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They all said getting cancelled wasn't the end of the world. Not in the sense of doing something problematic and losing a small percentage of one's follower base—because hardly anyone really stuck to their values when their comfort was in jeopardy—but literally being cancelled.
For a Toon like Rev Runner, it might as well have been the end. He'd been designed, drawn, and brought into existence for a single reason—to entertain and amuse the audience. Down to the very ink in his lines, he knew exactly who he was meant to be and how he was to be received.
A motor-mouthed inventor and comedy relief character for an otherwise edgy story defined by its departure from the easygoing and tongue-in-cheek nature of the Looney Tunes franchise. He was one of the Loonatics.
Key word being was.
The show ran for two seasons and sooner disappeared from the public eye once their time was up. The ratings were a mixed bag—the critics hated it while the kids always tuned in to watch.
But the men wearing the suits made their choice, and as if they were merely a tax write-off, the Loonatics were out the window and dumped into some forgotten edge of Toon Town with the rest of the rejects.
They called it Backspace, the place where those without a place to belong, belonged.
It wasn't all bad, though. Long as Rev and his crew had a place to call their own, they could go on living. Though he often found himself stopping to ask why they even bothered, it wasn't the end. It just… felt like it. Endlessly.
Day after day… day after day… Until eventually… what?
Was there even a punchline to the joke that was their existence? Was there a light at the end of the tunnel they trudged through on their way to meaning?
No matter how fast Rev could run, outpacing even his beloved predecessor, the Roadrunner, he came no closer to seeing for himself.
It made him a good Dasher, though.
Doordash was a pretty good gig for those with no qualifications other than being fast. He didn't even need a vehicle when he could outrun and outmaneuver anything with a motor in it. He never missed or delayed a delivery and maintained his perfect five stars with something resembling pride.
It was a living.
It was not much of a life.
Though he was without purpose, Rev was not without a place in the world—he shared a homely little apartment with his husband on a forgotten block of Backspace and considered it his one bastion of safety and sanity in a world unforgiving of his existence.
And at times like this, Rev wanted nothing more than to turn tail and run straight home and into his husband's arms if it meant not having to hear a nasty customer's tirade.
Funnily enough, it was always the other Toons who were the most cruel.
Especially the popular ones—the ones who had enough time on their hands to wait outside their door for a chance to interrogate Rev about his new career path.
Daffy was a loser and an ass, but people loved him anyway. It was his whole brand.
What did he have that Rev and his friends didn't?
Though it wasn't always easy to make out Daffy's words through that eternal lisp of his, nothing that came out of his mouth was anything Rev hadn't already heard before.
How sad it was to see him reduced to delivering greasy food to even greasier folks after he and all his buddies got canned for pissing off all the fans with their edgy designs and painfully unfunny gags—their contrived and convoluted lore and their vain effort in trying to take their place among the greats through what amounted to little more than a marketing stunt to be brushed under the rug.
It wasn't like Rev didn't agree, so why did it still hurt so much to hear?
It's not like he asked to be drawn.
He tried not to mourn the loss of his five stars on his way home after retiring early that day. Something about needing to remember his place, Daffy told him.
Rev considered heading straight home after his last delivery, but before he could think better of it, he called his husband, knowing he'd still be on the clock.
Tech answered on the second ring with a hiss.
"I'm at work," he said, his voice hushed. "What do you need?"
"I'm having a bad day," Rev said unthinkingly, technicolor surroundings passing by him in a blur as he moved. He swallowed hard, caught between being honest and being convenient. "So I just—I just wanted to hear your voice."
He heard Tech sigh over the line, taking some small comfort in knowing it wasn't out of aggravation with him.
"What happened?" Tech asked, his tone somewhat softer. Over the sound of paper rustling, Rev heard Tech moving around in his squeaky office chair. "Given that you called me, I can only assume you want to talk about it. I can take my lunch break a little early if you need."
I'd rather you come home early, Rev stopped himself from saying. I need you.
Rev forced out a small, strained laugh.
"Someone recognized me," he said, pacing back and forth. "And they weren't a fan. Not even a little bit. Said some—really awful things. All of it true, so I couldn't—I couldn't even defend myself."
Tech gave a low, guttural growl.
"Was it a human giving you trouble?" his husband gritted out. Rev almost wanted to laugh at his naivety. He knew how Tech felt about humans. He worked with them outside of Toon Town in a human office building. Had to go to a human university because being written as a technological genius didn't cut it for all the engineering firms hiring at the time.
