#I know some character from the adventure zone had this name but it’s not all one word and anyway they are fictional

[amethystjet]

Let’s say, sometime in your twenties, you find it necessary and desirable to change your name, and the name Electra calls to you. Except that you decide that’s too short and not significant enough, and you change your name—legally—to Electrocardiogram. You like the machines that make them, you like how they beep, you find personal significance in aspects of their relations to our hearts and heartbeats and the impermanence of life. But everyone just calls you Electra.

Now it is a while later and you realize you’ve never actually TAKEN an electrocardiogram, and you’d like to buy one of the machines that make them. Assume for this scenario that they are affordable and practical objects. But the only people willing to sell them to you run a small online shop where they take your card details down manually. If you pay these people for an electrocardiogram machine, they are going to see that your name is literally, legally, electrocardiogram, a name no one else has. What are they going to think? What do you do? How do you explain this?

This is a real question I am trying to buy ambergris and I’m starting to worry that the name on my debit card is going to weird out the wholesalers 😭

[watsondcsj]

SINSON IS JON KENT

Not metaphorically. Not philosophically. Canonically. Solicits dropped last week, and to my dismay, the description of Sinister Sons #6 mentioned no addition of a third kid joining the story as I had surmised previously. It took me a bit to figure out what it meant, but we got there. I have been convinced since March 2022 that DC was eventually going to pull the old switcheroo and reinstate the better™️ Jon Kent into the main canon after Tomasi's Superman & Robin Special gave us a really strange and kinda stilted adventure of Jon and Damian in the Fortress of Solitude. That book took me two months to figure out what it was saying: two versions of Jon Kent were coming. I didn't know when. I didn't know how, but I knew this promise would be upheld.

1. Vibe Check

Ever since Bendis was on the outs in 2020, DC has hinted very un-subtlely that everything he and Dan DiDio had planned was going out of the window from Drake to 5G. Super Sons megafans might remember that one time Bendis tweeted that your favorite comics were ass and the upcoming Legion book was the second coming of Christ. They might also remember that Challenge of the Super Sons opens with an inside joke mocking that very same tweet.

But Tomasi wasn't alone. Bendis himself would bemoan the future in his Justice League run, implying that nothing he had planned would come to pass.

The wheels of change were turning even back in 2020/2022. I was so confident in this that I wrote a gigantic essay (that I won an award for) before Dark Crisis had released, and I listed all of this out and much more before. At the time, I was convinced that we'd have two Jons by the time Dark Crisis ended. Alas, it's two years later, and no such luck. I still stand by the premise of that essay; that Superman: Son of Kal-El was an apology to readers for mistreating a fan-favorite character. I was incorrect in my assumption that the teenager Jon Kent we'd been told was the same one that had left Earth with Jor-El in Bendis's Man of Steel mini was actually the New 52 Superboy or his original, Jonathan Lane Kent. Although we have yet to be told his full name since Bendis essentially became the DC Comics showrunner, we are still supposed to assume our newest Superman is Jonathan Samuel Kent, but I know better. He's not the Jon born during Convergence. Son of Kal-El showed us he was born in the Fortress of Solitude like they showed off in Superman Reborn, not the Flashpoint Batcave. It's important to distinguish that these two are different and distinct characters. Really, the fact that Zod's son Lor hasn't found himself aged to match the newest Superman gives me suspicion enough that something is up.

2. "Last we left off..." - Matthew Mercer

Since I published my essay, Jon has been busy. He got his dad back. He announced he was going steady with his boyfriend to the entire world. He got his secret identity back. He went to another Earth to fight his tormentor of five years. Everything's coming up Milhouse for Jon.

And I'm bored.

Jon hasn't done anything self-motivated for what seems like years. No, it literally has been years. His boyfriend came to him and instigated their relationship. He didn't do anything to get Clark back. He didn't do anything to resolve anything with Ultraman. He left the man who brought him to that Earth in the Phantom Zone and was cross-faded back to his own after waggling his finger disapprovingly at the Injustice version of Clark. His scrappy impishness has left. His devil-may-care attitude towards his own safety is gone. Thankfully, Dan Jurgens and Lee Weeks made a sequel series to their mini that introduced Jon in the back-ups of Action Comics.

Lois & Clark: Doom Rising is in many ways Jurgens and Weeks' response to Brian Bendis' Superman stories. Set some time before the Kents moved back to Metropolis and well before his fateful encounter with Jor-El, Jon is approached by a mysterious space person who asks him to join them as they go into the cosmos to right wrongs, but instead of sitting idly as it became clear his life was in danger, Jon attempts an escape. Clark is kept occupied by a big bruiser so he can't come to Jon's rescue, but with Lois' help (incontrast to the complacency Bendis wrote for her) Clark eventually takes chase to rescue their boy. I got a lot of joy from that story. It also gave me another reason to believe my theory was still valid. After crash landing, Jon rescues his fellow survivor from the fiery wreckage but is severely burned in the process. I ask you: How can a boy who spent five entire years in a volcano prison leave unscathed if mere fire messed up his arms? (I'd also like to ask Bendis how his power of flight was sapped immediately under the volcanic ash plume but remained invulnerable for all five years, but I digress.)

The mini also ends on a line fit for canned laughter to follow as Jon says, "Awesome! Maybe I should get kidnapped more often!" in response to getting bacon and pancakes for breakfast as he returns home. They knew what they were doing. I admit that on its own, these things may not be indicative of anything. It may be the whims of Jon's creators to let off some steam and DC's corporate offices obliging, knowing there is an audience for the younger Jon Kent. Or that's what I would have said if the other story DC published starring the older Jon Kent didn't have a few nuggets of its own.

Tom Taylor wrote Adventures of Superman Jon Kent as a kind of epilogue to Superman Son of Kal-El to mixed reception to put it lightly. I'm not here to talk about the climax of the final issue as tempting, as that may be. Instead, I want to focus on the beginning when Jon is in the company of Val-Zod, the Superman of Earth-2. Jon states that he knows that Val is from another Earth because he can see the differences in his molecular structure. I believe this is a useful tidbit for later when Jon needs to identify his double is not from a different Earth than his. Then when they get to the Earth they've tracked Ultraman in response to Jon asking why they needed him specifically and not any other Jon in the multiverse, Val says that time is a constant across the multiverse which calls into question how Jon was thrown backward in time to an Earth-3 with a Crime Syndicate that the audience had seen die. Then, as if to disperse any lingering theory that Jon may be the son of Ultraman and not a true son of Clark Kent, Tom has Jon say, "I was never your Jon!" Finally, near the end of issue 5, Jon says he's been practicing sneaking up on Damian for years (plural) while holding the Lasso of Truth when he should only have had a single year between meeting Damian and getting lost in the vastness of space. Another potential plot hole if this were the same Jon that we knew before, which I hope to have convinced you at this point that he's not.

3. Pavlov's Orphan

And now to substantiate my Sinson claim. I suppose all of my previous theories have been fueled by vibes, but this more than the others feels that way, yet it feels the most salient. So, who is Sinson? He thinks he's the abandoned son of Thaal Sinestro left on some rock out in space. That's probably not true, just based on how much we've dwelled on how much Sinson wants it to be the case, but also because Sinestro already had a secret child that he hid out in space. Soranik Natu was created by Geoff Johns during his time on Green Lantern, but her big backstory reveal was handled by Peter Tomasi, notably one of the creators of Rebirth's Super Sons and writer for Sinister Sons. I find it very unlikely that he would purposely reuse a plot point he had already visited for another child of the same character. What's more, Sinister Sons has taken inspiration from the classic Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist. Sinson is in an orphan situation like when Oliver gets to London. He's encouraged to steal to line the pockets of the adult giving him food and shelter. This guy is called Nagaf, which is Fagin backward if you change a letter to avoid being dangerously close to a slur. Oliver Twist ends with Oliver going to live with a living relative he didn't know he had, another reason that Sinson likely isn't Sinestro's kid.

Nearly unprompted, Nagaf tells the boy that he was left at his orphanage six years ago by a woman who said she'd be back without leaving a name to call him by. "Oh, shoot. I guess that means he can't be Jon," is what an IDIOT would say! Two things: nothing is saying that that planet makes its full revolution around its star at the same rate as Earth does and in a metanarrative sense, six years ago irl from 2024 is 2018 which is the year that Bendis was Coming. Between Son of Kal-El, Lois & Clark 2, Superman & Robin Special, and Challenge of the Super Sons, all of those writers have more than happy to reply in kind to Bendis' multiple in-comic responses to fan discontent for his work. This would be Tomasi's third time and rightly justified since Bendis' infamous tweet directly insulted his work, and Tomasi clearly wasn't too happy about the decisions made when he was removed from Superman.

One of the more blatant times Tomasi would voice his dismay was later in Challenge of the Super Sons when Jon makes a comment that he didn't "instantly forget" some mental torture he went through in a subtle jab at the writing of the current Superman Jon Kent's ability to compartmentalize his own trauma. Really, this pair of panels may have held more foreshadowing than I initially caught.

So then why does Sinson look like he is from Korugar? My guess is he suffered some burns escaping from his volcano prison. Jurgens left us that little nugget last year, and his Jon certainly wouldn't have just sat in that crater for five years before trying to escape. Why doesn't he have the powers of a Kryptonian? When Lor-Zod gets to the planet Sinson lives, his Kryptonian powers disappear quickly. Why doesn't he seem to remember anything about who he is and where he comes from then? Why does he think his father is a villain? I'll say amnesia and mixing his time with Ultraman with Nagaf telling him he was from Korugar, but Sinson has more pathos hidden deep in his subconscious that betrays his true self.

Sinson chooses this name for himself which could be a really on-the-nose descriptor of his truth that he is Sinestro's son or it could be Jon's impetus for leaving with Jor-El coming out, that there is something wrong with him and that's why the Teen Titans rejected him. To this point, throughout the backups in Green Lantern where he was introduced, Sinson has soliloquies revealing that he begs to be taken seriously by his peers. When he overthrows Nagaf, he quickly builds a Sinestro Corps from his fellow orphans and paints big ol' "S" shapes on all of their chests (and shoulders like the current Superman family's jackets). He is good with technology enough to build a taser and a rocket, which again Jon is also known for. The opening scene even parallels Superman #8 with the boys using that sci-fi engineer zappy stick to make or fix something. He's able to futz with Lor-Zod's Kryptonian space pod very easily which presumably would not be easy for a boy who is unfamiliar with that flavor of technology. He has an affinity with dogs which Jon is known to have. He's cocky and fallible like Jon. He's got long hair like Jon, though much longer than the last time a story was published about him. All of the issue covers give him glasses that he doesn't wear in the story proper as if they're trying to imply that this is a secret identity i.e. Clark Kent. Sinson and Sinestro are not drawn with the same shaped ears in the mini, either. What I think is most significant, though, is that throughout the backups, Sinson acts more similar to Batman than to Sinestro. He's not going around causing fear to assert his dominance over the seedy underbelly he's robbing. He's righting wrongs. He's stealing drug money to skim creds off the top for his rocket, sure, but he's also returning organs to the hospital they were stolen from. This is the work of a kid who wants to do good, but his words do not match his actions. It's going to take a journey inside a giant TIME-TRAVELING SPACE WHALE (wink wink nudge nudge) to sort it all out. The cover and solicit for the sixth issue promise as much.

I didn't even have time to mention this time the chalkboard in Flashpoint Beyond that Jeremy Adams worked on promised that a supposed "he" would find "his son" and that the Time Masters were warned not to interfere, or that the recent Flash issue 797 implied that the Super Sons cameoing in the issue were from the main universe and had just finished their battle with Rex Luthor in Adventures of the Super Sons and how important that mini is to the continuity of this theory. I also could have brought up that every Tom King miniseries since Batman/Catwoman has led to an element he wrote end up in the main canon of the DCU, and that he's currently writing Super Sons in the backup feature of his Wonder Woman run. Everything is coming back around, and I feel confident we'll see its fruition come June or July.

[ltwharfy]

"Bob's Burgers" Season 9 Episode Ranking Rewatch (Long Post)

So, I've been rewatching "Bob's Burgers" from the beginning and ranking the episodes using the spreadsheet that @babsvibes created! If you want to know why I'm doing this or how I view the 1-5 rating scale, you can check out my Season 1 post! If you want to check out any of the other seasons, I've been using the "bob's burgers episode ranking rewatch" tag for all of them.

Now, on to Season 9:

Average (Mean) Score: 4.55

Mode (Most Common) Ranking: 5

Ranking Breakdown: 12 5s 10 4s

Season as a whole thoughts:

"Bob's Burgers" is turning nine and it's feeling *uses inhaler* fine!

Seriously, this is just another really excellent season in my opinion. It joins Season 4 and 8 as one of the seasons to not getting any episodes rated lower than a 4, and it's average score is good enough for 4th place of the currently ranked seasons below 7, 4, and 5. In some ways, it reminds me a lot of Season 7- a great mix of humor and heart along with introducing some new characters and other innovations- it's definitely representative of the series at its best, in my opinion.

Some thoughts on specific episodes (and feel free to ask if you want my thoughts on an episode I didn't comment on):

"Just One of the Boyz 4 Now for Now": It's a tough call, but this might be my favorite season premiere and my favorite "musical episode" (ie: one with more than the typical 1-2 songs). All the songs are absolute classics and great parodies of romantic comedy tropes! it's really a brilliant episode. It's hard to name a favorite song, but I think I might have to go with "Friend Zone" just because "Now let's kiss over this cake/'Cause it's your birthday, I guess" always cracks me up. The baby rat subplot is also really fun, and a great use of Hugo. And this episode gives us another (brief) appearance of Louise's Boo Boo crush, which is one of my favorite running gags! A great way to start the season.

"The Taking of Funtime One Two Three": While we're on the subject of great songs (or we were recently) "let an egg roll, from your egg hole" and "if wooly mammoths had had wheels maybe they'd still be around" are among the "Bob's Burgers" song lyrics that are always living in my head. Sadly, I rarely have an occasion to say either of them in conversation. I do like to say "To what end, people?!" occasionally, so thanks for that, Trip. Anyway, this is another classic "The Belcher Kids and their friends have an adventure episode" with a healthy does of Mr. Fischoeder and some fun moments with Yuli the security guard, one of my favorite minor recurring characters.

"Tweentrepreneurs": I love this episode because it helped inspire one of my favorite future career headcanons for Louise (and an outlined multichapter fic I'll probably never write). While taking over the restaurant or being a film director seem like the most obvious future career for Louise, this episode has the biggest of about three canon moments that inspired my "Louise Belcher, future labor union organizer" headcanon. I worked in the labor movement for several years and I just think would Louise would love it- taking on the rich and powerful, helping other people stand up for themselves, causing good trouble- it's a really good fit for her. And here she is, leading a walkout at age 9! (And, given my fondness for her relationship with Rudy, I have to mention that it's her concern for his health that is the final straw leading to the walkout.)

"Nightmare on Ocean Avenue Street": Probably my favorite Halloween episode; definitely has my two favorite Halloween costumes! Rudy and Bob are probably the two characters I relate to the most, and it cracks me up that their costumes in this episode are totally things I would do: "what? It might look like I'm wearing normal clothes, but actually I'm totally Paul Rudd or Bruce Springsteen, can't you tell?!" Also, I don't think I've mentioned before how much I love the guy who's about to throw the candy into the incinerator. He's really one of my favorite one-off characters. Dude just got out of six month coma, doesn't know what day it is, still goes to work...and apparently will just throw anything into the incinerator that anybody tells him to (unless he gets a more compelling reason not to)? I think he might rank second after the "Boyz 4 Now" security guard as my favorite nameless one-off character.

"I Bob Your Pardon": Maybe my third or fourth favorite Thanksgiving episode! I've always had an interested in politics and journalism (I wanted to be a journalist when I was a kid) so this hilarious small town Thanksgiving turkey pardoning scandal really hits a lot of the right notes for me. If I had become a journalist, I definitely would've stolen "Well, somebody better call Huey Lewis because I may have found myself some news" as my catchphrase. And the end credits song is a total banger! "Don't you taint my mayor!"

"Better Off Sled": An excellent Christmas episode! Generally speaking, Louise and Logan's dynamic isn't really my jam, but I enjoy them here. The one-upsmanship of the snowball arms race is a lot of fun, and the "stupid Christmas" ending is sweet but not too sweet and feels totally in character for Louise. Also, I can't help but love this exchange: "Then why does it look like your butt could take a sheet of fresh-baked cookies out of the oven?" "Genetics?" (Kristen Schaal's delivery of "genetics?" is one of at least three times on the series when she absolutely kills me with her delivery of a single word). All that being said, I think Teddy is the real comedic MVP of this episode- pretty much everything he says cracks me up! And I love that Rudy is basically the one who saves the day for the Belcher kids! And Knitcracker, I can't believe I didn't mention Knitcracker yet! (That said, it's still not my favorite Christmas episode since it doesn't involve any references to murder mannequins.)

"The Helen Hunt": I feel like this might be one of my least popular shipping opinions but...I like Teddy/Kathleen! Not in the sense that I want to create fic or art for them, but I just think they are kind of sweet together. Like with Roger and Judy from "Aquaticism" they have that "awkward middle-aged people finding each other" vibe that this awkward middle-aged single person finds appealing. And I think her pretty easygoing, laidback nature is a nice contrast to how stressed out/excitable Teddy can be. And I always enjoy people who watch odd sports! Okay, Teddy/Kathleen aside, I also just enjoyed that they did a followup to "Housetrap", and the father and hot son plumbing duo subplot is so cute! "You, you make plumbing fun..."

