#was google image searching this guy and this came up

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

BABY FACE BABY FACE!!!!!!!! KSDJDHG LFFKL WHY IS HE SUCH A CUTIE PATOOTIE

embarrassingly long ramble and wintersberg drawing below the cut:

lmao, I finished the GG playthrough of re8 the other day and uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

anyway yeah. Don't even know what to write about it cuz it sorta overtook me with no warning, and idk shit about resident evil but here we are.

I read mushrooms and magnets on ao3, i did the frowned upon thing and went straight to most kodo-ed (i KNOW it's wrong but i didn't feel like searching!! I just wanted to Read. If I stick around any longer I WILL read other things too), and I feel like that's probably a rite of passage in the ethan/heisenberg wing of this fandom. Blasted through it in like 3 days. Anyway, like, 3 quarters through it I realized I never took it upon myself to see what ethan looks like? I just assumed he had Typical White Guy Face, which yeah, he does, but after an image search.... I never realized he had such a baby face skjdgf sksjfh PRETTY BOY PRETTY BOY

So then I drew him. And I drew heisenberg too, although I need more practice with him. Plus I think I got gassed out for the night, after drawing ethan. it's really hot and it can be hard to remember how to draw for fun after doing so many commissions.

One of my go to drawing visions is one character in profile, and the other character all up in their face in a pseudo profile, 3/4, tilted angle. And idk why I keep doing that, because I fuck it up at least half the time. Ethan looks good here, heisenberg does Not. I need better references of him. Seriously, if someone has a karl heisenberg folder on their phone with a crap ton of pictures of his face from different angles, PLEASE send me some. I need a clear one of him in profile. All the ones on google have his face obscured by his hat, glasses, both, and he's always in dark lighting. Ironic that the one who's face you never see has better reference pictures.

Kinda considering doing a GG animated for the moment where ethan's like "I just want to fix my daughter!" and arin (as heisenberg) says "uh, she's in four pieces," because it cracked me up so damn hard. His voice is so dumb. I love him.

This came outta nowhere but hahaha oh well, my interests change on the wings of the wind (wings of the wind = what the grumps are uploading)

[seat-safety-switch]

With the ever-present rush towards convenience, so many sit-in restaurants are becoming take-out-only instead. Let's be honest: none of us really want to go outside and talk to people in order to get food. Just flip that app and bingbong® yourself a drunk order of fried treats for only $25 in fees.

Pizza Hut was one of the first to abandon the pull of large square footage, throwing millions of nostalgic red plastic cups into industrial grinders in a mad rush to stop bleeding so much goddamn money all the time. Today, those cups are worth $250 on eBay, so they look pretty stupid now, don't they?

The problem with all this is, in the time of our foreparents, it was real hard to fake the existence of a restaurant. If you went to a Pizza Hut, it was a real-ass physical building. It probably had not been copy-pasted together by a bunch of Taiwanese scam artists using Google Image Search fifteen seconds before you appeared. That was more of a Taco Bell thing. Nowadays, you can't be sure. Computers treat bullshit the same as any other kind of shit, so sometimes you'll be ordering from a completely imaginary restaurant. Feels weird, doesn't it?

As with many other cases in my adult life where I figured out everyone was just faking it, I decided to try and make some quick money. Papa needed a new engine, you see, and Slant Sixes don't exactly grow on trees anymore. With just a couple wonky Excel spreadsheets and a glob of code the size of Upper Tonawanda, I was in business with Switch's Fun-Time Pizza, an entirely non-fictitious restaurant whose address happened to be at the same place as a Pizza Hut.

Folks would pay me money, and then I'd quickly pay Pizza Hut to have a pizza ready by the time the delivery guy rolled up. Nobody seemed to care that the box said the wrong thing, and soon I was collecting fat stacks of money for doing nothing at all, just like the platforms themselves. This went on for a few weeks, fattening my bank account for slaughter. Until the first complaints came in, that is.

Yes, friends: it turned out that the local Pizza Hut had hired someone who wasn't very good at washing their hands. Soon, I was handing out big-time refunds on behalf of a massive international corporation, except I was doing so out of my own ill-gotten profits. My rickety, strung-together bullshit engine made entirely out of spreadsheets and chewing gum simply could not comprehend the idea of a refund, much less one for a weak human phenomenon such as food poisoning. Soon, all the money was gone.

Have I learned something from this whole experience? Yes. The most important thing in food service is to wash your hands thoroughly before (and after!) handling the customer's meat. The second most important thing is to charge at least a hundred percent premium over your supplier, to leave room for little hiccups such as this.

That's way easier to do if you position yourself as an upscale luxury restaurant, such as Lord Switchington of Canterbury's Refined Palate Pizza Parlour For Bourgeois Assholes Only, which will be launching this weekend in the very expensive neighbourhood next to mine. Hopefully their Pizza Hut is a little bit better at keeping the bathroom soap dispenser stocked.

[monsoonceroom]

New Spy x Family chapter! Let's Gooooo!

So Damian & co (but mostly Damian) are studying when the above drops. I did google this & apparently 'Mitera' means 'Mother' in Greek, so this is likely their version of Ancient Greece. Pretty neat imo.

With Ostania's economy probably in shambles after the war, I wonder if this boom was partially because of the country's citizens hoping for a way to get back on their feet financially by selling some sweet ancient relics.

It's nice to know that they had twitter in 1960/1970's Ostania. Weak joke, I know.

Anyways, treasure hunting happens & while the boys are in proper attire, the 3 butlers are in suits in the middle of a freakin' forest. This would be absolutely miserable in real life. However, with this being Spy x Family, I automatically assume they're much too professional to allow even a single speck of dirt to sully their clothes & will be vaporized immediately.

Also, it looks like their hair colors are inversions of the kids? Instead of 1 brunette & 2 blonds, it's 2 brunettes & 1 blond. Also that Egeberg butler does look pretty fine.

Shush you! Damian already knows his family life is shit; let him be happy!

It's cute to see them explore the wonder's nature has to offer. Also did they not bring enough water, so they had to resort to drinking from waterfalls? Props for getting it from fast running water rather than a stagnant pool though.

STRRRIKE! Maybe I'm just exaggerating, but I lowkey wonder if Jeeves can give Martha a run for her money when it comes to physical prowess. While not much in terms of what we've already seen throughout the series (especially compared to Yor) I imagine not many people would have been able to use an acorn like a bullet.

:(

Have some food to cheer up, Damian!

Hold up; wild-caught venison? Did the butlers hunt deer while treasure hunting? They probably brought the food with them but the image of guys in suits stalking a deer is hilarious.

Lol, Ewen & Emile are like 'Did he just call us peasants?'.

Damian is calling upon the spirits to guide him.

Oh crap, it backfired & now he's possessed!

Not to worry! A kind spider has come to help!

Maybe the real treasure was the big ass flower we found along the way.

A quick google search says that 'Geschocran' when translated into English means 'Projectile Crane', so nothing too crazy there considering the pistil on that thing. I checked to see if maybe the name 'Witch's Crib' had any real-world equivalent although nothing came up aside from baby cribs & witch hazel. I wonder what the in-universe lore is on the 'Witch's Crib' name?

Goddamn kids these days & their helicopters. Back in MY day we had to wait hours in the car to get somewhere, uphill, both ways in the snow in 180 degree weather.

More sad Damian & Jeeves trying to talk to him about it. Also no one else is home? Where the frick did everyone go? Let's see; Melinda has her own place so she's probably chillin' there, Demetrius is likely studying at a library, & Donovan is, I don't know, concocting evil schemes in his lair or something.

Yooo! Damian's accusing Jeeves of being a snitch! At least Damian forgot he was sad.

KSKSKSKSKSKSKSKSK Looks like Damian tried to impress Anya & then complained to Jeeves about it later. I wouldn't doubt it if Jeeves is feeding Melinda info, but alas, we have no proof.

[mewhenimanangel]

everywhere ʚɞ miles morales

pairing: 42!miles morales x reader

synopsis: miles finally asks to take you out.

wc: 2.3k

warnings!: swearing, kissing, making out, google translate spanish

prev ʚɞ

it'd been a week since miles invited you over and thanks to him, you got your grade up. the week had been full of flirting, whispering and laughing during class, texting all the time, him and his friend joined your table at lunch, and him finding any excuse to touch you.

in physics he kept his knee touched against yours, he would "drop" a pencil or whatever so he could hold your thigh using it to support himself while reaching for it. when he sat behind you in math, you would feel him touching your curls or your shoulder every now and then. when you would pass a paper back to him his fingers always reached out far enough to touch yours.

it was thursday afternoon on the walk home from school, safiya didn't come to school that day so it was just you and miles. "no because why did she say that like is that bitch really insane" you laughed. "shit is crazy for real" miles agreed, grabbing an arizona. you were currently in lenny's bodega heating up a beef patty - the last one how ironic, debriefing with miles about your day at school. "no fighting bout it this time?" lenny chuckled, ringing you guys up. "nah, he willingly agreed to share this time" you giggled.

you continued walking, both of you munching on your respective halves. you said something that made the both of you laugh and miles just stared at your smile, he wants that image stained in his brain. "alright, what. stressing me out with the staring" you joked, feeling a little awkward. "nothing" he laughed off before continuing. "will you let me take you out?" he asked you. all of a sudden you were nervous and looking around with a doofy grin on your face. "okayy. where?" you threw your trash in a nearby bin.

"it'd be a surprise. actually not really a surprise but on saturday, would you come?" he asked. "yeah i'll go on a date with you" you smiled. he pressed his lips together to hide the big smile that was growing on his face. he laughed out "okay alright, cool. i'll let you know the time" "okayy bye" you kissed him on the cheek and went up your block.

ʚɞ

it was friday night and you were rummaging through your closet for an outfit to wear. you groaned out a sigh and grabbed your phone opening miles' contact.

you pressed face time and waited for him to pick up. "yeah?" his prowler distorted voice answered. you looked at your phone to see him on what looks like to be a roof, prowler gear on. "oh shit sorry, didn't know you were doing your prowler stuff." you said, about to hang up. "nah it's fine, m'not busy right now" he told you, prowler voice turning off. "need something?" he asked you. "miles where are we goingg" you whined. "its a surprise, you can't handle surprises?" he chuckled. "i don't know how to dress for surprises. i don't know what to wear" you sighed. "you look good in everything, don't over think it."

"yeah well i wanna look good for you" you rolled your eyes. he scoffed "you literally always look so good, chiquita relax." suddenly there was a loud bang in the distance and he shot his head over his shoulder. "you'll figure it out. aight i gotta go" he said, prowler voice back on. he quickly hung up and you sighed, going to the kitchen to make a chicken wrap for dinner. this was a 3 am you problem.

ʚɞ

you got in the shower to shave, exfoliate, and scrub your body. getting out of the shower, you put on a face mask letting it set before you came back to do your skincare routine. you sat in your mirror to put product through your curls, deciding to let them down past your shoulders.

you finished your makeup and got dressed in the outfit you'd picked after a few hours of searching. you decided on a short strapless black dress and a gold chain belt that hung around your hips and chunky loafer heels. you decorated yourself with two layers of gold jewelry and your mom's earrings she'd given you.

you admired your look in the mirror before leaving to go in the living room. your dad looked over at you and furrowed his eyebrows "where you going all dressed up?" he asked, pausing his show. "i literally told you i was going out tonight" you scoffed, grabbing your purse. "with who?" he asked you. "miles.." you answered in a small voice. "that damn boy again?! y/n you're not-" daddy please, you literally already said yes. plus he's downstairs already. please please pleaseee" you begged, leaning over the chair in his face.

"ughh alright fine! but that location stays on all night and when i call, you answer. aight?" he bargained. "yayyy thank you daddy" you gave him a quick peck on the cheek before running to grab your purse and jacket. "okay i gotta go byeee" you ran out the door, and down the building stairs. you were about to open the door but miles was on the other side about to do the same thing. "oh hey. was gonna come and ask if you were still coming" he joked. "sorry, stuff with my dad" you smiled.

he took the time to really take you in. the way your curls perfectly framed your face, the way your gloss made your lips shine, the way your necklaces graced your collarbones, the way your dress hugged against your waist. "wow. you look amazing..you look like elegant and shit" he chuckled, feeling a little nervous. "here, they're for you" he smiled, handing you a bouquet of red roses. he reached out to hold your hand, leading you down the street. "ahh thank you" you didn't know what to say, compliments made you awkward.

