#this s is bananas

[why-lamp]

i'm finally getting around to reading Killing Time by Della Van Hise.

you know, the Star Trek book that was so gay that it was recalled and reprinted with over 50 changes.

I got my hands on a first edition copy from Thriftbooks and decided to use a sticky tab every time something "spirk" happened

I'm only halfway through.

update its very fucking gay

[mrvelocipede]

I finished the banana. I think I may have put slightly too much stuffing in it. When it was done, I embroidered a little face on the side, as requested by the person it's for.

I'm especially pleased with the small amount of shaping I did on the stem:

This is probably not ever going to be an official pattern. I know it was 36 stitches around, and that the short rows spanned 2/3 of the stitches, and then there were five plain rounds before the next short row, but I didn't really keep track of the shaping other than that.

[jtl-fics]

Fluent Freshman - Part 18

PREVIOUS

Weirdly enough the only thing that FF can think of as they head down the stairs is the first Saw movie.

That one happened IN a bathroom right? He kind of watched all of them in a row to prepare himself for whatever Andrew might decide to do to him. But he’s near positive that one happened in a bathroom. It was derelict and he didn’t think it really had running water (or did it? Didn’t the guy wake up in a half-full tub? His memory is hazy in his bathroom related desperation and may be trying to protect him from thinking about water).

All leading to the main thought going through his head as he slowly headed down the narrow stairway to his death.

Would Andrew let him use the facilities before he’s handcuffed to a pipe?

The worst part about all of this is that he is not sure if he needs to take a dump or if he just needs to fart, he knows he has to take a piss. He’s read that when you die your body will relax and it’ll all just flow out of you and Nicky gave him these pants so he feels bad but he also does not want to face his death without pants. If he needs to take a shit then they’re definitely going to be absolutely ruined, if it’s a fart well…Andrew can’t kill him any further? He can mutilate his corpse a little but FF won’t be around to experience it.

No matter what he’s definitely going to piss himself. He had way too much water at Sweeties trying to consume the spicy ice cream.

You may be wondering why FF has not run away from his predicament and is walking down these steps without protest or comment or plea for his life.

First of all he is pretty sure that if he makes any sudden movements he will ruin these pants that Nicky bought for him. Second of all Andrew had already told him once that he wouldn’t accept any pleading for mercy he still remembers how he asked Andrew, “Please give me back my pen?” and Andrew had shot him a look that had his stomach cramp and his fingers itch for the bottle sweet pink relief in his backpack.

“I don’t like that word, don’t use it around me.” He said.

FF ever the pragmatic sort, “Which one?” He had asked because he had said a few, “I don’t want there to be a misunderstanding.” He followed up with when Andrew glowered at him only for the glare’s intensity to increase 10 fold.

“Don’t use the first word of your first statement or the last word of your second.” Andrew grit out and got up to leave without a word.

Message received loud and clear Andrew did NOT like words ‘Please’ or ‘Misunderstanding’.

So FF knows that any pleading for mercy would ABSOLUTELY result in Andrew not letting him take a bathroom break before him and Captain Neil make destroying him into a couple activity. The fact that Captain Neil is here is a bit of a shock but maybe Captain Neil has finally gotten the other Freshman Dealer up to snuff.

Maybe Kevin really did want to dissect him to figure out how Strikers keep passing straight to him?

They reach the door at the bottom of the stairs.

Ah, time to face the music.

At least he’d texted Gran that he was going to die when they had gotten into the club and the bathroom had not made itself readily apparent. Sure it was about his current ‘gotta piss / gotta shit’ situation but he’d been wise to keep his cause of death vague in that text.

The door opens and…

This is the NICEST torture chamber FF has EVER seen. (And after his desperation watch of all the Saw movies he has seen quite a FEW)

“Minyard, Josten, and Guest. Table 6 is yours.” A voice comes from the side and when he looks over there’s a man in quite a nice uniform standing behind a soft-lit bar polishing a glass looking every bit like a bar tender at those high-end places you see in movies. He looks around a bit more and there are some other people down here. It’s not quiet per se but it is a comfortable level of noise in comparison to the IQ dropping noise upstairs.

“C’mon Smith.” Andrew juts his chin towards a table in the back.

FF follows but continues to try and fit this nice little room into his world view.

