wip that I will never finish but also did not want it to rot in my gallery so. here. clockers the best family dynamic ever and boat boys in the divorce court (colorized)

If we find some other way for War Games to kick off (or just...not have that arc, idk), I think my ideal end for the Robin!Steph arc would be for her, not to fuck up and get fired, but decide, on her own, that she prefers being Spoiler.

What she wanted was training, respect, and (ugh, DC, why?) to get back at Tim for the misconception that he cheated on her. The first two don't require being Robin (Bruce gave her a smidge during the Brentwood arc) and the third can be resolved through communication, or if we really want some interesting character growth, Steph confronting her own vindictiveness, wrestling with whether she cares more about Getting Revenge or Helping People.

Actually, that could tie back into her intro and subsequent early appearances pretty well? She became Spoiler to get back at her dad, but later shows up solving crimes in the suburbs pointing out that the Bats tend to focus on the main island city. She also wants to impress her crush, but moves away from that impetus over time. So deciding, "I built Spoiler into something more than revenge, and I want to keep building Spoiler, not get mired back in revenge as Robin," would be some growth.

So yeah, wrap up with Robin!Steph arc by her showing up at the Batcave in her Spoiler suit, mirroring how she first showed up in her handmade Robin suit, and tell Bruce she wants to split time patrolling the suburbs like she used to, and patrolling the city with him for more training. That being Robin was an honor, but she's Spoiler, and she's proud to be Spoiler.

This could be a kick in the pants for Bruce; by reclaiming Spoiler and laying down new terms of partnership, letting go of her grudge against Tim, she's acting more mature than Bruce (who it's implied made her Robin in an attempt to lure Tim back). Maybe this sparks him to reassess how he's handling the Jack situation and Tim's absence, reaching out in their civilian lives or otherwise doing something direct to maintain that important relationship.

bangs pots and pans

raph was never any less suited to leadership than leo

raph was never any less suited to leadership than leo

raph was N E V E R any less suited to leadership than leo

idk how many times i can say it before it sinks in that in rise there was never once any point where that was the point being made

if you just like leo’s character better than you like raph’s, that’s fine! if you just like it better when leo is leader, that’s fine! i have no issue!

but we need to stop trying to circle that leadership change back to somehow being about better or worse or ~more cut out for it~ because it sucks to throw the great job raph did through the series under the bus in order to prop up leo’s good qualities. 

they’re both great leaders. they both have strong suits and weak suits in the role, they both have growth and development when they’re in that role. they BOTH make on-screen mistakes in that role and aren’t very good at it at first! not getting a more in-depth explanation about it in the movie or series stinks and it’s very interesting to explore, but seriously. 

It absolutely breaks my heart to consider it but it really does feel like TBB is working toward an end of the story of the clones in general. They’re one of my very favorite aspects of the SW world and I’ve not wanted to think this could be the end of clone-focused canon, but I’m not sure there will be much left to say about them after the Tantiss mission is pulled off.

And anyway they deserve peace finally, to exit the story. We know where Rex eventually ends up, and maybe Echo will take over leading a cell of the rebellion in his place (possibly leading to Echo Base being named after him). But any of them who want to stop fighting and actually have a life after this should. Those three teen clones have already found a home on Pabu and maybe a little community of clone vets could be started there.

did you guys know that, well, the cruelty is the point

something about kageyama tobio being nineteen on the national team fresh out of high school and facing the whole world makes my heart ache.

it was everything he ever could have wanted. it was everything he ever did want, once. once kageyama tobio wanted to fly beyond the mountains he called home and soar into distant lands. once he wanted to climb to the top of the world until he was so high up that the sun and the moon and the stars were nothing but ants compared to him. once kageyama tobio wanted to do all these things alone — except he wouldn't be, not really, because he had someone who loved him and understood him and that was enough to shoulder a dream that blazed so bright it could burn him from the inside out with a single misstep.

and then kazuyo died and everything came crashing down like a satellite falling out of orbit, and the only thing tobio really wanted then was to heal from a heart full of broken glass.

