#((HELL YES THIS IS CANON INFO))

[neurodivergent-sonic]

unless something is actually included within the canon media, whether its outright said or implied, foreshadowed, hinted at, whatever, then I simply don't think its canon

"oh but the creators or official staff said this in some interview-" I dont CARE. unless theyre building on whats already being provided then it does count!! adding entirely new content and trying to claim it as canon in a place that isnt accessible or known to everyone is lazy at best

sure I don't mind whoever going "also [character] likes to knit in their free time" or similar, thats whatever thats cool, I like the little tidbits of information that has no reason or room to be included in the offical media, things you can take or leave and it doesnt matter, but for actual big shit that will impact the character/story and how the veiwer interprets it?? absolutely not.

goes the opposite way too. if something makes its way through the entire editing process and is published, then its part of canon. once again not talking about little things like a character in a comic having six fingers in a panel, but actual writing choices, things about the character or plot. if a character Says something, then they said it. even if the creator goes "oh my bad that was a mistake". especially if to find out it was a mistake you have to actively search it up to realise it was a mistake

[thankskenpenders]

The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings review

The day has finally come. Many, understandably, thought we'd never get here. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten here. We've been through so much. Lawsuits, reboots, redesigns, unreleased NFTs, empty legal threats over the fact that movie Knuckles has a dad, an attempt to license out Scourge the Hedgehog to fans that immediately got canceled (in both meanings of the term), and many, MANY idiotic Twitter controversies. But now, here we are.

Thirteen years after first announcing it in the middle of his legal battles with Archie and Sega that changed the American Sonic comics forever, former writer Ken Penders has released the first part of his new series: The Lara-Su Chronicles.

Yes. I had to buy the book. I had to take one for the team. Look at the fucking URL of this blog, a blog I've been using to talk about the American Sonic comics for nearly a decade while the specter of this book loomed in the distance. The one time I've actually been paid to write an article about anything in any professional capacity, it was an article about the Penders lawsuits. I'm cited on his Wikipedia page. There was no way I was going to skip reviewing this, and there was no guarantee that scans would ever turn up online given the incredibly small audience for this trash. (Only 166 people preordered this, and even that number feels way higher than it should be.) No, I had to preorder it to ensure I could get a copy and cover it for the blog... even if that meant my name would be forever immortalized in the list of "supporters" in the back of the book. These are the sacrifices I must make as a woman who stumbled ass backwards into being an amateur Archie Sonic historian.

So, what exactly is in this book? How much of it is new? How bad is it? How did we even get here in the first place? How can this exist without Sega pursuing legal action? What happens next? And, most importantly... why are there multiple depictions of an Archie Sonic character breastfeeding in this book?

I'm here to answer those questions as best I can, and in agonizing detail.

First, for those just tuning in to this decades-long saga or those who maybe don't know the full story, here's a refresher on the background info.

"What the hell is this?"

The Lara-Su Chronicles is Ken Penders' long-dreaded long-awaited continuation of his 1994-2006 run on Archie Sonic, ignoring everything written after he left by other writers like Ian Flynn. In particular, it picks up from the cliffhanger ending of the 2003-2004 arc "Mobius: 25 Years Later," which was set in what Ken considers the definitive canonical future of the series. It stars Knuckles' daughter from that future era, Lara-Su, among other new and returning characters. The project was first announced near the start of Ken's legal battle with Archie in 2011, and he's been posting WIP previews online for about a decade. Now, after all this time, a Lara-Su Chronicles book finally exists.

We'll get to the actual contents of that book in a bit.

"He can do that without getting in trouble with Sega?"

Believe it or not, yes, he can.

Thanks to the outcome of Archie Comics' woefully mismanaged lawsuits against Ken (yes, they sued him after he started filing for copyrights, not the other way around), he now has full legal ownership of every story he wrote for Archie Sonic and every character he created for the series. This was explicitly granted to him in the terms of the settlement between him and Archie (acting on behalf of Sega). He can even reprint his old Sonic material as-is to his heart's content. The main catch is just that he can't write new stories featuring Sega characters or trademarks, and his new stories also have to be distinct from Sonic at a glance to avoid confusing readers. As such, reprints can't use Sonic iconography on the cover, a few Sega characters (mainly Knuckles) have been renamed and slightly redesigned in the new stories, and the art style has been changed to less closely resemble Sonic. But otherwise, he can do whatever he wants with his own characters.

All of this is because Archie lost the original copy of Ken's work-for-hire contract that signed over the rights to his work. Without that (or any alternative that was considered permissible in court), his comics and characters are the property of their creator by default. Yes, those old comics are full of Sega stuff, but Sega doesn't automatically own the copyright for every drawing of Sonic in existence. And Sega put their stamp of approval all over those comics and let them get sold at retail for decades, even though (in the eyes of the court) there was no legal paperwork granting them ownership of any of it. It's almost like they were unwittingly distributing a fan comic for years and declaring it a fair use of their property, and now there's no takesies backsies. It's a strange and unique copyright situation. Again, they worked all this out in the settlement. And, yes, fans have long speculated that Ken stole and destroyed his own contract to regain the rights to his work, but frankly Archie was so incompetent throughout the lawsuit (it went so bad that they had to fire and replace their lawyers midway through) that I completely buy the idea of them just losing important legal documents.

