#super evolvers

[narmandia]

I wish I knew who designed the Super Evolvers.

Fossil Fighters Champions holds a special place in my heart.

[feminineflavors]

@naughtyapplepie

🍎🥧🧁

[ohposhers]

shitpost based off of something that happened when I was watching my buddy play Chao Island smhhh

[adelphenium]

strange little crossover but... steve + sam + bucky hockey au :0

all credit to @tinyhockey for the idea and for enabling me ^_^

[clowncakesss]

IT WAS ALWAYS DOOMED YAOI! IT WAS ALWAYS DOOMED!!!!!!!!

[papanorth]

Motherfuckers got me again

[ineffably-human]

So here's my problem.

And it's not about Nandermo, not exactly anyway. Because I didn't expect Nandermo to become textual until the very end, if at all. The show kept making it clear that they liked their ambiguity to keep the relationship on the razor's edge, and Paul Simms made it clearer and clearer that for some reason (put a pin in this) he just couldn't see their connection as a sexual one.

But I frankly don't care about that, because if anything is canon in this show it's that the vampires will eventually fuck everything, and Nandor canonically fucks his other friends. More importantly, their connection was always the emotional core of both characters. And Paul always did say he saw their relationship as a romance, if a strange and non-sexual one.

So I figured we'd maybe get Nandor confessing that Guillermo meant a lot to him (and immediately walking it back a little), or Guillermo confessing how lost he feels without his vampire dream and Nandor offering him a place. Maybe an ambiguous, could-just-be-queerplatonic-partners 'I love you'. Maybe just the hug they kept teasing for three or four seasons and never got. We got like...half of two of those, in episode 10, so I guess that's a wobbly semi-fulfilled thing by my definition of it.

But it's not the Nandermo of it all. It's the Guillermo of it all. And how this final episode seemed to almost mock Guillermo's place at the emotional core of the show.

And the Guillermo of it all is why we never got the Nandermo of it all.

Shadows has vampires doing absurd-ass things, but every character also has things they want and feel, and there are various amounts of emotional ink spilled about it. The show has found space, sometimes very poignant space, to take that seriously in between the piss and sex jokes. The vampires change very slowly and in spirals, they repeat a lot of their old issues that stem back even to their mortal lives. But they always try.

And things do change in the vampire house; that is not the same household from the first season. Every single character, right down to the Baron and the Guide and Derek, are in different and better places than they were before the show began. They've made progress in their individual desires, and a lot of that is due to the improved connections they have with each other, connections we've watched them foster. A lot of the time it's because they're talked about as a found family, something Guillermo started and Guillermo believed before any of the rest of them did.

---

So where is Guillermo this season? Our human point of view, our dynamic character, the character who has a dream and wants something more than any of the others? Whose dream drives the storyline of the entire show?

Guillermo has chosen to be human, and he thinks he can't be part of the household if he's not a vampire. We watch Guillermo try to throw himself back into the human world trying to make up for lost time - to the point that he forgets the person he called his best friend, the people he called his family, in a way I think we never fully resolve. He thinks he's thriving, and he doesn't even seem upset about leaving the others behind.

We watch him revert (and that's fine, people revert sometimes) to the same waiting lapdog he was when we started the series. We watch him realize that and he says no. Nandor stands up for him, and feels better and more fulfilled in doing so, and that's a great capstone for Nandor and Nandor's own tendency for selfishness. And that's excellent. Episode 10 was a great start for all the ground they had to cover.

Nandor offers for Guillermo to be his partner in crime. His sidekick, but Guillermo expressed that desire back in season one so it's not an insult inherently. But here's the problem. Here's the part of Guillermo that has frankly always been a problem, because I thought it's something the show was eventually going to cover respectfully, and instead it was always part of the joke.

---

Guillermo is someone who made a decision sixteen years ago as part of a very young man's desire, to be respected and have cool powers, to live forever, to see the world. (He somehow thought being a vampire, and only a vampire, could get him those things but that's a rant for another time.)

That young man has grown up. He's in his mid-thirties, he has a body count. We've watched him at various times be empathetic, clever, cunning, and brave. Also extremely sexy in bodyguard gear. (And for some reason, the show keeps wanting us to forget that for a season he was extremely competent and badass and sexy pretty much all the time, and he seemed thrilled to be in that role, and he didn't even care about being a vampire if he could protect Nandor in that way and be regarded as 'part of the team'.)

