#im a fundamentally different person because of these guys

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

Alright, here we go

First and foremost I want to talk about what flying bark's animation has meant to me.

In a world where every day I see 2d animation being rejected for cheaper 3d and puppet animation at every turn, Monkie Kid's animation was the one of the first things that gave me hope for the future of 2D animation. I can't tell you how long I've been wanting a 2D animated show, growing up I wanted one so desperately, I craved good animation amongst the stiff 3D and flat storytelling, so when I got it, when Monkie Kid happened, I was so unbelievably happy. It was everything I wanted in a show, gorgeous animation, excellent voice actors, romance free and friendly to my desperate friendship-craving, romance-overstimulated brain and written in a way I enjoyed so much. I struggle to describe exactly how much I’ve adored everything this show has been up until this point. It truly is a masterpiece.

Monkie kid has kept me company during the lowest and roughest points in my life. I got to such a bad place mentally but Monkie Kid’s fast-paced, snappy, detailed, colourful bright animation brought light into my darkest mental times and not only helped me stay connected with people but kept me creating even when I wanted nothing more than to lay on the floor and never move again. I'm aware most of the flying bark team is active on the bird app and none of them are gonna see this most likely but I still just wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much for animating this show, thank you so much for giving it your all. Thank you so much for giving me something I’ve always wanted so perfectly. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for keeping me company at my lowest, thank you for sharing your joy of animation so I could catch some of those rays of sunlight and feel a little of that joy too. Thank you for your positivity and good vibes, thank you. 

I know so many people have gotten inspiration from flying bark and I have to add myself to the infinite list. My art has improved so much thanks to their inspiration. My style has developed, I’ve had so much fun, I’ve written some of my favorite works ever based off of expressions that the characters make alone. My last amv I made because I was so grateful for the animation that we'd gotten up to that point. I wanted to showcase, to thank, to appreciate. I didn’t know it would be a goodbye. Words can't describe all that flying bark's animation and even their storyboards have done for me. When nothing could make me happy, monkie kid wormed its way into my brain and somehow kept me in one piece. I know that wouldn’t have been possible without the animation that left me at the edge of my seat, breathless and laughing over how incredible it really was every single time. Every new clip, every new episode I’d pause and rewatch again, I’d rewatch over and over, I’d take screenshots of every goofy background character, I’d screenshot every expression I could, I’d go through episodes frame-by-frame, literally one at a time for hours on end just so i could catch every detail, I’d open my eyes wider and wider to try and take in every bit I could in a way I’ve never been able to do before because there is nothing else out there like monkie kid. There was nothing as fun and as joyful as every single frame that flying bark gave us. And I am going to miss that so much.

The fact that season 4 was a sendoff is so heartbreaking to me, it's hard to describe how devastated I feel knowing something that kept hold of my hand when I was facing hard hard things in my life is suddenly gone. I don’t know how to ever express how important this show has been to me, it’s kept me going and helped me get to a place where I could breathe again. It’s connected me with some of the greatest people I know. It’s given me incredible experiences, introduced me to what animation could be and I can’t lie and say it doesn’t hurt having to say goodbye so suddenly. 

I know this isn’t the end of Monkie Kid as a show. I know season 5 is still coming. And I also know Monkie Kid has lost a huge part of what made it unique and special, a huge part of its heart and soul. Without flying bark it feels like half the show is missing and although I hope I can still support the show, no one can deny the cavern-sized hole that is left by flying bark’s absence in it. The animation team has such an incredibly positive atmosphere around them that just absolutely radiates from the things they create. I am going to miss that so desperately in monkie kid. I’m going to support every other show flying bark works on, I’m still going to love their animation wherever it goes, but I am going to miss it in monkie kid like nothing else I’ve ever missed.

I do have some other thoughts regarding the new changes in monkie kid but I wanted to keep that separate from the actual farewell, so that’ll be it’s own post and I just want to end this by saying thanks for everything Flying Bark you’ve been a real one. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You’re already being missed so hard it hurts. Keep those good vibes and keep up what you’re doing. You all really are incredible and an inspiration to artists everywhere. We love this show because of the voice actors, because of the writers, because of the music but a great deal of people loved this show because of you. You’ve inspired a community of artists, you’ve inspired me. Thank you flying bark for everything you've given us, you gave it your all and I’m gonna carry the impact you left on me for the rest of my life. 

LOVE YOU FLYING BARK. Here's to a bright future. Thanks for everything <3 

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

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[bardicious]

I'm writing out my superhero comic idea and it's history, and it's like embarrassingly obvious what my favorite shows are. lmao.

[comradekatara]

do you have headcanons about the gaang and fire girls’ gender identities and sexualities?

i mean yeah 😭😭 obviously 😭😭 im literally a homosexual on tumblr dot edu. that said, i don’t really care for the term “headcanon” in this context, as i think that reading characters as informed by the text constitutes “interpretation” rather than baseless theorizing and fancy. i do get that the term headcanon is pretty ubiquitous in fandom spaces, but to me there is a big difference between “interpretation” (something you can cite the text to persuasively argue, but which may differ across readers) and “headcanon” (baseless inventions purely for self-indulgent pleasure). when it comes to the characters in atla and their relationships to gender as informed by patriarchy, i think there is more than enough material to suggest my readings, as gender plays a fairly significant role in the worldbuilding and characterization. obviously when it comes to more minor characters, that is when a vibes-based analysis is needed, as takes on less integral players are largely conjecture. i have no evidence that june, for example, is a lesbian, beyond simply vibes. and as much as i trust my own judgment when it comes to sniffing out dykes, there is no real textual evidence that june eats pussy. i simply know in my heart of hearts that she does. HOWEVER, that is not what i am doing when i discuss the principal players of atla, whose relationships to gender are largely crucial to how they function in the narrative and how we read them. so without further ado..

aang is actually the vaguest character for me in terms of how i read his relationship to gender, because it’s very clear that he wasn’t raised in a traditionally patriarchal society and thus has a fairly different view on gender than the rest of the world, especially a world whose borders and categorizations have been more rigidly reified after a century of imperialism and colonialism. i can see the argument for aang being a cis, straight boy, and i can see the argument for aang being a nonbinary bisexual kid, etc etc. the one thing we know about aang is that he likes girls. like, really likes girls. so i’ve always kind of read him as mostly straight, but i don’t think he would rigidly define his own gender and sexuality along those lines, even if functionally he would probably present as a straight guy. but he could also be bi, or trans, or what have you. beyond his love for katara (and that time he rightfully felt humiliated by the fire nation portraying him as a woman, not because he doesn’t “respect women,” but because he correctly located it as a propagandistic tool of disrespect and colonial humiliation on their part) it’s not really crucial to his character either way.

