The fourteenth year of the Rebuild of Elmer Studios saw us achieve a significant milestone, reaching episode 500. Admittedly we’re not entirely sure if it actually was episode five hundred or if we had 500 episodes previously, but it’s close enough for us. We got a total of fifteen episodes out, which means that we were able to maintain our planned one episode per month release rate during the course of the last year. That schedule is one that we are fully intending to maintain for the foreseeable future.
This last year gave us a rather mixed bag of fics across a number of different fandoms. However, none of them managed to really dominate the year as has happened in past. None the less, there were ones that were memorable for a variety of reasons, and one that is very dear to me for a very, very strange reason.
So let’s take a look back at this last year and see what we had.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Baboons and Other Strangeness
We started the year off with Harry Potter and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was the sort of fic that really put it all out there in the title. None the less, it seemed to be a strangely definitive one for us, a distillation of all the weirdness that we’ve had in prior Harry Potter fics bought down to one key point while also hitting a number of our classic standbys.
First and foremost is of course a libertarian author proxy Harry Potter who is given free reign to do whatever he wants and never suffers any sort of setback or hinderance or anything else. The fact that this has become a cliché for us is rather telling; simply put, it’s happened with every single Harry Potter fic we’ve covered so far. Really the only difference has been the degree to which it happens.
However, that was not all the fic had going for it. We had a forced crossover, nonsense plot, massive chunks of regurgitated text, huge swathes of pointless filler (including a full class weekly timetable), blatant author favouritism and so very much more. But what really got us about it was the massive cast heard. The fic chose to bulk itself out with a slew of superfluous Harry Potter characters and then had no clue what it was going to do with them. The end result was that it often needed to remind us that these characters were present, but then didn’t actually do anything with them.
Also Ron is forbidden.
I also like Zabanya
Much like the prior fic, Shining Jewels of America may have been our definitive Gundam: Build Fighters fanfic. It built on the traditions established by the prior fics we’ve covered and took them even further than before. First and foremost was our OC protagonist, Mathias Wins. Much like previous GBF fanfic OCs, he was aggressively unlikeable, treated everyone around him like dirt and had an unhealthy relationship with his Gundam. What made Mathias stand out was how he was actively verbally and physically abusive towards his teammates, making us question why anyone hung out with him at all.
(and the answer was of course that his parents are rich and basically control the Gundam Fight scene in Florida and you basically need to pander to them to get anywhere, so there you go)
Once again it hit those other key points that we see so often in Build Fighters fics. Shallow supporting characters, author request to the readers to send characters in bulk out the cast and the inevitable tournament arc that sees the fic abandoned before it becomes to its incredibly obvious conclusion. Added to that it even has a reader-submitted OC that appeared in a prior Build Fighters fic, not that they really did anything in the fic. But it’s the thought that counts.
Gall Crisis
In many ways, Bubblegum Force was the most rewarding fic of the year. It started with the fact that we were doing something new in the form of a Gall Force fic, which sent us on a research rabbit hole so we would have context.
However, that doesn’t begin to cover just how wild Bubblegum Force actually was. The fic had so much wrong with it that it was amazing in its own way. It starts with a crossover that doesn’t really use that crossover and goes downhill from there. That the fic then spends most of its run faffing about and going nowhere became strangely enjoyable simply for its level of commitment to the bit. It kept repeating the same few plot beats regardless of how little sense they made.
And then there were the subplots that went nowhere. Key among them was of course the stupidly evil boarding school that had a nonsense level of over-reach in being able to take custody of students if they broke the rules. On top of that was the headmistress who was all but cackling in her level of cartoonish evilness. And that was not all, when you consider that there was a setup with Catty that once again amounted to nothing and all, especially when you consider that it involved a Boomer menacing a small girl that also was never explained.
Finally, while it did have a plot and an actual villain, those did not arrive until the very end of the fic. Not that it mattered, as said villain, Patrick Mason, was killed off not too long after being properly introduced. Which brings us to the final and most frustrating fact about the fic; it had no reason to be a crossover at all. The Gall Force elements could have been excised completely and the plot would have been largely the same.
On the other hand, it did not feature Largo at all, which is a shock for a BGC fic.
The Doctor Shikato Award for Pointlessness
There’s no question as to which is our fic of the year. Bubblegum Force beats all the others hands down. Strangely fascinating in its efforts to be so dull, clearly padding with blatant repetition, pointless subplots, shallow characterisation, lack of actual story and so much more. In many ways, much like Dire Straights, its empty dullness gave us so much that we could do whatever we wanted with. It also doesn’t help that it gave us one of the best promos that we’ve ever written and the unexpected return of an old joke.
Conversely, this year was a dry one for OCs; the few entirely original lead characters we had really didn’t do anything to endear themselves to us. So instead, I’m going give it to The Hag, the absurdly evil headmistress of the absurdly evil boarding school from Bubblegum Force. Every part of her was loaded with cartoon villainy that was as equally absurd as it was out of place as it was pointless, which only added to it all. An honourable mention should go to Doctor Shikato, the Genom Cryogenics expert for her incredibly niche role that we latched onto no less.
And with all that, it goes without saying that the stupidest thing of the year was the insanely evil boarding school for all the reasons we outlined above.
Get in, loser
As you’ve doubtless noticed by now, we’re doing something a bit different for episodes 504 through 506. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for some time now, and that we’ve been alluding to for a couple of years in our riffing. And now that we’re here, it’s a lot more fun that we expected. We’ll cover it in more detail once we’re done.
At present we have enough fics through to about episode 517 or so, which are presently in various stages of writing. The lineup includes an unexpected return to a prior fic, one that was the source of one of our most infamously stupid moments. Whether that’s something to look forward to or entirely ominous is up to you.
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