Do these people watch other people get tortured to death for fun on a Friday night? Unlikely considering the upholstery on the booths and chairs looked like it’d stain if blood got on it. Was this perhaps a trafficking location where Andrew would sell off his organs to the highest bidder? He looked at the other patrons who seemed a bit higher class than the general club scene upstairs but not like they had the money to buy one of his kidneys. Maybe-

“Do not tell Nicky about this place, ever.” Andrew says as they slide into the booth. FF nods but can’t help but tilt his head slightly in an unspoken question, “He would absolutely tell any and everyone about it. Eden’s wants to keep this place a secret from the general public.” Andrew explains.

“Nicky currently thinks that there’s a straight swingers club down here.” Captain Neil says with a huff of laughter.

“Eden’s is cool, even though there’s some sick shit in the basement.” Floats through his head again.

What the fuck was a swinger?

His fingers itch for his phone but he’s currently talking with Andrew and Captain Neil so that’d be rude but they’re talking to him like he absolutely knows what a swinger is and he DOES NOT.

“It’s quieter down here. Figured you’d prefer it.” Andrew says as he gets up and heads towards the bar down here where the bartender was aggressively cutting ice chunks.

He and Captain Neil sit in silence for a few seconds before Captain Neil offers him a slight smile, “I know you’d rather be with your grandma and you and Andrew prefer not to say things out loud but we’ve really liked hanging out with you.” Captain Neil says.

????????????????????????????????????????????????

That’s such a nice thing to say to someone.

Especially someone like FF.

Especially especially when they’re planning on killing him?

He hopes his confusion stays off his face as he nods once. “It’s been fun.” It’s not even really a lie. Thanksgiving yesterday had been nice and loud and FF had missed the chaos of a Family Dinner more than he had ever realized. The car ride had been…a time but once he’d asked Andrew to either keep his eyes on the road or let him out Andrew’s hands had stayed at 10 and 2 and the ride had been smooth. Aaron and Nicky’s weight against him had been nice too, a warm memory before he developed a possible life long aversion to whipped cream. He’d gotten to go Black Friday shopping and Captain Neil even helped carry it home for him. Baking bad been nice even if the stress of doing it with his life on the line was less so. The subsequent nap and day spent doing normal college guy things had been…it’d all been nice.

It’s starting to feel like….

“Drink this.” Andrew puts a drink down in front of him.

No Andrew definitely wants his bladder to burst.

“What is it?” He asks instead looking at the creamy looking drink with suspicion.

Andrew rolls his eyes as he hands Neil a fruity looking drink as he sits with what is a few fingers of scotch. “It’s virgin.” Andrew says not answering the question at all and must pick up that FF won’t be drinking it until he gets the full answer because he continues after a moment, “It’s like a Pina Colada but with bananas instead.” Andrew answers.

It’s not that FF hates banana but why in the world would Andrew grab him this? Was it just one of the few virgins options on this place’s fancy menu or-

“Bananas will help get your stomach acid back down.” Andrew says, “Since you’re an idiot and ate that mango ice cream just because you wanted to impress that girl.” He rolls his eyes.

“Impress that girl?” There weren’t any girls at the table and how in the world would him eating that god-forsaken spicy ice cream impress anyone other than Betsy. Even Betsy would only be impressed by the depths he was willing to reach just to avoid what he perceives as an awkward social situation.

“The waitress.” Neil reminds him as if that cleared anything up.

“Yeah,” he says as if he has understood the conversation but he has not. “It was spicy mango.” He says because maybe if he keeps the conversation going he’ll get enough context clues to understand what might be his last conversation.

Andrew let out a huff of laughter and pushed FF’s drink closer to him, “Drink your fancy Banana smoothie Casanova.” He says.

No closer to understanding the conversation he accepts that it might be something that only becomes clear after he sheds his mortal coil and is no longer given a -10 INT debuff by his full bladder and revolting stomach.

He takes a sip.

Oh that’s actually pretty good.

It feels like he can feel it sizzling in his stomach and soothing the discomfort there. Maybe he should look into Banana smoothies as a replacement for what Abby has called a ‘concerning co-dependence’ in regards to Pepto Bismol. No one can put him on a medical watch if it’s just banana smoothies he’s chugging down like they’re going out of style.

“Thanks,” he says, “that was good.” He admits before reaching into his jacket and moving past the Megamind toy and grabbing his wallet. “What do I owe you for that?” He asks.