"you look reall good too by the way" you checked him out. he wore a pair of grey pants with a black short sleeve top and jordans, black jacket over it. "tried my best to look as nice. i don't be dressing like that"he shrugged. "well you look very nice anyway" you squeezed his face.

"can you tell me where we're going now?" you asked him going down the metro stairs. "rockefeller" he answered with a smile. "to do what?" you furrowed your eyebrows. "skating" he answered leading you to a seat. "aw i haven't done that in so long. i used to go with my mom" you told him. "i know, safiya told me." he rubbed a thumb over your knuckles and only now did you realize neither of you had let go.

"you're such a sweetheart, i never would've guessed" you said. "what do you mean?" "i don't know. like i would've never thought we'd be going on a date. or that you would be so thoughtful" you shrugged. "i'm full of surprises, chiquita" he said with a smug look on his face. "yeah whatever" you giggled, resting your head on his shoulder.

you were still hand in hand walking to the entrance to purchase your tickets. “okay well now i feel overdressed” you sulked, taking off your heels. “nah you look good. don’t be afraid to show everybody else up” he got in his knee in front of you and helped you put your feet into the skates. thank goodness you wore socks. he looked up at you and the action felt so intimate while he gently placed your right foot in the skate.

soon after he put his skates on and put your bag and shoes in a locker. he took your hand again and helped you walk out on the rink. you were immediately losing your balance, throwing an arm around his shoulder to hold you steady. “aight i swear safiya told me you used to do this all the time.” he laughed. “only sometimes! and i never actually learned” you giggled.

unlike your clumsy and struggling to find balance movements, miles was smooth and moving with ease, hand on your waist to keep you up right. “how do you know how to skate” you asked him. “unlike you, i actually tried to learn” he joked.

for the majority of the time you stayed close the walls using them to move without making a fool of yourself. miles slowed down to match your pace, practically showing off how easy it came to him.

“alright come on” suddenly he was in front of you and grabbing your hands to pull you out in the middle. “alright wait wait wait wait” you frantically put your hands on his arms. “aye you need to learn chica. hold my hands and watch my feet” he told you. you followed his instructions as he pulled you along, yet yours remained unmoving.

he laughed “you know you gotta move yours too right. just copy how i’m moving mines but in the other direction”

he was in control but you followed his movements and eventually got the hang of it, enough to even move on your own. “atta girl, it ain’t even that hard” he smiled at you and you geeked at his praise. he grabbed your hand again and turned your body in a little twirl. which wound up with you falling into his chest nearly sending him to the ground. “aight so we not that far yet” he laughed. he looked at you before pressing a kiss on your lips.

you continued skating until your time slot was up and you got your things and left. “hungry?” he asked you. you nodded your head and responded with a small mhm before he led you down the street to a cozy restaurant.

you sat down and he ordered a plate of appetizers for you both. you talked the whole time throughout the meal, laughing your ass off. he excused himself for a moment and you kept your eyes on him watching as he found your waiter and told him something.

he came back after a minute and sat down and you guys got back to talking. after a few minutes your waiter came back with two plates, one with a raspberry brownie with fudge and one with strawberry caramel cheesecake - your favorite. he put the plates down and sent a wink to miles before walking away.

you looked down at the plate and it had the words ‘will you let me be your boyfriend?’ written in caramel drizzling. you gushed and bit your lip to hide the huge grin that spread across your face “ohh my god i thought you were literally never gonna ask” you giggled. “is that a yes?” “yes, it’s a yes” you smiled. he leaned over to the table to kiss you, hand placed on your cheek.

you finished your desserts and miles paid the bill before you left the restaurant. you practically couldn’t stay off each other on the walk to the subway station, you arms were wrapped around his and when you complained that your feet were hurting he leaned down so you could climb on his back.

you sat down on the train and he rest a hand on your thigh while you laid your head on his shoulder. “still got one more thing to show you. you down?” he asked. “yeah, for whatever”

you got off and he led you back to his graffiti site. “now how i’m supposed to climb that fence in these heels” you twisted your mouth to the side. he chuckled. “i’ll go over first throw them over the wall and i’ll hold them till you get over duh”

you followed his instructions and hopped the fence before leading you down. there was a wall, once blank now decorated with your face, detailed and big across the wall. you looked so beautiful through his eyes. he moved up next to you and took your hand in his. “ughh you are so..” you didn’t finish your sentence you just put your hands up to his face and brought your lips to his in a heartfelt kiss.

he wrapped his arm around your waist to pull you in closer. his other hand moved to push your curl out of your face and at the back of your neck to deepen the kiss. his hand slid down to your ass making your lips part slightly and his tongue slid in your mouth. the blaring sound of your ringtone made you jump and you sighed seeing it was your dad calling. “hey baby, you on your way home yet? it’s getting late, think you’d better come inside” he told you.

“okay i’ll see you” you answered, hanging up the phone. “it’s my dad, he wants me home” you sighed. “alright let’s go” he said.

you hopped the fence again making your way out of the station. “your feet still hurt?” he asked you. “a little bit” you answered. “well then hop on madame” he joked, leaning down so you could get back on his back.

you talked the whole way home, literally talking his ear off as your chin rest by his shoulder. “sorry if i’m talking too much” you said. “no it’s okay i like listening to you.” you smiled and buried your face in his shoulder, hiding the giddy expression on your face.

he got to your apartment building and gently put you back on the ground. “i’m really glad you asked to be my boyfriend.” you told him. “i’m really glad to be your boyfriend” he smiled. you held his face and pressed your lips against his before pulling away. “goodnight miles” you said. “good night, hermosa” he said back, easing away as you walked in your house.

taglist ౨ৎ

@prettypink-princesss @itsnotino @r3d0n33 @iluvprowlermiles @jmsanchoo @stevenknightmarc @melllinaa @444morales @noetophat @bigdikzaddy

[moonshynecybin]

what would you consider essential marc and rosquez watching? i don’t mean races but the stuff happening around it, there seems to be so much and idk where to start 😭

BIG ass question. i think it depends what you want outta this and how you best interact with content slash consume information. for me (not to brag but. winner of multiple historical essay writing competitions in high school. for context on the kind of freak i am bringing to the table here.) the research is kind of the fun part ! like i just started googling shit! i would go to inactive blogs and just search 'marquez' on them to see what would happen ! a lot of the times that works ! but it also takes a lotttt of time lol so i'll chuck some good resources your way, why not...

okay im not sure how basic we're talkin here but um. background. so the documentaries are, i think. the best place to start. theyre entertaining and offer a good amalgamation of clips to provide context for the actual racing. and like i know you de-emphasized racing (which is fine lol who cares) but it really is like the most important thing in the world to these fools and its a pretty visual sport so i think its at least helpful. like yes sepang IS about the press conference, but its also about the conversation they have ON the race track using their motorcycles. which is also somewhat a conversation that they HAVE been having all year long...

i'd start with hitting the apex (2013), its a GREAT introduction to the "characters" that does a lot of legwork to contextualize everything. lays the scene for where vale is at coming into his relationship with marc (both personally, wrt to marco simoncelli, and career-wise concerning his flop at ducati), and also how insane marc's whole deal is in general. the second half is. materially a study on what him entering the premiere class did to the sport as a whole. the introductory chapter in many respects

marc marquez: all in. MY introduction and blissfully free online. marc comma in his own words, with all the implications of that. a self-produced documentary where he is giving feedback about the edit of said documentary straight to camera and no less vulnerable because of it which is very marc imo. revealing both intentionally AND unintentionally about his whole deal with injury, vale, and his image.

motogp unlimited. im gonna be real kind of boring. like i would still watch it ! but do it kind of later, once you know the major players so youre automatically more invested. it doesnt really give you more than marc says himself in all in tbh, and i get the sense him and vale were NAWWWT interested in doing more than the bare minimum for it.

marc's rookie doc. free and subtitled on the youtubes. the first half of this is deadass just him wanting to fuck vale so bad while every comment from vale has me saying GIRL. out loud because the foreshadowing would be genuinely shocking if this was fiction. anyways the laguna seca of it all....

next i would hit up PODCASTS ! i think it makes sense after the documentaries, because these are all podcasts that arent strictly about rosquez (even if they are in many ways the main characters lmao) and personally it helps to put faces to lesser known names that might pop up before i listen to a purely audio product and get lost in the soup of sounds. the paddock pass podcast has two retrospective episodes about the 2015 season that are really good at context, oxley bom pod has a fun recent episode on valentino that i love, again just poke around a lil

videos. these guys have never filmed a lot of content together tragically. what i wouldnt give for someone to make them do an escape room. anyways ranch visit HERE (post explaining the ranch visit here). sepang presscon (sowwy) here. vale unhinged podcast interview the month after marc's documentary came out here. vale retirement interview where he gets asked about marc here. vale talking about asking marc to the ranch here. vale postrace at argentina 2018 here. UCCIO postrace at argentina 2018 here. theres a lot moreeeee just go on my blog archive and filter for rosquez and vids its easier lol

journalism. hello. okay so you should genuinely spend some time reading through mat oxley's stuff he can write (theres a paywall but you can run that shit through wayback machine). he also loves an insane comparison which i do enjoy.... again this is one that can be solved by googling his name and tacking on 'marquez' or 'rossi' or a specific time period or race it will probably reap some dividends. in terms of specific ass articles this one is kind of load bearing in terms of sepang and some of the interpersonal competitive tensions at play. that being said there are manyyyyyy crazy interviews and snippents of articles from other journos floating around motogp tumblr (like literally too many to link) adn its fun to dig around to find them, but mat oxley gets a shoutout because i was reading this article TODAY !

other content. honestly one of the best resources I'VE found for plotting out the arc of their relationship is @kingofthering's everyrosquezpodium series. you can REALLY see it play out lol. also her tagging system rules she very neatly lays out years and races... so if something jumps out at you, CLICK ITTTT ! also all of @ricciardoes fave presscon moments series. insane.

all this to say a small little rpf fandom like this rewards some digging! i would just recommend following narrative threads that interest you ! its also a small fanbase that is pretty research oriented, so if youre ever confused about somethin, just shoot an ask or run a search on someone's blog (@kwisatzworld has endless vale resources and @batsplat is one of the most thorough researchers ive ever seen, for example) like for real theres so much... i also have a primer that i made forever ago that has some links on it so you can peruse that if you so wish. but frankly a lot of it is just using those research muscles and being sufficiently deranged enough to be screenshotting reddit threads at one am so you can post them to tumblr because they mentioned marc and vale in the same sentence and that lit up some of the neurons in your brain

(and i know you said outside of races but i think theyre good benchmarks as turning points soooo you should do some diggin on laguna seca 2013, jerez 2015, argentina 2015, ASSEN 2015, sepang 2015 obvi, argentina 2018, and misano 2019. those are the big tentpoles of insane rosquez relationship drama imo. i mean theres many more but. im limiting myself.)

[the-hydroxian-artblog]

I love your animatronic toy OC guys so much, they have so much personality to them and their colours are really good (especially umbra)

Thank you! The funny thing about Umbra's design was that while I was developing it about two years ago and had some colors in mind, I described in text what I already came up with to an image generator for fun (shitty unconvincing old kind, vs now where it looks like shit but in a somewhat more convincing way) and it produced something so silly that I made her design better than what I would've settled with out of spite.

More details of my process and anti-AI ranting below the cut, so the examples given won't show up on search results. Google Images is getting polluted too much with slop to begin with.

Let's begin.

In 2022 I was drafting up Umbra's design with mostly concrete details. At this time image generators were newer and much less convincing, and I was a bit less aware of just how unethical they were, so I fed one a text description of what I had drafted for her design out of curiosity. Something along the lines of, "doll of an anthropomorphic owl librarian in glasses, blazer/suit jacket, skirt, corset, high heels, sitting on a bookshelf" and probably a few more terms. Really specific, lengthy prompt.

I try to be open-minded and give new things a shot, but the results were Not Great. Ideally, I'd want to not share the AI pictures at all on-principle, but I feel like it's useful, transparent, and necessary to show them. Both as a means of not hiding anything, but also just to appreciate where the design is at in spite of it.

Outside of this particular collage of Weird Owls, no other pictures on this blog are AI-generated. AI Image Generation is harmful, and I am against its usage.

