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It was late. They’d had a big day, welcoming themselves back to the Tower and the Small Screen. And despite how close the Warners were getting to the big nine-oh in real time, they were all still animated kids who had a bedtime.
And, in possibly the first weird thing Yakko had noticed since the end of the original TV run, he was not only the one enforcing that bedtime, but he had some modicum of success every single night he tried. And tonight would have been one of those successful nights, except that he couldn’t sleep. He’d gotten Dot and Wakko into bed, tucked them in, and both of those things would have been normal even twenty years ago, if only he would have been right in there with them, and all three of them would have conked out in unison with snores of varying comedic value.
Tonight, he’d tucked in his baby siblings, crawled into bed, and then realised… he wasn’t interested in sleeping.
His fingers were itching for something. Something to play with. Something to stare at mindlessly until his brain switched off. Something small, fairly light, with pixels and a connection and oh my gosh he was craving the internet. No! He’d become a digital native! He – he – he –
Oh, whatever, he’d learned to love TV, he could do social media.
But not while his siblings were sleeping near enough to get woken up by the light. He crawled out of bed, dug around in hammerspace until his fingers touched his new and glorious device, and then crept out of the bedroom to go sit at the kitchen table.
That, at least, felt familiar. Not the table – that changed like every other episode. But the overprotective brother schtick had been really running overtime on his brain since 1999. Since Wakko’s Wish, to be precise. Before that dumb movie, Yakko had mostly viewed his little siblings as partners in crime. Sure, he’d been protective of them, and had absolutely spent way more time than he should have making sure they were always smarter than they were silly, but then Wakko’s Wish came along, and suddenly he was all worried about what Dot was eating and whether Wakko was getting enough sleep. Even here in Reboot Territory, Yakko could feel it gnawing away in his bones. He was allowed to wreck himself with technology, bad decisions, and vaguely creepy adults, but his little siblings were going to (figuratively) grow up healthy, happy, and with both a good relationship to technology and a solid grasp on their own wellness.
Whatever the heck ‘wellness’ meant. He opened the search engine and decided to start his late night escapades with a definition.
Adjusting to the late 2010s was going to be hard, he could already tell. At least in the 90s, you could pretend things didn’t change much in a few years, but these days it felt like six months was a lifetime. And that was without his Rebooted dark side reminding him that six months literally was several thousand lifetimes, if you looked in the right parts of the world.
Hoo boy. He shook his head as he realised he’d already opened six tabs for once he’d finished reading about 'Goop TM' (Wikipedia was already his new favourite website, and wikiwalks were his new favourite past-time). And to think he’d been snarky and easily distracted before.
He’d always been the snarkiest of the three Warners, with an adult sense of humour, but this urge to quip and snark about death more than taxes was gonna be a real doozy to keep under control. It didn’t matter if their true demographic was the exact same people they’d been playing for twenty years ago, they were still a kids’ show. Morbid humour would do them absolutely no favours in the ratings.
Which was a real shame, because if he was honest with himself, Yakko was a little apprehensive about how he was supposed to crack jokes these days. Satire would be tricky, with the world moving so fast. Their crosshairs already felt dated, somehow. He could always stick with education, but his favourites were the social sciences, and he’d learned his lesson singing Nations of the World only to have half of them disappear or get renamed, and he could feel some new and cringy part of him feeling a little dicey about History. Even in his own head, he couldn’t quite figure out whether he was supposed to love or hate the founding fathers right now. And politics – hah! He hadn’t even seen the 2016 election coming! Now that had been comedic irony! Somehow he didn’t feel like the 2020 election was going to be nearly as funny.
He supposed he could always… well…
His thumb fidgeted over a link on something called ‘microaggressions’.
Why, of all the jokes in his repertoire, did he feel the most uncomfortable about falling back on raunchiness? He’d always been raunchy. It was his thing! He was a loud-mouthed teenage boy with a Warner Brothers sense of… a sense of…
“Severely outdated sexism, is what I’ve got,” he muttered, slumping his chin into his palm as he clicked through to another article. “No way that’s gonna fly in 2020, even if I am bein’ written in 2018.”