“We’re even.” Andrew waves away the money.

“You bought the stuff for breakfast, those brownies, and the pie tomorrow.” Neil says and FF blinks surprised to hear that they were talking about the pie he didn’t think he was going to get the chance to make.

“You don’t need to buy a spot with us.” Andrew says and FF leans back slightly at the intensity on Andrew’s face as he says it. “I invited you here because I wanted to. The brownies were good but if you don’t feel like making the pie tomorrow? It’s not like I’m going to drive you back to Palmetto and leave you on Abby’s doorstep.” He says.

FF feels gears start to turn in his head.

“It’s good pie.” He hears himself say.

“I didn’t even know about the pie when I invited you.” Andrew says and…

Andrew and FF sit in silence but honestly it’s not like Andrew’s sharpening his knives. The two of them mostly just do their own work or read. FF has been getting his German literacy up to snuff so that he can read the language when he goes there to visit Nicky’s fiance next year. He likes how serious Andrew is about learning it so that he doesn’t have to ask Captain Neil a thousand questions and it’d be nice if Andrew wasn’t obviously planning on murdering him.

Andrew brings dried apples and sends Captain Neil along with probiotic yogurts to their meetings. Both of those things tend to soothe his stomach and the yogurt that had been unflavored before was now vanilla which he liked a fair bit. It would have been a really nice gesture if it wasn’t for the fact that Andrew was making fun of his tummy troubles.

Andrew will put his foot down in practice sometimes when Kevin is getting too demanding wanting to know exactly how FF intercepted his passes to Neil. Kevin always backs off and Andrew will do the same when Jack starts to get a little too personal in his attacks at FF or when Sheena decides she’s going to be a bitch. It’d be nice if it wasn’t Andrew staking his claim that he was the one who was going to make FF’s life miserable.

Andrew drove FF around for an hour after Greg had shown up. He found out later from one of his friends that Andrew had threatened Greg after he had power walked away into the building. Andrew had driven him around and had only started heading towards the tower when FF had relaxed. It would have been nice if Andrew wasn’t trying to lure him into a false sense of security.

Andrew had invited him to his Family’s house over Thanksgiving when the bad storm had ruined his Thanksgiving plans. Andrew had threatened Jack to stop him from eating his Grandma’s pie and complaining about it. Andrew had stopped messing around with Captain Neil when FF had made it clear he was uncomfortable being in a car where the driver wasn’t paying attention to the road. Andrew had twice made him go to bed in the last couple hours.

It’d be nice if…

“We’ve really liked hanging out with you” Captain Neil had said.

Andrew was just trying to be nice.

Embarrassment rolls over him like a wave but FF has many years of pretending like he’s not going to die from embarrassment, “Thanks for inviting me. I’ll still probably make the pie tomorrow.” He offers.

Andrew’s eyes change slightly and FF is under the impression that he’s happy to hear that.

“Just enjoy your drink Smith.” Andrew says.

FF does go back to sipping his drink and letting more and more memories of things Andrew had done come to him and lets his embarrassment grow.

He finishes his drink and only then realizes that he is a code red in terms of bladder capacity. The new knowledge that this is not a torture chamber but in fact yet another overture of friendship from Andrew paired with his desperation finally loosens the question from his mouth, “Where’s the bathroom here?” He asks.

“There isn’t one downstairs but just head up stairs and hug the wall to the left.” Captain Neil answers.

“Bring your phone. If Frank doesn’t recognize you to let you back in.” Andrew reminds him.

FF nods and heads out of the club and up the stairs.

He might be doing a bit of a potty dance so he forces himself to become unnoticeable because he does not need cool people at a cool club to see him about to piss himself. Once he enters into a stealth mode that the United States Military would like to talk to him about he hugs the wall and nearly cries tears of relief when he sees a door labelled MEN.

He doesn’t think about the possibility of letting up on stealth mode because he is sure that he is about to make a face that he does NOT want any human being to see when he unzips his pants and starts to take the world’s most life-affirming piss on the planet.

As his bladder empties his brain is able to process the understanding that he had come to down in the basement he had thought would be his final resting place.

Andrew has been trying to be nice (and succeeding it was all so nice! He feels like an asshole! He is an asshole! Gran always told him that assuming makes an Ass out of U and Me. He had just thought it was funny grandma humor not valuable life advice!)