Also, in case it needs to be spelled out: while Ken's a weirdo, it's ultimately a good thing for creatives everywhere that Archie lost their lawsuit against Ken. We do not want to live in a world where corporations can claim ownership of peoples' work without the contracts to back it up. That would be an incredibly dangerous legal precedent to set. And more comic creators, and artists in general, should own their own work! Corporations are not your friend! They'll delete your work for a tax write-off in a heartbeat! It's just bewildering that this guy, of all people, was the creator who ended up successfully getting his shit back, and that this is what he's doing with it.

"What about his old collaborators? Are they involved? Is he paying them?"

Ken is mostly doing The Lara-Su Chronicles solo, though he has, in fact, talked about compensating the artists involved in any material he's reprinting. The ones who give enough of a shit to get paid for a small scale reprint of something they did 20 years ago, anyway.

On the subject of his collaborators, it's also worth pointing out that Ken's wasn't the only contract that was lost. Most of the early Archie Sonic writers from before Ian Flynn's time seem to be in the same boat as Ken, with the ownership of their stories and characters defaulting back to them. Again, Archie fucked up big time. But like I said, most of them don't really seem to give a shit. For most of them, Sonic was just a random temporary gig they took to pay the bills while Marvel was busy going bankrupt in the '90s, not the thing that defined their entire careers.

The only other Archie Sonic contributor who's tried to do anything on the level of what Ken is doing was writer and editor Scott Fulop. In 2016 he attempted to sue Archie for the unauthorized use of what are now retroactively considered his copyrighted characters and stories, and he even announced a standalone comic about his most famous Sonic character, the recurring villain Mammoth Mogul (sort of a pastiche of DC's Vandal Savage and Marvel's Kingpin, with wizard powers added for spice). However, Fulop lost his lawsuit because he didn't put together a particularly compelling case. Since then he seems to have wiped all traces of his ill-advised Mammoth Mogul comic and his company, Narrative Ark Entertainment, from the internet. For now, this leaves The Lara-Su Chronicles the only project of its kind.

"What about those other Archie Sonic reprints he just announced?"

At the time of writing, Ken is once again claiming that he's trying to get the band back together to reprint all of Archie Sonic, now under the bad new banner "Floating Island Productions: MOBIAN LINE" that I can't imagine he consulted literally anyone else on.

So, like, look. As we've established, Ken can reprint his own stories. And if he can work something out with the other contributors whose contracts were lost, he can print their work, too. But there is no fucking way he's getting his hands on Ian Flynn's run, which Sega undoubtedly holds the copyright for. Even if they don't, Ian needs to maintain a good working relationship with both Sega and IDW if he's to keep his job, so he'd never go for this. Not to mention that Ian and Ken just... don't get along! Ken's whole plan here seems to be predicated on IDW going out of business (a thing he REALLY wants to happen) and freeing up the Sonic comic license, after which he knocks on Sega's door and goes "hey I've still got dirt on you guys," blackmailing them into giving him the Sonic license back so that he can reprint the later comics. Every step of this plan is ludicrous. It's never gonna happen.

He's been saying he wants to reprint the whole series for a few years now, though. This isn't really anything new. And despite his lofty plans that set Sonic Twitter ablaze, he quickly backpedaled. The only specific things in the works right now are a "two-volume omnibus" of all of his Knuckles stories and a collection of artist Scott Shaw's work on the very early Archie Sonic issues, since they're on good terms with each other. I have no idea how Ken plans on packaging these when he can't put any Sega characters or the Freedom Fighters on the covers, but these projects are small enough in scale that there's a decent chance they'll see the light of day. Scott Shaw only did like five issues. But anything beyond that? I'll believe it when I see it.

Or, y'know, this could've all just been a publicity stunt for his new book. I wouldn't put it past him. Let's just focus on the book that actually exists.

"So he finally did it? He made a whole Lara-Su book? It's out? He finished it??"

Yes and no.

The book that's out now is The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings, a prologue for the series of seven graphic novels Ken somehow plans on making, even though it's taken him 13 years to put out literally anything new. I don't know whether or not this counts as book one of seven, because it only features 30 pages of new comics. 30.5 if I'm being generous.

Most of the book is actually just a reprint of his infamous Archie Sonic storyline "Mobius: 25 Years Later", which ran from issue #131 to #144 in 2003-2004. (Again, yes, he can reprint this, he just can't put Sonic on the cover.) Why's it infamous? Well, Ken had been building anticipation for this future era of the series for basically his entire run. We kept seeing King Sonic and Queen Sally from the future. Knuckles' entire backstory hinges on his dad having a vision of this future. Several years before Silver the Hedgehog was created, it was Lara-Su who was Sonic's equivalent to Future Trunks, the cool-looking child of one of the main characters who traveled back in time to try and prevent a dark future. Believe it or not, yes, there was hype for Lara-Su. And then we finally got M25YL, and none of that cool stuff happened. Instead it really ended up being about how unbearably boring the middle aged Sonic, Knuckles, Sally, and co. are in this peaceful future where Robotnik is dead and they're all married with kids, forced into traditional nuclear family gender roles. Lara-Su is present, but she mostly just does generic teen girl stuff and complains about how Knuckles won't let her do anything even though she REALLY wants to be the new Guardian of Angel Island, like, super bad! Come on, dad!!!