But hey, two of the generated pictures look close, right? The top left is the closest, and bottom right is second.

That's because they started out worse, and I had to actually erase chunks of them and have the generator fill in the blanks to get anything remotely close to what I wanted. Misshapen limbs, unrecognizable anatomy, fever-dream clothing details, etc. They didn't even have a corset or proper legs until I slapped the generator in the face enough times to make it produce them. I was just using it to photobash, which was such an annoying process, I just went "this is dumb" and stopped. They're literally posed like that because I kept erasing and regnerating their limbs until they looked vaguely in-character. It literally only looks passable thanks to STRANGLING it with human input.

Before I used the image generator, I already drafted her to be night-themed with yellow eyes and something like purple, dark blue, or sky-blue as her main color; the generator making one owl yellow-eyed and purple was a happy coincidence, and the only thing the generative AI "came up with" that I didn't already have in mind or included in the prompt was the light blue shirt, which I did adapt into her cyan shirt and stockings/socks as well. That was a good call. You get One Point, Mr. AI.

...Which still meant that at its absolute best, it was a largely redundant step in the creative process if its contribution was worse than what a randomized palette generator or character creator could come up with.

That's already putting the ethics of it aside, like carbon emissions, data pollution, using artists' and photographers' work without credit or permission, the incentive to plagiarize, flooding sites like deviantart with slop, Willy Wonka Shit, etc etc etc. When people say "you can use AI as a tool though", this ordeal was enough to convince me that it's more trouble than its worth, even in its most ethical usage. I feel gross for having even tried. I wish I knew what sources went into the creation of those Weird Owls. It'd be better for research if the right people could be credited.

Nothing else on this blog is AI-generated or ever will be. The art below is purely my own (2022 vs a few weeks ago)):

Actually drawing Umbra and solidifying her design was far more rewarding than having an image generator vaguely approximate my own ideas. I wanted her to look really special, so I used a black cape and pants, gold highlights and buttons, and blue undertones to make something more distinct. Also, neck floof. Very important. I wanted the head in particular to look distinct and original, going with bold black streaks to really help her look distinguished.

I also have certain inevitable Hydroisms for Fancy characters like her; most apparent in these designs for Chasey and Kaita from even longer ago, which were more of an influence than anything else. (Old art of mine from like 2021, Kaita ref looks wonky but Chasey still holds up nicely):

Most of Umbra's other design elements were already commonly used with established ocs like Kaita, like her shape language, corset, skirt, heels, etc. It was my previous work with Chasey that inspired the use of gold buttons and highlights.

Umbra is also now a bluer shade of purple partly to distance the current design from that ordeal. All things considered, I'll probably make her more indigo next time. I already wanted her to have a wide color range from the get-go (Featured below is, again, purely my art from 2022:)

I may use a different colored shirt and stockings in the future. I like to think she has many different shirts and clothes based on the different stages of the night sky, from dusk to dawn, and the painting I made in the top right there was an exploration of her range in different lighting.

All in all, it's frustrating. I'm proud of her design, but explaining all of this is annoying, because it's technically all relevant to showing how her colors were picked and how the design was made. I still technically have AI to """Thank""", in the way you thank a bad experience for encouraging you to make things better out of spite.

[strawberrycheeks-and-glasses]

Listen to Me

Tsukishima x f!reader | rated E | 5k

Summary: Failing one of your classes, you remember a flyer you saw on campus offering ‘on call’ tutoring sessions. So, in your desperation, you call and develop a crush on the guy’s voice on the other end. Pretty soon, things start to heat up.

A/n: this is very self indulgent porn tbh, pls don’t judge me but I had a craving for a voice kink and the thought of Kei whispering in my ear gave me goosebumps. So~

“Hey there,” the smooth sounding voice on the other end of the phone says, sending a shiver down your spine.

You had seen a flyer on campus for a call in tutoring session a while back and as a joke, you snapped a picture of it for future reference. Well, good thing you did because guess who’s failing chem?

“H-hi,” you hesitate, being completely thrown off by the sound of this guys voice.

“Hello,” he greets again. “Did you need help in a subject, or are you one of those girls who call because they heard I have nice voice?”

“People actually do that? I mean you sound, like a normal guy,” you shrug, fiddling with your pencil.

“I’ve been told my voice is soothing to the ear,” he replies. “Not too deep, but not too high, and with a tone that is both unbothered, yet still attentive.”

“I just meant that you sound familiar, is all,” you scoff a laugh, rolling your eyes at how pretentious he’s sounding.

“I get that a lot,” he chuckles. The sound vibrating through the speaker tickles your ear. “Was there something I could help you with?”

“Oh, right,” you almost forgot why you called in the first place.

Talking you through your chemistry homework like he’s in the same class, he teaches you how to find the compounds and use your graphic calculator with ease. And, yeah, okay, his voice is kind of soothing, but he doesn’t need to know you think that.

“Holy shit, I think I understand now,” you laugh, amazed at how simple it actually is once it was explained in a way you could grasp. “You’re pretty smart aren’t you?” You tease him.

“Well, yeah,” he says, and you can hear him rolling his eyes at your stupid question.

“Okay, nerd,” you playfully insult him.

“This nerd just saved your ass from failing chemistry,” he rebuttals. “And the next time you have to call me for help, I’m charging you. Only the first one’s free.”

“Ugh, fine,” you say, pointedly, ending the call.

Please read the rest on ao3

Also, I’m not sure who to credit for this pic that my friend had saved from Pinterest, the artist is no longer active on Twitter and there is no watermark or signature on the art (I even reversed Google image searched and nothing came up), but if you know who made it pls lmk so I can tag them or link their art!!

Anyway, this is the Kei I think of when I wrote this fic, just to get an idea of why I needed to write this fic 💁🏻‍♀️ (also, my friend said Kei biting on the pen is slut behavior, and I agree I agree I agree)

[where-did-the-groove-go]

Okay, so I've been lucky enough to encounter a Volkswagen Thing irl on more than one occasion since constantly keeping an eye out for them in the past couple years, after first becoming aware of their existence as what Ron still stubbornly drives to this day. Actually, the first one I saw was a VERY lucky sighting, but I didn't even realize it was a Thing until afterwards. Because I'd been looking for something that looked like Ron's car. Not THIS:

That's the Acapulco Thing, which was briefly sold in 1974--only about 400 of them--after being designed to shuttle guests around at a couple of high-end beach resorts in Mexico. In retrospect I probably should've realized a lot sooner, because my reaction upon seeing it had been "What the heck is that THING?!" It dawned on me a couple days later, just because you'd be hard-pressed to find any other car that boxy, though a quick Google image search hadn't pulled up any with the surrey top.

(My second Thing sighting was much more as expected and obvious; it even had a decal plastered on its side which read "The Thing".)

Several months later, thanks to the Boss Accountant showdown being posted here, I found out that the Thing is a relatively rare car. Which prompted me to spend a few days fixated on reading about them. Then I was finally able to put a name to the Acapulco variant.

Something else I learned... Turns out that if you're anywhere near LA and you see a Thing that looks like Ron's, it almost definitely is.

(I say "near LA" only because I doubt Ron is doing any serious roadtripping in it these days.)

A bit of backstory: the Thing was advertised as a fun car. A beach cruiser, a safari car. Aimed at surfers and hippies and other adventurous types. It's a convertible. The windshield folds down. The doors can be taken off.

That's not the impression I initially had of the Thing, and perhaps with good reason: Ron's is a bit unique even among Things. For one, it has the less common factory hardtop on it, instead of the convertible one. Additionally, in 1974, black was not a stock color for Things. They only came in colors suitable for 1974: orange, yellow, white, and avocado green. Which means that more than likely, Ron specifically wanted his black (because of course he did), and would've had to go out of his way to get it repainted or find one that had already been repainted. A full repainting job is no small feat for a Thing because a lot of the metal is exposed inside the car, meaning that everything has to come out of it to have the interior repainted--and we can see that Ron's has.

Anyway, I just think that makes it all the more poetic. Not only does Ron's car reflect his personality in being "a little bit out of the ordinary", but his black utilitarian ride is a brightly colored beach-mobile in disguise. Nothing more fitting for a guy whose crisp shirts and ties and slicked-back hair and quiet demeanor would never belie it now but one of his formative experiences was spending the 1960s surfing.

So if you're ever feeling sad, just remember that Ron is driving the same car as the Acapulco Thing.

[sweetmariihs2]

About being an artist and an hyperfocused fandom person in public (this ramble has to do with Cedric the sorcerer. I saw a dude with his haircut in public. Weird stalker demeanor I would say from my part but here we are):

Some months ago I was at my grandma's house, in a neighboring town, and we took my little 6 yo cousin to her friend's party. Me and my gramma were just there chilling and eating snacks from the party, talking to some people she knew and everything. When I simply looked around to the people in the party and I saw this guy with Cedric's haircut. I've never seen someone with this haircut irl like ever. It was IDENTICAL except that it was full black instead of having white bangs.

The little curve up that Cedric's bangs do in the exact middle and fall to the sides. The back of the hair was like — the hair on top of the head was longer to give some volume while the hair on the bottom was trimmed to be shorter and stop at the nape of the neck, but not like in a low fade way, in a CEDRIC WAY. The whole hairstyle was exactly the SAME as Cedric's with no flaws except for the color. I would also like to add that in order for your hair to naturally look like this (so that your bangs don't fall flat and fall over your forehead like regular bangs do) you need to purposely style it with hairspray every morning or be born with your bangs naturally like this.

When I tell you I was so shocked my jaw dropped. It was >>>identical<<< to what Cedric's hair would look like in real life, in every possible detail. Because I'm an artist I kept looking at it and studying how to draw Cedric's hair which at the time I had difficulty doing. Ngl helped a lot. But then maybe he started to notice and I stopped because I didn't want to look weird. (look? im naturally weird you don't need to look)

I know the guy in person I just don't know his name or anything. He's a regular cis hetero guy, who dresses regular, has a regular life, works as a waiter, I know this guy from a restaurant I went to because he's one of the waiters.

I tried, when I tell you I really tried, to find an image of something slightly similar on google, but I couldn't find it. I can't even illustrate my thoughts. I've been searching for a pic since that day but never found. I don't even know the name of the haircut

Imagine being a random normal guy and your normal daily haircut just casually looks like Cedric The Sorcerer from Sofia The First (His skin came with a rare item)

[leofiat-bunny]

After The Scene™

Then

Chen Yi woke up, stumbled through getting dressed, and - when he couldn't find Ai Di - checked his phone. Then he sees the text from the night before. He sends his guys out searching for Ai Di while he goes to hq to speak to Boss about BZY.

When Boss tells him what happened - a bit exasperated but not surprised that Ai Di didn't let him know - he doesn't yell at Boss mostly because he's frozen. He's stuck trying to process "Ai Di will be in prison for as long as BZY is, which will be some years".

Since then he's been more uptight than ever about never setting a foot wrong. When he messes up THIS is what happens. He's legit traumatised by it.

(As said elsewhere, it's no small miracle Chen Yi didn't give himself alcohol poisoning after losing Ai Di.)

If someone else went over his head to leave the gang he'd be annoyed but accept it.

But Ai Di can't go over his head because Ai Di doesn't belong to the gang, he belongs to Chen Yi.

Now

Chen Yi doesn't understand why he's being avoided because "Ai Di thinks I hate him" requires "Chen Yi hating Ai Di" to be a concept that computes and he'd have an easier time dividing by zero.

Chen Yi has long accepted that if Ai Di kills someone, that's on Chen Yi for not being there to stop him.

Of course "killing someone" and "betraying Chen Yi" are very different propects.

As for the betrayal of taking advantage of his drunken state, I don't think Chen Yi will process it like a normal person would. He was raised in a gang. It would be more strange if his moral compass wasn't a bit wonky.

Yes, he could process it by switching their places but I'm not sure he'd really allow it to rest with him?

Almost: if my pet bites me, that's bad; if I bite my pet, that's unforgivable?

(He doesn't think of Ai Di as sub-human or stupid, that was just the best simile that occured to me)

Even if he really allowed it to sit with him, by far the greatest betrayal was leaving.

Meanwhile

Ai Di will do anything to avoid hearing Chen Yi say "I hate you". He knows😒 it but he can't take hearing it.

Except Chen Yi came for him, brought him back, prepared his favourite foods. Ai Di doesn't know what's going on but he does know that hope has no place here.