So… no gallows, cautious education… Wakko was the food guy, Dot was definitely going to take over on sass and witty comebacks, and would probably be the only one of them able to get away with anything dirty… did he even have anything else?
Well, songs, obviously, but his best ones weren’t usually funny.
What he had was… words.
Yakko had always liked words.
Puns.
Except… huh. Puns were… He tilted his head a little further into his palm, idly considering it even as he read about Gwyneth Paltrow trolling the entire world with marketing spin. Who would have thought Little Miss Sliding Doors had actually been paying attention to all that jazz as she raked in the big bucks?
Puns were interesting humour these days. They almost always got a reaction, but it was only good about a quarter of the time. The rest of the time you were risking getting smacked outta state.
Of course, you couldn’t groan if you weren’t engaged…
He pursed his lips, eyes flicking up to the darkness for a moment. He’d suffered worse for less. And puns had all sorts of flavour to them. Raunchy, wholesome, smart, stupid, dark, light… he could fit basically any mood with a lame enough pun. And all the songs he could write with them…! Ohh, yeah, he was gonna get some good mileage outta puns. Sold.
He grinned and went back to the Goop analysis. Dot was gonna hate it.
She was gonna hate a lot of things, actually. Oh, and she’d be written to react to the dated sexism, too! Ooh, he was so gonna be a mansplainer! He couldn’t even help it! It was literally in his design to explain everything! And all social awareness aside, he still identified as both a guy and kind of a jerk in this Rebooted World. Him trying to mansplain was totally going to be a thing, he just knew it. He couldn’t wait to get some good sister-socks in the face for it!
Boy howdy but it would be fun.
But his smile faded as he thought about it a bit more, remembering some of Dot’s most famous scenes. It had never really been a problem for Wakko, who had always been too innocent for it, but Dot had always been pretty comfortable with 90s feminism and sexism, even after the movie. She had revelled in being cute, adorable, and severely underestimated. She’d been a total hypocrite when he (and occasionally Wakko) went nuts for girls, making more dirty jokes than even Yakko could spin, and she had her whole Mel Gibson thing.
Hah. Mel Gibson. Now there was another trainwreck he’d loved to have seen coming. Oh, and Tom Cruise, too, argh… Wow, in hindsight, Dot had really known how to pick ’em. Oh, and Scientology! Yakko slid down over the table, phone almost dropping from his fingers as he gleefully squirmed at all the jokes he could have made. All the potential satire…! Wasted! Wasted on South Park and Family Guy and all those shows parents wouldn’t watch with their kids! He could have had so many field days, shooting right over the target demographic’s heads!
Ahh, probably for the best, though. He picked enough fights without annoying half of the Hollywood elite with the same memes every other cartoon knew by heart.
He stayed slumped over the table, arms out and eyelids at half-mast as he brought his phone back up to continue wiki-walking his way through slightly dated pop-culture. He was going to have some fun with this whole concept of ‘alternative truth’. He already loathed how much he loved memes. He was horrified to find he’d missed the era of tongue-twisting rap in the 2000s, but thrilled there was such a thing as Chap-Hop. Flyting had finally returned! He’d already developed a life-long unhealthy relationship with renaissance art Tumblr. Dot was never allowed to know.
Sleep, he decided somewhere around three am, was for younger sibling people. He had coffee and the internet. There was no way that would come back to bite him in four hours.
Three hours later, as the sun rose up unnoticed, Yakko clambered into the cupboard over the coffee pot, determined that he would just read one more TV Trope before turning in for the night. Surely the uncomfortable position would keep him from falling asleep.
Somehow, and even later he couldn’t explain it, the next thing he knew was being jerked awake as he fell out of the cupboard into a brightly lit kitchen, with Dot standing on the counter above him, juice jug in hand and a deadpan stare on her face.
For a few seconds, neither of them said anything, letting the fact his sister had totally just discovered him sleeping in a cupboard settle. She eventually quirked an eyebrow.