katara, on the other hand, really only makes sense if you read her as a cis straight girl. i know that people have gotten incensed over my saying this in the past, but it’s just the most logical reading of her character. she is confident in her femininity and sexuality. she is a girl who can successfully conform to gender roles (and expects others to, quite frankly) but also recognizes and protests the fundamental inequalities of patriarchy. she has internalized a lot of patriarchal ideas about what is appropriate, but also understands that on a structural level, equality across genders is needed. she’s not a girl who struggles with her own gender identity or sexuality, she’s just a person who’s sick of being dismissed and devalued due to her gender, as if her femininity negates her strength or her capacity for anger. she is feminine, strong, and angry. she likes fashion and boys and ecoterrorism. when i call katara a straight girl, it is not to position her as a less compelling character (the fact that i have to even say this is crazy to me. sometimes characters are straight and that doesn’t make them less compelling??? unless you’re some kind of egomaniac who can only like characters if you relate to them… but she's literally the world's specialest princess). in fact, as someone whose best friends are all incredibly intelligent yet kind of ridiculous straight girls, i say it with the deepest, utmost love.

sokka is not cis to me but sometimes people will "agree" with that sentiment by being like "yeah he's a trans boy" and i'm just like.... what. manhood & masculinity are clearly concepts that are imposed upon him as a role he feels compelled to fulfill within a colonial paradigm. people will also say "sokka's arc is about learning what it means to be a real man" and like. if anything sokka's arc is learning that he does not Have to be a "man." so i guess technically i read sokka as nonbinary, but i also don't think sokka would ever bother to conceptualize his own gender, he'd kind of just reach a point wherein he inwardly feels like his relationship to gender is no longer significant to how he defines himself, and not really communicate that feeling to anyone to except for probably suki. also i think he's bisexual (again, he would never outwardly communicate that, he'd just be like "of course i've experimented, i'm a scientist") but with a strong preference for women. and thank god for that bc his daddy issues are so bad; he should not be dating men.

i do read toph as a baby butch who doesn't quite know how to articulate her own relationship to gender and sexuality yet bc she is still a baby. but i definitely see her as embracing her masculinity down the line, as something that isn't only valuable to her as it is positioned contra femininity, but as a mode of expression in its own right. and i know that long hair =/= femininity necessarily, but i do think toph would cut her hair short as a way of undermining the confucian values of belonging to the family, which i know may seem like its unrelated to gender, but considering the patriarchal role of the nuclear family structure informing toph's quite radical disavowal of it (we don't talk about lok, but she was also a single mom by choice so like that's ...... something, at least) toph's decision to renounce those entrenched values is reflective of her gender identity and refusal to adhere to patriarchal dogmas as they impose femininity as passivity and submission. i do still see her as identifying as a woman though, but in a distinctly butch dyke way that complicates the role of womanhood as it rejects the notion that womanhood is primarily a performance for the male gaze. so i think toph is a masc lesbian, which i suppose is quite an obvious reading of her gender, and i don't think it's the only valid interpretation either. i can accept someone reading toph as transmasc or bisexual or otherwise recognizing that these identities can be unstable and even in flux. for example, acknowledging toph's baby crush on sokka means problematizing the notion of her as a lesbian, or at least it can. but i do think sokka is like the one "man" (see above) that dykes find appealing (suki, ty lee, etc etc.) so it makes perfect sense that he'd be like. her ring of keys moment. if anything toph having a crush on sokka illustrates her latent lesbianism (although nothing will ever come of it, obviously). and her gender is also just Lesbian.

suki's relationship to gender is a lot less complex than toph's or sokka's because she's also just a far less developed character in her own right, so i've always kind of just read her gender as an extension of kyoshi's for thematic reasons. and since kyoshi is canonically bisexual with a preference for women, i also read suki as bisexual with a preference for women. like i definitely think that she was surprised at first by how into sokka she was because she had never experienced liking a "boy" before. and i also think it's fun to read kyoshi as trans (no, not because she's tall and "aggressive," dear god); if you've read the novels you'll probably understand what i mean by that. so i'm partial to trans girl suki as well, but i think her being cis or trans is actually equally likely because she literally grew up on the isle of lesbos. but nowhere else on avatar planet in that particular epoch is this true. except for maybe the swamp idk. anyway she's a bi dyke to me for sure.

zuko is very obviously gay. i'd say that zuko's sexuality is the most obviously entrenched in the entire show. however, i don't think the writers themselves are aware of this (because it was 2005 and gay people weren't invented until december 2014 korrasami handhold) so they clumsily try to get him back together with mai in the finale even though they had actually constructed a near-perfect portrait of two closeted children attempting to perform a functional relationship under political pressure to please their noble families. but so much of zuko's arc is potently reflective of the struggle of a closeted child on the journey to assert himself against an abusive patriarch who imposes his rigid ideals of what kind of masculinity is appropriate for boys to model and what isn't. obviously the political and ideological dimensions to his arc as his consciousness is raised constitutes the primary aspect of his character, but reading him as gay is also just the logical extension of that journey. i could literally go through every single episode scene by scene explaining how every single facet illustrates his latent homosexuality in such and such way. but i'm pretty sure everyone following me also very much knows this, and also i don't actually care enough about zuko to do that (sorry zuzu). oh and yeah he's cis (obviously) but i have seen (sparse) transfem zuko interpretations that were kind of compelling. however, i do just think he's a cis boy who struggles with adhering perfectly to a fascist model of masculinity and has some stereotypically gay/effeminate inclinations. and also the blue spirit is drag and the height of camp. but yeah he's cis probably.

