#I had to rewrite plot and extra info

[goofygoobercreature]

Posting my Marvin the Martian movie remake AU stuffs here because yessssss

Some extra info is down below.

So I wanted to write this AU for the purpose of rewriting the entire Marvin the Martian movie. Because, let's face it, this icon ABSOLUTELY deserves a movie fr fr. So I somewhat wanted to make the plot similar to Shadow's, but with the idea that Mars was at war with another planet outside of the Milky Way for reasons unknown. Earth catches a sight of one of the vicious battles and one of the Martian ships gets shot down, convieniently barreling down to Earth.

The ship crash lands within the US and they extract Marvin and the ship into custody. Marvin was labeled as concussed and was put into a cryogenic state for thirty years. Between those thirty years, they were able to deconstruct his ship and take what could be salvged to further advance modern technology. Once the thirty years pass, Marvin finally does wake up to his dismay of being in human custody.

The time Marvin was shot down was in 1952 and most people thought that his arrival was a nuclear missile strike and caused a short term panic among the public. The government eventually covered it up as a simple meteor strike and that affirmation had calmed down the public.

When Marvin wakes up, he finds himself inside of a cryogenic tube with a 14 year old girl looking at him along with a whole group of scientists. The girl, named Stephanie, looks up to him in disbelief as he is showing no interest to her. Stephanie's father is among the scientists, looking at him with extreme interest at the chance of finally being able to study the martian. Eventually, Stephanie finds a way to leave the facility with her dad and Marvin with her dad being unaware that Marvin was tagging along in order for him to escape. The government did take away his physical weapons, but his armor is able to create a chameleon-like camoflauge to any environment.

Once home, Marvin reveals himself to Stephanie and orders her to tell him where he could retrieve his laser gun. As confused and frightened as anyone else would be, she had no clue. It didn't take long for him to realize that 30 Earth years had passed, or nearly 16 in martian years. So now more frustrated that he's been MIA for so long, he demands Stephanie a bit more. After a while, Marvin gives up on trying to make demands of her and becomes mildly accustomed and tolerant to her way of living. Stephanie is burdened to keep Marvin a secret, knowing that her dad would more than likely try to get rid of him or put him back into government custody just so he wouldn't lose his job.

More or less the plot is mainly about Stephanie struggling to keep Marvin a secret as he tries to find a way to get back to Mars. Thanks for reading!!

[n0irrrr]

i've been trying to think why i stopped writing entirely, so this is just a vent/ramble post and doesn't mean anything beyond that? line break bc i dont think someone would want to read rambling tb: rant about aot, info about reiss mental asylum/empty/future

the first reasons i came out with were 1. work 2. a shitty situation that worsened my already shitty mental health and 3. void of creativity/writers block/no energy to think or to came out with something i liked bc i kept comparing myself to others creators (which is... very bad).

the other big reason....... (since i only wrote for aot):

i think i stopped writing anything attack on titan related because i really, really got so salty that my favorite peace of media (that i've followed for 11 years) ended they way it did? and i don't mean that 'oh just bc u didn't get a happy ending or u didn't understand the characters and the plot doesn't mean your opinion is valid bla bla'

but the way characters' developments were poorly handled and recessed, how they were just made dumber for the sake of the plot and how suddenly a romantic relationship that wasn't there in the first place became something bigger at the end and how eren was handled in the last moments just made me so salty lmao.

and it makes me more salty how people just shits on you if you don't like it and quickly go with their 'u didn't get it' like brother ive been here since 2013 tf you mean? now we can't criticize anything and still like something??? AAAGGGHHHH

im sorry LOL it's just that i can't see anything aot related bc it is so ruined for me. literally i see tiktoks and i get so sad and bitter bc i know what the comments will be lmao i hate it, literally just read the manga and stopped watching the anime until season 3 bc i just disliked how everything was handled so bad. like any news about it just doesn't make me feel anything 😭 i need a therapist

anyway :) im trying to find my love towards it again because i genuinely liked writing my shitty stories about it and the world building and characters were what i fell in love with.

(also, this doesn't mean im bashing ppl who liked the ending!! in my eyes, everything is subjective—some like it, some dont, and that's fine. how boring life would be if we all thought the same?)

but i AM bashing those who say 'you didn't get it'. come here and get this hands how about that

oh, and im rewriting reiss mental asylum (just the earlier chapters bc they are... bad y'all LOL), nothing too heavy, just trying to improve the writing and adding extra things. (such as the damn time period... i've had in mind to settle it around 1960-1980, but i just didn't pay attention to the world building enough to explicitly mention it. oh well, the more you know.)

i've already made a big chunk of info about how i want to develop the whole story, so i do have a clear structure to follow. also, i once begged for ideas in ao3, and many people came with great input, and a commentor was so spot on on what i was intending to do with the story! (like really spot on LOL they found my secret plot twist...)

it really makes me baffled how many people like the story, with its flaws and all. i was young and very inexperienced when writing it, so i hope i can refine it enough to make it a decent read for all of you.

also... people from russia 🫵 im speaking to you directly... thank you for your kind messages as well! (some of you have reached for me through email) it just baffles me how well liked that story is? and for the translator(Вероника_69) to still keeping an eye after years of no updating? aaaa. thank you.

i think i needed to write this vent, it helped me to get some good motivation!!

aaaaand i've watched jujutsu kaisen... you may see silly things coming up as well... err, someday. because college is around the corner again and that means suffering! and poor mental health! and no time! and no life!

been having these intrusive thoughts lately of... erasing all of my works LOL BUT i won't, don't worry. they'll be there as a reminder of how slightly ive improved (not much).

but yeah, if you see me experiment with small drabbles or just silly posts it doesn't mean im not paying attention to reiss mental asylum! i won't abandon it unless i die, even then i've told my friends to release my 30 unfinished drafts for you to get some closure LOL (fr though). but yeah, i will gravitate towards other fandoms if i feel like it (:

so, empty: hiatus... hiatus hiatus bc i hate to touch aot right now as its canon universe. indefinite hiatus, but i love that story to just abandon it. i was having much fun with it, tbh. which also im very grateful that it also got a russian translation by _Полуночник_! sorry that these news aren't very positive for the fans of empty, but i promise i'll get around it someday.

anyway, this turned out too long. thank you for still checking my stories, as bad as they are! i really, really appreciate you all reaching out to me. hopefully this year i can be more active, even if to write drabbles with meaning behind it. (i just love stories with lores thats why im so damn slow) although... i wrote more for myself in the beginning, so i was very surprised that people wanted more LOL

oh and im going to post masterlists to order my shit better. i want pretty visuals too, yk? headsup if u see me posting... also, feel free to ask anything about this vent lol i dont mind. (also i always got notifications to my email when someone asked something, and idk when they stopped? also, yeah, i check my email 😞)

hope you are having a good start of year. and, if not, well, we have 11 months anyways

and i never fucking realize i had 550 FOLLOWERS. i am not fit for social media y'all im sorry. i'll have to spoil you with something... THANK YOU FOR FOLLOWING A DAMN GRAVEYARD 😭 i will make it better i promise

also... dont use chat bots... my brain rotted... 😞 i had an unhealthy obsession (still do) but don't give in LMAO

[aceinacloset]

FNAF SL REDUX

This whole Au is just self-indulgent for me, but you may like it, so still give this post a read if you're a fan of Fnaf sl, Fnaf aus, or both. Enjoy 😊.

This Au is dedicated to "rewriting" sister location to be more independent from the other fnaf games (*cough* *cough* FNAF 4) and to give a more unique perspective to SL'S story.

This Au is focused on the funtimes

I love these 4 sillies, I just love these 4 heck all the characters in sister location. I really wanted to have an Au that focuses on the funtimes and their struggles in the facility, focusing on that also allows me to delve into the very motivations that had them want to escape the facility in the first place.

The other animatronics in SL are also part of this Au, just not as prominent as the Skittle squad.

Elizabeth is also very prominent in this Au.

Elizabeth is another character in SL. I love a lot, so she's also very present. Since she experiences the same pain as Funtimes I through, I felt it really necessary.

There are lore changes.

Not really changes, more so add ons. These add ons are here to expand upon what Fnaf had built with Sister Location but never did anything with past SL. Some stuff in here are add ons just to indulge me.

William and Michael are here too.

While they're not as focused on as the characters previously mentioned, they do have their role and place in the story.

William is intentionally designed that way. While I do have a planned human design, I have a reason he looks like his 8-bit sprite. The reason is to show the rift he would unintentionally build with Liz after her death, and this rift would become so wide that she would no longer see him as her father let alone a person.

While Michael's look would specifically be keeped hidden through most of the story to show how the Funtimes and Elizabeth perceive him.

Oh yeah, Mrs. Afton is here too for some extra plot.

I don't have a complete design for her yet, so all I have are concepts of her design. I'm still working on her character (That's the fun of Mrs. Afton not being canon yet, I get to write her how ever I like.) But I want her to be someone who's kind and sweet but doesn't take shit and has the will to beat the shit out of those who deserve it.

A major plot point she is a part of is going down into the rental facility to find clues on what could have happened to Liz.

She would find answers, but at a price

Yeah, she would, um be killed by william. I'll go into further detail on this event at a later date.

Extra changes

Redesigned the facility's map

Changed some game events because I didn't like them or I felt they could have been better

Some new faces to really bring life to this Au

Unique character designs

More a focus on events prior to Sister Location (the game) events

Spooky stuff if I feel up to it.

Mult ending ideas

This Au may also touch upon and make content in association with other games and books in heavy relation to Sister Location (ex. FNAF 6 and fazbear fright story "Room for one more")

That's all the info I got so far, I hope to post more about this Au soon.

Bye-bye

-Jester 🤡

[sakumira-agashi]

"That Stupid Little Waiter" being reworked

I forgot I had a tumblr to make announcements for my AO3 folks XD

So yes, as the title said, That Stupid Little Waiter (TSLW) is getting a rework! That means a rewrite to almost all the chapters. BUT don't worry, the plot isn't gonna change. Just wanna redo how I wanna write the scenes and add in extra info/backstory. Basically, think of it as an elevated version of the original.

There will be more art, way more words, extra animatics and a bonus chapter! Which will be posted at the same time when the rework is done so you'll get a notification for it. But I also will be posting an announcement as well

[roxannarambles]

Indigo Disk Photo Album

Just some screenshots and excuses to ramble a bit about Drayton, the environments in Indigo Disk, and Rika. Major spoilers obviously.

First of all, I want to say when Drayton said "Yo, Champ in the making," I was so happy. Such an adorable callback for old fans. Then when I beat the next E4 and he said 'Yo yo, Champ in the making' I thought maybe it was just script writers being lazy and not noticing, but MAYBE he said it twice because I beat TWO people? The third time confirmed it was intentional and I was so happy, lol. Also, I saved him for last, which the dialogue takes note of, so that was really cool.

I liked Drayton, he was my favorite BB person. I think most of that 'laziness' stems from pushing back against all the no doubt intense pressure put on him to follow in the footsteps of family members that are very powerful and accomplished trainers, and really, who could blame him. (Read his dialogue with Hassel if you get the chance, it's good) He's also a 'lil toxic towards Kieran when Player wins, but again, I can't exactly blame him for having some bad feelings towards Kieran considering how much of a JERK Kieran was being.

Terarium stuff. I loved this Pyroar they intentionally placed on the Pride Rock-esque formation. Also I loved other environmental details like electrowebs for Galvantula, antlion pits for Trapinch, nests for Vullaby, etc. Also met up with Perrin so the brothers could re-unite . . . girl why don't you evolve your Growlithe. You do know all you need is a Fire Stone, right? You could be riding a giant fire dog around.

The extra-super sparkly part to Area Zero was nice, but this underground lake with this awesome tree in the center was the coolest. I think they should have had Terapogos there instead of some random poke you need to battle to progress. Also, I have to admit this WAS a very cool moment, when Terapogos broke the Master Ball. It felt very impactful, just seeing that. So props for that.

Ms. Briar's academic obsession with Terapogos is so similar to Sada/Turos' obsession with building a Time Machine and a paradise, I really expected more parallels to be drawn in the story but they never really did. I feel like they didn't take full advantage of that. Although I suppose it's nice Ms. Briar realized she needed to step back, that she was hurting people as a result, whereas Arven's parent never realized this. (I'm gonna explore the idea more if I do an Indigo Disk rewrite and get the Paldea Pals properly involved in the plot) Kieran had an obsession of his own, of course, with Ogerpon but also with growing stronger, and that resulted in a lot of pain too ultimately.

Okay so, the added information on Rika was interesting. She mentions 'babysitting the boss' because Geeta is prone to being absent-minded and needs help keeping track of all the details, which a lot of people loved, although personally I don't like Geeta, so that info didn't fascinate me too much. I found it more interesting that Rika got super upset when she learned Player went into Area Zero, which is honestly really sweet that she's that concerned for our safety. She also mentions that she 'went to kind of a rough school' which is really interesting. I guess she didn't attend Naranja then. People often assume she and Geeta attended Naranja and met there as students, I guess that kinda wrecks that theory. I wonder which school Rika attended? I'm going to guess it's in an area that was economically disadvantaged, as "rough" usually means "poor" (Rika also notes the clubhouses were not 'as nice' as BB's)

Rika also notes that she has a "professional mode" when she's teaching or doing League work, which she finds exhausting if she has to do it all the time, and that she prefers her regular, relaxed, normal self. (She also reveals she wears the glasses because they make her look sharp and professional but they're literally just for show, which is hilarious.) If the player tells her they prefer regular Rika to professional Rika, she says she'll try to loosen up around us and act like her normal self. Aw.

[willel]

The town believed what the lab wanted them to believe, they probably communicated false info, fake timing, etc. As for Victor: let’s say he woke up from his trance, saw his children’s bodies (either Henry is faking coma to frame his dad or was really exhausted from the MF possession), panicked, left this bloody house and was later arrested by the police. Meanwhile, Henry woke up, went to the school and back under Brenner’s control who decided to cover up his murders. Problem solved!

Honestly I think writers know that supposed plot holes are easy to solve, these details aren’t important, imo, what matters are the big ideas and new interactions introduced each season or in the play ( in the latter case: Henry/the MF, Henry/Patty, Henry/Brenner, and to a lesser extent, Henry/Joyce). Btw, it doesn’t diminish Will’s relevance at all, on the contrary, there’s also a clear parallel between what happened to young Henry and S1 Will that may likely resurface in S5.

Again, it's not what the town "believed". It was stated in the show that Victor killed his whole family that day. The news. The people. Everyone. It's not like there's some conspiracy going around like "But actually his son lived." Everyone in town believed they all died because they were never seen again and Victor was locked up.

Yet in the play, Henry shows up at school the day after just so Joyce can tell him it wasn't his fault?

The government may be powerful but I doubt they're powerful enough to erase the memories of everyone who saw Henry the day after the massacre still alive and attending school?

It simply does not match what was presented in the show. What they're doing to do with that I don't know, but I personally will disregard that conflict and go with what the show said happened. Henry was taken into custody that night by Brenner and was never seen or heard from again so Hawkins believes he's dead too. (other than Patty I guess but that's about it imo)

This tidbit of the story didn't even need to be made so complicated. Henry passing out/going into a small coma because of overuse of his power perfectly lines up with what El experiences when she overexerts herself. It makes total sense that Brenner would swoop in during the confusion and take Henry away, covering up the kidnapping by saying Henry was also killed by Victor. So easy and simple and self explanatory that I'm just not going to bother coming up with more complicated reasonings.

It was seemingly changed to give Joyce a small part in the story and it's a typical prequealism I'm personally not fond of.

Joyce could've still had a "It wasn't him" moment and believed it fully without needing Henry to be literally present. If this is supposed to be a relevant plot point later, all he'd have to do is look in Joyce's head just like he does everyone else and see that she really thought he was a good kid.

Rewriting such a simple plot point to force some interaction between them feels like spoon feeding the audience "Joyce is good actually" or "Joyce is naive", whatever point they were trying to get across with that.

Then again, that is the nature of a stage play. Some things need to be over-exaggerated because it's not filmed like a tv show or movie. I don' t know to explain it other than I feel like a stage play requires extra exposition.

[fountainpenguin]

Fanfic meme: 8, 16, 20

[Current Ask game]

8. What’s the oldest (longest since last update) fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

I made a significant amount of progress on both The Beatin' Path and Lions Under Palm Trees before I faded from writing Total Drama, and some of my favorite scenes I've ever written are in those 'fics, but were never posted. I delayed mainly because writing those meant skipping past my unfinished 'fic The Lyin' Queen, which came chronologically earlier but which I was struggling with.

I like Staci as a character. I think she's goofy and confident. She was fun to write, but I was going to do this big twist reveal where you find out at the end that she has short term memory loss, and the entire story was written so that you just thought she was a little spacy until then. I wrote the prequel to Lyin' Queen (Life of a Loser) in two months or less, so I was young and ambitious and wasn't prepared for how much work Lyin' Queen was... and it only grew more difficult as I continued through school.

I'd like to get back to these stories though because sincerely they have some of my all-time favorite scenes and I still think about them a lot. Leonard is like, my all-time favorite Total Drama character and he was eliminated second in Pakithew and first in Ridonculous Race, which means it's Leonard time ALL the time and he's the best.

Will there be an audience for these stories almost 10 years after I stopped writing them? Idk, maybe not... but when I think about how Leonard is fantastic, and how many scenes I never shared with the world, I am filled with love... (for Leonard).

Throwback to 2015-2016 when I was still posting mainly on dA and I used to type with the manual italics:

Also to this day, Topher is still hands-down one of the best examples of a manipulative slimeball character I have ever seen in my life and I love him too <3

16. Have you ever stopped writing a fic/for a fandom because it wasn’t receiving enough attention?

I don't think I'd put it all on not receiving attention, but I did put No Anesthetic aside partly because it wasn't getting as much positive feedback as I hoped and partly because of criticism I received (not in the visible reviews portal, but elsewhere) that kind of hurt.

Honestly Youngblood is the only part of Danny Phantom that truly captivates me (though I do have a fondness for a few of the other ghosts), and I just didn't have the drive to carry that story through a wave of criticism when I had the alt option of writing for Fairly OddParents in a fandom that was much more welcoming to my ideas.

I don't want to make it sound like that's the only reason I stopped on this 'fic. There are a lot of scenes in No Anesthetic that are kind of info-dumpy and drag on, since Youngblood is learning about the Ghost Zone for the first time. I was juggling school, life, and other 'fics and the info-dumpy nature of this story made it more of a chore to write. It just didn't feel worth it because it was more work than my other stories, I didn't feel like anyone was enjoying it, and it was one extra thing I had on my plate, so I stopped.

Now that it's been 6 years, I'd like to rewatch Danny Phantom and maybe go back to this story someday to see if it sparks something in me. I like my worldbuilding ideas for the Ghost Zone, and like the TD 'fics above, I had a lot written. Here's one of my favorite WIP scenes:

But also, my draft has a lot of missing scenes, and the story hangs in fragments because it doesn't really "go anywhere" and the plot is just a found family story without a lot of direction, so it would take a lot of revisions to make it less info-dumpy and flesh it into something with proper story beats. I might go back to it someday, but probably not any time soon. Or if I do go back to it, I might cut a lot of the plans I initially had and turn it into a shorter piece with just a few chapters instead. We'll see.

20. Have/Would you ever rewrite a fic? If yes, would you take the original down?

When I'm finished with Origin of the Pixies and Frayed Knots, I'd like to go back and clean them up a little. There are little lines here and there that bother me, and I used to spell out large numbers instead of typing them as numerals, there are info-dumpy moments, stuff like that. I force myself to keep moving forward because I'm worried that if I get nitpicky, I'll never finish, so just remember that you're reading stuff I started in 2016 and it is technically in a draft state /shrug.

I've not rewritten a 'fic before, but I do have some pieces from 10 years ago that I'd like to write with more sensitivity knowing what I know now. As one example, there's a 'fic I wrote that I never moved from dA to FFN because the relationship between those characters moved from platonic to romantic after one forced the other into a kiss. I didn't understand consent back then and media had shown me that people often liked surprise kisses and enjoyed platonic relationships that suddenly became romantic.

I played with those characters for a while before I discovered the concept of asexuality and realized that I headcanoned this character as ace. I no longer wanted that forced kiss to be associated with my storyline, so it still exists on dA because I don't like deleting 'fics, but I didn't move it to FFN with the others.

There's also another 'fic I wrote where it's pretty obvious that I didn't understand how the legal system works, so I didn't move that one over either because I don't think it's very good. I also have other 'fics on a site that's not AO3, FFN, or dA, but I posted under a different name back then and while they were fun, they were populated with OCs and I don't want to unbury them.

