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but from an educational standpoint we're talking absolute bankrupt complete and utter goose egg but Pokemon now Pokemon you see it's more like there's some substance to it you know that refrain Gotta Catch Em All right?" "..." "Well to most parents it looks like a marketing gimmick you make one hundred fifty-one characters and structure a game around collecting them the merchandising potential is astronomical kids buy one hundred fifty-one trading cards stickers coloring books figurines uh collectable lunchable toys I'm sure you've got some yourself."

He continues:

"But really you look at the game itself before the big toy explosion the game itself the focus is placed less on the collection and more on the catalogue you're given a blank encyclopedia to fill and you fill it by capturing one hundred fifty-one Pokemon but the goal is to create a complete database of each and every one and this is what I argue is the educational core of the Pokemon series." His hands left the wheel to conceive of his idea in the cool air of the car, which remained steady on its ever-forward path. "Our modern era is no longer one of singular isolated knowledge it is one of the catalogue the database which is most clearly personified in the advent of the internet because now all knowledge can be at the fingertips of any one human being all that is needed is someone to go and put the catalogue together and presto whiz bang it's there think about it Z. when you catch a bunch of Pokemon where do you store them?" Z. didn't need to think long to remember the game's mechanics. "In the PC." "Exactly now isn't that odd consider it in real life terms you have real life creatures made assumedly of flesh and bone and yet you store them in a computer how does that make sense you'd expect a farm or a holding pen but no it's the computer and that too prepares the budding portion of the millennial generation to become cognizant of the linkage between the computer the encyclopedia and the database structure of knowledge in a new era." "So," said Z. "So you're saying Pokemon taught kids how to think in the digital age?"

There's also a deleted character in Modern Cannibals. Well, mostly deleted—he still shows up, unnamed, in a couple of pages. He is Cole Coulter, Z.'s older brother, a popular League of Legends streamer. Before I deleted him, his role was to accompany Mrs. Roddlevan and Frederick in an attempt to bring Z. back home. He had POV scenes that gave insight into the weirdness of his cotravelers, but ultimately, I decided he didn't add anything to the story and removed him almost entirely.

Even then, though, I was already considering the future of Cole Coulter as the protagonist of a story about League of Legends esports. Playing under the ID MadKing, he would be a North American professional top laner, once known for his aggressive duelist style but recently forced into playing boring tanks as the esports metagame became more sophisticated and tactics-based.

The story would be simple, something I envisioned as a "sports story" only about esports instead of regular sports. It would start with Cole's team being relegated from the league, only for Cole to get a last chance signing to a new team with two promising Korean imports. One import, the mid laner, would be a charismatic and eccentric player in the mold of Doinb/Ganked By Mom/Huhi, while the other, an AD carry, would be introverted and pissy and elitist, in the mold of Piglet. The team would initially struggle, cultures would clash, then a mid-season replacement to sign a psychopathic Tyler1/Tarzaned style streamer as jungler would revitalize the team, put them on a major run, and get them to the World Championship. Though they would eventually fall after a miracle run, Cole would get a moment to truly shine on the biggest stage when he won a pivotal game by aggressive split pushing rather than tank play.

Thematically, the story would be about two things. First, a counterpoint to the idea of American exceptionalism, featuring a league where Americans are particularly bad compared to Korean or Chinese players. Second, an exploration of what it means to be exceptional at all. Cole would be an all-around mediocre person. Middling at school, at (real) sports, at the various popularity contests of being a teenager. League of Legends, this niche sub-sport, is the one thing he truly excelled at, the one place where he was good, better than 99.9 percent of all players, and yet even within that statistical greatness he wound up, ultimately, in a professional scene where he was once again mediocre, relegated to "tank duty," to facilitating other players to carry.

What does it mean to be the best? How can someone be so, so good, only to reach a level where they were still nothing special? Is there any way to win if you're not "the man who always wins"?

I remembered that panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu. The last people filtered before the final champion. It's certainly no walk in the zoo!

This idea was pretty detailed for a story I never wound up writing, something I mostly blame on the years 2018 and 2019, when a lot of bad things happened to me and in retrospect I consider it a minor miracle I managed to finish Chicago at all. As a human being, I would be decimated for the next three years, and so a lot of stories I might have written in that time never came to fruition.

Meanwhile, League of Legends esports reached a peak, then the venture capital bubble burst as investors realized there was no monetization scheme in place for any interested party except Riot Games. Money hemorrhaged out, Riot shifted resources to Valorant, and a sport that had been overinflated based on projected exponential growth in perpetuity fell back down to earth.

Also, Players came out.

Players was a 2022 mockumentary about a fictional League of Legends team competing in the North American league. Conceptually, it was doing a lot of what I had planned for my story: following a single team on a rags-to-riches run, focusing on the interpersonal drama of the team members, asking questions about greatness and its pursuit. It's a pretty good show if you're familiar with League of Legends esports at all, with a lot of on-the-ground fidelity that gives it an authentic feel, which is exactly what I had been hoping to use my esports fanaticism to accomplish. It completely took the wind out of my sails; it was like my idea had already been done.

So by 2022, the idea of a League of Legends esports story was dead. But there was still a drive to create something with that spirit, that would delve into those themes.

What remained after all these years of sifting the sieve, letting sand slip through, was that one panel from the manga. The number of people pursuing greatness slowly filtering until only one remained. And if I wasn't going to pursue that idea through League of Legends, maybe I could pursue it through another vehicle. Maybe the vehicle through which the idea had originally been exposed to me. Pokémon. It all came back to Pokémon.

V. Everything Evolving Into Crabs

I knew immediately that if I were to write a Pokémon fic, it would be a tournament arc. This was the natural evolution of my esports story idea. Also, if I were to write Pokémon, I wanted it to be a story about utopia, immersed within Pokémon's near-future ideal world, where everything is clean and healthy, where society is neat and ordered.

This idea caused me to remember the novel Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley, which I had read a few years back. A mostly autobiographical bildungsroman written on the precipice of World War II, the novel ends with the young protagonist on a journey to Central America, where he meets an idealistic doctor who believes sport to be a proper substitution for war. He tells the story of two tribes locked in internecine conflict through generations, able to replace that violence with soccer matches.

And wasn't that what the world of Pokémon was, a utopia revolving around neutralizing weapons of war by using them for competitive sport?

This tournament, I envisioned, would not simply be about deciding who was best, but an ideological battle for the future of the Pokémon world. To that end, I imagined a war between an entrenched trainer class, who competed as philosopher-warriors, intense individuals with deep connections to their Pokémon, and an upstart commercialization that sought to replace the ideological underpinnings that made their society so safe and prosperous with economic accumulation. It was from this kernel that the character who would become Aracely Sosa arose: charismatic, appealing, human-empathic, and propped up by a support staff who did all the hard work of teambuilding for her.

I imagined the story having an ensemble cast, focusing on nearly every competitor equally, with the Aracely character not having any especial focus until her improbable rise to the top. I imagined a final round where she faced off against "the man who always wins," and though she would lose to him, she would seem to have won the ideological battle, altering the course of society as major corporations scrambled to employ her formula for success at a much grander scale. The story would end with this realization of the earth-shattering importance behind her run, only for Aracely to sink in disappointment. Because in the end, all she really wanted was to win.

The more I thought about it, though, the less I liked the idea of an ensemble cast. The ensemble cast element of Chicago hadn't gone over very well (though I like it), and I figured it would wind up inflating the length of the story considerably. I was coming to the end of Cleveland Quixotic, after all, and once more wanted to write something smaller, tighter, and denser.

So I oriented my thinking to instead have the story revolve around Aracely and one major rival, to give an interpersonal mirror to the ideological war being waged. Thus, Toril came about as an antithesis to everything I had imagined Aracely to be: gruff, antisocial, independent. Their rivalry would culminate in a semifinals battle, before Aracely went on to fight "the man who always wins" in the finals.

I forget exactly when the gender theme came into the equation, but it evolved as an outgrowth of (once again) my competitive League of Legends expertise, where women are essentially nonexistent despite there seemingly being no biological blocks against them. This dovetailed nicely with Pokémon, a world where women seemingly could be powerful competitors, but where—in the anime at least—none ever are. For instance, look at this chart of every major tournament in the anime:

Every known winner is male. Every known finalist and semifinalist is male. Only a handful of female characters have reached the quarterfinals. What possible in-universe justification could there be for that?

This question was actually far more prominent in early planning and drafting than it wound up being in the final work. Initially, I had Aracely's personal motivation revolve around a drive to be the first female trainer to win; this would increase the ideological conflict between her and Toril, who attempted to ignore that she was female altogether. Over time, this theme would see diminished importance in face of the last piece of the thematic puzzle: cults.

It came from reading Underground by Haruki Murakami, a nonfiction journalistic account of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attacks carried out by the cult Aum Shinrikyo under the direction of its leader Shoko Asahara. Japan in the 90s was experiencing its own End of History, one taken literally by those disaffected with modern society's grand narrative. The prophecies of Nostradamus became fashionable among the young, who believed that 1999 would be the final year before the world was destroyed. Murakami interviewed both survivors of the gas attack and members of Aum Shinrikyo, collecting worldviews of people who simply thought they were "different" and who were willing to give everything in their lives to the one place that seemed to accept that difference.

The 1995 attacks were a watershed moment in Japanese culture. In their wake would come pivotal works of Japanese pop media, like the titan of otaku culture, Neon Genesis Evangelion:

(What's scary about Nostradamus' prophecy is that it might not come true. A year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.)