"Bed, Bob, and Beyond": One of the things I've noticed in this rewatch, is that I really enjoy the three-story episodes (aka vignette episodes aka triptychs aka who knows what else some folks have called them.) I think what I really enjoy is that the reason for them is always different, and therefore it always says something different about the characters and their situations. it's not just the Simpsons having a trio of non-canon Halloween adventures ever year. I think showing Linda and Bob having a stupid fight, and the kids view of it and their efforts to get them to reconcile, was a really clever use of one of these stories. Also, if I am ever asked to do an English accent, I will likely say "I'm watching footie on the telly in the pubby where the beer is". (Which is probably offensive, so please don't ask me to do that!)

"Every Which Way But Goose": Another thing the rewatch has made me appreciate more: Jimmy Jr. and his relationship with Tina. I never hated J-Ju, but I will say that I probably took him and the Tinimmy relationship for granted- it's been there since almost the beginning but I never really thought much about it. But the rewatch has helped me realize how funny of a character J-Ju is (it's just a really funny voice by H. Jon Benjamin) and how the Tinimmy relationship has given us some really funny episodes- most notably this one and "Ex Mach Tina", which are both all-time classics in my book (and, of course, they play a big role in "Bob Actually" as well, but I like that one for other reasons as well.) To me, it's clear from this episode and others that J-Ju does care about Tina...he's just very much a 13 year old boy. So, he's occasionally thoughtful but more often dumb or oblivious. Also, the end credits song to this one is another classic. I wish I could go to a concert of "Bob's Burgers" music just so I could scream out "secret kiss with Bruce the Goose" with thousands of other excited concert goers, because that is what that lyric deserves, dammit!

"The Gene Mile": So, I recently posted about how much I enjoyed some of the Rudy moments in this one. This is another great "Belcher kids and their friends" adventure; and I really wish that Courtney and Alex had more appearances in stories like this- where they and their relationship with Gene isn't really the center of the story- they are just part of the gang! It's always fun to watch different combinations of the kids have fun together. Also, nice for Large Tommy to get his largest role- going back to Season 1 of the rewatch it's funny to think that he was introduced much earlier than some of Louise's more iconic classmates (Rudy, Chloe, Millie, Jessica, Harley, etc.).

"P.T.A. It Ain't So": I feel like this might be the first example in the rewatch of an episode that really grew on me. A lot of the episodes I've given 5s to were ones I remember loving as soon as I saw them. Or they were "sleeper hits" that I had basically forgotten about before rewatching. This episode I remember when I first saw it, and I remember thinking it was fine but nothing great. But on rewatches I just find myself enjoying it more and more. I really love the Kim and Sons hardware store bird subplot- especially the ridiculous flyer the kids make. Also, it's fun watching the kids play with their pipe in the background (such a great kids being kids moment)! But the PTA stuff is great too- I love the fact that Tammy's Dad is Linda's PTA bestie for some reason! And Linda's idea of Colleen being in the shark suit for the dramatic revelation! And the Bleach Boys! Also, as someone who headed a neighborhood political group for a while, Joanne's line "Do you have any idea how many emails I send a week? No, you don't because no one reads them" resonates with me.

Random thoughts (stuff that doesn't affect the ratings):

-More great new characters continue to arrive on the scene! Hi Susmita! Hi Arnold!

-I would totally watch Randy's movie "A Life, Well, Steved". "And I thought to myself, 'I can't take another hurdle. I think I am that baby turtle.'" That's some beautiful, profound stuff there.

See you in the Season 10 post! It could be pretty soon since I've already watched rated it all- just need time to write!

[dr-mechano]

Eggman Has Always Had Redeeming Qualities: Masterpost

Eggman’s always had noble traits. He’s still a bad guy, I’m not arguing that he’s a hero by any means. But he’s not some irredeemably evil character without any nuance.

1992 - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit)

At the end of Underground Zone, Sonic falls headlong into an unavoidable lava pit. He’d have met certain doom... if he wasn’t saved by Dr. Eggman.

Yes, Eggman immediately drops Sonic into a boss arena where he squares off against his latest Badnik, the Pit Master. I’m not arguing that Eggman was trying to save Sonic’s life in the long-term. But this action does display a sense of sportsmanship and respect for Sonic, as if to say, “No, I won’t let my arch-nemesis die by falling and tripping into lava. He, and by extension I, am too good for that.”

2001 - Sonic Adventure 2

“As a child, I looked up to my grandfather because of all the great things he accomplished in his life. He was my hero! And I wanted to be a great scientist like him. But... Did he really mean to destroy us?”

Eggman opens up in a rare moment of emotional vulnerability to Tails in this scene, revealing an important piece of his past: That he’d always looked up to and admired his grandfather, Professor Gerald Robotnik, who inspired him to get into science in the first place.

But here, for the first time, Eggman has misgivings about his childhood hero. Gerald, it turned out, wasn’t the great man he’d always imagined him to be. He went mad and tried to destroy the world - a fact that Eggman contemplates somberly. He comes off as disillusioned with Gerald, and disappointed that he would ever sink this low.

2003 - Sonic Heroes

“Eggman is a romanticist, a feminist, and a self-professed gentleman. Sadly, his charms are often difficult to spot through the abominable laughter that accompanies his maniacal declarations of world domination.” - Sonic Heroes instruction manual

Sega themselves outright say it here. Eggman, despite his villainous qualities, has these positive qualities as well, which the manual admits can be difficult to spot because of his villainy.

Lest anyone think this was the addition of a cheeky localizer, and not canon to the Japanese portrayal of Eggman, there are Japanese character profiles that say the same thing.

2005 - Shadow the Hedgehog

When Eggman learns that Professor Gerald formed an alliance with Black Doom, he fears the worst: that his grandfather betrayed humanity in the name of mere research. This shows that, while Eggman wants to conquer and rule over humanity, he still sees humanity’s value. He still sees fundamentally selling them out to alien invaders as wrong, and morally objects to what he thinks his grandfather did.

Fortunately, his fears are assuaged when he learns that Gerald created the Eclipse Cannon to stop Black Doom, which he declares is brilliant. But there’s more from Shadow the Hedgehog:

Here, Eggman - thinking this may be his final moments alive - confesses the truth to Shadow about who he is.

Eggman has nothing to gain from doing this. There’s no selfish or villainous ulterior motive that could possibly be applied here. He tells Shadow the truth about his past, giving him closure - for perhaps one final time, during his battle with Devil Doom.

He does a good thing for someone else, and gets nothing in return for it.

2008 - Sonic Unleashed

Chip worries that Eggman might be starving Professor Pickle.

Tails quickly assures him that he wouldn’t do that, because he’s “not that cruel.” And considering Tails himself has been kidnapped by Eggman (back in 8-bit Sonic 2), he’d know from experience.

2013 - Sonic Lost World

During Eggman’s truce with Sonic and Tails, Eggman immediately and without hesitation leaps into harm’s way to save Tails’s life after a rogue Cubot-Crabmeat attacks him.

This isn’t some master gambit to gain the heroes’ trust, since he leaps into danger at the spur of the moment without any time to think it over. Furthermore, Eggman really only needs Sonic to stop the Zeti, not Tails. You could argue that losing Tails might have put a damper on Sonic’s confidence and made him less likely to defeat his and Eggman’s mutual enemy, but that’s not the kind of complicated weighing-of-options that Eggman would have had any time to think over in the few seconds it took to protect Tails here.

Later, he also rescues Sonic from falling into lava (weird that that specifically has happened twice!), and after faking his own demise even takes the time to swoop down and rescue Orbot and Cubot as well (despite his constant annoyance with them, he does care).

But why would he do this? Even discounting needing Sonic to stop the Zeti, he didn’t need Tails. And after all, Eggman gleefully tries to kill Sonic and Tails in other games, right? The answer is simple: They had a truce, and Eggman has enough decency to honor his terms of the truce.

“Ah, but didn’t Eggman betray Sonic in this game?” you might ask. After all, he did show up at the end as the true final boss after Zavok was defeated. But nope! No betrayal whatsoever took place, and I’ll tell you why:

Sonic and Eggman agreed to work together until the Zeti were defeated and the energy-sucking machine was turned off. Eggman didn’t show up in his Great Eggrobo to fight Sonic until both of those conditions had been met. Meaning, strictly speaking, Eggman didn’t betray Sonic or dishonor the truce. The truce was simply over, and he wasted no time attacking immediately afterward.

2022 - Sonic Frontiers

And finally, we’re here.

In Sonic Frontiers, Eggman creates a new AI program, Sage. Initially Sage is merely a tool, designed to protect Eggman and interface with the Ancients’ technology.

However, Eggman and Sage bond over the course of the game, culminating in Eggman coming to view Sage as his own daughter. That’s right: Eggman loves Sage, and sees her as more than just another expendable minion. This is by far the most blatant example of Eggman having a heart, despite his evil ambitions.

What does any of this mean?

Well, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean: It doesn’t mean that Eggman’s a hero. It doesn’t mean he’s not a villain. It certainly doesn’t mean he��s a good or even morally neutral figure in the Sonic franchise.

Eggman is a bad guy, and I’m not trying to downplay that or whitewash his misdeeds. What I am saying is that Eggman’s better qualities have always existed. Frontiers didn’t invent them out of whole cloth, nor did non-game adaptations like X or Boom (though they did certainly expand and focus on these qualities more than the games usually do).

Game Eggman has everything from in-game cutscenes to official profiles spelling out that he is - to use his own words - a complicated guy.

And to me, that makes Eggman more interesting as a villain, not less. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Eggman - his good and bad traits alike - in future games!

[wild-karrde]

One Step at a Time - Part 9

Master List | Previous Part | Next Part

A/N: IS THIS THING ON??? OK HI HELLO I HAVE RETURNED WITH THIS FIC AND I KNOW I ALWAYS PROMISE THIS, BUT I PINKY SWEAR THE NEXT CHAPTER WILL NOT TAKE AS LONG (in fact, I already have a good chunk of it written). I'm super excited to introduce some new characters (and also maybe make a reference to a certain mechanic that I haven't yet named in this series). But anyway, I AM VERY EXCITED FOR THIS CHAPTER AND I HOPE YOU ALL LIKE IT. THANK YOU as always to the wonderful @teletraan-meets-jarvis for beta-reading this for me and helping me hash out characters and plot and just generally screaming encouragement at me!

Chapter Rating: T

Warnings: language, copious amounts of new OCs (because I cannot help myself)

Word Count: 8.3k words

Lothal wasn’t nearly the paradise Sorgan had been, but it would have to do. Instead of lush green foliage and thick forests, the planet’s landscape was dotted with rock formations that broke up the dead, yellowing grass that covered its plains. Everything appeared to be a different shade of tan or grey.

Arni had told them that the planet had experienced famine and drought during the war, crippling its agricultural industry. But where the farmers had floundered, the mining industry had flourished. The planet was peppered with veins and cave networks that were rich with various metals and minerals that the Empire found useful, so of course it hadn’t wasted any time in swooping in and setting up shop.

Chuckles had been hesitant to travel to any planet that had an Imperial presence, but as Arni pointed out, it was almost impossible to find a world where the Empire didn’t exist in some capacity. Their best option was to find a planet with plenty of rural areas to disappear into, and Lothal provided that. There had been a moment where Chuckles considered returning to Sorgan, but he knew that Ry and Oks had likely had to come up with a story for the drunk that had stumbled out and never returned. Showing back up, especially if the Empire was still around, would only complicate things for them, and that was the last thing he wanted to do for the two women.

So Lothal it was.

Chuckles and Arni had selected a small, family-owned mining operation to target for their next place to settle. The Kern Brothers Mining Company was well away from any major cities, and as a result, a small sort of township had cropped up around the mine itself. It seemed to be a fairly new establishment based on the many job postings that Arni was able to find on various forums, and by all accounts, other than the occasional inspection and weekly supply drops, Imperials largely steered clear of the small community, instead relying on shipments delivered by droids or automated vehicles. 

It wasn’t perfect, but it was about as close as they could hope for. 

As Chuckles settled the freighter into one of the crude landing zones outside of the township, the two younglings pressed forward to get a look at their new home. Aside from the mine, there appeared to be one strip that served as a main part of town, and the area was peppered with buildings that had clearly gone up in a hurry to accommodate the workers. Many of the dwellings seemed to be built from whatever could be salvaged in a hurry, or like the Ayyshus, it appeared many families opted to live out of whatever vessel had carried them there. With opportunities coming and going everywhere across the planet, it made sense to remain mostly mobile should they need to pull up stakes and move on. 

Chuckles could see Nita was less than impressed, and Arni was chewing the inside of their cheek, eyes darting around and taking in every detail. Chuck grinned as the two kids turned to him, clearly trying to hide their disappointment.

Not much of an adventure compared to Sorgan. But, it’s quiet. And probably boring. And we could use boring.

“Not much to look at, is it?” he teased, and he could see both of the younglings relax, apparently considering themselves released from having to pretend.

“It’s very… dusty,” Nita concluded.

“And dry,” Arni added.

“But it’s ours,” Chuck countered. “And we’ll make it what we want. And if not, we’ll find somewhere else.”

Nita nodded, appearing to find this an acceptable compromise, but something had drawn Arni’s attention. They giggled, pointing out the front viewport of the freighter. “Nita! Look! A tooka!”

Nita leapt into the co-pilot seat, leaning forward on the control panel to peer outside. “WHERE?”

“RIGHT THERE BY THAT ROCK!”

The speckled creature scratched at an oversized ear, surveying the ship with disinterest.

“TOOKA!” Nita squealed. “Open the hatch Chuckles! I wanna go make him my friend!” She leapt down from the seat, sprinting towards the ramp and bouncing on her toes eagerly.

Chuck tried to stifle his laughter, releasing the hatch and lowering the ramp. He watched as the two younglings raced outside in the late afternoon sun, Nita at a full sprint with Arni calling for her to slow down so as not to frighten the creature. 

The tooka was most definitely not looking to make new friends, lowering its ears and hissing at the approaching younglings before bolting off of the rock it had been sunning itself on. The clone pilot couldn’t help but grin as he watched the two children chase the Loth cat through the grass, shrieking and squealing as they raced in circles after their furry quarry.

We’ll find a way to be happy here. Dust and dryness be damned.

The sun was beginning to approach the horizon already, casting everything in hues of orange and pink as the cool evening breeze kicked up, rustling through the grass. Chuckles strode down the ramp, leaning one shoulder against a landing strut as he watched the two younglings. 

Yeah. We can make this ours.

—

The following morning, Chuckles headed into the small settlement to look for work. From all of the notices Arni had looked through for job postings, it appeared that the mining company had plenty of positions to fill. Chuckles had opted to once again cover his face, deciding it was a risk not worth taking yet. 

Actually entering the settlement did little to improve his first impression of it. The town was far from a booming metropolis, and while he hadn’t expected to find anything close to the scale of Coruscant’s glittering skyscrapers, he also hadn’t anticipated the rusted out husks of buildings that lined the dirt road that appeared to serve as the main street of the settlement. Even though the sun was barely beginning to break over the horizon, the township was already bustling with activity. Groups of children scampered by, stopping to stare at the stranger with the covered face as he made his way towards the mine entrance. Chuckles had become accustomed to children staring at him during his time as a pilot. The ground troopers were fairly commonplace on Coruscant, but the pilots always seemed to garner special attention from any younglings in the area, wanting to know what it was like to soar among the stars and shoot down vulture droids. 

However, it was the stares of the adults that made a certain tension take root between his shoulder blades. It seemed that there was no shortage of variety in terms of species and homeworld, but they all knew one another, and they also were easily able to identify anyone who wasn’t part of the community. Wary eyes seemed to follow him, and after a few failed attempts at a friendly wave, Chuckles shoved his hands in his pockets, fixing his gaze on the large building in front of him. 

The mine’s main office was certainly one of the most well-maintained structures of the settlement, which he supposed made sense considering it was likely the first thing built, and also the structure that largely sustained the entirety of the small settlement. It was the only multiple-story building in the entire community, well-lit windows glowing in the early morning haze. It was easy to identify the employment office with its freshly painted signage. What did surprise him was the lack of activity inside. He’d anticipated a line out the door, or at least a few applicants waiting around to be met with. But the lobby was completely empty when he entered, a soft chime announcing his arrival, seemingly deafening in the silence. He had to fight the urge to flinch. 

The only other occupant of the employment office was a burly Latero at the far end, who glanced up when Chuckles entered. His eyes roved over Chuckles’s frame, clearly surveying his build and physical usefulness before he heaved himself to his feet with two of his four arms, unleashing a deep sigh and making his way over to a large desk that appeared to be the most central piece of furniture in the room. There, he plopped down heavily on a stool, glancing up at Chuckles again and clearing his throat impatiently. Chuckles took his cue, striding quickly up to the front of the desk, trying not to nervously rock back on his heels. 

“Well?” the Latero prompted.

His voice was gravelly, and he raised a bushy eyebrow at Chuckles, toying with the ends of his facial hair, which was streaked with grey. His forearms were thick and scarred from years of hard labor, and he wore a jumpsuit that was stained and torn in various places. A stitched on name tag on his breast identified him as Jerrno. 

“I’m uh… looking for a job,” Chuckles replied, internally cringing. 

Jerrno snorted. “I figured that much. What kind of work?”

“Whatever you’ve got.” 

The Latero paused, glancing up at Chuckles as though he was an idiot. 

Maybe I am. 

“If ya don’t have career aspirations, do ya at least have a chain code?” 