I have no interest in rewriting those old 'fics, but the general idea of "There are sensitive topics I didn't treat in the most sensitive way 10+ years ago" and "I really didn't understand how the adult world works" remains. I'm glad I've been writing for so long, but I do hope I never end up in a situation where someone wants to hold up my old stories as an example of what I believe now, because I was young and have a lot of old stuff I don't want to delete because this is my writer's journey and I don't want to throw it away /shrug.

This is the last Ask for this Ask game that I have in my inbox, so I'll wrap up the questions here unless anyone wants to send in more tonight. Thanks for the interest!

[Current Ask game]

[sinkingtime]

Rewriting the DCU, part whichever

See also: previous entries, in no particular order.

Mostly, today is about Saturn Girl, who doesn't quite work with how I've set up the metaphysics for this setting. I believe I've found a workaround.

It involves giving her considerably more backstory than any other character yet, which is also considerably more useless than anyone else's. I love it!

But before that, a bunch of additions and corrections, because that, too, is par for the course.

...about Dr. Pamela Isley

She's definitely the Static spin-off, but first I need to make a few changes to that one.

She will indeed be a scientist, not a protestor. Part of the team that was developing the crowd control gas that caused the plot of the movie. She's not the lead, but her contribution is significant, and perhaps unfairly overlooked.

She's also Francis Stone's ex-girlfriend, currently on cold but cordial terms. She may instead start as his current girlfriend, the relationship deteriorating as part of his negative character arc, while Virgil and Daisy's advance as he grows as a hero. That's only if there's enough screentime to showcase the parallel arcs, of course.

Either way, Isley always calls Stone "Officer" and he calls her "Doctor", which will serve to obscure her actual identity. Her real name may show up on-screen on some document or something, but probably the after-credits is enough.

She is also the one to say he "always had trouble controlling that hot streak" or something like that, which is where he gets the idea for his superhero (supervillain) name.

Since she's from Gotham, we can say he used to visit her there or they visited her family together or something, which should be enough to justify his eventually running that way (for the loose thread in Jokerz), which in turn means this movie is free to be in its own city. I prefer to give one to each hero, generally speaking.

The after-credits isn't her being inspired to do good, as I had first suggested, since she doesn't have any powers. Instead, she's at her appartment, depressed about the project failing miserably. It was actually suppressed and all documentation and samples destroyed, but I am not sure if we would have gotten to see that.

The appartment is full of plants, naturally, including some rare specimens that are considerably more expensive than anything else she owns. Maybe we had seen that place already, or she kept a few at the lab or something.

She reaches into her clothes or hair or something, to pull a small vial containing what may be the last existing sample of the gas. Cut to black.

As for her actual movie, we start with that info about the program failing and getting swept under the rug. Very important if that particular fact wasn't explicitly established back in Static, but honestly it probably needs to be repeated here either way.

We also see that she didn't randomly gas herself, as that after-credits scene was deliberately trying to imply. Rather, she continued her research as best as she could, in secret, in her appartment. She mixed in a variety of plant extracts, some other chemicals, etc, until she reached something she was content dosing herself with.

It will be an injection, to make it extra clear that this is completely deliberate.

Her skin becomes green, and actually photosynthetic. If she does end up wearing the bikini uniform, it will be specifically so she can take in more sunlight. She should make a comment about that to someone.

Though I also enjoy the idea of her wearing a lab coat through the entire movie.

She's stronger and faster and generally more athletic than before. Not necessarily to a superhuman degree, but more than her appearance would suggest.

She gets conscious control of her bio-chemistry, which lets her intentionally synthesize various substances. Not "anything", but several different things; we will still show her working at her lab to actually create most things she needs, with her power providing materials that would be expensive, difficult and/or illegal to acquire.

Also she either only emits the various stuff through her hands, or she can intentionally control what parts of her skin will do so at any given time, because otherwise she'd be constantly ruining her clothes. It's okay if she does that once, early on; and if we want that kind of fanservice I'd certainly rather that than an enemy cutting them, but later she needs to be able to wield acid in melee without trouble.

Early on she's simply enjoying the many perks of her new condition, both in a simple hedonistic sense and out of scientific curiousity. She does soon get roped into a random fight and immediately sides with the innocent party, to show us that she's a basically decent person, but she's not particularly motivated by heroism.

She should visit that family that hopefully got established earlier. They will reject her and cast her out, but she doesn't take it personally and, while hurt, is hopeful she can mend things with them, later. Maybe a single member reaches out to her, in secret from the rest.

Other people in the community can have more mixed reactions. I kinda want a mostly negative reception, but not enough so that it'd be jarring when she doesn't mind it. Ultimately she was never a sociable person, the little acceptance she gets here and there is still nice, but not something she would seek or care about.

She should fight the Jokerz at some point, to remind us about Harley's existence. She doesn't get to show up, though. Alexis ("Punchline") isn't with them anymore, either.

Also want to make clear she used to be a vegetarian, but isn't anymore. Maybe some fake horror hunger scene, but actually she's overreacting and it's just a burger or something.

After enough prancing about that we start getting comfortable with her, she's randomly attacked by a plant monster. She's able to kill it, in part by grappling it while sweating some acid or poison.

Afterwards she drags it to her appartment for study. She's very interested in what makes it move, but unfortunately there's nothing for her to find. It's just a bunch of different plants, roughly mashed together in a vaguely doglike shape. All tests she can think of show nothing of interest.

After some consideration, she decides to destroy it, just in case. She quickly brews a small bottle of something, grabs all the remains of the monster, and goes out to a poorer part of the city, where a bunch of homeless guys are gathered around a fire in one of those metal barrels.

She tosses the plants in there, pours about half of her bottle in, and the flames burn brighter and taller. All the while she's mumbling that she can explain, but everybody is busy looking the other way. These guys know better than to get involved with a weirdo like her.

She ends up staring at the remainder of her fuel, unsure what to do, and is about to just tell them they can keep it when another monster appears. Her immediate instinct is to jump in and protect the people, but it quickly becomes clear that it's only interested in her. She runs away, and after a small chase ends up pouring the remainder of her fuel on it, then lighting it with a still-burning cigarrete that happens to be on the ground.

Over the next few days, she keeps trying to resume her normal life, or what it had been after she changed herself, but the attacks keep happening. We also see her growing obsession with them; her appartment now features a huge map of Gotham, where she marks each event, hoping to figure out where they come from. There's no pattern she (or we) can discern.

Over time she'll get less worried about some sort of Trojan Plant and start actually holding and studying samples. She cannot find anything special about them, but keeps filling papers and whiteboards and whatnot. She may even harvest some of them for materials, though they're all species found within Gotham.

She also starts preparing tools and weaponry. I picture mostly thrown bombs, but it'd be funny if she gets a dart gun and then the first time wastes most of her ammo because she's a terrible shot. Could also get a nice human interaction scene out of her trying to go to a range to practice.

Could also devote a bit of screentime to her practicing parkour or similar, as every good (non-flying) super should.

Eventually she manages to escape from one creature, doubles back to observe it and hopefully follow it back to its base, but instead once it has no further idea how to find her it immediately falls over, de-animating and losing cohesion, apparently "dead". She approaches it cautiously, but it's just normal plants.

Cut to her angrily erasing one of her whiteboards full of equations and diagrams. Instead she writes "MAGIC????" and then starts pacing frantically, pulling at her hair and rambling.

We should see that some news and/or newspapers start almost picking up on the monsters. Nobody but Ivy has actually been attacked, so there are reports about the rumours of plant monsters, but most believe it's some sort of hoax or publicity stunt or something like that. The only source to report them as actual events also claims they have been seen to obey her.

Monsters start coming in groups, as well as bigger ones. At some point she kills one with blunt force trauma (I'm picturing some sort of construction site shenanigans) and it also falls over and dies like a living creature before falling apart like usual. This also leaves her professionally offended, complaining about how they don't even have organs or any anatomy or anything.

As the groups get bigger she spots a humanoid shape hanging back, apparently being their leader. That's Swamp Thing, there's no way for her to know that but I see no benefit in hiding it. Once she defeats some creatures he charges at her, and he is superhumanly strong, to her surprise. She's barely able to hold him back, by liberal use of secreted chemicals.

As he retreats he says something to the effect that he won't be destroyed so easily, which leaves her surprised since none of the others could talk, naturally. I actually think it's better if they don't make any noise at all, thematically, but for scene design they probably need to growl or something. She yells at him to wait, but he retreats, yelling back something defiant.

Something that, as she thinks about it later, gives her the impression that he thinks she's the aggressor in this circumstance. Naturally her immediate reaction should be annoyance, but we need her to consider it seriously so either something about the way he said it makes her think it's legit, or it's just her curiousity getting the better of her. Either way, she spends the next few encounters trying to get him to stop and talk to her.

I'm not entirely clear what she would do to prove her sincerity, short of the obvious third party that they team up against, but I'm specifically trying to avoid that cliché. It's kinda important that he be the genuine antagonist, right until the end.

I'm thinking as he attacks she takes a personal risk to prevent damage to innocent bystanders, probably a burning building except she's the one that has been using fire so preferably not? Dunno, something.

That said, if we do need the common enemy to unite them, I'd say internal politicking at the Parliament of Trees, the bad guy having engineered this whole incident. Presumably that introduces the Floronic Man, though I think I'd prefer to dig for someone more obscure.

Anyways, what we learn is that Swamp Thing is the (formerly human) champion of the Green, more or less protectors of nature. In the comics it's specifically plants, and there's other Parliaments, but this version can probably be all consolidated as nature in general, since we're unlikely to ever use the others.

They detected her making herself a half-plant and thought that was an attempt to usurp him as champion, or possibly the Parliament at large, that was why they were attacking. There exist protocols nature mages can use to operate without incurring their ire, but since she doesn't know anything about magic and doesn't actually have any she was unable to invoke them.

Possibly we can even establish she received notice, before the attacks happened, in a way she wouldn't have recognized as such; assuming we can think of a good idea for what form that would take. As of yet I have not.

Naturally, after they've talked, he brings her to do the proper ritual/paperwork so that she can continue to operate without future issue. Possibly physically brings her into the extra-dimensional forest that is the Parliament, but even if she's not quite that trusted we should see it at some point, since it will be important that the set design be reminiscent of the one for the Rock of Eternity, from Shazam. I would have to check the set for that, but hopefully there is some manner of interesting layout that lets us clearly show that it's the same, but trees.

Also, it's probably better if the trees don't literally talk, but if Swamp Thing is ever shown speaking to them, it would become important that they answer him. Probably better if he never has a chance to do it, but the point is that the movie must not allow a possible interpretation in which he is insane or making it up or something.

Anyways, they're all friends now, the end.

After credits, Swamp Thing and Shazam are hanging out together at a bar that also conforms to the same architectural design that we now know signifies extra-dimensional magical places of power. It's probably more of a restaurant, especially since Billy is a kid, but its name is "Oblivion Bar" either way.

Shazam has been checking in on other important magical groups that protect Earth, since he's now not only the Champion but also the Wizard. This is good worldbuilding to introduce, since it readily excuses why such a powerful character isn't doing much; he has, behind the scenes. I suppose that also means if I ever want a widespread magic crisis, the inciting incident can be that he has died, been tricked or otherwise failed.

He mentions that there hasn't been a Champion of the Green for a few decades. 40ish years, the previous one took a side in a human war, and that eventually led to the Parliament being bombed, so it withdrew from human affairs. Not sure I want to commit to which specific war, though if we do Billy would know the exact year that happened, and the fact that the previous Wizard had no further contact with them after.

Sometimes it's part of his powers to have knowledge of the goings on of magic, specifically on a "wider picture" sort of way, so if we want to establish that this is the ideal time to do so. Otherwise, he may just have notes and documents that the previous Wizard kept, which he's been going thru now that he's also assumed that responsibility.

Swamp Thing tells him that he was chosen after Zod's attack. Not really in response to him, there was no possible way the bureaucracy was going to respond that fast, but that was the event that convinced the Parliament that they can't not have a Champion at the ready.

Ideally something about their conversation should hint that he's thinking about Ivy to be the next one, if something should happen to him while she's still around; but while that's probably important to justify the scene being in this movie, really what I care about is the reason why they didn't defend against the kryptonians. I wouldn't be comfortable introducing this faction to the setting without an excuse for that.

...meanwhile, in Earth 2

Swamp Thing probably doesn't exist, given that Zod didn't attack. Jor-El and Lex did end up building and using the World Engines, briefly, but that's not necessarily the part that riled up the Parliament of Trees; and they're specifically trying to use it to restore Earth's atmosphere to a previous version of its own, which could conceivably be something the Green would approve of.

Plus I already established that the atlantean ruling caste was mobilized to war by that, where they had not been by Zod, so it feels right to have the Parliament be conversely less offended.

That doesn't necessarily mean the character doesn't exist, or even that he's not a vegetable biomass monster, since whatever version of what made him like that is separate; just that he's not Champion of the Green, and probably there still isn't such a Champion.

That said, I will definitely take this chance to establish there definitely isn't an Ivy, or Static, Hot-Streak, any of them; the entire experiment with the gas didn't happen, because LexCorp won out the contract with the lab that was doing it, rather than the Dakota City Police Department.

Possibly they still did that experiment, but testing was better controlled, so we get one super whose origin is that. More likely, though, they just worked on different stuff. Either way, Dr. Isley is happy with her career as a civillian science researcher for the Society, and has no powers.

And I thought there would be mention of those characters that I'd need to retcon out, but in checking back it seems I never added any. That's convenient. Thanks, past me!

...about tamaranian currency

From the scene when Earth 2 Komand'r threatens with denying the kryptonain survivors aid, in order to pressure Koriand'r into taking the throne. I have decided she says "not a single lace", that being their small coin name.

This on the grounds that the larger one is "gown", both in reference to the several real-world countries that use (or have used) "crown" as the name for their money. I doubt any have used a physical part of a crown to name the smaller divison, but whatever.

Naturally there is no possible way this could come up in-story. This did nothing to keep me from thinking about it a lot. Therefore, here it is for you to read.

...about Victor Stone

Earth 2 again, as part of the montage for Power Girl's introduction to the world I said she would save him. But on second thought, that doesn't quite work.

She arrived 2 years before Superman's death, and therefore 3 and a half before Bruce showed Diana that video with the cube and his dad. This makes him a little too old in the franchise proper. I'm aiming for about a year between the accident and Cyborg's joining the League.

More specifically, I'm thinking he was almost finished with high school, and definitely pre-approved for a college scholarship, on account of his sports, when the accident happened. So when we actually meet him, he's just college age, 18 or 19, though actually a drop-out.

Well, legally dead, to be precise.

In Earth 2 Power Girl still saves him and prevents him from further mattering, it just cannot happen so early in her career. She'll have to do it later.

And I'd like to replace that with someone else, to highlight that some character exists or doesn't exist that wouldn't in other timelines, due to no real superheroes having been active back then. I'm thinking maybe Alan Scott. The Watchmen/DC crossover establishes that he died or almost died in a train crash, depending on Manhattan's meddling. She could save that train instead, then he becomes a super after.

I don't exactly love it, not having a convenient train crash established in previous movies, but just the fact that she's helping with that and we know there didn't used to be superheroes active at that time may be enough?

...about the cube

I have decided it's not related to the end of the world, but rather to time/dimensional travel. It is some sort of crystallized time-space anomaly, created as a side effect of the martian teleportation experiment, which had been orbiting Earth since and which S.T.A.R. Labs randomly found embedded in one of their space probes.

In Earth 0, Cyborg had it originally so the Legion got it from him; I don't want them having his rotting corpse or anything, but it definitiely should be modified in some way. Maybe it has molded itself as part of his chestpiece, though it still would have the weird sort of "breathing" protrusions that the cube form had.

More importantly, they have some wiring in the back, among the Science Props, that should ultimately recur in some way in most or all dimensional technology. I think it could be modelled roughly on the pattern of the wires behind young Victor Stone, in the BvS scene, like that's what his dad was trying to do.

I'm also thinking the first two times we see that room it's not visible, covered in tubing and metal, but further in the future, after it's fallen in disrepair and Booster Gold fixes it up, that's when the cube (or whatever its new shape) is exposed for us to finally see.

Prometheus would also have a similar setup in his interdimensional spaceship, but the materials would be different. Where the Legion has highly utilitarian, bare metal pipes, his are highly ornamented, more reminiscent of a church organ or greek columns or something. His cube is in clear view, and didn't pass through a human's chest before he got it.

He also needs to have a few other dimensional-capable ships, with cubes collected from other universes. These ships are the true bottleneck of his invasion; they have captured and killed versions of Cyborg, but so far cannot extract an useful cube from him. All the ones they have so far are from universes where he wasn't created, which mostly means versions of the Amazons Attack timeline.

As he moves towards canon, those get rarer and rarer, because of course the hyper-geometry of the multiverse roughly corresponds with differences and similarities between timelines. That doesn't really make sense, but it sounds like it would, so there we go.

That does probably mean he's specifically after Earth 2, out of the ones we care about. I don't think he should be able to detect it from multiple universes away, beyond the basic fact that time travel dimensions are easily detectable; but certainly if and when the army comes into contact with these worlds, that one will be of special interest, should they learn about that.

Meanwhile, in Earth 3, Booster figuring out dimensional travel will have involved studying Cyborg. He won't take him apart or otherwise remove the cube from him, but did take some readings and whatnot. And the same type of circuitry pattern is now on Skeets, though it doesn't need to be visible from the outside. Maybe we can see it on some sketches as he was working on it.

And I feel the need to stress that this doesn't mean he's individually superior to all of Prometheus' scientists put together. He is good, but he also has a thousand years head-start on them, and specifically comes from a civilization that already did strides on this particular problem.

The traitor from Lanterns didn't have a cube or cube-analog, the machinery was specifically creating its own distortions in time-space in this universe, but the systems on the outside should still have some variation on the same pattern, there's just not a central Important Object that they all connect to.

Also the tubings shouldn't have an obvious material theming, because I wouldn't want that to be a clue as to the traitor's identity. So again just raw industrial metal, I guess? Or some sort of pure energy nonsense that implies the systems were carved out of spacetime itself or something.

If Orange Irons did recur as a dimensional traveller, his suit also features the same dimensional circuitry as all others, but he also doesn't have a cube, and probably didn't even figure out that Cyborg was useful. His system is derived from the info they collected on the traitor Lantern's systems, and is powered by his magic like everything else he carries.

On the other hand, if he was the traitor, then nevermind.

And then I need to actually introduce Saturn Girl before I can talk about her implementation of this technology. But there's more, first.

...about the end of the world

I have decided that that is instead related to KORD Industries. Mostly I was never completely satisfied by pulling yet another millionaire industrialist scientist out of nowhere for Booster Gold's supporting cast, but I had to do it anyways. Because even if I wasn't going to ship them together, I'd still want them to be friends.

Also, why would I not ship them, if given the chance?

Anyways, it's not exactly that they are responsible for it. Even in Earth 0, the company failed on its own at approximately the time when Irons took down AmerTek. Ted Kord just wasn't that good of a CEO and/or scientist. But something they left behind would later be picked up by some other group(s) and developed and ultimately leads to the explosion of the planet in the 27th or 28th century, plus maybe to some of the social and/or technological hardships that humanity had been suffering from in the centuries prior.

So when both Supergirl and Power Girl team up with their respective rich dudes it's because they need the help guaranteeing that all relevant documentation is found and destroyed. We don't see Ted himself, but the building they're raiding is a (former, for Supergirl) KORD Industries lab or storage facility, so there would be the logo on the wall and on boxes or stuff.

And since it turns out Power Girl arrived when the company was apparently fine (because I want it to be on the brink by Booster's time, so that he both needs to and can save it), that means Earth 2's Luthor engaged in some underhanded business moves to help her. Definitely helps with the characterization I'm aiming at for him.

Naturally, it doesn't actually matter what KORD Industries was doing that would inevitably lead to the end of the world, but I'm thinking some version of OMAC, since I already gave this company the "Brother Eye" branding.

Comet, the Superhorse

The movie's probably not called that, but he's the kid whose planet was destroyed and that Supergirl is helping avenge. Well, a heavily modified version of him.

The comics version is from Earth, but this one will be an alien from a planet who randomly happened to have horse-looking people. That is stupid, but not any more than any of the already established planets full of randomly human-looking people, which makes it ok.

Or they may be weird-coloured horses instead. I prefer the pure white one as in canon, but either works.

He has telepathy, all his people did. But since Supergirl can magically speak all languages we should still get at least a few scenes of her doing horse noises to talk to him.

He also has superspeed, but that's not a normal thing. He was a young superhero in his society, which is also how he was the one survivor/escapee, and why he feels he can go fight the villains but not without support. He already failed once.