Pokémon, whose first games released in Japan in 1996, also emerged within this post-Aum world where fixation on the minutiae of pop media was becoming a primary pillar of meaning for the youth, and it's hard not to see echoes of cultism in the evil teams that dot the series' landscape. Even Team Rocket, originally more modeled on organized crime than occultism, veers that direction in Gold and Silver, and afterward the organizations and their world-ending plots become increasingly absurd, to the point where it starts to become unclear why anyone would ever follow, say, Lysandre.

As I mentioned earlier, my personal interest in Pokémon was at odds with these clownish, Saturday morning cartoon villain organizations, but Murakami's account of the Aum attacks recontextualized them for me, made them make sense even within the framework of a "realistic" utopian world. The last elements snapped into place, and I knew my main character would be the member of one of these cults. A cult dedicated to, what else? Evolution. A core element of the Pokémon series, a perfect metaphor for the frustrating lack of movement of the End of History 90s. I imagined a cult leader as a surrogate mother figure for Aracely, who would have a strained relationship with both of her own parents, and deciding on that, the idea of making Pokémon's canon evil mother Lusamine the villain was a no-brainer. I imagined a post-SuMo Lusamine, unable to move on from her experience merged with Nihilego, languishing in Kanto after being sent there to consult with Bill, who had his own experience being merged with a Pokémon... It didn't take long to figure out how all these pieces connected.

The full form of the story had taken shape.

VI. Showdown

I knew immediately I would be following Showdown rules for the battles. No alternative even crossed my mind. I had dabbled in Showdown a few times over the years, first in Gen 3 OUs, then later in Gen 7 OUs, and I knew from experience that Pokémon is a monumentally more interesting competitive game when operating at a high level compared to either its depiction in the anime (shounen logic, mid-fight evolutions) or the general playing experience (spam your best move on your overleveled starter). I knew I would use competitive rulesets before I even considered the thematic or worldbuilding aspect I would eventually take in the story itself (i.e., that the specific rulesets prevent battles from becoming bloodsport and enforce order on the world). I simply thought doing battles this way would be far more entertaining.

To prepare, I started playing Gen 9 OUs under the guidance of a few friends who were into the competitive scene. I grinded the ladder for months, eventually getting a good enough grasp on the metagame to reach 1500 Elo on the Showdown ladder, which is not very good but generally higher than someone can reach with dumb luck.

Crafting the tournament format and rulesets used in the story wasn't difficult. I modeled the tournament format on the League of Legends World Championship, with region-based seeds (having been selected due to performance in regional tournaments) competing in four groups before the highest performers advanced to a single elimination bracket. Initially, I envisioned a 32-competitor bracket instead of the 16-competitor bracket that would appear in the final draft, but otherwise the format came quickly and easily.

In terms of the rulesets and available Pokémon, my considerations were made primarily in terms of what would be most entertaining to read. I decided to include Mega Evolutions and not include Z Moves, Dynamax, or Terastallization, because Mega Evolutions are cool and those other gimmicks are not. The bring-9-pick-6 format, while unusual in Showdown rulesets, is similar to the rules in Pokémon Stadium and VGC tournaments, and also adds a level of intrigue to which Pokémon each competitor uses. (It also enabled Red's Zapdos at the climax of the story, which was something I knew I would bring out from very early on.)

With the help of one of my friends who knew competitive Pokémon, I scripted out each battle assiduously before I wrote them. Every battle was tested using Showdown itself, with only a few turns mocked up to account for luck. For instance, in Aracely versus Jinjiao, Slowking is meant to stay asleep for three turns. Rather than rely on luck to ensure Slowking actually slept that long during the test, I could give Slowking a useless move and have him use that instead to simulate being asleep.

The only thing that couldn't be tested in Showdown was the 7 PP Kingambit trick Red uses at the end of the story, because it's impossible to set a Pokémon to have fewer than max PP in Showdown. This led to one of the bigger mistakes of the story, as it turns out that Encore would simply wear off if Kingambit ran out of PP, rather than forcing him to use Struggle like I assumed. Luckily, even if this were the case, it wouldn't change the outcome of the battle, so it's not an error I lose too much sleep over.

Character teams were chosen to thread the needle between a few considerations. The team needed to be competitively viable, reflect the character's personality in some way, and be distinct from other teams for the sake of variety. (Variety is somewhat unrealistic in real top-level competitive Pokémon, where you'll often see many almost identical teams in the top ranks. But that would be boring.) Some lack of optimization was allowed under the conceit that actually training these Pokémon to peak form would take a lot of time in the real world, compared to Showdown were optimization can be determined quickly due to the ability to immediately adjust stats and builds.

I also tried to give some preference for Pokémon that would be more familiar to layman fans, though this was difficult because Gen 8 and 9 have outrageous power creep and many popular early generation Pokémon have been completely phased out. (Using Megas helped with this issue.) It was this consideration that led to Azumarill being Aracely's ace. There was also an innate challenge to imagining what the competitive scene would look like without legendary Pokémon. Zapdos and Landorus-Therian have been inexorable staples of the competitive scene for generations. What happens in a world where they aren't used at all?

In the original 32-person bracket, I imagined Aracely competing against Jinjiao in the first round, then minor characters Adrian da Cunha and Jacq Ray Johnson in the next two rounds, before facing Toril in semifinals. I imagined Adrian da Cunha as a "hometown hero" whose team wasn't great but he was plucky with a lot of grit, and Jacq Ray Johnson as a self-aware heel who liked to use cheesy strategies and gimmicky Pokémon like Smeargle and Ditto. Condensing from 32 to 16 occurred around the same time I had settled on Lusamine as my villain/cult leader, which led to replacing those two with Gladion. I developed full brackets for both the 32-man and 16-man iterations, with character names and regions, just in case I ever needed to mention them.

All that was left to do was write the story.

VII. Unbroken Line of History

I began writing in September 2023 under the tentative title Unbroken Line of History, which I would later change to simply Lines. In the original drafts, I opened the story with a modified version of the panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu detailing how people are filtered over time in their pursuit of being the best, this time starting with all 8 billion people in the world until only one remains. The story then cut to Aracely's perspective in the restroom as she mentally prepared for her final group stage match.

At this point I was more set on Aracely being the clear protagonist of the story, so she had a few facets of her personality designed around that. First, as I mentioned before, there was a feminist angle where she was motivated specifically to be the first female trainer to win the championship. Secondly, I threw in some more generic nervousness/fear of failure. The other major difference is that I did not lead with the cult prophecy of the world ending. I originally envisioned the cult reveal to be a mid-story twist, and only obliquely hinted at it.

The scene still played out with Toril appearing and the two getting off to a bad start. Then, Cely's father tried to talk strategy with her while she ignored him, before the battle transpired in much the same form as it does in the final draft.

I showed this early draft to my friends and most disliked it. My girlfriend at the time told me Cely sounded like an edgy 13-year-old boy, while my neuroscientist friend whose aspirational idol is Bondrewd from Made in Abyss wanted to know more about the oblique hints of a cult, finding everything else boring. Another friend said it was stupid that there were 30 seconds between turns during the battle and that the Pokémon should just go at each other; nobody would actually want to watch a battle that was paced so slowly. (I vehemently disagreed with that take. Basically every popular sport balances between slow-paced moments of strategy and fast-paced moments of action and execution.) Some people I showed it to did enjoy it, though. Gazemaize, the author of Chili and the Chocolate Factory, was especially enamored by the Brittany/Gardevoir reveal and the Bud Light Analyst Desk, and implored me to keep both of those elements at all costs. 7th, one of my friends who helped me with the Showdown stuff, was so into it she drew fan art of all the characters (which I've posted before) and also wrote eight pornographic short stories about them.

I rewrote the same opening scene several times across October and November, though these were minor iterations without significant adjustments. Frustrated with the lack of progress, I decided to take a break from writing to simply think about the story for a few months.

During this time, to fix Aracely's edgy 13-year-old voice, I decided to lean into her being from Pokémon Los Angeles (with her native region, Visia, being a play on "visual" as a reference to Hollywood) and gave her a Valley Girl accent. To prepare for this, I listened to hours and hours of ASMR videos of people speaking like Valley Girls and took notes on their inflection and syntax. It was here where I decided on Aracely's underlining quirk, as a way of capturing the unique style of emphasis Valley Girls used.

This also made me realize I needed to adjust Aracely's personality. Despite the tone of her voice, she was still acting antisocially. She didn't want to talk to her father, she didn't want to talk to Lachlan Nguyen, she didn't even really want to talk to Toril. Toril herself was a lump of coal. My own misanthropy kept leaking into the characters, even when I conceptually didn't want them to have it. I thought back to Cleveland Quixotic, and how what made the Jay and Viviendre romance work was that they actually both liked each other, and figured—even though I didn't have explicitly romantic plans for Aracely and Toril—that I needed to do something similar to make their rivalry truly pop. Rather than avoid people, Aracely would lean into talking to them, even if they were annoying. Although Toril remained frigid, there would be a part of her yearning for emotional contact, a way to coax her out of her shell.

I also thought deeply about the structure of my stories in general, and my inability to come up with good hooks. It was around this time that someone I knew was reading Chicago. They pointed out that the plot of Chicago doesn't really start until Chapter 26; that I was "burying the lede." I considered this. My logic, when writing Chicago, was that the Empire moving to take over Washington would be a twist, something that would shock and excite people and change their perception of the entire story.

But did that make sense, when really the story was "about" that twist? Didn't that just make everything before the twist harder to get into for a reader? Chicago might look radically different if I revealed the Empire's goals immediately, but it would also probably be a more immediately engaging work. I'm a big fan of delayed gratification in storytelling, but had I taken it too far?