In its original printing, this meandering arc ended on an abrupt time travel cliffhanger that Ken was never able to follow up on before he left Archie in 2006. This new printing slightly changes that ending, using the unresolved timey-wimey shenanigans as a convenient excuse to alter the entire timeline. This creates the slightly different world of The Lara-Su Chronicles, where the few relevant Sega-owned characters have been replaced and everyone is ten times uglier.

After this, we finally get two short new stories picking up where M25YL left off: "The Storm," starring Acorn Kingdom super-spy and known creep Geoffrey St. John, and an early release of the first chapter of The Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows, the first full TLSC graphic novel.

And now that we're all on the same page about what we're looking at, let's actually talk about the book!

The cover

Let's start by beating a dead horse. The cover art: it's still bad! But why is it bad?

The cover is, of course, based on Patrick Spaziante's cover from Archie Sonic #131, the start of the "Mobius: 25 Years Later" arc. (Ken did the layout for that cover, though, so in the eyes of the law he's the original creator who owns that cover.) That cover was, itself, a tribute to the iconic cover of Giant-Size X-Men #1 by Gil Kane and Dave Cockrum, the issue that introduced the version of the team with Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, etc.

Ken seems to have forgotten that the point of both these covers was to hype up the arrival of a new cast of characters. The new guys are supposed to make a dramatic entrance front and center. That's the focal point. Meanwhile, the cover for Beginnings has the old timeline versions of the cast from Archie Sonic dramatically bursting out of a shattered crystal ball, while their new counterparts look on in mild bemusement - if they're even bothering to look at all, since most of the characters here are just copied and pasted from their profile pages. That's just not how you do this particular homage! The point is supposed to be "out with the old, in with the new." And why are they using a crystal ball to view the past? Hell, why are they even using a crystal ball at all? The original arc was presented as a magical vision of the future courtesy of Tails' uncle Merlin (don't ask), but the new story leans all the way into being futuristic sci-fi.

Of course, there is no real artistic intent at play here. The old versions of the characters are placed front and center in the crystal ball simply because Ken traced over Spaziante's original art of Lara-Su and Julie-Su (the only two characters on the Sonic cover he owns) and threw out the rest, ruining the composition in the process. Look at the awkward empty space where Sonic, Sally, and Rotor once were, and the new drawing of The Character Formerly Known As Knuckles who's no longer properly centered between his wife and daughter. Even if Ken can claim ownership of the cover because he did the original layout, this all just feels scummy and lame.

And, yeah, if it needs to be said, the new characters and Ken's new rendering style look like absolute fucking dogshit. Putting new Lara-Su directly next to old Lara-Su does her no favors. The shattered glass effect looks absolutely atrocious. I could go on, but we'll have plenty of time to talk about the art style when we see how bad the stories inside look.

Changes to "Mobius: 25 Years Later"

Overall, 99% of M25YL is presented identically to its original printing. Sonic, Sally, Knuckles, et al. are still present with no changes to their names and no tweaks to the art. Even the original cover for issue #131 is included only a few pages into this book with its Archie, Sonic, and Sega logos still intact and everything. Again, because of the weird copyright situation described above, these preexisting comics can be released without any changes.

There is exactly one bizarre change to the art, though, where a hand drawn shot of Angel Island is replaced with an unfitting photo background and the ugly Floating Island photobash that Ken has been using as his personal logo for decades. I think he only did this as part of a test for his motion comic app that nobody asked for. I don't know why this had to make it into the print version. It's like the book is firing a warning shot for what's to come if you keep reading.

The new content begins on the final page of M25YL. In the original wet fart of a cliffhanger ending, Sonic and co. accidentally alter the timeline with an old time machine of Robotnik's and Lara-Su begins to fade away. Then, after everything goes white, we just cut to the present day heroes going "gee, you ever think about the future?" In this new printing, that last bit has been cut, and the rest of the page has been awkwardly shrunk down so that Ken can fit in a new panel. We now see the hands of an off-screen villain, seemingly named "Override," proclaiming that "the Praetorian" (Knuckles) has messed up the timeline again and that they'll finally get their revenge.

Who is this Override? I have no fucking clue. The new stories in this book make no mention of them. You have to buy the next book to find out.

My confusion over the identity of this villain overlaps with another big problem: name changes. So many names and nouns have been arbitrarily changed in The Lara-Su Chronicles, even ones Ken didn't have to change for copyright reasons, and I only know what half of them are replacing because Ken's been tweeting about this shit for years.