He's unforgivable and maybe Chen Yi wants to hear Ai Di's excuses before passing judgement, maybe he's been telling himself that Ai Di would never have done that to him.

Ai Di can't stay for the realisation.

He has no place by Chen Yi's side and never will again and he deserves whatever Chen Yi does to him but he can't.

Ai Di is collarless and will remain that way until he's ready to stop running.

Soon

Are we recovered from ep 9? No? Shame, I wanted to break you again.

Well, I have (spoilery) ammunition, so I'll give it my best shot.

I trawled their youtube channels for clues and!!!

(Partially ninja'd because I am a slow bunny)

Next ep

Better pic of outfits for colour convo:

And then

Chen Yi has a tried and tested way of getting Ai Di to come back.

And it still works. Quelle surprise.

Until

Remember what I said about collars? I thought that before finding this and I just lost it.

Give the wardrobe department a raise. And a bonus. And shares. And a prize.

But what is he trying to pinky promise?

"Even if you die tomorrow, you must wait for me to die first. Only then can you die."

"One second. I will give you just one second, then I'll follow."

(I transcribed the subs: 就算你快掛 也要等我先掛 你才能掛

一秒 只讓你一秒 我隨後跟上

According to google translate:

Even if you die quickly You have to wait for me to hang up first Only then can you hang up

One second Just give you a second I followed later

Then I tidied it up a bit, hopefully without moving away from the meaning

I found an official sub where they translate it as

"Promise me that you won't die before I do" "One second, Then I'll follow up right away"

Bonus point? Guess which outfits are in the cover image:

They got to privacy but not home 😊)

[gaysindistress]

I love u like I’ll get on my knees 😍😍😍😍 CAN U PLEASEEEE PLEASEEEE do TFAWS!Bucky x Latina reader?? maybe more specifically Brazilian?? we need some rep 🥺🥺 HAHA actually though like reader is good friends with Sam and Sam introduces them? Please, and thank u the dead love of my life

AHAHHAAHWH MY FIRST REQUEST!!!! thank you so much love!!

Okay okay so here’s a little Drabble for ya! I feel like this could be a full one shot?? Maybe after my follower celebration that starts on Friday! Also I wrote this on my phone so I apologize if there are any spelling/grammar errors.

Anjo -Portuguese for “angel”

mãe - Portuguese for “mom”

Warnings: cursing

Word count: 1.2k (this was only meant to be 500ish words…)

disclaimer: credits to original creator/poster of image/gif. found on google/Pinterest

“Please tell me that you didn’t text him,” My coworker asks with an edge of dread and disgust in her voice. For the last two hours of our shift, Lilly has been on me about the guy who left me his number yesterday.

It had been a slow day with only regulars really coming in so a decent looking young guy walking in felt like Christmas. Lils was on it and immediately put on her best flirt, fluttering her big eyes and matching lashes at him when he ordered. I wanted to laugh at the scene but that died when he flashed a smile my way and handed me his number. It was quickly followed by some passing comment about how he hates it when girls throw themselves at him. I had half a mind to throw his coffee on him but I knew my boss would have my head. I settled for plastering a fake smile on my face and saying “Vai pro caralho.” Of course the ignorant asshole thought I was being nice and winked at me. It took all of my strength to not shutter in disgust.

“You should know me better than that,” I throw back at her, “from that 2 minute interaction alone, I can already tell that he would talk about himself the entire date before saying something borderline foul like how Latinas girls are his favorite and he can’t stand white girls .”

Lils snorts as she takes a sip of her coffee, nearly choking and sending the hot liquid flying over the freshly cleaned counter. I arch a dark brow at her which makes her laugh even harder.

“What? Am I wrong? You can’t tell me that he wouldn’t have pulled out that high school Spanish to impress me.”

“No, no,” she stutters, wiping the coffee up, “it just caught me off guard is all. Wait, didn’t you say something to him in Spanish before he left? What did you say?”

I narrow my eyes at her, “Vai pro caralho? Babes you should know better.”

She looks at me in horror, “oh my god it was Portuguese, wasn’t it?”

I nod as she profusely apologizes, “I am so sorry, Y/N. Oh my god I’m not better than that asshat. Ugh, what does that mean though?”

The front door opens before I have the chance to speak and the little bells above alerts us to the one regular that never fails to put a smile on my face. Sam had been coming in since before I started working at Brewed Awakenings but after that first interaction, he came pretty much daily. He even got Sarah his sister to start coming in and within a matter of a few weeks, I was invited over for Sunday dinner.

“It means Go fuck yourself,” I tell Lils as I round the counter with a bright smile and wide arms. Sam matches me and wraps me into a tight hug.

“Good morn, Anjo. How are you?” He asks as he squeezes me into this chest.

I pull back and give him my best angry mãe look we I demand to know where he’s been for the last few weeks.

He holds his hands up in defense as he says, “put those eyes away, Anjo. Im sorry okay? I was on official business and I didn’t have time to swing by to let you know but I’m back.”

I don’t let up my expression at first and lecture him some more, “You better be. You were gone for like…”

I pause for dramatic effect to pretend to count the time while walking back around the counter, “6 weeks. I was about to send out a search and rescue team to find you. Ridiculous.”

Sam chuckles while shaking his head at me. He steps to the side to reveal a man that’s been standing behind him and one that I hadn’t noticed before.

A damn attractive man.

Albeit a bit judgmental given the looks he’s throwing at the both of us.

“I wasn’t gone that long,” Sam tries but stops when I shot him another mãe look. He quickly changes the subject, clapping his hand on his companion’s shoulder and introducing him, “well this is Bucky. He’s the reason I was gone so if you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at him.”

Bucky.

He looks familiar but I can’t quite figure out why. The massive resting bitch face forced me I stop the search before offering him a bright smile as I repeat his name.

This seems to…irritate him? I honestly can’t tell with the stone wall of moodiness and brooding that lives on his drop dead gorgeous face.

“Well welcome in Bucky, I’m Lilly but everyone calls me Lils and this is y/n,” Lils jumps in with an equally wide smile. His dark eyes flicker between us but hover half a second longer on me. He utters a low “thank you” and looks up to the menu.

Sam rolls his eyes at his short answer but his ever present smile never fades as he orders his usual, a large hot mocha with soy milk. I’ve tried to get him to switch to coconut or even hemp milk but he refuses. He always gives me the whole speech about how “soy is the closest to real milk and if I’m going to drink alternative milk, it has to be close to the real thing.”

“And for you?” I turn my attention to Bucky while Lils starts on Sam’s order. He looks me with slightly wide eyes, a little startled it seems that I’m still talking to and looking at him.

He freezes for a moment, “uh…um a large house coffee.”

“Of course,” Lils jumps in once again and slides a cup across the counter to him. The loud volume of her voice causes him to flinch and Sam instinctively steps in front of him. He takes the cup without another word and fills it while Sam pays and throws a shamelessly flirty smile to Lils. She mocks faintly in a fit of giggles and winks at him.

Sam turns his attention to him and subtlety jerks his chin towards the door, wordlessly asking me if I’ll walk them out. Lils caught it too and rolls her eyes before shooing us out the door.

“She means no harm. She’s just…cheery,” I tell Bucky when the door closes behind us and we step onto the side walk, “I can tell her to tone it back for when you come in next.”

Sam chuckles under his breath and tries to hide a smile behind his cup but fails miserably. Bucky shots him another one of those bored looks and rolls his beautiful eyes at him.

“You don’t have to do that,” he finally says to me and actually makes eye contact with me, “Y/N.”

I offer him another wide smile and stick my hand for him to shake. He glances down at my watch and rings before taking my hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, Bucky. Don’t let Sam fill your head with too many tales and I hope to see you soon.”

The man in question basically squawks in protests as I hug him goodbye and disappear back into the coffee shop.

About an hour after I get home, I get a text from Sam saying something along the lines of “Robo cop liked you and asked for your number.”

Moments later a D.C. number sends me a text and I quickly save it under “Bucky (aka Robo Cop according to Sam)”

That’s when it clicks who he is; Bucky Barnes, the former Winter Solider and the most attractive man I’ve ever met.

[cinnabean3]

Here’s the thing, as happy as I am that Colin’s alive, it makes sense that he will probably die (or quit and refuse to reach out and share his knowledge) now that we have a piece of the puzzle. Of course, this could all be us seeing stuff when it isn’t there, and he’ll survive until the end. I don’t know though, I feel like he’s at home now because something happened and he figured it out. I think the ‘He’ from the episode is FR3-D1 or the head of the OIAR, and I think he might’ve hidden at home to avoid getting hunted down or framed (brutal pipe murder reference) or something.

Because he’s definitely figured something out. All that talk of alchemy in the episode, the symbols on the logo, and this.

“Not too much mercury or the world ends, not too much sulfur or we all go mad.”

That’s the spirit (mercury), body (salt), and soul (sulfur). Yes I am American and say sulfur. Unfortunately

My tiny little theory (tell me if it’s obvious) is that these all correspond to a specific catagory. Catagory 3 is the body, the objects like the dice or the stupid capitalist stonks game. Catagory 1 is the soul, the people who are the Externals.

I’ll admit I was in between on whether Cat 1 was mercury or sulfur, because maybe the Externals are more likely to kill or take over, which would end the world, it’s not a perfect theory, but I was convinced by the first search that came up when I googled the alchemy Tria Prima.

I’ve got the image attached at the bottom since I’m not enough good with Tumblr to know how to continue text under an image. Sorry

But what it says is that sulphur is the seat of emotions and desires, and that reminds me of two things: 1, the theory that the Fears have changed to desires, and 2, the idea that Avatars are less pure to their chosen Entity than objects, because emotions get in the way. Cat 2 is places, and I feel like those are the closest to actual Entities (keep in mind I’m using the Smirke sorting for fun and clarity, I believe in Gerry and his color theory). What also makes a bit of sense then is what Colin said about too much mercury ending the world, as the Fears coming into the world literally led to its end in TMA.

But if you’ll check the amount of each Catagory, I’m pretty sure 2 is the most common one. Maybe that’s why the OIAR has Externals, to prompt them to act when balance needs to be restored. Maybe the Magnus Institute was in on it, and Artifact Storage uses one of their items whenever the balance is too low. Maybe it’s like the rituals and there’s no need for a balance at all. Either way, we’re all gonna cook up some new theories now. Thanks for listening, and feel free to comment any theories that you have, because I’d love to talk with you guys!

[serendertothesquad]

Seren's Studies: Odd Squad UK -- Episode Titles! Crackpot Theories! Venting! Excitement?

Honestly? I expected at least something from Odd Squad UK. It's the first of August (at the time of writing), advanced schedules have been put out and now go through October...I mean there was bound to be something, right?

Well, yes. Inverse Pandora's Box. (Or is it an actual Pandora's Box, given my criticisms?)

Episode titles. Synopses (of the basic kind). That promo image up there that came from PBS Kids themselves after I tweeted about my findings. It's like going to the bathroom after having not been in it for nearly a year, opening the door, and suddenly being hit with a flood of bathwater coming at you. When I say there was absolutely nothing of substance that I could dig up over the course of that time beyond a 30-second trailer and a Kidscreen Magazine image that everyone and their mothers use to talk about the series, I mean it. Go ahead. Go punch in "odd squad uk" into Google and get back to me with how long it takes to see my username in the search results.

I'm going to set aside my Seren's Study about PBS's mistreatment of Odd Squad and shift gears just a little bit. This Seren's Study will cover all of the theories, discussion, and thoughts I have about these episodes and characters, in lieu of a Seren Reacts video (an XP-era laptop does not good for OBS Studio recording make). You will see me scream, cry, melt (shit's hot outside), and ask if I can put any of this on my job resume.

Before we begin, I'm going to warn folks that there will be spoilers ahead for those that haven't seen the episode titles and synopses, nor the trailer for OSUK. If you want to take a peek at those, I made a handy-dandy Google doc here. As for the trailer, I made a Seren's Study on that a while back.

Oh yes, and I'll be referring to Odd Squad UK as a whole as a series, not a season. Technically, it is a spinoff series, just marketed in America as Season 4 of Odd Squad.

All right, warnings are out of the way...now we can dive in. Less'go!

A Refresher

Let's get caught up to speed on what we know so far. Couldn't hurt, y'know?