This was a major revelation for me, and immediately I understood what I needed to do for my Pokémon story: move up the cult plotline. Place it front and center. Name the whole story after it even. I decided on framing the opening scene from Toril's perspective, depicting Aracely initially more as an alien other, emphasizing the fact that she was in a cult rather than hide it behind foreshadowing. This could also lead to Aracely and Toril having more of a dual protagonist setup, which would make my planned two-half finale (one half where Aracely battled "the man who always wins," one half where Toril got involved in stopping the cult's doomsday plot) work even better.

Confidence resurged. At the end of January 2024, my girlfriend of seven years  and I broke up. A few days later, I started writing the sixth—and ultimately final—draft of When I Win the World Ends.

VIII. When I Win the World Ends

Now it's the part of the Making Of where I actually make the thing I'm supposed to be making, but there's a lot less to say about it. Once I have a plan, the actual writing of the story is the easy part, and most of what I wrote—with a few exceptions—looks similar to the story as it exists now.

There were some oddities. I wrote the first seven chapters (everything up to the end of the Jinjiao battle) and then had to take a two week break to write a short piece for a writing contest I had entered in December as part of an effort to stop overthinking WIW. After this interruption, I returned to WIW writing perhaps a bit more perfunctorily than I usually would, leading to an original version of Chapter 8 (the chapter where MOTHER makes her first real appearance) that was short and abbreviated. Later, in editing, I would rewrite most of this chapter.

A few ideas emerged while writing, like the motif of serendipity/Logos, which I felt tied nicely to the ideas of evolution and history. It was also in this draft that I introduced Cely's friends Haydn and Charlie, as a nod to an earlier work of mine also featuring a fashion-obsessed girl from Los Angeles. (Speaking of nods to earlier works, in the original 32-man bracket, Cole Coulter featured as one of the competitors, but he didn't make the 16-man cut.)

The process went smoothly. I finished the draft at the end of May, a little under four months after I started it. I had envisioned the full story as being about 70,000 words, but the draft ended up closer to 115,000. Underestimating story length is just an essential element of the trade, though.

A few days after finishing the draft I went on a four-day Oklahoma Darkness Retreat where I had access to zero electronics. The goal was to think about my story deeply and how it could be improved in the editing process.

In this time chamber, where I did nothing except complete crossword puzzles and read The Recognitions by William Gaddis, I came to a realization. There was one element the story needed that wasn't already there.

That element was Sabrina. In the original draft, Sabrina was not present during the scene where Aracely meets the Old Man. She was mentioned obliquely a couple of times in conjunction with Aracely's "psychic powers," but it never really built to anything. There was still a scene where Aracely was interrogated due to her relationship with MOTHER, but only by nameless goons, and the scene lacked tension as it was clear Aracely could talk circles around them.

When I returned from Oklahoma, I prepared for my conception of Sabrina as a character by writing an 8,000 word short story from her perspective, which hashed out an entire backstory for her. Then, I started editing the draft.

For me, a lot of editing is just polish. Usually, cutting out needless sentences and fixing clunky ones, as well as emphasizing a few of the more understated themes and motifs. For instance, during editing, I made slight additions to emphasize the thematic connection between Aracely's suicide attempt and the global war that almost destroyed the world, as well as the connection between the moon and cyclical insanity (lunacy, etymologically, being related to the moon). I made the Old Man more of a Walt Disney-esque figure (from my notes: "a dying Disney"), rewriting much of his dialogue to either be direct quotes or to evoke his ideals. I also expanded on several of the scenes where Toril and Aracely interact to make their relationship more complex and nuanced. I gave MOTHER some new dialogue, including her speech in Chapter 18 about loving a child for the potential it promises, while also paradoxically wanting it to remain a child forever.

The largest changes were in the three chapters I almost fully rewrote. The first was Chapter 8, which as I mentioned earlier was overly terse. In the original draft, it depicted MOTHER as more pathetic, more dependent on Aracely. I decided to make her a more threatening figure, and incorporated a few references to the Moloch sacrifice scene from Valle Verde to make her seem more like a false idol. Similarly, I rewrote Chapter 12, which was originally a very short chapter that focused solely on a conversation between MOTHER and Nilufer that ended with the order to kidnap Aracely. In rewriting the chapter to include Fiorella, I gave myself more opportunity to flesh out the respective philosophies of her and MOTHER (including some of the story's most salient discussions about why cults exist), as well as give more of an insight into the inner workings of RISE as an organization. And lastly, I fully rewrote Chapter 19 to include Sabrina.

The last changes I made in editing were to the final chapter. When I finished the final draft of the story, I sent it to several readers, many of whom had looked at the original drafts of the first chapter, as well as julirites, the author of a Fargo fan fiction called London. There was an immediate and minor backlash to the final chapter, which was originally much more pessimistic, from most people who read it. In the original version, Aracely and Toril were not still in communication. (Fiorella was also dying of cancer instead of jockeying to replace the Old Man.) The finale had a much more somber, sedate, tragic note. Juli and 7th disliked this sad ending, while Gazemaize wanted me to cut the final chapter altogether. I felt confident that the final chapter was necessary, though, and revised it to its current version, which was much better liked.

And then... the story was finished, near the end of July. I crunched the numbers and realized that if I posted two chapters to start and then did a twice-weekly posting schedule, I could end the story serendipitously on October 12. So I did.

IX. Names and Special Thanks

In my Making Of post for Cleveland Quixotic, I had a fairly extensive list of where I got all the character and place names from. The list is a lot less extensive here; most names I constructed for the purpose of sounding evocative, rather than taking them from someplace specific. For instance, I chose the name Aracely Sosa because it sounds like whistling with its repeated S sounds, compared to Toril Lund which is a lot harsher with its consonants. You can see a similar rationale behind names like Fiorella Fiorina, Yui Matsui, and even some of the background characters, like Jacq Ray Johnson, Jr., where there is a lot of emphasis on alliteration and rhyme.

There are a couple of exceptions. Jinjiao is the in-game ID of a longtime Chinese League of Legends pro of middling notability. He picked the name (which means "Golden Horn") as a reference to the Golden Horned King, a villain from Journey to the West.

Lutz, Fiorella's cameraman, was named after an extremely minor character from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, who is not playable and only appears in a singular cutscene before being killed. They are so irrelevant that despite naming a character after them, I actually forgot their name, which is Lotz, not Lutz.

Haydn is named after the famous classical composer.

Special thanks to 7th and Elick320 for helping me with the teams and battles. Thanks to Gazemaize and julirites, among others unnamed, for reading and providing feedback. And thank you all for enjoying the story.

[teamcavota]

50 milo murphy's law facts

5 not so fun and 45 fun!

Not so fun to start!

The only Milo Murphy's Law official merchandise is a notebook released in Japan for the MML X PNF crossover.

Disney actually apologized to Dan (and I assume Swampy) for the treatment of Milo Murphy's Law. Dan has expressed frustration at the MMLs treatment before, citing the Hiatus between s1 and s2 and the fact it did not air on the main Disney Channel.

Doof appears in more episodes than Cavendish and Dakota in s2 (this is the real reason we needed a s3). Also, while PNF/Doof stuff was planned from the start, Disney did push for more PNF.

When season 2 was airing, new episodes would randomly be released in other countries.

Milo was cut from CATU due to a feeling from Disney that audiences would not recognize his cameo.

ok LAME ones out of the way

On the first drawing of Milo there are three names beside it: Milo, Mikey, and...Monty. As you probably know the Mikey one got pretty far and is the name used in the pitch bible (and was referenced with "I am Mikey!".) The reason Mikey was changed to Milo was not a creative choice, but because there was a popular YouTuber named "Mikey Murphy."

Speaking of, Milo was also just going to be another character apart of a different pitch, but Dan kept thinking he should go into his own show. He went to Swampy and asked him what he thought of Milo (at the time Mikey) and the idea of a show about Murphys Law. it took them about an hour to come up with the concept pitch.

You can find several of MML song dubbings on YouTube and other platforms. Most notably the Japanese version (マイロ・マーフィーの法則) highly worth checking out. Fun fact in a fun fact, Doof and Dakota also share the same voice actor in this dubbing.

In re-airings of some of the first MML episodes, second versions were made that included Cavendish and Dakota in the background.

Yes, Melissa was originally going to feel the lasting effects of the pistachion uprising by remaining looking like one instead of Bradley having his arm turned into a vine. This would have been a source of conflict for her in season 2, but in the end they felt it was too much of a change. As far as Bradley's plant arm it was originally only going to come out sometimes before it was changed to being a constant thing. He does have feeling in this arm.

The Island of Lost Dakota's was going to include a scene with merman Dakota's ("merkotas"). There was also going to be "mutation" Dakotas, such as ones with multiple heads.

There exists a live action version of the Milo Murphy's Law theme song. well, sorta, watch it

Before Milo came out Dwampy made the song "we're gonna do it again."

MML was originally set to debut in early 2017.

Weird Al did not originally come to mind for Milo. One of the idea voices they had was Noah Z Jones (Fish Hooks). They auditioned hundreds of people for Milo, but many had issues such as sounding too nervous in their lines. It wasn't until Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls) posted a photo with Weird Al that Dwampy realized he'd be perfect for the role.

Sara is based on a friend of Dwampy.

In tune with the popular headcanon/fan theory, it's possible they did actually consider making Cavendish a descendant of Milo. When Cavendish was going to agree he also liked Milo, he was going to say he was his descendant. *this may have also just been a joke line

Milo and Cavendish are meant to mirror eachother in the fact Milo deals with Murphy's Law and Cavendish is the "author of his own misery" in regards to things going wrong.