He was lucky his application had gotten through at all. Humans didn't take to hiring Toons for any of the important jobs.
Still, Rev shook his head.
"No," Rev murmured. "It was another Toon. An older one. One of the classics."
He didn't see a point in being specific. Even if he named names, it wasn't like he or Tech had the means to exact any kind of justice on their seniors—their betters.
They were the eternal underdogs, always being crushed underfoot.
Tech, fortunately, seemed to understand and didn't push. He wasn't the thoughtful sort, but he was clever enough to make up for it. He knew what worked and what didn't—had all of Rev's little quirks mapped out and down to a science.
"You know they only say those things because they don't understand," Tech said, echoing what he always told Rev on days like these. "They have it easy, so what should we care what they have to say?"
"The critics didn't like us either," Rev said sullenly, his crest limp as the ever-present weight of shame grew heavier still.
"Screw the critics," Tech said simply, and Rev could perfectly imagine the way his husband's ears must've flattened out of frustration. "You know why they're called critics? Because that's what they get paid to do—to criticize people. Hit pieces and scandalous tabloids are what sell, so they've got incentive to write the most overblown negative reviews imaginable. Doesn't matter how much love and work went into whatever it is they're tearing apart. You know that, Babe."
Rev sniffled, wiping at his face with his free hand.
"But the audience," Rev murmured. "Even the audience, they—"
"—They just weren't ready for us," Tech cut in, trying to remain patient with Rev even after he'd lost his patience with people in general. "You know how people are—both humans and Toons. They don't like change. They see something different from what they're used to, and their first instinct is to get rid of it. But that doesn't mean we were drawn for nothing. We still had some fans—still do, somewhere out there."
Rev remained uncharacteristically silent until he broke into a sigh.
"I know," he murmured. "I know. It just—doesn't feel like it sometimes."
"I know," Tech echoed. "I get the same way too sometimes. It's not your fault."
Though he knew Tech couldn't possibly see, Rev nodded slowly.
"What time do you get off work?" Rev found himself asking, his voice hollowed out by a defeat he'd accepted long ago.
"I'll be about an hour late today," Tech said in place of an apology. "Another workplace hazing—just some coworkers dumping paperwork on me to see if I'll crack."
"You've been there for six months," Rev said. "I don't think it counts as hazing anymore. Can't you report them or something?"
Tech gave a small, scathing laugh.
"Not like it'll do anything. I'm still a Toon after all. We're not meant to be taken seriously."
Rev didn't see the humor in whatever joke his husband made, but he forced a laugh anyway. He knew the feeling all too well.
"I guess you're right," Rev said sadly. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Tech said back. "It is what it is. I'm gonna show all these morons up one way or another. Then maybe they'll use their free time studying instead of trying to toy with me."
"You have such high hopes for them," Rev joked weakly. Tech laughed anyway.
"Gotta have a sense of humor about these things," his husband said. "Otherwise you'll go loony for real—and we're not the Looney Tunes! We're…"
Hearing Tech trail off expectantly, Rev faked an aggrieved sigh.
"The Loonatics," he finished lamely, though he couldn't help but smile a little. "Yeah, I know. Thanks, Tech."
Even from afar, he could perfectly envision the way Tech's chest puffed up in pride.
"Of course," his husband said. "I'm going to grab some lunch now, but if you should need my sage counsel again—text me, okay? I'll respond when I can."
Rev nodded again, his smile streaked with tears.
"Okay," he murmured. "Thanks, Tech. Love ya."
"Naturally," Tech answered. "And I love you too. I'll call as soon as I'm off work."
"Okay," Rev said again. "Talk to you then."
"Mm. Bye."
The call cut, and Rev let his hand fall to his side, phone screen going blank.
They'd come a long ways since the old days—back when their show was still running, they started off closer to being rivals, but in the end, neither Tech nor Rev could find such profound understanding in anyone but each other. And when they got the news that their run was officially over, they found solace only in each other's arms.
Twenty years on, and they'd never spared a single thought to parting.
Truly, Rev loved nobody more in the world.
But that was precisely what hurt the most—that he would still doubt the words of his dearly beloved because of the old insecurities he just couldn't shake.
He knew he was loved, but he just…
He just—
—didn't understand why.
Why any of this had to turn out this way.
Perhaps in search of answers, he wandered aimlessly, lost in thought as is surroundings morphed into something resembling everything he knew in reverse.
He crossed the boundary of Toon Town and into the Real World.