Chuckles hurriedly produced his chain code disk, handing it to the Latero, who scanned it, eyes glancing back and forth over the lines appearing on his datapad before he glared at Chuckles. 

“No employment history.”

“I worked at a common house. Off the books.”

“How long?”

“Five months.” 

Somehow, Jerrno’s expression became even more judgemental. 

“I’m guessing there’s no references available then. Since ya were ‘off the books.’” 

Chuckles flexed his hands nervously. “‘Fraid not.”

The Latero leaned heavily on the desk, steepling his fingers on his uppermost set of arms while his bottom two gestured at Chuckles. “Son, I know ya see there ain’t exactly a line out the door here. We are hurtin’ for people, but I can’t hire ya if I don’t even know who I’m hiring. ‘Specially with no relevant experience.”

“Listen, I’m strong, and I’m stubborn, and I’ll bust my ass however you need me to.”

Jerrno heaved a sigh. “I don’t even know what species ya are with that getup, and that makes me think you’re hiding from somethin’. I do need people, but not ones that are going to land me in hot water. Understand?” 

Chuckles’s palms were sweaty. 

“I’m human.”

“Can ya take off the mask and prove it?”

We don’t have enough supplies to get anywhere else. It has to be here. We have to make this work. 

Maybe enough time’s passed. The war didn’t really make it to Lothal anyway. Maybe he doesn’t know what a clone looks like.

He sighed, tossing caution to the wind as he pulled off the mask and goggles. 

The Latero’s eyes widened in recognition. Chuckles’s heart fell. 

“You’re a clone.”

Chuckles’s fingers itched for his blaster. He’d left it on the ship.

“I get that a lot,” he replied steadily, hoping a lie might get him at least to the door. 

Jerrno raised an eyebrow. “Son, I served the Republic. I’d know that face anywhere.” 

Chuckles’s mind was racing, but before he could come up with a solution, the Latero heaved another sigh. 

“Well, at least I get the lack of work history now. You’re right, you’re a hard worker. Never met a clone that was a slacker. We can find something for ya. Maker knows there’ll be more of ya with the decommissioning happening.” 

“Decommissioning?” The question was out of Chuck’s mouth before he could stop himself. Jerrno paused. 

“Yeah. Was just announced a handful of rotations ago. How come ya don’t know?” His beady eyes narrowed suspiciously.

The lie came easily this time, and Chuck delivered it as flawlessly as his nerves would allow. He tapped the scar on his cheek. “Bad accident towards the end of the war. They weren’t sure what to do with me, so when it ended, I was released from duty. Guess you could say I got decommissioned early. But being a clone hasn’t exactly made work easy to come by.” His mind was racing, trying to come up with a lie while simultaneously attempting to process what decommissioning would mean for his brothers. 

Some of them surely survived. What the kriff does that mean for them? 

“Accident, huh? It affect ya too much physically?” Jerrno asked, his eyes still slightly narrowed.

Chuckles forced a dry laugh. “Not exactly winning any beauty pageants, and sometimes have some aches and pains, but I promise you won’t find a harder worker than me.” 

Jerrno surveyed him one final time, eyes raking over the scar on Chuck’s face, how he was standing, his overall manner. His gaze felt like an inspection, and Chuckles straightened to attention out of habit. The Latero huffed a laugh. 

“Alright, I think we can find a place for ya. Opening up a new vein first thing tomorrow. Forewoman’s a Nautolan named Anjii. I’ll let her know you’re comin’.” He popped open a drawer, pulling a badge from it and scanning it with his datapad. “Mine entrance is just through the main gates and on the right. Be there tomorrow morning at 0815. Anj will be waiting for the crew, and you’ll get up to speed on the job. We’re expanding in a hurry to meet Imperial quotas, so it’ll be trial by fire. Got a name?” 

“Chuck. Chuck Ayyshu.” 

The Latero punched a few buttons on his datapad, his brow furrowing. “Chain code says Chuckles.” 

“I’d prefer to go by Chuck if that’s alright with you.” 

“No skin off my ass.”

Chuckles assumed his face would draw enough attention on its own. He didn’t feel the need to also have a name that made him stand out more. 

The Latero handed him back his chaincode, and Chuckles tucked it hurriedly away along with the badge he’d been given. 

“Make sure you pack a lunch and water. And don’t be late.” 

“When do I get paid?” 

Jerrno glared at him as if he’d asked an impertinent question. 

“Got two kids I’m feeding,” Chuckles explained.

The Latero’s expression softened. “I didn’t think clones had kids.” 

Chuckles couldn’t help but giggle at that. “I’m sure there’s plenty of kids out there that have my genetics. But these two are adopted. They lost their families in the war, and I lost mine when I left the GAR. So, we found each other.” 

Jerrno nodded. “A fairly common story nowadays,” he said quietly. “How old?”

“Ten and five.”

The Latero’s mouth crinkled into a smile. “I give ya your credits every two weeks. If ya can hold out to the end of this week, I’ll see if I can get ya a bit of an advance. To help ya get settled.” He extended a hand. “Name’s Jerrno by the way. Jerrno Kern.” 

Chuck clasped his hand in, giving it a firm squeeze. “I take it you’re one of the Kern brothers then?” he asked, jerking his head at the logo on the back wall with the Latero’s surname emblazoned in bright orange lettering. 

Jerrno nodded. “Yep. Me and Teef are makin’ a go of it here. Seems promisin’.” He gestured out the door towards the street. “There’s a school on the main drag for your kiddos. The second largest building here. Got a little red sign and some flowers out front. Not a fancy education by any means, but the teachers there care about the kids. Even have a few getting ready to apply to university in a few months.” 

Chuckles smiled. “Thanks. I’ll be sure to look into it. My oldest certainly would like that.” His chest tightened as the words fell from his lips. 

My oldest. Arni is my oldest kid. 

It came so naturally, but his eyes were suddenly a bit misty at the realization. 

“And your youngest?”

Chuckles giggled. “I’m sure she’ll hate it, but she’ll go. Might take some bribing with her favorite snack. But the older one keeps those well-stocked, so shouldn’t be too much of an issue.” 

Jerrno nodded. As he finished punching information into Chuckles’s newly-created employment file on his datapad, the clone noted a holo on the far desk he’d originally been sitting at. It was an old image, but it showed a much younger version of the Latero that sat before him, a female Latero he assumed was his partner, and two squealing younglings, their heads tipped back in uproarious laughter. The image seemed at least a decade old, and he wondered what had become of the children. There was a certain grief in Jerrno’s eyes that made him think the story didn’t have a happy ending. 

“School starts at 0800. I’d drop the kids off on your way to the job tomorrow.” 

“Got it. They need to bring anything?” 

“The teachers have managed to keep a small stockpile. They should be set unless there’s a shortage.” 

“If that’s the case, is there a store I can shop at?”

“The only store is Grinz’s place. He has a pretty good selection normally. Should be able to find what ya need there. But if ya ever can’t, talk to Grinz. He’s got a few good connections that are able to get just about anything ya might think of.” He paused. “But if it’s ever an emergency. Medicine or the like, ya come to me. I can get anything expedited.” 

“That’s kind of you.” 

The Latero huffed a laugh. “We take care of our own out here, Chuck. We have to. That’s the only way this all works.” He pushed himself to his feet, the stool he was perched on making a loud scraping noise as it skidded out from under him. “Don’t be late tomorrow,” he repeated. 

“Thanks. I won’t.” 

—

“Why can’t we just stay on the ship?” 

While he’d anticipated perhaps some resistance to the idea of school from Nita, Chuckles could honestly say that the fight she was putting up was far more than what he’d expected. She’d appeared to be somewhat receptive to the idea the night before when he’d brought it up over dinner. But now, she appeared to be completely changing her tune when confronted with actually having to go.

“Honey, we’ve been over this. School is a good thing. Right Arni?”

The young Twi’lek shrugged, their nose already buried in their sketchbook. When they looked up, Chuckles gave them a pleading expression, hoping they’d provide some sort of support.

“Sure. It’s great if you like to learn,” they mumbled. 

Not what I was hoping for, but sure. 

The little Pantoran was still digging her heels into the dust with every step, making the short walk to the schoolhouse take an eternity. Chuckles was already beginning to feel the margin of time ticking away that he’d allotted himself to get the kids settled into their classes before dashing off to his first shift. 

I promised I wouldn’t be late. I have to believe kriffing up before I even get started won’t give the best first impression. 

He attempted to lengthen his strides, but Nita tugged firmly, and he almost tripped over her, stumbling and biting his lip hard to keep himself from swearing in frustration. Mercifully, the building that served as the schoolhouse was within view, and he finally readjusted the small pack of food and water on his back and scooped Nita up, tossing her over his shoulder. Her protests grew louder, drawing some additional attention from the townsfolk that were beginning to emerge from their dwellings for the day. Chuckles gave them a tight smile and sheepish wave as Nita thrashed in his grip. 

“I DON’T WANNA GO.” 

She’s never done this before. WHAT is HAPPENING?

“She seems upset,” Arni mumbled.  

“Yes, thank you for that very astute observation, kid,” Chuckles muttered, finally setting Nita on her feet when they were within a few steps of the school’s front door. He could hear children squealing and laughing inside, and some round faces were pressed against the windows, their attention drawn either by Nita’s shouts or just the fact that there was someone new and exciting outside. 

Reaching down, he patted Nita’s head in between the buns that Arni had carefully styled that morning. “Honey, you’re gonna have a great time. I know not everyone can get as excited about school as Arni, but I still think this is gonna be good for you.” 

The little Pantoran was completely unswayed, her large golden eyes brimming with tears as she realized she wouldn’t be convincing her adopted parent to let her stay home. “Chuckles,” she whimpered. “Please don’t leave us.” 

He squatted down, holding out his palms towards her. “I’m never leaving you, honey. It’s just temporary. I gotta go to work, but I’ll be back to pick you up before you know it.” She took his hands, and he pulled her closer, speaking quietly enough so only she could hear. “This is just something we need to do in order to blend in here. School is supposed to be fun! Plus, don’t you want to learn some new stuff? Hang out with other kids?”

Nita’s golden eyes were still shining with tears, and she buried her face in his shoulder, muffling her voice as she whispered to him. “All of the other kids I used to hang out with are dead.” Arni stiffened next to her. 

Chuck’s heart stuttered in his chest as the realization sunk in. He pulled Nita into his arms, wrapping her in a tight hug. 

“Oh honey. I’m so sorry. I didn’t put it together.” 

“It’s not your fault,” she said quietly, some of her tears finally breaking loose. “I’m just scared.” 

“We’re about to start this morning’s lesson!” a voice called from the door. “Will your children be joining us today?” 

Chuckles peered around Nita’s shoulder, meeting the golden eyes of the tall, blue-skinned woman standing in the doorway. She was watching the three of them patiently, some of her dark hair blowing in front of her face in the early morning breeze. Chuckles gave her a helpless smile, and she nodded, seemingly understanding his current predicament.  

“I promise that won’t happen here. You won’t lose your friends again like that. You know that, right?”

Nita nodded into his shoulder. He knew that was little consolation. He’d held similar fears during his entire career, fears that his ship would come apart around him again, fears that he’d lose his entire squadron again. He’d known then he was playing a statistics game, and even though he thought Nita’s likelihood of living through a second once-in-a-millenium genocide that included children was almost zero, he knew that wouldn’t do anything to dissipate the fear she was feeling. His eyes drifted back to the teacher, who was still waiting patiently in the door for her new pupils. 

“Look, your teacher is just like you, honey,” Chuckles tried, nodding at the woman.

“Actually, she’s a Wroonian, not a Pantoran,” Arni corrected. Chuckles glared at them. They shrugged. “They’re different.” Turning, they called over their shoulder to the teacher. “Just a minute. My sister’s a little nervous.”

A sudden thought struck Chuckles. “Arni, are you alright doing this?” he asked, suddenly fearful he’d missed a cue from them too, something that would indicate they shared Nita’s fear. But they nodded, their lekku jiggling with the motion. 

“I’m fine. I want to go to school. But I’m worried about her.” 

The Wroonian woman approached them, squatting down next to Chuckles in front of Nita. “Hello, dear girl. What’s your name?” 

The little Pantoran examined the woman in front of her, her large golden eyes raking over the newcomer from head to toe. A gentle waft of the woman’s perfume filled Chuckles’s nose, inundating him with the smell of vanilla and cinnamon, but he resisted the urge to look over at his new compatriot, instead focusing on Nita and her reaction. 

The wrinkle between Nita’s eyebrows appeared to soften as she observed the teacher for a few more moments before she finally replied, “Nita. My name is Nita Ayyshu.”

The woman smiled at her gently, extending a hand. “It’s lovely to meet you, Nita. I’m Endoline, but you can call me Teacher Endi. Does that sound alright?” 

Nita nodded, slowly taking the teacher’s hand. Chuckles saw Endi squeeze it lightly in greeting before turning to Arni. “And who might you be?”

“Arni,” they replied with a shy smile. 

“Excellent. Well, would you both care to come and join us? Today, we’re focusing on mathematics in the morning with sciences in the afternoon. Do you like either of those things?” 

“I like both of them,” Arni replied eagerly, their large brown eyes lighting up in a way Chuckles hadn’t seen from them before. 

Endi turned to Nita, clearly hoping to elicit a similar response. Chuckles was internally churning, praying to whatever deity was listening that she’d take another step closer. 

“I don’t know about math, but I suppose I like science,” the little Pantoran conceded. “I like the flowers that Arni draws and the notes they make about them.” 

Endi’s smile widened as she clapped her hands excitedly. “Well the two of you couldn’t have picked a better day to join us then. This afternoon, we’re walking out towards the rock formations to see what sort of native flowers are out there and document their life cycles. Does that sound fun?”

Arni appeared to understand that their enthusiasm was noted by default. The three of them all seemed to be holding their breath as Nita mulled it over. 

Finally, she smiled slightly, wiping at her eyes. “That does sound fun.” 

“Very good,” Endi said gently, pushing herself back to a standing position. “Would you like to come and meet the other students? They’re always excited to make new friends.” She reached out both hands towards them. The two children looked up at Chuckles, who gave them an encouraging nod. 

“Go with Teacher Endi. I’ll be back to pick you both up at the end of the day. Ok?”

“Pinky swear?” Nita asked. 

Chuckles huffed a laugh, extending both pinkies. “Pinky swear.” 

Both younglings locked their little fingers with his as Endi stood by patiently. Once their oath had been sealed, they both took her outstretched hands, and she began leading them towards the door. Chuckles stood, trying not to bounce nervously as his two children disappeared inside the school.

Never trusted them with anyone besides Oksann and Ry. And I knew them pretty well before I ever let this happen. I just met this woman. 

He took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. 

And it’s going to have to be alright. 

Just before closing it, Endi cast one more look over her shoulder, giving him a soft smile. It was then that he noticed how strikingly beautiful she was, her golden eyes twinkling at him in the early morning sun as she tucked a dark curl back into place behind her ear. 

Dark curls. Just like… 

“I assume you’ll be at the mine if there are any pressing issues?” she asked. 

Chuckles dug his fingernails into the meat of his palm, chasing away the memory of someone he’d long kept buried. “Yep. I shouldn’t be too late picking them up.” 

An indignant shriek ripped through the air, and Endi’s head whipped around as her brow furrowed into an authoritative stare that even made Chuckles’s insides ripple. He couldn’t tell who she was looking at, but he certainly didn’t envy the kid. 

“Dez, what have we discussed about pulling Ooni’s montrals?” she asked firmly. A sheepish response that Chuckles couldn’t make out came from somewhere behind the windows. “Thank you for apologizing,” Endi replied. “Now let’s all take our seats.” She turned back towards the door, giving Chuckles another warm smile. 

He mouthed good luck at her. 

Her smile widened and she winked before she shut the door the rest of the way, and Chuckles couldn’t ignore the way his heart fluttered this time. 

Well. That’s new. 

His feet carried him towards the mine as he tried not to think too hard about the heat in his cheeks. Or the other individual with dark curls and sharp eyes. 

—

Whatever Chuckles had imagined Anjii might be like, he’d never have gotten close to reality. The Nautolan was about as rough and tumble as anyone he’d ever met. She swore more than even his most vulgar brothers, was covered in tattoos, and took no shit from anyone. He hadn’t met many Nautolans in his lifetime, having only bumped into Master Kit Fisto once or twice in between briefings during the war, but whatever impression Fisto had given him of Nautolans, Anjii quickly dispelled. 

0814. Cutting it close, he thought as he’d sprinted into the shaft, scanning his badge and almost tripping on his way through the entry point in his haste. As he hurriedly clipped his badge to his belt, he ran into something solid that knocked the wind out of him with a loud oof. He stumbled backwards, clutching his chest and wheezing as the obstruction in his path whipped around and stared at him with piercing black eyes. 

“You the new blood then?” the Nautolan asked, hardly seeming phased by the collision. 

“Yep. You Anjii?”

“You see any other water dwellers lining up to work on this dried up husk of a rock?” she grunted, glancing down at her datapad. “Go by Anj though. And you go by… Chuckles?”

“I prefer Chuck,” he muttered, mentally making a note to find out if Jerrno had given his real name as some sort of hazing exercise. 

“I would too with a name like that,” Anj cackled. “Doesn’t exactly make you sound like a serious person.” She circled him slowly, eying him up and down. “Clone then, eh? The name makes more sense, I suppose. But why not something cooler like ‘Zap’ or ‘Comet’?” 

Chuckles shrugged. “It’s a family name.” 

If Anj got the joke, she didn’t let on, only responding with a muted “hmph.” As she circled him, he felt his shoulders immediately draw up and back, his spine straightening to attention out of reflex. 