Another thing they considered was the possibility of Dakota and Cavendish being in a romantic relationship, but they ultimately decided they wanted them to have them represent a strong male friendship.

The Milo Murphys Law crew did keep up a fanart and concept art wall. Here, here, and here are some photos.

There was a baby Cavenpus cut from final productions.

There are no official ages for Dakota and Cavendish. Dan has said he believes Cavendish to be older, while Joshua Pruett has said he believes Dakota to be the older one and by a bit of a margin.

Pistachios came to be a thing in the show because a son of some of Dan's neighbors had been allergic to specifically pistachios. They needed an idea for the larger plot and somehow those two came together. (Swampy also notes it's a funny word).

Several of the scripts for MML storyboarders included just the words, "and Murphy's Law happened."

Dan has made at least one Vinnie Dakota dedicated Tiktok similar to his Doof ones.

The Doof and Dakota lines were recorded together, back and forth.

Melissa was going to have a hamster nemesis named Ham. In the Pitch Bible the name wasn't included, but it's explained it was a pet class hamster that would always escape and end up on her things.

The secret handshake Milo and Zack do in scream-a-tourium was intended to be longer.

The studio executive for MML originally thought The Island of Lost Dakota's was a joke idea until he read the script.

There was a MML kids menu at Disneyland circa 2016.

Dakota and Cavendish were originally not in the shows ideas, nor was any B-plot, but being used to it in PNF the writers room felt they "needed something to cut away to"

Joshua Pruett pitched for the MML x PNF crossover for where when Milo opened his backpack to pull out the thing he needed to save the world it'd be...Phineas and Ferb.

Dakota is the reason parking tickets exist, as he can be a bit careless about leaving time vehicles all over the place. Dakota is proud of this.

Melissa's likeness and name is based on Dan's daughter Meli, as to sorta "balance out" Isabella also being based on his other daughter.

They considered a twist where Bob Block would be an alien wearing a face mask.

"Cavendish Farms" is an episode that never came to be pitched by Pruett where in order to track Cavendish Dakota would try to duplicate Cavendish, though none of them would quite be Cavendish. One of the Cavendishs would have a heart to heart with Dakota, while Doof would ultimately call out Dakota for what he's doing and tell Dakota "you already know what he would do." dwampy rejected this idea because this was a bad idea, to which pruett felt that is exactly why Dakota would have tried it. if renewed, pruett would have tried to convince them more on it.

Chop Away at My Heart was originally called "Jump Jump Jump" and was made for another project by one of Dan's friends. After Dan have asked to transform it into something else for Milo, Joshua Pruett suggested a "Lumberjack themed boyband" in the script.

unfortunate split for character block limit

Dakotas voice was inspired by Elvis Costello. It's also the harder voice for Dan in comparison to Doof.

Mark Hamill originally auditioned to play a teacher on the show, but Dwampy liked his audition so much they decided he'd better fit Mr. Block.

In the MML pitch bible it is stated, "Mikey has a destiny to fulfill, something vital to the future of the planet." The goal of Cavendish and Dakota would be to make sure he stays on the right path.

There IS a full version of We're Going to the Zoo, which was played by Dan in this interview at 3:00:30. Several MML songs have had full versions leaked, implying this is probably the case for some other songs too.

Like several other characters, Sara in the MML pitch bible was different from her show counterpart, being "a hipster like Thora Butch in Ghost World."

The song "A World Without Milo" is based on the song "Happy Together" by "The Turtles"

Almost every character, including creatures or minor one-offs had a name in the script. An example is "Pia," the name of the poodle Diogee falls in love with.

In regards to when Dakota talks about cutting through the Mesozoic in First Impressions and the fact it is illogical, Dan says this is likely just Dakota being Dakota (aka, it was a mistake), and not every such line should be taken serious.

In a deleted "Snow Way Out" line it was confirmed that the raccoon in Going the Extra Milo and Fungus Among Us is recurring raccoon.

Brick and Savannah were going to have a role in the crossover.

Story ideas from the MML pitch bible that never came to include a beach episode, a Friday the 13 episode, and an episode where Cavendish and Dakota try convincing Milo to take a self defense class leading to conflict with a hidden ninja gang.

For unspecified characters (probably multiple different sets) Pruett wrote in hugs that were cut by (mostly) Dan. In response, he says he "put 4 in so at least 1 stays."

S3 would have likely included: A third Block (yes, still voiced by Mark Hamill and a Block "family meeting"), Milo creating the universe, Dakota and Cavendish getting the promotion they wanted but being unsatisfied, Elliot cleverly being connected to the overarching plot, AU exploration (akin to pnf) including an episode where Dr Zone is real, and a conclusion to the Prof Time arc. The overarching plot would have been the "biggest yet."

credits to: danvillecheese for suggestions + encouragement, cheetochild989 for facts the fact about going to the zoo and a world without milo, the 2nd dimension on YouTube, my hamsterward friends, and of course all the talented people who worked on MML :3

[wenellyb]

How I feel about Buddie...

You guys have been warned, this is a long post.

I've always liked 911 and was a casual viewer but never got involved in the fandom or anything. Of course I knew about Buddie, but I personally never saw it. Buck and Eddie have always acted like best friends and do stuff best friends do. I have never seen any scene that could be interpreted as romantic, except maybe for the "you want to go for the title" scene. But to me it wasn't enough to ship them, especially since it was the only scenes in their hundreds of scenes together that could be seen as romantic.

That being said, I've always thought the ship was cute, and I understand it because who doesn't like a good friends to lovers storyline?

I just never got involved in the fandom because their behavior reminded me of the Stucky and Destiel fandom, which were chaotic experiences for me. Some people just don't know how to handle non canon ships and act entitled, complain to the showrunners and harrass the cast. I've always tried to avoid fandoms like that, but wasn't against the idea of Buddie as a ship.

The 911 Lone Star crossover episode for me was the confirmation that Buck was into men. To me, it was obvious they confirmed he was into men but hadn't set up a storyline yet. So naturally I thought... if they set up a storyline it will be with Eddie. There was no doubt it my mind.

So fast forward, a few years, I wasn't really watching season 7 and then I see all the fuss from Buddie shippers I follow, and it makes me watch the sneak peek video from 7x04 and I'm like....For sure Buck is being jealous right? (it was the scene where Eddie interrupted Tommy giving Buck a tour)

So I decided to watch the episode convinced this was going to be the episode where they confirmed Buddie, but I was also very cautious because Buddie shippers had cried wolf too many times before.

So I was careful, but I was also convinced that this was it: "Buck was going to get jealous of Eddie hanging out with Tommy and then confess his feelings or the other way around".

And that's actually what was happening until the end of the episode, we saw Buck get jealous, and most of us assumed he was being jealous about Eddie.

We didn't figure out until the end of the episode that it was all about Tommy.

And that's the beauty of that episode because you think you're watching something when in fact you're watching something else and when you rewatch some scenes you understand it, and that plot twist was written so beautifully.

So we have Buck and Tommy have a heart to heart in Buck's kitchen and they kiss. And what a kiss... the kiss itself was Nice but the look Buck gave Tommy after the kiss was breathtaking.

From that moment on, I was rooting for them.

But I still had Buddie at the back of my mind because I was thinking, what if this is all temporary and they're planning to break them up to set up a buddie storyline? So I shipped it but didn't want to get my hopes up.

This feeling got bigger when I started watching 7x05 and I saw the way their first date ended. I thought... this is it, we might not see Tommy again, what a shame. But then Buck talked to Maddie about his date and confessed it was with Tommy. And Maddie asked: "so tell me about the hot pilot", and I thought this isn't how they'd talk about a character we never see again. But I didn't know for sure.

Maybe they were setting up a Buck x Eddie storyline....

I changed my mind when I saw Buck's coming out scene to Eddie, the scene was beautiful and at that point I still was thinking Buddie was a possibility. But one line made me think that Buddie wasn't happening: "I can't stop thinking about him".

No writer would put a line like that and have Oliver say it like that with that look, if they were thinking Buck and Eddie would have a romantic scene in the future. And if you do write that, you would get a jealous reaction from the other character, not a "You should call Tommy".

And then I was conforted in my feelings when the writers doubled down and had Buck invite Tommy to Maddie's wedding. Buck could have just apologized and asked Tommy on antoher date, but no, he invited him to his sister's wedding.

There has been absolutely no hint of a romantic relationship between Buck and Eddie throughout the season. There has never been a sign of jealousy from Buck or Eddie's side when they were dating Tommy, Marisol. If they had been setting up that storyline, the writers would put some hints here and there. Instead, they shared meaningful scenes like best friends do.

I never had anything againdt Buddie as a ship, I was even open to it, but all the times I thought Buddie was going to happen, it was because of the fandom, not because of something I saw in the saw...To me Buddie is and will stay a fanon ship.

TL:DR: I don't hate the ship, I find it cute but the behavior of some shippers has made me want to stay away from the fandom. And when I thought Buddie might be happening, the writers showed us they had long term plans for Bucktommy.

[sofs16]

ripples in our love

part 1: paddock day , part 2: our leclerc win, part 3: our love in photos, part 4: our home — next

not proofread and lots of text / paragraphs ahead:)

“are you sure you don’t want to come with me” charles asked as he was putting on his shoes.

“charles, i’ve been with you all year and break, have fun with your friends.. just not too much fun” you laughed, clutching your robe closer to your waist as a shiver went down your spine from the ac.

“but i love spending time with you, amour” he sighed, standing up, holding your face between his palms, and kissing you.