Really, it was just some random square of Los Angeles, but part of the Real World all the same. A place far deeper and wider than Rev could even conceptualize outside of his occasional delivery routes. He made it a point not to linger here more often than absolutely necessary. The oversaturation of colors and the lack of defined lines always left Rev's head spinning.
But for as noisy as it was visually, it was quieter than Toon Town, devoid of the whimsy that defined his technicolor home and instead filled with the sounds of nature and its abstract heartbeat.
Birds sang in a language Rev couldn't decipher, nesting in trees he couldn't name, and the wind blew through the wildflowers brave enough to thrive in the urban landscape. Fish bobbed above and below the surface of an old pond lined with algae and teeming with dragonflies in search of something to snack on.
Belatedly, Rev realized he'd wandered into a park. Nearly tripped over a bench, too, so he thought, When in the Real World, do as humans do, and sat.
His proportions made sitting comfortably a trifle whereas most other Toons would have to climb up. One of the few blessings that came with being a stylistic anomaly among his kind, really.
Breathing deep, Rev tried to recall what Tech taught him about meditation, but he ultimately came up empty.
Maybe it was better that way.
Closing his eyes, he melted into the sounds of his surroundings, wondering what life might've been like if he'd been born instead of made.
He really wasn't sure, but if it meant having more moments of pure nothingness like this, he thought maybe it would've been worthwhile. Even if he didn't understand what it meant to be human, he found himself wondering often. He and his friends were closer to humanity compared to the rest of the Toons—sharing not DNA, but experience.
Feelings, but not the same fate.
He didn't notice a stranger had come to share the bench he'd taken for a perch.
Blissfully unaware of—or perhaps all too familiar with—Rev's plight for reprieve, they spoke.
"Now, isn't this a rare sight?" they began. "Awfully far from home, aren't we?"
Rev snapped out his stupor with a start. Were he like others of his ilk, he might've literally jumped out of his skin.
"Oh, um—" Rev stammered, taking stock of the stranger "—I guess I am, huh? Sorry—must be kinda weird seeing a Toon just loitering around like this."
The stranger blissfully waved off his concerns.
"No apologies necessary," they said. "Everyone is welcome here—or at least I'm fairly sure they are. I don't see any No Loitering signs, do you?"
Belatedly realizing they were joking, Rev laughed just a second too late.
"I guess not," he replied softly, feeling more out of his element than ever before. "It's—um. Awfully pretty out, isn't it? Nice day and all—sky's clear, birds are singing…"
"A good day for walks," the stranger agreed, ever cordial. They steepled their fingers together—two sets of five compared to Rev's two sets of four. He tried not to stare.
The stranger's sandaled feet did not quite reach the stone below. They gently swung their legs back and forth, humming thoughtfully.
"You look troubled," they thought aloud. "Penny for your thoughts?"
Rev gave a bemused laugh because sometimes laughing was all he could do.
"Am I that easy to read?" he asked quietly.
The stranger took him on another trip to Shrug City.
"Toons are awfully expressive," they said simply. "Honestly, I'm surprised you haven't got a little rain cloud over you, pouring rain."
"Sorry to disappoint," Rev said mildly. "I'm not like other Toons."
"Probably for the best," they responded easily, floating entirely over the thorny subject. "It'd be a terrible shame to miss out on this beautiful weather for one little cloud. But I'm sure you'd rather talk about something other than the weather, right?"
Rather than lament again how easy he was to read, Rev just sighed, letting his head fall back as he dragged his hands down his face, trying to pull the exhaustion free like a dried out face mask.
"I'm not sure you'd understand," Rev said. "It's—Toon stuff, you know? But it's not really the kind of thing I can talk to other Toons about either."
"Mm. Hence why you're all the way out here, I imagine."
"Right," Rev said. "I just needed some time to think, I guess. It's quieter here than back home. But it's also overwhelming. The real world has so many colors, so many shadows. I feel like my eyes weren't made to take it all in."
"I think I understand," they said. "Humans—if we spend too much time looking at screens, it can harm our eyes. Something about blue light?"
Rev forced a laugh, unable to lift it cleanly from the well of bitterness within.
"Sorry if I'm not easy on the eyes, then," he found himself saying, immediately regretting it. The human had been perfectly nice up until then.
The stranger, however, fixed him with an earnest look, eyes bright and inquisitive.
"I wouldn't say that," they said, sounding genuinely confused. "I think you have a nice design."
Design, huh? That little detail got Rev's attention.
"Are you an artist or something?" Rev asked. "Not many folks comment on the design directly."
They usually just make fun of us for looking so different from the rest, he didn't say.