This also means "Comet" was his superhero name, not the real one. You know, as translated from horse noises. The real one could probably be one of his human aliases from the comics, appropriately modified of course; or he can refuse to say it. His civilian identity died with his people, all that's left is the vengeance, etc etc. That may work.

He will not have any of the various other powers he's sometimes had.

Also I feel compelled to acknowledge that he was one of her love interests. I'm honestly not against that in principle, it would be hilarious, but in this case I say no because I insist on making this one a kid. He's about twelve, or the alien horse equivalent, making this more of a mentorship relationship.

The opening attack would involve an older hero dying, whom Comet was the sidekick of. Or he may have been on a team with other young heroes instead. More or less depends on how many other horse superhero concepts we can come up with, I guess.

As for the actual plot, she's not going to actually counsel him against vengeance. She's not a pacifist, in fact she was a soldier and is currently empowered by the magical essence of wrath, so she absolutely understands and agrees. She will ultimately kill the boss, plus possibly some other bad guys along the way.

She will, however, counsel him against being reckless. Probably he almost gets himself killed at least once. She'd be the one trying to make sure he has some plans for a life after his vengeance is complete, which would admittedly be easier if the bad guys are slavers and so they can look forward to the people they will rescue.

It's for this reason I'm now more inclined to say they were not, and Comet is in fact the last of his people. You know, for extra drama. Not 100% sure either way, still.

She could also be concerned about him getting lost to his anger in the sense that anger must be righteous, in accordance with my version of the Red Lanterns' ethos. I'm not sure I want him to actually have an issue with that, though. I think I prefer not, if possible, but it may be necessary to pad out his character arc.

Finally, the bad guys will now be specified to be the minor, inconsequential villains from Red Daughter of Krypton. I don't remember their exact names, they were Worldbreakers or Worldkillers or something silly like that. Whatever, they're just space pirates; the only thing that matters is the finale, which I want to steal.

Their leader turns out to be not the apparent leader, but the power armour he's wearing. The living dude inside is being mind-controlled and mostly worthless. After Supergirl kills him, it jumps her to try to take over her body instead.

For my version it barely succeeds, but cannot take hold of her magic as it hoped to; the ring doesn't respond to her under mind-control. I don't necessarily want to say it's impossible to steal a Lantern's magic, but it should be very difficult. I guess we can just say this guy could never do it because it doesn't wear any clothes, being that it is clothes. I always had wanted to establish that is also a requirement, in the sense that if a culture didn't have a concept of clothing then those people would never be able to become Lanterns, no matter how otherwise eligible they may have been.

Related, now we can say the tamaranian Lanterns aren't merely refusing to wear their rings normally. If one of them put it around her finger, the magic wouldn't work, because for their people that is "carrying", not "wearing".

Anyways, Comet arrives to see her wearing the enemies armour, she shows him the former leader's corpse and tells him she will be taking over the organization, he should join her, etcetera. He's able to reach the real her mentally, help her fight it off, etcetera.

That does mean the climax of the movie is her tearing apart the clothes she's wearing, so we have to be extra careful to make sure that it be tasteful. But then, all the important circuits were probably in the helmet, right? It's probably ok.

...about an unnamed planet

The world where Earth 1 Koriand'r brought Supergirl in case she freaked out is the same one she gave to the kryptonians in Earth 2. It's barren and featureless, but there still should be some sort of establishing shot on each to show the repetition.

I don't think there's a reference to be made out of that, but I do want to say it legally belongs to her personally, independently of any titles she may or may not have. It was a gift from her parents at some previous time.

In other timelines, generally Komand'r makes sure nobody breaches her sister's ownership, as part of a general show of respect that is very transparently an attempt to lure her back in order to yield the throne to her. In timelines where Koriand'r never returns I'm going to say it's kept for her for all her sister's life, then afterwards someone strip mines it or something. It really wasn't a good choice for habitation.

In the timeline of Blue Komand'r, if she was the traitor, it's where her scientists mustered to research and ultimately set up the plot of Lanterns. If she was not, it will be where they will do so, afterwards, to receive the intel she got and plan their (hopefully less villainous) response.

Challenger of the Unknown

First off, the name of the movie is now in singular. It refers to the ship, not the people aboard; they may colloquially get called "Challengers" by someone, but they should really protest. Or at least the most pedantic among them. I have also been mentally calling the larger organization they spun off from "Challenger University", but it needs to specifically be Not That. No idea what though.

More importantly, I have decided it is them who are the modern descendants of the martians. In part because I never did get any other ideas for that world's movie, but mostly because that culture is already established as coincidentally having names that sound almost like english names. I guess Tamaran also does that, but only for words ending in -ander. The Bottled City was already a stretch. Anyways!

The crew of the Challenger are K'yll, M'att, L'esst, W'altt and C'rinn. C'rinn is specifically the one that knows about magic; this version of her doesn't need to have a power source or actual powers, but another alternate appearing in Lanterns probably should, since that event was supposed to draw in important, powerful people.

Inventing a power source for her will be left to a later date, if ever, but it has led me to realize that martians cannot ever become Lanterns, because they don't wear clothes. By which I mean, those guys will be shown as "wearing" a standard superhero suit based on the comics, I think the version with an off-center yellow band, based on covers I've been looking at. But that's not clothes, they're just shapeshifting into it.

In this version those are the colours and logo of their parent scientific organization. Scientists in Lanterns also should be generally "wearing" that, at least the random science extras local to Earth 1 and most alternates of the main five, though I guess it's also useful to have one or two versions who don't fly that flag. And the Challenger itself should be painted those colours, or at least prominently display their logo.

Supergirl is going to recognize them, in that she met a martian briefly. It's not impossible they think she met a current one, or even that it all happened so long enough ago that they don't even know their society used to exist in a different planet; but since they have telepathy it makes most sense that they realize what she means.

That would mean they would both be interested in where each other's world is, for scientific reasons and for the purpose of offering J'onn a ride there, respectively. That's honestly a better reason for her to go to Earth than a sudden renewed case of missing her brother. I like it.

As for the timing of J'onn's teleportation accident, I still don't have a clear idea but I see three possibilities.

At minimum, it needs to be several centuries back, to avoid humanity having knowledge of their cities. Would be kinda funny if it was literally moments before Galileo pointed his telescope there, but in honesty I would feel obligated to give it a few centuries more to protect against some earlier culture having had observations that were maybe forgotten or supressed. Unless we were doing a "the mayans knew!" plot, but I wouldn't want to.

Except, I think I would be okay with the atlanteans knowing. That they had observations of the cities on Mars, but never made contact or anything. Then one day they saw them disappear without warning, leaving nothing behind, and that's what made them panic and go into hiding.

In that case that would need to be old enough for them to have forgotten, since we already saw that they believe the sinking of their cities to have been an accident. So, several millenia ago, in this version. Did Aquaman had a specific date for when the sinking happened? I doubt it. Easy enough to say they are mistaken, if necessary.

And my last idea, which was actually my first idea but is probably stupid, is that the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs passed close to Mars, back when J'onn was a child. He wouldn't remember much, but there were doomsayers and cults and general chaos that he'd have vague memories about.

The Challenger of the Unknown has another cube installed into it, a result of when they teleported the cities. Naturally this is an unintended and unexpected effect, teleportation technology is not supposed to do that; the cube could be smaller, because this was a later, more perfected attempt, or bigger, because it was a much larger project. For now I'm going to say those cancel out and they are about the same, until and unless an idea comes that builds up on either of the other possibilities.

We're also going to say no other version of teleportation or dimensional travel we've seen yet does that. There can exist other cubes, somewhere in the galaxy, but they'd have to be extremely rare. In particular, if Prometheus learned about it he'd try to replicate that version of the experiment, we can't let him have that, except maybe right before his ultimate defeat.

The Challenger of the Unknown's dimensional circuits are in the same general pattern as all the others, but with the weird semi-organic materials that martians in DC sometimes have had. Supergirl may or may not recognize it as the same thing that her people used to send her back, she's probably not a good enough scientist to do so on sight but if they explain she probably should remember something. Importantly, she doesn't know that Cyborg currently has their cube in his chest.

Also important to establish that other versions of New Mars (not actually called that) don't have their own version of the Challenger. These guys are specifically from the timeline where they figured that out, that's the specific difference. The local version has the cube, probably their study of it was what first brought the organization to fame, but they never found the way to breach dimensions with it. Probably it's used as a power source, or even just left in storage after they exhausted what they could learn from it.

...about the future of humanity

I never really thought about it before, but the Most Probably Future would have to be the same as Earth 0, but without sending people to the past, no? It's either that or Prometheus, since that's the only difference so far that doesn't depend on time travel.

Well, there's also Orange Irons. But I don't think he changes anything relevant. Lanterns aren't any more long-lived than normal, mostly because even with all my nerfs they still have too many powers already, so without any info about what was going to happen he wouldn't be able to change it. Nobody was expecting that.

I guess we're establishing that the crew of the Challenger will have motivation to go check out that star system, may as well say that in their specific timeline they saved humanity. J'onn also exists and is in hiding among the Watchtower's civillian employees, they would logically make contact with him. Supergirl told them enough that they can send him on that mission, we already know she's open about future stuff, and of course they'd be curious.

But in general, unless a named character interceded during those few years or the entire history was changed long before, most timelines end with the planet exploding, the last few survivors hiding out in the moon for a few more centuries and then dying to a stray piece of planet.

I guess the main difference is that the three time travellers don't get to go away, and also the two official ones don't get superpowers. But they, too, wouldn't change anything important. The resources they invested in creating those superpowers are allegedly vast and may have made a difference, but I don't think I want to establish that; thematically, that moves the Legion's attempt from "noble" to "foolish".

So in the end, we keep this implication as canon. A little bleaker than I originally wanted, but honestly that's probably good. Makes certain the time travellers are important, and their resulting timelines are special.

...about other Comets

Because now that I have a multiverse, everything needs alternate universe versions, right? Right!

Since Supergirl is specifically the one difference that defines the Earth 1 timeline, obviously their movie is actually an unique and strange version of this storyline. In most timelines Comet would have found some other great warrior to help him, generally succesfully. I'm thinking that should usually be Lobo.

In Earths 0 and 3, since Koriand'r never abandoned Earth, he eventually gave up and left. Comet's call for help was probably the next job he took after deciding the princess thing wasn't going to work out, if the timing supports this. We know he waited about a (human) week in Earth 1 between the League launching their space detection systems and Koriand'r shutting down hers before deciding it was probably not a trap, or at least worth the risk. So he's patient.

But of course if the timing doesn't work out, he can just have had another job in between. I guess that would depend on where exactly Earth 1 Comet originally heard about each of them, since he would logically have been on the same trajectory until he meets the part where the timelines differ.

Their adventure together is more or less the same as with Supergirl, actually. The two of them are oddly similar in their attitudes towards violence, he's more of a jerk about it but not actually any less responsible, when it comes to that. That would be a funny parallel to have.

I'm also going to say the finale is basically the same, except he cannot fully fight off the suit, even with Comet's help. He has just enough control to stick his head inside some machinery, they're inside the Worldmunchers' flagship at the time so the power core or whatever, and he tells the kid to activate it and kill them both.

He probably starts giving him some inspiring final speech, but can't and instead laughs at himself for even trying.

Mostly I'm now thinking that every appearance of a version of Lobo should end with him dying by decapitation.

Meanwhile in timelines where it wasn't him, Comet should find another great warrior to recruit, or at least attempt to. If the Apokolips movie happened, at least one version of Orion should be on this list. Other than that, no idea.

In Earth 2 Koriand'r left and settled things with the Star Sapphires before Lobo could even take the job, so he may or may not have been free to help horse world. And in Green Lobo's timeline, this movie is probably starting at approximately the same time as the second half of Lanterns or thereabouts, so he's already gone to Earth 1.

I think either or both of those could be a time when Comet learns about Lobo, decides that's who he needs to recruit, but cannot find him. Then he'd eventually give up, go at it alone and get himself killed. Because we do need at least a couple failures.

In timelines where Princess Koriand'r did become a Violet Lantern but didn't go to Earth, such as Prometheus', I'm going to say she originally moved to horse world. It was her second-to-last vision, so in this case the last one. I feel compelled to point out here that this doesn't mean they're the best and second-best; she just literally goes to the most recent place she saw, once she's ready to leave.

Since hyperadvanced tamaranian make-up isn't quite good enough to let her pretend to be a horse, she's openly an alien in this world. She ends up doing heroics and joining their super hero team, not the young heroes Comet was with (if applicable) but the main one; though she would still know him.

Her superhero name is "Star Sapphire" again. By which of course I mean the alien horse language translation thereof; she also can speak all languages, can't let that opportunity go to waste. Her costume will just be her regular suit, since she doesn't have an identity to hide in this world, and with the ring in her necklace because she also didn't swap it out nor does she have any reason to hide it.

I'm also going to say this was an uncontacted world, she's their first alien. And she'll be the only one, since the planetary detection beacons she deployed are enough to send the Worldkickers away. That does mean they had been horse world's First Contact, in other timelines, which is good for more bonus drama. But also it does make perfect sense that they'd prey on solitary, vulnerable planets, rather than for example one apparently belonging to, or otherwise being of special interest for, the largest empire on the galaxy.

In Blue Komand'r's timeline, horse planet was one of the worlds she took her mother for tourism. They also made peaceful contact with the superhero teams, but did not establish oficial diplomatic relations, so the world was still targeted. Afterwards Comet sought them specifically, the princess was unavailable (also being in Earth 1 at the time) but Queen Luand'r was outraged, and it was the full might of the tamaranian armies that hunted down the Worldscrappers and killed every single one of them.

If she was not the traitor, she comes back to Comet now living in Castle Tamaran, along with any other rescued survivors if applicable, and news of what happened.

Finally, I feel we do need a version where he became a Lantern.

Actually, I first started thinking he would be exempt on grounds of space horses being a nudist culture, but then I thought if they're going to have superhero teams and all the tropes, they need costumes. They need at least masks, but ideally more general clothing defined in their culture.

This detour is what eventually led me to add martians above. I actually had to rewrite a lot of paragraphs to add them.

So, in one timeline he'd become a Green. His Test kept him from contacting Lobo, until he decided to just go at it alone then. At that point he was given the magic, let's say it resides in his old superhero costume, no ring for him.

Sadly, I already established that Worldstomper One can defeat and take over Lanterns, so it does. Without a fellow telepath to help him fight it off, he spends the rest of his life trapped as the apparent pirate leader. The magic remains in his costume, but the armour never manages to access it, and eventually it flies away when he dies at the hands of the next one.

...about The Authority

They are a team from a competing company (Image, I think) that eventually got bought out and unified with DC. Therefore, I want them for the main generals of Prometheus' army. Each gets one of the dimensional ships they have.

The ships themselves should also be visually inspired by the Carrier from Authority comics, though they won't be nearly as large nor absurdly overpowered. They can still be called Carriers.

Jenny Sparks will have to be referred to as "the spirit of the century", without specifying which century, but other than that she works out fine, I think. The empire probably has their own calendar anyways.

Since earlier I made Hawkman be a regular human with a magic flying belt, we can just have Swift hold that same item. May as well be ancient egyptian, then. He used to be a common grave-robber until he found that thing, made it work, and upgraded himself to general robber. Add some of that info to Task Force X.

In this timeline, the belt was found by Diana. This also helps establish that she always had an interest in archaeology, despite all the differences, which is nice. As for Swift herself, she's a trusted friend, may be an amazon but doesn't necessarily have to be.

Apollo gives me pause, given my existing alternate Superman with a greek mythology name. Almost tempted to switch things and combine them. Ultimately no, because he has a canon romantic relationship, and I really want to keep the God-Imperator married to the job.

Plus I don't think I'd want to make the one gay Superman also be evil Superman. That's kinda going to happen anyways, since he's an evil minion, but it still feels different. I guess if earlier movies had already shown us that this Superman swings both ways, I'd probably be trying to find an excuse for Diana to name her infant child Apollo and merge the characters. But since that didn't happen they will have to both exist.

Also since our Superman isn't powered by sunlight, bringing in a character who is seems poetic, probably.

I don't really have anything to say about Midnighter, sorry.

When I was first considering giving generals to Prometheus I thought there should be one that doesn't have a ship yet, but has been promised the next one after they capture the next cube; who therefore is the one the heroes mostly interact with, since that's the one that has something to prove. This will be Hawksmoor. If any Carrier actually has a city on it, it should be his.

The Engineer is one of the most notable scientists in the empire; while she operates at basically the same level of hierarchy as the others, she's not technically a general and her ship and crew are considered non-combatants. She was also the one that actually figured out the interdimensional travel capabilities.

Since she worked on the cube, her appearance should be less of a naked metal doll and more similar to Cyborg. She doesn't contain the cube, but she did modify her body in a similar way to what happened to him, only considerably more intentional.

The Doctor is their Champion of the Green. That's part of the reason why I wanted to extend the Parliament's authority to be over all of nature, to blend them with this guy's backstory. Since the point of divergence is at the end of World War 1, he doesn't have the empty spot right before him, but rather his canon antecesor from Authority comics. Others in his past can also come from that line, until we get to Diana's arrival, from then on back it's Swamp Thing ancestors.

He's also not a plant monster; his magic is more nature-focused than in the comics, but his character design should abide to the canon one as much as possible.

In their universe, the Parliament of Trees itself recognizes the God-Imperator's authority, and their Champion was appointed, in part, with his duties for the Empire in mind. As they travel through the multiverse, he also conquers other Parliaments in their name; if we need to show off the Empire being a problem that the heroes definitely need to deal with, part of that can be Earths that suffer strange ecological issues as a result of that.

If any of them is to turn sides and become a good guy, my personal favourite is Jenny, but probably one of Apollo or Midnighter would be best. For the drama.

...about Saturn Girl

Finally! I'm not sure how much I should get into the canon one. Her entire story is deeply connected with the Legion of Superheroes, being both a founding member and usually the leader, but they will not exist in this version.

What's important is she's a powerful telepath, from a civilization of nothing but telepaths, a charismatic and inspirational leader, and there seemed to have once been a running gag of her trying to do a noble self-sacrifice only for someone else to steal the opportunity from her at the last moment.

Also at least once she couldn't speak, except by telepathy. I'll definitely bring that in, she's mute and deaf. Maybe doesn't have ears, digitally removed from the actress, unless that would look too weird?

And at least once she also had some technopathy, or I think maybe in the future they had computers meant to interface with telepaths? Point is what I'm about to do with that isn't completely unwarranted. Technically.

We start at an alternate version of Prometheus' timeline, where the difference is that they didn't figure out dimensional travel. Or I guess that is more normal and the one that did is the special one? Anyways, without that outlet for his ambitions, his empire did eventually go to war against Tamaran. Ultimately he and princess Koriand'r killed each other in battle, then queen Komand'r ran away, but for real this time.

Without a clear line of succession for either empire, both fragment into civil war, generals and other power holders grabbing what they can while still technically at war with the other, also crumbling, empire.

Approximately one thousand years later, the solar system isn't the center of anything, and only a few fools even tell any stories about the past glory. Earth itself is lifeless and barren, but specifically not broken. Some sort of radioactive accident a few centuries before.

I think I want that to specifically be kryptonite. That's sometimes (usually?) been established to also be bad for life in general, in the long term, even if non-kryptonians don't have the ridiculously accelerated allergic reaction.

But then, these people have the kryptonian spaceships and the corpses of Zod's people; while we could say Prometheus forbade experimenting with those, it logically would have happened at some point after his death. So it's not unreasonable for their descendants to have at least some kryptonian dna, alongside the human, atlantean(s) and amazon, plus whatever alien types they picked up over the centuries.

The kryptonite irradiation would have been an act of war by someone against someone. Probably retaliation against the Doctor or his successor(s), they'd definitely try to hold on to that specific planet. Failing that, weapons testing or something. Though I guess the best answer is that it was too long ago, nobody knows for sure.

Of particular interest to us is Saturn's moon, Titan, home of most telepaths in our solar system, and exclusively telepaths (minus the occasional visitor). At some point they all moved there, either on their own or forced by the rest of their societies; historians disagree on that.

Nowadays people who are randomly born with telepathic powers don't need to go to Titan, but they are welcome there. Whether and how much their home expects and/or pressures them to do so varies per location. It would be a rare occurrence anyways.

Titanians are a single people but don't have a species; each of them is cloned from their various parents, once again thanks to technology mostly derived from the kryptonian remains, and the only genetic engineering they allow on that is to guarantee the child will be telepathic, any further thinkering is verboten.

That does mean the world would be full of weird and interesting body types, which in turn makes it extra-sad that the one character we get out of it is a normal human-looking woman. Oh well.