The echidnas are now a totally original alien race called "the Echyd'nya." Even in flashbacks to events from M25YL attempting to mimic the old art style, if it's on a new comic page, they're gonna call themselves "Echyd'nya." Evil echidna faction the Dark Legion is now the "Cyberdark Dominion," hailing from the "Cyberdark Colony." The Brotherhood of Guardians is still the Brotherhood of Guardians, but now the main guardian is called "The Praetorian." Angel Island is still called "The Floating Island," like it was in the older Archie comics, but it's ALSO sometimes called "Avion"? When I read this I wasn't sure if he had randomly renamed Albion, the other echidna city from the Archie comics. But no. Now we have an Albion AND an Avion. Sally is mentioned simply as "Princess Acorn," while Sonic is referenced once as an unnamed "blue-spined Erinaceinae," using the scientific name for hedgehog to make it sound more sci-fi. In an incredibly ballsy move, Ken even mentions Robotnik as "the Insurrectionist Kintobor," retaining his original surname from the Archie comics that's just "Robotnik" backwards. Guess Sega never trademarked that one.

Aside from every name change being a downgrade, this leads to confusion when you're not sure if something is supposed to be new, or if it's just an Archie thing you're supposed to recognize despite having a new name and design. Is "Override" someone I'm supposed to know already? Am I just supposed to have read a fucking tweet from Ken where he said he changed the name of some existing villain to "Override"? The answer is no, but I had to term search his Twitter just to verify this.

Moving on!

New story #1: "The Storm"

If you've been following the WIPs, this is that story about Geoffrey St. John that Ken's been posting previews of for almost a decade. The title page copyright dates it to 2015, and that absurdly long gestation is probably why the art is so inconsistent here. Even the style of speech bubbles and the font change between pages two and three.

This is a problem when there's supposed to be a deliberate and noticeable change in art style here signaling the moment where the time travel stuff alters the timeline, replacing the Archie Sonic world with the Lara-Su Chronicles world. If you don't already know that's what's going on, the idea isn't conveyed clearly at all. It just goes from one hideous art style to a slightly different one with no explanation.

The main problem here is that Ken has hitched his wagon to a franchise about anthropomorphic animals when he can't draw furries to save his life. (Though a bit later in the book we'll also begin to wonder if he can even still draw humans.) He's shifted away from the cartooniness of the original designs and given them more human proportions and facial features, but this just ends up making them look incredibly uncanny and lumpy and gross. With some designs he's trying to lean into more of a Star Trek alien vibe, but then he still insists upon retaining the giant Sonic eyes on most characters even though he has no idea how to make them emote.

The rendering of these godawful designs doesn't do them any favors, either. Ken's going for more of a painterly look now, but it almost seems as though he's shading everything with Photoshop's burn and dodge tools that are designed to darken and lighten select areas of a photo. The result is a muddy, smudgy look that makes it feel like the color layer has been smeared in vaseline. And it only looks worse after coming off of 14 chapters of M25YL that have way more palatable art.

The backgrounds, too, are a complete mess, a jumble of low res jpeg photo elements (sometimes with extremely noticeable pixelation), stock textures, and smooth digital gradients. There's no real sense of place here, and it gives everything a surreal, dreamlike quality when you can't really tell where anything is supposed to take place. This first story is seemingly set in a high-tech stronghold below Castle Acorn called "the Bunker," but it could just as easily be confused for the bridge of a spaceship. This whole story features characters speaking to each other over floating video displays and hologram projectors from three different locations, but without a hologram effect and without a clear sense of where the characters are it often feels like they're just in the same room as each other. Characters will be in one location on one photo background, and then the camera angle changes and they're in a completely different place, because Ken just uses mismatched photos off of the internet. It's been like 25 years since he first tried using photo backgrounds in the Archie comics and he hasn't gotten any better at it.

When I had my boyfriend read the book to see if it made literally any sense to him (it didn't), Anthony said this: "This is the kind of shit I'd see linked on a Second Life world that hasn't been touched since 2004." I think he really hit the nail on the head. Now, there's actually a contrarian part of me that thinks that might theoretically almost be kind of cool, in sort of a messy counterculture way. I love weird indie shit. I was a Homestuck reader! But this isn't a scrappy mixed media zine, or experimental outsider art from someone just messing around with Photoshop, or a loving throwback to weird old internet art, or even something intentionally bizarre and offputting like Xavier: Renegade Angel or a PilotRedSun video or whatever where the fact that it's weird and ugly is part of the humor. This is supposed to be a sincere sci-fi epic drawing on Star Trek and Jack Kirby comics, made by a guy who's been drawing comics professionally since the '80s. This is supposed to look good. This is supposed to compete with mainstream comics that are on sale right now. He thinks any day now IDW's gonna go out of business and Sega will come crawling back to him so that he can stamp the Sonic logo on shit like this. It just doesn't work.

But, okay. It's ugly. We knew it would be ugly. But that ugliness would be much easier to accept if it was in service of an otherwise genuinely good story. So what about the writing? After all this time, how does Ken choose to kick off this new saga? Well, credit where credit's due. "The Storm" feels like a proper continuation of Ken's writing style from M25YL.

Because it's eleven pages of characters standing around and talking while nothing fucking happens.