"I guess? I just like to dabble, though," the human answered, apparently content to leave it at that. But Rev, feeling like he was on the verge of uncovering something important, chose to chase the topic down to the very last.
"Have you ever shown your work off? Like at an exhibit or something."
The human's eyes went wide like saucers in an expression almost like that of a Toon.
Then they laughed.
"Oh, gosh, no. I'm not nearly at level. And—even if I was, I probably wouldn't go looking for the attention. I just draw for fun. I just do it for me."
"And that's okay?" Rev asked, chest tightening for reasons he couldn't describe. When the human gave him a confused look, he went on, the words spilling free of their own volition.
"I mean, you're an artist, aren't you? It's what you do. Don't you wanna take it as far as it can go? See where it takes you? Seems like a waste not to, doesn't it?"
The human fixed him with an indecipherable expression, peering through him on a level he couldn't understand—the gap between the real and the imagined.
"There are plenty of other things I like to do," they began, "but I'd hardly consider any of them to be my calling. Honestly, the idea of one true calling just seems silly to me—suffocating, too. I can't imagine doing one thing my whole life and making it the center of my life to boot. It's important to keep your work and your hobbies separate."
"But what if your work was all you had?" Rev asked, unable to stop himself. "Wouldn't you want to give it your all then?"
The stranger looked uncomfortable just imagining it.
"That hardly sounds like a life at all," they said. "I wouldn't want to get caught up in thinking my work was the only thing that mattered in life. I'd still want to do other things."
"Even if there's no purpose?" Rev asked, leaning in a little closer than was probably polite.
The stranger didn't seem to mind.
"Why not?" they asked like it was even a question. "Worrying about stuff like purpose just sounds exhausting. People can die from overworking, you know. You see it on the news sometimes."
Rev did not know that. He didn't make it a habit of reading the news. He already had enough of the doom and gloom in his own life back in Toon Town. The irony, really.
The human kicked their feet below, eyes fixed high above the sky, perhaps seeking to name the shapes of the clouds.
"I think it's fine just to do interesting things until you die," they said.
Rev didn't have anything to say to that. Honestly, he'd completely forgotten all about it—that little thing humans do when their time is up. He tried not to think about it whenever possible. Even if his backstory was a little edgier than the usual fare, he didn't see the point in dwelling on death.
Humans only have one ending, Rev once heard, but ideas live forever.
He wasn't sure how to feel about that.
So he decided to try again from a different angle.
"Do you know who I am?" Rev asked. Then, realizing what a strange question that was out of context, he asked again, "Have you seen my show?"
"Can't say I have," the stranger said, head tilted to the side in pleasant confusion. "Should I look it up? I have my phone on me."
"No point," Rev said quickly. "We got cancelled."
Apparently not comprehending the gravity of such a revelation, the human merely blinked.
"Oh. That's a shame."
Rev's laugh tore out of him.
"You're telling me! When I heard the news, I really thought it was over for me. For all of us. I never imagined we could just—not keep our story going. It's what we were made for! All the work that went into everything that makes us who we are, everything we felt during our run, and everything we went through in our backstories, it just—it just didn't matter anymore. We were cancelled. I thought we might even be deleted."
The stranger looked at him with the kind of sympathy too painful to be on the receiving end of. Still, all Rev could do was laugh. Laugh and apologize.
"Sorry," he bit out, hating the way he was tearing up all over again. "It was a long time ago. I should be over it by now."
I've already had this talk with the others a million times, he thought bitterly.
The human seemed to forgive him like it came naturally to them.
"I'm sure that must have been very hard," they said tentatively. Rev fought the urge to run off—it's all he was good for nowadays.
The stranger hummed a tune with no melody.
"The old days were fun, weren't they?" they asked suddenly.
Rev nodded, his heart heavy in his chest, the only thing keeping him anchored.
"It's hard not to miss them," they went on, "even if sometimes you think it'd be better to forget."
Rev nodded again, unable to muster anything worth saying.
"I used to envy you Toons," the human said. "I thought you had it easy—that your lives were all sunshine and rainbows. I thought you were lucky because the matter of who you are and what you're meant to do was already picked for you. But now I see how naive I was."
Rev sat up, crest perked at full attention.
He hadn't expected any of that. Yet, in opposition to everything Rev thought he knew, the human went on.
"It's different for us humans," they began again, threading a finger through their loosely-hanging hair. "We have to figure out who we are on our own. There are no right answers, and the only hints we get come from losing parts of ourselves—things like our friends, our family, and our sense of belonging… It's hard not knowing if you have a place in the world or not."