The night wasn’t going to end with Andrew’s knife in his stomach, it was probably just going to end with Nicky puking on his shoes (which is fine because these are the shoes Nicky was letting him borrow for the club anyways, they’re his shoes to puke onto.)

A secondary relief fills his system. His stomach, soothed by the Banana smoothie and now this, feels like it might actually let him live through the night.

While FF was distracted with a piss that would have made any number of cult leaders jealous with the number of divine revelations he was experiencing he failed to notice a second man enter the bathroom.

There was a reason that FF always ALWAYS became noticeable when he was at a urinal and the man who came to the urinal right next to him was showcasing that VERY reason.

He was trapped here for at least ten more seconds and he could hear the man grumbling distractedly but didn’t really pay it too much attention until…

“Fucking Wesninski Brat.” He grumbled under his breath.

Oh god dammit.

NEXT

MASTERPOST FOR ALL PARTS OF FLUENT FRESHMAN AU

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[90s-2000s-barbie]

Bananas In Pajamas (1992 - 2001)

[hawkeyeslaughter]

im so picky about people saying [ sentence ] is their “ i love you “ about ships but i mean hawktrap’s “ whoever the them , it was always the us “ will GET me

[motorcycleboy9]

I hope that in the other universe we're not a blond&black hair duo in the US during 80's in which one desperately wants to protect the other hates the social distributions and wishes to escape the world of cruelty and live as plain normal people

[mctxart]

Shorter WONG

[wh0re-in-the0ry]

My experience with these idiots on miitopia:

Schlatt keeps shooting Charlie out of the tank. He ONLY does this to to Charlie, it doesn’t matter who I put in the party. The big guy will only use the human cannonball if Charlie is there. The fact that Charlie isn’t pissed at Schlatt amazes me.

Ted is a banana whore. I used to have almost 30 bananas, now there’s six. The worse part is that HE HAS THE ABILITY TO STEAL HEALTH FROM ENEMIES THAT HE DOESN’T USE.

Tucker is an absolute delight as always. He’s the only reason why Ted hasn’t eaten all the bananas by now. <3

I have spent over 50k in gold and 60% of my food for these miis .

Did I mention Ted is a banana whore? The sheer amount of times I gave him money to buy a new outfit or weapons just for him to come back with a banana is absolutely ridiculous.

[odk-2]

Banana Fan 3-D Color Slides c.1950's

[galactic-glamour-girl-posts]

And now, an essay about Dot Warner because I have nothing better to do

In the series bible for Animaniacs, Dot is described as:

"everything that all animated female characters have never been"

Was that true at the time?

I think so, and Here's Why

Before I begin, I'd like to mention this is mostly gonna revolve around western animation...and by "western" I mean "not anime". Okay? OK.

Part 1 : Her design

I'll start by comparing Dot's design to the design of many other female animal cartoon characters that came before her, because a lot of them are...not great. For context, Animaniacs (and therefore Dot herself) debuted in 1993. At the time (and after) when it came to animal cartoon characters, guys would often be designed as "the default" or "the norm", and girls would be given extra visual signifiers to make it clear that they are, in fact, girls. Stuff like human-like hair, and/or really long eyelashes, and/or human-like body parts such as hips and breasts so they needed to be fully clothed, and/or smaller noses and mouths than the guys to make them look "cuter", and/or permanent makeup, etc.

Let's take The Chipettes for example:

They barely look like chipmunks! They're basically human girls with chipmunk noses! Their-I guess it's probably fur-looks pale enough to pass as white skin, they have human lips, even human hair. Their hair doesn't even match their "fur" colour, which makes it look like skin even more. I know it's a cartoon, I don't expect them to resemble real chipmunks completely, but I should still be able to recognise them as chipmunks, shouldn't I? Just look at them compared to the boys, it's jarring:

Although at least in their case, both the guys and girls are in full outfits rather than just the girls.

Gadget's probably another one of the best examples (pre-1993) of what I'm talking about (she has human hair and a more human-like body and hence needs a full outfit, meanwhile Chip and Dale do not), but Toodles is also a pretty good example (she has smaller, more human hands than Tom's, permanent makeup, really long eyelashes, and her figure even more human than Tom's). Even if they weren't in full outfits they usually were made to look more human:

Female animals were constantly given more human attributes than the guys, usually just to make them look "prettier". Honestly a lot of female animal characters are still designed this way.