Then Nandor dresses him in a stupid cowboy costume, and gives him a sidekick name ending in 'Kid', which he seems less than thrilled about. They all still talk about him the entire episode as if he's a disobedient child. The vampires speculate if Guillermo is having a fling with the crew, but no - Guillermo's had one boyfriend, who we saw him hug once and nothing more. Despite living in a house for fifteen years that is openly raunchy and shameless, he seems like a character designed to be both desexed and humiliated, and they never expand on the reason why.

(And if Guillermo were ace it'd be amazing, hell it's my headcanon at this point, but I don't think that's what they're going for. I think the show just desexualizes Guilermo. As a matter of praxis. For some reason.)

And the show has done this more and more to Guillermo in the later seasons. Nandor says he could steal original!Freddie easily from Guillermo if he wanted to. The vampires laugh at the thought of him being a vampire - "a little bat pooping everywhere," and Guillermo's time as a vampire has him basically feeling no different in his sexuality or, after a very brief moment, his confidence. Even Nandor's big climactic moment in Episode 10 has him saying that just because Guillermo isn't as cool or hot or interesting or strong as Jordan (or Nandor) doesn't mean Guillermo deserves to be treated poorly.

Look, I don't know if it's because Harvey Guillen is babyfaced, or because he's fat, or because he carries a different energy to his masculinity. Or because it's great to talk about gay sex and being horny, but writing a gay relationship is just too hard. Or some fun combination of all those things.

But I keep thinking about everyone freaking out when Nandor swooped into the collapsed floorboards to save Guillermo in season 4, and everyone freaked out and swooned. And Paul Simms expressed that as "[Nandor] has to save his little buddy."

Guillermo is a grown-ass man, with a desire to feel powerful and special and accepted, who Nandor sees as his little buddy. (Who everyone in the house sees as their little buddy, and it's nice he's part of the family, but...) After every emotional beat that makes them seem like equals with a special connection, he reverts to the less-cool sidekick who makes Nandor feel special and important. And Guillermo's prior devotion to Nandor - not to vampirism, not to a job or promotion, to Nandor - changes to other things, but Nandor never figures out why that hurts him so much. And for some reason the deepest bond of the series just isn't sexual, the showrunner just can't see it that way, in a house where everyone's fucking but not you Guillermo.

We're at the end of the story, and that's our punchline.

---

And we don't end on one of the points where Guillermo is asserting himself as someone who deserves to be taken seriously, and given the things he wants - and the show has had plenty of those moments, all of which seem to be building and evolving his relationships over the years.

We end on Guillermo being told that suddenly, the documentary is packing up without any fanfare or clarity on what they were looking for in the first place. We get Guillermo stumbling for clarity on what it all meant, what the point was for him and what his life is going to be now. We're told over and over again the documentary (and Guillermo, and the viewers) needs a satisfying capstone, needs emotional closure.

And the vampires tell him to shut up. And they tell him this has all happened before, and none of it is special to them. ("No human is special," Nandor said several episodes ago, and never went back on it.) And they tell him to do a little dance for their amusement, and Colin recites some pithy lines. And every attempt to take a moment to care about Guillermo's journey, or the core of his character and what he needs, is turned into a joke for him and for us.

Guillermo's looking for a point to it all, for some kind of fulfillment, and there wasn't one. And everyone is satisfied in that but him. And even if there were times Guillermo got the chance to be respected, to have cool powers (which he kept, but the vampires keep forgetting them), to live forever (he will die and leave Nandor someday!), to see the world - none of these things are going to come to him now.

It would make absolute, complete, and devastating sense for Guillermo to feel he's outgrown them and to leave. Nandor doesn't even seem upset enough to try and stop him. We never really get a clear reason about why he decides to stay.

I mean, it's for friendship or something, with a line about how they can still be close but he needs 'his own thing'. But in six seasons, over and over and over, we've been driven back to the idea that the most emotional part of this story is Guillermo's desire to become accepted in this family, and the effect he has on Nandor. That Guillermo needs this home and he consistently makes Nandor softer, kinder, less selfish and more fulfilled when they're together.