“At ease, soldier,” she guffawed. “We’re not like that here. I’m just sizing you up since you didn’t have a position listed.” 

“And?” he prodded. 

She stopped in front of him under one of the dim tunnel lights, and he finally got a good look at her. She was at least half a meter shorter than him, but he sensed that didn’t bother her. Her skin was a dark grey, and every visible piece of it that wasn’t dappled with light scarring was covered with ink, although he couldn’t discern any of the symbols from this distance. Several of her tendrils had woven bands wrapped around them, and each tendril shifted from grey to a bright green at the tips. He also noted one or two of her tendrils were missing, cut off at various lengths like a bad haircut and scarred at the ends. She didn’t appear concerned with his appraisal of her as she tapped a long finger against her lips. 

“We’ll put you in the clearing crew to start. I assume Jerrno told you we’re blasting into a new vein today.”

“He did.” 

“Good. Deploying droids is a pain if we’re not certain about a vein, especially since we don’t have enough in the fleet yet. So we’ll be clearing manually until we’re sure about the new prospect. Then we’ll redirect a few of them down there to help.”

“Jerrno and Teef planning on upping their droid fleet?” he asked. “Figure if they’re serious about expansion, might want to do that rather than relying on manual labor.” 

Anj scoffed. “Course they are. But you need to make money in order to do that. I don’t know how long you’ve been out of the tube, but in case you can’t tell, this is a fairly new setup.” 

Chuckles huffed in exasperation, trying to keep his temper in check at the reference to his creation. “I suppose it was too much to hope for to not have what I am get talked about, but if it’s alright with you, maybe we keep the tube jokes to a minimum.” 

“A sense of humor is necessary for the job,” Anj replied with a shrug. 

“Yeah, well when you’ve had the term ‘tube-bred freak’ screamed at you enough times by the people you’re supposed to be protecting, it somehow loses its charm,” he muttered through clenched teeth. 

Something shifted in Anj’s expression. She rocked her weight to one foot. “Fair enough. I didn’t know that’s how it was. I apologize. Won’t happen again.” 

“Sorry to be a buzzkill,” Chuckles mumbled. He wasn’t used to being apologized to, and as a result, wasn’t sure how to react. He felt his knuckles creak as he released the fists he didn’t even realize he’d clenched. 

Anj huffed a laugh, stepping forward and slapping him on the shoulder. He’d assumed she was strong, but her grip was still surprisingly firm. “Another thing you need to survive down there is a good sense of trust. I don’t know how many mines you’ve been in, but it’s dangerous work. We watch each other’s backs and make sure everyone goes home at the end of the day. You spend enough time down here with the same people day in and day out, you become a bit like family. And that means we don’t make each other feel shitty or othered. Unless they’re an asshole and deserve it. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a lopsided grin. 

“None of that shit, now. Not when I was just starting to like you.” She stepped past him, heading towards a set of lockers. “Now, let’s get you fitted for some gear and get down there. If you survive the first week, we’ll work on getting you some personal stuff more fitted to you.” She popped open a locker, and a pile of helmets spilled out with a clatter. “See if one of those will fit your dome.” 

Chuck squatted down, picking through the battered plastoid helmets. “Not everyone lasts the first week?’’

Anj barked out a laugh as she popped open a different locker that appeared to be her personal one. It was more well-organized, and she pulled out a bright green helmet that matched the tips of her tendrils. “Most don’t make it three days before they pack up and bug out. Jerrno’s assured me you’re made of sturdier stuff. We’ll see how you fare.” 

—

Anj hadn’t over exaggerated, not by a long shot. By the end of the day, standing felt like an overwhelming physical endeavour, and Chuckles leaned heavily against the interior of the lift as it carried them out of the mine’s depths. It had been slow going, but they’d managed to successfully open the vein, finding more doonium than they’d anticipated. When the dust from their blasting had finally cleared enough to see again, they’d cheered when they caught sight of the glittering metallic streaks in the walls around them. Even Chuckles had giggled like a maniac, his breathing filter making his laughter sound like mechanical hiccups. 

Now, every muscle in his body was screaming with exhaustion. When the hissing of the lift’s purge system finally ceased, the crew around him all removed their breathing gear and helmets. Chuckles followed suit, running his fingers through his sweat-soaked mohawk. His hands were blistered under his gloves, and every exposed bit of skin was covered in a thick layer of grime. As he hooked his breathing mask to his belt, he inhaled the sharp, fresh air, nearly choking on how cool it was compared to the filtered warm air he’d been breathing all day. His stomach growled loudly, reminding him that he hadn’t packed enough food or water for himself, something Anj had teased him about before offering him half of a protein bar she’d stuffed in her pocket. 

“The new ones always underpack on their first day. You’ll figure it out. Or you’ll quit,” she’d joked.

With heavy eyes, he observed the rest of his crew that were jammed into the lift with him. There were two other human men in the crew whose names he’d already forgotten. They’d eyed him warily when Anj introduced him, and for the most part, they’d kept their distance throughout the day, which was just fine with Chuckles. There was a tall Nikto that had identified himself as Lu, who also appeared to be Anj’s second in command. He was quiet with fiercely observant eyes and always seemed to be at Chuckles’s elbow any time he had a question, answering quickly and firmly before moving off down the line to help somewhere else. It was a bit unnerving, but Chuckles’s appreciation outweighed the nerves. The technical specialist was a young Rodian that had enthusiastically introduced herself as Helly before talking Chuckles’s ear off about the type of droids they’d need and how she calibrated them to precisely mine the doonium, ensuring that there was minimal environmental contamination from the surrounding rock which made purification efforts down the line less difficult. He was positive he couldn’t regurgitate any of the information she’d shared back at her with any sort of accuracy, but she honestly just seemed excited to have anyone listen to her for more than five minutes. She reminded him a bit of Arni. 

“You alright back there, rookie?” Anj called over her shoulder as she undid the wrap that was holding her tendrils in place under her helmet, shaking them loose. 

“Yeah,” Chuck managed to reply. “Easiest first day I could have asked for.”

Anj chuckled at that, and even Lu huffed a laugh. “Then we didn’t work you hard enough,” the Nautolan replied. 

“Make sure you take it easy tonight and consume plenty of water and electrolytes,” Helly chattered at him rapidly, offering him a flask of water. “It’ll help your muscles heal, and-”

“Hells, don’t overwhelm the guy just yet. We want him to come back tomorrow, remember?” Anj teased. “He’s been kind enough to endure your dumping all day. Let him have a moment of peace.” 

Helly seemed unbothered, but Chuckles still felt a twinge of guilt. “Thanks,” he rasped, returning the flask after taking a massive swig. “I’ll be sure to put down a few more liters before bed.”

Helly nodded silently, but her eyes sparkled. He wasn’t sure how she still had so much energy. 

Maybe I’ll get there eventually. 

Several minutes later, the lift doors slid open and Chuckles shuffled out along with the rest of the crew to the lockers, where he replaced the items Anj had outfitted him with at the beginning of the day. The helmet had been a little small, and he made a mental note to try and size up the following morning. 

Anj squatted down next to him, removing the air monitor she kept strapped to her ankle. She leaned over, speaking quietly to him. “I’d recommend at least two canteens of water tomorrow and plenty of protein bars. Dried fruit is good too for the sugar. Nothing greasy or you’ll be looking at your lunch again before the day is out. Got it?”

“Got it,” he mumbled. “It always like this?”

“What, sore to the point where you think you’re gonna die and ready to collapse on the first flat surface you see?” She laughed quietly. “Yeah. Seems about right.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow, Chuck.” 

He managed to get his gear put away into the correct lockers before limping through the checkpoint. His legs seemed to get a little less sore as he walked, but he could feel the blisters on the bottom of his feet promising retribution at a later time. He rolled his shoulders and was greeted with the burn of muscle soreness. 

I think even my eyebrows are sore. Not sure how that happens. But Maker, everything hurts. 

His feet somehow carried him back to the schoolhouse’s front door, where he found a handful of children filtering out slowly. When he poked his head inside, he saw Arni sitting at a desk furiously drawing in their sketchbook, their tongue poking out of one side of their mouth. Nita was perched on a bench in the back of the room, weaving flowers into a chain with Endi. At the sound of his boots thudding on the hardwood flooring, Endi’s eyes snapped up, her warm smile lighting up her face again when their eyes met. Chuckles was suddenly very aware of how filthy and unkempt he looked. He ran his fingers through his mohawk again, trying to muss it into something presentable. 

Endi leaned down, saying something softly to Nita, whose head whipped around. Her eyes lit up when she saw Chuckles, and he almost melted with relief as she launched herself off the bench with a chain of flowers clutched in her hand and raced towards him. 

“CHUCKLES!” 

Despite his knees screaming at him in protest, Chuckles managed to squat down to the little Pantoran’s level as she eagerly danced in front of him.

“Teacher Endi helped me make this crown with the flowers we found today. Isn’t it pretty?”

“Fit for a princess,” he agreed, taking the delicate blossoms she held out to him. He grinned at her before leaning forward and putting the crown on her head, nestling it around her buns. “See? Perfect.” 

Nita giggled, bouncing on her feet. 

“What about you, kid? You have a good day?” Chuckles asked, glancing at Arni. 

They nodded quietly, but an irrepressible grin was spreading across their face. 

“Good stuff.”

“Do you have a moment?” Endi asked, coming to stand next to him. 

“Uh… yeah sure,” Chuck replied. “Nita, Arni, why don’t you two go wait outside while I speak with Teacher Endi?” 

The two younglings nodded before sprinting out the door, laughing loudly. 

Chuckles watched them go before trying to push himself to a standing position. He grunted as one leg cramped up, and he would have toppled over if Endi’s hands hadn’t caught his arm, helping him lean against one of the small desks. 

“Sorry about that,” he mumbled, trying to ignore the heat rushing to his cheeks. 

“It’s quite alright. You look like every other miner that’s just survived their first shift with Anjii.” 

“That bad, huh?” he joked, sitting heavily on the top of the desk. 

A silence hung between them for a moment before Chuckles cleared his throat. “So, everything alright with the kids? Did Nita settle in?” 

“She did,” Endi assured him. “And everything’s fine. I just like to meet with new parents to see if there’s anything I should know about their children. And…” she paused, searching for words. “I can tell by your family dynamic that it’s likely there’s a good amount I should know.” 

“Because I’m a clone?” he asked, bristling slightly. 

“Because you’re all different species, because they call you by your first name, and yes, because you’re a clone. It’s not for the reasons you think. I just know that you can’t have been a parent long yourself. You were a soldier, bred for fighting.”

“I can take care of my kids.”

She sighed, raising her hands in surrender. “I’m not saying you can’t. That you haven’t. They obviously love you, and I can see how much you care for them. All I’m saying is that it must have been a large adjustment. I can only assume that they’re orphans, and judging by Nita’s reaction this morning, they haven’t been separated from you very much. I just… I just want to see if there’s anything I can do to make this transition easier for them. And for you.” 

Chuckles nodded, some of his defensiveness melting away. “You’re right,” he conceded. “They lost their families at the end of the war. I was discharged early due to injury.” 

Mostly true. If I hadn’t of hit my head hard enough, I’d have been another cog in the Imperial machine. 

“We’d tried to make a home on a different world, but it’s been hard to find work because of what I am.” 

“But now that the decommissioning’s happening, you’ve had a little more luck?”

“Yeah. People don’t think I’m a deserter,” he joked. 

She laughed softly. “Well, I think what you’re doing for them is something special. I’d argue that you’ve done enough with your service during the war, but taking on two orphaned younglings is something else entirely.”

“It hasn’t been easy,” he agreed. “But never because of them. The two of them just fit with me immediately. There were growing pains of course. Still are at times. But… but I can’t think of them as anything other than my kin at this point. Weird as that may sound. They’re my kids. And I want them to be happy. And I want to give them a sense of normalcy. I think them going to school here will be good. Arni loves to learn.”

“They are a very special student,” Endi agreed. “Their journal is impressive. The way they document everything in such detail and then can recall it later. It’s astounding, frankly. They’re quite advanced for their age.” 

“And Nita is a bit of a firecracker.” 

“That she is,” Endi giggled. “She was shy at first, but I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t unionize the entire class come the winter. I may be facing a mutiny.” 

Chuckles tipped his head back and laughed loudly at that. “Well, be sure to comm me when that happens. I’ll stand with you against her uprising.” Leaning forward, he whispered conspiratorially. “I’m not saying bribery should be your first tactic, but a bag of fried crispy snacks will get you a long way.” 

“Noted. You’ll be my first consult should such an uprising occur.” Her eyes were sparkling, and there was a purple blush in her cheeks. She had darker blue freckles, Chuckles noticed. They dotted over her cheeks and nose, and one or two larger ones were visible on her neck. She cleared her throat, and his eyes snapped back to meet hers. The purple hue in her cheeks had deepened, and suddenly, his face felt like it was on fire. 

Way to leer at the teacher on the first day. Good job, you kriffing nerfherder. 

He pushed himself to his feet hurriedly. 

“Well, I suppose we should get going. I appreciate you helping them along on their first day.”

“Of course,” she replied, standing quickly as well. “There is one other thing.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, Nita did tear a hole in the knee of her leggings today while climbing on a rock. She skinned her knee slightly, but a little bacta should do the trick. We bandaged it the best we could here.” She stepped forward hesitantly, and it was then that he noticed a piece of flimsi in her hands. She held it out to him. “I know new clothes are expensive, and seeing as you’re just getting settled, I imagine credits may be a little tight. If you want, I know how to mend clothing. I’d be more than happy to patch up her knee.” She tapped the flimsi. “This is my comm frequency if… if you’d like that.” 

Chuckles was fairly certain his face was going to melt off of his skull. His stomach was churning and a tingle ran up his spine. When he looked from the scrap of flimsi to Endi, her cheeks were somehow even more purple, and he imagined his entire face had to be glowing with how hot it felt. 

“Th-thanks,” he stuttered. “I just might.” 

“Alright then.” 

They stood awkwardly for another moment before Chuckles carefully folded the flimsi and stuck it into his pocket. “See you tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here.” 

“Good.” It felt like a silly thing, but his brain felt completely scrambled, and it was the best response he could come up with before he turned sharply on his heel and stepped outside. 

That was not how I expected this day to end. 

Nita was twirling in circles, kicking up dust as her hair ribbons fluttered around her face. The flower crown was still firmly perched on her head. When she caught sight of Chuckles, she raced towards him. Arni was sitting on the steps, still sketching. 

“The princess of the Starlight would like a piggyback ride home,” Nita stated, her spine erect as she attempted to address him as regally as she could. 

“Nita, he’s sore. I don’t think-” Arni started, but Chuckles put a hand on their shoulder. 

“I can do it. If you carry this,” he said, handing off his lunch satchel. Arni took it, looking on nervously as Chuckles sat down on the steps, patting his shoulders. 

“Your chariot awaits, my lady.” 

Nita squealed with delight, racing up the steps and wrapping her arms around Chuck’s neck. He tucked his arms under her knees and stood, teetering for a second before regaining his balance. Arni looked on with concern, but Chuckles tossed them a reassuring wink. 

It was a good day. I may not be able to walk tomorrow, and they might not like school as much, but I’m counting today as a victory. 

“Faster, Chuckles!” Nita demanded. 

Huffing a laugh, Chuckles whinnied like a fathier as he broke into a gallop, the blisters on his feet forgotten. Nita shrieked with laughter, and Arni jogged patiently next to them. When Chuck looked over, they were laughing too, their deep guffaw that they seemed to reserve for only their most joyous moments. For the first time since they left Sorgan, it felt as though Chuck’s heart might burst out of his chest with happiness. 

We can make a home here. We can make it ours.

Tag List: @seriowan @partofttheeternalsoul @rosmariner @misogirl828 @ellichonkasaurusrex @zoeykallus @the-sith-in-the-sky-with-diamond @gjrain20-starwars @staycalmandhugaclone @redheadgirl @fordo-kixed-rex @wizardofrozz @ariadnes-red-thread @extrahotpixels @justanothersadperson93 @leftealeaf @meekaielmyerhs99 @kaminocasey @echos-girlfriend @lucyysthings @obihiddlenox @merkitty49 @littlemissmanga @clonecyaree @baba-fett @sleepingsun501 @rexxdjarin @samspenandsword @babygirlrex0504 @ladytano420 @fxlsealarm @runforrestr @rennyboo9 @djarrex @rain-on-kamino @ladykatakuri @arctrooper69 @hidden-behind-the-fourth-wall

[machathecat]

OK NO ONE CARES ABOUT THIS BUT IM FINALLY GOING TO RAMBLE ABOUT MY OCS SUJSJQJQBA

Warning this is going to be chaotic as fuck

First the characters themselves

((all lineart made with this picrew, I only colored it. Also ofc they got clothes in canon but I'm too lazy to edit it so y'all r gonna have to wait till I finally get the fucking energy to draw them))

Here's Moia! He/they, 15 at the start of the story, transmasc n asexual. He's pretty far from having a good life, they're father is an asshole, they got no friends at school, his life is shit and he's very probably depressed. Only thing really keeping him going is their best friend Eden (he/she/it, white bunny with a bunch of brown splotches) one day he was walking to school and got hit with a car n got send to a liminal space world (call me cringe if you want idgaf) called the Ethereal Plane, he met a friend there and he's living a life 100x better than on earth. They miss their best friend tho

And speaking of his new friend here's Richard! 40/45 year old, he's been stuck in the Ethereal Plane since MAAANY YEARS and lost track of time, He/him, bisexual. (Also he's supposed to be way more chubby than in the pic but I didn't though of editing it at first rip) He got cool grandpa vibes n is basically a father figure to Moia. He knows a lot about the place and guide them through the weird lands n shit. They're a cool duo

So a bit more about the Ethereal Plane itself, it's literally just those aesthetic liminal spaces pictures

That basically

It doesn't really make sense how a place lead to another, you could open the emergency door of a market and find yourself in the middle of a never ending grassland. Sometimes you walk in a open space, zone out and when you go back to reality your in a completely different place (note that if someone fully conscious of their environment is watching you, you can't get teleported while daydreaming n shit)

A very phew creatures live there, some species from earth managed to noclip to this world a few years ago and have evolved to survive in some parts of it. For example, you can find two headed bunny pretty much everywhere. Some creature are dangerous, but they live in very specific part of the Ethereal Plane , generally in packs.