“what, you don’t wanna drink and be manly?” you raised a brow “i mean… i do…” he thought about it “go” you whispered with a reassuring smile. you weren’t one for parties and a part of you was worried charles was being restrained to hang out with his friends because of that, so you encouraged him to have a night out before the races.

“i’ll be back by 12” he kissed you for the last time and you giggled “you better come back home to me, leclerc” you scolded “of course, where else?” and then the door shut.

2am, that’s what the time was. you were sat on the couch in your shared apartment. it was 2 hours since you saw that nightmare of a post. you have been getting multiple texts by the minute.

a part of you wanted to be childish and run away, never facing him. but that wouldn’t be right at all.

you heard the keys jingling on the other side of the door and heard a grunt and stumble. you gulped but trained your eyes on the tv, not really watching the episode of gossip girl.

“amour! you’re here!” charles replied with a cheer in a sluggish manner. he frowned when you didn’t turn around to look at him, or greet him with a kiss or hug as you usually did.

“amour?” he mumbled, stumbling over the couch, clearly drunk. his eyes lit up once they saw your face and he trained to kiss you but you held his face in between your hands before he could. “are you thinking straight right now, charles?”

no nickname. the gears in charles’ head weren’t fast enough at the moment.

“of course, let’s go to bed” he smiled “charles, you kissed another woman” you said quietly, as if you didn’t want to believe it

“No! That’s crazy. I only love you. You only. You’re my everything. I dont like anyone else. You’re my girlfriend. I’ll make you my wife one day” he said against your chest, shaking his head

you found yourself to be someone who cries when they’re frustrated or overly happy. “let’s talk in the morning and get you into bed, ‘kay?” you helped him up as he tried his best to sober up.

unlike the many showers you had together, you left him to shower on his own, making sure he was balanced enough before shutting the bathroom door.

the shower sobered him up quickly. cold water tricking down his body as he revisited the events of tonight. oh how he had messed up.

he stepped out of the shower to see his favorite shirt out, though all his favorite shirts were yours, it was his that was put out. he walked out of the bathroom to find you setting down the trashcan beside the bed, just in case.

“amour, can we talk please?” he held your hand but you dropped it. “tomorrow charles, okay? let’s get you to rest first” you pulled the covers over him, made him take headache pills.

“you… are not sleeping beside me?” he asked as you made your way to the door. “not tonight, charles” you whispered, turning off the lights and shutting the door.

though he was overthinking that night, the alcohol helped him sleep throughout that night, unlike you.

he woke up and frowned at there being no dip on your pillow and side of the bed. he rubbed his eyes, taking his cellphone and that’s when he remembered it all.

he jumped up the bed and rushed in getting the door open, in hopes to find you. you were sitting at the dining table, staring at the floor below you, tiredness evident through your eyes.

“amour?” you looked up “do you remember it?” you asked and he nodded, taking the seat adjacent to you. “why” you turned to him, swallowing the lump in your throat.

“i- i don’t know. i swear- amour i thought she was you” “i’m fucking blonde, charles” you furrowed your eyebrows

“you know how i am after i drink” true “i don’t- i don’t know what to do, charles” you shut your eyes closed

“amour please, you mean everything to me, you are my everything. if i could take it back or if i had stayed at home with you that night, i would. please don’t leave me” he held your hand quietly. you couldn’t say anything.

silence greeted him.

“tell me what you are thinking. call me names, scream at me, i do not care— just let me in” he asked.

when he said that, he thought you would burn him to the ground and pick on every flaw he had, even hearing you say you wish you had never dated him. your words… were not that.

“i think…im thinking if i’m enough for you” charles was shocked. “i think about all the girls you could have who are prettier, more famous, kinder, and everything more than i am but you’re stuck with me” you groan in frustration as tears start to well up. “and i can’t help but see you with someone else and it hurts” there they were, tears falling too quick for you to see. charles had never seen you cry, truthfully. “it hurts knowing— you could just leave me and maybe even be with that girl you were kissing last night” you sniffled

“yn,” he said quietly, wiping your tears away “i don’t want to be with anyone else. only you. and i don’t care if they are the models of the year or what. you are the prettiest girl to me and- i cannot let you think that low of yourself. i am so sorry, amour. please, let me fix this somehow. anything, i will do anything”

“i think i need space and time, charles” you looked up to his face. he knew if it weren’t serious right now, you most likely would’ve made an avengers infinity stone joke you were thinking about it, but no words came out

“i- yes. i understand. i’ll go out for a whil-” “i mean, i’ll go back to the house in paris for some while” “what?” his heart sank. “it makes sense right now charles. i need space to think and plus, i was going to go there anyways for fashion week” you rubbed your eyes.

charles knew your relationship with your parents were wobbly as you moved away from france to live in spain. but going back to them? that was how bad this was.

“are you breaking up with me?” he wobbled. “no, i just- i don’t know! i need to think charles” you stood up “please, yn! you- you are the only one for me please do not leave me” he pleaded hugging you from behind.

he hugged that girl from behind.

“you were in this position when you kissed her” you said quietly and charles shuddered at the thought of being with someone who isn’t you. “i’m sorry” you nodded and made a beeline to your bedroom.

30 minutes later you came out with 2 suitcases in hand. it was real. you were leaving. “will- will you be at the gp?” he asked quietly. maybe a little selfishly, but you were his comfort especially during nerve-wracking times like gps. you shook your head no. and he nodded, in understanding.

“do you want me to drive you to the airport?” he asked and you shook your head again. “good luck charles” you sighed, kissing his cheek. you meant for the gp— but so many things were going through his head. ‘good luck living a life without me’ was one of them.

yn.charlesupdate

liked by 2,438 others

yn.charlesupdate No yn at the paddock. Oh we’re done for. view all 7,337 comments

lestappen12 what did you think? she just saw the love of her life kissing another woman 2 days ago…

ferr4ribae im tired. august 25, 2024

charles_leclerc

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charles_leclerc P2 for you :) Shame for what happened to Lewis on the first lap, we were lucky to finish the race even with the damage we had. See you next year, Zandvoort.

view all 2,484,399 comments

charlesyn17 He really got guts to post this like he didn’t just CHEAT on yn.

chachahaa cant believe you cheated on yn. she treated you like a king. that’s what’s a shame.

checheco1 Lewis deserved that P2 after what you did to yn.

nightleclerc … i can’t keep defending you charles

alphmercedez i hope you dnf 😊

august 26, 2024

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yns_love

liked by yn, and 473 others

yns_love yn actin like he didn’t just cheat on her… but ok mother we love& trust u and will stfu

view all 1,494 comments

august 30, 2024

yncharle

liked by 6,373 others

yncharle 2 races with no yn. charles p3. 2 weeks radio silence from yn. bye.

view all 1,474 comments

september 11, 2024

yn

liked by charles_leclerc, and 10,484,484 others

yn 💌

view all 2,585,686 comments

leclerc_pascale Beautiful ❤️

⤷ yn merci maman 😆

⤷ ynlelllerc STOP 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹😭

landonorris You look cool in that 3rd photo 😎

⤷ yn cuz i am cool, landito! like u😊

⤷ carlossainz55 thats not true

⤷ yn dont be mean carlitos, youre cool too🫀

⤷ wagsgrid her interacting with the grid is so wholesome 🥹

ynsbeaut SHES BACK BITCHES!!

[liked by yn]

dior 🤍

charlesbae jesus did she buy the whole dior show?

⤷ yn GIRL IM NOT THAT RICH 😭 it was for fashion week 🤭

chachaaaa Are she and charles still together?

16s55love why is she just ignoring what happened.. she seems unbothered, did she even love charles :/

⤷ yn we’re handling this privately so please respect that and dont make such assumptions. and i do love charles, dearly :)

[liked by charles_leclerc]

⤷ ynscharles I CANT. THEYRE MY PARENTS YOUR HONOR

softwags._ will you be at baku?

september 12, 2024

sharlie brown 🫀🏎️

august 21, 2024

sharlie brown 🫀🏎️

Amour, I am so sorry and I hope you know I never meant for this to happen and you are the only one for me.❤️

y/n/n🤪🤍💒

thanks charles but i just need time, okay? :)

sharlie brown 🫀🏎️

Of course, yes. I will just be messaging you every now and then, would that be alright?

y/n/n🤪🤍💒

mhm. good luck on sunday, charles

sharlie brown 🫀🏎️

Thank you, belle. I will do my best for you❤️

[yn reacted ❤️]

.august 22, 2024

sharlie brown🫀🏎️

Hi belle❤️ If I am being honest, I am nervous for tomorrow and I wish you were here. I hope you are doing alright there. [yn reacted ❤️]

.august 24, 2024

sharlie brown 🫀🏎️

hello ynn! I got P2 in today’s qualifying though I hope I can turn it into a win tomorrow. We miss you here at the paddock

.august 26, 2024

sharlie brown 🫀🏎️

Hello amour❤️ Remained P2 today but unfortunately took Lewis out:/ I’m sure I’ll be getting an earful from the Mercedes fans but it is alright. I miss you and love you

.august 28, 2024

sharlie brown 🫀🏎️

Hello, love! Thank you for the story you posted. I hope you are alright and doing well there. Don’t over work yourself, please. I have just landed in Monza and as usual, the fans are crazy! I wish you were here to feel the love they share for you as well. I miss and love you

.august 31, 2024

sharlie brown🫀🏎️

hi love:) I am quite stressed at the moment since the car engine almost gave in during the last turn. I feel it is my fault… anyways, I do not know if you have been watching. I hope you are doing alright. I love and miss you ❤️

september 1, 2024

sharlie brown 🫀🏎️

P3 today. Disappointed to say the least because if I pushed more I could have won for you.I saw on twitter you are in fashion week already?Do what you love:) ❤️

forgot to say hi… Hi! I love and miss you

y/n/n🤪🤍💒 Don’t blame it on yourself, Charles. You can’t always be perfect or always P1 even if you want to. The most you can do is try your best next time and enjoy. You’re world champion and leading the world champion points now:) Fashion week is stressful but I can manage. Stay safe, Charles. I love you.

september 3, 2024

sharlie brown 🫀🏎️

Hello my love, thank you. I really needed that. I wish I had replied sooner but I have been sleeping a lot.. haha. You will do great, I know you will. I love you, amour and miss you more than you know😘

september 5, 2024

sharlie brown 🫀🏎️

Hello, beautiful! How is France?:)

y/n/n🤪🤍💒

hi charles:) france is good as always

sharlie brown🫀🏎️

Amazing photos! I miss you and love you❤️

september 10, 2024

y/n/n🤪🤍💒

would you mind if i went to baku this week and we talked?