But those parts of their relationship, the love story parts, don't matter. Guillermo is going to find 'his own thing' when it's been clear how entrenched in this world he is (right down to his DNA), but Nandor will drag him back into shenanigans anyway, probably keeping Guillermo from whatever 'his own thing' is.

And Guillermo will always be Nandor's sidekick, his little buddy, never to be taken seriously. And one day, Guillermo will die, and he'll be someone they all forget. And for some reason, he'll be just fine with that, because he belongs with them but will never really be in a better position.

And he'll be satisfied with that. For some reason. But I won't.

[weaselle]

you know something i love about Terry Pratchett's trolls?

yes they are written very very dumb, for laughs, for instance most trolls can only count as high as "lots" (which is four. Troll counting goes: one, two, many, lots) and we all get a good giggle out of the stupid way they think and talk...

but because of the way he wrote his troll lore, under the right circumstances, trolls are actually far more intelligent than almost anybody else.

And there's something about the way, idk, it's just... i act stupid a lot of the time. Because i get lost in my head and distracted by ten thousand things, and given more than a split second to consider things i'll overthink and second guess my second guesses... but i know that i'm quite smart really.

And there are plenty of people who even more acutely experience some version of being treated like they are dumb while being, in fact, very intelligent if their particular needs are met.

and i just love that these trolls, often the butt of the joke and by far the most comically stupid of Terry Pratchett's fantasy races... when in the circumstances they are made for... turn out to be geniuses. There is something so poetic and cosmically Just, to have that be true. To have them actually be the most intelligent out of everybody if only you put them in the right environment.

[cloudyydraws]

Luigi and Miku (+Mario) doodles

[dezerex]

[crazypatrolstudent]

Uhh... I don't even know anymore...

My ancient otp (my Mario brainrot I had back at kindergarten days came back from 9 years of hibernation because of a dumb nightmare I had)

[feminineflavors]

🐇🌸🧁

[voidwelt]

The mispronunciation of Welt's name used to bother me (as it is canonically meant to be based on the German word, so it should be spoken with a harder V sound). I studied German in school, so I had to work myself out of pronouncing it correctly, just so the game pronunciation would stop bothering me.

But as time passes, I sort of come to think, the way the reason for this mispronunciation IRL is the intent being lost in translation (CN doesn't quite have the right syllables for the German pronunciation and EN direction carried this along in HSR), the reason for its mispronunciation in-game could, if you like, also be chalked up to something being lost in translation (in a different way).

I like to imagine Welt Joyce's name is 100% pronounced correctly. (No EN dub exists to prove me wrong). He got the name right from its source, given to him by a German, and mentions as such when he dies, "Welt" for "World" in German. There's no way it's not meant to be pronounced correctly.

When it gets passed down to Yang, the meaning is still there, but the interpretation is muddied through the inherent perception filter of a young person (as is his interpretation of the duty as a whole). He sees Joyce bleed out against the concrete to save a city and he internalises this as the legacy and the "burden" of Welt. The German word becomes a gifted Title that represents protecting the World first and foremost, and then as its bearer takes off to the stars, off of that original world, in an attempt to save others, it's even further divorced from its original language context.

When Welt describes the meaning of his name to Sunday, he's come up with his own, adjusted and extended definition for it. He's expanded onto it with his own thoughts, influenced by the Trailblaze and how many lives he's come into contact with. "Each person is a world unto themselves, with as many possibilities as the distant stars." (paraphrased)

(He also says some stuff about how the Trailblaze doesn't end when you leave the Express, so it really makes me think of how he might think of... Ahem. Anyway, back to topic.)

Ultimately, Welt Joyce and Welt Yang have the same first name/title in text and in writing, but...

If they're pronounced differently, it just goes to show, that no matter how hard Welt (Yang) attempts to personally embody his hero in all that he does, how hard he tries to carry this legacy in its purest form, they're ultimately still different people, with different experiences, with different souls.

Or, I could just be looking too much into a minor flaw in the translation process! Isn't that the fun of thinking too hard about things? Should we run Mr. Yang over with our shared car? We have to do something about this

[knuckleslove]

The sun and moon eclipse.

[claitea]

mushing my two main interests at the moment together

[scarlet-hedgehog-from-hell]

Yes this is the lore in my AU thats what happened

A couple of beast/dragon form doodles (i should really use a reference when drawing internal lord x tbh)

Bonus how xilog was created