Odd Squad UK -- or Season 4 of the regular Odd Squad series, in the delulu minds of PBS Kids execs -- is a spinoff series of Odd Squad, following Odd Squad Mobile Unit (Season 3). The premise involves a girl named Orli, an Odd Squad agent working on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls who is transferred to a precinct in the UK to boost numbers and help deal with the rise of oddness. She eventually partners up with Ozzie, an agent of the UK precinct, and begins working under one Captain O, a Director who loves anything nautical and aquatic. From there, we see a lot of other characters who take the spotlight -- deadpan Security agent Orwell, quirky Scientist guy Onom, a Chef O, and a girl in a rather mysterious department.

Keeping in line with the reputation of Britain having series with shockingly low episode counts (there's even a trope for it!), Odd Squad UK has 12 episodes in total, the lowest of any season/series to date. However, the crew is open to making more episodes if there is enough demand for them -- a cliche that has plagued a ton of animated kids shows as of late due to the flakiness of the industry.

...That's really all I can give you in the way of a refresher. So let's move on to what the episodes contain.

------------------------------------------------------------

What's the Story, Seren?

Press releases and articles for Odd Squad UK have touted focus on Orli. Once. Exactly once. By all accounts, it seems like the focus of the series is on her struggling to fit in with British culture, customs, and of course, their wacky mathematics. That, however, is not the case -- instead, Ozzie is the focus of the series' story arc.

...Yeah, it has a story arc. They're pullin' an anime with this one and I don't know if I like that.

The arc features Ozzie and his relationship with the Terrible Three, a villainous trio of (what I can presume are) youngsters who seek to spread oddness throughout the town. And guys, I feel obligated to put this tweet from my moot here:

Because they're right. On every single account. This leads into my first criticism, which I will compile at the end. Moving on, though.

Due to that arc, a majority of these 12 episodes feature villains in some kind of capacity. This is not unusual for Odd Squad as a franchise, of course -- villains to them are what air is to a living being. Goes hand-in-hand, and there are many episodes that have villains as antagonists. What is unusual, however, is having well over half of your episodes feature a villain in a major capacity, and while I do love myself a good villain, it seems like one hell of an overdose.

Outside of that, though, the series will feature Orli attempting to fit in to British life. Because after all, she isn't just transferred to the UK -- she has to upright pack up and move nearly halfway across the world. Which I won't deny is a nice premise...but again, 12 episodes.

Enough complaining, though. Let's move on to what I'm sure y'all came here for.

------------------------------------------------------------

The Episodes, or: Netflix is Quaking in their Boots

ISS' CRACK THEORY TIIIIIIIIIME.

In this section, I'll go over each of the episodes revealed thus far, share my thoughts, theories, and what I, for one, hope to expect. (I'd use the colloquial "we", but different strokes for different folks and not even I know what's gonna happen.)

So let's dive into our very first one...

------------------------------------------------------------

Odd Ones In

James Rallison is marching his way on over with a nice fat happy lawsuit as we speak.

...Okay, I kid. He's not. He knows about PBS Kids, but trust...trust me guys, he is not suing anyone.

While this synopsis, like all the other synopses PBS Kids has ever put out ever, is barebones, most of the stuff in this episode can be gleaned from the trailer. The episode is split into two parts for a 22-minute episode in total.

The first part basically deals with Orli transferred, and by extension moving, from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls to good old Britain. Touted as being "the best agent in the world" to help solve oddness, the British agents realize that she sure as hell can't stand on the same pedestal as the thirteen already-existing living legends do, especially since she has no idea how the fuck British people go about their lives. The second part features Orli and Ozzie teaming up to deal with a creature known as an Icy Mousey that is freezing agents left and right.

Let's be honest right out the gate: this is already a better premise for a 22-minute season premiere than "Odd Beginnings" was in 44. And yeah, I know "First Day" is similar, but Olympia didn't have to move to an entirely different country when she graduated from the Odd Squad Academy, y'know? Nor was she branded a "best agent" because she wasn't one yet. Here, we have Orli becoming a Canadian transplant who echoes the sentiments of everyone who has ever traveled to another country and failed to do the research beforehand. Which makes sense, because she's supposed to be an audience surrogate.

I really can't discuss this episode at length without heading into the next episode, though, because it ties into that and the trailer. So, may I present:

------------------------------------------------------------

A Dish Served Odd

Died in 2015. Born in 2024. Welcome back, Seren Taking Food-Oriented Odd Squad Episode Titles to Reflect Episodes About Food That Are Not About Food At All.

*the longest sigh I have ever taken in my life*

Following up from the season premiere, this episode takes a look at the UK town of [REDACTED], where Orli wishes to explore. Most of the stuff in the trailer is taken from this episode, up to and including the alternate-angle image included in the initial press release of Orli and Ozzie telling someone to "stop right there". We have Orli fighting a woman for tour bus tickets using Rock-Paper-Scissors (and I am not talking about the Nickelodeon cartoon, thank you), Brits attending an Odd Squad movie event, and The Trifler.

...I mean okay, there's more, but the hell do you think I have, an eidetic memory or somethin'?

I do find it odd (hehehe lol obvious joke) that an episode out of 12 is dedicated to Orli learning about her new hometown. I get why -- if you discount the fact she does not magically learn all about a goddamn country within a day, she really needs the tour, and we really need the tour, because Let's Go Luna got the axe and someone needs to pick up the slack -- but to not, say, expand "Odd Ones In" to include a tour seems like a waste, especially since the "watch our shit or the show gets killed off" guillotine is hanging over this franchise's head. You can compare Toronto to this -- I'm a dumb lil' American who sees Canada as the land of free healthcare, maple syrup, and a choir of red-shirted children singing "O Canada" with an orchestra in the near-dead of night. Seasons 1 and 2 take place in Toronto, though they never say it outright. There's signage and places that scream Canadian. So why, then, did we not get lessons about Canadian culture? Because if Olive and Otto took the time to teach me lessons about Canada, the writers probably would have fumbled the bag and ruined the world tour story arc of Odd Todd. Which...wouldn't really be a good thing.

I don't know. My opinions will probably shift when I watch the episode itself. At the very least, it's gonna give us McDonald's product placement, which will give me good leverage the next time I roll up behind an asshole in the drive-thru.

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Odd Jubilee

Not to be confused with Ruby Jubilee, a popular pegasus character from G5 of My Little Pony. This is her...odder cousin.

...No, actually, if you think about it, it fits, because Pinkie Pie and Olympia. Bite me.

So this episode is the start of many, many Ozzie-centric episodes. Which, given whom this series' story arc is about, makes sense. In this one, "Party Agents" (Party Department?) arrive with a box that, of course, contains a party. Like Pinkie Pie's party ca- okay, you know, I joke a lot about Olympia being Pinkie Pie (and I even have a pretty smeggin' good fanfic goin' about it right now!), but the comparisons are fucking writing themselves here. Lest we forget this franchise made a Friendship is Magic reference back in Season 2 with Party Pam's balloon colors.

But I digress. The conflict of the episode comes in the form of Ozzie, who has the key needed to open the box. Unfortunately for him, and for the rest of the UK precinct agents, he's vamooshed and needs to be found.

...If this isn't tying into the story arc, shove an apple into my mouth and send me to Walmart. You couldn't put a sign on any episode here that wouldn't make it any more obvious that there's a story arc. At least Season 1 was humble about it and kept all the 43s hidden as cool lil' Easter eggs. (Season 2 stumbled a little. Season 3 was when shit hit the fan and the smell and the sight of it was made obvious to everyone.)

I might as well get this out of the way now: there's a bit of a problem when it comes to whom, exactly, the series focuses on. We have a core cast of seven main characters. The franchise as a whole is notable for focusing on two agents in particular, mainly two Investigation agents. Orli is an audience surrogate and we're supposed to see the world through her eyes. Ozzie has a bitch-ass past and a wild-ass story arc, hence why he gets the most focus. While residing in seasons with higher episode counts, Olive and Otto, as well as Olympia and Otis, have an equal balance of screentime between each other, despite two of them having an ongoing story arc.

So lemme ask: who am I supposed to focus on here?

Looking at it now, a core cast of seven main characters instead of the four we've gotten before is a great shakeup, but not if you have 12 episodes and a threat of cancellation hanging over your head while your body's infected with Network-Don't-Care-Anymore Disease. Even the synopses alone tell me that this is 100% going to be a hell of a mess, and more than one main character is going to be lacking in the character development section.

Maybe I'm being a little too cynical, especially after Odd Squad Mobile Unit. But this is a franchise that is going on 10 years and made a "jumping the shark" joke only 3 years in. Odd Squad is not immune from rot, so I'm not surprised when it happens.

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The New Ozzie

Congrats everyone, we now have a name we can pin on the Mysterious Department Girl. Only took us nearly a year!

Opie -- not to be confused with the Opie from Season 1, mind you; different gender, precinct, and department -- is in the Department of Help and Human Services and is being promoted to its topmost position, called a Head. (The Season 3 episode "O For a Day" implied there were head agents of departments in Odd Squad, but nothing was outright confirmed in terms of the organization as a whole -- it likely was exclusively for the Seattle precinct.) Ozzie, who was the previous Head of the Department of Help and has since moved to the Investigation department (neither a promotion or a demotion; both departments have the same shape with the same number of sides), needs to help her learn the ropes. Problem is, he also has to solve oddness in town. What do?

This episode pretty much solves the question of "is he wearing an H on a hexagon or is that a bridge?" It's an H. The department's logo is an H. I can't even be mad at that, but I'm not happy about it either. Ozzie was a leader, and now he's a run-of-the-mill Investigation agent, which could raise some interesting conflicts given the story arc. It can be a superiority complex. It could be the "British people evil" cliche. Or it could lead to absolutely nothing. It's 12 episodes, take your pick.

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Bad-Luck-itis

Okay. They paid the "Find the Cure" fee. Can they please get their paychecks and go the fuck home already, guys?

Seems the gadget competition video served as some weird foreshadowing, if you replaced Orli and Osgood with Captain O and Orwell and the Mondays with...well, Bad-Luck-itis. Basically, Ozzie becomes a walking disaster area, and his partner, plus another agent named Osgood, have to find ingredients to make the cure.

This can reasonably go one of two ways: either we get an episode that's a direct copy, or we get an episode that's actually unique and puts a spin on things. Until we get a bigger and more explanatory synopsis, it can go either way, and, well...we don't right now. So I can't really say much about this. I will say, however, that given "Off the Clock" from Odd Squad Mobile Unit, I'm hoping "Bad Luck-Itis" "Bad-Luck-itis" can keep up the pace. That was a solid episode, for what it was worth.

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The Triangle Sisters

Not to be confused with the Triangle siblings from "Crime at Shapely Manor". Thass'...thass' a whole 'nother ball game.

There's really not much to this one either. The synopsis tells of Orli and Ozzie attempting to hunt down villains -- the eponymous siblings, natch -- who have stolen shapes from a museum. That's about it. Either this is "Crime at the Britain Museum" or it's something unique. Like with "Bad-Luck-itis", it's too soon to know yet.

...But that wording is very suspicious, given Ozzie's story arc...makes you wonder.

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Miss Information

Ah. Three for three with the "is originality as dead as chivalry" comments.

This one concerns "Bad Lemonade" in particular, in that it's about a villain using bar graphs to bring some kind of harm to a character. Imagine Odd Todd, then imagine him slandering an entire pseudo-government organization instead of just Polly Graph. Now make him an adult woman, and you've got this episode.

If they really wanna spice it up, they could slip in some wondrous British social commentary that dumb lil' Americans like myself would never get. But Odd Squad as a franchise has never really been about that (I am slapping the word "really" so hard my hand is red, thank you), so here I'll sit in my delusion for two months.

...Also, Canada slander. Just to get under Orli's skin.

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A Dicey Situation

Oh yeah, we had a Director character, didn't we? Let's employ her in a- ohhhhhhhhh, it's another one of those episodes.

Look, I love "Totally Odd Squad". Provides some excellent backstory for Oprah, gives us some lore as to the inner workings of Odd Squad as an organization, and it had O'Donahue flirting with his boss in one of the most expressive romantic things in the entire franchise. Same goes for "Fistful of Fruit Juice"; I loved that too.

On a more negative note, if you've ever seen my Seren Reacts video on it, you'd know that "Mission O Possible" is on the lower end of the ladder for me. Among other criticisms, it's a parody of Mission Impossible that utterly bombs due to network restrictions and poor choice of central character. I'm not exactly banking on "A Dicey Situation" to parody anything, but I'm not holding confidence that it's going to be good either.