#SOF: thoughts? :)

thank u btw for all the support in this lil series<3

@glow-ish — your tag! lmk if you wanna be tagged in the next part! feel free to also send in messages thru the ask box hehe

[jedipoodoo]

Bring Them Home (Sergeant Hunter x Reader)

Notes: SPOILERS FOR SEASON THREE EPISODE TWO: PATHS UNKNOWN. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE SEASON THREE PREMIERE. Children, angsty Hunter Edit: STUPID TUNGLR POSTED THIS WHEN I MEANT TO SAVE IT SO PSA-- If you read this before 10pm EST on Feb 27, this one-shot is officially completed so please reread it again and enjoy it in its full glory.

gif by @dreamswithghosts

It had been months since you'd seen Hunter, so of course you and Phee were there when the Marauder touched down in the Archium. Wrecker waved to you both as the ramp lowered, beckoning to someone inside the ship.

Hunter said they were bringing someone with them, but you didn't expect the cadets-- the children --to look so bewildered when they stepped off the ship.

"They're so young," Shep said softly, and you wondered how round and baby-faced they must have been when they left Kamino, the only home they'd ever known.

The three cadets lingered on the steps of the ramp, looking around in earnest while Wrecker waited patiently.

"It smells like Kamino," the tallest said as you approached.

"Mox, did you see the ocean? D'you think they'll let us go swimming?"

"You can do whatever you want here!" Wrecker laughed encouragingly. He gave you his classic thump on the shoulders, and you smiled. It was the happiest you'd seen him since they lost Tech and Omega.

"Hi," You introduced yourself to the cadets, "What're your names?"

"I'm Deke. This is Mox, and that's Stak." The shortest of them stepped forward, while his brothers watched you warily.

"And I'm Phee Genoa, liberator of ancient wonders," Phee smiled warmly at them all.

"Welcome to Pabu," Shep said, "I'm the mayor here. We have a warm bed and fresh food for all of you."

"Thanks," Mox, the tallest, said softly. His arms were crossed over his chest, and Stak's hands fidgeted at his side.

"Wrecker, why don't you and Phee show them the island? I reckon they're as hungry as you."

Wrecker chuckled softly and nodded towards the ship, catching your drift. He beckoned for the kids to follow him. They seemed to trust a clone more than other humans, but that was understandable.

"Have you boys ever heard of Skara Nol?" you heard Phee asking them.

"What's that?" Deke asked.

"It's a big mountain, filled with lots of puzzles!" Wrecker said, waving his arms to demonstrate.

At that point, you'd stepped aboard. The warmth of the sun dissipated as you were enveloped in the Marauder's dim lighting. Hunter sat at the navicomputer to your right, half asleep and blanketed by a hazy blue glow.

"Those boys aren't the only ones who could use a home-cooked meal, you know." You said, putting more weight into your steps so he wouldn't be surprised by your approach.

"I assume you've brought some, then?" He said.

You rolled your eyes and took the canteen of gumbo from your bag.

"Only when you step away from the computer. It won't do you any good to spill it all over Tech's equipment now."

Hunter sighed, and set another diagnostic to run through the files.

"We've got another lead," He said, turning away from the computer. Your heart fluttered at the note of hope in his voice.

"The Intel from the Durands was too old, the kids were all that's left of that lab, but we scraped some data from one of the data banks. We think it could tell us where Hemlock took Omega."

You handed him the spoon, and Hunter tried to eat politely, but it soon gave way to his hunger as he shoveled spoonfuls into his mouth without waiting to chew.

"Careful, you'll make yourself sick," You warned him, "You've been eating too many rations. I'll have to send you off with some real food this time."

Hunter looked up at you, and you used your thumb to wipe some sauce from his chin, but you couldn't quite meet his eyes.

"You could always come with us. How's your leg doing?"

The only reason you hadn't gone with Hunter and Wrecker when they set out to find Omega was because your femur was broken in the same railcar crash that took Tech. Phee had promised to look out for you and keep you from getting too bored while they scoured the galaxy. Despite your protests, you knew that in your injured state, you couldn't be much help at all.

So you made yourself useful in Pabu. You sewed clothes to replace those lost in the tsunami, you looked after children while their parents rebuilt, you made your family's old gumbo recipe for those who were too tired to cook at the end of the day.

Those like Hunter.

"What about the kids? Deke, Mox and...Stak?"

Hunter nodded, "Shep said there were some families on Pabu who could take care of them for now, he even offered to take two of them into his own house."

"Oh," You said softly, "That's kind of him."

Setting the empty canteen to the side, Hunter squeezed one of your hands as it hung at your side.

"Everything alright, cyare?"

"Oh!" After so long without him, you forgot how well he knew you.

"I just...I was hoping we could take them in, take care of them."

Hunter's eyes softened, and finally stood. "I'll admit I thought about it myself, but..."

"Not while Omega's still captured," You finished for him, dropping his hand and folding your arms.

Hunter's thumb brushed against your cheek, begging for you to look at him.

"You remember that night on Ord Mantell, right?" He asked.

You pouted, bottom lip jutting out, "We spent a lot of nights on Ord Mantell." Too many, to be precise.

"You know the one I'm talking about," He cupped your face in both hands, and you looked up at the dark circles beneath his eyes.

And you did know the night he mentioned. It was a full moon, so you could actually see the moon high above all the neons and smoke from the city. Hunter had made you a promise then and there, and you made one to him too. Nothing like marriage, but something like it.

Biting your lip, you reached up to run your thumb over his crows' feet. His eyes closed, blissfully relaxed beneath your touch. You knew how much he needed to find her. He could never forgive himself if anything happened to you, to Wrecker, or any of the cadets they'd just saved.

"I meant what I said that night," He whispered, eyes glistening as his forehead rested against yours, "We'll have our own family some day, something Kamino and the Empire won't ever be able to take from us. We just have to wait a bit longer."

You sniffled just a bit, and buried your face in his chest. You wrapped your arms around his torso, and when he wrapped his arms around you he leaned more of his body weight on you than he usually did. He felt frail, delicate even, like too much pressure in one place would snap him in half.

Hunter needed you, and you needed him.

"I'm coming with you," You whispered. He sighed with relief.

"Let's bring her home."

[impactrueno]

(thread i posted on twitter copypaste)

i think musical bj and lydia have the most interesting dynamic of the three…they go toe to toe, seem to be in perfect sync without even trying, she managed to turn his marriage threat on its head by tricking HIM back, and then a mini redemption arc? we love to see it but this also means it's hard for me to think of interesting things for them, because they already said everything that needed to be said in the musical. perfect closure too. what else is there even to tell?

thinking about this again since i've been rewatching the musical over and over. the emotional resolution and closure they had was so satisfying after offering what is probably the best (subjectively) and most balanced (objectively) dynamic of the three iterations

over at tumblr i've been talking about how cartoon bj and lydia's friendship isn't as perfect as it seems, especially in the later episodes. it's so sad to see but i'm also invested in their potential downfall and how that would go down…it's interesting to think about

but hey at least they're not movie bj and lydia lol. what….a mess of a dynamic those two have now with the sequel. it could've been handled so much better. they obviously wanted us to root for bj a little in this one, but the cool things he does amount to nothing, pretty much.

feels weird sympathizing with THIS beetleguy of all three but wow not even a reluctant "thanks i guess" or anything? idk feels like something was missing there. just one of the many things that feel like they're setting up for a third installment

thinking so hard about this because when i write them i gotta think about their motivations, feelings and why they feel that way, etc and bj saving astrid's life and exposing rory as a fraud and abuser (in an incredibly satisfying way) definitely tipped the scales in his favor.

so i'm still figuring out how lydia would feel about all that. i have this scene stuck in my head of her and astrid talking about bj. and astrid, who's really only seen him do good things, goes "…really mom?" and now i'm going "welp she's kinda got a point, lydia" NOW WHAT.

if i were in her shoes, me personally, that would've won me over or at the VERY least i would've forgiven him since he made up for the bad stuff. and i keep seeing people who feel the same way… then again, the ending does show he's still messing with her so idk. mixed feelings

trying my hardest to work with what canon gave us if you couldn't tell lol. sloppy as it was. i will try to make sense of it so i can do my stupid little comics

i guess at least she let him down easy lmao. as sarcastic her "look i'm sorry things didn't work out between us but the 600 year gap is a little much for me" line was. but he's not gonna give up that easily, is he? of course not. he's beetlejuice. he's gonna be annoying forever.

none of this would be such an issue if they had given them more screentime together to let their dynamic cook a bit and actually see how they get along 😑 hmph

anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk im done now

[cl0wncakez]