at nineteen, he joins the national team. at nineteen, he plays at the olympics in brazil. at nineteen, kageyama tobio has everything he ever could have wanted, has everything he ever did want, once, but -

there are pieces of him missing, tobio thinks, a piece inside every single person who had taught him what it meant to love something so deeply it settles in your bones. there is a piece of him inside every single person who gave him a hand up out of the dark and pulled him onto steady ground. there are pieces of him that his new teammates will never know, will never understand, will never be able to put together and get the whole picture of who kageyama tobio is and why he seems so lonely when he is not alone, because kageyama tobio may be older and wiser and will not break so easily the way he did at the fragile age of fifteen, but there is NOTHING that can ease the ache of wanting the people he called home

I’ll never get over how good the first arcs of season 2 were

since i have laras permission to post shit he made heres another favorite old art done by her ☝️☝️

this literally summarizes everything there is to know about these guys

one beach day during purgatory could fix all the team vs team vs team trust issues but that'd be too good for them the eyeball does not want that and that hurts me </3

Rise of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - "Mask of the Masked Rider"

Prince Dex of Edenoi was given the powers of the Masked Rider by his dying grandfather, King Lexian, following a devastating final assault on Edenoi's capital by the evil Count Dregon. With Edenoi's defenses crippled, Dregon set his sights on Earth. Dex soon followed, teaming up with the Power Rangers and forming a strong alliance with them, counting them as some of his first and closest friends.

Dex's past is riddled in tragedy, Edenoi having been under constant siege since before he was born. His planet made for an easy target, as most of the population were pacifists, save for the Masked Rider Warriors that stood guard against incursions. Sadly, they were all wiped out in Dregon's final attack, leaving only Dex and his Ectophase Activator as the last remnants of the Rider Warriors.

Around the Rangers, Dex says everything extremely deadpan, making it hard to tell whether or not he's joking, but he will soon clarify with an equally deadpan "That was a joke." or "Was that not funny?"

He comes into inadvertant conflict with Tommy as she starts to worry about him replacing her on the team, threatened by the "newer and cooler green guy". The two soon reconcile as Tommy apologises for projecting onto him, with Dex saying that, as someone who also had never had friends before now, it's understandable that she would be worried about losing them again.

Central's Resident Trouble Maker

Hartley Rathaway was not a hero. He wasn't about to dress up in skin-tight tripolymer and run around getting cats out of trees, he had a cloak, not a cape, and he certainly wasn't prepared to race around the city fighting criminals. But if no one else was going to stand up to Amunet Black he supposed he would have to go make a nuisance of himself.

That did not make him a hero (G, 450 words)

The Flash (TV 2014)

Hartley Rathaway, Caitlin Snow

Additional Tags: Pre-Season/Series 04, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hartley Rathaway-Centric

Hartley hated this place. It was bad enough he had to be the one dealing with this, now he had to come to this dump. Where half the rowdy drunks were entirely oblivious to what was going on under their noses and the other half included some of the most repulsive people he had ever had the misfortune of meeting. Someone had to deal with this though.

[Continued on AO3]

Sonic the Hedgehog movies AU where the times Knuckles and Sonic respectively arrive on Earth are reversed. Five-year-old Knuckles, searching his village for useful supplies after realizing that nobody is coming back, discovers the distant planet Earth marked as important on a map of likely locations the Owl Tribe may have hidden the Master Emerald. With nothing left for him in his homeland, he takes his father’s bag of portal rings and steps through. He is taken in by the Wachowskis first. Four-year-old Sonic meanwhile grows up alone, travels the galaxy and initially appears as an antagonist.

Right now I can think of two main plot divergences beyond that. Firstly, complicated but interesting: Knuckles doesn’t stay hidden, as he’s trying to find the Master Emerald and also with his code can’t resist rushing in to help when sees Tom in need, so he gets unofficially adopted practically right off the bat. He then grows up the best kept secret of Green Hills. His parents adore him, but he’s still kinda an outcast from the rest of human society, because he’s just so different and potentially dangerous - he struggles to take the necessary care with his strength and suffers from the same loss of control of his Chaos energy when deeply upset that canon Sonic used to. The townspeople see that he’s a good kid and they can’t speak ill of their upstanding sheriff and vet, but they don’t exactly trust Knuckles either. Not feeling like he’ll ever fully belong, afraid of causing more damage and not having processed his grief for his birth father and people and everything he knew before nearly enough, he develops strong tendencies to isolate himself and bottle things up in shame. And, oh yes, he still hasn’t completed his mission to retrieve and protect the incredibly powerful most sacred object to his lost culture. He fears that at this rate he never will. He feels very guilty about all of this.