azula is a lesbian (cis, again, there's no way she's ever going to seriously contemplate transing her gender) and i'm not just saying that because she's cunty and mean. her relationship to mai and (especially) ty lee is highly reflective of the experience of teenage (closeted) lesbians in very intense friendships with other girls that precariously toe the line between platonic and romantic. azula's relationships are obviously also complicated by the factor of coercion and the fact that none of them actually have any agency to act on their desires for a myriad of reasons. the only time azula ever displays interest in a boy is when she is attempting to soothe her own ego by proving that she is in fact desirable to the most powerful boy in the room – a space wherein the hierarchy of court is replicated by the hierarchy of high school popularity rankings, and she is no longer at the top of the food chain and must climb her way up the ladder by asserting her ability to "attain" the famous cha(d)n. she also clearly has no idea what to do once she has attained such a boy because her desire is superficial, and she can only actually operate on the logic of domination and conquest that was instilled in her by ozai. however, contrast this with the softness and affection with which she treats ty lee, the jealousy she displays when ty lee is fawned over by boys (which she mistakes for jealousy over the fact that she wants the boys' attention for herself), or the devastation she feels over her betrayal. azula is capable of genuine love and affection, even if she has spent her entire life convincing herself that she isn't, but that affection is reserved for her female friends. [lord farquaad pointing] baby dyke.

ty lee is probably a lesbian but there's also the possibility that she is attracted to men but would simply never in one million years actually date one in any capacity, and thus is functionally a lesbian regardless. but like. she literally joins the dyke warriors as the culmination of her arc which is about how she hides her true face and performs and contorts herself to please others for the sake of her own survival, before asserting that her love for another girl is so strong that she would sacrifice her own life for that love, and then ultimately embracing authenticity. it literally does not get any gayer than that.

mai kind of has trans girl swag actually but also there's literally no circumstance wherein her image-obsessed noble family would permit her to transition (especially since they so clearly favor sons over daughters) so she's probably just a really cool cis girl (those exist, i'm told). and also she's a dyke obviously. i do think she did have a crush on zuko at some point as a child, but if anything it was born of the mutual recognition that they have something in common (gayness) and so she found him to be an appropriate yet also kind of thrilling object of fascination. obviously he's very different once he returns from his banishment, and so that illusion is almost immediately shattered, but she nonetheless tries her damn best to be a good, supportive girlfriend to him, and invests a lot of emotional energy into their (somewhat farcical) relationship. that said, i do think that assuming that her attraction to zuko is genuine beyond the social pressures that facilitated it is just. really sad for her. so i think she is a lesbian.

rapid fire round: iroh straight (duh), jet repressed bicuriosity but functionally straight, yue bisexual (vibes-based assessment), king kuei bisexual as is bosco the bear, kanna lesbian, hama bisexual, herbalist lesbian, piandao gay, haru straight, long feng eunuch.

[deltaruminations]

i think one of the most telling examples of how we’ve been influenced to think about gaster is that if we say no to him after he asks if we want to continue after a chapter 1 game over, we’ll proceed to hear the absolute gentlest most heartbroken fucking unaccompanied piano arrangement of gaster’s motif any of us has ever heard and we’ll still be like "huh wonder why THAT’S there."

it’s because he’s sad!!! he’s fucking sad!!! this is the sound of an incorporeal man holding back metaphysical tears!!! WHY would the game have us linger here at a black screen instead of immediately going back to the menu like a normal RPG would? because it wants us to have this quiet moment in the dark with him, to finally catch him in a moment that’s raw and deeply vulnerable and unmarred by either cryptic mythologizing or his own mask of confident, neutral professionalism, just a black screen and a tender, melancholic song. and then he closes the fucking game himself.

it’s like, after narrating our ending, he just can’t think of anything else to say. he doesn’t want to tell us to go away because he probably doesn’t want us to, we’re both his last hope for success and the only person he’s been able to "connect" with in a very long time. he just sits there awkwardly with us while he quietly processes the situation, before he finally accepts that this is the world’s (and his) fate and he can’t force us to stay there with him any longer.

again im not trying to woobify him, what im saying is that we’re so used to seeking out spooky, vaguely sinister lore for an extraplanar entity that even when we finally meet him, it doesn’t occur to us that he could just be another character, one who’s VERY different from the other characters but a character nonetheless.

gaster is fundamentally cryptic and ambiguous, possibly in part because he intends to be hard to read. i think he hides himself between layers and behind clinical speech and trees because he’s uncomfortable with being seen, but he isn’t a perfect rational being, he’s just a guy, and he can’t connect with us without risking "pieces" of himself seeping through. just as undertale challenged us to hunt through it for pieces of gaster’s lore, deltarune is now going out of its way to give us insight into his character, but just as with his lore, we have to seek it out and consider it carefully in order to learn anything. like do you understand why im suddenly so obsessed with this guy!!! not to mention all the ways he parallels kris and chara and alphys and serves as a reflection of the player and. god. i love these fucking video james so much

[mysterycitrus]

hi! i' m really loving persephone but i was a little confused about how you're writing jason (and roy). i read through the author's note but i havent read a tonne of earlier comics yet so i just wanted to ask about your characterisation of him? its really different from other fic ibe read

hello! firstly, thank u for the question. i included that chunky list of comics at the beginning of persephone cause i knew how i was writing some of the characters (SPECIFICALLY jason and roy lmao) would be pretty different from popular mainstream interpretations of them. even if most people can acknowledge rhato 2011 was a bad comic these days, it's still (unfortunately) a foundational comic for a lot of jason fans.

the long answer is jason is a very popular character, but because he hasn't had an actual good comic since 2005 a lot has to be filled in to make him a "consistant" character. if u actually analyse any of his modern comics with knowledge of other characters, u would probably notice that: a) 99% of his relationships are stolen from dick grayson wholesale, with no development, b) 99% of what makes him popular was stolen wholesale from characters like selina kyle, helena bertinelli, and stephanie brown, and c) that everything politically interesting about his concept has been watered down to like... a sometimes angry dude who doesn't even use guns anymore.

roy is a separate issue - i truly dont believe most people who identify as royandjason fans have read anything preboot about roy, cause otherwise they'd understand that he would not do any of the things he does in rhato, and he definately wouldn't be besties with his best friends thirteen year old brother.

jason as he exists in fan spaces is a guy who is devoid of nuance, and is basically a reskinned 90s dick grayson stand in. that's not interesting to me. his original conception - the fact that he's from park row, he struggles with violence, he was a fundamentally kind person who isn't anymore because of things outside his control..... that's someone who could engage with batman's legacy in a cool way! a guy with his own moral values who does terrible things but still believes in the inherent value of his personal crusade! when i was writing him, it was important that yes, he can be quippy and fun, but he's also a person who's done a lot of fucked up things, and people aren't going to just roll over and think he's the coolest guy ever cause the writer treats him like a self insert.

the short answer is that im a roy harper fan and i haven't known peace since 2011.