At the very least, the villain's name is unique. If her last name is Doubloon, I'm hoping we can get a financial math moral that can put me and the rest of the fandom at ease when it comes to the sheer irony of this franchise tackling every aspect of math but finances. You can't say "kids today don't wanna work anymore" if the shows made for them are too afraid to teach them about a new app called The Fucking Dollar Bill.

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Lift Off

Now here's where shit gets good.

Imagine, if you will, me, going to Japan to buy some Precure merch and not understanding any cultural customs.

Now imagine Orli in the same spot, in Britain, with elevators. Oops, sorry, lifts.

Here's a fun fact some of you may not know: there was an episode with a working title of "See You Later Elevator", all the way back in Season 2. No one knows what that episode was turned into, if it went beyond the script and name-registering stage, or what it was about. And while it was made sometime in 2017, predating this episode by a good 7 years, it makes you stop and think for a moment about if "See You Later Elevator" did get past the script stage but was retooled to fit Orli instead. Depending on who you ask, it's at least a better title than "Lift Off".

This episode could best be summed up as "how does Britain work?", as Orli must send an interdimensional clam (God did not create enough animals to populate Europe, clearly) back to its home but has trouble working the lifts because they're different from the elevators she had in Canada. And I gotta be honest, folks...this might be one of my favorite episodes of the entire series. 11 minutes of Orli being a silly ding-dong and toying with a machine that can cause immediate death is gonna be real fun to watch. (Only...y'know...no gore. For obvious reasons.) It's like if you had 11 minutes of Orla trying to figure out some item in the modern world and kept messing things up, and I'd enjoy that too in spite of what I think about Season 3.

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A Tour of Odd Squad

Not to be confused with "Welcome to Odd Squad" from Odd Squad Mobile Unit; I'm sure this episode won't be as bad as this one.

...

I'm overshooting the mark, aren't I? Shit.

Old-timers to the fandom might remember all the tours held of the studio set the first two seasons used. In-universe, "Disorder in the Court" is the only episode I can vividly recall where a tour is offered someone who wasn't an Odd Squad agent. As a freebie, to boot. (When I first saw "A Tour of Odd Squad" as a title and its synopsis, I was under the impression that tours given to non-clients and non-agents were not a concept that existed. I was wrong.)

This episode, however, has an Odd Squad Superfan tour. A bit of a different breed, though if you want to believe the Odd Squad Superfan Tour exists in "Disorder in the Court", feel free! I know I will.

Basically, it's a "spot the imposter" type situation. One villain has come into the tour in disguise as a fan of Odd Squad, and Opie must stomp them out. This is another episode that raises quite a few suspicions concerning Ozzie's story arc, because we don't know if it's a child disguised as an adult, a child that looks like a child, or an adult that looks like an adult. The synopsis doesn't tell us that much. If it is a child that looks like a child, though, I have to wonder if they'll pull an "I'm separated from my mommy and she's in the group, help me get back to her" gambit. It's a villain trio that describes one of the worst periods in a parent's goddamn life. Kids are smarter than most would think. I can envision it.

Good premise either way, though. I look forward to seeing how things play out.

I am also expecting as much meta commentary as Oprah did in "First Day". Hey, they did it once 8 years ago, and I wanna see them do it again. Clap back!

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Club 37

Not to be confused with Club 24- okay, look, this is fucking annoying and I can't keep doing this. Just set your bars low, people. Set them seven feet from the ground and call it a day.

Oy...okay. So this episode involves the exclusive titular club. To gain access, an agent or a partner pair must solve a total of 37 cases, which Orli and Ozzie must do. Because...in 6 episodes, they haven't solved that many? There goes Orli being Odd Squad's best agent to stem the rise of oddness in the UK.

...I dunno, guys. You think the crew saw my "What Odd Squad Got Past Censors" video, realized the implications of Club 24, and made a kid-friendly variant instead? It's a very slim chance, next to nonexistent, but I can't help but wonder. After all, not every day you see two preteens enter a nightclub where the line is full of solely adults.

This episode does have a few similarities to "The O Team", though, just in the way Olympia and Otis have to solve a select amount of cases. Hoping it isn't a retread, because "The O Team" was a great way to shine some light on two side characters and "Club 37"...isn't. PBS synopses do not pull red herrings, people.

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Odd Way Round

Go ahead, take a shot for every "odd" pun they make in this season. At this point, Popularity Papers did a funnier thing with their Odd Squad title reference. (And also has better, more inspirational titles than just making puns out of "popularity" and "papers".)

Putting aside the title, though, the episode has a pretty straightforward premise -- Orli needs to get to the Odd Squad Test Center, but is repeatedly stopped by villains as she's trying to get there.

All right, first question: exactly what does Odd Squad need a Test Center for? I'm not buying that it's a British thing, because even with my dumb lil' American ways that's the stupidest shit I ever heard. And second of all, how the hell are they keeping that shit staffed? Who's staffing it? How much money does the Britain HQ have in the bank to keep that shit staffed?

Best way I can really sum this up is that it'll be 11 minutes of battle scenes with a payoff of her coming to the Test Center and being told "lol your test is on another day". Not exactly enthused, but I'm not going to actively hate it out the gate either.

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Strictly Odd Dancing

Now this. This is the kind of punny shit I live for with this franchise. It's another "odd" pun, sure, but it's also a pop culture reference very few people would get. Hell, it took someone in the Odd Squad Discord server to tell me they were referencing the British version of Dancing with the Stars! This is what I like!

Moving on to the premise: the episode features two minor characters, Ostin and Olyla (you'd think with the latter name, PBS would be all over it...'cuz Lyla in the Loop and all that), who tell a story to some agents about how they went from "singing and dancing gross" to "singing and dancing great" due to a villain's influence.

It's...another storytelling episode. Which, again, I'd be fine with, if there weren't 12 episodes in the entire damn series. Focusing on minor characters (not side characters; "minor" here refers to oneshots) is nothing new for the franchise, but most episodes that do it are in seasons with high episode counts. This series does not.

Let's be honest for a moment: the only saving grace this episode has for me is if we get a musical number. It's a singing and dancing episode. It'd be a crime not to have a song. LET ME HEAR THE BELTING OF THE BRITISH CHILDREN, GOD DAMN IT. I DESERVE IT.

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Villain of the Year

If this synopsis refers to Ozzie as the "unlikely villain", I am going to throw myself onto my front lawn, scream into the grass, and let the ticks consume me.

And that's not even getting into the other times we've gotten award mentions and episodes. Do we really need a villain variant of the Agent of the Year award that Odd Squad Book of Games introduced? What is point? Why is point? I was fine with the villain report cards Season 2 introduced! Leave it at that!

I'm just...I'm tired. Only a select handful of these synopses are inspiring confidence in me. If Season 3 came up with more original synopses than this series, with a return to form, does, then we're in trouble. That is with a capital T. A T as big as the Titans Tower, that's right.

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Planes, Trains, and Oddmobiles

God this is a good pun. God I love this pun. Best title of the franchise, hands down. Even beats out "Assistants' Creed". Took them ten fucking years to make the pun, but...it's here, and I love it. It barely even relates to the episode from what I can tell from the synopsis, but damn if they didn't do good.

And speaking of the synopsis, this one has a sort of similar plotline to "Nature of the Sandbeast" from Odd Squad Mobile Unit, in that there is a female creature with eggs missing who is incredibly pissed off and is seeking to harm anyone and anything until she gets them back. That episode had the titular creature; this one features a Huggle Monster. That episode had Orla, Osmerelda, and Omar fighting off the creature; this episode has Orli and Ozzie. Not exactly a repeat, but we'll see where things go.

...Okay, I'm taking my above comment back about the title not relating to the episode, because I just figured out what the math moral is.

It's about which mode of transportation is the fastest: a plane, a train, or a car.

I don't know whether to cackle because kids can't drive either of those things (and for "car", I'm talking about big-boi cars like Audis and Toyotas, thank you), or clap because they made a pun that encapsulates the math moral.

God bless them.

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Part of the Furniture

Now here's an episode title I really am scratching my head about. It's not a pun. It's not some kind of typo. It doesn't relate to the episode as far as the synopsis goes. It looks like a lost memo from a Bob's Discount Furniture employee meeting.

You wanna know the best part, though? The episode deals with Orli joining a bunch of clubs but not having time for all of them and helping Orwell at the same time. Which...I...look, if she doesn't join some kind of furniture-related club, then what is point? Is this some British pun I don't- ah fucking hell, it's a British pun I don't get, isn't it. God damn it.

Not really much to go off of with this one, but man is that title gonna be eating away at me for the next two months. I have to sleep at night, people. 15 years of sleep deprivation weighs on a person!

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The Odd Ness Monster

Look. The Oddverse has kraken. It's only justified that it'd have the Loch Ness Monster, too.

Me, I'm just surprised it took them way too many franchise installments to get to this point.

The synopsis for the episode, however, is a little confusing. The best I can gather is this: Onom and Orwell are doing something when the Loch- shit, the Odd Ness Monster wakes up. From there, they have to put it to sleep before it destroys Headquarters (which, I will remind you, is fucking underground and doesn't need much protecting against a creature commonly depicted in fiction as a seafarer).

It's incorrect, but this is PBS we're talking about. Wait until mid-September when we get stuff from the BBC.

Outside of the "destroying HQ" stuff, I look forward to seeing how a Scientist and a Security agent with differing personalities handle Odd Squad's take on Nessie. I guess the Britain HQ lacks a Creature Care department, otherwise either Onom or Orwell would be replaced.

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Oddtober the Thirteenth

Died around 2016.

Born 2024.

Welcome the fuck back, Oddtober.

For those out of the loop, Oddtober is the name of an event PBS Kids held to celebrate Odd Squad having new episodes in October. Because, y'know, they actually loved the show back then and didn't treat it like shit. The event died off when Season 2 premiered and was replaced by a more generalized "Celebrate Halloween All Month Long with PBS Kids" event, which has been in place for years now and covers multiple shows on the lineup. And now it's back, in episode title form.

If this wasn't intentional, you're lying to my face. If this was intentional, you're giving me a chance to gloat.

But what about the episode itself? Well...it's not another Halloween episode, unfortunately. It's not even airing on October 13, which sucks, but...that's a Sunday and PBS Kids doesn't premiere new content on a Sunday in most cases. The episode's premise is actually pretty unique -- the British agents wants a day off from oddness, which villains are, surprisingly, more than happy to give them...provided their happiness meters break the limit. To do this, agents throw them a party.

I...another party episode? Really? The fuck were they celebrating over in the writers room, the fact that Odd Squad got greenlit for another season and PBS didn't kill it off like it was forest game? I mean it's a good thing to celebrate, but again...12 episodes. And the crew was the one who gave the "you want more OSUK stuff, watch what we got to offer" ultimatum to begin with!

Given the title of the episode, though, I expect things to go down south very quickly. At the very least, we know where it falls on the incredibly messy franchise timeline.

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Agent Overhill's Last Day

Oh, another episode focusing on a minor character. I'd actually spit more fire at this if it weren't for the fact that this episode inches the line closer to the season/series finale. It's up in the air whether the "one last villain" is Ozzie or not. However, I can appreciate the use of "Overhill" as a name. As in, "over the hill". As in...someone who is old and past their prime.

...Yeeeeeeah, 10 fuckin' cookies they won't touch on that shit. Established rules for that haven't changed in 10 years, and just because it's Britain doesn't mean it'll be changed. I do like how they're willing to go further into retirement from Odd Squad after only featuring it for a one-off gag or an offhand mention here and there, though.

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The Ne- Wait, I Mean The Other Ozzie

And the prize for Most Unoriginal Episode Title goes to.

Seriously, there are a host of puns involving the color purple they could have gone with. Instead, they pulled from a previous episode title and changed the goddamn adjective. Now there's something to confuse the kids.

But what is the episode about? Well, Orli's being featured this time around, partnering up with an agent named Oz from the Movie Star Dimension to find out who is turning civilians purple.