I'm also going to go ahead and say titanian culture believes romance should be a 3-person affair, in the same way that it's 2-person for us. Allegedly for reasons of genetic viability, given the re-mixing of random species, though mostly it's what's encouraged by popular media, well-meaning parents, probably some of their ancient religions, etc.

And normally I would dedicate a few paragraphs for how that may have affected their language, but in this case I'd rather say they don't have one. Their telepathy can transmit pure meaning, they don't need any syntax or grammar or whatever.

So our protagonist, Imra Ardeen, was the daughter of an important wealthy philanthropist, plus two others whose identities don't particularly matter. All three of them die in a spaceship accident, likely an assassination though it's never confirmed, when she's about half a year old, which is to say 15 or 16 in Earth time.

I also feel compelled to add that titanian society cannot possibly have minimum ages for things, because just about everyone is a weird and original genetic abomination of their own, and on the other hand it's not unreasonable to say their telepathy allows them to just check people and know whether they have achieved maturity. But Imra's psychology is basically human, so it doesn't come up.

She inherits her mother's wealth and takes command of her charitable organization(s), to some opposition on account of her youth but utlimately whoever is in charge of deciding this does decide in her favour. She ends up being extremely enthusiastic about charity, and basically spends all her personal finances on helping as many people as she can, becoming both extremely popular and pretty much poor.

Volunteer members of her organization end up supporting her alongside it, maybe some of them also spending irresponsible amounts of their own resources, though Imra always encourages them to not put themselves at risk and dismisses everyone who tries to tell her to take her own advice. Some people start referring to her group as a cult, mostly disparagingly.

They also start drawing some attention from powerful people and groups who maybe don't approve of all her "helping everyone" agenda, along some sympathetic people who want to advice her to temper herself. She refuses outright, if there's anyone who needs her they will receive her aid. That's what attracts the attention of the Indigo Light.

Her telepathy is augmented to reach everyone in the solar system. Every single person in every planet, moon, station and whatnot. We will also say the magic protects her from going insane by overload. People on Titan obviously understand even if they can't really know how she's doing it, but at least many know her and most know of her. But for most of the rest of the system, it's their first time experiencing telepathy of any kind.

She will never again shake off the accusations of leading a religion and/or being some sort of divine being. (until she ditches this universe, that is) That's also when they start calling her "the girl from Saturn", which is ultimately where she'll derive her superhero name from.

Naturally the idea was for her to get a first-hand look at the magnitude of the responsibility she was trying to claim, so that she would check herself and ask for help. But instead she tells everyone to come to her, promising that everyone in need would be saved by her, personally, thereby spectacularly failing her Test. The magic goes away, cutting her off mid-sentence. (well, the telepathic equivalent)

The government of Titan panics about that display, also maybe receiving threats against Imra and her cult from other governments and/or criminal organizations, so they ultimately settle on forbidding their activities, disbanding the organization and exiling her. She is gifted an extremely advanced ring spaceship, partly as a concession to the fact that this is tremendously unfair to her, and partly in hopes that she will use it to go very very far away.

That's basically a version of the Legion Flight Rings from the comics, except it cannot have their logo because they don't exist in this universe, and also it cannot time travel (yet, kinda). It does provide her excellent life support, free flight both in atmosphere and deep space, and travel fast enough to cross interstellar space on her own. The technology is mostly derived from the science done to the cube, dating back all the way to the Promethean Empire, which will matter later and so should be mentioned among the data she gets with it.

It's also going to be important that the ring is one person only, because she's going to want to use it to move other people. Because I need her to be skilled in its internal mechanics later, so this is the excuse for why she studied it obsessively and learned hyperadvanced engineering and so on.

She does not leave for other stars, of course, but rather joins with various like-minded people from various local worlds who want to help her help people. Some of them do in fact worship her for real, though not all; her trying to discourage it mostly just gets her praise for her humility and whatnot.

Also I should obviously populate this list of followers with characters from the actual Legion of Superheroes. At least the other two founders, Cosmic Boy and Lightning Lad, both of whom were romantically entangled with her at different points in time but in this version they won't because she would only begin to consider it if it could be all three, which she can tell it can't.

They're also from random fictional planets, but for this version we will change that to somewhere within this solar system. Since their powers are magnetism and electricity, respectively, probably two moons of Jupiter. But since they're the first two Imra meets after starting her exile, maybe instead one or two other moons of Saturn. Doesn't really matter, I suppose.

They meet more like-minded people, as usual some being versions of comics characters, a few being originals, maybe a traditional villain. The group doesn't call itself "Legion", that name will not occur in relation to this character at all and arguably I should stop bringing it up. They don't actually call themselves anything; outsiders refer to them as "The Cult of Saturn", Imra always complains about that but at least a few members are genuinely joining for religious reasons.

The group goes on to become more of a Scooby Doo type thing, exposing injustice and whatnot, now that they don't have the vast resources for more traditional charity that they used to. Imra is very good at that, because it turns out telepathy is kind of overpowered unless you live somewhere that literally everyone has it.

This is also when she starts wearing her superhero suit, the red and white jumpsuit with the stylized image of Saturn on her chest, because while she will continue to insist she's not a religious figure and shouldn't be worshipped as such, she's also not going to let all that free brand awareness go to waste. And it does amuse her a bit, personally, the implication that she speaks for the planet when the whole issue was that she very much does not.

She should also acknowledge the fact that that's not actually an image of her homeworld, she lived on a moon and nobody really lives in the gas giant, but that would be much less visually recognizable, so.

After a few more adventures they do end up finally getting hunted down by some of those corrupt governments and/or crime syndicates. Most of them die, preferably all but it's ok if one or two escape or betray the group or something. Also important that at least a couple specifically die by sacrificing themselves to save her from sacrificing herself to save the rest, against her protests.

That's what finally gets her to internalize the lesson the Light wanted her to, that it's ok for her to also take care of herself, though for the record it's much too late. The magic isn't coming back.

She ends up hiding out in Earth, her ring's life support lets her do so, and since the helpful pamphlet she got and/or her original research thereof mentions the ancient labs here, she goes to check them out, mostly for lack of anything better to do.

The old lab is on Themyscira, because that's where Prometheus put it to take advantage of the hiding magic, and nobody afterwards saw any reason to move it. The magic faded away long ago, Imra doesn't even find out about that. She finds the cube still connected to a machine, the last thing they were going to do or had just failed to do, before the place was abandoned for whatever reason. Presumably the radiation, but not necessarily, or at least she can't know for sure.

Sidebar: because this is a timeline that will have time travel, it's also one that can't have dimensional travel, even in the past. The physics are subtly different in ways that mean it wasn't really the old imperial scientists' fault. But mostly what matters is I am now tempted to say it was something they did, and which the Legion people on Earth 0 (or their predecesors) also had done, while attempting to figure out what they could do with that thing.

This would have split off their timeline into a (mostly) unreachable state, sort of a higher-dimensional black hole-like trap, which would also be why both settings feature no further interference from the rest of the galaxy. The entire rest of the universe doesn't exist for them, except for whatever debris need to be postulated for them to not realize this is the case.

I'm ultimately deciding against making this canon, because I don't really think that's a question that needs answering. It's a big galaxy, small backwater planets get ignored all the time, sometimes the people in them go extinct. It happens. But if ever I come up with something else to derive from this fun fact, then it would become canon.

Anyways, Imra finds enough in that place to succesfully augment her ring for time travel. She's not going to actually modify it, but rather constructs a spherical shell to stand in, based on the time spheres from the Legion of Superheroes comics, though of course with the same dimensional circuitry embeded in it. She inserts her ring on a special receptacle, to serve as the power source, and then it teleports her away.

The sphere only transports her and doesn't come with, more or less for the same reason that ring couldn't take any other passengers through space. And furthermore, the sphere is wrecked by her leaving, collapsing as if by immense gravity, though nothing else in the vicinity is affected, only the parts that were actually part of the machinery. This way she still can't bring anyone with her across dimensions, nor really smuggle anything that doesn't fit within her clothes (within the invisible forcefield that provides her life support, to be exact).

More importantly, she needs to build a new sphere each time she wants to travel, even if she's going back and forth between two known dimensions, though in that case I suppose the remnants of the previous attempt may give her a head-start. But that's still complication enough to fulfill my instinct that it shouldn't be trival and immediate.

Lastly, each trip drains her ring's power source. It'll still recharge automatically, but it takes a while, which she didn't know about the first time.

Second timeline is about 11 centuries before. The first thing that happens is that she panics about her life support having shut down, plus maybe falls down on account of the (ruins of the) building she was standing on not having existed yet. The atmosphere is mostly fine, for the record, since logically something like this was the target they had in mind when they terraformed Titan. Maybe she's a little uncomfortable, but not in any danger.

She specifically arrived a couple days after Steve Trevor's death at the beach, and as she senses people and approaches them she finds them gathered at their town's central plaza, where Diana is recruiting amazons for her crusade. Hippolyta is sort of arguing against that, trying to get her daughter to not go, though we can see she's mostly given up already on that. By which I guess I mean that Imra knows that Hippolyta believes her attempts at dissuading Diana are in vain.

Imra walks in and everyone goes on guard, though again her telepathic communication is strange enough to shock them and give her time to explain. She's overheard enough to understand who they are, specifically who Diana is, and tells them about their near future/her ancient history. She wouldn't remember everything, but she should know enough (presumably as an extension of her research into the ring, or maybe one of her cultists could have been a history nerd) to tell them that she can't succeed.

All the amazons that were ready to sign up for the mission are dissapointed, Hippolyta is sad but oddly relieved, and Diana screams "Liar!" and stabs her with her sword.

Obviously Imra sees it coming, but her first instinct is to fly away, and the ring isn't ready yet. She has just a moment to look at it, surprised, as she's impaled through the chest and falls to the ground. All the others stare at them, confused, as Diana visibly struggles to retain her anger and fight off the coming guilt.

Then Ares tells them the stranger wasn't lying. Everybody turns towards him, he's standing behind Hippolyta so several of them draw their weapons. Diana also reaches to her back but her sword is still stuck in Imra. He and the Queen stare at each other for a moment, then she announces that they are being visited by the God of Truth.

She does not say his name. I have decided only she and Diana knew about that, Zeus mentioned it offhand but then quickly changed subject, so she never knew Ares' goals, only that he used to be Truth and became War. She never told any of the amazons save her daughter, and all they know is he didn't wanna talk about it.

(i've also decided Zeus used to shapeshift into Hippolyta, per her request, but that's beside the point)

With everyone relaxing, as their Queen evidently vouches for him, he goes on to admit he can't see quite that far away, in neither time nor space; he's much too diminished for either. But still, he knows she's sincere, and that she's not confused. Her words are True. This much, at least, is still within his powers. Possibly Imra delivers a bit more exposition now.

Also, everyone can feel Imra's pain. She doesn't want to do that, is doing her best to keep it contained, but she's both suffering significantly, possibly the worst she ever has, and is getting progressively weaker as she bleeds out, so it's hard for her to do. Everybody occasionally flinches or doubles down as her control slips, then she notices and focuses again.

Anyways, Ares finishes explaining his original plan, how all the other gods are gone and he's about to go too. One of the amazons, a random unnamed one, should ask about the visions they've been getting since the soldiers crashed at their beach. He admits they're from him, and the soldiers too, but he never expected them to succeed. There can be no success, as the visitor says.

All he wanted was for his niece, Diana, to learn this truth and give up on this world and go to the new one with him. The two of them are the only ones left that can. He extends his hand towards her, but she refuses.

Instead she points towards Imra, asking him if she'll recover. He looks at her for a moment and says that no, it's taking her a notably long time to die, but that is a lethal wound. She nods sadly, she suspected as much. Diana demands he heal her then. She tries to claim that it's all his fault anyways, but can't bring herself to say it. Instead she asks him to do it as a favour to her, which is why he came here anyways, right?

He shrugs sadly, says that he's never been a healer, but he'll help. He probably grabs Imra's shoulder or taps her with his cane or something, and she turns to stone. Before anyone can complain about that, he tells them all they have to do to release her is remove the sword from her chest. But then she'll resume bleeding and dying and so on, so don't do it until there's someone at hand who can help with that.

He also says that, normally, something like this would be like sleeping without dreaming, "but you are special, aren't you?". He says that bit telepathically, gods can do that, it's fine. She answers that this is extremely weird, none of her senses works, she can't feel her own body at all, all she has is her telepathy.

He gets up again, solemnly announces that that will be her blessing and also her curse, "as per long-forgotten tradition", and with one last sad look at Diana, he disappears forever.

So this version of Diana will not leave the island, which means Sidebar: if Doctor Poison exists, something probably needs to be different. I don't have anything in mind, and in fact the future needs to be superficially the same for things to work out here, but the fact stands that her bombing would have been succesful if not for that meddling demigoddess.

Add this to the list of reasons why she should be removed from Wonder Woman, I guess. Currently my only reason to keep her around is so she can befriend God-Imperatrix Diana, in relevant timelines. Back to the plot!

Diana stays in Themyscira, getting to know and befriend and eventually will romance the petrified Imra. She also learns sorcery, eventually will be the main mage of this world's superhero team, but for now she's mostly just frustrated that the power of Zeus also isn't particularly good for healing. They'd need a child of Hermes or Apollo, but Ares assured them there are no such anywhere in the world, so she doesn't have much hope.

Obviously Imra knows future technology can do it without problem, but she never did study medicine and has no idea exactly when this sort of procedure was first available. Also the fact that she changed the past, which may or may not affect anything regarding that.

Over the decades they also build a nice house around her, since they don't think they can move the statue, which would also mean the plaza got moved. Some other buildings probably also got moved, or at least rotated around or something.

Also during this period she will make telepathic contact with J'onn at the center of the Earth. I feel it's important to point out neither of them is actually that good a telepath, normally; it's only while they are literally cut off from their bodies for decades and untold centuries, respectively, that they can focus intensely enough to reach such ridiculous distances.

They also become friends and he's her other love interest, which is why I had Titanians hold normalized throuples. The other two are weirded out by this, but ultimately both agree to give it a try, if and when the opportunity presents itself, for her sake. They've also never spoken to each other, except through her relaying messages.

Imra didn't know Mars had a native people, but she knows humanity was going to colonize it within about a century and a half of her arrival in this era, more or less, so she quite reasonably assumes the Empire met them and eradicated them. They should be able to show each other images of the planets in their respective times, to see that none of his buildings are there; but again, it's quite logical that they would have been intentionally destroyed.

Finally, she notices when Koriand'r's solar system security systems go online, which is why I wanted the mild technopathy. She can't properly interact with the energy fields that it has, but their presence is clear to her. Possibly she intentionally trained to detect this sort of thing, back in her Meddling Youth era. She doesn't realize it's alien and is mildly suprised that such a thing would be available so early, but admits her knowledge of ancient scientific history is cursory at best.

Half a year after, she does sense the shift in the fields' direction of information, being when Koriand'r moved from Brasil to the States. With that Imra is able to trace its direction, correctly assuming that's where the system's controller will be. Over the next couple years she's able to narrow it down to a rough position on the planet's surface, relative to Themyscira; they don't know what's there but if they had a map she'd basically be able to say "somewhere in Jump City".

Unless the soldiers had maps. Steve was supposedly being chased because he had stolen important documents, if I recall, and World War I was recent enough that I don't want to say the city didn't exist yet. Maybe it was "Jumper's Town" at the time, something like that. Or we can just say their maps were not detailed enough, since it wasn't a strategically important location.

When Zod arrives and J'onn materializes in Metropolis, he takes a moment to learn what's going on from the minds of the people around, which I guess we're establishing he also did that in other timelines, but instead of pretending to be a local and hiding this one flies out, directly towards where they know the center of the world's detection system is. He floats above the city, since all he knows is that it's somewhere in here.

His telepathy is already decaying, thanks to the newly reinstated distractions of the flesh, so he already cannot reach Imra. But he still has enough focus to communicate with everyone in the city at once, to tell them they know about the planetary surveillance, and beg the help of whoever is in charge of that against the invading planet destroyers.

(meanwhile, Imra felt him being janked out and then lost contact, doesn't know any more. she's probably panicking and making the amazons panic with her.)

Koriand'r was at work, which is to say it's time to establish what her job on Earth is. By which I guess I mean I should have given this some thought a while ago. It would have been relevant for Earth 3, at minimum, but really any time Dick is shown to go see her would have been a good chance to have him pick her up from work.

She's a shop clerk at a small, independent business. Needs to be something love-adjacent, her Lantern instinct drew her attention there. My first idea is sex shop, specifically so she can make a point about the differences between sex, romance and love. There's no possible way that can fly, though, so it'll have to be flowers or chocolates.

We already knew, from Man of Steel, that people around the world were anxiously watching the news about Zod's attack, so everyone is staring at the store's little tv, and then when J'onn's plead hits they start sort of half-heartedly speculating about who it may be. "Star" starts playing along with the others, but she was already on the fence about interceding so she doesn't take much convincing.

(i think i only ever said that part in noncanonical asides that have since been removed, but that particular fact had always remained. in my mind at least)

She sighs, walks out from behind the counter and out of the store. Some friendly coworker who I'm strongly tempted to also further develop is about to ask her what's up when she starts shining and flies straight up.

Next we see the Batman V. Superman flashback, when Bruce Wayne saw Zod's ship fold into itself and disappear. This time, just a moment before, it is impacted by a violet light from out of nowhere, which displaces it by about twice its size, from this perspective. That also causes its beam of light to be shattered. Then the ship is wrapped by violet tentacles, which drag it away, beyond the horizon.

(i'm tempted to say we also see this from the perspective of the army/science guy/Lois as they are going to destroy the ship and just barely miss it, but having both would be too much, and i feel the ground-level is more interesting)

Next is the alien ship, broken and emiting smoke, having crashed on Themyscira's beach. (J'onn knows how to get in, Imra told him, Diana told her). The kryptonian soldiers are being marched in by Koriand'r and J'onn, still in their suits, hands over their heads. At the front is their medic/scientist, the one who was going to dissect Superman to get the stolen codices, and who they're going to force to treat Imra's wound. They briefly explain this to the amazons, and Diana pulls out the sword.

Everybody doubles down in Imra's pain. She's over three years out of practice containing it, which is to say about a century in Earth time. That should last a minute or so until she can push that under control enough for the doctor to operate.

Hippolyta and her girlfriend, same one as usual, loom over him as he works, trying to say something threatening should he try something against "our daughter". Daughter-in-law, basically, but I wanna say that amazons don't have marriage; love is not related to property, the Queen's lover isn't counted among her heirs even though their eventual daughter would be, stuff like that.

The kryptonian doctor just laughs at them, and says that if he even thought of anything the first thing anyone would notice would be the Lantern having already killed him, since there's a telepath. Imra replies "...two telepaths" and he says to stop distracting him.

Imra also reassures the Queen that he's going to do his best. He is fascinated by the prospect, and at this point he'd do it for pure professional pride, even if nobody was forcing him. He can't help but nod discreetly at that.

It works, and once everyone is clear that she will be fine, Koriand'r gathers the prisoners again into the ship, promises to come back soon, and flies away. She's going to take them to the same planet that she used in other timelines, but this time without telling anyone what happened. She's already sabotaged the ship so that it cannot travel through space, though the life support will still work, so they can live in it, or try to settle the planet, without bothering anyone.

Meanwhile, back on Metropolis, Zod and Superman also saw the ship getting taken away, and the former correctly guessed that that was a Lantern. He is again outraged that they let Krypton die without comment, but would defend Earth against it. Possibly he assumes this is some sort of official action, since the Star Sapphires specifically maintain the fiction that they are a central government.

What matters is that this changes his attitude, enough to change the fight so that they both kill each other. Just for fun, the killing blow is going to be a more accurate recreation of the Superman vs Doomsday fight, from the Death of Superman comics. I'm torn on whether Superman should take Doomsday's place in that part of the choreography. That would be fun, but I don't really have anything for it to mean.

After that, Imra, J'onn and Diana go to Jump City, to wait for Koriand'r's return and plan their future. She won't get involved with the Star Sapphires so it won't be that long, but still probably a couple days; despite her anger, she can't quite bring herself to leave the kryptonians without making sure they won't die. Possibly she'll keep checking in on them every now and then.

While they wait, the three make their presence known publically. J'onn is already a renowned hero and local legend, for his intervention. They form the Titans, with Imra as their leader. They're not teens, it's a reference to their homeworld.

They should get the T-shaped tower, if that can look good enough in live action. If it can't, I'm thinking a more regular building complex that looks like a T when seen from above.

Imra already has a suit and a superhero name, so J'onn just shapeshifts into a version of that, with Mars instead of Jupiter, and calls himself "Martian Manhunter". I've probably used the name to refer to other versions of the character, but I'm pretty sure never in-universe. I want to go ahead and establish now that this is the only version of him that answers to that.