Say whatever you want about the black and white anime, but the one thing i will always stand by is that IRIS AND CILAN WERE NEVER PART OF THE PROBLEM!!!!

i did a full watch of the bw series a few weeks back, and the main 2 complaints i had about it were ash’s pokemon (he caught too many and most of them didn’t get enough screentime as a result) and team rocket (they were like barely there and didn’t even do the blasting off gag until the last season i think)

but for me the best parts of it were iris and cilan!!! i was kinda expecting them to be annoying cuz of all the hate they got, but i was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable they were.

first off, i am the number 1 iris defender. all the posts i see that complain about her say the same thing everytime: “all iris does is say that ash is a little kid!”

well, as someone who’s binged the entire unova anime in like a week and a half, i can say that there is so much more to her. but for one, she doesn’t even say that ash is a kid as often as you might think. she mostly says it in the first few episodes when she first met ash. for the rest of the series, she’ll occasionally say it in passing, but it is not her one defining trait. while there are a few instances where i thought that it wasn’t warranted, there are plenty more times where ash was being big dummy and deserved it.

what people seem to forget about iris is that at the start of ash’s unova journey, iris is practically a new trainer. her axew is at most only a few weeks old, and her excadrill, while strong, hasn’t battled for who knows how long after being brutally defeated by drayden’s haxorous, leaving it in a state of shock. so obviously, she isn’t going to be the most experienced trainer out there.

iris grew up in the village of dragons, which as the name suggests, is a village inhabited by various dragon type pokemon. having spent her whole life surrounded by dragon types, iris has made it her dream to become a dragon type master. while at the beginning of her journey, she’s just with her axew, she over time has several encounters with dragon type pokemon, all of which help her better understand how to communicate with dragon types.

in one episode, she helped a druddigon out from a trap set by team rocket, while everyone else assumed it was rampaging out of anger. in another, the gang were helping out at a pokemon daycare, and in it was a deino, who was extremely shy. it’s trainer hadn’t returned for days after they said they would (the trainer ended up getting lost in a cave) and it was beginning to refuse to eat due to its anxiety. and what did iris do? she stayed with the deino the whole night, helping it relax in a place it wasn’t familiar with. it’s episodes like these that show that she’s not a one dimensional character, and like the rest of ash’s companions, she has character development.

but what helped fully flesh out her arc was when she caught her dragonite.

unlike axew, who was by her side from the beginning, she and dragonite did not get along immediately. dragonite was stubborn, wouldn’t listen to iris, and had its own way of battling. in order to become a dragon master, she would first have to understand dragonite. the trust that was built happened really slowly, but she did get there. by understanding a pokemon as troubled as her dragonite, iris would then be able to reach out and soothe her excadrill, making it confident enough to battle again, and help axew evolve after her journey with ash ended. and i think that was a solid way to end her arc until pokemon journeys, where offscreen, she fulfilled her dream as a dragon master and became the champion of unova.

now onto cilan.

cilan doesn’t get hated on nearly as much as iris, he’s more or less just forgotten about. so while i was expecting to hate iris when i first started watching, i had zero expectations on cilan. and tbh, i think he’s my favorite traveling companion?? if not than at least top 3.

cilan is the oldest of three siblings, and he first met ash and iris when ash came to battle at the triplet’s restaurant/gym. usually, the challenger only battles one of them, but ash was the first person to want to challenge all 3 brothers. when it was cilan’s turn to battle, he assumed that he would win due to him having the type advantage (ash choosing to battle with oshawott against cilan’s pansage)

well, ash won. and a few episodes later, cilan asked if he could join ash on his journey. the reason cilan wanted to come along was because he saw a new side to pokemon battling that he wanted to better understand.

something about cilan is that while he is a gym leader, he doubles as a pokemon connoisseur. a connoisseur is someone who makes critical judgements in fine arts or matters of taste. for cilan, he analyzes the bond between trainer and pokemon. and during his battle with ash, he evaluated his and oshawotts bond based on their battle. and he dug INTO ash, almost outright insulting his capabilities as a trainer, due to his assumptions from ash using a water type against a pansage.

but the thing is, cilan was wrong. in the end, oshawott ended up winning with ash’s strategy and support.

he fully expected to win, and was given an entirely new perspective of battling after seeing ash pull through. like cooking, pokemon battles aren’t just about type advantage and throwing moves out. it’s about thinking outside the box and trusting your pokemon, which ash accomplished by having oshawott use its scallchop to deflect a bullet seed attack. wanting to become a better trainer and connoisseur, cilan tagged along to gain a new understanding between trainer and pokemon.

and outside of his arc, cilan is just a genuinely fun character!!! did you know that along with being a pokemon connoisseur, this man is also a fishing, cooking, detective, judge, and film connoisseur??? and he can cook!! (EDIT: people are mentioning that he is also a train connoisseur!!! sorry :( i forgor)

cilan is shown to be more composed with his emotions than the previous traveling partners ash had. he also plays a mediator role whenever ash and iris bicker. and remember, cilan is the oldest sibling of 3 triplets, so he’s likely had to play mediator countless times if his brothers ever argued. ash and iris also seem to have a sibling-like bond, so their clashing was probably similar to what cilan faced before with cress and chili.

as i said, cilan is much more patient and gentleman-like. so the few moments where he genuinely loses his shit leaves a stronger impact.

the most notable example was with skyla, who instead of fulfilling her gym duties, played out battles in her head, and made her own judgements on if she could win a battle or not. this lead to challengers either being pushed away without a chance to battle, or given a gym badge without deserving it.

now cilan, who is a gym leader, sees this as a disgrace. it goes against everything a gym leader is supposed to do. skyla was lazy, arrogant, and wouldn’t do her job, which set him off. while he did lose against skyla, it was a big character moment to try and defend his honor as a gym leader.

overall, cilan is soooooo cool you guys don’t get him the way i do!!! i am the number 1 cilan fan!!!!

i think the reason people complain about iris and cilan more than any other companions ash had is because they were different.

iris had a completely different goal than everyone before her, it was a complete 180. she had zero interest in contests or performing, her dragon master dream was brand new in the anime. additionally, her relationship with ash was more like siblings than best friends, which likely made some viewers think their bickering was annoying.

and cilan. poor guy didn’t even have a chance from the start. not after brock was around for like a billion seasons.

overall, the black and white anime does have its problems, as does every pokemon anime. but leave iris and cilan out of it THEY ARE INNOCENT PARTIES :(

[aimasup]

Spoilers for The March 2024 Welcome Home Update, LONG post warning:

The Eddie Scene

Let's establish two realities: The Neighbourhood (theirs) and The Show (the humans').

(The third is ours, here, actually real, no black gunk and Welcome Home is just a really cool fictional horror project. Irrelevant, just wanted to bring us down to earth)

I like to believe it's an unaware Wreck-It-Ralph situation: The Neighbourhood exists as The Show because that's how they live and what they were created for.

They have a happy home in the commercials and episodes, interviews with humans and playfully leaning on the fourth wall (via Narrator). And when Playfellow Workshop had a really good influential show, they quite literally brought these puppets to life, perhaps too much.

That's where the trouble comes in; we don't know if the puppets being sentient was ever revealed to the public, or what the black rot even is yet. Personally I can't really even guess how much the other puppets know at the moment, not even Home. All we know is that Wally was the first to 'wake up', likely.

So I'm just gonna say what I think about the Eddie segment at the end of the commercial compilation from his perspective alone (bravo to the voice actors and artists my god).

The Neighbourhood...

The Show.

Here's what I assume: both in the Neighbourhood and The Show, Eddie is being given a break from working so hard. Because I believe the script/special was supposed to end here:

Eddie Dear was happy.

[calm jazz music as the title card fades in] And a Happy Homewarming to one and all! Ho Ho Ho!!

End.

Because it makes no sense why The Show staff would spend extra resources to give the puppet Not Quirky Anxiety and end their Christmas special on a worrying note for general audiences.

I think The Show staff wrapped up that scene and left to go check on the rest of the set or something, and the Eddie puppet was left there, alone in Wally's room set because its job is done. Except it isn't, and Eddie became aware somehow.

He sees Home, his friend, and something isn't right

I don't know what this is: my first thought was that it was Home's hand crank, and Eddie was seeing but not understanding the puppets behind the scenes

"Sources say, however, that this puppet’s (Home's) eyes could move through a hand crank on the other side of the prop facing away from the camera."

-(welcomehomerestorationproject.net)

His friend's eyes look dead but they're moving, I thought. But looking at it again, it looks more like a microphone stand a Show staff is holding? Some sort of set equipment. Speaking of the set

Wally's room is too big and leads to nowhere. Is this a visual representation for Eddie's mental state? Did they literally turn the lights off on set? Or can he not see everything right now because his poor fictional brain can't handle our reality just yet?

His hands are fuzzy but there's something in them. Something was under his skin just now. They don't feel like his hands.

"Eddie was a live-hand puppet who required two puppeteers to operate."

-(welcomehomerestorationproject.net)

I imagine he's in a limbo of awareness, he's seeing so many things and not quite understanding what they are, and he's getting more lost and panicked

Can you imagine how overstimulating it must be to go from a clean, happy children's fantasy reality to a world with the laws of physics?

The clock's ticking doesn't quiet down and it's constant. He's sweating when nothing is wrong (?). Gravy was poured on the tree ornament, he's always helped do that, but now it's dripping onto the floor and it's making a gross mess. Little things like that don't have consequences unless the script calls for it. Eddie doesn't know that, and especially he's freaked out by the breathing and the heartbeat.

Maybe it's Home's, or his own, or both, idk.