Here's the synopsis: A dog woman named Brownie, an ensign in the Royal Secret Service fresh out of training and the only character who's almost cute, walks up to Geoffrey to deliver a report. He's immediately suspicious of her, asking who let her in and if she's a spy for Elias (Sally's brother, if you're new here) or Alicia (Sally's mom). The art style suddenly shifts when the timeline is altered, but the scene continues uninterrupted. Geoffrey points a gun at Brownie when she won't say whose spy she is. Geoffrey is distracted by a call and proceeds to have a conversation via a mix of holograms and video screens with Remington (head of Echidnaopolis security), Spectre (Knuckles' great great great great great grandpa, the one with the helmet who always looks evil), and a new scientist character named Dr. Zephyr/Zephur. (The spelling of this character's name changes multiple times throughout the 11-page story, because I guess nine years wasn't enough time to spellcheck this shit.) They say a bunch of made up technobabble nonsense about how it looks like the timeline was just altered and Knuckles and co. seem to be involved. It's complete drivel that I'm not even going to try to make sense of. Everyone decides to investigate further, and the conversation ends. Brownie tells Geoffrey she's his spy, then walks out and implies she's actually Alicia's spy in her inner monologue.

To be continued!!!

Yes, that's it. It's really just a bunch of technobabble where some characters talk about how it seems like the timeline has been fucked with. That's it. The whole time Geoffrey doesn't even get up out of his damn chair, which he's of course sitting in backwards to show how cool he is. It's just 11 pages of Geoffrey sitting in a chair and talking to people and looking uglier than he's ever looked. Nothing happens. Nine years for this.

I'm also struck by how meaningless all of this is to anyone who hasn't read Archie Sonic. The added context from M25YL may help a little, but "The Storm" focuses on characters who weren't in that arc, and the story does very little to introduce who any of them are. Brownie could've been super useful as an inexperienced point of view character who's only meeting the others for the first time here, but instead she's really just a passive observer who's here as part of some kind of 4D chess game between Geoffrey and Alicia, an off-screen character whose motivations in this era of the story are completely unknown to even returning readers. Who are the good guys and bad guys here? What are the conflicts and the stakes of the story moving forward? What do these characters want? Basic questions like this aren't really answered. I can't imagine a new reader being able to make heads or tails of this. Hell, I can't really imagine a returning reader who hasn't been following the last decade's worth of Ken's tweets about this story making heads or tails of it, either.

...Maybe more will happen in the next story?

New story #2: Shattered Tomorrows preview chapter

After another message from Ken, the story of The Lara-Su Chronicles proper begins with the redesigned Lara-Su walking along a jpeg photograph beach at sunset and crying while thinking about how Knuckles - sorry, his name is K'Nox now - is dead.

Yep! Straight into the dad stuff!

Look, I'm the last person to complain about writers getting super personal and drawing from their own baggage in their writing, but Ken's just no fucking good at it. There's no nuance, nothing interesting to say. He just keeps writing mediocre-to-horrible dads whose misdeeds are always justified by their "good intentions," and then sometimes they die and their kids are like "we may have fought but actually you were the bestest dad ever and I'll miss you forever, I'll never be able to fill your shoes!"

This is the only part of the new material here that feels like it has any heart behind it, because I know how much his complex relationship with his late deadbeat father means to Ken (there's an author's note in this outright saying as much). But the guy died 42 years ago, and it doesn't feel like Ken has had any new thoughts about this part of his life in those four decades. He's just not an introspective or self-aware enough artist to actually mine his personal baggage for anything beyond "father knows best."

Anyway, so then it jumps forward in time(?) and now we're following this human guy who looks like this.

Previously, Ken got a lot of shit for literally just using the likeness of Anthony Mackie for this guy, based on his IMDB profile photo. Ken has thus redesigned the character... and by that I mean I think he looks more like Ernie Hudson now? Ken's clearly just working off of photo references (if not straight up tracing), given his face is the most detailed and realistic-looking thing on any page where he's present.

But you may be wondering: who is this, and why is he here? Well, for one, he's here to run around in front of some low res space photos while making trite references to things like Planet of the Apes and Star Trek. Haha, he makes a joke about red shirts! Original!! But beyond that, Commander Mykhal Taelor (yes, that's really how he chose to spell it) is a human... from Earth! Archie Sonic readers are probably confused, because in those comics Mobius is Earth in the distant post-apocalyptic future. Well, despite being a Planet of the Apes fan, Ken always hated that particular worldbuilding decision from Karl Bollers, always preferring to think of Mobius as a separate alien planet. And now he gets to make that canon in his own stories and throw out Karl's ideas. So Mobius is basically just, like, a Star Trek planet now, with its own alien creatures that sometimes just so happen to look like anthropomorphic Earth animals.

Also, at one point Taelor wonders if the inhabitants of the dead Mobius might have been human, and the alien ally he's talking to over the radio says it's unlikely. "I don't understand why your kind has a problem understanding you're a minority within a minority." Perhaps poor wording for a line said to the only Black character in the story.

Anyway, Commander Taelor here seems to have discovered the uninhabited husk of Mobius after the vague time-space cataclysm everyone was worried about in M25YL has come to pass, and he finds an audio log from Lara-Su that I presume will explain what happened. I guess those are the titular Lara-Su Chronicles. In theory this flash forward establishes some sense of pressing danger, but when the threat to the planet is so unclear and technobabble-y it just kind of lands with a thud.