Diana takes the name "Jupiter's Daughter", and they do make a suit for her in the same style, but she rarely wears it. She also won't have the armour bikini anymore, though, since she's a mage, not a warrior. Should usually be in a mix of a cultist's robes and greek-ish toga, I think.

Koriand'r becomes "Princess Venus", to fit in with the other's planetary motifs. Since two of the other three are literally from their respective planets, the general public will also assume she comes from actual Venus but probably isn't an actual princess; she should get a chuckle out of that.

Other supers that join up don't need to use that naming convention. They do receive an uniform in the style, but its use is not mandatory.

Koriand'r can trivially bring J'onn to Mars, so she does. Imra tags along, on her own flight ring. Having verified that no relic of his civilization remains, he now believes his accident was aeons ago. I'm not sure if this should mean that is right or I should make it be the most recent it can be, for drama. Still undecided on that one.

Zatanna either doesn't even try or is beaten immediately, thanks to the telepaths, not sure which. But probably it doesn't even get that far.

Prometheus attacks. It's actually perfectly logical, since this is a time-travel timeline that's so close to his, that it'd be the very first one they detected and invaded. Its very existence is probably part of the reason why that particular version of the Engineer was able to figure out dimensional travel in the first place.

Imra at this point still thinks there is only one history and that she changed the future by preventing Diana from leaving and meeting whoever was to be Prometheus' father (history doesn't say, at least as far as she knows). So now she thinks he's coming back to undo that change, presumably "before" it can affect him, in a Back to the Future 1 sort of way.

After the Titans and Earth's armies are both overwhelmed and the planet is added to the Empire, she runs away to construct another time sphere, to go back a couple years and use what she learned to prepare them for the upcoming future invasion. Naturally, she can't time travel anymore so she instead lands in some alternate universe where either Diana or Prometheus still rule, but don't have dimensional travel.

She'd keep trying to go back, jumping around multiple universes and eventually figuring out how that actually works. Possibly she recruits a scientist from some universe to help her with that. Meanwhile time has kept running, the empire has been slowly but steadily growing, so once she has a grasp of hyperdimensional geometry she'll move away from its center, hoping to meet someone that can help stop him, eventually making her way to our "normal" continuity.

Which serves to remind me that this is all backstory for the first time we meet her, and I don't actually have anything to do with this character. Fun!

[crap-copper]

I have a lot of wips, both active and dead, as many of us do. Most will probably never make it to the light of day and that’s alright. It’s how the creative process works. I want to share one of my dead wips with you guys because it’s one I like. why let a wip I like die? It was a bit too much like the series Harry Potter. At least I think it was, I’ve never actually read/seen Harry Potter, but this story was inspired by the fandom, Cursed Child stuff mostly. I saw a lot of people saying it could have been better and I wanted to try to make it better. I tried to make it my own thing, but I ended up still being really similar. I still like it, but it could never be it’s own thing.

Background: There are five categories of magic; spell (magic that needs words, works instantly), hex (magic that needs words, works after a period of dormancy), potion (liquid magic, each with a specific use), charm (magic contained in an object), and curse (any of the first four, but illegal). This senior at a boarding school for magi (there are many of these schools) had ambitions grew to big and deemed to dangerous. She was thrown aside in an attempt to stop this behavior. Before leaving though, she placed a curse on four sixth graders (magi begin practicing magic in sixth grade) that would come to fruition in their senior year. They were suppose to lead an army of their classmates for her to overthrow the Magi in power, but things didn’t go according to plan. They still lead her army like the curse intended, but against her and those who stood with her. Many lives were lost, but the cursed students won.

Premise: The story follows the children of those four students and how they try to find themselves apart from their parents’ legacy and their fears.

Characters: (all main characters are 15)

Benjamin “Benji” Abbey - Named after his great uncle, who was named after another family member and so forth (Benjamin is a common name is his family), Benji comes from a wealthy and powerful family in the magi community so he’s expected by his parents to always be well behaved. He goes by Benji with most people, but his parents and some teachers call him Benjamin. He is a people-pleaser and wants to be what adults expect of him, but he finds this clashes with who he wants to be sometimes. When he was in sixth grade, he had a teacher encourage him to try new things, find himself, but when he started doing that, his parents didn’t approve. They didn’t want him to be the odd one out, they wanted him to fit in. As he got older, his family self and his school self started to separate more and more, to the point that he completely different clothes, wears his glasses instead of contacts (like his parents insist), uses potions to dye his hair, and wears charmed piercings that don’t leave marks. He feels like he’s living two lives sometimes, but it’s the only way he can be himself and keep his parents happy. He is very smart, excelling in his magic and language courses. He loves school and it’s where he feels most at home.

Avery Brown - Named after one of his parents’ friend who died in the war, Avery is a bit of a rebellious kid. This is because of his overprotective parents. He knows they just want to keep him safe, but he doesn’t need protecting. The war is over. He just wants to have fun and be a kid. Often, he feels out of place in the world. He isn’t very good at magic and honestly doesn’t care for it much. He doesn’t feel like he belongs to that world. The non-magic world isn’t much better though, because magic is still part of him and he feels the secret separates him from that world. He feels like he’s stuck in between two worlds, destine to never fit in. The only time he ever really feels normal is when he’s messing around with tech. He likes taking stuff apart and putting it back together. He likes knowing how it works. Avery is also hard of hearing, having difficulties with high sounds. He wears hearing aids because of this. He and his family knows sign language (I don’t have a specific one in mind because I don’t know where this takes place) because his grandpa was deaf, but he doesn’t really need to use it.

Emrys Brown - (apparently this is traditionally a boy’s name, but I thought it was a girl’s, either way it’s her name, not changing it) Named after one of her parents’ friend who died in the war, like her twin Avery, Emrys is like the mom of the group. In contrasted to Avery, Emrys is very mature for her age. Her siblings don’t know the reason why, though. The war really did a number on their parents, but they hid a lot of it from their kids. One time, during the night, Emrys and her siblings heard a noise from their parents room. Emrys went to see what happened. Her dad had knocked over a lamp during a panic attack. Her mom insisted everything would be alright, but Emrys was scared and wanted to help. Her mom told to just put her siblings back to bed. Later on, her parents sat her down to explain what they went through as kids. She taken on the role of protector ever since. She didn’t want her siblings scared like she was and never let on how badly their parents were emotionally scarred. She tries to keep her brother and her friends out of trouble, not that they listen often. They sometimes see her as a stick in the mud, but she just does’t want any of them to get hurt.

Hayleigh Char -  Named after her late paternal aunt, Hayleigh is a serious troublemaker, if that word even covers it. Her mother is a magus, but her father isn’t, nor is her little sister, technically (when you have one magus parent and one non magus parent, you might not inherit magic. It’s less common for girls to inherit magic over boys too, like colorblindness and if you don’t have magic, you’re not always consider a magus). Hayleigh doesn’t like people expecting so much from her because of who her mother is and tries to lower everyone’s expectations of her being this perfect girl as soon as she meets them. She’s really good at reading people and knows how to push just about anyone’s buttons within minutes of meeting them. She might be sociopathic, but has never been diagnosed because she’s too young. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t care for anyone, she cares deeply for her family, including her small group of friends (these five). Rules are more like suggestions to her and this would definitely lead to trouble if she got caught, not that she does often. She has a bit of a temper too, but it tends to only come out for her family more than herself, especially when someone is mean to her sister.

Naomi Medina - Also named after someone who died in the war, Naomi one a quiet person. They tend to just go with the flow and, while they usually follow the rules, they’ll choose following their friends over following the rules almost every, if not every time. They trust their friends, maybe too much. Their friends can be a lot sometimes, but Naomi loves them all the same. Naomi is introverted in nature and prefers reading to most things. Sometimes, when everyone is just hanging out, they’ll just stay to the side, reading. They like being able to just escape in a book and put reality aside for a moment. Naomi also really like history, it’s their best subject. They know a lot of relatively obscure facts too, primarily history based. They’re a good person to talk to if you need someone to just listen. They’re also genderfluid, using they and she.

Plot: At first I had this convoluted idea where there were living spells that got lose and they were going to kill non-magi if they weren’t stopped, but it was just too much. I ended up going with a simpler idea.

Hayleigh and Avery were getting into trouble like usual when they accidentally let the headmistress’ pet escape or something like that. It’s grounds for expulsion if they’re caught, so they enlist the help of their friends to find and put back her pet. Emrys is hesitant, but ends up going along with it because she doesn’t want to see any of them get in trouble. In the end, they get caught, but, while their parents are called about it, they aren’t expelled because of who they are, or more accurately, who they’re parents are. They think about calling out this hypocrisy, but stay silent, not wanting to get expelled.

There was also this plot b where Benji starts developing feeling for Avery and goes to Naomi to talk because he finds it all very confusing. He’s never been attracted to boys or girls or anyone but Avery before and Naomi is ace-aro and part of him thought maybe he was too, but he’s young so he wasn’t sure. They try help him understand his sexuality, but labels are confusing and frustrating to him and he chooses to just go without. It turns out Avery, who is gay, has been harboring a crush on his friend the whole time. They end up dating.

There is this one scene in particular I have in my head towards the end of the book. Benji’s dad comes to the school after being called by the headmistress and Benji doesn’t have time to change his clothes and hair before his dad arrives. His dad is mad at him for breaking rules and lying and and everything. During this, Benji ends up telling his dad he’s dating Avery (not like he accidentally said while arguing or anything, he knew what he was saying). They’re quiet for a moment before his dad says “I’m always disappointed when you lie to me, but I more disappointed in myself that felt like you had to hide that.” He tells him that he’s alright with him being gay and Benji explains to him that he doesn’t really like boys, just this one boy, a lot.

Extra info:

I had this idea that magi would have their own language, Magan. I never did anything to make the language, aside from a couple rules. It’s alphabet is a combination of Latin and Cyrillic, the letter X would make a sh sound, and J didn’t exist, it was replaced with I, making it both a vowel and a constant, like Y. This was what Benji and his dad were speaking in the scene I described because Avery was also there, but he sucks at Magan and Benji’s dad didn’t want him eavedropping. (Fun fact: Avery is the only one of the five who can’t speak Magan and Benji is the only one who is truly fluent)

There are these places called hidden towns (well, they’re called that in Magan, I just don’t know the Magan words). They are small towns that are completely hidden from non-magi where you can buy potions, charms and other stuff. While most magi now live alongside non-magi, some still live in these towns.

Avery and Emrys’ dad explains at some point why magic is hidden. When there is a group a people that are perceived as “better” than another, one of two things tend to happen. Either the “better” group is worshiped by others and that power goes to they’re head and they abuse that power and the people who follow them, or more likely, the “better” group becomes feared and hunted and no one from the group is safe even if they have never harmed a soul. Both of these have happened before to the magi and the decision was made to stay hidden from non-magi and one can only tell a non-magi about magic if a council agrees to it. (this is how Hayleigh only has one magi parent)

In the beginning of the story, the five play this game they call truth. They place out a bunch of drinks, one containing a potion that temporarily turns skin blue. Before starting, they all drink a truth potion. Everyone asks each other questions and then have a choice, answer or drink. They play until all the drinks are drank and someone is stuck with blue skin for a day.

Wow, that’s more than I realized. A lot of this was just sitting in my head rather than on paper. It’s one of the only character driven ideas I had too. Most things I come up with are plot driven. This was fun to think about when I was still working on it. Like I said before, this wip is dead, but it was a useful one. It helped me with character development. A lot of characters I’ve written tend to just have the story happen to them, but these guys helped me see how the characters can affect the plot. I guess what I’m trying to say is, no idea is a waste, you learn from every piece you work on, even if you decide to drop it. I also wanted to share this idea with someone.

I know this is crazy long, so thanks for reading this far.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Ice Queendom Recaps: “Red, White, Black, Yellow”

Hello, RWBY fandom! It feels good to be back.

Technically I never left — still answering the occasional ask, just finished up "The Girl in the Tower" recap — but between the extra long hiatus and my continuing obsession with Our Flag Means Death, it feels like I've been out of the RWBY loop for a while. I wanted to start this post with that acknowledgement because I had assumed that's why I didn't realize that Ice Queendom had dropped the first three episodes. Sure, I got an anon asking my opinion of the reboot (AU? Rewrite? We're all a little unclear about that still), but I had thought that was just in preparation for the July 3rd premiere. So imagine my surprise when I did a bit of googling last night — just in case — and found a new trailer, then a three episode sneak peak, but it weirdly wasn’t on First, but it was on Crunchyroll, and (at the time) it was set to drop on YouTube at 1:00pm today, but only for a short period? Some fans had clearly seen the episodes already, yet there wasn't nearly the amount of posting I'd expect for a community-wide, anticipated drop, and official information seemed to be scarce ... but surely my confusion was simply a result of me taking a semi-break from keeping up with all RWBY info, right?

Ehhh...

This is an excerpt from MurderOfBirds’ tweet thread (URL posted at the end of the recap, in case tumblr is still being weird about links) and, if you've been in the RWBY community for any significant length of time, you'll understand my shock that he of all fans was calling RT out like this. To be honest, I don't have much to say beyond, "This is happening"? From what little I've gathered, fans seem to have enjoyed the IQ premiere — or at least, they haven't called for a salt and burning yet — but RT's relative success in that regard doesn't suddenly erase all the other problems surrounding RWBY as a franchise. RTX planning remains a mess, communication about upcoming projects is shoddy at best, RT's company culture is continually under fire, worries about Volume 9 and the upcoming video game haven't disappeared just because we've had little reason to discuss them lately, etc. Regardless of what we think about IQ as a story, it's coming into a tumultuous IP — to put it mildly.

Again, I fully acknowledge that I haven't been actively seeking out every bit of RWBY info lately, but the fact that I, someone who is generally working to keep up with the story, had to suddenly scramble to figure out how and when and why a big chunk of the new installment was releasing now is... not great. And apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way.

That said, let's get into the story proper. In case it's not abundantly obvious by the title, I've decided to keep these recaps separated by episode, despite 1-3 releasing as a single hour of content. You all know I can write enough for each, even with a lot of this plot being repeated. No sense in giving you all a dissertation to wade through lol.

Let's do it!

We begin, as we did originally, with Salem's voice-over telling us how the humanity of today came to be.

(Oh yay, a nice het-centric creation myth. Look, I really wasn't joking about being obsessed with OFMD right now. After months of canonical queer pirates, I'm feeling a little salty towards RWBY's version of queer rep. I won't get over it, sorry, but I promise I won't bitch about it too much.)

(Actually wait, one more point: I saw a post here — which I’ve now lost — where the author didn't seem terribly enthusiastic about IQ, but they said they'd forgive it if Blake and Yang made out in every upcoming scene and like yeah, joke-y posts are jokey-y, I love them, but AS IF. If IQ confirms Bumbleby I'll just straight up die of shock. You all can @ me in the afterlife.)

(But oh god can you IMAGINE if IQ confirmed the fandom's biggest ship before the webseries? Chaos. Calamity. An actual, defensible position for IQ being better. It would be a complete disaster, yeah... but potentially an entertaining one.)

Anyway, back to the plot. We go through a version of our opening speech and, frankly, I don't think the actress playing Salem sounds nearly as menacing as Taylor does. I've always cared more about the characters themselves than the actors playing them, so I don't have any big opinions on the casting here. This is just a little acknowledgement that, had I been watching IQ prior to RWBY, I never would have gone, "Oh, this is our villain" like I did during the webseries’ opening. At least not until the end of the episode when we get the more threatening dialogue. Regardless, the animation more than makes up for that, showing us not merely the paper-like history of humanity, grimm, and the rise of their combat capabilities, but far more visceral images like a man collapsing amidst a field of flames, very nearly succumbing to them. That sells the idea of humanity almost crumbling back to dust.

But then, “The smallest spark of hope brought forth a great light” and humanity discovers capital 'D' Dust, which allows them to maintain and spread civilization despite the grimm. Salem says that it was through their “power and ingenuity” that they secured it and I'm like... really? Because the animation just shows an almost-dead guy stumbling upon a glowing rock in the ground and presumably thinking, "Hey, that might be useful." Not sure there's much power and ingenuity in randomly finding a magic mineral lol.

With the history lesson out of the way, we find Ruby at Summer's grave with... a military-like march soundtrack? It's an intriguing choice and, combined with Ozpin’s introduction + Weiss' AU design, I'm curious to see how much this story will feed into RWBY's (badly managed) anti-military themes. Though introducing our simple soul protagonist with that vibe doesn't seem like a great start...

What is done well is the character work in this scene. Actually, that's something I want to praise about the episode as a whole: IQ is very good (so far) at developing the cast and the world, something it absolutely has over the original RWBY. Remnant feels lived in, the characters' stories are better intertwined — helped by making this episode a combination of the trailers and “Ruby Rose” — and I actually feel like they have internal lives they're living, rather than just existing as archetypal puppets under the Rule of Cool's strings. Sure, RWBY gets better at that as time goes on — I wouldn't care about the early Volumes like I do if the characters didn't feel engaging to me — but IQ nails it right from the start.

Case in point, Ruby isn't just staring at a mysterious grave that was added last minute because hell, why not. She's really talking to Summer, telling her all about how Yang made it into Beacon Academy and that she "always said she wanted to be a huntress." Such a small line of dialogue and yet suddenly Yang’s motivations better align with Ruby's. Rather than being the party girl just out for a good time (the club scene doesn't even make it into this episode, if it shows up at all), Yang always wanted to be a huntress, specifically — just like their mom. It stabilizes Yang's career path and helps sell the idea that one primary, personal conflict is how Ruby will break away from her sister's shadow: she's talking to Summer primarily about her "sis," she wants to be a huntress just like Yang, she's kinda jealous that Yang is already on her way — a nice detail that makes Ruby feel like a legit person with complex emotions — Tai is worried about his youngest standing on her own, and meanwhile Ruby is asking her mom, “What can I do to be more like [Yang]?” Frankly, this scene sells the idea of Yang raising and influencing Ruby far more than the entirety of Volumes 1 and 2 did. We can see how Yang has become the mother figure that Ruby is desperate to emulate, even as she says she also wants to follow in Summer's footsteps. From Yang and Tai talking about Ruby like they're the parents waiting on their wayward child, to the hug where Ruby is positioned more like the child as Yang holds her and looks to Summer —

I feel like the show has visually told me that Yang helped raise Ruby, episodes before we get to that talk with Blake. Sure, they're absolutely still playful sisters — and Yang calls Summer "Mom." No Raven complications just yet — but IQ changes the dynamic slightly, making Yang come across as more mature and, consequentially, more of a mentor figure for Ruby. Yang is someone Ruby needs to eventually step away from in order to forge her own path.

Also, love that they give them the exact same wink. Again, they're close and we can see Ruby mimicking some of Yang's mannerisms:

However, this is perhaps as good a time as any to admit that I don't really like the character designs? Outside of their normal outfits/distinguishing features, of course. I mentioned weeks back that I find their eyes to be creepy as hell and though I realize now that's a visual staple of the creator's... it doesn't change that I think they're creepy lol. Worse, there's something very doll-like about the models that makes my skin crawl. It's not too bad when we've got a fight sequence going on, but when Ruby is just standing there with her unnatural eyes, glossed lips, painted cheeks, kinda shiny skin like she might be made of porcelain...

Yeesh.

I don't know. I'm assuming this is purely a me problem (no doubt born from too many horror movies in my youth) and not every shot is bad! But some definitely make my brain go, "Nope, nope, nope, NOPE" in a very Uncanny Valley kind of way.

I mean sure, the animation quality is undoubtedly better, but original Ruby just looks more... real to me? You know? Does anyone else get that?

Yeah, I can't explain it well. It’s fine. Just don't let IQ!Ruby into my room at night, please.

We cut to Weiss standing before the garden monument — which I've only now realized is kinda weird. Who gives a snowflake wings? —  and she's approached by Klein who is, for all intents and purposes so far, a totally different character. There's no sign of his semblance (no real loss imo) and he's far more formal — deferential — towards Weiss than he’s ever been in the webseries. Gone is the chaotic, buddy-buddy dynamic they had and in its place is the far more common “Play-by-the-rules butler has a soft spot for the young mistress, allowing for a bit of parental love to shine through.” Think Carson with Lady Mary. Or even Alfred with Bruce. Though I’m personally a big fan of this character type—I’m an absolute sucker for love pushing up against class/social expectations/job formalities—this is a case where IQ arguably moves backwards. Rather than introducing a bit of depth like we saw between Ruby and Yang, we’ve reverted to a far simpler setup. Which, I want to emphasize, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t think Klein is important enough to necessitate that creativity when being a fond, long-suffering butler serves the story just as well. It’s just an observation that they have stripped him of what made him stand out from the butler crowd.  