[ot3]

I mean this in entirely good faith, I promise, but I'd love to hear the "shortcomings" you think those shows have

she ra i mostly just found boring i don't think i could point to a single thing it did (out of what i watched, that is. i didn't finish the show) that i found to be an objectionable writing choice, but it just didn't do anything to keep my interest. which is a shame because i went into it REALLY excited!!! i had long been a fan of nimona so hearing that ND stevenson was getting the chance to make a cartoon i was SO prepared to be all over it. and i watched it and it all just fell pretty flat for me

steven universe and the owl house i feel like are shows with some pretty major structural issues. i really think they try to have their cake and eat it in terms of episodic moments vs overarching series narratives that are kind of at odds with each other.

with steven universe i feel like this manifested in some pretty bizarre tonal whiplash that prevented either of the shows angles from sticking its landing. i think if steven universe had either been an epic space opera about a kid inheriting his mother's war, it would have fucking banged. i think if steven universe had been a more slice-of-life oriented show about a boy coming of age by realizing he's sort of the living manifestation of the war trauma of the people around him and learning to navigate and help people heal from that through fantastical, alien super-powered twists on mundane life that would have banged in a completely different way. but as it stands i think trying to do both at the same time detracted from the overall experience.

it feels weird to have them fucking around at the barn when there is something that is going to literally hatch from the earth's crust like an egg and destroy the entire planet and theyre just ignoring it. it feels weird in a different way to have them visit an alien zoo full of human beings and know that the structure of the show means we will absolutely not be taking the time to fully unpack that one. for me this cognitive dissonance really reached its peak an episode where steven explicitly calls his mother a war criminal, but that was a throwaway line because the A plot was that lars, the guy who works at the donut shop, bakes as a hobby and is embarrassed by that. to be perfectly clear i don't think it's impossible to balance more mundane slice of life moments with big adventures to combat existential threats. but whatever that balance looks like is not what steven universe was doing

the owl house on the other hand i don't feel like was ever really willing to commit to a particular vibe long enough to get invested in it. it's trying to be a show about a girl who is a witch's apprentice, but that doesn't really feel quite fully realized because it's also trying to be a show about a Magic School, but we don't spend enough time at the Magic School to get invested in that setting as a framework for the character interactions and narrative events, but then it also starts trying to be this big adventure/questing show. and then before too long luz is the one teaching magic to everyone else? it refuses to really commit to any one thing it's trying and just kind of throws everything at you with out actually getting to spend time with its concepts

in general i also think luz was a weak protagonist. in terms of writing. i think she wasnt given enough meaningful flaws, didn't make enough mistakes, and didn't really have to learn any hard lessons or make decisions that fundamentally went against who she thought she was. her whole thing is basically being Nerdy and Kinda Weird which i think is kind of an outdated substitute for meaningful character writing in the current zeitgeist. im sure she is an absolutely fantastic power fantasy for a lot of 12 year old girls who consider reading books to be their main personality trait and i absolutely do not fault that for existing. i think that's a critical thing to exist and all those 12 year olds really deserve it. but it has no appeal to me as an adult woman who has grown out of that phase, yknow?

i feel like once again the comparison to akko from little witch academia invites itself very easily, and anne from amphibia too, which was also a disney teen girl isekai airing at the same time. i loved both of those two as protags a ton and i think its because they really fumbled repeatedly and went through the wringer in a way luz didn't

[fagcrisis]

pondering time. i was raised buddhist right and i consider myself religious despite the fact that i rarely practice anymore. and there is a couple of reactions ill encounter in lefty/anarchist circles when mentioning that im religious

one is that they immediately assume im christian and get mad at me for it, the other is weird apprehension, and there is also the "im not religious im spiritual" type of person. and all of these people when i tell them i was raised buddhist, will tell me that oh, that doesnt count, buddhism isnt a religion its more like a philosophy

which betrays such a fundamental misunderstanding of what religion is, because they all base their idea of religion on the type of western christianity (catholicism in hungarys case) that they grew up with. i dont like this arguement because first of all buddhism does still have like, mythology and fucking whatnot and also its a fucking orientalist ass attitude to have towards any religion

but also like the spiritualist bit annoys me as well, bc theres this weird thing of like, oh well its fine to believe in crystals and self care and do tarot but as soon as it has history and u were raised with it it sucks and is bad actually. its a really weird like, individualist approach to what religion actually is

this post doesnt have a point im just kind of vaguely annoyed at people. u cant just stop at "guys im so edgy i think god is evil" even christianity is so varied and practiced in so many different ways by so many different cultures that you cant condemn it as a whole. also be normal about religious people maybe

[kijosakka]

Thoughts. okay so the total drama drama drama drama island special is interesting mainly bc of team e-scope but im going to take a moment here to ramble about his dynamic with other people here,,

(oh and i didn't have anywhere really to slot it into the other post or segue into it here but dodgebrawl as a Moment demonstrates how [this AU] noah can play the social game, just in a very very different way than how it's normally seen.

he knows what he's doing is going to bother his team and incentivize them to vote, i'd say in this au he even plays up the cockiness and makes veiled personal slights against specific people

(mainly those who would be annoyed enough to vote him off, see: heather, justin, leshawna, cody/trent to some extent if he said smth about gwen? < and gwen herself in that scenario. and to another extent beth, since hes playing up his outright mean traits, which would make lindsay vote with her. i dont think he would do anything specific to/with owen or izzy, since he may see izzy as too volatile and owen too genuine)

in the opposite way of whats expected, sure, but it is a social play. he can pick apart what these people are and what they show and push at it to achieve his own ends (and maybe its even some sort of way for him to regain control in this fundamentally uncontrollable situation he's found himself in; he can be the punishment in foucalt's imagining, to a much smaller degree))

so his teammates,,, do not like him tbh. his flagrant display during dodgeball and everyone being pissed at him after the fact is true in this AU, just coming with different motivations. even after the fact when the frustration of everyone fizzles out, hes still majorly offputting because of his detachedness, and deliberately makes his shown traits very unpalatable to experience in person combined with that.

the only two exceptions are izzy and owen respectively: owens mostly coming from a place of genuineness and im going to say while he wouldnt be able to verbalize it, in some manner owen would clock noahs behavior as a defense mechanism. maybe in the sense of 'hes just scared to open up to people!!' or something similar, but he definitely has a lot more faith that noah really isnt that cold and flat.