Meanwhile guys can look as cartoony as possible and go around in half-complete outfits no problem, because they were drawn to be funny talking animals, not conventionally attractive human/animal hybrids:

Then in some cases they'd just take one of the pre-existing male characters, add a bow or skirt or eyelashes or something, and BOOM! A "new" character:

Yeah they have no human hair and have cartoony proportions, just like the guys...but they didn't have to make them look just like the guys to do that. I prefer these over the previous examples but...actually creative designs would be nice.

Now let's look at Dot:

See this? This is nice.

She has no human hair (the hair on her head is just more of her fur), no permanent makeup, no eyelashes needed to signify "she's the girl" (she's only drawn with eyelashes for comedic effect or when she's trying to look extra cute), no curves or hips, and isn't fully clothed and goes around with no shirt like Yakko, because she's a funny talking animal and should look like one, not a human girl.

Now let's compare her to her brothers:

She's a different height, has no whiskers, a slightly different head shape, and has longer but not human-like hair. She looks similar enough to look related to them, but she's not just Yakko or Wakko in a skirt.

For this section I'm mostly just talking about animated animal characters, but I also want to mention that even with human characters male leads often were allowed to look round or blocky or basically any body type, and didn't have to look conventionally attractive; but female leads were almost never designed to look as cartoony, and were often drawn to look as conventionally attractive or cute as possible by being given more (even if just slightly) realistic proportions, and were usually of the same body type.

Now, the three human examples I showed aren't actually bad designs. Honestly, on their own, they're good designs! But they're once again showing that there was a clear difference regarding how guys were drawn vs how girls were drawn.

Dot's cute but they don't draw her anymore realistically than they do her brothers nor is her cuteness over-exaggerated by giving her more human attributes than necessary to make her as conventionally pretty as possible. She's anthropomorphic, but no more so than her brothers.

Part 2 : Her personality

Now, there were of female leads before Dot where the tropes I mentioned don't apply and whose designs are unique, like for example Olive Oyl, who's allowed to look wacky (stick thin and not curvy, lanky with noodle arms, circular head, large hands and feet) and Penelope Pussycat, who's allowed to look like an anthropomorphic, but still cartoony cat and not too human. So what I talked about before wasn't the case every time.

But then you have to consider their personalities (or sometimes, lack thereof).

Many animated female leads were flat characters compared to the male leads, often because they fell under cliché tropes.

Some of the most prominent being: the token love interest, the eye candy, the damsel in distress, or the sensible one because "girl", who would often mostly just exist to set up punchlines the male characters would deliver.

Of course this didn't apply to every animated female lead, especially not by the early 90's, but it was still the norm.

Even Babs Bunny, who predates and is similar to Dot whilst being a good character in her own right, falls under the token love interest trope (also her design is basically a pink Buster in bows, although in her case that was intentional given that their "No relation" catchphrase was meant to poke fun at the "male and female love interests look and are even named suspiciously similarly" trope, so for her it works). Basically in some cases they'd just staple these tropes onto decent characters who didn't really need them.

However, Dot doesn't fall under any of these categories. She's the younger sister so obviously she couldn't be a love interest, I just went over the fact that she wasn't designed to be eye candy, just cute but not in an over-exaggerated way, and she wasn't just cute to look appealing. Her cuteness benefited her character; either by the shock value of seeing a cute little girl swear or scare Satan or something like that, or by Dot using her cuteness fool foes (or at least make them look bad). She could hold her own in any situation and although both her and her brothers were captured a few times on the show, they escaped pretty easily each time. The one time she alone got kidnapped she basically saved herself, so I wouldn't count her as a damsel in distress because it never really feels like she's in real danger; the audience knows she's got this.

Most of all, she was definitely not the sensible one of the group. Sure she'd get annoyed when Yakko and Wakko did the Hello Nurse bit, but she was just as bad, and would react the same way whenever she came across a cute guy. She was of course written this way on purpose, she is very bit as wacky and silly and chaotic as her brothers. It didn't matter that she was the "cute one", she would go off-model if it meant she could make a funnier face. She'd gladly join in on tormenting their "special friends", without worrying about if their feelings got hurt or preaching that they should all try to get along. She'd gladly indulge in excessive violence. She'd gladly mess about and wreak havoc just as much as her brothers. I'm all for smart female characters (Dot is smart after all), but in a main group of guys and at least one girl, a girl doesn't have to be the sensible one every time.