He tells Weiss that the “arrangements” have been made and they walk together to the ballroom where her final test is to take place. On the way we spot a day-drinking Willow from behind and the shot reminds me a bit of the comic panels:

and we also run into Whitley, still leaning smugly against the wall like he did in the webseries. This time though I’m reading him through the lens of the kid he is, rather than the scheming, Jacques Jr. that both stories seem to be going for. See: Whitley smirking from the shadows while Weiss walks through beams of beautiful light, finally settling between the pillars in the full sun. It’s not subtle.

This is one of a couple split-screens in our opening episode and though it’s a technique the webseries has made use of recently (think the Team RWBY vs. Ace Ops fight), personally it’s something that I think should be used sparingly. Like here, do we really need to get Klein’s reaction and, in the process, see the awkwardness of Weiss with half a face? Or, in a moment, a shot of her boots?

Next to the contrast of Weiss and Whitley, which actually serves a narrative purpose, these just feel unnecessary. Technique for the sake of technique.

We also get a shot of the family portrait as Weiss passes by. Nothing detailed unless you pause the episode, but it's a glimpse of that supposedly picture-perfect family right before we see it unravel. Whitley questions Weiss’ ability to pass this test, she tells him to just watch her do it, and then we get what I think is a damn solid line:

“I’ve always watched you, my fearless, foolish sisters."

We’ve got the story introducing that there's a third sibling before we see Winter at the test. There’s Whitley's quiet admission that yes, he's been watching them (looking up to them) for, presumably, years. Also an acknowledgement of those complicated emotions tied up in their choice to not just become Huntresses, but to use the career as a means of escaping their father's abuse when he, someone without combat skills, can't follow them. Is it foolish then, or fearless? Depends entirely on whether you have that option to begin with. This is a Whitley who, right from the start, feels like a kid struggling under an inability to follow in his sisters' footsteps, despite how the animation paints him as the shadowy antagonist, with the concept of paths and having to carve out your own tying in nicely with Blake's story.

Weiss arrives at the test where both Winter and Jacques are waiting for her. It puts them on fairly even footing — both watching this dangerous battle with detachment, both taking up the same position on opposite sides of the room — despite the fact that verbally Winter is more supportive of Weiss than Jacques has ever been in his life. Still, that parallel combined with Winter being "too busy" when Weiss leaves for Beacon and her cold approach to training her in the flashback makes this version of Winter seem far less welcoming than the original. “The powerless return to dust. That is the law of this world” she tells Weiss after she fails to defeat all of her summons (as seen in the Volume 5 short) and while that is a very cool line that hints at how Remnant's history has influenced the peoples’ philosophy, it’s also a damn bit more dismissive than Weiss promising to do better and Winter saying only that she hopes she can — she'll need it to escape. I can't imagine this Winter playfully batting Weiss' head and demanding information about the friends she's made.

I do want to emphasize that Weiss' entire story is much clearer for the audience though. We're told exactly who all these people are (at least in relation to one another). We've established that Weiss is undergoing a test to get into Beacon. We have a line about Klein releasing the grimm, right on the heels of our intro explaining wtf grimm are, and oh look, now she's fighting it. All of "Red, White, Black, Yellow" flows together more smoothly than the trailers + "Ruby Rose” do, meaning there's no mad scramble to, say, explain to the community that this is a flashback, Weiss got that scar during her fight—look, there’s a bit of blood—she’s singing on her father’s orders, yeah idk why exactly it’s just a thing she does, mhmm the fight is a test to get into Beacon, etc. I didn’t come into RWBY until Volume 3, but I remember finding old posts that worked to clarify the iffy canon of our trailers (and, indeed, acknowledging that some details like Ruby’s strength against the grimm remain in the realm of “Not canon, actually”) as well as explaining what precisely happened in each. None of that is necessary here. The only thing the scene doesn’t clarify is how a suit of armor is also a grimm, but failing to get into the possession abilities is small potatoes compared to the potential confusion we started out with.

Yet despite the obvious benefits of that clarity, the fight itself is just… fine? Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about it—except, perhaps, the weird glyph sound effects that I personally hate—yet even following much of the original choreography, I didn’t have an emotional investment in this fight like I did the White Trailer. I think a great deal of that comes down to the music. Though I’ve always agreed that the soundtrack is a huge part of RWBY’s personality, I didn’t realize quite how much of the emotion it carried until it was gone. The generic battle music of IQ just can’t compare to hearing

Mirror, mirror

Tell me something,

Who’s the loneliest of all?

…I’m the loneliest of all.

while Weiss is framed in front of the broken moon, expression stony, this epic moment inter-cut with her future self belting this lament, all right before she drives through the knight and lands, perfectly confident in her victory.

IQ!Weiss technically has the same combat beats of the original fight (with the exception of the knight’s sword nearly crushing Klein??), but it’s a completely different vibe. IQ!Weiss feels frantic at the end to me and her getting to coldly demand the Beacon reward from her father is a one-up moment that doesn’t jive with, say, Weiss later trying to muster up a fake smile in the elevator to convince her family that everything’s fine. She feels too confident, like she’s already won against Jacques and RWBY!Weiss’ journey (marred as it was by Volume 8) isn’t even on the table anymore. And, you know, maybe it’s not. Though the changes are subtle so far, this is already a very different version of Weiss. Personally, I prefer the theme of loneliness in the original: Weiss standing as the knight is obliterated behind her, bloody face fading into someone who, despite this victory, is still left standing there, alone on stage, performing for her father. She won the battle, but is still fighting the war.

(Gotta love shots like this though. The size difference! The scale! The seemingly insurmountable challenge!)

With a red leaf that looks a lot like a rose petal flying by—nice—we transition to Blake who is…

…Naruto running with Adam?

alksdfjalsjfa okay, cool.

Their section is pretty similar to the Black Trailer, though this time around Blake’s decision to leave feels like it’s really coming out of left field. I mean, she questions whether they’ll be fighting actual people, but Adam reframes that around Blake’s courage and there’s no visual cue from her that he’s wrong about that. Then we get a seemingly sweet moment where she doesn’t even look at the Atlas soldier behind her, knowing Adam’s got her back

and though she’s clearly not happy about Adam crashing the train when there are people on board, Blake doesn’t have that much of a reaction to it. She just walks over to the next car and severs the connection, leaving the audience with Adam’s supremely awkward line, “Are you betraying me? Betraying the White Fang?”

Easily the worst part of the episode for me 😬 You know you haven’t written a scene well when a character has to spell things out in the most heavy-handed way possible.

To be honest, I’ve always found the Black Trailer to be the weakest of the bunch and I don’t think IQ has succeeded in improving on it. If anything, I think having Blake sneak away while Adam is busy with the mech, only for him and the audience to both realize she’s on a different, separated car works better than… this. I suppose neither version really sells me on the idea that this was a breaking point for Blake and if it wasn’t, why leave now, right in the middle of a mission? Compared to the clarity of our other stories, Blake’s remains lacking in some respects.

We get to Ruby’s Dust shop robbery and, given that we’ve just gone through two of the trailers, I’m a little disappointed that the Red Trailer wasn’t included. Certainly it’s the least plot connected of the four and yes, they’ve done away with Yang’s too, but Ruby taking out a horde of grimm under a shattered moon is the defining image of the franchise—at least for me. It’s not just what IQ decided to cut out though. Like Weiss’ fight sending a very different message thanks to the time spent on clarifying her test and its consequences, the development of Ruby’s character pre-robbery means that we’ve lost the appealing surprise of who she really is. What I mean is, outside of the Red Trailer, the moment Ruby turns—tiny, bright-eyed, sporting headphones and a weapons magazine—is our first introduction to her and that particular image contrasts wonderfully with her kicking that goon to hell and back. I mean sure, we already know how such “surprises” work (especially in a combat webseries. It’s not really a surprise), but I still love the (supposed) shock of this child being cornered, but then turning around and kicking ass.

That doesn’t happen in IQ precisely because the show does a better job of developing Ruby beforehand. We’ve already watched her tell Summer about how she might be getting bad grades, but she’s an expert with weapons. She’s already visited a weapons store before popping into the Dust shop.

She’s already gushed over the weapons magazine and even quoted from it, rather than that existing purely as a background detail for the audience to catch. Hell, we’ve already seen Crescent Rose, at least in its compact state, which makes the robbery “reveal” no longer a reveal at all. There’s no, “Oh cool the vulnerable kid is actually a badass fighter! And she’s got a scythe!!” reaction because the show has established that as a firm part of Ruby’s characterization. We know about Yang and Beacon and Ruby’s long-term combat goals. This

just doesn’t have the same impact anymore.

It’s the same with Zwei. Do I love seeing my favorite pupper right in the first episode? Hell yeah. Have we now lost the opportunity to introduce him through the mail—another iconic RWBY moment? Also yeah.

Which, again, is not automatically a bad thing. This isn’t a case of “Choice A works, but Choice B doesn’t.” Although IQ’s timeline is arguably a more productive way to write a long-term story, in inevitably comparing it to the webseries, I can’t help but notice that we’ve lost a certain absurdity and, well, fun that’s a part of RWBY’s charm.

(That’s an awesome shot though. Love the lighting.)

So Ruby works her way through the goons—a combat sequence I quite enjoyed. Very liberal on the crunchy faces. Looked painful—and Roman runs through most of his original lines. This time he does comment, “Semblance? A Beacon Academy student?” when Ruby busts out the window, which both hints at the fact that semblances might be comparatively rare (remember that Roman doesn’t have one) and, by extension, highlights Ruby’s innate abilities. The fact that Roman assumes she must go to Beacon implies that only someone two years older than her could pull that kind of control off. Ruby, as the talented protagonist, has managed this early.

Roman throws his smoke bomb, runs up the building, Ruby follows him… calls him a thief even though technically he didn’t take any of the Dust with him lol. While they’re on the roof, Tai, Yang, and Zwei arrive on the scene, having grown worried when Ruby failed to return home at a normal time.

(Why is that clock so cool and why don’t I own it.)

Again, IQ does a really great job of fleshing out the world and the characters’ relationships, especially in just 20 minutes. I love that Ruby was out looking for a present for Yang (still bitter we never got to see what she bought her in Volume 6), that Yang and Tai have this conversation about Ruby’s growth, Zwei is being used as a bloodhound to track her, the fact that yeah, of course there are other civilians about and the police were called on scene.

Personally, I think there’s a nostalgic charm to RWBY’s shadow people, but it’s still true to say that animating actual characters responding to situations goes a long way towards making your world feel lived in. 

Also, can I just SHOUT FROM THE ROOFTOPS that Tai is out looking for his daughter? I never cared about his character much until post-Volume 3 when the fandom started dragging him for… well, everything. How dare you make a joke your daughter clearly loved. How dare you tell her the truth in an effort to keep her from losing another limb—or her life. (Which, I will always point out now, happened! Yang stupidly jumped in front of Ruby, just like she stupidly charged Adam, and Neo killed her!! You have a ranged weapon, Yang, oh my god—) How dare you fail to follow one kid while the other is at home with severe depression. How dare you not follow both when [checks notes] you’re not a part of the primary plot. Tai really went the way of Ozpin and Ironwood (pre-Volume 8 Ironwood, anyway) where potential mistakes are declared unforgivable sins and… that’s it. You’re Remnant’s #1 Worst Dad. Sucks to be you.

So hell yeah, good on IQ for reminding everyone that Tai, even an AU Tai, is of course worried sick over his missing kid and will do whatever he can to help her. Double kudos for managing that alongside a slight increase in mom!Yang energy.

Glynda (my beloved) shows up and does her thing. Cinder never comes out to fight them, but we still see her piloting the airship, which is interesting. At least, it is to me given that I’d assumed going into IQ that a lot of the larger plot-lines would be dropped in favor of the new story: the White Fang, Cinder’s lust for power, even Salem herself. Obviously that’s not the case, so now I’m wondering if IQ is like an interlude type story? We get a mostly-the-same Volumes 1-2, then a totally new adventure, then the implication that the characters go back to a version of the original tale with Relics, Maidens, la de da? We’ll have to see.

After Ruby DOESN’T ask for Glynda’s autograph (tragic) and she’s getting her lecture while Tai and Yang wait at the station, Ozpin shows up to… salutes?

That’s a choice.

You know how I was saying that Whitley’s characterization feels more in line with where he’ll end up several Volumes later? Well, Ozpin’s characterization feels more in line with where the show says he ends up several Volumes later… even though they never actually wrote that. Meaning, this is an Ozpin introduction that actually implies an ulterior, morally gray motive. This is a guy that does feel sketchy to me.

Let’s tally the details.

Ozpin arrives at the station—now overtly a police station and not the ambiguous closet of the webseries—and is saluted by everyone there. He doesn’t wave the formality aside with discomfort or anything, but takes it as a given. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that was Ironwood walking into the room.

He still gives Ruby cookies, but this time we see that he didn’t arrive with them. Meaning, he must have made one of the officers scrounge them up which, while still potentially just a nice gesture, feels like it has more potential for manipulation. More “Do the work for me so I can look good to the kid” rather than, “I heard Glynda had you in her clutches and brought cookies from home to soothe that :D”

Ruby never gives her passionate speech about wanting to help people like her parents taught her to and how Beacon is her plan to do that. So although the fandom has long assumed that Ozpin invited her partly due to her Silver Eyes—an assessment I agree with—that motivation feels far more prominent without Ruby overtly wanting to come. At least, she doesn’t tell Ozpin she wants to come. Now, instead of making Ruby’s wish come true (with the added benefit of assisting Ozpin’s war) Ozpin offers a place seemingly out of the blue, still putting some focus on Ruby’s combat skills, far more on those special, Silver Eyes. This feels like a recruitment now, not a benevolent gesture towards a family friend’s kid.

Going off of that, there’s no playful banter between Ozpin and Glynda about Ruby getting in early. This Ozpin has very little of the kind, fatherly energy of the webseries.

Finally, we see Ozpin talking to Tai afterwards and though Tai is quite taken with Ruby getting to skip two years, it’s not like Ozpin is asking his permission here. Sure, sure, we could get into the question of how much agency Remnant kids actually have—Blake’s parents are cool with her going off to Beacon after being missing for a time, no one is looking for Oscar, etc.—but the point is that twice, once before meeting Ruby and once after, Ozpin has the chance to offer Tai this opportunity for his daughter, but very overtly does not. He says that he will be speaking to Ruby. He says that she will be attending Beacon. He’s in control here.

The combination of this creates a far less approachable, more calculating Ozpin. AKA, the kind of Ozpin that RWBY failed to write, but the fandom insists is there in an effort to make the fury in Volume 6+ make sense. I’m not sure how I feel about it? On the one hand yeah, I’m glad to see IQ setting the stage for future reveals. This is an Ozpin who really might be puppeteering this war in a way the cast can be justifiably disgusted by. Yet on the other hand, it doesn’t feel much like Ozpin to me. Though small changes have been made to all the characters, they still feel like themselves (Klein being the exception). Ozpin though… there’s no interest in Ruby’s passion, no teasing Glynda, no intimacy with Tai. Seriously, go back and watch “Ruby Rose.” We’ve got Ozpin’s dad-like concern over Ruby using one of the “most dangerous weapons every designed,” his clear fondness for his “dusty old crow,” offering the cookies only after Ruby has explained herself a bit and her actually eating them (comfortable in his presence/trusting what he gives her), the eye-twitch when she talks with her mouth full, fond smile as Ruby gushes about her uncle, laughing a little at her karate chops, “adorable girl,” the very stern “You want to come to my school?” which forces Ruby to clearly state her own goals and desires (that oh so conveniently align with his), THIS

I mean, Ozpin is a dad. I feel like that’s a very crucial part of his characterization. He’s a romantic who settled down, had kids, does the stupid voices while reading his beloved fairy tales… and then his life went to absolute shit. He’s an exhausted dad who is still fighting because he believes wholeheartedly that the world is worth fighting for. He’s exactly the kind of guy who would bring a talented kid cookies and let her skip two years, all while ensuring her happiness benefits humanity somehow.

This guy feels like a creep—and that’s not just because of the weird doll features.

So good for the fandom, finally has a legitimately suspicious Ozpin to embrace? Yay IQ laying the groundwork for future plot-points? But as my favorite character, I wish we had Ozpin back. Especially since he’s only existed as an extension of Oscar for the past five Volumes, one everyone uses as a punching bag.

Maybe his characterization will change in the upcoming episodes? :(

We near the end of “Red, White, Black, Yellow” with a bit of additional worldbuilding slapped onto the trailer content. Weiss learns from Winter that there are hard rules to their totally-not-magic system—“Your Aura can only take a direct attack once or twice at most. The moment you’re hit, you’re finished”—and that’s reiterated by Glynda to Ruby: “Is your Aura strong enough to stop every bullet they fired?”

Cue me CACKLING at, like, every single RWBY fight ever. Will IQ do what the webseries couldn’t and actually stick to its own rules? We’ll have to see…

Blake is off in a… barn? Some isolated place with a bag of supplies now. She gets her admission notice from Beacon and I have to wonder when she took that exam. Was it before she left Adam, thereby making her leaving him feel a little less random? Was it after her escape and she’s been, what? Just running through grimm infested territory since then, popping into Beacon once for a quick test? Why didn’t she ever go home?? Yeah, there are still aspects that don’t quite add up for me. Regardless, Blake gets teary and says that now she’s really able to follow a “different path.”

Klein sends Weiss off with faith that she’ll carry on the legacy of Master Nicholas Schnee and, after Ruby tells Tai that she’ll make a ton of friends at Beacon (that’s a change in characterization), we finish with them all boarding the same transport. We then get a really lovely moment where both Weiss and Blake stare at their reflection on opposite sides of the ship, mustering up a smile.

Watching OFMD grow as a fandom these last few months, I’ve gotten to see a lot of people question certain fandom trends that have popped up, including asking, “Wait, people ship that?” Ignoring for the moment that you obviously don’t need a reason beyond, “I like it,” we can usually pinpoint why fans end up liking that particular duo (or trio). The important takeaway here is that it doesn’t take much—at ALL—to spark that interest. This moment is a perfect example of that. Blake and Weiss are set up to parallel and contrast one another. One is the rich heiress harming the faunus. The other is the (right now reading as) poor faunus fighting the heiress. They’ve got that Romeo and Juliet potential—two houses not meant to join—and yet we also see, right here, that they’re so much more alike than either will initially believe. They’re separated now, haven’t yet met, are literally on opposite sides of the transport, and yet they both go through the exact same motions of sighing in relief at making it in time, catching sight of themselves in a reflective surface, considering who they are, and then smiling. There’s so much potential there! We in the RWBY fandom know that Bumbleby and White Rose are the two heavy-hitters, but right now Weiss hasn’t met Ruby and Blake hasn’t met Yang. I guarantee that if IQ were its own show and we were waiting a week for the next, totally original episode, fans would be all over Monochrome as the primary ship. It would have sunk its teeth into the community from that alone and even if IQ went the way of RWBY, splitting them up and starting numerous moments of other shipping potential (Weiss slowing coming to care for Ruby, Yang opening up to Blake, etc.) there’s a good chance that Blake/Weiss would have hung on like whoa, just from this moment and a week of theorizing alone. Never doubt the power of fans to imagine up the most epic romances from a single, thematically loaded shot.

We’re given our first glimpses of Jaune (vomiting), Nora (hanging onto Ren), Ren (suffering, but he likes it), and Pyrrha—taking up most of the screen as Salem says that “even the most brilliant lights eventually flicker and die.”

I can’t go through this again 😭

At least that’s a WAY better introduction for Pyrrha than being Jaune’s background, quirky girl...

And, of course, we end on a close-up of Ruby as Ozpin talks about small sparks and simple souls igniting the most change.

(I’m sorry she looks so creepy here hOW IS THAT NOT A MURDER DOLL??)

So, just to summarize, there's really good character work throughout this episode. Not only are the introductions tighter and better interwoven with Remnant's worldbuilding, but IQ does a decent job of setting up future themes, conflicts, and — if the plot circles back to canon — foreshadowed events like Pyrrha’s death. Basically, this is what happens when you take your story through another draft. This is RWBY with an eye towards what did and didn't work the first time around.