[*]izzy feels much the same -- except maybe it comes off more to her as strategic. izzy can act, and might recognize that in noah. if you wanted to you could write this in as to why she was eager to swap teams in the first episode, but it wouldnt change that he does get eliminated and thats all she sees of him until the special -- which, her intrigue in his lacking and the fact that it apparently wasnt strategic to get him further in the game, could help explain why she picks him in the team-up.

[*i have soooo much to say about izzy in this au actually. but ill save it for a diff post]

and speaking of the team-up: team e-scope!!!! :0

my au my rules eva and izzy became really good friends on the playa; izzy isn't afraid of eva (and curbing her anger before it reaches a boiling point) and eva is physically adept enough to restrain izzy from Shenanigans that might be a little Much. but eva doesnt really?? know anything about noah?? but izzy insists on teaming with him for the special (and unbeknownst to her noah wasnt even planning to participate initially) so he must be some level of Not Too Bad if izzy wants anything to do with him that doesnt seem to be related to tormenting the guy

and she thinks hes Fine. apathetic and detached and unpalatable (but then again, everyone in their little trio really is to some degree), but can kind of understand izzys intrigue: hes still A Guy, hes just hidden behind 20 layers of non-substance that are so offputting from the first meeting it makes people steer clear of him.

now with tddddi comes two other pertinent details: the justin line, and the Thing With Duncan.

i personally thing noahs 'he's the anti-me' line is really funny in the context of canon but if you squint it kinda works here? wherein justin is non-speaking yet flaunts himself to be the center of attention and clearly shows intent and capacity to scheme (underdeveloped or no, see: awakeathon), whereas noah speaks a lot yet lets himself fade into the background, showing vague hints of the capacity to scheme but no intention or palpable ambition behind it.

^ am i reaching? maybe. the other option here is noah somehow has seen him in-person before on a modeling or red carpet kind of gig and dislikes him on principle because of it/its a jab at it (smth smth they are both opposite ends of the same industry? justin is the face of it in a manner where noah stays behind the scenes and out of sight)

and the thing with duncan,, hear me out here okay noah does his whole song and dance, goes up to him and patronizes him, and duncan retaliates. however, he curses like a sailor and in noah's head has ruined the footage, therefore instead of further retaliating and potentially invoking actual physical harm he just. doesnt react. at all. duncan looks up at him and hes just dead-eyed staring down at him -- and then he leaves.

^ the scene has been ruined, and everyone else is doing so much that theres no reason to play it up any more. duncan and him arent plot important like how heather and lindsay were, theres no reason for the crew to painstakingly edit his swearing out. they just wont let it reach the final cut. duncan is understandably very confused by this, but at that point noah was already gone to find eva and izzy again (< this is when the cast having a running bet that noahs and android becomes Not a Joke)

but life goes on!!! and in the worlds worst comedy of errors (for noah), izzy ends up dragging him along into the lake, thereby leaving him as a confirmed member of the next season.

^ noah is so angry at this. popping blood vessels. he argues with chris endlessly, straight frothing at the mouth at only having two days of real reprieve before he has to deal with the Same Shit again. and chris gets this, to some degree, but also knows that if theres no explanation for noahs non-appearance to hand the producers, theyll be pissed (since all things considered, noahs pretty damn popular among the fans)

luckily for him, courtney just filed a lawsuit against the show!! and since chris is busy running said show, the producers do not want to deal with it and are willing to hand off the case to anyone else -- hence, chris officially signs noah on as his PA, and noah takes over the court settlements and whatnot.

< though i do imagine the producers would see it as a 'get out of the show' scheme, and thereby push way harder for his involvement in WT as a result

but noah does get a break!!! for now, at least.

[beatcroc]

excessively long and complex read on pillar john, and the larger john collective

there are a lot of things in pizza tower that, to one extent or another, Are John. some, like the pillar johns, have known and stated canon; but there's a myriad of other things, from mini-johns to the tower itself, that could also be argued as Being John. this post aims to reconcile all of those things as different facets of the whole being that is "John".

now right out of the gate i want to be real. i want to level with you for where im coming from with all this. i do think john is akin to some kind of god. i don't mean this in a super literal sense, but this dude is absolutely [conditionally] immortal to me. he's been around for a very very very long time, and will likely continue to exist almost indefinitely. barring specific circumstances.

i don't have an exact image for the first type of john, so i'm using this scrapped type of block from betas bc it illustrates the concept well enough

this is what i'll henceforth be referring to as "john tower"

this is john in his purest essence; the tower itself, and/or a power or a presence or just a vibe contained in and by the tower's walls and bricks. john tower is 'where' it could be said john's true consciousness and memories lie, but by itself it isn't really "alive" and doesn't have a will its own.

i'm not taking the brick itself Too seriously/literally since it's from beta, but i think it works for the general idea of "John is, and is within, the tower at its most fundamental level; and left to its own the tower will just sorta start making John-type things." Such as the following:

this one i will be calling "real john" this john is the physical, living manifestation of john tower, and what i would properly consider to be "John, Brother Of Gerome". he's a sapient guy with a personality and will and all the stuff that usually comes with being alive. this john is probably the most important type, and under normal circumstances there's only ever one of them at once.

these are just "dead johns". yknow because of the.

yeah. past incarnations of real john that died or got killed, or perhaps just wore out after awhile. real john dying isn't a particularly huge issue because, again, the tower just sorta Makes these things. and boy have there been a lot. they never seem to look quite the same between bodies, but they're all the same john with the same memories nonetheless, and so long as the tower stands, there will be more johns.

these are the pillar johns. this is known. these, as far as i know, are canonically clones of a cursed state of real john, and are mentally all the same guy by way of a hivemind. no speculation to be done here!