It doesn't take long before we get back to Lara-Su being sad about her dad. A good little chunk of the chapter is spent with this new timeline's Lara-Su recalling moments in her life, including echoes of the original Lara-Su's memories from M25YL, which feels redundant coming hot off the heels of a straight reprint of that entire arc. And boy, for anyone who read the later Archie Sonic comics, the protagonist having vague memories of the old version of the series from before a lawsuit-related timeline reboot sure does sound familiar, huh?

The art inconsistency somehow becomes even worse in this story, with Ken flip-flopping on whether or not he wants to use outlines, with the no-outline art managing to look even worse by relying entirely on Ken's awful rendering. By this point in the book, readers are also likely to start noticing how often Ken reuses art from previous panels. This is a shortcut that tons of comic artists use, of course. Invincible famously did a joke about this. It's often understandable. But, again... it sure does stand out in a book that took 13 years to make with only 30 pages of new art. Amusingly, Ken even manages to combine his inconsistency and recycling problems by reusing the same art with and without outlines. And, of course, any time Ken tries to draw the Archie era designs it's just... the worst.

And, yes, it's in this dreamlike montage sequence of Lara-Su's life that we get...

The uncomfortable family nudity scene, followed by the dual timeline Julie-Su breastfeeding scene.

Yeah, you might have heard about this one already. If this incredibly eerie presentation of Lara-Su's hazy memories of the two different timelines make it hard to tell what's going on, don't worry. There's another, clearer version later in the book as part of Julie-Su's character profile, because I guess Ken was just so proud of it.

(I censored these myself because I'm not playing Russian roulette with Tumblr's inconsistent nudity rules and risking getting banned lmao)

Like, okay. Is a mother breastfeeding her child really that shocking of a thing to see in a story? No, not at all. But, like... when it's two characters who you previously created for an officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comic for 7-year-olds... and some of those officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comics for 7-year-olds are reprinted in the same book... and when it's drawn like this... yeah, it's kind of a shocker.

It just looks so unnatural. Julie-Su is posed very deliberately so that you'll see both of her breasts, and in the new timeline version she's barely even holding Lara-Su so you can really get a good look at her supermodel body, showing zero physical signs that she just gave birth. Most people will immediately jump to this being Ken putting his fetishes in his work (a type of criticism that I'm incredibly tired of - it's 2024, all the cool artists are blatantly putting their fetishes in their work now). And my immediate response is that, no, this is probably just Ken trying to come off as really mature on a surface level, a thing he's been obsessed with since the Archie days. Free from the shackles of writing a licensed children's comic, of course he's going to jump immediately into depicting some nonsexual, artistic nudity to try and prove he's A Real Mature Artist For Grown-Ups who just thinks the human body is beautiful and breastfeeding shouldn't be a taboo etc. etc.

But then, like. You look at some of the other character designs. Like Espio's daughter Salma, who's now this horrifying alien lizard person who's always nude, and her scale pattern puts scales exactly where her nipples should be. Or you look at his comments about the Echyd'nya age of consent. Or you look at how he keeps drawing Lara-Su in this. Like, does the shuttle really need this, like... reverse chaise lounge thing in the cockpit? So that we can keep getting these shots of the 16-year-old Lara-Su lying on her stomach and posing with one of her legs kicked up, her naked ass in plain view?

The vibe isn't great, is what I'm saying!

I'm not going to try to ascribe authorial intent here. I don't know. I'm not a psychic. Given his very blatant reliance on photo references elsewhere in the book, it's entirely possible he just referenced some figure drawing photos that were maybe just a little too sexy. And also, he's an American comic book artist, and a boomer one at that. Those guys tend to draw women a certain way, even when it's not supposed to be sexual. I don't fucking know. It just sucks. I'm not gonna make some hyperbolic statement about how this makes him a literal pedophile who should be in jail, but it is deeply offputting and objectifying.

But if you already knew about the nursing scenes and were hoping there was some other really shocking stuff in there for me to talk about in this review, sorry to disappoint, but nope. That's the only shockingly weird new thing in here. Once again, not a lot happens in this story, and what does happen is pretty boring.

Once we get past the recap stuff and the human guy, the plot developments boil down to this: The timeline was altered at the end of M25YL... but not as much as you might think. In the new timeline, Knuckles ("K'Nox"), Cobar (now looking significantly younger), and Rotor (now a rhino just called "The Emissary") still traveled via shuttle to go find a time machine in the Badlands and fix the time-space continuum, like in the climax of the original arc. This time, though, Sonic wasn't there, and Lara-Su came along without having to stow away. Lara-Su watches the ship while the grown ups go deal with the time machine, and then after a couple panels Not Rotor comes back with Cobar and is like "Hey, Cobar got hurt, we gotta leave. Dunno what happened to your dad." And then they just, like. Presume that Knuckles must have died. Even though we have no idea what happened to him. And then they just fly away. And then Lara-Su is sad that her dad died.

And that's pretty much it!

This is supposed to be a really emotional sequence - it's literally the scene where Lara-Su learns that Knuckles is dead - but instead it comes off as unintentionally funny because of how poorly it's portrayed. Not showing Knuckles' actual disappearance is a huge misstep, for one, making his uncertain fate more confusing and anticlimactic than dramatic. But also, Ken keeps just using the same two drawings of Rotor for two pages, so he doesn't really seem to be emoting at all, and he's in this spacey hazmat suit that honestly just makes him look like fucking Moltar from Space Ghost. So the whole time I'm just reading his dialogue in Moltar's deadpan voice as he's like "I dunno. We did what we could. Anyway, let's leave."