It's no secret that Dot was written to be feminine. At the time, characters that were written to be very feminine often were written to fit within gender norms, meaning many were: passive, demure, soft-spoken, gentle, wide-eyed and innocent, and/or sensitive, etc; or at the very least more so than the masculine characters.

But Dot just wasn't any of those things. She was assertive, confident and acerbic, loud and outspoken, often acted more violent and angry then her brothers, witty, is as lustful and dirty-minded as her brothers, and doesn't get her feelings hurt easily and will instead pretend to be extremely upset/hurt for sympathy or for dramatic effect.

Before and around about the time of Dot's debut, if animated female leads were given personalities that broke many gender norms (and that already wasn't too common), they'd usually be tomboys. Now let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with tomboys. They're just as valid as girly girls and deserve to be and should be depicted in a positive light in animation, but this perpetuated the idea that to be tough and/or wacky, you had to be masculine, which just isn't true.

Dot was wacky and tough but still feminine and was by no means a tomboy, and I think that's important! She liked to look pretty, she liked pink and dresses and flowers, but she also made silly faces, liked to play rough and was more than willing to beat the living daylights out of someone who was asking for it.

Female characters in cartoons often either had decent personalities but their designs were lacklustre, or vice versa. Sometimes both their designs and personalities were lacklustre. Sometimes neither was a problem but their character was held back by having some trope forced onto them because "girl". Dot was a (at the time) rare case of none being the case whilst not having to sacrifice her femininity to be wild and strong.

Part 3 : Her role

By 1993, even if a female character had a good and unique design that didn't come with double standards and had a well-written personality that didn't submit to too many gender stereotypes, they were often:

A - An antagonist

I'm not saying these characters aren't bad people, but a lot of the time when we did get a fun female character, she was a villain.

Also (for this next point I'm not really talking about the three examples above), sometimes they were the only female characters in their show/movie/etc to go against gender stereotypes, which just perpetuates the idea that female characters breaking gender norms is wrong.

B - Essentially a clone of a male character

They'd act exactly like one of the male leads with minimal personality differences (those differences usually being more gender stereotypes) between the two, if there were any; again perpetuating the idea you had to be masculine to be wacky and/or tough.

Basically a distaff counterpart, or a half-identical twin, stuff like that.

C - Less important

Even when we did get a well-written, well designed female animated character who didn't fall under tropes associated with gender stereotypes, chances were she'd be a side character, or at the very least perceived as less important than the male leads.

I'll just use one example for this section since it's a lot more broad in terms of scope; Granny from Looney Tunes. She's one of the most well known female Looney Tunes characters, but even she was never really the "star" of the cartoons she was in. They're not called "Sylvester, Tweety, and Granny" cartoons, they're called "Sylvester and Tweety" cartoons. Even the show that was about Granny solving mysteries, what was it called?

But Dot doesn't fall under any of these categories. She's not a side character, she's not even a tritagonist, she's a protagonist. Yakko may have been the leader, but all the Warners acted as a unit and were presented as just important as each other. We call them "Yakko, Wakko and Dot", "The Warner Brothers, and the Warner Sister", etc.

I've already mentioned that's she's not designed as a clone of Yakko or Wakko, but she also had a distinct personality. She was more anger-prone than Yakko, she was wittier than Wakko, and she had a way bigger ego than both of them combined!

Dot's definitely not an antagonist, she wasn't a saint and she may have been chaotic, but you're meant to root for her. The people she and her brothers would go up against in their cartoons were often jerks, bullies, pompous, etc. Meanwhile the Warners had a strong sense of justice and morality. They weren't malicious (to people who didn't bother them at least), they just liked acting silly. When viewers saw Dot unapologetically being herself without conforming completely to how society thinks a cute little girl should act like, they weren't meant to hate her or love to hate her or anything like that, they were just meant to like her and laugh.

Part 4 : Today

There will probably always be room for improvement when it comes to female representation in cartoons, I mean, a lot of the tropes I mentioned are still commonly used (although I must stress that not all of them are inherently bad). However, it's better today than it was back then. We've gotten tons of well designed female leads over the past 30 years with three-dimensional personalities, ones who are gender non-conforming but still heroic, or who are strong but still feminine, or who are allowed to look and act as wacky as the guys on their show (if not more so), you get the idea.