I'm going to shove the elephant in the room out the door and let it go back to its native habitat: this Oz has absolutely no relation to the Oz from Season 1, nor Ozelprazelwixelmist from Season 1, and if you believe otherwise then I will respect that but you are wrong. Realistically, they could bring Oz back, especially since Odd Squad Book of Games brought him back via a mention and...well, he's an invisible agent, so there's no need to cast another kid to act physically. But this episode looks to involve a counterpart of Ozzie, which neither Oz nor Ozelprazelwindowsmistplay is. And I highly doubt they'd bring the latter back from the "silly lol gag" dead and put them in a major role.

Putting that aside, though, this episode actually contains what is known in TV Tropes parlance as a Mythology Gag, which is when a franchise references previous installments that are not canon to the work containing the gag.

In this particular case, I'll direct your attention to the pilot. Some of you reading this may have seen it, others may have not, and others I probably melted your minds just by telling you it exists. (Mass apology to those people.) At the beginning of it, Olive explains what Odd Squad is and what they do, coupled with slides that show oddness in action. One of these incidents is a family and their dog, who are all colored purple.

And thus, you have the basis for this episode.

Given how the pilot and Odd Squad UK have different staff and different prodcos, I don't know if this was intentional or not...but Tim McKeon is at least working on it, so it makes you wonder. What better way to celebrate the franchise's 10th anniversary than a throwback to the piece of media that started it all 12 years ago?

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Three is the Oddest Number

Huh. Did I just crack the code for why this franchise is keen on four-person teamups? Because it feels like I just cracked the code for why this franchise is keen on four-person teamups. (Okay, fine, five if you count Odd Squad Mobile Unit with both Oprah and Orpita. But this episode's not called "Five is the Oddest Number" so weh to ye.)

Anyway, this episode kicks off the two-part sea- sorry, series finale. I have no confirmation it is the series finale, but I've seen PBS Kids execs throw this franchise around like a ragdoll for the past few years and I can see a very clear path ahead. Almost crystal, even.

This is an 11-minute episode, similar to past season finales ("Who is Agent Otis?" as well as "Odds and Ends", "Sunny Sides Add Up" as well as "Old Odd, New Tricks"). Here, we're introduced to the Terrible Three in proper, who begin to bring their reign of terror upon Britain. We also get to see why Ozzie seems to know them, and unravel the story arc.

Again, I will refer to my Twitter mutual's tweet at the beginning of this post, and reiterate that the "main character knows the villains somehow" schtick is getting a little old. They would have had something good going with Olando if they didn't fuck things up, because that story was actually kind of unique. (Yes, discounting that Olando is a male Orla.) If they want people to watch Odd Squad UK so it gets more episodes, then they better hit a homerun with this go-around of an apparently popular story.

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Should Odd Acquaintance Be Forgot

I won't lie: before I found out what this title was alluding to, I genuinely thought PBS fucked up on the grammar. I thought, "Shouldn't it be 'Should Odd Acquaintance Be Forgotten'?"

But lol, no...it's a reference to a lyric in "Auld Lang Syne". God bless Google. God bless search engines.

This episode, the second part of the two-part series finale that is 22 minutes in length, picks up where "Three is the Oddest Number" left off, natch. It seems that the Terrible Three have broken into Headquarters and are close to securing a win against Odd Squad, but have hidden from the agents, who need to find them.

...I don't know about you, but I'm getting some Secret Catch Teenieping vibes. Only, y'know, there's no "the Teenieping is hiding in one of three objects". The episode could lean that way, though...wouldn't be unlike them.

In any case, the second half of the episode has the Terrible Three still on a rampage, opening up some containment units that will spread oddness throughout the town. The Britain HQ's agents are now forced to answer the question that I'm sure they'll be asked: "Oh yeah? You and what army?"

By finding other kids to help them.

...I know exactly what the fuck you're thinking right now and I'm here with the thorn in my foot squashing your hopes and dreams and letting the thorn go even deeper in.

If you have ever seen any reaction I've ever had to "Odd Together Now", you're probably aware that I died a little inside. With the ending involving clips of past seasons, even moreso. The Seren Reacts video...I had already gotten up once and came back when they showed Olive and Otto. That ending made me want to physically leave my house. And I have depression.

Smart is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wise is not putting it in a fruit salad. Peak intelligence is realizing that nearly every single child actor that has been on Odd Squad is now too old to reprise their roles and then not begging for them to come back. I want them to come back too, but that's what fanworks are for. Fanfics, fan videos, animations and skits, all that jazz. It can be done. Hell, I've made fanfics with Odd Squad characters. Other people have too. There are Odd Squad fanpieces all over the 'Net, if you look. Some are good, some are bad. But the fact of the matter is that they all have the creator's own personal brand of creativity to them.

But fanworks are a topic for another Seren's Study on another day. For now, I'll just say that I hope they go out with a bang with this one, for being only 12 episodes.

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The Future of Odd Squad UK: Cancellation or Resuscitation?

I will forever stand by my theory that Odd Squad UK was birthed merely to fill a quota, and the extra win for SSE and FRP of financial gain. But the quota part is what I'm specifically focusing on, because when it comes to this franchise, my ire largely falls with PBS Kids execs. Last I read, Sara DeWitt wanted about twenty shows by end of year. I lost count somewhere around March, but I don't know...if you count the season premieres (and Lyla in the Loop), I'd say it's nearing or exceeding that number.

...No, actually, they probably do count season premieres. Look at our very own OSUK.

The issue with PBS Kids and OSUK is something I'm setting aside for another Seren's Study that is currently a work in progress. However, it's no surprise that execs frown upon Odd Squad as a whole and include it in promotional media only for gratuity purposes. Like a way to remind the audience that yes, however creator-driven they may be, they do own the Odd Squad IP and they will shove it up as many hairy nostrils as humanly possible.

Because of this, it's entirely up in the air whether Odd Squad UK will get greenlit for another season, maybe with a higher episode count than just a meager 12.

...You would think. Bitch you would think.

It is worth noting that this is a coproduction, so PBS didn't solely produce this -- BBC Studios Kids and Family had a hefty hand in it, because, y'know, it's their own damn fault country. Hence, it's largely up to them whether Odd Squad UK will continue. And unlike PBS, they salivate over ratings over most anything else, and Odd Squad's is pretty well up there...so it does make you wonder.

Either way, I can't reiterate this enough: if you want OSUK to continue, watch it. TV, on the app, through official streaming services, anything that's legal. Hatewatch it, even; like I've said before, hatewatching is a nice happy form of reverse psychology at work, and everyone involved on OSUK could not even give a shit about you satisfying your curiosity if you gave them Bezos level of monies. Every little bit counts.

As for me, I'm not going to hatewatch OSUK, but rather, I'm going to try and go in with a relatively open mind and then rip into episodes accordingly. We do still have that gadget competition results video coming in September, so that'll be another tease that people who have read titles and synopses can see. And then they can judge the quality of the show itself with that in mind, of course.

If you've read all this and digested it and didn't just click on the links above, then thank you. Expect another Seren's Study on PBS's mistreatment of Odd Squad as a whole franchise soon.

(Would you believe me if I said I wanted to take a break for August? But the franchise never sleeps, and apparently neither do I.)

Seren out.

[amphibianauthor]

⭐ I'd love to know more about the process behind the HTML for the phasmo fic! How did you come up with the idea to do 'invisible text'? (And anything else you want to share)

I'd love to share more about the coding undertaking that is Case File 8008135 co-written by the amazing @that-fall-guy, (Sidenote: It did an amazing directors commentary of the whole writing from it's perspective, I really appreciate how he broke down the fic (even if I am exposed a bit lol). We are both really really proud of the magic we were able to make in a very short 3 week timespan.

This got Very long, so see more commentary under the cut <3

Alright so a bit of background, before this fic, I had only dabbled a tiny bit with HTML in fic--Mainly through coding my choose your own adventure fic. However, I enjoyed writing that HTML elements so much that I had gone out of my way trying my best to collect literally every single HTML Ao3 reference guide I could.

Now when Fallguy suggested we do an Epistolary fic because we both shared a love of unconventional formats, it's like all of the puzzle pieces fell into place. I had the perfect skillset to add all of the HTML so long as I was determined, and it had the perfect skillset for audio editing, image editing and remarkable phasmophobia gamer skills to get the evidence photos. (Fun fact: I have never played phasmo at all. All of my knowledge comes from streams. I barely have touched minecraft myself even)

One of the first things we did was plan out an ambitious bulleted list of different types of evidence we could include in the case file. We came up with several classics almost instantly--Newspaper clippings about Sunny Meadows, Police Reports, Group Chat texts, Medical files, Photos with descriptions, Witness statements-- but also knowing exactly what I had guides to already was a big help in adding more of the unconventional formatting--email chains, Yelp reviews, Case closed stamp, Ghost hunter Certificate, Google search history. Some of the ideas that were suggested but we felt didn't fit correctly were using a Minecraft respawn button pop-up, an apocalypse game-mode trophy and an unfolding trifold letter for the HR complaint. I also at this point preemptively said I could maybe do both a youtube video layout and the Ghost text, but I was very uncertain if I would be able to pull off those elements (I'm so so glad I did though).

After making a game plan, we wasted no time writing all of our artifacts. One of the first things I wrote was the Dr's Biography's-- I wanted to establish a set of evil doctors that were both terrible but wholly at odds with one another. I gave Dr. Hels Knight an 'mad-scientist experiment' vibe and Dr. E.V. Ilxisuma a 'sterile-clean-keep-status-quo' vibe which Fallguy took and ran in terms of journals and Medical logs later on.

I decided we needed a receipt from Kwik Trip and Ghost hunting equipment next. (Ironically these were some of the hardest things for me to code and make authentic despite how small they are. I spent a good few hours googling kwik trip receipts to find the formatting, and then I had to eventually format them myself. )

I made the Police Report descriptions of artifacts, HR complaints and photo descriptions next. I had fun including different folks Impulse has played phasmo with, and Fallguy was so amazingly kind to grab phasmo screenshots for photo descriptions I had written.

I did a majority of the Group Chat texts and Radio Transcripts. I am so so lucky Skizz has established nicknames for all of the GIGGS crew that make it both really easy to tell who's speaking and also makes the group chats feel like a personal group chat. The reason made the phone that was found be Skizz's is also for this reason--so I could use 'Me' instead of making up a nickname. Close observers will notice that he does have a nickname in chat of 'Sir Skizz' in the top text that says who's in the group chat.

Our detectives were a very last minute addition in terms of plot surprisingly. We both planned to have a group of police investigators on the case from the beginning, but we were kind of under the idea that we were going to use either Hermits or other mcyts to fill those roles. (You can kind of still see the remnants of this in the fact that Sparklez is the head Police Chief or that Cub is the evidence collector for specific items.) However as the transcripts started being written, I quickly realized I needed two OC characters that were stupid(/pos) in order to make the plot work. I literally wrote them as A: and B: for most of their lines in the radio transcripts. I am very thankful for Fallguy for giving them actual names referencing proper detective themed media.

The whole thing took me over 12 hours to code (there was a day where I coded it for 8 hours straight), and fallguy graciously helped me with coding a bunch of the repetitive radio transcripts so I could work on other parts of the fic. By itself the workskin is over 3k words, and I had 2 different docs for coding the fic (one for just the workskin and comments on how to use (aka the HTML formatting) and the other as a pastebin for formatting the fic. The pastebin page is very hard to actually read with how much formatting is there.

I am very lucky that Fallguy did the hard work of organizing where each artifact would fit into each other to make the best possible viewing experience. I was also very lucky to have so many tutorials to follow so I wasn't coding this from scratch. (This fic would not be coded if I had to create my own code, I am still very much a HTML novice in my eyes.)

Okay instead of commenting on code specifically in chronological order, I'm going to section them based on how easy they were to code or not.

First, the easiest: Glowing Text-- Are you surprised? Cause I certainly was. Glowing text was one of the Last things I added into the fic, (We had small amounts of lines we 100% wanted to include but a majority of it was me winging what I wanted them to say specifically. I was extra nervous when I was tackling these because the guide I was using from InfinitysWraith is an absolute complex masterclass in HTML and I very much was not confident in getting it to work. I should make a mini-tutorial on how to do it, because it's very very easy to use. The Ghost glowing text actually has extra effects of changing fonts when hovered so that's why it shifts a bit when you look at it. My favorite line I think I included was the ghost text of Skizz saying "Eat 'em up G!" when Grian was sniffing out the officers lies or "If police were called every time I screamed like that I'd be answering the door in my birthday suit" found in Scott's witness statement. "What was that about sitting on the bone, Dop?" is also a pretty good one.