What's curious is that Frank and Sally are fine and talking about the day's events. This means that Eddie should've been fine after the episode too, relaxed like normal, but he didn't get to. He probably didn't even know when they got there or when Sally left.

This image right here? I think it symbolises the scary clash between both realities by now.

2 (Eddie and Wally) or 4 (counting Sally and Home) out of 9 neighbours being aware is too many. Frank wasn't supposed to have to comfort Eddie. The episode was supposed to end and Eddie can see all of it.

(and yeah maybe romance is an additional factor here)

We don't know if people remember seeing this scene on their televisions. Maybe the episode ended as normal for them. The cameras weren't rolling, so currently, we only get to witness the puppets' descent into decay because someone behind the television is Letting The Neighbourhood In, bit by bit.

Maybe we'll get to see all the other puppets go through the same awareness crisis as the website keeps updating. Personally, I don't think there's an ulterior motive for Home, nor do I think any of the puppets are under strict supervision to behave a certain way for filming episodes, like celebrities.

What freaks me out is that they banter with the narrator and do commercials for real products. They're aware of the fourth wall but only because the fourth wall let them be aware. And it even got me thinking about the nature of existing as a concept (they're fictional characters. they don't really exist? Not in the same way individual humans do anyway. They aren't really supposed to belong to themselves.)

Sorry this turned into ramble rubbish, these are just my thoughts, could be entirely wrong about everything. Welcome Home is just super neat and the amount of effort gone into it shows. Lemme know what yall think, kudos if you read this far

For your troubles 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍯🥛🍵☕🍶

Extra note: I don't think they require the puppeteers to function outside of episodes either. They just live their lives chilling, don't even know there's a Show. Maybe there's an explanation but for now I'm content with 'it's magic'.

That being said I've seen other theories about the peas and the isolation of Eddie specifically those are real neat

[wellofdean]

OK, I was going to reblog this excellent post by @luckshiptoshore so go read it, because yes. Yes!! YES!!! But then when I got started my post got super long and I felt bad tacking it onto her post and decided to make my own in response to these tags:

#i am actually a bit obsessed by the whole hunting as queerness metaphor#it’s so clearly something everyone involved in the show is thinking about#supernatural

Gurl, me too! Like go back to the start! By the time Supernatural began, the backlash against the Joseph Campbell Monomyth-style mode of storytelling had already begun in the hallowed halls of USC film school, and yo: I was there at the time of Kripke's graduation, and my best friends from college are full scale big giant time filmmakers now, whose names I will not share on main because it's uncool, and I don't want that attention, but... yeah. I am referencing FIRST HAND SOURCES on this.

But, for a real source? The Oxford English Dictionary places the first use of the term "Queer Theory" in 1990, with Queer Studies as an option in the academy by 1992. I know the kids think it's a new-fangled thing, but Kripke graduated USC in 1996 (I graduated in 1995) and it was ALL THE RAGE by then. My friends read queer theory in their Critical Studies courses in the Film School, I read it in the College of Humanities getting my degree in Literature. By that time, you could not get through that school with any degree in any non-STEM subject without knowing about ye olde postmodern lenses, queer and feminist theory, and without knowing how to employ those lenses.

Queer refers to sexuality, yes, but the word's earliest use (again, according to the OED) is in the 1500's, meaning: strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character; suspicious, dubious.

So, ok, in 2005, Enter Supernatural, episode 1:

Presented? Two brothers. One actively seeking credit in the straight world that is not available to him in the bosom of his family: Stanford, law school, hot co-ed girlfriend, the other bound to his fractured, wounded family by duty, yes, but also by love, living on the fringe, alone, fighting monsters, and chasing after his father's approval, and who has long since given up any dream of being 'normal'. Episode 1 presents Sam's call to adventure, which he refuses when it's just familial duty, honor and love calling him, but accepts when the show takes a very straightforward and very telling path by classically fridging his woman. Ok, now he's on board. Like John, whose motivation is another dead woman, his motivation is revenge. So far so straight!

Dean though: he's different. He is already on the adventure and he was not 'called' or given the option of accepting or refusing because he had no agency when his feet were set upon this road. He does not fit the straight world at all, because he is cobbled together out of love, duty, deep guilt, striving, desperation and fear. This is who he is now, in some elemental, incontrovertible way. It was not a choice for him, he was born to it. His mother is dead, and we later learn, she made the choices that brought them all to this fate. Dean remembers her idyllically, but he is not motivated by revenge, more than any other thing, he wants to be worthy. He wants his father's approval, his brother's love.

Enter Supernatural's main theme: fucked up relationships between men enmeshed in patriarchy, which will eventually expand to include fucking GOD HIMSELF.

And like, there are SO MANY CLEAR STEPS ALONG THE ROAD in season one, and I am not even talking about sexuality and gender here, but there is SO MUCH TO SAY about it in season 1. But I am not talking about that -- I am talking at a structural, narrative level, the whole thing is just fucking all the way queered, yo.

The big climax?

At the end of the season, Dean says: "I just want my family back together. You, me, Dad... it's all I have." He is Sam's mother, John's partner! His vulnerability and emotion is feminized and contrasted with Sam and John's more overtly driven by their more masculine/straight heroic revenge quest. John: "Sam and I can get pretty obsessed, but you always take care of this family." Only that's not John talking, it's Azazel, and Dean knows it is because his father would never forgive how soft he is, how he will always choose love and family over revenge. Then, in the end, the show makes a huge point of telegraphing that Sam is finally aligning with Dean by refusing to shoot Azazel because he's possessing John, and Sam just can't do that to Dean.

Sam and Dean are thus bound together and cemented into a marginalised path, living on the road, haunting liminal spaces and cheap motels, confronting the monstrous everyday. Sam is presented as the brains of the operation, he does research, logics his way through things (masculine) while Dean is the heart who acts impulsively and on instinct and intuition (feminine).

It later transpires that Sam has a piece of the monster inside himself, and Dean has to learn to love the monstrous, he has no choice, because Sam is his brother and then Cas... and, and, and!

Like... I could go on and on, citing ENDLESS EXAMPLES. This could be a literal book. Maybe one you need to read with a magnifying glass like my condensed edition of the OED. LIke, the queerness of Supernatural is DIZZYING and MYRIAD.

But basically? FROM THE START, hunting is a queered version of family, and within that, Dean is a queered version of a Campbellian hero. Hunting is a metaphor for otherness and liminality, and that's even before you say a WORD about sex. It starts in deviation from the norms of family, masculinity and expands from there on so many levels both in story and on a meta level. The story is flesh on queer fucking bones.

I'm so sorry, but anyone who thinks queerness was not BAKED INTO Supernatural and more specifically into Dean from DAY 1 has clearly never seen Dean's insane lip gloss in season 1, and vastly underestimates the cultural awareness of people who write shit in Hollywood, and also the other people who put pink lip gloss on pretty boys in Hollywood. Nothing that gets on your screen wasn't a fucking choice made and approved by a LONG LIST of people who know what they are about.

[twig-tea]

It is such a wild time to be watching QL, there is SO MUCH every day. And a lot of it is really good?!

Today I watched EIGHT different shows, and of them, I was really happy with the episode for all but one. Here are a few words about the ones I had a good time with today:

Addicted Heroin Thailand crossed the first hurdle of adaptation by including the kidnapping scene. Looks like they're continuing to stay true to the source. I appreciated that this scene in particular retained the emotional core while toning down the SA threat (though Hero's desire is still very much present). This is a solid adaptation so far!

Reverse 4 U is using the powers so well, and I am loving the sister relationship, especially how they tease one another around their powers. It's also building to the relationship turn between Four and Wa in a believable way, which I'm really enjoying.

Peaceful Property is delightful and as @lurkingshan already articulated so well, I love what is being set up re: inequality. Plus this show is just so funny! it's balancing these two threads really well and doing a good job maintaining the haunting-of-the-week energy so far.

Love is like a poison had an incredible first episode, I love the effects and cutaways in this show, and the way it is making fun of its protagonist is so much fun. Ryoma is a dork with main character syndrome and I am obsessed with him. Curious how they're going to turn around this setup into a romance!

I Saw You In My Dream was a baller episode, @my-rose-tinted-glasses wrote about how great it is to see a conversation like this between friends as well as between lovers; all of the conversations in this episode were good (between both couples, between the besties, and between the parents). I really appreciate how, as many folks have said, everyone in a relationship in this episode wants to have sex, and the barriers to having sex are real and discussed openly. Big fan of everything in this ep. We've really departed from the dreams, which I think we need to get back to, but this ep was worth the deviation.

The On1y One continues to be incredible; Thank you in particular to Faiza (@usertoxicyaoi) who has been giffing like mad to capture every important conversation in this episode which was so many of them. The one about moving to the dorms together made me misty fr. I love when youths who did not get a chance to have a childhood get to blow bubbles.

Unlock Your Love also started today, I really enjoyed the very pulpy and trope-filled previous show this team put together (Lucky My Love) so I've been excited for this. We have a workplace GL filled with canon bisexuals, a grumpy/sunshine dynamic with a history from college, and a playgirl. I'm so seated.

I don't usually do a roundup post like this but it just hit me how much good television I got to watch today, and how rare it is that I have this good a time with almost everything I'm watching, and I needed to capture the moment.

Tomorrow, all 6 episodes of A Time of Fever drop on iQIYI, as well as How to Make a Million Before Grandma Dies on Netflix, and that's in addition to the episodes of The Onl1y one, The Two of Us, Monster Next Door, Twilight Out of Focus, and probably Seoul Blues that will be dropping too.

I'm really having trouble keeping up with everything airing, everything I want to write about it, and everything being said about the shows on tumblr. It's the best possible problem to have!