this "original john" is also stated canon the current real john, under a curse from pizzahead. physically the same being as real john, so the tower isn't just going to make a new one because this one's not technically Dead. i like to think john is closer to just being another brick of the tower like this, in something of a suspended state between being john tower and real john. still alive and sapient like real john, but much more connected to and in tune with the general sense of Energies of john tower. Has direct control over bits of it, which is primarily expressed as:

mini-johns! as real john is to john tower, so mini-johns are to pillar johns. there is no way to make this less confusing. mini-johns are essentially just random ass bricks and blocks of the tower that pillar john went 'ok little fucker you're gonna be alive now'. they're not part of either the pillar john hivemind OR the john tower collective and operate on their own agenda, which is i suppose is why they attack you, despite john generally seeming to be on your side about what you're doing to the tower. the little guys are a little more removed from their host, and aren't too thrilled about you tearing everything down. or maybe john is just pissed about getting killed over and over since there's no doubt that shit hurted. the john ghost certainly doesn't seem too happy about it either but honestly he's allowed to be a little vengeful in my book.

an aside note but there's also definitely some weird connection between them and [pillar] John Being Dead since they only ever appear during escape, except for in the graveyard-themed level [scrapyard] where everything is already dead... though interestingly not the JOHN graveyard level [john gutter] until pizza time? whatever. i don't have much of a sensible framing for this aside from it just being a general thematic thing and the mini-john section is too long already so i am moving on.

this john i frankly have no fucking clue about and am generally leaning more toward the idea that it's maybe not a literal thing that exists. more just a visual representation of one thing or another?

since it dies when you kill the final/original pillar john my initial read on it was that it's just sorta like an alternate view of original john so you could get a good look at the whole thing not restricted to the space in the 2d plane the player is on, but, crucially, it is missing real/original john's hat, which feels like too central a detail to leave out.

my alternate read on it is that it's a representation of the... overall state of the tower. emotionally, or perhaps structurally, which really might mean thing when you are talking about an arcane structure that is an undetermined amount of alive. either way, it's clear john, the tower, its energies, anything relating to such have been under duress and steadily, irreversibly decaying for....however long it's been since pizzahead took over. bit of a dour note to end on i suppose but that's just the way the tower crumbles man.

you may ask me what all this means for gerome. and i would answer, hell if i know?!? they're said to be brothers and clearly the same Kind of guy, but they don't seem to be cut from the same cloth, as it were. gerome doesn't seem to have Powers:tm: like john does, or pizzahead certainly would have been using him for shit as well, and there's also not a million versions of him lying around to land him in that weird pseudo-immortal space like john.

my best guess is he's something more intrinsically connected to the treasures, and something of a life support system or failsafe for the tower. i'm not sure how to Coherently articulate my thoughts here, but it's something like...little guy fundamental to but also entirely separate from the tower, made to help with its general upkeep [janitor stuff] and also to protect itself in dire straits [treasures]. not in any way attached to the john collective so that if something goes wrong there, at least gerome's small part of the tower's vibe remains untarnished. something about shaping and fragmenting the tower's energies into and across each of the levels by routing and/or stabilizing it through cloned johns; by proxy still this taps in to the gerome part of the tower's energies which manifests as its own separate door/room within that space that can't be altered by any other force re: the background in the treasure rooms always just being normal purple tower brick. treasures being condensed physical standalone bits of the tower's energy, enough of whatever's been channeled into that area to keep john going when given back to him should something disconnect/destroy the energies of the rest of that area. something like that.

honestly, i still have a bit of a hangup in saying gerome is of the same tower origin as john simply because he's not same shade of purple as all the other john tower stuff, but that's really kind of nitpicking at that point, so. hwatever.

ANYWAY all that said and done the most important thing you should take away from this post is that at one point gerome might have had a brother that looked like this

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 1, Wave 3, Poll 6

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and prior here.

Data Soong-Star Trek: The Next Generation

Qualifications:

Many fans interpret him as autistic, including me, and he is gay. Also canonically asexual! He has only ever had one onscreen romance (Tasha Yar does not count, that was a one night stand/FWB thing), with a woman, in which the entire moral was that he was forcing himself to be someone he wasn't while in a relationship with her. His closest relationship is with Geordi LaForge, a relationship commonly interpreted as romantic or queerplatonic.

Propaganda:

Data as a character is so important to me, as an autistic queer kid. His whole storyline of wanting to be human, but never being able to be human, because there's something fundamentally different about him that causes some people to treat him as lesser and nonsentient.... very autistic. He often infodumps to people, is very blunt, experiences emotions in an unconventional way, is socially awkward, and has specific interests in things like poetry and painting. He is a very kind person, and is averse to harming even people who are direct threats to him (such as Kivas Fajo). He has a cat and writes poems about her!! He breaks the prime directive to save a little alien girl!! I cannot adequately explain how awesome this character is in words.

Submitted by @convenient-plot-device

Sir Alistair Hammerlock-Borderlands

Qualifications:

Canonically an amputee, also has a missing eye

Propaganda:

Silly victorian gentleman hunter guy in a scifi setting. His glasses are broken in a way that makes you see his robo eye AND resembles a fancy monocle. Bri'ish for some reason. Goofy lil man who gives you sidequests and is probably the nicest person in the setting. Refined vocabulary which he occasionally peppers in swears. Fabulous facial hair. Makes jokes abt his missing limbs ("[...] my more artificial limbs may begin to rust. Hard to sneak up on prey with a squeaky prosthetic!"). Huge ADHD and tism vibes imo. Also he's gay and has an equally silly + classy husband who is also disabled so epic diversity win (old man yaoi)

Anything Else?:

IM SO NORMAL ABT HIM

Submitted by @wainwrightjakobshammerlock

[roseworth]

im a little sick rn so im sorry if this doesnt make sense or sounds like the ramblings of a crazy person. but every once in a while i see people say that teen titans 2003 completely butchered rose's character and while i think thats true i feel like its also important to mention that. tt03 completely defined rose's character. dgmw she had plenty of good appearances beforehand (titans 99 rose my forever beloved) but teen titans IS her character

like she had showed up in deathstroke comics and mostly either didnt have much of a personality or was experiencing a lot of emotions given that she was having the worst week of her life so its hard to pinpoint an actual personality from that, then in titans she was a fun character but was entirely a side character that didnt have a lot to do. she was on two titans teams before tt03 but never went on a mission (unless u count that one ww issue she was in). not to mention her entire relationship with slade was "hes just kinda the guy that impregnated my mom then indirectly got her killed" so she didnt like him but she also didnt care all that much