This world had a permanent feeling of peace, it's hard to describe but you know that emotion when you see a liminal space pic that hit you hard and you just feel calm for a second like if nothing else mattered? That's this feeling but constantly. It's pretty pleading actually

I don't really wanna spoil much about the plot, y'all just gonna have to wait till I post a drawing here and there until you can fullfil every pieces of the puzzle in 2/3 years ig lmao. Just know if it was a tv show, the first ep would show how crappy Moia life is, the second the first day he spend in the Plane, rest of the first season just him n Richard having cool adventures there without much plot just 95 showing characters personality and shit. It would have a season 2 that I think would be the last but I'm not done thinking about every details yet for that sooo y'all gonna have to wait and see

ALSO SORRY FOR PUTTING THIS AT THE END LMFAO BUT the name of whatever this is is "a cat who got lost in the backrooms" (technically a reference to a childhood book but I doubt anyone will get it rip)

Ok now have fun hearing me only talking about those random guys I made in my head for either the next few hours or next few months idfk byeee

[ocshowandtell]

HELL YEAH SOMEWHERE ELSE I CAN INFODUMP ABOUT SUNSHINE!!!

OK so hi hello, I'll tag my related blog at the bottom since that's where I talk about her and what franchise she's in so anyone who's interested can check out the things I've got for her there

Starting off! Her full name is Sunshine Fairfield and she's a half-elf sorcerer-bard in the world of DnD podcast The Adventure Zone. She's an eighth bird, which for those who haven't listened to the podcast means that she's a part of a group of people who ended up in a sort of universe-hopping time loop for 100 years. They ended up separated in the last universe and year... 101 I think? Due to a choice one of them made that resulted in almost all of them losing memory of the century and each other. A few of them ended up leading normal lives, but some of them had complications with that. I could go super super in depth with this just because of how much I love the Adventure Zone, but for the sake of the character limit, that's essentially the long story short for how it all starts out.

I'm in the process of writing a whole story for her and I've almost finished the Crystal Kingdom arc, for those who know. What I haven't written, I've at least mapped out, though the Eleventh Hour arc is kind of an exception and so are some parts of Stolen Century.

As some basic information on Sunshine herself, like I mentioned she's a half-elf sorcerer-bard with emphasis on the bard part. At the time of the story starting, she's in about her thirties, and the life she ends up leading in their last universe is one of a traveling performer, using her magic to help with special effects.

If or when this gets posted, I'll reblog from @institute-of-planar-shitposts to kinda lay out what parts of the story I have written and talk about what I haven't yet. I'm always happy to answer questions about her, and my pinned has some links to things related to her that I have here on tumblr. It should include her tag - I'm actually going to check that and make sure. Thanks for reading!

thank you for sharing!!

[n7punk]

“Children of the Crystal” Fic Notes Season Two

Children of the Crystal is “officially” done! I still might go back and add short (non-plot) fics set in this verse further down the line, but the story is all wrapped up at a monster 14 (15) fics.

I split the fic notes into two “seasons” just because there’s a lot to cover, so the other post has notes for the first 6 fics. This one has the playlist, the notes for the rest of the fics, and discussion of the original outline/plan. This fic series doesn’t get an “epilogue” section because I’m keeping all those ideas in my back pocket in case I end up doing fics on them.

Playlist:

Haha so. This series had a playlist that was originally like seven songs long. Then I couldn’t sleep one day, and suddenly this story had a plot(??) and the playlist exploded. I’ll cover the plot thing later, but here’s the finished playlist (I also listened to my canon Catra, Adora, and Catradora playlists while writing this).

Just Friends — Morgan Saint

Illusion — Carlie Hanson

WASTE OF CONFETTI — Meg Myers

S.T.A.R. — Mothica

hallelujah — Bea Miller

For God’s Sake — Morgan Saint

Highlights — Mothica

Crazy Bitch — Sizzy Rocket feat. Mothica

feel like shit — Tate McRae

Once More, With Feeling! — XANA

Battle demo [not released to the public. Listen, the vibe is “I don’t want to fight you, but if that’s what you’re going to do, then let’s go”]

Jealousy — Pale Waves

i did this all for you! — XANA

Two Sides — Ari Hicks (this one is for Light Hope, because I think I’m funny)

I Don’t Believe In Anything — Deathbyromy (THIS IS SUCH AN ADORA SONG OK)

I’m Trying (Not Friends) — Maisie Peters (aka the fic 13 song)

Only Love [Acoustic] — PVRIS

General Notes:

⦁ For the ease of future rereads, the big plot heavy-hitter fics are (generally) every other fic: 1, 3, 5, maybe 7, 8, 10, 12, maybe 13, and 14. I was intentionally spacing them out (as best I could) so there would be a plot beat, then something that fleshed out the universe/characters, then another plot beat, but that wasn’t always the best thing for the series so there’s exceptions.

⦁ Several of the fic titles from this series are inspired/from lyrics from a couple of songs. They are as follows: The “Crystal Kingdom” song from The Adventure Zone led to the fic titles “Beckoning to Break the Seal,” “Locked in a Cage of Glass and Steel,” and “This Is Where Separation Ends.” I listened to that way back in the day and that song stuck with me for some reason. I thought about it again after naming the fic Children of the Crystal cuz. you know. Crystal. i did this all for you! by XANA is the origin of “Carve Your Name in My Bones.” Full lyric: [in my brain] I love what you’ve done with the place/really made it your own/carved your name in my bones. “I’d Die Just to Be Someone” is a lyric from Crazy Bitch by Sizzy Rocket (feat. Mothica). (Side note: can anyone tell me if Sizzy Rocket is a terf? One of the people she has a feature track with has a sus line) The fic and chapter titles of “One of Us Has to Keep a Promise” come from I’m Trying (Not Friends) by Maisie Peters. These are the only chapter titles in the entire series not in title case. More info on songs and lyrics later >.> Finally, “Once More, With Feeling” is a XANA song (on the playlist, too) that’s actually not happy but the title was a great fit for them returning home and falling back into their relationship with a lot more peace and happiness between them.

Locked in a Cage of Glass and Steel

Chapter 1:

⦁ God the ENTIRE series was leading up to this fic. I wrote it all in one sitting. Actually, I wrote the final chapter of Halls That Make a Home, all of this fic, and all but the last two scenes of Carve Your Name in My Bones in the same day. I wrote 12.7k words that day, my highest single-day word count ever (my previous being 12.1k, which was insane and not at all usual. My average word count is 2k a day).

⦁ I guess I leave it a little ambiguous (mostly because other people lie about it), but what happened with Entrapta was that Scorpia had bonded HARD with her, so when Shadow Weaver attacked Entrapta to stop her from trying to free the captured princesses, Scorpia turned on the Horde. She can’t exactly feel for a pulse with her pincers, though, and she thought Entrapta was dead. She then freed the rest of the princesses, and when they went to recover the sword, Shadow Weaver had roused to tell Hordak that Scorpia took the side of the princesses, bonded with the garnet, and killed Entrapta in the process. He didn’t believe her, but then Scorpia showed up leading the charge of princesses into his sanctum, crackling with electricity. So he pulled the lever.

Chapter 2:

⦁ I talked about this a little in the first author’s note, but figuring out the set-up of the portal is… interesting. I think the wider fandom has kind of agreed it has something to do with who pulls the lever? Like the portal was built around Catra’s wishes? Which makes sense, IG, but it could easily be a collective thing, or just a weird mindfuck, or Adora could have some control over it too because it’s her sword powering it. Personally I think it’s a mix of all of that, but for this fic I went with the idea that it’s the person who pulls the lever, because in canon I find the angst of Catra’s “perfect world” being one where Catra is still just “second best” but it doesn’t matter to her anymore because Adora is there absolutely delicious.

⦁ In the show, the Portal was kind of “an easy sell” because Adora did know a life in the Horde, and all the Bright Moon stuff was just a recent divergence. Everybody was pretty much “with their own” in the portal, Bow in Bright Moon, Catra and Adora in the Horde, etc. In this portal, a bunch of the princesses were locked up in the Fright Zone (because they… were in the Fright Zone IRL when it was set off) and Catra and Adora found themselves transposed into this foreign world so everything would be simple for Hordak and his greatest nemesis were now working for them. The portal bridged that gap by co-opting their memories. Instead of running and playing in the woods, they were fighting rebels in them. They remembered how fighting felt from when they would fight the Horde, but when they were actually forced to fight rebels in the portal, it all felt completely wrong. The other way the portal tried to form its perfect world was by giving Adora what she always wanted: freedom from duty. She wasn’t She-ra and there was no magic destiny to weigh down on her shoulders. As much as she will deny it and doesn’t even believe it, that’s what she wants. She wants to just be able to live her life and be useful, yes, but not have the weight of the planet on her.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Before I even started posting this series, I posted “sorry” because I had just outlined this wallowing scene and Catra deciding to go to the Horde. Obviously I’ve written breakups, self-loathing, etc in the past, but I felt like I was really lulling y’all into a false sense of security with this AU. It doubly applied since I had already outlined the AU’s end, too.

⦁ Because that was such an early outline, though, in that outline scene Catra discovered for the first time that Light Hope could appear in the room they thought was private. I ended up including that earlier in the series, because it’s not much of a reveal if you don’t already know that she’s not supposed to be able to do that and I thought her having the realization when they weren’t together yet but had said some Things in the privacy of the room worked better.

⦁ Btw, Light Hope did “usually” try to leave them alone in the room, especially when they were kids and her overwrite instructions hadn’t been fully installed by a reset, but she absolutely was intending to lie to them when she said she couldn’t listen to that room. It was not a misunderstanding. Those happened sometimes, but a lot of “misunderstandings” were intentional.

⦁ I considered giving Catra a breakdown haircut in this because those are fun, and by “considered” I mean I did and then I read the scene I just wrote and went. This is scary. Like I actually felt I couldn’t include it without a significant trigger warning and what the hell even is that trigger aside from Bitch Not Well so I cut it.

⦁ I had a whole freak out with the end of this fic and whether or not it made sense. Basically, I wrote the first scene of On Stumbling Feet way before this. A consequence of that (and how long-held my headcanon for Halfmoon is) is that I just completely fucking forgot whether Halfmoon running under the Fright Zone was established. I tried to put in more hints to it in the scene itself (stuff like the mentions of their last entrance being patched up) and went back to the fic where Catra calls herself the last of the magicats to edit in more context for future reads, only to find I already outright said there that Halfmoon was near the Fright Zone. I edited the wording slightly to make it more clear it was under, but I mostly panicked for nothing.

Carve Your Name in My Bones [one shot]

⦁ I’ve talked a couple of times about this AU being where I was able to finally put my backstory headcanons for them, but they did have to be tweaked to accommodate the story. For Catra, I imagine she was just scooped off Halfmoon’s street at a battle like this and brought back to the Fright Zone. Halfmoon being the mine beneath the Fright Zone is my headcanon, but not it being connected to the Crystal Castle or anything. I did that mostly to get around 1) Light Hope would have had the foyer door locked when Adora was that age so she couldn’t get out at all to help Catra if there wasn’t another way since that blocks off the override too and 2) to force Catra back through castle when leaving the Fright Zone. The original outline called for her trying to “confront” Light Hope, which I feel would be justified considering she had emotional ties to her just like Adora in this AU, but it would be pretty dangerous and a little stupid, so making it just be something she was forced to do made more sense.

⦁ Rescuing Catra was the first time Adora had left the castle since she was a baby. Feeling the surface of the rock was really shocking to her after being used to the perfectly smooth surfaces of the castle, only broken up by the texture of her bed and clothes. Everything else is metal or crystal. Catra introduces something as simple as touch to her life, that’s how incredibly isolated she was.

⦁ Catra’s parents in this are the same ones I made up for her in TTFT, Leona and Felina. Only one of them is actually her biological parent (magic inception, common for gay couples on Etheria) so Leona has Catra’s heterochromia this time to pass it down.

I’d Die Just to Be Someone

Chapter 1:

⦁ Shadow Weaver was willing to believe Catra’s story pretty easily given she defected to the Horde for similarly petty reasons, but willing is different from believing and she knew there was a chance it was a ploy, or she could be flipped again, which is why she went in hard on her immediately. Shadow Weaver was also dying and losing her shit anyway.

⦁ Hordak growling and Catra commenting (internally) on it was because he’s an alien clone and like, reminiscent of an elf, sure, but actually has his own rules to play by.

⦁ The story Shadow Weaver told Hordak was that Scorpia turned on them and let the princesses in because she wanted to take her powers, and when she did she electrocuted Entrapta (it was implied to not be an accident). It’s kind of a ridiculous sell if you know anything about Scorpia, but Hordak barely knew her name, and when he saw her using lightning powers and fighting alongside the princesses, it checked out, especially with her leaving afterwards.

⦁ Shadow Weaver was desperately trying to either 1) break Scorpia’s connection with the Garnet so she could begin using it again or 2) find a way to siphon energy off of it with Scorpia still connected to it. If Catra hadn’t shown up, she probably would have gathered herself up after her collapse and tried to slip away to Rebellion and trade “insider intel” in exchange for healing, but with Catra calling a medic, and them taking her under observation, she never had a chance. And… yeah, she wasn’t looking good and we don’t see her again. Read into that! (If you are interested, though, her story would have been that she worked with the Horde out of fear for her life as she needed the Black Garnet to live, trying to gain an ounce of sympathy, and then she would have tried to trade Entrapta’s location for healing. To them she would have said Hordak sent Entrapta to Beast Island when he heard of her treachery.)

⦁ Grizzlor gets to take over Shadow Weaver’s job because in the original show he was the… warden? Boss? BGIC? of the Beast Island prison. It was either him, Octavia, or Lonnie in this version, but I didn’t have room to throw in Lonnie being promoted to Force Captain in Scorpia’s place (though it definitely happened) and it feels like Octavia isn’t very respected considering the eye thing and that she still sleeps with the cadets.

Chapter 2:

⦁ When Catra mentions trying to line up to whisper in Adora’s ear during the fight, I wanted to leave it ambiguous if she was trying to gloat, but she was actually looking for any opening to tell the Princess Alliance that Entrapta was alive. She was always on missions with other people and the least trusted person on the squad, though, so she couldn’t even try to work it into a “taunt” to pass off because it wasn’t common knowledge and would give away that she was sneaking around.

⦁ Catra’s recognition of the hex-sided screwdriver is because she did spend enough — friendly — time around Entrapta in this universe to pick that kind of thing up.

⦁ When Catra says she “hasn’t managed to do anything about” the transport log, she means both that she hasn’t figured out where Entrapta was sent and she hasn’t managed to tell the Alliance she was live at all.

Chapter 3: Interlude

⦁ This wasn’t supposed to be here but I was thinking about how Adora must be feeling and then I was like maybe I have to write a one shot about this…. So I just stuck it in as an interlude.

⦁ Let’s! Talk! About! The Alliance! Okay, so like, Catra is right, they really should have known better that she wouldn’t go join up with the people who just murdered her friend and kinda-pseudo parental figure, but there’s a reason they “accepted” her defection. First of all, they were already annoyed with her for disappearing (though everyone was equally, if not more, annoyed with Adora for being a fucking idiot). Being mad at someone makes it a lot easier to believe the worst of them. Second, they had already experienced Entrapta’s defection, which was feeling more and more like a true defection as Scorpia told stories about her in the Horde, even though it was a kind of halfway thing for her. Third, Adora and Catra were really codependent, like ridiculously unhealthily so, but it had never been something they needed to work on when Catra and Adora were “doing fine” and there was a war on. When Adora broke her heart, it was possible Catra totally snapped because neither of them knew how to be a person — or even what a person really was — without each other. Four, several of them had picked up the vibe that Catra had some bitterness over Adora’s magic destiny from comments she made over time. And like, they weren’t wrong, that is what spurred her to go to the Horde, she just wasn’t joining them. And then five, of course: they were fighting her and watching her not respond to their attempts to talk. No matter what you believe, when you have enough evidence in front of you, eventually you have to give. None of that should erase the fact they knew Catra was a good person, and especially that she should want to destroy the Horde more than ever at that moment rather than joining up since they had just killed her friend, but just like they shouldn’t be too mad at her, Catra can’t be too mad at them when she didn’t tell anyone. Them believing someone they know is a good person would do Very Bad Things is kind of a commentary on how sometimes they struggle to be good friends, like how they get annoyed with Entrapta and both sides have to learn how to accommodate each other in the show.