After this, we get a two-page spread previewing the rest of the story from Shattered Tomorrows. It's basically like a trailer in comic form. It has one of the most mystifying layouts I've ever seen in a comic book. I have no idea what order I'm supposed to read this in.

Yeah, I kinda have a feeling this is the full extent of what Ken has drawn for the rest of that book. I'd love to be wrong, but I fear that I'm right.

Bonus material: Data files

These are mostly very dull, recapping a lot of events shared between Ken's Archie run and the new Lara-Su Chronicles timeline. It seems like almost his entire run is still considered canon to the backstory of the new timeline, just with some names changed, and things only really diverge at the climax of M25YL. But I'll share the interesting stuff here.

Lara-Su

The main thing you'll notice in Lara-Su's profile is the massive, unreadable wall of text where Ken felt the need to list the entire Knuckles family tree, split across both pages.

This is literally so long that Lara-Su's personal history has to awkwardly cut off mid-sentence and be continued on the final page of the book, after the rest of the data files.

Also, please note that this list gives Julie-Su's mom's full name as Mari-Su of the House of Atrades. Incredible on all levels.

There's also a reference to the dark timeline Lara-Su was originally supposed to come from. You know, the one where Julie-Su is the leader of a rebel movement fighting against a Knuckles who had gone mad with power? The timeline that would have been way more interesting than the one in M25YL? Here it seems to have been written off as the result of another "timeline disruption." Lara-Su allegedly has vague memories of this timeline, in the same way that she has vague memories of the M25YL timeline.

Geoffrey

Geoffrey's bio mostly recaps events from the Archie comics, which means the Sonic/Sally/Geoffrey love triangle has to be alluded to. His rivalry with Sonic is described like this:

"He would later resurface when Kintobor was transporting his latest hi-tech weapon, the Dynamac-3000. It was during that mission he discovered a rival for the Princess' affections. Whereas the Princess would be one of a line of conquests where St. John was concerned, the blue-spined Erinaceinae who protested doth a bit too much regarding his affections for the Princess for St. John's taste would prove to be a source of great sport and amusement."

Yes. It's gross. Saying that Geoffrey saw Sally as "one of a line of conquests" is gross. Ken writing this and then still treating Geoffrey as the coolest badass ever is gross. The "Princess Acorn" is also first on the list of Geoffrey's "female relationships" elsewhere in his bio, though I suppose how much of a "relationship" they had is left vague. Honestly, at this point the fact that Ken didn't explicitly confirm that Geoffrey took the underage Sally's virginity in the book comes off as a display of restraint. The bar couldn't be any lower, I know.

Remington

His bio is, frankly, shockingly long for such a minor character, though I guess he does get a large portion of the word salad dialogue in "The Storm." There's a lot of stuff here about how the identities of his biological parents are shrouded in mystery, a plot point that fans have long speculated Ken just straight up forgot about in his time at Archie. (Ian confirmed that Kragok from the Dark Legion was Remington's dad, though, so this isn't really much of a mystery.)

Lien-Da

She gets a bio even though she's not present in the two new stories, just so we get to look at her awful new design and compare it to how Steven Butler drew her earlier in the book:

Commander Taelor

We get to see two drawings of him with the same exact Ernie Hudson face side by side! That's fun.

Julie-Su

She gets a list of "known friends," but the only character listed is Knuckles' mom. Poor Julie-Su.

Also, Ken feels the need to reiterate that Knuckles and Julie-Su are still distant cousins. He made a whole new timeline where he can change whatever details he wants, but THAT had to remain canon. Thanks, Ken.

And then after the data files we get the special thanks page, listing everyone who preordered the book and/or bought TLSC merch from Ken.

With my name on the list. Because I had to buy a copy to cover it for the blog.

My name is on the very next page right after the breastfeeding panel in Julie-Su's data file.

Yep. He got me.

Is it at least a well put together book? Like, in terms of manufacturing quality?

Its physical quality is... fine. It's a nice, sturdy hardcover. The print quality seems fine, though mine does have a bit of smudging from some sort of printing error on one page. The pages don't seem like they'll fall out on me. The image quality is crisp. The colors are vibrant. This is a low bar, but this is one of the few places where I'm able to give this book anything resembling praise.

The formatting and graphic design work, on the other hand...

(I didn't crumple those page corners, it came like that.)

For one, the placement and sizes of the M25YL pages is inconsistent, largely due to the fact that the book doesn't actually match the proportions of a comic. A lot of pages aren't properly centered vertically. Some pages go all the way up to the top edge of the paper, while others leave a visible gap of about half a centimeter. Every page has a 1cm gap to its left and right, which is sometimes filled in with a solid color or gradient that doesn't quite match the page it's surrounding. I have to assume Ken didn't have any sort of source files or original artwork to work off of, as those ideally would've had more generous bleed to account for slight shifts in printing. It kind of seems like he just got the highest resolution versions he could find of the digital releases online and printed those. The colors are a dead ringer for the digital versions, which have always looked slightly more saturated and pastel than they did in print.