but tt03. usually when geoff johns butchers a character he doesnt really give a reason for why their personality is different, but with rose there is a very clear explanation. in #0.5 despite its problems (mischaracterizing lili in the one (1) panel she appeared in and giving rose the. sigh. foster parents.) she was pretty much the same she had been in deathstroke comics, where she was a mostly average person with mild violent tendencies. then wade (same guy that killed her mom) came and murdered her foster parents in front of her, she was very obviously angry and was having a VERY emotionally charged moment. she was angry at the titans because they were the closest people nearby in that moment, then she wasnt angry at slade because he was the one handing her a gun to let her take her revenge. so we very clearly see what made her feel like slade was her only resort, then in issue #12 they say that slade is using the super soldier serum on her to keep her there. so everything is laid out pretty clearly. then ofc when she joins the team in #34 its pretty obvious that her personality is gonna be different bc shes just gotten out of being forced to work with slade against her will, then put on the teen titans where she feels like no one but eddie actually wants her there, but she cant leave because she thinks slade will find her again. shes angry and hurting and her life has been fundamentally changed

basically idk. tt03 shaped most of her personality, her relationship with slade, and her general outlook on life and actually gave a reason for why so much was changed. and before that she had been a pretty minor character, so teen titans gave her a chance to actually. be a character with motives. so while she is a different character in tt03 (though i'd also argue that she has a fairly similar personality in the deathstroke comics she'd been in) i dont think its entirely true to say that it was BAD for her character

[astarionspocketpussy]

im trans so all of the characters get to be funky about gender as a treat. 

Shadowheart is a trans woman in my heart. I don't know I think something about her just screams that to me, you know? And I think the idea that she transitions socially quite young, young enough that the name her parents call her when they see her was a name she chose herself, I think that just scratches an itch in my brain. Extra points for the fact that Shar's games means she likely can't remember so much of her own journey with gender, how strange and uncomfortable and isolating that would feel. Its just a story I think is interesting and would be fun to explore thematically. 

Gale is a trans guy because I'm projecting. Those enchanted underwear he has? Magic packer. Also something about his personality just screams trans guy to me. Again, projecting. 

Wyll is also a trans guy. This is because A) I like him and he's cool, so he gets my highest honor- the trans-ification bean. And B) because it makes his relationship to heroism and his ideals have such a nice texture. His gentlemanly, heroic beliefs become both an expression of how fundamentally good he is and also a fun bit of gender expression. He's playing the role of the dashing princely figure both because he wants to help people and because that's what manhood is to him. Also it colors his relationship with his dad in a way I really like. 

Karlach for me is like. She could be anything. Trans woman, nonbinary, cis, genderqueer, literally anything goes. She just has a fun gender expression and I think she's best taken as just, like. Her gender is that she's Karlach. 

Lae'zel is cis to me. But her culture has very different rules and I feel like her relationship with gender would reflect that. I feel like she'd be a cis woman, but insofar as she doesn't really want to be anything else. Like, she doesn't dislike womanhood it just doesn't matter to her as much as cool weapons and dragons do. And I like that, its fun to examine gender in that way. 

Astarion is also cis to me. I've seen headcanons that I like well enough but I don't know, I just cannot help but see him as cis. I think he has a funky relationship with gender and expression, but he's ultimately a guy. He'd love drag though. He gives me that vibe. The performance would be appealing to him. Maybe he doesn't do drag himself but he'd love the scene. 

Halsin is nonbinary to me and I will not be accepting criticism at this time.  This is just me blatantly pointing the tran-ification beam at a character I like and I do not care. 

[infiniteko]

Yeah, I sent that message to Bry because she was the only one posting about these anons attacking you guys...as far as I'm concerned. I haven't been here in a while.

I don't really wanna private message anyone. Sophie can privately message you if she so desires.

Further, as far as Sophie and I discussed, like yeah...you guys just had different styles of sharing ideas. Sure we can all get butthurt sometimes. But, it wasn't anything personal, ultimately, a social media tiff lol. I imagine that post is deleted?

Does it really matter anymore? Do you expect Sophie to still be raging by a tiff?

Im not gonna say anymore, it's none of my business. But the anons sending so much hate: you guys need to stop and go within. Sophie wouldn't want this for y'all. Its deplorable behavior...her and ada are gone, rely on yourself...

[neutral but more confused tone]

I'm not sure what you discussed with her but dming me and agreeing about the "there is no ego, this post is limited" story on Instagram that was meant in a neutral way but then going to tumblr, switching and saying "you're speaking from the ego, i'm so disappointed, you sound jealous of her" and making it sound like I'm attacking Ada which I originally never did within 1-2hours which resulted in her devouted deciples living in my ask box since the very start of this account to now and never saying anything about it and sendings asks anonymously about topics only she could knew about from our IG dms which were personal, doesn't sound very "different styles of sharing ideas & nothing personal" to me. How can I be jealous of someone I don't know? I asked afterwards on IG who Ada is and people told me. That's the thing that confuses me here. How can I speak from something that doesn't exist fundamentally? They talked about ND/AV but contradicted themselves with ego-related posts and concepts. Pointing that out is not an attack. I never attacked Ada, I never even knew her to begin with but Sophie's reblog was the catalyst of everything else that followed to this day that blew everything out of proportion. She knew I wasn't attacking her because that's what I said in the audio back then on IG. Disagreeing with someone does not mean attacking them. She knew her followers were camping in our inbox (not just this account) for months and stayed silent and now says it wasn't anything actually? After she (Sophie) left for a reason her anons didn't know, people started blaming Chen for it and no one said a thing. A follower on IG sent me a message asking what my opinion of this post is, i replied and AFTER i found out it's from tumblr, i made an account too. Another thing is, I don't fully understand why you operate as a middleman for her. You said in Bry's message that Anons should stop speaking for her, but aren't you speaking for her or in her name anonymously too? I'm not angry, just confused as to what exactly she told you and why it clashes with the actual situation and the reactions of it

[quidfree]

hear me out…. todobaku as villains???

im going to disappoint you anon bc i am not a like... dark & twisted fantasy villain au person. as per quidfree canon what keeps me going is good characterisation and so you will find no undercut tattoo-laden bad boys here.

if you want my two cents on what todobaku villain au would most likely look like though it's under the cut

todoroki:

this one is easy right? touya exists. shouto already has his villain backstory: his dad is a bigshot hero uplifted by society and also an abusive bastard in private. his motivations in hero-oriented society are obvious.