⦁ Adora not walking all the way into the entry and leaving immediately kind of saved the planet here. With her first visit, it was quick and she got further into the castle, but Light Hope was willing to wait until a second visit before she went as drastic as locking her in, because it was going to be pretty hard to talk her into setting the Heart off at that point. This time, Adora didn’t get past the large door that could seal the main chamber from the entry walkway (the door that was closed when she and Catra were little, and that Catra squeezed through in The Start of a Legend). Light Hope technically could override the outside door, but she wasn’t prepared to do that, especially when she couldn’t do anything about the override door Adora could easily slip through. Honestly, she anticipated Adora’s breakdown taking longer and being able to use her fragile emotional state to manipulate her, but instead Adora fucking booked it away from the terrible memories and guilt.

⦁ It wasn’t fair, but one of the reason’s Glimmer was mad at Adora was for everything Catra did while defecting. They were friends, after all, and Adora breaking up with her is what drove her away, so even though Glimmer was already mad at Adora for the shitty breakup, she was also mad at them both for every shitty thing Catra did while defected because they shared the blame to her. It was more aimed at Catra since she was the one, you know, doing it, but Glimmer has a proxy-blaming problem (see: her partially blaming Adora for her mom’s death) so she was mad at them both.

Chapter 4:

⦁ Shadow Weaver “limping off to die” was actually her trying to sneak off to the Rebellion for survival.

⦁ The dent on Emily’s hull is this-universe’s version of the scratches. Emily tried to go into Hordak’s lab trying to find Entrapta after she “died” and Hordak grew enraged at the sight of her as a reminder. He threw the closest object at her and made the dent. She skittered away still not knowing what happened to Entrapta, but she picked it up soon after.

⦁ Emily has seen Catra before, back in that single battle where Entrapta got captured, but she’s dressed differently and on the other side, and it was possible there were multiple people named Catra, so she wanted to “verify” by showing Catra the projection.

⦁ I (Catra) shifted over the course of the chapter from calling Emily “it” to “she” to show how Catra was bonding with her. Using feminine pronouns for her did make it more confusing (which “she” is this she referring to, etc), but Catra really needed something to latch onto, so anthropomorphizing Emily hit hard.

⦁ I fucked up here. I came up with a cool idea literally the day after posting the chapter. Catra should have tried to take some of the files on the Heart so the Horde doesn’t find them, get caught sneaking out, and have to choose between keeping them or helping Emily to safety. She would choose Emily, ensuring the files fell into Horde hands and leaving her certain that Hordak — and thus Horde Prime — knows about the Heart when he arrives. Unfortunately, I only came up with that while writing fic 13. It’s a causality of posting as you write, even though I was ahead.

On Stumbling Feet (Find Your Home) [one shot]

⦁ Because this fic takes place before the last few, Catra is still under the mistaken impression that fire played a big part in Halfmoon’s downfall. The problem with this series is a lot of people are lying or just straight up wrong and so they contradict each other or even themselves a lot and I worry it looks sloppy when it’s intentional, just kind of misleading. I actually wrote the Halfmoon report scene before I even wrote the get together fic and wasn’t sure where I was going to stick it but had the idea for a “catch all” snippets fic possibly in the future.

⦁ Adora’s language around “manifesting” is because it’s one of those words/concepts that are new to her, since that scene is set fairly early on, like a few months in.

⦁ Adora saying “She’s going to need to hold onto these moments for the future.” just really goes to show that she can’t even let herself have good moments purely for the sake of them, but rather has to categorize how they could be useful to justify them. This girl needs therapy so bad.

⦁ The make out scene basically exists to tease Adora’s access to her powers without the sword. Obviously, canon shows her powers predate the sword, but with her runestone trapped. Originally the idea was that it would be a little one shot, but then it was brief enough of an idea to use in something like this. I ended up giving a “preview” to this kind of thing with her glowing eyes in the library fic, but she still had the sword (literally) on her then, so this showed that “disconnect” for the first time. Otherwise, this fic would be the kind of filler/fluff I would stick at the end of the series as “not part of the plot arc,” but that particular scene needed to be read before fic 14, so it ended up in the main arc. A little fluff was also desperately needed here.

⦁ The make out predates the scene in the library with her eyes glowing, but Adora still called that new because it had never been tied to anger before, and she didn’t fully understood what her eyes were doing in this scene. What she caught in the mirror was just them being extra blue.

A Thousand Years in the Making

Chapter 1:

⦁ The “true colors” in the fic description do refer to how Light Hope turns on them, but also to how she really does love them and wants to protect them from her own programming.

⦁ “The failsafe would kill the user” and Catra’s resulting “Wait.” reaction were actually because Light Hope was — in the only way she could — trying to help. She was informing Catra both of the risks and that it would work by explicitly not saying that it wouldn’t, since that’s the most logical way to dissuade its use.

Chapter 2:

⦁ The language Adora uses to describe the moving of Etheria in the library fic was carefully chosen to conflict but in a believable way with what Light Hope says here. Adora says “Mara made Light Hope move the planet,” which is what her impression of the situation was, in the sense that Mara ordered it, but what Light Hope actually says here was that Mara forced her hand and made her move the planet for everyone’s safety. Of course, that’s a total lie and Mara moved the planet without Light Hope’s consent, but it was part of the narrative needed to reach Light Hope’s goal of getting Etheria back where it should be so they can set the bomb off.

⦁ In the show what (kinda) breaks through to Light Hope is Adora mentioning Mara, which is a really cool moment I fucking love and was sad to strip away, but in this one it just made more sense for Adora to use their own bond since they had a deep one and she never discovered a lot about Mara without the signal tower.

Chapter 3:

⦁ This was the one and only time that Catra ever referred to Light Hope in a maternal way. She doesn’t really see her like that but she also… doesn’t… not see her like that, you know? Light Hope was her guardian, not her mom, but especially with the wound of Glimmer losing her mom recently, that’s what spilled out.

One of Us Has to Keep a Promise

Chapter 1:

⦁ I vagueposted lyrics from the song “I’m Trying (Not Friends)” when I was thinking obsessively about Catra’s “betrayal” twist and then untwist. The chorus really works for the clusterfuck that their relationship becomes and those two lyrics in particular were feeding my brainrot so hard I could not shut up. The urge to drop songs on the playlist that were massive spoilers and hinted at what was to come was so hard to fight. At one point I almost just posted “CotC spoilers: there’s XANA on the fic playlist” because like. if you know XANA’s music that is a spoiler. She has very few happy or wholesome songs. Most of them are breakup songs or intense shit that still implies a hot and heavy relationship like Catra and Adora don’t appear to have in this series. I was going absolutely nuts keeping all this to myself and knowing for about 7~ fics everything was going to look Fine and then it was getting insane. I then vagueposted again with lyrics from “Crazy Bitch” later thinking about Catra’s “betrayal” because this fic had a vice grip on my brain. For a while I was writing like 4-6k every other day with 1-2k in between and it still wasn’t enough to get it out.

Chapter 2:

⦁ The reason Prime hit the surface so hard and then pulled back was because he was planning on wiping out the planet and all its residents completely to cover up Hordak’s messy rebellion (as he says in the show before Catra interrupts his plan by telling him about the Heart, so he’ll spare Etheria), but he pulled back as speculated when he became aware of the Heart and its potential uses.

⦁ The position they’re sitting in while discussing their relationship in Catra’s tent is a mirror of the one they sat in while listening to music right after they came together as kids back in Carve Your Name in My Bones.

⦁ “She wants to ask Adora if she’s sure she loved her the way that Catra loved her, but while she can walk into the Horde ready to face any danger, she’s still a fucking coward when it comes to things that matter.” Yeah so Catra is saying her life matters less to her than whether or not Adora loved her here. Which is totally healthy and normal and she for sure doesn’t need therapy.

⦁ Catra eating the bread instead of throwing it back like she normally would have done is a result of both her imprisonment and her few weeks on the run/digging through Halfmoon. She’s also aware they’re running on rations and would probably be more conscientious even if she wasn’t painfully aware how important real food is at the moment.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Glimmer is basically bribing/guilting them BOTH to stay in camp using each other, because really they both need to recover, and everybody needs to fall into sync again before going out in the field together.

This is What Separation Ends

Chapter 1:

⦁ The title here has so many different implications. As I said earlier, it’s a lyric from Crystal Kingdom, but it pulls triple duty. It’s “separation” (being broken up) ending between Adora and Catra, it’s separation between Adora and She-ra ending with the breaking of the sword, and it’s separation between wider worlds ending as Horde Prime is defeated and they’re all finally free.

⦁ This first chapter was actually all stuff that was supposed to happen in One of Us Has to Keep a Promise. Then I was just… too into the whole breakup/deflection/come back together concept and the fic ended up expanding a lot from the initial concept of “quick slice of awkwardness with them on the same side again now it’s all hands on deck fighting the Horde” (exact quote from my outline doc). Yeah more was needed by the time we got there and I wanted to write more anyway lol.

⦁ Their time going back to be alone in the tent… Man, even I don’t know what they did in there LOL. I will say I did consider having them have an implied “end of the world, plus weeks of tension with their relationship” hook up, but them just cuddling and being needy also makes sense. Making out like they did in the last fic makes sense. They definitely kissed at least once in that tent, but the rest I wouldn’t be able to say definitively without actually writing it and feeling it out.

⦁ Okay, in Castaspella’s defense, Catra was very convincing, and Casta let Shadow Weaver of all people lead her off alone without telling anyone so I think this is in character for her lol. Catra basically went “yep, Adora was 100% dead and She-ra brought her back to life in the Heart, so she can heal someone else when they use the failsafe, but we don’t know if the failsafe will destroy She-ra if she did it herself, and we can’t risk that.” In this verse, they’re very aware that only a First One can be She-ra and they’re fucked without Adora. That, combined with some guilt-tripping and the valid point that they need a tiny strike team if they’re going to have any chance of infiltrating Mystacor (and that either Castaspella or Micah has to be on said team if they’re going to have a chance), convinced Castaspella to go. Catra said she would leave the message with Emily to deliver a few hours after they left to ensure they got in and out before the Alliance could catch up and ruin the plan by immediately getting caught (because let’s be real, that’s what would happen). The Mystacor infiltration was way more high stakes with a lot higher chance of failure without Melog by their side to camouflage them, so this was riiiiisky, but they didn’t have a lot of options.

Chapter 2:

⦁ Adora’s powers didn’t exactly get an upgrade post-alignment, but her perception of She-ra did, and that allowed her tap deeper into her, which is what led to stuff like the shooting blast, especially on complete accident.

⦁ So I did (briefly) consider having Catra get chipped here and Prime commanding her to walk off the cliff instead of the stabbing. TBH, I just wanted to do my own thing without retreading so much ground from the show (which was kind of my whole philosophy when it came to this AU) and there wasn’t much point to it anyway since Catra would be chipped and unchipped within hours. It seemed far more logical to me that Prime would just kill her, keeping her alive only long enough to utilize her to get the sword. He wasn’t going to risk keeping the failsafe (Catra) alive long enough to really go through her memories, so chipping her didn’t have much use, and leaving her unchipped seemed like more effective blackmail (because who would want back their loved one when they know they’re indoctrinated? Somebody who understands love, you idiot).

⦁ In the initial outline of this chapter that I did a month and a half ago (lol), Prime didn’t stab her, instead just throwing her off the cliff. But. I mean. The drama. I had to go with stabbing. The fact he was doing it with Adora’s sword, which is supposed to be the home to a goddess of healing and protection but has been perverted and turned into a destructive weapon waiting to end the world, was just too poetic.

⦁ Okay okay okay. The sword-shattering thing. I have written that into two AUs now. The first one was an idea I came up with in October 2020 and was definitely destined to just be one of those “talk about it with your friends in Discord and never actually write” AUs, and then again into… well one that didn’t end up happening. Then this AU came around and I realized I could finally use the idea. In each iteration of it, the circumstance was entirely different and the reason why the sword had to break was a little different too (Adora needing healing beyond the sword’s capabilities and She-ra’s power surging into her; being too far away from it to save the world; and needing to heal Catra leading to agony surging her power past the sword’s breaking point), so it always felt fresh and exciting while also being something that I was excited to finally incorporate because the drama. I was refreshing my inbox all day after posting this chapter because I love the end of it so much and I wanted to see people’s reactions.

⦁ Okay but what are the mechanics of it, I hear you not asking. Well, I’ll tell you. So one, my headcanon is that the sword was forged using the Heart for realsies, not just in this AU. Like I said, I was able to shove a lot of my headcanons into this AU because it was actually reasonable for them to have discovered that stuff in this ‘verse. Anyway, She-ra’s runestone was as old as the other runestones and used to work like them too where she just had to be magically connected to it, not physically, to use her powers, but it was placed in the sword’s hilt so the sword could “impose order” on She-ra. Basically, the Sword of Protection was supposed to keep her locked as a First One and give her a “weakness” in the form of making her tied to a physical object. If She-ra becomes a problem, just take the sword away and she’s gone. The sword is old, though, and She-ra’s magic is very powerful. Adora has been in a lot of tight spots before, but none of them as devastating as this, and her connection with She-ra is strong now. If Catra had died the same day that Adora got the sword, it probably wouldn’t have worked like this, but between knowing the sword is just an object now and the strength of her powers, she could reach for She-ra’s runestone even with it locked inside the sword. When she grabbed that connection is when the magic started manifesting around her, but she still couldn’t transform with the sword around it despite trying and trying. So She-ra broke the lock.

⦁ Oh yeah, what actually happened when Adora was going a little insane. As soon as Catra fell, her friends started fighting and the clones that had parted for Adora rushed her. They made the mistake of trying to hold her down and pull her away from Catra, though. That’s when her eyes started glowing. As she internally spiraled and fought against the hands, she started to glow, and the power began to swirl around her. Pretty quickly, some clones were forced to let go, and others were knocked away. The remaining ones were knocked flat when she went full power-aura a la Save The Cat, and then she screamed, it did actually cause a minor local earthquake, and then she transformed.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Remember She-ra’s earthquake powers? Because Adora certainly doesn’t seem to with how little she uses them in the show LOL. Okay, but that feeds into my “full power She-ra” thing. In episode two where Adora does that, she’s kind of… overtaken by the avatar of She-ra. She’s almost mechanical in movement, she’s absolutely glowing with power like a beacon… you know, the stuff she was doing here. She-ra definitely has a deeper power that Adora can tap into at times, and that’s what she did here when she broke the sword. Prime was dealing with She-ra like he had never seen her before and the world had never seen her since before Mara.

⦁ In the initial version of this, Etheria started surging up to meet her and those cracks in the earth started pouring magic, but I changed it because that’s more related to my post-Heart headcanons then pre-Heart and I just don’t think it would work like that.

⦁ The outline of this scene included Adora bringing Catra up to the top of the cliff and then putting her down to fight Prime, but that was… a bad idea, so I had Adora put her down on the ground. I considered having the grass grow under Catra as a part of She-ra’s “life” powers (another headcanon), but that felt too close to Perfuma’s powers, and Perfuma was literally there, so I just had Perfuma do it and she made the protective tangle while she was at it.

⦁ I’m not entirely sure that the ending I wrote here is possible. Let me explain. My interpretation of Prime’s hivemind and body jumping is that he basically can’t be killed because, like Corypheas (to everybody who just cringed internally, I salute you, we did time in the trenches together), he always moves to the next body when his current one is damaged. Thus, you have to disable the entire hivemind before you can trap his current body and kill him off in that. That means that in this canon, Adora can’t kill him off yet because she hasn’t yet destroyed the mothership, but I went with the logic that once she has started that… magic purge thing she does, he can’t move, and without him in the system imposing order on it, the hivemind becomes a thousand discordant voices that don’t even know how to speak on their own, essentially debilitating them until the mothership is destroyed and they all become individuals. The clones do calm down, but right now they can barely think and are prone to lashing out.

⦁ I forgot not everyone is as insane about this show as I am when someone brought up the failsafe in the comments, so I’ll clarify here: the First Ones alphabet is phonetic. A reading/writing guide was uploaded to the show/Dreamworks’ social medias with all the details, but basically the failsafe/word Heart from the show is formed from a base word bar with two decorative elements sticking out of the top on both ends to form the top of the heart. The language is read right to left, so the outlines for the bottom half of the heart are made from the sounds/letters H and R on the right, and T on the left. So when Adora says she has H and R, she means she quite literally has one half of the heart, while Catra has the other containing the T, like one of those half-heart best friend necklaces totally not baby-lesbians get with each other.

⦁ The Hearrrrrrrrrrtttt sceneeeeee god okay. Man I really like this fic can you tell XD Them intertwining in the Heart is something that can be So Personal- OKAY I swear I’ll stop memeing now. The intertwining thing was born of them needing to share the failsafe for Catra to survive it (initial outline just called for Adora “taking” it from Catra via She-ra and the healing magic, I changed that and it’s way better this way) but then I absolutely loved what it led to. It also really helps resolve a lot of their personal issues to see each other, stripped and honest and incapable of hiding. Adora can feel how Catra truly, truly doesn’t need her to be useful to love her, and Catra can feel how Adora loves her even when she doesn’t show it how Catra needs, not to mention how her friends in general love her and think about her when she isn’t there. All of these are things they realize over the periods of weeks and months and years post-canon, but they got to kind of speedrun that process here. And also it’s just so fucking yuri I had to do it.

⦁ In the finale of the show, someone on crew (pretty sure it was ND) said the original idea was for the burst of magic to shoot up and destroy the mothership, but someone on crew (and I know he named and credited them, I just can’t remember who right now) came up with the idea for it to be overtaken by that tangle of plant life instead to reclaim it, and he thought that was a better idea. And I don’t disagree with that. But in this one they went with that first option and just blasted him out of the sky lol.

Once More, With Feeling [one shot]

⦁ These two dumbasses blush when talking/thinking about the Heart for so long, half the Princess Alliance is convinced they had victory sex down there or something, but no, they’re just so fucking gay.