Repairing his strained relationships with Tom and Maddie is a key part of his arc in the first movie, alongside learning to accept, forgive, trust and be kinder to himself. He ultimately decides that the Master Emerald is evidently safe enough for now and his mission can wait until he’s older and wiser. His current focus shall instead be being a normal teenager who Has Fun and Likes Himself.

Secondly, Sonic’s antivillain personality would not be a dutiful, honourable warrior genuinely believing he’s in the right. No. How does his literal theme song go again? “Long as the voice inside drives me to run and fight/It doesn’t matter who is wrong and who is right”. This Sonic, pre-second movie, is a cynical, untethered pragmatist who cares only about his own survival, benefit and freedom; a notorious thief and swindler sly and swift enough to get away with anything. They call him the Blue Devil. Where Knuckles had an excessive sense of responsibility, Sonic has all but suppressed his. The only person who mattered was Longclaw and she’s gone. What’s the point of getting attached to other people? They’ll all leave too. But that won’t need to hurt him - he won’t hurt them - if he follows his mother’s advice and never stops running. Yes, deep down he blames himself for Longclaw’s death. He has better social skills than Knuckles, but not his principles. Is Robotnik mean and shady? Absolutely. Is that Sonic’s problem, when he’s confident that he can either stay on the doctor’s good side or outrun his bad one? Nope! Getting to kick an echidna in the nuts with super speed is a nice bonus.

But beneath that arrogant, apathetic facade he does have a conscience. His character development starts with it slowly dawning on him how much worse than him Robotnik and big of a deal the Master Emerald are and he begins to take the stakes seriously. If Robotnik wins, innocent people will die. This entire (admittedly very beautiful) planet could be in danger. None of his crimes have risked going this far before. Does he really want to be an accessory to the rise of an actual tyrant and supervillain who wants to murder a teenager? So he begins to hesitate about aiding Robotnik. Next Knuckles notices that they’re about the same age and empathizes with him, knowing from the previous film what it’s like to be a traumatized, terrified, self-loathing fifteen-year-old in over your head; that they lost everything on the same day just draws more attention to their similarities. Tails curtails that conversation, but it remains the first taste of empathy and connection Sonic’s had since he was four. That’s pretty enticing. He saves Knuckles’s life to not be in his debt (ostensibly at least), and the rest is history.

Knuckles’s arc in the second movie is learning what it really means to be a hero and leader, after idealizing the concepts - and his parents, who are his heroes - his whole life. He’s internalized that he’s a kid and is allowed to make mistakes, but can’t reconcile that with now being responsible for an innocent and younger friend, Tails, and having to complete his Heroic Quest for the Chaos Emerald much sooner than anticipated. Surely a Hero has to be perfect and a leader has always know what to do. His birth father seemed that way, after all. When his moment comes, he can’t afford to fail. Learning that his beloved dad, and generally the echidnas, were responsible for Longclaw’s death and Sonic’s trauma shatters that idea. He eventually resolves that he can be a hero and his imperfect self simultaneously and his team are his equals and able to cover his weaknesses.

Also, Knuckles still speaks the same while Sonic absorbs modern slang and speech patterns like a sponge. This is crucial. When Knuckles calls his parents Mum and Dad at the end of the first movie instead of Mother and Father, it’s a huge affirmation of intimacy.