“This is going to become A Thing, isn’t it?”
“Uhhh…” He pulled his phone up and squinted at the time. Seven oh two. Four hours. He did not regret. He rolled to his feet and set his hands on his hips with a rakish grin. “Probably. Goooooood morning, Baby Sister!”
She continued staring at him for a few beats, then calmly went back to pulling out one of the glasses he definitely hadn’t been napping on. “Wakko’s filling the bathroom with bubbles again.”
“Is he at least in the bathroom at the same time?” he asked, and she nodded. “Then great! Means I don’t have to tell him to have a bath today! One less problem to worry about. We got enough on our plate without adding industrial level bacteria behind Wakko’s ears.”
“That’s true. I hear cellular level warcrimes are already being handled by some Japanese anime,” she said as she poured her juice. “And we wouldn’t want to be derivative.”
“Not this close to Bun Control,” he quipped. “Maybe let’s schedule that one in for next season.”
She finished with her juice and carelessly dropped the jug, correctly assuming that he would snatch it out of the air and throw it in the refrigerator before it could spill all over the floor. Mess only occurred when Wakko was around to be a bad influence on his brother. Dot, on the other hand, bounced off the counter and took a sip of her juice before raising her eyebrow again. “So is there a reason you’re so chipper after sleeping in the kitchen? If this is a bit, I don’t get it.”
“Ehhhh, little from column A, little from… well, there was no mentioned B, but I’m sure it was implied,” he said, reaching for the coffee pot to begin the caffeine aspect of being an irresponsible digital native. “I’ve been continuing my education in all the stuff we’ve missed. Did you know that colouring in is for grown-ups now? Just when you thought adults couldn’t milk nostalgia for more! I wonder how important it is to stay in the lines…?”
“That sounds like a lack of creativity to me!” she said brightly, and he winked at her approvingly, only to remember how important that whole colouring thing was to some people and grimace instead. Dot pulled back in perfectly understandable confusion. “What?”
“What what?” he asked, because he totally didn’t know and would never admit otherwise.
“That what. You’re doing a thing with your face.”
“No, I’m not,” he said, his jaw and cheeks twisting into a proper cringe.
“Yes, you are! What’s the matter with you?”
“I… ugh,” he said eloquently, and gave up. He used the mug he’d just fished out of the cupboard (also not something he was sleeping on) to gesture to the table. “Take a seat. We gotta talk about this whole Reboot thing.”
“Oh, no… this isn’t you telling me we’re going all dark and edgy, right?” she asked. “You’re not going to become a drug-addicted teen star that needs rescuing from his own demons of inadequacy due to being compared to YouTube sensations that are both younger and more talented than your sold-out butt could ever hope to be?”
He paused, considering the humour potential, but ultimately dismissed the idea. It felt like a South Park bit that had probably already been done, without the immediate parallel they preferred to skate over. “Nah. Maybe a little crippling anxiety, but let’s leave the lifetime movies to Slappy and Skippy, shall we?” He poured out the energy bean juice and swung around to slide back into the chair he was going to deny spending most of his nights in. Dot obediently clambered up into the one opposite, though she slumped onto one fist and stared at him over her orange juice as she pointedly slurped it. He ignored the attitude with long practice. “I got two words for you, Dot, and I want you to tell me what they mean for a solid chunk of our old jokes: ‘Me too’.”
She blinked lazily. “As if you’re Not All Men.”
He smiled and lifted his hands up, coffee dangling by one of them as he rested his chin on the back of his wrists, waiting for her brain to catch up to her mouth. Dot was smart – she didn’t need him to explain it, but it did take her staring at his smug face for a few seconds before realisation started to click.
“The… hashtag. The Me Too movement,” she realised, and then twitched as everything slammed into place. “Sexy girls aren’t funny anymore.”
“Especially not sexy nine year old girls,” he said pointedly, “draping themselves over pianos in slinky red dresses.”
“Aww…” She let her fist drop, pouting instead. “No more finger jokes?”