⦁ It's... kind of a headcanon? For my own fic? But they do end up going out to explore space with the help from some reformed clones (when it comes to spaceship building/repair and intergalactic navigation) at some point after the war and eventually come across Krytis, because I can't leave Melog there forever.

⦁ I have a list of some more ideas for this universe, so I will return at some point, but I need a break. I had SO much fun with this fic, it was absolutely wild, but it was also a long ride and my creativity needs a bit of a rest or I might burn out.

Original Outline:

Originally this series wasn’t supposed to have plot and I had disclaimers about that. Okay, there was supposed to be some plot (Fics 1 & 3, the breakup, and the finale fic) but there was very little aside from that. Even the finale fic, I didn’t have context for how that happened, it was just “confrontation with Horde Prime looked different since Catra never got captured since she was never with the Horde.”

Never with the Horde. Yeah.

So. When I was first planning this series, I only briefly considered the possibility of not breaking them up, because in this AU they’re extremely codependent and it’s not healthy. They absolutely needed to learn to function independently of each other, and I love angst. However, the initial idea was just that they would break up and Catra would run away to the Whispering Woods, having her own adventures, getting caught up in shit but luckily never any missions with Adora.

Then I went to sleep (while writing the first fic, I think, but maybe just planning), and by the time I got up the next morning I had written the entirety of the deflection fic (that’s what I called I’d Die Just to Be Someone for a while) in my head. I sat down in front of my rough timeline for the series that acted as an outline and went “‘kay how do I mess this up because this idea is so angsty I can’t not.” I mean I did consider not, I outlined like three or four different back halves of the fic using the deflection and not, but in the end I hammered out my best version of them with the deflection in place.

Having such an arc determined for the series really changed the way I thought about it in that it needed to have structure now rather than doing whatever I wanted like before, but I kept the nonlinear nature of the series like I first planned.

When I constructed the arc, it had an overall pretty simple structure with 1 plot forwarding fic followed by one character/world building or backstory/fluff fic, repeat 5/6 times. This changed almost immediately because I kept having ideas for new insert fics. Maze (Literal, Metaphorical), Girls Talk, and Halls That Make a Home were not in the original list of ideas, and HTMaH was just supposed to be a filler fic once inserted but ended up somewhere halfway between that and plot since it brings up the Entrapta thing before we hit the portal and is where Adora reveals her backstory.

The fact I kept wanting to move around fics didn’t help. The first 3 fics were as planned, the forth fic was supposed to be “something in the Rebellion,” which I suppose it is, only the ideas that were supposed to go there ended up being in the 11th fic in the series. Then the 5th was as planned, 6th and 7th were come up with while writing the series (the single fic that was supposed to take their place ended up as a scene in the 11th fic), and 8, 9, and 10 were as planned. 11 kind of fluctuated but was originally the library fic before that got moved earlier (because I really wanted to write it and it was a good way to introduce the Entrapta thing). 12, 13, and 14 were all as planned again, though.

BTW, when I say “as planned,” I mean the fic topic was as planned. Some of them still saw changes within that fic, but most of them were just a few sentences of summary so there was plenty of room to grow.

Also… let’s talk about those other endings. Because I ended up with two “main” versions once the deflection was planned, so there was a second version of the ending I was toying with up until the point of no return (fic 8). The other version of the end was that Scorpia never connected with the Garnet, but they discovered the Heart, and Light Hope was forced to try to activate it. Without the Garnet connected, it couldn’t go through, but it started enough for Prime to pick up signals and he (at least kind of) realized what Etheria’s deal was. This was the first way I explained the sword being kept intact (though Catra did still help Adora out).

What did this result in? Well, Prime figured out the temporal thing and started sending clones back in time to fight Etheria. This led to a much different looking war, with clones at first supplementing the Horde’s ranks, and then overthrowing Hordak when they realized what was up and marching on everybody. Once sent back in time, however, they were cut off from the hivemind and it was a disorganized mess, so Prime himself eventually realized that was the problem after sending waves and waves of clones back in time and went back himself. The stand off happened pretty similarly, Adora purified him and freed all the clones in their time, and then they used the Heart to move Etheria into the wider world, scattering the army in the process.

Honestly, there’s just a lot of logistical problems with this version of the end, and maybe I could have hammered them out and changed things around, but I liked the version I used better because it was just simpler and I feel like all that timetravel and different-looking war stuff would have gotten convulted and muddied the story pretty quickly. As much as I liked the idea of going in on my time travel headcanon, it was just too much. It would have necessitated at least two more fics that I don’t think would have been that interesting. I love how this series came out, so I think I made the right call there, lol. The only loss was that “This is Where Separation Ends” doesn’t also represent Etheria moving into the universe anymore since that already happened two fics ago, but it’s still the effective joining with the universe since Prime’s army was cutting them off, so good enough lol.

Meta:

Season One Fic Notes

Catra’s clothes (Wild, Weird)

Series Directory/Share Links

Upcoming:

I’m torn between two projects right now, so I’m not sure yet, but it’ll be a short multi-chapter fic either way so it will probably start in the next couple days

[hellofromthehallowoods]

1, 4, 5, and 20 of the podcast ask game?

First audio drama? Does the Adventure Zone count? It was the only podcast I'd listened to before starting to write Hello From The Hallowoods. But I began Welcome to Night Vale shortly after so as to have a better idea of the other shows in the space.

4. Favorite completed show? Bear in mind, there aren't that many of those floating around. Parkdale Haunt, perhaps, or the Dead Letter Office of Somewhere, Ohio. The Silt Verses is about to qualify for this category too!

5. Name a trope I like that's specific to audio drama? I love the obscure explanations people make to explain why they're audio recording every single plot-important thing. There are so many situations where the tape recorder just happens to be recording during the dramatic conversation with the protagonist and a villain, even though making their little diary is probably the last thing on their mind in that moment. Of course had to do this same thing for the Athenaeums/Old Bindings series.

20. Which podcast character do I think would have their own podcast in an AU? The not-very-exciting answer is probably Melanie Flores. She basically has a podcast already. But I'd love to hear a podcast from Walt that's mostly talking about the Hallowoods survival tips and interviewing local residents about nothing terribly exciting. It's not much to listen to, but it's the only radio program on at the Scoutpost, and all the people getting interviewed are the people who already live there. Even so, everyone tunes in anyway.

[she-lives-in-her-dreams]

Swipe City Chapter 5:Dating with a Twist

Disclaimer: I do not know any celebrities in this story.  I’ve been super sick for a week; thus, this is not proofread. I’m not from nor have been to London; so, I apologize if I use American terms when writing a Brit character. 

Please let me know if you guys have any interest in this story continuing. I’m not receiving a lot of feedback and feel like this story is a bit of a flop. 

@mountpulisic​ @mllynne​ @luminous-99​ @alwaysclassyeagle

       Christian is nervous–no, he is beyond nervous. A level of nervousness that he doesn’t know how to describe in English nor in German.  It’s Wednesday and in exactly  30 minutes, he is going to be sitting in a small, local  pub with Y/N for a lunch date. He is mentally trying to prepare  himself for any reaction she may have to his identity. 

        In a flat across West London, Y/N is nervously fixing her makeup and trying not to vomit. It’s out of character for her to go on a date with man she has never videochatted with much less never even seen pictures of.  The thought runs through her mind to cancel the date and ask for a videochat before rescheduling it.  The notion disappears as quickly as it appeared–the move to London had been one she promised herself would be about adventures and a fresh start. A clean slate she knows has to include some risks that are out of her comfort zone. Besides, if Chris–hopefully that is his real name– is a serial killer, she did activate her location on her phone, has a secret code arranged with her friends back home, and an agreed upon check-in time. 

    The 30 minutes past quickly for both Christian and Y/N, and before either knows it the pub  is in their views.  Y/N arrives first–always one for arriving early to avoid having to approach her dates.  She chooses a corner high-top table and quickly texts Chris where she is seated. The pub is not busy at all which makes her sigh in relief and give thanks that Chris asked for a lunch date rather than a dinner when the evening crowd would surely have overwhelmed her senses with all the noise. 

    Christian arrives at the pub exactly 5 minutes before the arranged time. He checks his phone and finds a missed text from Y/N with information about their seating arrangement. Christian clutches the bouquet of tulips tightly as he pulls the pub’s entrance door. His coffee colored eyes search the corner high-top tables for the lavender sweater y/n said she would be wearing. 

     The instant they land on the woman in the corner’s lavender sweater, his eyes still. Her head is tilted down looking at her phone. Before Christian can even process what is happening, his feet have moved him across the pub to standing in front of y/n. He clears his throat to get her attention and when her eyes lift to meet his own, Christian feels his breath catch. He has always believed that no matter the color of someone’s eyes, you could tell a lot about the person just by looking into their eyes ; and in this moment, all Christian can tell about y/n from her eyes is that he never wants to stop looking into them. 

     Y/N hears the clearing of the throat and looks up. In front of her is an absolutely breath-taking man. His boyishly handsome face with the shy smile and dimple cause her heart to race. For a second, there are no words spoken.  Christian clears his throat again and forces himself to speak. 

“Hi, Y/N. I’m Chris.” The shy smile never leaving his face. 

Y/N stands to greet him but hesitates awkwardly. Does she give him a handshake? A hug? What is the tradition for dates now? God, she hates dating. 

Christian makes the decision for her as she speaks her name by moving closer and opening his arms for a gentle hug. After several phone conversations and hours of texts, he feels that he knows y/n and a hug is the only acceptable greeting for someone he already feels safe with. 

Though the hug is short, it is warm and soothing to both. As the two separate, both recognize the noticeable loss of warmth and comfort. 

“It’s really great to meet you in person. I hope you don’t mind, but I remembered you saying you loved these; so, I picked these up for you.”  Christian says shyly as he hands y/n the flowers. Her smile widens– she mentioned these flowers during their second conversation when he was trying to figure out which flowers to send his mother for her birthday. 

“Wow, Chris! That is so thoughtful of you.”  Y/N tries not to gasp–a man significantly younger than her put more effort into their first date than any other man had during a committed relationship. 

As the date progresses, Christian realizes the pub is becoming busier. He tries not to panic and attempts to calm himself by remembering  he doesn’t get recognized as much as Mason or Reece especially when he is out without them. It’s not that he wants to lie to Y/N, he just knows he wants to tell her in his own nonpublic way. 

    Christian feels a sense of relief when it is not until y/n is in the restroom that he is approached by an older man asking for an autograph and picture for his young grandson. The interaction is swift and when the man sees y/n approaching the table again, he thanks Christian, winks at him, and promptly walks away. Christian thanks his God for this small miracle.

“It’s getting to be a bit late. Unfortunately, I need to go back to work.” Y/N says with a sigh. It was the one part of a lunch date that had made her hesitate– she had to come to the date in her professional clothing and was limited to a few hours before she would need to return. 

  Christian smiles a bit sadly. “I hate that it has to end so quickly, but I understand not everyone is off today like me.”  

     After beckoning the waiter over and handing him his card to pay for their date, Christian swallows the lump forming in his throat. “I had a really great time and would like to see you again, if you are open to it.” 

Y/N feels the heat in her face. “I would love to see you again.” 

    After receiving his card and helping y/n to put her jacket on, Christian escorts Y/N  out into the chilly weather to catch her waiting  taxi.  Already anticipating her next move, Christian rushes around Y/N to open the taxi’s door and help her into it. 

    Feeling somewhat empowered by the man’s consistent gentlemanly ways, Y/N leans over and presses a soft kiss to Christian’s cheek as she enters the taxi.

“Let me know when you are available.” She whispers after thanking him again for the date. 

     As the taxi pulls away, Christian touching his kissed cheek, a man steps into his peripheral vision.  The man begins to speak causing Christian to turn his head in the gentleman’s direction.

“Son, you have the same look on your face that I had when I met future wife, when my son-in-law looks at my daughter, and when my son looks at his wife. I hope it works out for you because I would love to say I witnessed the first date of Christian Pulisic and his wife.” 

     Quickly recognizing the man as the guy from the bar who asked for the autograph and photo, Christian responds nervously. 

“She is great, but was it really that awkward and obvious it was a first date?” 

     The grandfatherly man laughs. “You are standing in the cold holding your cheek from a little peck. I think that makes it obvious. Good luck on Sunday, Pulisic. I’ll be cheering for you in more than one way!” The man continues to laugh as he walks away leaving Christian with a glowing red face. 

Christian touches his kissed cheek again and thinks how much like a romcom this is turning out to be. 

[riddlerosehearts]

Okay now EYE must ask you - how are you liking BG3??? How far are you?? Tell me about your Tav!!!! (Please and thank you <3)

hi!! 💖 i only started the game a few days ago and it was an impulse decision i made after having previously told a friend of mine that i definitely wanted to play it but that it'd probably take me a while to get around to it (and, because i thought i wouldn't play anytime soon i hadn't really been trying to avoid spoilers). but, i have the PC version and while it generally runs just fine, my computer is kind of slow and the game is so big that it took hours to download and install. so i kind of went ahead and started to come up with a whole character idea during that time LOL. sorry if my explanations of things get a bit too rambly/disorganized. i'm actually not very far in the game at all yet, i've been spending a ton of time doing stuff in the druids grove and i'm supposed to go find halsin but i haven't even gotten karlach in my party yet! i've recruited all the main companions except for her but i am excited to meet her. gonna put the rest of this under a cut for length.

my only background with DND is that i listened to the first campaign of the adventure zone and i've watched the legends of vox machina show. i also have a friend who's super into her own DND campaign and another friend who's told me a lot about dimension 20, specifically fantasy high--and i've considered trying it out for her but haven't gotten around to it yet! i think she actually told me the same thing about the episode lengths making it easier to get into than critical role, because i had tried critical role and it was just so long that i couldn't stick with it. but, yeah, i've also looked at the forgotten realms wiki a bit but i've never actually played DND. i have played skyrim and final fantasy 14 and some other similar RPGs with customizable blank-slate protagonists, and in those types of games i always have to make OCs to roleplay as--usually i'll think up a basic idea to start with and then flesh the character out as i get into the game. they're never really self-inserts but i do often project onto them a little.

so, in games like these my first character is usually an elf that specializes in elemental/destructive magic. idk why, that's just what i've always liked. in ff14 i started out as a black mage without knowing it was the hardest class to play LMAO. soooo i went into this planning to create a high elf sorcerer, but as i started writing out ideas and thinking about what to do, i ended up creating a half-high elf bard. they're transmasc/nonbinary and in my head they use he/they pronouns, but i picked the nb option in the character creator and that causes npcs to actually use they/them in dialogue which i think is so cool. i love that the character creator is so inclusive in regards to gender.

anyway, i named them elenion, which is something i took from the lord of the rings universe because i'm a huge nerd. in LOTR it's an elvish word that basically means "of the stars". here's a couple screenshots i took when i first started. let's just ignore the fact that this hairstyle clips into elf ears (and also that the face preset is from a mod i downloaded).

i didn't really give him a tragic backstory or even the most interesting story haha--i'm wanting to do something bigger and angstier with another character on a second playthrough when i'm more familiar with the lore and world of the game. and i'll probably also end up changing or expanding on some things about this character later, but for now i just kind of made a normal guy with normal problems. i had this idea that his father, a human who attracted the attention of a beautiful elf woman, was also a bard and was a very successful musician in his youth. so elenion has always shared his father's passion and dreamed of being like him, being able to effortlessly tell incredible tales and inspire crowds of people through song, but no matter how much he studies and practices he never feels good enough. if he seems confident it's usually just because he's gotten really good at faking it. he's also pretty reserved and often avoids having to talk about himself by asking a lot of questions. see, i kind of wanted to specifically find a way to not roleplay the usual sort of loud, flirty, goofy bard, lol. not that i dislike those kinds of characters or anything though!

however, bards are meant to be super charismatic, witty, and persuasive and of course the game strongly encourages that with the dialogue options and skill bonuses you get. so my way of explaining this is to have elenion be a bit like raine from the owl house, in that they may be shy, but they're very firm in their ideals and are no pushover when it comes to protecting themself or their allies. they're clever and have a snarky side to them, and they're genuinely friendly and caring in a way that gives them a sense of quiet charisma. which reminds me that one of the spells i gave them at the start was sleep, and it's made me imagine that when they were a kid they tried calming a crying baby by playing a lullaby on their lute and accidentally ended up casting their first spell.

oh, and, i also wasn't really sure at first where in the world i wanted elenion to come from but i decided on something pretty quickly after getting multiple of those dialogue options suggesting that the protagonist is baldurian! i pictured them growing up in a somewhat small town with their family but moving to baldur's gate as an adult, hoping that if they left the comfort of their home and started to journey out into the world a little they'd eventually find their spark and become the bard they wanted to be. unfortunately they've had little luck so far because even after all this time they can't see that maybe their whole fixation on trying to be just like their father and achieve the exact same kind of success that he had is holding them back. the fact that their father died the year after they moved away hasn't helped either. and now, in the middle of traveling to a historical site that they'd wanted to see in person and use as inspiration for a song, they've been abducted by mindflayers and are struggling with the massive upheaval that this has brought into their relatively mundane life.

so. yeah. my tav for this first playthrough may not be the most unique or exciting character but i like him! i like figuring out what kind of choices he'll make and thinking up new ideas for what he likes and how he sees the world. also, i find it funny how in your reply to my ask you said you thought you'd be into gale but then you fell for astarion--because i thought that i'd be all over the edgy, brooding, snarky vampire man, but it turns out gale is so charming and funny that i'm probably going to romance him first. i'm also pretty intrigued by shadowheart and wyll but i'm so early in the game that i can't even say who i think my overall favorite companion will be because they all seem so interesting!! even karlach despite the fact that i haven't actually met her yet, i've seen a bunch of cool gifsets of her and my brother told me he's been romancing her on his playthrough. i really need to go find her soon.

i'm sure you can tell from everything i wrote here that i am definitely enjoying the game LOL. i can already tell that there's just so many different things to do and see, that i will both need and want to do a lot of different playthroughs and that it's going to be something that sticks with me. nothing wrong with using guides and walkthroughs btw! i do it too because i'm worried about missing too many things and have the world's worst sense of direction even with a minimap. honestly i probably need to look up some guides for certain mechanics that i don't feel like i've really figured out yet. there's a sarcophagus trap in the ruins early in the game that got me SO stuck and got my whole party wiped and then i looked up a video and found out you could turn off the whole trap system by pushing a switch... i felt so stupid askjdfgf.

anyway, i think this got to be way too long of a reply so i will stop here! but if you ever wanna tell me more about your tav or anything definitely feel free to and i hope you're having an awesome day!