i think shouto probably distinguishes himself from touya in a number of ways, one of which being style of villainy. touya was a lot more unstable emotionally (?tied to his quirk self-harm stuff) and undiscerning in his resentment (see: woman hater) even before he ran away. i think shouto would be a more classic anti-hero type villain, less quick to cause chaos and death to unrelated civilians or high schoolers. they would have an uneasy relationship if and when shouto figured out who dabi was- i think he would retain his empathy for his siblings and mother, but he would disagree with touya’s choices.

i see him as a loner villain, not likely to join the league. early UA shouto appeared to have literally never spoken to another person in ten years, so if he around that age veered off the expected path and went MIA, i think the whole ice prince thing would solidify pretty definitely. and that’s the kind of personality he’d have too- icy, controlled superiority over a core of red-hot rage. no quips here. though some dramatics. he hides it but shouto always has flair.

shouto is a practical guy first and foremost. i think he’d just wear something similar to his plumber fit. maybe something akin to a balaklava to mask his identity, but maybe not, if he wants to make his father aware of his actions. i do think touya-style he might go for a hairdye, but in his case it’d probably be bleach, as a sort of obvious reclaiming of rei’s heritage and rejection of enji’s.

overall as villains go if we are keeping to a world close to canon shouto is probably one of the more morally upright people you will encounter. very scary motherfucker but pretty targeted enemies, so unless you’re involved in maintaining the hero justice system at some pivotal level you’re probably safe. if you are though? rip i guess. prepare to have your home frozen, your limbs stuck to the ground, and an icepick summarily driven through your skull by a teenager.

bakugou

katsuki is tough because for him it very much depends on setting, and at a basic level when you’re looking at. katsuki fundamentally is not a fuck the system guy- he’s a guy the system loves, and he’s interested in winning it, not destroying it, at least until character development kicks his ass. so really if you want to go early canon for both of them, villain bakugou is just hero bakugou. a katsuki from the start of bnha left to continue on his presumed arc uninterrupted, no deku or kidnapping or war to force him to question himself. arrogant and cruel and uncaring of what heroism is meant to be about. saving big numbers, sure, or at least defeating big ones, but when your defeats involve death or as good as, hard to draw the line.

similarly, in a universe where for some reason heroes have lost their relevance and villains reign, teen katsuki would have very easily risen in that direction, with similar traits.

who would his targets be? whoever’s in his way, pretty much. even in a more anti-hero slant, villain’s goons would not be safe. and anyone who tried to recruit / hire / ally him would inevitably face some kind of betrayal bc katsuki simply got sick of orders and believes he can handle the fall-out.

in terms of looks, katsuki is more style conscious than shouto is, but as lord explosion murder doesn’t necessarily look very heroic i think he wouldn’t look that different. maybe more of the black and winter-suit vibes.

for as insufferable as he would be, he would also be horrifying, yes. i mean, the guy is a starter kit terrorist. even if he was in tantrum ego mode he could level a street. collateral would be nasty if katsuki didn’t care to contain himself.

todobaku villain interaction ???

if we’re going with the above sort of setting? would not stand each other. for bakugou it’s obvious stuff (think sports fest and general canon), but todoroki genuinely would not tolerate villain bakugou at all, given the obvious alarm bells of similarity to endeavor. it’s not his focus but if bakugou died he would not be displeased.

as in any universe they could be begrudgingly forced into cooperation and then be privately disgusted by how well they worked together after the initial predictable faux pas. all of their other villain colleagues are like “can’t we just call that guy in for an assist again” and theyre like *breathing exercises* no.

they are both despite appearances and villainy-amplified dramatics fairly pragmatic so theyd probably not actively seek to cross each other unless they seemed to be getting in the way of their respective goals. they can recognise that this would be getting into it w an unnecessarily big distraction/threat. but i can imagine the “keep out of this” warnings would be fairly inventive. todoroki negligently thwarts one of bakugou’s plots and bakugou turns his entire hideout to rubble. a bunch of todoroki’s contacts are collateral during one of bakugou’s attacks and bakugou wakes up to find all of his security died of hypothermia overnight. lest we forget they both have petty streaks.

hero x villain interaction would be. very funny and very bad. hero todoroki would be So Tired of villain bakugou bc of how frustrating it is that hes actually hard to stop and villain bakugou in turn would resent him immensely. hero bakugou dealing w villain todoroki? that would be (psychologically bizarre) fun. i think for some reason that would be the closest we get to a bakugou w ‘doodling hearts against their own volition’ crush energy. but theyd get along a lot better than the reverse, mainly bc hero bakugou is like a decent person and villain todoroki respects moral integrity. in both duos in a lighter setting the villain of the two might start getting a mild kick out of messing w the hero despite their focus on other things just bc 1) it gives villain todoroki the mildest of entertainment to look forward to every blue moon given he doesn’t necessarily wish bakugou any active harm 2) villain bakugou feels he’s owed some todoroki suffering considering how annoying he personally finds him.

that’s my two cents on it anyways. idk what everyone else has in mind!

[sergeifyodorov]

WE DO HAVE TO MENTION GENO AND LEON..... WE DO WE DO WE DO. oh the narrative. it's got me

(also where does mitch fit into this. who is the mitch of that gen)

wait i cant read. saw a geno mention and blacked out mitch and nicke which. oh god the narrative manifests even now /2

no actually lets break two curses one stone. connor bedard can be free from the one two punch career long rivals and partners narrative and we over here at the canucks can be free from our general ailments and curses too. and the sun can shine on vancouver for a change /3

im answering the FIRST three of these in one go u will get the other thesis in a diff post. it is sidgeno and mcdrai because those are two centres who are on the same line and the same unit and one of them is the weird other guy and one of them is the goodboy captain and it is nickeovi and 1634 because one of them is the loyal quiet centre and the other is the loud effervescent winger and you have a generational goalscorer AND a legendary playmaker in there. and also the aforementioned sid-davo and ovi-auston parallels. of course.

now the FIRST thing about that dollface bedsy is that not only. not Only is he fundamentally different from sid and davo in play style (a volume shooter instead of any kind of playmaker, to start) is that he is ALSO different in terms of personality. in vibe. no nose-to-the-grindstone sidney-esque blue-collar honesty, no softspoken davo shyness. he's all fire. fundamentally a merger of oviauston glam with siddavo hometown heroism.

the SECOND thing is that we're at like. Year One of his myth here. all things in good time. maybe chicago will stumble into another high pick and make off with bedsy's betrothed. fingers crossed that doesn't happen and he makes a break for it