Yet for all that praise... I have to admit that a certain spark is missing. Yes, the animation is so much better, but as said, there's something charming about RWBY's janky movements and shadow people. Yes, the characters' introductions fit more neatly into the story-world now, but it was exciting to get individual action trailers, unsure at first how they would develop into a plot-driven narrative. No, there's no reason to waste time on silly things like Jaune being Vomit Boy, but the lack of stupid humor in this premiere makes me feel like a crucial part of RWBY is missing. There's no disappearing cookies, or Ruby being chill about Yang kicking men out of club windows, or karate chops, or (and this is a real travesty imo) a cringey "Can I have your autograph??" towards Glynda. Maybe it's that we're nearly a decade out from the original air date and tastes have changed, or maybe it's just straight up nostalgia on my part, but for however good IQ is so far, it doesn't feel like it has the same heart that RWBY did — and I don't think it's capable of recreating that. RWBY was a specific storm of Monty + 2013 + the appeal of a group of fans doing something fun in their basement over something objectively "good," and who knows what else thrown into the mysterious pot of success. You literally can't recreate that, especially when so much of RWBY's fanbase are adults now, unable to return to their teenage years — or even just the eight years younger version of themselves if they were adults the first time around — and the headspace of when they first fell in love with the story. That doesn't make IQ bad by any means (and it may well get its own fanbase of first-time viewers). I really enjoyed this first episode... but I enjoyed it in the way I enjoy lots of other well-made, but kinda generic anime. Without it already being a RWBY story and without RWBY having caught my imagination back when it did, I don't think I would have gotten hooked on IQ in the same way. The premier is good, arguably far, FAR better than "Ruby Rose" ever was, and yet, whether due to time, nostalgia, or something else entirely, RWBY still feels like it comes out on top. It’s just got... something that IQ lacks.

Not that it's a competition, of course, though certain members of the fandom seem to believe quite strongly that it should be. More because they’d like a built-in reason to drag anyone with a criticism of IQ/RWBY than because they actually believe two versions of a story can’t co-exist.

But I digress.

With that, we've completed "Red, White, Black, Yellow"! At a measly 6,000 words, no less. (I’m apologizing now for the inevitable typos. It’s past 1:00am now and I can’t read through this again...) As is abundantly obvious, these recaps take a long time to write and this sneak peek has, quite unexpectedly, dropped the equivalent of three weeks worth of RWBY content into my lap all at once. Normally I'd have no problem buckling down to write the next episode, but I have a number of fic commitments at the start of July that I can't afford to ignore. So writing time will be going towards those, first and foremost, with me continuing to work on Ice Queendom on the side. I hope to have the next episode recapped in the next few days — at the latest — but that depends entirely on how kind the writing Gods are to me this week.

So stay tuned and, as always, thanks for reading! <3

MurderOfBirds' Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/MurderofBirds_/status/1540414268457340928

[blazingstaro]

DotS: April Update

Things are moving along smoothly behind the scenes!

Producing at least a page one day every week (with a break over the weekends or a little extra into the next), scripting several new pages for following DotS:MMM parts/ drafting DotS episodes every week.

DotS' shattered pieces are slowly starting to come together and meld into one clear image, and I'm so stoked!! Once I've finished scripting all of DotS:MMM, I'll be able to channel all my writing energy over the weekends into finally rewriting and drafting new episodes following the delicious new plot Faye and I have going!

DotS:MMM has been a refreshing change of pace, yet also a great pace-builder since I've been out of the game for so long. I'm having a super fun time with this mini-series, and it's setting up so much!

Some of my readers on dA have asked if we'll get some more information on Eave, a character I had name-dropped in the original Episode 1 of DotS some 4 years ago in the early stages of the comic.

With as far as I've scripted in DotS:MMM, I'm happy to say this mini-series will be rich with lore & TASTY info on various mysteries in DotS proper, and introduce new plot-important characters. Not only references to Eave, but also some antagonistic forces that have been in play for a long, long time. 👀

I'm not just throwing you all a bone, I'm gonna serve you guys a fine meal of stuff! Of course there's plenty sprinkled about in every part/chapter of DotS:MMM, but there's a couple that are really THICK with the goods!

That's all for now! Nice quick news update for you all!! <333 I'm so STOKED AAAAAAA THERE'S SO MUCH IN STORE FOR YOU ALL IN THIS MINI SERIES It sets up sOOOOO much in new DotS EEEEEEEE

[quillyfied]

Omenstuck Goodies and Extras

Hello! Below are my doodles and extra details for Omenstuck that didn’t make it into the fic (and probably wouldn’t have even if I did finish writing it properly); any questions or comments are completely welcome, because this project has been so big for so long I’m sure I’ve forgotten something. This is going to be extremely Homestuck jargon-heavy, because I have given up any pretense of Omenstuck being at all friendly for non-Homestucks and I’m deeply sorry for that. Anyway. On with the show!

The basic plot element breakdown: this was an experiment in applying to Homestuck lore what Good Omens accomplishes: what if these NPCs become main characters instead? How that worked out for Omenstuck was that the story followed Aziraphale and Crowley through the different Dream Shards (as opposed to Homestuck Dream Bubbles, since reality is breaking apart and different realities are occupying the same area in Paradox Space), the game of Sburb being under stress from the game-breaking move of Satan (Lord of Space) pulling Agnes (Muse of Time) from her own session and forcing them together into the same pocket of reality and therefore causing the rest of the parallel realities of Sburb to start crashing into each other. Aziraphale and Crowley were just carapacian pawns the entire time—it was only Sburb’s code attempting to work as intended that started trying to populate itself with players and ended up cannibalizing its own NPCs, rewriting them as other species Sburb already had saved in its data banks (cherubs, trolls, humans, etc).

Gabriel and Beelzebub were the White King and Black King. Michael was the White Queen. Hastur and Ligur were Dersite agents. The other angels and demons in the troll session don’t have fixed carapacian roles, beyond the angels being Prospitian and the demons being Dersites, but that was the general idea driving the structure of both the background narrative and the troll session narrative, once we got there. Death and the other Horsemen were occupying a weird role, vaguely as the Felt (who in HS are creatures called leprechauns, but we didn’t get to learn too much in-depth info about them and I certainly wasn’t about to make some up, so for the purposes of the story, they sort of occupied a coding troubleshooter role but hijacked by Satan’s Lord of Space powers into becoming more his cronies than anything else).

So by the time the story, bound to linearity, manages to catch up with the “human” session of Aziraphale and Crowley, playing out on a Dream Shard that was in the middle of getting sucked into the collision of two very real sessions (the Scratched sessions of Satan and Agnes, occupied by Adam and his friends and Anathema and hers respectively), Aziraphale and Crowley have gone beyond their tiny existing glitch of hooking up every Sburb cycle and have become much more sentient and aware. And, because playing with the Thief of Doom/Rogue of Life dichotomy with regard to past and parallel lives is fun, they get to pull from their former lives/sessions to become hodgepodge creatures that resemble their Good Omens canon forms, wings and all. Meanwhile, Satan is pulling a Lord English in attempting to destroy and subjugate everything, Agnes is pulling a Calliope in providing inspiration to her descendant/ancestor Anathema, and Adam is playing with the wide possibilities of being a Page of Space and limitless creativity being his superpower, just like in GO canon. And eventually, thanks to Adam fixing the Sburb glitches and reforging the game, all of the characters now get to live out full lives in perpetuity, Sburb being turned into an infinite sustainable creation machine rather than a cycle of creation and consumption.

If any of that made sense, I’m glad, because I think I got lost in the weeds while writing the fic and got too tickled with myself for being cryptic that I forgot to make things make sense. Not sure I achieved that now, either. And as for Warlock, a full breakdown of his fate and role is coming, but later. Want to talk about some of these unused or glossed-over details first.

As I mentioned in my comment glossary for A3A1 (Chapter Six), the “human” session for Aziraphale, Crowley, Gabriel, and Beelzebub was a non-HS canon “glitch” session, in keeping with the fact that the gang here are supposed to be Derse/Prospit carapacian inhabitants of the Sburb game and not true players. I wanted that to be reflected in their Quest Planets, for desolation and futility to be the name of the game. And, for simplicity’s sake, I kept them all in a black and white theme (Aziraphale and Crowley share a palette, Gabriel and Beelzebub share a palette).

Crowley: Land of Scales and Barren. Dark volcanic sand, huge snake skeletons arcing up and through the ground. Snake denizen (which would be in line with Homestuck tradition), snake fossil consorts (not canon but not too far off its reptilian preferences either). I traced a snake spine to make the upd8 art that showed Crowley and Aziraphale’s bandstand fight from A3A1, and I’m still proud of that, dangit.

Beelzebub: Land of Honeycomb and Hollow. Flat black rock bored through with pale-lit hexagonal tunnels. Fly denizen, bug consorts. I was particularly pleased with how Beelzebub’s concept and name for their Quest Planet turned out; shame we never got to visit it, because it feels rad to me.

Aziraphale: Land of Scripts and Cavities. Pale sand (actually paper particles), strange cryptic scribble structures, caves with more scribbles on the walls. Bird denizen, pterodactyl fossil consorts. I might have flipped that around in the actual script of the fic but eh. I mostly wanted Aziraphale’s to feel particularly infuriating to him, since he is the one having the most visceral flashbacks to previous lives (what you get for dying so often, you self-sacrificial chump, CROWLEY WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE IN THE TROLL SESSION AND YET YOU JUMPED IN ANYWAY) and it’s his unease that starts the chapter, and for it to be very flammable. For reasons.

Gabriel: Land of Angels and Deficiency. Barren pale flat landscape, huge airplane-sized scorch marks. I mentioned this in the Ch6 comment glossary, but to reiterate, Gabriel’s in particular is a callback to his role in the troll session, where he took on the canonical Eridan role and started blasting angels on his Quest Planet, which he was not supposed to do but got fixated on anyway. It also helps that in Homestuck, “angels” are huge, powerful, serpentine creatures who aren’t consorts or denizens but whose role in the game was never realized (except as foreshadowing for cherubs, who are also huge serpentine winged creatures that are incredibly hard to kill and will attack when provoked).

Now for one of the “real” sessions, Agnes’ session that she was pulled from and was subsequently Scratched, or flipped over for the dancestors of Agnes’ session to become the players instead. I wanted these to be based on a Homestuck canon Void session, since a circular quest pattern and waiting for something to happen fits Anathema’s GO canon arc (and much like in GO canon, she is unsatisfied with waiting and tries to make a change herself: hence her meeting Adam and Aziraphale at the connection point between the three colliding sessions). I color sampled from real noble gases as best I could for the general accent colors of the Void planets, and stuck them with basic HS canon templates for the Alpha Kids’ session, if flipped around a bit (and using different grave synonyms than HS canon to make them stand out). Also their Pesterchum colors, but more on their handles later.

Anathema: Land of Krypton and Mausoleums. Yaldaboath for denizen (powerful, often drawn to game-breaking players), iguanas for consorts. Since mausoleums are above-ground structures that go deeper, I wanted Anathema’s planet to look like islands in a sea of mist, because that’s metal. Also she was the only one with a defined quest out of the group, and it was just to find the Great Beast, about as vague as GO canon, especially when the Great Beast is in reference to Adam and not Anathema’s denizen (though I think if she’d thought of it, Yaldaboath could probably have provided some details, for a price).

Newt: Land of Xenon and Undercrofts. Abraxas for a denizen, turtle consorts, which is very appropriate given that most of Newt’s quest planet features are underground. Undercrofts aren’t graves, precisely, but they’re often used as structures for deeper architecture and sometimes cathedrals will stick crypts down there. For a guy like Newt who is sort of politely bewildered and not very assertive, it felt appropriate and even kinda cute for him.

Shadwell: Land of Argon and Tumuli. Nix for denizen, salamanders for consorts. Tumuli, according to my research, are hill crypts; it felt like an appropriately archaic word for a guy like Shadwell, and is occupied with said hill crypts surrounded by streams of argon gas. Similar to Anathema’s, in a way, but given that I never summoned the mental willpower to find out exactly what Shadwell’s role in the greater Omenstuck narrative is, imagining a grumpy paranoid witch hunter bumbling from hill to hill looking for a can of condensed milk will have to do.

Tracy: Land of Radon and Vaults. Hemera for denizen, crocodiles for consorts. Tracy’s land is brightest of them all, for obvious reasons, and I gave her little pools of radon gas to wander around along with the above-ground vaults. Admittedly, I was struggling to find grave synonyms by that point that hadn’t been already used in HS canon, and struggling mentally in general with the entire concept, so Tracy and Shadwell get a bit of a cop-out for their Quest Planets since they aren’t meant to be front and center important anyway. Tracy’s more pivotal role in GO canon was pretty diminished in Omenstuck, acting instead as a Prospit dreamer guide to Anathema’s Derse dreamer, but at least her typing quirk was fun.

The Them’s Quest Planets are next, and full warning, they are eye-searing.

The Them were fun, because I was toying with a trickster mode flavor to their planets, but also I was lazy and assigned them Beta Kid colors and decided to just use those colors for my planet sketches. The Them is the Scratched version of Satan’s session, as led by his dancestor Adam, and is supposed to be a healthier session since they have a Space player and a Knight to assist in frog breeding duties to create a normal, viable Genesis Frog. Once again, their planets and quests weren’t really essential to the plot, so for the most part they went on mention alone. The consorts also match the Beta Kid color they got assigned, just to make it easier on myself. I think. Pretty sure.

Adam: Land of Dreams and Nightmares. Echidna for a denizen, iguanas for consorts (to match Anathema). Adam’s planet is supposed to look most Earth-like, with reversed lands and seas. As with most viable sessions, Adam as the Space player has a frog temple on his planet and the means to go about creating the Genesis Frog, but the most defining trait of his world is its malleability and how it responds to Adam’s wishes. Familiar, no?

Pepper: Land of Choice and Injustice. Hephaestus is her denizen, crocodiles for consorts. Pepper’s land is full of statues of Justice with tipped scales, courthouses, and her quest is related to righting all the scales and instances of injustice in her planet, as evidenced by the name. As with most Sburb Quest Planets, the quest is tailored to a younger audience, matching and challenging Pepper’s growing sense of social responsibility and dedication to righteous causes. Also. War’s foil and all.

Brian: Land of Bridges and Detritus. Typhus for consort, salamanders for consort. Brian’s land is pretty self-explanatory: it’s full of bridges and garbage. His quest is to clean up or find use for the garbage. Standard Brian stuff, in having him both mirror and contrast Pollution.

Wensley: Land of Accounts and Figures. Cetus for denizen, turtles for consort. Wensleydale’s quest was about balancing the accounts and figures, so similar to Pepper’s quest for justice, but much more boring. His land is populated with giant ledgers and dollar signs in the doodle, and in theory his quest would do more to have him compare and contrast with Famine, but it never got that far.

When crafting the Act 3 classpects, I had a hard time, because I wanted the full set of three sessions to fill available roles, but also, the available roles were a bit like the troll session in that it was more about completionism than about what truly fit. Agnes and Satan fill the Lord/Muse roles and the Space/Time dichotomy, and for ease’s sake (and plot continuity) I had Aziraphale, Crowley, Gabriel, and Beelzebub keep their troll session classpects, but that left the humans a little scattershot. I threw out a lot of Homestuck canon speculation regarding certain classes and their (seemingly) gender-locked states, and did some creative bending with aspects. But. Did my best. Here they are.

Satan: Lord of Space (seemed to fit; needed Satan to fill the HS Lord English role as an agent of unstoppable and unspeakable violence, and Space fit Adam better, so I made it fit Satan too. In HS, dancestors don’t usually share a class or an aspect, but they can be related. I wanted Adam and Satan, as well as Agnes and Anathema, to share Aspects, because it kinda fit a GO theme about outgrowing your origins and choosing who you are despite where you came from or what your destiny says you’re supposed to be. I think Satan also fits as a Space player as a nod to Lucifer the Morningstar, but that’s more of a nod than anything.)

Agnes: Muse of Time (I settled on Muse because Satan needed a counterpart as a Lord for plot reasons, and because Muse is precisely what Agnes is, in Good Omens: she doesn’t take any actions, she merely inspires through her prophecies. As for Time, I think that’s pretty obvious, don’t you?)

Adam: Page of Space (obvious, had to be a Space player because Space is all about creativity and creation, and he couldn’t be another Lord since that wasn’t quite his MO and he couldn’t be a Bard because Gabriel had it, though a Bard would be a perfect fit for his wildcard nature. Prince, too, would have been a good fit as an agent of destruction, but Beelzebub had that. Which left Page, the class occupied traditionally by the weakest players, but shown to have the most wide-open chance for growth and success due to its limitless capacity for potential.)

Pepper: Knight of Mind (Knight was obvious from the get-go, though I did swap a few other classes in there while trying stuff out. Mind was difficult to land on but I eventually chose it for her because of its ties to choices, which seems to be something important to Pepper.)

Brian: Heir of Blood (sort of a throwaway classpect, but I kind of like the idea of Brian coming to embody bonds, given his surprising insight as well as brave chewing-out of Adam in GO. Plus his loyalty. Bri is a loyal guy and that’s canon.)

Wensleydale: Witch of Light (a hard one, and admittedly I wish in hindsight I’d made Shadwell the Witch because CAN YOU IMAGINE, and also Anathema and Tracy both would have suited Witch power sets well, but Anathema needed to be a Seer and Tracy’s gimmick is that she isn’t a Witch and it felt too active a class for her. I landed on it for Wensley mostly because I’m tickled by the idea of him taking up witchcraft in Anathema’s stead as a personal GO headcanon. Light was a no-brainer. Wensley regurgitates facts like the nerd he is, so knowledge is his domain no question. Luck is a little more questionable but his glasses didn’t break during Armageddon so I’ll give it to him.)

Anathema: Seer of Time (I chose Seer for her instead of Witch because Anathema, for all her desire to be an active player, is a more passive one in GO canon; Seer could also be a more active role in HS, it’s mostly guesswork, but between Seer and Witch, I needed Anathema to be able to catch glimpses of the future, not manipulate it, and mostly through her medium of Agnes’ GameFAQs, which both fulfils Agnes’ ultimate HS passive role as inspiration and her GO role as cryptic guide. And Time, because of Agnes.)

Newt: Maid of Void (I stumbled face-first into this after trying a few other combinations and once it clicked I could have slapped myself for not thinking of it sooner. Maid, one who helps another person or literally “made”, and Void, the absence of all other aspects and sort of anti-creation rather than destruction? Chef’s kiss. Couldn’t have planned it better myself. In English, I suppose, what this means is that taking Newt’s single-use purpose in GO to irrevocably destroy electronics translates pretty darn well to a suggested utility of a Maid of Void to cancel out an act of another player, perhaps some rage-happy Lord of Space or assorted cronies on a rampage.)

Tracy: Sylph of Heart (in simplest terms, a healer of relationships or feelings. Could have had a lot more utility if I had the spoons to use her fake medium and sex worker skillset in this capacity to mend some of the breaks in communications between players, but c’est la vie, sometimes our ambitions are greater than our abilities.)

Shadwell: Mage of Breath (and behold the bottom of the barrel for what Shadwell could be, the last classpect combination available. Mages are an odd class and I’m not sure I truly understand them, but what Shadwell is, to the best of my knowledge, is one who knows about detachment or wind. If you want to look at it that way: a blowhard. Mages can also represent an absence of their aspect in themselves or their party, so a lack of lack of attachment, or a lack of wind or direction: sure. Why not. Why not. Can’t be any more cryptic and useless than the rest of the behind the scenes knowledge of this fic.)

Yes, everyone had pesterchum handles. No, they were probably never coming up. Yes, the colors depicted were the colors I was going to code for them if they ever did come up. I gave Satan and Agnes the rNA “uu/UU” designations, and kept the human DNA sequence combinations for the humans. Because easy. Didn’t color-match the canon HS colors and abbreviations, so I’m sure a veteran Homestuck looking at these theoretical pesterlogs would have lost their minds, but I did the same thing in the troll session, so we can all live with it. I’m also not going to explain my choices, because they feel self-explanatory; anyone who feels differently can shoot me a reply or an ask!

Satan: universalUsurper

Agnes: untoldUniverse

Adam: guaranteedTrouble

Brian: grimyGusto

Pepper: testifyingGrit

Wensley: thoroughTeller

Anathema: geneticTheurgist

Newt: tragicTurpin

Tracy: ghostlyGuide

Shadwell: thunderGun

Now, for the main non-canon event that I dropped into this unwieldy chili of canon and non-canon elements: Warlock’s classpect.

I knew I wanted to include Warlock, but I wasn’t sure how. The single-player Dead session that a Lord or a Muse is supposed to embark on was already tossed out the window by having Satan create a specialized two-player session for himself and Agnes, trapping them in a reality bubble that was breaking everything outside of it. All possible classpects had been assigned, and I wasn’t particularly interested in creating another overlap. So what to do?

Easy. Pulled a Hussie and made a non-canon classpect just for Warlock.