[asinfullangel]

7 Costume

I believe: “A few beers is enough to make you look more like a snack,” will be fun.

What could be worse on Halloween night or during October? Some preds crashing a costume party, eating up people left and right as if they are a pack of wolves (would be more fitting if they dress as wolves), how about a pred that get into character all too well wherever they dress up as a hungry beast or invade a haunted house attraction to add more of a scare to anyone that doesn’t end up in their gut.

I’ll settle for one idea in mind and that is: inviting a pred to a costume party with an open bar. And so, a party was underway within a fancy apartment, a few friends arriving fashionably late (because they forgot where they left their costume after a few drinks). The pred of the group (that had “something” to eat already) dressed as an orc with some body paint on walked in along with his group of buds dressed up like an d&d adventure party following behind. They heard of this open door party around town and look like whoever’s running the place sure likes to spend a great time. Everyone was in costume, the place looked like the interior of a vampire cattles and the host dressed like a dark lore chatting with some guests. And the ore dressed pred was gazing around till he saw something he favored the most at a party, a bar loaded with bottles that’ll be empty sooner or later by him.

The group all dissipate around the place to enjoy themselves as it lasts. The pred at the bar ordering himself a few shots to be handed a bottle instead as he’s told, “enjoy yourself, they all have been paid for already.” The bartender left to do some catering (dressed like a blond satyr, seems to be having fun too). (You can see what’ll happen next) One bottle emptied, 3 bottles empty, a few to many emptied soon enough then the beer rack goes missing and said beers included. The bartender returned to see behind his counter that the same orc was drunk out of his mind in a daze with a slightly bigger belly now on him. “At least enjoy all that the party has to offer, but I suppose you’ll need to pick me up and luckily it is my specialty.” So with one bottle left and one quick brew of coffee he made the man a simple Irish that woke him up by the scent before he drank it all down without much thought. The bartender left without a word knowing what he did (hehe).

Skipping a few minutes the orc man was back on his feet and gazing around the room once again, drooling on his lips along with a hunger in his eyes that was the only few signs of what is going to happen next. Now begin the part of the event that was not planned by the host. Guests were disappearing left and right by this man throughout the night. He may be drunk, but somehow manage to add more fear into this party from the shadows and behind lockable doors. His buds took notice of the signs before they disappeared for the rest of the event. They knew to stay out of the way when this happened so back into the hallway and up they go to the rooftop to wait things out (at least the view of the stars will be nice to see). Once they were out of the hunting zone they took this time to themselves to recall and chat about their time at the party, getting a few laughs out from one another as the party downstairs was being silenced…

After an hour they group return downstairs to see the aftermath. A mess of costumes littered the ground along with anything else that was dropped & burped out hinted by the semi dried saliva coating it. They search around the place for their stuffed silly bud to find him filling out the master bedroom, crushing the queen sized bed underneath his gut that was squirming. The legs of the host were hanging out of his mouth while he was taking a nap because of his gluttony, so with a little push by his friends the host was sealed behind his lips and sent to join the rest. What was odd was a note left on the nightstand with one of their names signed to them saying, “do not worry about the mess even if that idea crossed your mind, I can handle such a aftermath with ease and don’t forget to take a goody bag on the way out.”

[samobservessonic]

We’re back again with our Uncle Kintobor for story time. The title says this is part 2, but I’m sure this is the third one of these that we’ve done. Regardless, Kintobor picks up from where we left off last time with Sonic having achieved his first defeat of Robotnik and now needing to figure out what to do with the Chaos Emeralds

Helping Sonic figure out the answer to that is the usual duo of Porker & Johnny. Y’know, as much as Porker is one of my fave StC characters, I do sometimes wonder why, out of all the small animals and the characters who appeared on that AoStH promo art, it was these two who Kitching favoured using. In the early issues, Millar would also throw Sally into the mix, but Kitching stuck with Porker and Johnny, making them staples of StC. Maybe it was an editorial decision or maybe he just liked pigs and rabbits? Regardless, it is something I’m curious about

Anyway, if you’re wondering how Sonic would lose the emeralds again in time for Sonic 2, they just vanish! But not before causing some trouble on the way out…

Super Sonic!

The retcon I’ve been waiting for is now in place, with the flashback establishing that it was taking the full blast of the chaos energy that made Sonic able to turn into Super Sonic. And, just like how the Chaos Emeralds made Robotnik evil in StC, they’ve had a similar effect on Sonic. I’d always heard that the reason behind Fleetway Super Sonic being like he is is because Kitching reckoned that Sonic was already the fastest thing alive, so making him even more powerful just wasn’t as interesting as making him his own worst enemy. But honestly, even outside of that, I like that they keep it fair - if the emeralds had that effect on Kintobor, then they have that effect on Sonic as well

The Kintobor Computer also explains on another panel that it’s being kept together that makes the emerald unstable, causing them to warp back to the Special Zone. I enjoy these in-universe explanations for game mechanics

With a brief introduction to Super Sonic, we find Sonic waking up dazed in a place called Swampland Zone, where he finds what he assumes to be two guys drowning in a lake nearby

We all know who this is! Though he’s not actually local to the Swampland Zone (even if Sonic doesn’t know about that), Tails is here and he’s grateful to Sonic for saving him

The one thing that I think is kind of a shame about this story being a brief look at how everything came to be is that it means parts of Tails’s backstory that I like are changed. Namely that he already knows how to fly prior to meeting Sonic and that Tails is something he cheerfully calls himself and not an insult that Sonic helps him claim back from the bullies. It’s a small gripe, but if the story had been longer, then I would’ve liked to have seen Tails’s backstory be closer to what it was in the old Sonic 2 instruction manual. As a side note, I really liked how the short silent animation in Sonic Origins handled that story

With Tails in the mix, we get a recap of the events of Sonic 2. Then our story ends with Kintobor telling us that Sonic found a safe place to store the Chaos Emeralds together in the North Cave, where they mostly remain when they’re not being stolen by Captain Plunder

And that’s the conclusion of our first Sonic’s World story, but we’re told that this feature will return in issue 32, which is a little way off where we are now

In the meantime, we don’t have to worry about going back down to one Sonic story per issue, because next issue the Tails solo stories are back! After enjoying the first couple of adventures in the Nameless Zone, I’m looking forward to seeing Tails potentially return there next time

[vilelittlecritter]

Okay more OmorOff, here's a funny doodle I did and some and some sweet sweet lore

Okay so here's a summary of the story I've thought of so far!!!

So it starts with Omori waking up in an abyss, he doesn't know who or where he is. Not long after he sees a room with a boy in it, that boy being Sunny.

Sunny notices Omori and starts talking to him, they can't touch each other and simply fade through each other like a vision. As they speak it's clearly obvious that Sunny is upset and ill, he wears a long white gown and slippers, his eyes are sunken and his skin a sickly pale. Omori and Sunny become friends and Sunny asks Omori to come save him from wherever he is, Omori basically just being born and seeing Sunny as his best friend gladly accepts and completely agrees to save him.

After this conversation Omori finds himself in Zone 0 (White Space) with a new found purpose, save Sunny and purify the world. He meets Mewo who takes the place of The Judge/Stranger by aiding Omori in combating the spirits which have suddenly invaded this world and overall accompanying him through his journey.

Along the way they meet a charismatic and smooth talking business man who calls himself Hero, a hyperactive cheery boy called Kel, a pissed off over worked girl called Aubrey and an erratic and paranoid gardener who goes by Basil.

Oh yeah and there's the big psychotic murder cat who tortures their people in a manic obsession of making them happy, the giant whale which has basically imploded and now lives as a half dead parasite living off their entire Zone while slowly melting and mutating into a horrible flesh monster in a desperate attempt to survive and the octopus lady who ended up learning so much forbidden knowledge it drove her and all her people completely insane! Like completely insane! Like her and all her people are in unimaginable agony! Yay the horrors!!!

And don't forget the horrifying mangled spirits! There are A LOT of them and they need purifying!

And at the end of it all there's a being that everyone is careful to mention by name. Mari. The Guardian angel. Whom everyone seems to answer to. Not much is known about them other than god forbid you get on their bad side...

So yeah a lot of wacky fun adventures to be had :)))

Watch these silly characters travel across a world on the brink of collapse and going completely insane while being invaded by horrifying spectral beings which are hellbent on killing everyone they come across.

Is this world real? Is it all another version of headspace??? What the hell is going on?????

Answer, I don't know! :DD

This story honestly like the original Off is probably going to be kinda open ended, so this world could totally exist on its own. Or it could just all be inside Sunny's head. Both work with the story I'm probably going to tell!

I'm going to try my best to keep it close to Off while still being its own story because I'm not a fan of just blatantly copying Off's story. There will still be a lot of parallels and sometimes just character swaps but I'll try my best to stay original. Like I'm using the skeleton of Off and building a different world around it.

A lot will probably change because honestly the core story is basically the same, and sure it could work fine but it just feels wrong of me to do it. I feel like I'm just copying Off, sure I have a lot of cool ideas but a lots the same.

Anyway if you've read this far WOW I'm impressed! I hope I've at least interested you and if you are interested feel free to share your thoughts! I seriously would love to hear what people think about this and give some criticism!

Anyway I hope to share more in the future if you guys are interested at all!!!

Also if you haven't played Off or Omori PLAY THEM. BOTH ARE SO FREAKING GOOD!

Anyway toodles :D

[otakween]

Digimon Adventure Drama CD 1 (Character Song + Mini Drama 1)

I almost forgot about drama CDs! Digimon has a whole bunch of them, it turns out. Looks like I get to cling onto the Adventure cast for a little bit longer. This CD is a combination of very short drama bits and character image songs, as the name suggests. It feels a bit on the short side but I guess that's because it's only part one ;)

Download link

SOS! Grade 5 Class A

Translation here

A very silly story about Taichi and Sora fighting a potato digimon (Jagamon) during home ec class. Very esoteric references to 1970s anime are made.

I liked that this was just Taichi and Sora. I know that was probably more of a budgeting thing, but one-on-one moments (even dumb ones like this) are important to me.

There's something icky about Taichi commanding Agumon to digivolve just for his amusement...poor little guy

Favorite part of this was all of the meta jokes about this being an audio drama. For example, when they introduce Jagamon the narrator's like "well...we can't show you what he looks like, but he looks like a potato just trust me bro"

I had to look up who Ikkyuu-san was. At least the one Japanese commenter on the YouTube video understood the reference lol.

Image Song 1 - Turn Courage Into Wings (Yagami Taichi)

Translation here

A somewhat generic, but very Taichi song. (When it comes down to it, Taichi is a pretty generic shounen guy). Of course it focuses on courage because that's Taichi's thing.

At first the "you" mentioned in song was supposed to be a romantic interest and then I realized he could be singing platonically to Agumon or Yamato. I like the Agumon option best, that's really cute.

Takeuchi Sora's Fluttering Yellow Card

This was less of a drama and more of a little radio DJ-like snippet featuring Sora and Piyomon. Sora's VA is apparently a DJ IRL so this was an in-joke.

Mimi asks Sora where her hat came from and she just say "I don't know!" lolwut. I'm not sure if this segment is supposed to be in character or in some sort of weird "behind-the-scenes" world where the characters are aware they're in an anime. Seems like the latter.

Image Song 2 - Tomorrow I'll Be...(Takeuchi Sora)

Translation here

Damn, Sora's song was pretty dark. It did have a tinge of hopefulness, but mostly it sounded like she was singing about depression/existentialism being temporary. Kind of like a "this too shall pass" song. :(

She sings about how she feels like she has no one to fight for and has lost sight of her dreams. This fits in with that one arc where she despaired over "love" being her crest because it didn't suit her. I think we all know that feeling of being lonely in a crowd, even a crowd of friends. This song helped me appreciate Sora's character a little more.

Joe's Singer Debut!? (Parts 1 & 2)

I like how these skits introduce the character image songs, that's a really cute idea. These characters aren't singers in-universe (except for Mimi), so I guess they wanted to give context for why they're singing haha.

Part 1 is Gomamon suggesting songs for Joe to sing and performing little samples. Very cute. (Of course, he can't really sing well lol, but that adds to the charm).

Part 2 is the studio rep explaining that the next drama CD will be about a love triangle between Mimi, Koushiro, and Hikari. That sounds like a terrible idea. No chemistry between either pair if you ask me...Maybe that's the joke though.

Image Song 3 - There's Another Me (Kido Jou)

Translation here

This song was all about Joe facing and overcoming his insecurities and fear of risks. He talks about how you'll never grow if you completely avoid pain of any kind. Honestly, a pretty inspirational song for kids out there. I can definitely relate to Joe's timidity. I'm always avoiding getting out of my comfort zone which has held me back in some ways.

[ohblitz0]

Hi! I saw your post about the Pedro Pascal character matchup and I was wondering if I could please get one? Your blog name and theme is really nice btw!

Personality description - It takes me a while to feel comfortable around new people but once I do, I become really talkative and outgoing. I love helping out and I'm the therapist friend, people come to me to vent or for advice and comfort. I'm smart and ambitious; I love being the best at everything I do. I'm deathly afraid of failure and disappointing the people I love. I'm quite the hopeless romantic and I love being in love! I adore big and small romantic gestures. I also daydream a lot and I can get lost in my own world for hours. I can be quite dramatic and stubborn, and I tend to be withdrawn and distant at times. I get frustrated easily and I'm quietly competitive. My love languages are acts of service (giving) and quality time (receiving)

Hobbies/likes - I adore adventures, witty and playful banter, pulling harmless pranks, joking around and having indepth discussions on anything and everything! I love reading, my favorite genres are poetry, Russian lit, and mysteries! I love learning about new things and knowing a little bit of everything, I'm very interested in psychology, history, mythology and folklore, and fashion! I adore all forms of art and storytelling, and I have quite a few creative hobbies! I especially enjoy interior decor.

Physical description - I'm 5'9 and I have long and curly dark brown hair and brown eyes. I have a fair skin tone, I'm slim and I've got full lips and slight dark circles under my eyes. I wear glasses and I also have these dimples that I really like! I love wearing makeup, and I almost always have a red lip on. I dress mostly in relaxed suits, blazers and coats and I love the occasional dress or sweaters layered over a white button down!

I'm sorry if this got too long! Thank you very much, I hope you have a lovely day ❤️

based on your qualities i think you’d work best with agent whiskey! hope you enjoy <3

warnings: a bit of fluff, a hint of some smut & some language.

when you first met the southern agent, it took you awhile to get used to his extroverted personality but in turn the both of you connected well

taking a job at statesmen was ambitious but you so were you— you were up for anything if you put your mind to it

agent whiskey had had caught your eye almost instantly

the two of you began to bond more because the amount of mission you’d done together

he admired how much work you put into the assignment, the long hours of training you would do and he appreciated all the help you wanted to give him

he found it cute how you’d start to zone out at times when he’d talk to you. he often teased you about it

“if you want to kiss me that bad sweetheart, just ask.” he teased with that damn smirk and that instantly woke you up from your silly little daydream. “you wish.” you’d muttered back before leaving the room with a blush on your face.

the two of you often messed with each other, constant flirting that went no where but one day that all changed

he always found you so beautiful, dressed to perfection when you came into work but one day you waltzed in with a red lip and the man went feral

the whole day he couldn’t focus on the tasks at hand. all he could think about was your pretty red lips

by the end of the day, a long meeting had finished and it was just the two of you left. whiskey often stayed behind with you when it got this late, always offering to walk you to your car. of course, he knew you could handle yourself but he wanted to be a gentleman.

the two of you were walking down the hallway towards the elevator before he stopped in his tacks making you stop as well

“jack?” you’d call, turning and walked back towards him with a look of confusion.

suddenly he backed you up against the wall, his hand grasping your chin making you look up at him. there was an obvious height difference and that was another thing you found attractive about him.

“been thinking about those lips all day, sugar.” he’d murmur, his thick southern drawl deepen than you’ve ever heard before. you felt hot all the sudden.

this quickly resulted in him hiking up your dress, you fumbling with his belt, as he finally claimed what had been his all along

the sight of your smeared lip stick was what made him come undone so quickly, not even ashamed at all because you were just that beautiful

the sight of his own lips stained by yours made you even more wet

“fuck— you look so pretty like this, baby.” he’d whispered during the feverish touching, and quick thrusts, trying to chase that high

that small quickie turned into much more after that day. he’d send you flowers, often got you coffee in the morning when he knew you were running late. he took you on many dates just to clarify how whipped he was for you.