Now I just need a name for this AU. Any ideas?

wrote a long post about subtle changes i would have put into s3 of ted lasso to set it up as a four-part show, accidentally wrote another post now about potential s4 stuff (but do not have it in me to write out an episode by episode structure post)

but also really the main gist is that why I was initially confused at the 3-season structure (and then I felt right in having felt it should have been longer when I did watch the season, despite liking where it ultimately landed on those final scenes), was that everything barring ted himself felt like it needed a bit more time

if ted ended s3 by making his decision and telling rebecca (either on or off screen, but if it were cliff-hanger I'd say off) and then having all of s4 setting that up while he's in a much better place to help others with their various things after a s3 where he was so in his own head that he wasn't a very good coach for almost all of it -- and then also a story about when he's planning on telling the team

if one could have fully dealt with sam's narrative about being hounded for standing up for his ideals and grounded him more centrally and built up to him joining the nigerian national team, rather than jumping to it, and given proper space to his interpersonal relationships (such as with the woman managing his restaurant, sorry I forget her name rn)

if nate could have had a whole season after being with west ham where he's back with the team, in which he could have, yes, made it up to some people, but also dealt with how it felt to be with west ham and before that, how he was treated by his teammates, his girlfriend, and even his own father

if rebecca could have had that whole season after their manchester win to go "oh wait, I really don't care what my husband thinks of me" while getting to share scenes with both his ex-wife and his current (but also soon-to-be-ex) wife, showing the three of them in a supportive space recovering from being in a relationship with a manipulative, cheating, controlling man

if keeley could have a whole season building her company with her new, more financially savvy and more organised friend at her side, barbara, while not centering romantic relationships/having her realise that she really can be okay without one (whether or not she is with anyone by the end, but actually giving it a whole season's worth of time)

if there could be a whole fallout/supportive trend after colin publicly kissed his boyfriend on the football pitch, to really give us more actual delving into what it means to be out as a male football player, and perhaps isaac taking that on himself as both his best friend and team captain, and how that plays out in contrast to perhaps other teams, none of which would have out players

if roy and jamie kind of... I guess continued along the lines they were doing, but really got to get into the former's feelings about being "old" in football terms, but not really that old at all, and the latter's relationship with his father (and yeah, I'm a roy/jamie/keeley fan, so scenes that let the three of them be mutually supportive and effortlessly close with one another)

with trent crimm's own narrative continuing to be that of documenting and pulling together the structure

and all of that with a main storyline on building a women's football team and centering keeley's storyline around that as well (also soooo many gay characters then, for realism 😜 also I know two non-binary football players who play semipro personally, there's more than that, so that could be a storyline too...)

just a bit more time youknow

it would have first of all given a final season that broadens the world they're in more, after a third season that wasn't trying to wrap things up and so maybe gave us a bit more west ham/just football beyond the tiny sphere of richmond

and crucially that things weren't flattened to make them get to the ending faster (things like how some characters had done some really nasty stuff (rupert, jamie's dad), but at some point characters just went *ah well, but I'm over it enough to start moving on,* or how sam never quite got to carry an ongoing dramatic arc that wasn't solved with a handwave that didn't give enough weight to how serious his narrative was, or whatever jade's deal was and how she wasn't nice to nate (and neither was coach beard's gf) and the rushedness of keeley's company and need for romantic partnership to feel safe in herself, etc.)

I really liked the ethos of the show and I enjoyed watching it, but I do not believe that three seasons was the intended structure, and I think if I knew for sure that was the case, I'd be more shrug-and-move-on of some of its rushedness than I am now, where I'm trying to understand what prompted those choices if indeed they were deliberate. because there was a lot of unexplored territory for almost every character, I think especially the characters of colour (nate with how he was treated and sam with his politically deeper storylines) and the female characters (keeley with her business, potentially rebecca with her kinship with bex)

like how the sense8 movie could never in a million years have paid off all the plot that came before, but we're just glad for the catharsis

also lastly, it could have still setup a potential spinoff centering the woman's team entirely, if that was something one wanted to do

Years ago I came up with an ATLA fic idea for the earth avatar after korra and it was kinda good but I stopped caring about it. as I developed the plot and transformed my initial (flawed) idea, I got less interested in it because it was no longer the same idea. I basically wanted to write Trope A, didn't like that it was such a bad rendition of Trope A, fixed it, and got bored cause it wasn't Trope A anymore. I absolutely don't have the time (or desire) to go write it now (especially with avatar studios coming in hot with a new avatar), but damn I hope an alternate universe-me wrote it.

if y'all catch me totally changing Keeley's entire plot in TATBP with no elaboration mind your own business.