Cheekily named the Twist of Fate, Warlock’s role in the story was to act as a sort of deus ex machina for saving Aziraphale from the destruction of his Dream Shard, and for him to show Adam the way forward. A Twist of Fate is a one-use classpect that can unleash unfathomable power exactly one time per thread of Fate the player is following. The apple that grew in Crowley’s garden in A3A1? Warlock’s doing. Time and Doom are both aspects that sort of encapsulate what Fate is, but because it’s my fic, I decided to make it a special separate aspect just for Warlock to follow. Warlock’s backstory and what happened to him after he got sucked into a black hole in A2 was going to pop up in an interlude, but the basics are that he occupied the same general narrative as Caliborn in Homestuck, playing a game of single-player billiards in an attempt to achieve his God Tier and escape his sliver of reality. The Other Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a nod to the Good Omens book, were going to be Felt-like creatures that did Warlock’s bidding, but there just wasn’t the time or energy to get it done. So Warlock did two very big things as a proto-antichrist to show Adam how it’s done: he fused together the three-way session collision into a single solid piece of universe, and he handed Adam the apple, the visual key Adam needed to realize the choice was his to make when it came to what to do next. I have much affection for Warlock as a character that could be a very good foil for Adam, if they ever met in GO canon, and this was my blown kiss to GO fanon that recognizes and expounds on that.

And…that’s it. Nothing more behind the curtain, no more tricks up my sleeves, no more detritus or ephemera to disgorge from my thinkpan. It’s all out there. As always, questions and comments are so welcome, either on AO3 or as an ask or reply here on Tumblr. Thank you to anyone who read this, I’m sorry I couldn’t give a complete story, and hopefully this info-dumping sort of makes up for it? Hope so, anyway. Bye!

[hecallsmehischild]

Recent Media Consumed

Books

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. About ten or fifteen years ago, I tried to read this and was totally overwhelmed by it. I kept it around, hoping maybe someday I might be able to read it. I finally have, and here are my impressions: WHY SO MANY NAMES. WHY YOU HAVE TO NAME EVERYBODY, AND EVERY TRIBE OF PEOPLES, AND EVERY INANIMATE OBJECT, AND EVERY LANDSCAPE FEATURE. WHY. *ahem* So. I have a general comprehension of the events of The Silmarillion, but I dealt with it by doing what you do for an impressionist painting. I (mentally) stepped way back and let all the names flow by me, and if there were names that were repeated a lot, then I mentally attached appropriate plot points and character details to those names so I could track with who they were and what they were doing. And, actually, I found myself able to hang on and enjoy the book for the most part. This is going to lead into a re-reading of the Lord of the Rings books, since I haven’t read those in about as long…

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I haven’t read some of these books since pre-teen years, with one required re-read of The Two Towers in high school (i.e. it’s been many an age since I’ve read these and my memory of the stories has been far more heavily influenced by the movies). In re-reading the first book, I was struck by the extreme tone shift for the Elves and Dwarves. Elves seem much closer to happy, mischievous fairies than these ethereal, solemn pillars of elegance and grace the movies show them to be. And Dwarves are far more bumbling and craftsmanlike than the movies show. Aside from that, The Hobbit was a pretty solid adaptation from the book, and the book also reminded me that this story was the first time I experienced “NO, MAIN CHARACTERS DON’T DIE, HOW DARE YOU,” and probably was the first book to make me cry. I must have been 8 or 10 years old. I FORGOT HOW MUCH THIS STORY INFLUENCED ME.

A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell. I have a longer-than-usual list of things to say about this book. First is that it was just that level of difficult that I was struggling to understand while reading it (on Audible), but I think I got it. Sowell has several base concepts that I see repeated throughout his books, though he does like to dedicate whole books to specific aspects of the same topic. He is pretty damn thorough that way. So, for example, I would put this book in the middle of a three-book spectrum of similar concepts: Intellectuals and Society (most concrete and easiest to read), A Conflict of Visions (next-level abstraction, a little difficult to read), Knowledge and Decisions (root abstract concept, very difficult, I have not been able to get past chapter 2). The second thing I have to say is about a couple interesting concepts it proposes. Its whole point is to help readers understand the roots of two ways of seeing the world that come into severe conflict politically, and he calls them by their root titles: the constrained and the unconstrained visions. He traces the path of each back through the intellectuals that most spoke of them (tending to contrast Adam Smith with William Godwin and Condorcet). Though he leans heavily toward the constrained vision (based on reading his other works) he does his best to make this book an academic study of both, with both of the visions' strengths and flaws and reasoning and internal consistencies fairly laid out. In doing so, he helped me understand a few things that make this situation really difficult for people on opposing sides to communicate. One of them is that root words and concepts literally mean different things to different people. I had some vague notion of this before, but he laid out three examples in detail: Equality, Power, and Justice. It was kind of astounding to see just how differently these three words can be defined. It makes me think that arguing about any specific issues rooted in these concepts is fruitless until first an understanding has been reached on terms, because otherwise two parties are endlessly talking past each other. Another really interesting idea he brought up is the existence of “hybrid visions” and he named both Marxism and Fascism as hybrid visions. This was especially fascinating to me because I have seen the accusation of “Nazi” flung around ad nauseam and I wondered how it was that both sides were able to fling it at each other so readily. Well, it’s because Fascism is actually a hybrid vision, so both sides have a grain of truth but miss the whole on that particular point. In any case, this was a little difficult to read but had some fascinating information. For people who are wondering what on earth this gap is between political visions, how on earth to bridge the gap, or why the gap even exists in the first place, this is a really informative piece.

Movies

The Hobbit & Fellowship trilogies (movies). I mean, it’s definitely not my first watch, not even my second. But I went through it with Sergey this time and that means the run-time is double because we pause to talk and discuss details. This watch came about partly due to Sergey’s contention that Gandalf’s reputation far outstrips his actual powers, so we ended up noting down every instance of Gandalf’s power to see if that was true. Conclusion: Gandalf is actually a decently powerful wizard, but tends to use the truly kickass powers in less-than-dire circumstances. That aside, this movie series was always a favorite for me. I rated The Hobbit trilogy lower the first time I saw it but, frankly, all together the six movies are fantastic and a great way to sink deep into lore-heavy fantasy for a while. And I’m catching way more easter-egg type details after having read the Silmarillion so it’s even more enjoyable. (finally, after about a week of binge-watching) I forgot how much this story impacted me. I forgot how wrenchingly bittersweet the ending is. I forgot how much of a mark that reading and watching this story left on my writing.

Upside-Down Magic. Effects were good. Actors were clearly having fun and enjoying everything. Story didn’t make enough sense for my taste, but it was a decent way to kill flight time.

Wish Dragon. So, yes, it’s basically an Aladdin rewrite, but it’s genuinely a cheesy good fluff fest that made me grin a whole lot.

Plays

Esther (Sight and Sound Theatres). < background info > This is my third time to this theatre. There are only two of these in existence and they only run productions of stories out of the Bible. The first time I went I saw a production of Noah, the second time I saw a production of Jesus. My middle sister has moved all the way out to Lancaster, PA in hopes of working at this theatre. My husband and I came out to visit her. < /background info > So. Esther. They really pulled out all the stops on the costumes and set. I mean, REALLY pulled out all the stops. And the three-quarters wrap-around stage is used to great effect. I tend to have a general problem of not understanding all the words in the songs, but I understood enough. I highly recommend sitting close to the front for immersive experiences. This theatre puts on incredible productions and if you ever, ever, EVER have the opportunity to go, take it. Even if you think it's nothing but a bunch of fairy tales, STILL GO. I doubt you'll ever see a fairy tale produced on another stage with equal dedication to immersion.

Shows

The Mandalorian (first two seasons). Well. This was pretty thoroughly enjoyable. It felt very Star-Wars, and I’d kind of given up after recent movies. Felt like it slipped into some preaching toward the end? Not sure, I could be overly sensitive about it, but I enjoyed this a lot (though I did need to turn to my housemate and ask where the flip in the timeline we were because I did NOT realize that the little green kid IS NOT ACTUALLY Yoda).

Games

Portal & Portal 2. Portal is probably the first video game I ever tried to play, back when I had no idea what I was doing. Back then, I attempted to play it on my not-for-gaming Mac laptop. Using my trackpad. Once the jumping-for-extra-velocity mechanic came into play, I just about lost my mind trying to do this with a trackpad and gave up. Later I returned to the game and played it with my then-boyfriend on a proper gaming computer. Now, after having played several games and gotten better at "reading the language" of video games, I decided I wanted to see if I could beat the Portal games by myself. Guess what. I BEAT 'EM. Yes, I remembered most of the puzzles in Portal so that's a little bit of a cheat, but I'd say a good 2/3 of Portal 2 was new puzzles to me. It is crazy how proud I feel of myself that I could beat Portal 2, especially. Learning how to play video games at this age has really knocked down the lie, "You can't learn anything." Though I still suck at platformers and games that require precision. Since I find those types frustrating, I probably won't be playing many. Games are about enjoyment, so I'll push myself a little, but not to the point where I can't stand what I'm playing.

The Observer. I like the concept and the art but I don't think I could keep trying to play this game. It's really depressing. My in-game family members all died of illness or accident or committed suicide. I also kept getting executed by the state. In order to keep us all alive I'd have to do pretty terrible things that I have a hard enough time contemplating even in a fictional setting.

Baba Is You. Fun and interesting concept, but I got stuck pretty early on. Don't think I want to push as hard on this one.

[emblemxeno]

Is it weird that Azura's crystal ball of truth didn't bother me but the way they blew off Gunter's involvement did? He rejoins in CQ! He knows about Valla! He is an ally to their plight because he saw the truth himself! He has a tense reunion immediately after with Hans! And yet... Corrin and Azura never bother asking for his help in cruising their ruse. Hell even if Azura's crystal had a timer or something, I was still confused why they didn't let him in on that important info since she was the one who found him and made sure he was still alive.

Yeah, that’s one thing about FE as a whole in that you can’t have too many characters be plot relevant because the existence of perma-death would mean having to rewrite a lot of scenes for every possibility.

But even then, Gunter can only retreat instead of dying because he has like, a few extra scenes in Conquest so I don’t know why he wasn’t more involved than he already was. Maybe they didn’t wanna give him too much spotlight since he takes on a major role in Revelation? I don’t know, it’s all weird any way. 

It’s a missed opportunity in Fates that actually holds some merit, because usually when people talk about the game’s missed opportunities, they mean things the game never even hinted at in the first place.

[imjustmarcy]

My Ao3 review of the year??

So, because I have nothing better to do, here: have a list of every fic (mainly bnha, oops) that I posted this year, sorted by different AUs and plot bc holy shit I made like 4 series this year-

Endeavor-centric:

The day that wasn't (x) (5k) Gonna be honest, not a big fan of Endeavor, but my pal Platypus mentioned their dream they had and well, this was born. Basically Endeavor getting hit with a Quirk that turns him into a ghost and makes so he's forced to follow his children around and hear what they really think of him. With a sprinkle of DabiHawks

Hawks-centric:

The Discovery (x) (1k) so my brain decided to write aromatic bisexual Hawks bc self project much and this is just a small piece of him finding out he's aro.

Very self indulgent DabiHawks plus Mar projecting onto Hawks again:

The bird that forgot how to fly (x) (2k) just some hurt/comfort that I wrote to vent

Dabihawks as parents:

Yes I am indeed that bitch. Now prepare yourself bc I wrote A LOT about this...

Phoenix (x) (20k) basically the introduction to the story of Ryu, the DabiHawks kid, and chapter two goes more in depth about him and his best friends. Chapter one is more DabiHawks centric, and chapter 3 is just a mister dump of extra info.

A (not really) spooky Halloween (x) (3k) Halloween special of Ryu trying to sneak out to a haunted house with his friends. Spoiler: his dads know and just decide to fuck with him.

Ryu's little time travel adventure (x) (6k) Ryu gets hit with a Quirk that sends him to the past, before his idiotic dads were even together. There will be a next part to this but at this rate it will have to be posted sometime in January so...

The new League of Villains (x) (7k) so Mar's monkey brain wanted to make a part with Ryu becoming a villain so... He's vry badass and formes the Dragon Alliance, aka the new LOV, with the help of his best friends and with the purpose of destroying the Hero Commission :D

Dabihawks has Ryu, but it's crack:

There's a lot more crack works for the Dragon Verse than there is for the 'Canon' story... Oh well

Sneaky is my middle name (or not) (x) (4k) Hawks has a big ass mouth and lets it slip he has a son and is married. Dabi is not amused.

Who's the dad? (x) (4k) follow-up to that disaster and poor attempt at a social media fic. The internet is smart and everyone already suspects that #DabiIsTheDad

Should've keep it in your pants (x) (4k) inspired by the amazing fic 'Stolen Fried Chicken'. Where Hawks discovers that his son's dad is very much not dead. Ft Natsuo and Hawks being the best bros and having one braincell between the two of them.

Dabi's Biggest Secret(s) (x) (3k) the Todorokis find a bunch of old flash drives with their older brother's videos and discover he used to date Hawks and had a kid with him before they even graduated high school :D

Hawks makes a scene (x) (2k) complementary to the previous part, with Hawks finding out Touya is not dead and proceeding to scream at his face in front of the entire League because he left Hawks and his son to belive he was dead.

Dabi the waking cryptid (x) (1k) modern college AU with no quirks?? I guess. So the league is all curious about why does Dabi never hangs out with them. Guy's just busy with his model and actor fiancé, his studies, and their son.

Again very self indulgent DabiHawks but it's Angel and demon AU.

Angel wings and demon instincts (x) (6k) Dabi is a demon and gets sent to earth to cause havoc, Hawks is an angel sent to find Dabi and keep him from causing havoc. They gay for each other. That's it.

An angel's first time (x) (1k) the first smut I write in the past 4 years or so, still demon and angel AU.

Shiggy, Hawks and Dabi being childhood friends <3

The Terror Trio (x) (2k) those three as childhood friends + their reunion, with a sprinkle or Shiggy/Natsuo and DabiHawks at the end.

The de-aged Terror Trio (or the little menaces, according to Aizawa Shota) (x) (5k) the Terror Trio get de-aged and found by Aizawa, who takes them to UA. They almost make class 1A have a heart attack.

Converting Eri to chaos, a guide by the Terror Trio (x) (5k) the de-aged Terror Trio bonds with Eri and they cause havoc at UA. A fourth and maybe last part on the works.

Yay for even more self indulgent DabiHawks:

The mysterious case of Hawks' boyfriend (x) (2k) Hawks is already dating Dabi, everyone at his agency are snoopy bitches and want to know the tea.

FINALLY, SOMETHING THAT'S NOT BNHA! My vld rewrite:

My Blood (x) (800) Lance is Altean and Allura is his cousing. Lotor is his half-brother. Klance and Lotura. The og version (the Spanish version, being published in my wattpad) is currently about halfway through the story, with 30 chapters. I'm working on translating this one and posting it on AO3, hence the low word count.

Aaaaand that's it. I just started writing in English this year, and that sort of really boosted my creativity, since I started posting stuff on AO3 just this past September, so to post this much fics in that amount of time... Damn. Will update the post if I manage to finish this I'm writing for Christmas/Ryu's birthday/Hawks' birthday.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Guess what? We’re onto the Thieves in Time rewrite Episode 2: Go West Young Raccoon! And before we start, can I say that Tennessee was my favorite in the game? Because he was. 

Onto the rewrite! Featuring an OC and a special guest appearance!:

The Cooper Gang ends up in the old west, where Tennessee Kid Cooper should be. However, much like Japan, things are odd.

Sly goes out for recon, and finds out about Tennessee being arrested, and a new Sheriff in town, Toothpick. Unfortunately, when Sly makes his way back to the hideout, he is followed. Fortunately, the one who followed will be an ally!

As soon as he gets back, the door is kicked open by a female Coyote, who points a gun at them and demands answers. The Gang tries to play dumb, but she says she already figured out some things. Toothpick's men have mentioned Time Travel. And while she thought it was the alcohol talking, Sly is definitely a Cooper. She has plenty of puzzle pieces, she just wants them to put them together. 

After admitting and explaining that yes, Time Travel is a thing, the Coyote puts her guns away and tells them she's George, local saloon owner and a friend of Tennessee's. 

George wanted to go in guns blazing as soon as Tennessee got arrested, but figured that might be a bad idea and has been gathering information through her saloon. She's especially laying low because Toothpick is looking for her. 

When asked how she's hiding in plain sight so well, she just says "Toothpick's looking for a 'Miss Georgia Darrow', not 'George the bartender'!". Basically, no one in town knows her real full name. And the few who were smart enough to connect the dots like her too much to hand her over. 

They still end up with the "let's break Tennessee out by getting Sly arrested" plan. Though with George in on the jailbreak, it's easier to convince Tennessee to trust Sly. Mostly because she tells them to just hand Tennessee the communicator instead of skirting around the subject. 

After getting Tennessee out, the next plan is getting his gun back. However, the plot is derailed a little because he slips and says they need to "get his gun and ring back". Everyone asks "what ring?" And he gets a little shifty but eventually confesses. 

Turns out, Tennessee had planned to propose to George after the bank heist. But then he got arrested and since the ring was in his pocket, it was confiscated as 'evidence'. George is kinda touched but also extra pissed at Toothpick for fucking up the proposal. 

Since I rewrote it so Carmelita is already with the Gang, we skip the missions where they have to rescue her and then everyone gets captured and she has to rescue them. (Also, since Tennessee is taken, and the Sly/Carmelita fight isn't relationship breaking, they don't have whatever they had in the game). Toothpick also doesn't steal the van.

This is instead replaced with Sly ending up meeting the one character he really did NOT want to confront on this adventure, Clockwerk. 

Clockwerk shows up while Sly is attempting to do one of the other setup jobs. He looks a little different, his mechanical body matching the technology of the time. But still, even as he approaches, Sly knows there’s probably not a second mechanical owl haunting his family. 

Clockwerk is less hostile and more curious. He mentions seeing Sly and his gang in other Times, foreshadowing the other episodes, and had yet to interfere. But he can only stay in the shadows and observe for so long. 

Sly decides to tell the truth, but play what he knows about Clockwerk. He says that an enemy is attacking the Coopers through Time, and Sly gets to fix it. However, it would be a bad idea for Clockwerk to take advantage of it. After all, his History is intertwined with the Cooper Family. Messing with it could spell his own demise. 

Clockwerk ponders that, but wonders if it wouldn’t be worth it to end their feud here and now, striking while they’re distracted. Sly’s just all ‘where’s the fun in that?’. After all, Clockwerk wants to prove he’s better than the Coopers and their legacy. Going after them when another villain has taken them down? That’s not much of a victory. 

While considering that, Sly plays another card. He tells Clockwerk that, if anything, he should be helping them. Obviously Clockwerk is annoyed and insulted by the suggestion. But Sly asks ‘are you really going to let someone other than you take us down? Are you going to let them succeed where you have failed?”

Clockwerk chuckles at this, but agrees that he will stay out of it. Preserving his own legacy and destroying the Coopers on his terms will come eventually. 

After that, Sly goes back to the hideout to have a mini-breakdown because hello ptsd! He was shoving his panic down in the moment but now that he’s safe he’s like ‘Okay, I’m just gonna… take a nap. Knock right the hell out!’. 

Tennessee comments on how he don’t blame him for that. Clockwerk is one of the few things the Coopers are worried about, in the long run. The rest of the Gang is a little curious. They all dealt with Clockwerk as an enemy, but they don’t know what the story is behind it. What is Clockwerk’s issue with the Coopers? 

Tennessee admits he doesn’t completely know. That info didn’t get written down anywhere, probably because whichever Cooper started this didn’t think the old bird would stick around so long. What he does know is there was some sort of betrayal involved. That’s the only kind of thing that could make someone hate with enough passion for immortality. But he has no idea which Cooper started it or what the whole mess is about. 

Back to your regularly scheduled plot!

Train heist goes mostly the same except the breaks on the van are fine so they don't make a hasty time jump. But Tennessee’s gun is taken again. 

They find out that the next place the Gang has to go is to the time of swashbuckling pirates with Henriette 'one-eye' Cooper! Yeah I mentioned that I'm replacing two of the levels completely and one is Bob because while I like prehistoric levels… it doesn't make sense for the story. (Seriously. The Thievius Raccoonus only goes back to ancient Egypt! Even if the family were Master Thieves before making the book, even to the point of 10,000 BC, there would be no record of it for Le Paradox to use!!!)

Anyway, George managed to help with this because Toothpick and his goons paid for their drinks in some gold doubloons. 

Carmelita also drops off Toothpick in the Present. Her bosses are like "wtf? You just dropped off El Jefe five minutes ago how did you-" and she just deadpans "Time Travel. Long story. Might have some more here in a few minutes. Well. A few minutes for you guys.". Her bosses are so confused.