“Nuh-uh. At least, not like you make,” he said, and playfully flickered his own fingers around the coffee cup rim. “Finger food, on the other hand… uh, in certain contexts, anyway. Not sure the radar’s gonna take that one.”
“But that’s so unfair!” she wailed. “It was funny! Everyone says so! You’re just going all S-J-W on me!”
He slanted a look at her from under lowered eyelids. “Do you even know what that means yet, Sister-sib?”
“It – it means – it means S-silly Jerk… Warner?” she guessed, and he lifted his chin just enough to clap one hand over the back of the other. It had been a good shot. Dot scowled and sat back with a huff. “Oh yeah, well if you’re so smart then why don’t you tell me, Mister Mansplain!”
“‘Social Justice ah-Warrior’,” he recited smugly, before letting his smile drop a little so she could see he was at least trying for something serious. “And you’re right. It was funny. I’m not gonna deny it. But it was also the 90s. People thought Ross and Rachel had a healthy relationship. And no one ever blamed a little girl for what creeps said about her on the internet. These days…?”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Fine. No more sexy costume changes. Can I at least still like cute boys, or is that off limits too?”
“Depends on which ones you got,” he drawled. “If it’s Justin Pretty Boy Bieber I am gonna laugh at you.”
“No!” she cried, and then clasped her hands under her chin with a dreamy smile. “All those Chrises! Every Hemsworth! Benedict Cumberbatch! Jason Mamoa!”
Yakko looked up at the ceiling and quietly ticked them all off on his fingers. “I think they’ll be fine… I’m gettin’ some weird vibes from one of those Chris guys, but anything we say about him will come with a heavy dose of Jurassic Park commentary, so I bet it’ll all even out in the end!”
Dot dropped her hands to give him another blank stare. “So what’s the problem? I can ask boys out but I can’t look good when I do it? How am I supposed to get a date?”
“You’re nine, sweetheart. Let’s aim for comedy over crime,” he drawled, and took a sip of coffee. “But egh, we’re only promised two seasons and we’re on a streaming service. We’re probably gonna get boycotted for something. Just try not to make it look like adult writers are putting little girls in silky nightgowns, would ya?”
She waved him off. “Whatever. I’ve got more than enough material without it. Heck, I can probably get through half the season with jokes about boys talking too much, Biggest Brother-mine.”
“And tick off the other half of the internet while you’re at it,” he said with a grin, and she smacked her juice glass against the table, frustrated.
“Boy, whatever happened to the days when we could call the internet a bunch of nerds and ignore them?”
“Oh, but Dot!” he cried, putting down his coffee cup so he could properly gush like the geeky digital native he’d become overnight. “The internet! Online fandom! YouTube! It’s so amazing! There’s so many people online these days! They’ve got so many stupid opinions! There’re so many easy marks! So much vitriol all ready and waiting for someone to come along and make some truly special friends!” He flopped back down over the table, arms spread, and sighed dreamily. “It’s a perfect playground… I’m gonna write another song about it… It’s gonna be so meta…!”
But Dot just gave him one of her best old fashioned looks. Given how close they were to ninety, it was a pretty good old fashioned look. “Y’know, you’re not just gonna be able to rely on that. Meta humour’s been going out of fashion for years now.”
“Hey, I’m gonna die on one hill or another, it might as well be this one,” he said, pulling himself upright to stand, hand on heart in front of an American flag. “I was one of the great forefathers of meta-humour. I stand for truth, sarcasm, and mocking all heck out of my own production house! If I cannot live doing what I believe to be true and right, then by all that is good and toony in this world, I shall be its final and greatest swan song!”
“Uh huh,” Dot said, completely ruining his moment by leaving the table to get herself some cereal. “Just so you know, I am going to look fabulous at your funeral. Black sequins all the way.”
“I expect tap dancing on my gravestone,” he said, and she grinned.
“I’ll salsa dance with Liam Hemsworth, how about that?”
“Scarlett Johansson and you’ve got a deal.”
“I can make that work.”
Yakko sat back down with a smile. It would be a change, but he was pretty sure they would make it just fine in the new world. For a couple of seasons, at least.