"It's the worst," Rev agreed quietly, his voice wavering.
"But," the human cut back in, a finger raised to rein Rev back in. "There's a silver lining. Some people say that hitting rock bottom means you can only go up from there, but I think there's more to it. Once you lose what others might call your purpose, you're left with a choice. You can either call it quits there, or you can keep moving forward. You can keep digging for who you are, and you won't have to worry about meeting anyone else's expectations anymore. For the very first time, you'll have tasted true freedom. And sure, it's terrifying because of how many choices you suddenly have to make for yourself, but even if you make the wrong decisions, you'll still end up learning something about yourself."
The human no longer kicked their feet below, no longer turned their gaze to the sky for fanciful impressions of something that wasn't there.
They focused entirely on Rev, seeing him in a way nobody ever had before.
"Here in the real world," they murmured, "nobody can give you the answers to who you are, but once you have it, nobody can take it away… and isn't that just wonderful?"
Rev couldn't recall the exact moment the tears finally fell. All he knew was that he soon found himself sobbing into the arms of a complete stranger, unable to understand the way they so easily wrapped their arms around his form, shushing him gently as if he were a human child.
He didn't understand how kindness could be so painful and yet so healing.
"I know it's hard," the human whispered to him, sounding a little choked up themself. Yet another thing Rev just couldn't understand—another thing he wasn't made to grasp. It wasn't in his ink.
"You've been so strong," the human went on, stroking tender circles into Rev's back. They were smaller than him, yet the only thing that kept him anchored there, lost and alone in the real world.
"You did your best," they whispered. "I'm sorry that it turned out like this."
"I just wanted to make people happy," Rev sobbed into their shoulder. "I don't understand—why didn't anyone like us?"
He knew there was no answer he could ever hear to set his heart at ease. Nothing could patch over the swiss-cheesy holes inside him. Still, the stranger held him carefully.
"I know," they murmured. "I know. It's okay now."
He didn't know how long he cried for—there, curled up next to a complete stranger who just happened to find him at his most vulnerable and choose to stay anyway.
He wondered what humans meant when they spoke of things like grace—of mercy.
The sensation of a human's embrace was too overwhelming for something as artificial as himself, but he couldn't bring himself to let go. So many textures, so many scents, and such undivided love from someone with whom he hadn't even exchanged names.
There was no one in this world who has never felt lost. That was what made them real.
"You're alive, aren't you?" the human asked him as the force of the sobs receded. "So it's up to you to decide what you want to do with your life."
"But I'm scared," Rev whimpered. "What if it all ends up the same?"
The human released him from their hold, their expression painfully tender.
"But what if it doesn't?"
Rev didn't have an answer to that. He didn't know anything. Tech was the smart one—he was just the assistant.
But—would that always be the case?
Did he have to be that way forever?
His life was his own, wasn't it?
The human, seeming to sense his indecision, answered for him.
"Whatever happens," they murmured, "if you're even a little happy in the end, I don't think it was a mistake that you came to be. As long as you can live without blaming others, you'll be okay. If there's one lesson you take back with you from the real world, let it be that."
For once, unable to muster anything to say at all, Rev just nodded.
The human showed him their smile, world-weary but warm and gentle as the sunbeams through the leaves.
"Run home, okay?" they said, slowly coming to a stand. "Not from the real world, or your real feelings… But back to the ones who accept you for who you really are, okay?"
Sniffling, Rev nodded again. His voice caught in his throat as he hesitated to reach out.
For reasons he couldn't pin, he wasn't ready to say goodbye. Down to the ink in his lines, he knew that he would never meet with this kind and gentle human ever again. Their lives were too different, their worlds too far apart.
But they met. And they were nice to each other.
He didn't want it to end.
Yet as the human turned and waved to him, headed back towards a life so unlike his own, Rev could only wave back.
He was glad they met.
He promised to not forget.
Run home, they said? To the ones who accepted him for who he really was…
Only one person waited for him there, and Rev knew how lucky he was that special someone understood him. Welcomed him. Loved him.
They weren't written to be together, but they drifted together anyway. They chose to take each other's hand. From the very beginning, their lives had always been their own. Rev just hadn't noticed—he'd been too preoccupied with things like purpose and his own design to see.
But he wouldn't lose sight again.
Feeling lighter, through the shadow of gently swaying leaves, Rev ran home, residual tears drying as he moved like the wind.
He wondered how best to greet Tech once he returned home from work.