I'm not saying Dot is the first good animated female character (or that her character was handled perfectly in the original Animaniacs-it wasn't), we all know that's not true, but she defied many tropes that so many animated female characters before her fell under, through her design, personality AND role. Notice that a lot of other animated female leads that also do that (both the examples I gave and any extra ones that you can think of) most likely debuted after Dot did.

To be 100% honest, you could argue that, even as of 1993 (or I guess 1991 considering that's when the series bible was written), describing Dot as "everything that all animated female characters have never been" is debatable, but I do think there was some truth to that statement at the time. I can't say for sure that she was a trend setter when it came to how girls in cartoons were handled, but I'll always appreciate the fact that her character turned out the way it did in spite of when she was created.

[bananasofthorns]

save me not dead yet live save meeeee

[cookinary]

I redrew (and redesigned) my Portal boi because he definitely needed a refresh!

Sum details:

His mask broke during the long fall in Portal 2 but he kept it anyway

I'm going with the stupid "Portal 2 happens 50 000 years into the future" theory because it's complete nonsense and I fucking love it so, because he spent so long in the Relaxation Vault, he got very pale (he was already pale in Portal 1 but not as bad)

For the same reason, his hair grew pretty long (he shaved it after escaping)

He got the massive burn scar on his left arm from an energy pellet grazing him

Oh yeah, trans rights also

And I just realized that I never shared his backstory here so it's under the cut if you're curious!

In chronological order:

Mitch creates Aperture

He puts Ophelia at the head of the entire facility

Ophelia realizes that Pedro would make the perfect test subject so she wipes his memory -it's the first and only time that a full memory wipe is done on a subject- She then realizes that watching him test would make her feel bad so she gives him the mask to hide his face. That way, she can watch him test without any remorse.

After a few tests, she puts him in a cryo-chamber (because she wants to put him through much harder tests that have not been invented yet)

Mitch and Denny are (forcefully) hired as test subjects but are brainwashed. They are both put in cryo-chambers

Not long after, Ophelia decides to turn herself into an android so she can live forever and control the entire facility. The scientists warn her that this can cause severe memory loss and mild insanity. She does it anyway and loses all memories of her human life. She now has full control over Aperture.

Judging all the scientists useless, Ophelia floods the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin

Portal 1 happens

At the start of Portal 2, Pedro is woken up by banana Pedro (who is a core in this AU) who wants to help him to get out of here.

Basically the same story happens. But Pedro eventually encounters Mitch and Denny who try to take him down. He kills them in return (Denny didn't have his long fall boots)

They finally get to Ophelia. Though, contrary to Wheatley (who got corrupted by the mainframe), Core!Pedro was actually planning to take Ophelia's place from the beginning. He stuffs Ophelia in a potato battery (she appears as an hologram being projected from the weird eye/circle thingy on it) and sends she and Pedro down the elevator shaft

Pedro's mask breaks during the fall, which leads Ophelia to realize that his face feels familiar after they reunite

While going through old Aperture, Pedro and Ophelia learns the truth about themselves (thanks to all the pre-recorded messages)

The rest of the game happens pretty similarly, except that at the end, after shooting Core!Pedro into space, Ophelia tries to get Pedro back to testing (after all, he IS the perfect test subject). Pedro refuses and attempts to destroy her. He fails, but Ophelia gives up and lets him go as she does not want someone who will try to destroy her 24/7

Basically like in Blue Sky, Pedro ends up in a small town where the people help him back to full health. He settles here and eventually finds out he has great cooking and baking skills and gets his own little cake shop (I'm not sure I still want this to be the post-game for this AU but I'll leave this here anyway)

These notes date back to 2020 HOLY SHIT IT'S BEEN 4 YEARS

[paul-simon-juggling]

As a Scottish person I feel it's my duty to share with you this picture of Paul Simon with Billy Connolly.

[bwunnipaws]

OUGH MY FUCKING GOD I LOVE SHORASH THEY MEAN EVERYTHING TO ME

[snailvee]

being haunted by this au

[springbon-t-art]

Part 4 of me drawing my favorites cookies from Cookie Run Ovenbreak & Cookie Run Kingdom Wars

Part 3

PLEASE DO NOT REPOST