Second: Therapy Journal and Newspaper Articles Surprisingly easy copy from the source code, only real difficulty was finding extra font families to use for back up cursive text.

Third: Appearing Images: TBH Fallguy's job of editing these images was harder than putting them in, since InfinitysWraith's tutorial was fairly interesting to use, even if the spinning page was hard to look at to grab the CSS from.

Fourth: Group Text. The tutorial I used is an amazing tutorial and already was coded in a way that was good for both light and dark backgrounds. I highly highly recommend using irrationalpie's Group chat workskin.

Fifth: Youtube Tutorial: Another surprise, 1984's tutorial is so easy to follow, that even though it was the LAST thing I added code wise, It was actually fairly easy.

Sixth: Yelp Skin and Google Searches: Okay these were relatively easy to code with their respective tutorials, however the <li> code that they use is a PAIN cause if you update the fic draft it will break randomly. I literally had to go fix the Yelp skin today and every single time I edit the work I have to double check they don't break on me. I did have to strip the backgrounds from both of these tutorials in order to make them site-skin independent.

Seventh: Box coding: Aka Receipts, Case Closed Stamp, and Ghost Hunting Certificate. So These are some of the only things I coded from mostly scratch. I did have tutorial help instructing me what specific things did, but I made these. I am quite proud of them.

Eighth: Radio Transcripts. Now we are getting into my truly made me frustrated territory. These are coded very well, and the tutorial walkthrough was very thorough. I did strip the background color of them from the CSS to make them compatible with most site skins. Honestly my main gripe with these is just How Much code lines you need for every line. Here I'll include a screenshot to show what I mean:

^^ THIS IS A SINGLE MESSAGE. The HTML it takes to make 1 response for a transcript. Luckily Fallguy was able to help me finish these since it's very easy to copy and paste the code with slight changes, it's just very chunky.

Ninth: Police Report. Tables my beloathed <3. Also could not get the dates and signatures to not overlap strangely to save my life. I did add my own custom code for signature fonts on these, and stripped the background of the report to make it site-skin independent.

Tenth: Emails. I could not get the CSS on emails to work easily and it genuinely frustrated me so much. I originally wanted to combine 2 different tutorials to make a hybrid with the specific features I wanted, but I ended up ditching that idea quickly in favor of using DemigodofAgni's workskin and stripping the background from it, as well as the "reply all" button. The formatting with replies also gave me a bunch of trouble when putting them in. When in doubt, I just pasted more and more </div> and </span> until it stopped breaking other things in the document after it.

Coding this as a whole was an experience, and I'm so so glad I was able to include the ghost text and appearing images because they truly make this fic. I think the only thing I would want to change is making the fact that Grian is guessing the ghost to respawn Imp & Skizz a tiny bit more clear, but honestly that's a very small nitpick. When we finished the coding of it, I felt so accomplished, like I had truly conquered a beast and won. Again I could not have done any of this without Fallguy working with me--tyr is such an incredible writer and has brilliant ideas. Its ideas of how to organize the fic, of where to place our world, of the history and background of Sunny Meadows allowed this piece to truly be a work of art. To pull back the curtain a bit, tyr wrote the entire 1.6k of Pix III's Asylum closing article in a SINGLE night!

And thank you all so much for the amazing comments and feedback on this fic. Every time I see a comment for the ghost text or HTML or excitement of GIGGS crew supremacy, I feel warm. And if you'd like to here Fallguy's thoughts on this piece, please check out his commentary here!

[wrestler-smash-or-pass]

Weekly Wrap Up - 12/3/23

Top five smashable wrestlers this week:

Julia Hart (Spooky Variant) - 81.9% smash, 277 total votes

Orange Cassidy - 77.1% smash, 354 total votes

Anthony Bowens - 74.8% smash, 214 total votes

Shota Umino - 73.4% smash, 203 total votes

Danhausen - 68.8% smash, 324 total votes

More stats under the cut, along with my observations, commentary, and some of my favorite tags...

Bottom five smashable wrestlers this week:

Vince McMahon - 3.9% smash, 334 total votes

Kyle O'Reilly - 37.2% smash, 231 total votes

Andy Kaufman - 38.2% smash, 251 total votes

Kane - 41.0% smash, 188 total votes

Andre the Giant - 47.6% smash, 307 total votes

Most total votes this week (most enthusiasm)

Orange Cassidy - 354 votes

Chuck Taylor - 334 votes

Vince McMahon - 334 votes

Danhausen - 324 votes

Damien Priest - 318 votes

And least total votes this week (least enthusiasm)

Kane - 188 votes

Julia Hart (Cheerleader Variant) - 203 votes

Shota Umino - 203 votes

Anthony Bowens - 214 votes

Kyle O'Reilly - 231 votes

The closest match was Julia Hart (Cheerleader Variant), which was decided by a single votes

Top Five Overall

Kris Statlander - 91% smash

Rhea Ripley - 84.2% smash

Eddie Kingston - 82.8% smash

Julia Hart (Spooky Variant) - 81.9% smash

Orange Cassidy - 77.1% smash

Bottom Five Overall

Vince McMahon - 3.9% smash

The Boogeyman - 22.6% smash

Brock Lesnar - 23.2% smash

Doink the Clown - 28.3% smash

Gunther - 29.6% smash

Top Women Overall

Kris Statlander - 91% smash

Rhea Ripley - 84.2% smash

Julia Hart (Spooky Variant) - 81.9% smash

Penelope Ford - 72.9% smash

Aubrey Edwards - 66.1% smash

Top Men Overall

Eddie Kingston - 82.8% smash

Orange Cassidy - 77.1% smash

Anthony Bowens - 74.8% smash

Shota Umino - 73.4% smash

Samoa Joe - 72.1% smash

Thirteen of you are actual sickos who voted smash for Vince McMahon. I NEED to know what is going on inside of your heads. Unless, idk, you thought "smash" implied violence.

Great showing from the Best Friends this week. OC, Danhausen, Trent, and Chuck (and Trent and Chuck together!) join their friend Kris Stat as certified smashes. Though, somehow a threesome with Best Friends the tag team rated higher (66.7%) than Chuck or Trent separately (66.2% and 61.3%, respectively).

You guys definitely prefer House of Black Julia Hart over Varsity Blonds Julia, and who could blame you! She is a powerful combination of scary and beautiful.

I was out at a bar with my husband when the request for Andy Kaufman came in, and I said to him, "Someone just submitted Andy Kaufman??? He didn't wrestle." And my husband replied, "Yeah he did. He called himself the intergender world champion and offered $1000 and his hand in marriage to any woman who could defeat him." So that was a neat history lesson and definitely shed some light on the line "Andy Kaufman in a wrestling match" in the REM song "Man on the Moon," which I'd previously assumed was some kind of weird Michael Stipe metaphor.

I have seen some complaints about the images I've used for some of these wrestlers, and I don't disagree! Anyone who requests a wrestler is encouraged to add a photo to their ask! And since you can't include photos in anonymous asks, if you don't want your username associated with the poll, mention that in your ask and I'll create a separate post for the poll instead of replying to your ask. I did also find a source for photos that isn't just a Google image search, so image thirstiness will improve soon.

And now for some of my favorite tags and comments

@howlinghunters on Best Friends: #These two have always given me#'Someone will die.' 'OF FUN!' vibes

@are-we-really-doing-this on Danhausen: #I’d suck the tattoos off his body

@jennegatron on Chuck Taylor: #I would let chuck awful waffle me (please tell me wtf this means it sounds terrifying)

@jennegatron again on Trent Beretta: #his brain is so smooth#but he's simply so hot

@rosabellebelieve on Orange Cassidy: #make him into pulp

@wrassle-castle on Vince McMahon: #if i fuck him can i also kill him?#cause i'd take that L#for the greater good

@tahiri-veyla on Kane: #the only appropriate smash for this is with a semi

@dm-me-your-weltanschauung on Vince McMahon:

[sapphire-weapon]

The thing about Resident Evil, though, is that “from the beginning” can mean one of two different things. You can start from the beginning with Resident Evil (1996) on PSX, I suppose, but Resident Evil 0 (2002) is chronologically the earliest point in the series.

And, in my opinion, starting with either of those games is a bad idea if you’re coming in from RE4.

I’m going to give you two viable paths through RE, and you can choose the one that you think would work better for you personally.

If you came into Resident Evil through RE4make (and/or OG RE4), and you are only interested in seeing Leon’s story before going into the wider canon, this is the path you take:

Resident Evil 2 & Resident Evil 2 Remake (it doesn’t matter which one you do first, but you should do both. RE2make cuts some shit that’s actually really super important.)

Google search “Resident Evil 3 Leon epilogue.” It’s a single image. Just read it.

Darkside Chronicles (game)

Congrats, you are now up to date with everything (important) that happened to Leon pre-RE4, and you now have a better context for who he is/what he does in that game. From there, the canon timeline for Leon’s appearances then goes:

Degeneration (movie)

Infinite Darkness (Netflix series)

Damnation (movie)

Resident Evil 6 (game)

Vendetta (movie)

Death Island (movie) (releasing in July)

And that’s it. You’re up to date with Leon’s story, and now you can go through the rest of the games at your leisure. The good news is that Leon is in every single canon CGI movie that’s been released, so you don’t have to worry about tracking down anything other than games in order to go into the wider canon once you’ve reached this point.

If you came into Resident Evil through RE4make (and/or OG RE4), and you want to go through the canon because you’re interested in the world and not necessarily hyperfixating on Leon, I actually suggest going backwards and out of order. These are the steps that I would take in order for the series to make the most sense as you’re going through it:

Resident Evil 2 & Resident Evil 2 Remake (again: do both). Doing this gives you more context for RE4, and it introduces you to Claire and makes you aware of who Chris is.

(optional) Resident Evil: Outbreak. Nothing that happens in this game matters, and you’ll never see any of these characters again. This is the only non-essential RE title that I’ll mention, and only because Kevin Ryman is delightful and was supposed to be the guy training Leon if Leon had ever actually started work for real.

Resident Evil Remake. Ignore RE1 on PSX. It’s been erased from canon and overwritten by REmake. This now gives you the setup for why Chris wasn’t in Raccoon City when Claire went looking for him, introduces you to him, and also the rest of the recurring main cast. It will also explain to you who Wesker is; he’s the guy who was talking to Ada in the post-credits scene in RE4make (and who called Leon a dog over and over lmao).

Resident Evil 0. This tells you how Rebecca got to where she was when you meet her in REmake and finishes fleshing out STARS and Wesker for you. By the time you’re done with RE0, you’ll have a full understanding of who the main players all are and how this all started.

Resident Evil 3. Original or Remake. Doesn’t matter, really. I recommend the remake just because Carlos is hot in that version and the game is overall more palatable, but the changes that happen between OG and remake don’t really matter in the way the changes between RE2/RE2make matter.

Code Veronica X. Now that everyone’s out of Raccoon City, the next event chronologically is Claire continuing her search for Chris (and finally finding him).

Umbrella Chronicles followed by Darkside Chronicles. This is just to cap off the Raccoon City saga. Most of what these two games are are recaps of all the games you just went through, but there are extra bits in there that are important. Like, the original version of Operation Javier is shown in Darkside Chronicles -- and, once you see it, you’ll understand why RE old guard says that it’s been changed and retconned in RE4make. The rest of this list is just how the series then unfolds chronologically, because we are now caught up to Resident Evil 4.

Degeneration (movie)

Infinite Darkness (Netflix series)

Revelations 1 (game)

Resident Evil 5 (game)

Damnation (movie)

Revelations 2 (game)

Resident Evil 6 (game)

Vendetta (movie)

Death Island (movie, but not out yet, so it’s okay if you go past it until it releases lmao)

Resident Evil 7 (game)

Resident Evil 8/Village (game)

And that’s it. That is the list of essential RE canon. Everything else in this series is just a spinoff that’s there for funsies, and some of it explicitly is not canon. If you want to be a complete and utter crazy person and go through it all, feel free, but I promise you that you don’t need to know who Morpheus D. Duvall is (nor do you want to), or about that dude who fucked that spider in Gun Survivor 2 (though it is the funniest bit of RE lore to pull out and shock people with. DUDE PUT HIS DICK IN A SPIDER).

Good luck and god bless.