AU Where (somehow) Palpatine Becomes Emperor And All That Jazz Without Killing Off The Jedi, But Before

the LAPD is having a town hall and getting fucking eviscerated

Rottmnt!Casey Jones (Jr.) design is fantastic and here's why:

I'm sorry for ignoring the numerous asks actually requesting stuff for me to review, but I have to strike the iron while it's still hot.

Ok, so. Rottmnt has fantastic, 10/10 character designs. That's not something I discovered, it's something anyone with two eyes and a brain can figure out. In particular, the eponymous Turtles themselves have never been more interesting and distinct before this incarnation:

They are fantastic anthro designs, simultaneously easy to imagine as humans while feeling inseparable from their animal traits. And the crew managed to take this a step further with Casey by going in the complete opposite direction! Casey is not just a regular post-apocalyptic fashion kid, he is a reverse engineered turtle gijinka. It's not all that visible at first because the pieces of his attire are all pretty standard, admirably practical, and color-faded, but think about it! The green jumpsuit and shoes are the base "skin", the chest-plate is self-explanatory, and the cape is the turtle shell.

And of course, it's all made even more endearing by how he incorporates something from each of the 4 brothers. Leo is the most obvious influence because Casey is his direct protege; he adopted his eye markings in his mask, his color for the armor, and the diagonal fanny-pack -I wouldn't have complained if he used a belt, but the fanny-pack is the much better option because it's more realistic and practical for him to use that-.

Donny made his gadgets, so he wears his insignia on the cape -which also cleverly breaks the dullness of it without bulking the silhouette- and his shoulder pad is purple.

You get the sense that Casey never really met Raph in his original timeline, so he is only present in the red details and, lastly, Mikey is present in the adorably doodled knee-pads.

Lastly, his facial design is great. Now, I could follow that up with an actual argument about how it balances his more traditional lean hero physique with less conventionally attractive traits that actually convey a personality and a context for where he grew up, but actually, no, I'll just spam pics of him because he really does have Expressions™️ and I love him for that:

okay but the sibling energy

Marc (Oldest)

-weight of the world on his shoulders, is trying to be Responsible

-mom (khonshu) makes him do all the work

-trying his best to keep everyone’s lives separate but failing because the other two won’t listen

Jake (Middle)

-everyone kind of forgets he’s there till he acts out

-“Marc is married and Steven is a vegan… I’m gonna ask Dylan out on a date to a steakhouse :D”

-chaotic energy, interrupts the other two to kill a bitch

Steven (Youngest)

-spoiled, his finding out about them being killers is completely accidental, he’s been the one living a good life set up by Marc

-Baby

-“mom said it’s MY turn with the body” “we don’t actually talk to mom” “she said it’s my turn, Marc”

Coming from a state champion baker:

If y’all use a decent box mix and use melted butter instead of vegetable oil, an extra egg, and milk instead of water, no one can tell the difference. I sure as hell can’t. 

Also, if you add a little almond extract to vanilla cake, or a little coffee to chocolate cake, it sends it through the roof. 

This concludes me attempting to be helpful. 

favorite star wars memes

I’ve got. All kinds of bad feelings about this. They literally put a kid on the front lines for the purpose of tanking a specific knock out weapon and I get it’s a good match up but also? He’s like 16? He’s a teenager and he’s terrified out of his mind.

You know what this reminds me of? The very first chapter when Bakugou was being attacked by the slime villain

Familiar isn’t it? We got to wait for the right quirk and let this kid fucking die in the mean time. Here they got the right quirk but it’s in a kid and he might die in the meantime.

Like I’ve been giving shit to the Villain Liberation Army about their fucked up ideals but I can’t deny it’s really just an extreme fast forward of what this society is already headed towards. And by extreme I mean kinda accelerated. This society will fucking fall apart without “the right quirks” and the heroes perpetuate it too, we’ve seen where it fails so many times now with Izuku’s quirklessness, with Shinsou, and fast forward to Kaminari here who couldn’t really say no since the entire plan hinged on a teenager absorbing the power of a fully grown, willing to kill zealot.

All this is knowing that taking too much electricity will literally fry his brain. (But that’s a gag right like All Might coughing up blood from an old injury that took out a fair amount of his organs is a gag too.)

But it’s okay because he gets his moment of badassery right? Every thing is fine as long as they look cool doing it and win (or lose making a grande finale and leave mourning in their wake cough Water Hose Duo and Koufa cough). That’s what All Might did too.

What really kills me is how through the entire chapter Kaminari keeps looking backwards at where his friends are in the “safe zone.” We get multiple panels where he’s looking around and all the heroes are charging forward and it’s so obvious that he’s scared and confused. He’s way in over his head, he’s been at hero school for less than a year and now he’s on the front lines supposed to be defending the very heroes he put his hope and trust in with his life.

Look at the composition of these two panels. Which side is the dialogue really addressing? What’s wrong with your society that a single disbeliever will bring it down? Who’s making children put their lives on the line to fight for an ideal they don’t really understand?

These are zealot words, fighting words, and smack dab in the middle is this kid who’s basically being raised in a military institution to become another soldier to die for them.

This is what being a hero means in this society.

Ok love your thoughts on Animorphs tv series pacing. Hear me out: episode 1? Starts with *David’s* POV finding the cube, being attacked by Visser three and “rescued” by the animorphs, and given morphing power. Episode 2 starts with book 1 and progresses normally through the series from there

I think like “Machete order”, this really reframes the slow escalation of paranoia, and in episode one when these strangers show up and are like “Yes david you have to abandon your parents, they can’t be saved” you’re like “fuck these guys”

But by episode [redacted] of meeting david in animorphs pov, youre like “DAVID YOU MORON THEYRE LOST TO US GET IN THE FUCKING CAR”

And Jake goes from episode one “David, face reality, shit’s bad and your parents are a loss” to episode two Jake “of course i can save Tom”.

I love this, because it's a great way to throw the viewers right into the story. In the original series, it was necessary to give us some kind of origin for the Animorphs — it's a superhero story convention, it's important in a kids' series, it gives out exposition nice and slow, and it sets the tone of the books. However, there are a lot of things like "touching this box lets you turn into animals" and "the enemy are sea slugs who live in brains and eat in a cavern under the school" that you can simply show on TV without having to tell anyone. Concepts like "andalite navy" and "kandrona" can be conveyed with a few shots, so there's no need to have a scene where Elfangor explains them to Jake or brain-dumps them to Tobias.

This adaptation would probably lean more toward YA than middle grade, because it'd require trapping and/or killing the focal character, but I think YA would make sense for an Animorphs adaptation. YA series are more able to depict violence and body horror than children's shows, and Animorphs isn't Animorphs without realistic violence and body horror. There's also a lot of potential for making the conflict between David and Jake even more complex than it is in canon, if we don't see why Jake is the leader, only a bunch of his close friends insisting that it's for the best.

Not nearly enough “Sirius Black makes himself at home in Privet Drive because there’s nothing the Dursleys can do to get him to leave” fic out there, and it’s a crying shame.

rolling in the deep

I feel great romance for you        the one you are going to marry                  will be a very  p o w e r f u l  b e n d e r