I can't say this bodes well for his further plans for Archie Sonic reprints - sorry, Mobian Line reprints. If they ever come out, please, for the love of god, do not buy those. I don't care how much you love Archie Sonic, they aren't going to be good reprints. For comparison, IDW's similarly priced hardcover Sonic collections have none of these formatting problems, because they're made by people who know what they're doing with access to the actual source files.

The book also has its fair share of text-focused pages, split between the data files and messages directly from Ken about the history of his career and this project, and these are formatted in the most amateurish way possible. Just massive walls of Arial text over either plain white backgrounds, simple gradients, or faded photos. I've seen school yearbooks with better graphic design. Even ignoring my subjective feelings about the art and stories within, this book does not feel like it's worth $36 USD.

It's frankly shocking how shabby he let this thing look considering it's supposed to be his baby. And doesn't that really sum it all up?

Closing thoughts

Obviously, I did not expect this to be any good. But I'm still left kind of dumbfounded by it.

I think what really strikes me about it is that Ken had a blank check to do whatever he wanted here. He got an opportunity many writers would kill for when he gained complete ownership of his most famous work. He's free from the limitations of a monthly licensed comic book for children, free to make whatever creative decisions he wants without editors or other writers or Sega to worry about, free to completely reinvent the series to his heart's content and finally tell the story of his dreams. And with that opportunity and 13 years of his time, he made... this. A direct continuation of "Mobius: 25 Years Later" that barely changes anything about the characters or world beyond their awful new designs, even though much of the word count is spent rambling about how the timeline has changed. A story that makes zero concessions for new readers, or even returning readers who don't already have the last decade's worth of Ken's tweets explaining his creative decisions burned into their memory. 30 pages where nothing really happens and the story barely moves forward an inch despite the decades-long wait - but maybe something will happen if you buy the next book!

Who is this for? Maybe this really is a project for no one but Ken. Maybe he just really, really wants to finish the story he started, a story that's personal to him due to the family history it evokes, and the number of people who enjoy it or buy it beyond that is irrelevant. I think that many of the best artists are incredibly self-indulgent ones working with that exact mindset, artists whose enthusiasm for their own work jumps off the page or screen. So, if that's the case, then why the fuck isn't he telling the damn story? What's stopping him? Why is he still spinning his wheels? Where is that passion for his own work? Because it sure as hell isn't there on the page. There's a huge part of me that really wishes I could say "Man, what a weirdo, but you do you, Ken. You tell your weird little story." But there's barely any story here. It's like he loves styling himself as a storyteller, but he's terrified of finally having to actually tell a story after all this time. He's still stuck in the exact same mode of writing he was in almost 30 years ago when he was doing 6-page backup stories about Knuckles, just killing time and stringing readers along until he's eventually able to truly realize his vision. If not now, then when, Ken?

Even the back cover blurb is mostly just a dry recap of the history of this thing. It was a Sonic comic, the original arc was published in these issues, it went unfinished, Ken left Archie, the lawsuits happened, now he's continuing the story. There's nothing about why anyone should give a shit about this as its own story, even though Ken has spent years trying in vain to convince people TLSC is its own beast that shouldn't be judged as a Sonic story. I think deep down he knows that there's no pitch for this beyond the novelty of it originating from Sonic. And that's why, despite declaring that he'd leave the site, he's still on Twitter riling up Sonic fans. It's the only attention he gets at this point.

Maybe this is too harsh when those 30 pages of new comics are just intended as a preview for the "real" book. But the elephant in the room is that we have no idea if that "real" book will ever actually come out, let alone the entire series of seven graphic novels that will supposedly complete this saga.

Ken is undeniably a complete jackass and all around unpleasant, vindictive person who's rightly become an industry pariah. He's a self-proclaimed paragon of progressive values who'll send Comicsgaters after his successors for the crime of not worshiping the ground he walks on, and then turn around and announce he's going to reprint their work without even consulting them. He's a sore winner who already won his copyright battle on a level most comic writers would never dare to dream of, and yet still won't truly be satisfied until he sees an entire major comic publisher go out of business, putting god knows how many people out of work, because he thinks this would get him back the license to a video game franchise he doesn't even like.

But I still have to pity him.

As an artist, the trajectory of his life is my nightmare. I think all of us fear dying before we can tell all the stories we want to tell. There's simply never enough time to do everything. And here's Ken in his 60s, talking about how he's still planning on making his magnum opus all by himself out of stubbornness and pride, despite demonstrably proving he can't handle the workload, and also talking about how if he dies before the project can be finished he'll have to pass the torch on to his kids and get them to finish it for him. It's so grim. Even just typing that sends a shiver down my spine. It took nine years of his limited time on Earth to finish and release an 11-page comic about Geoffrey St. John sitting backwards in a chair.

This is a purgatory of his own creation. And yet... I'm not sure he's ever been prouder. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I guess if I want people to take anything away from this review, it's this:

Lesson one: If you're an artist or writer of some kind, or an aspiring creator, don't wait around. No one else is going to tell your story for you. Start writing that novel. Start drawing that webcomic. Start making that game. If Penders can put out this damn book that no one asked for after 13 years of work, then proudly proclaim that he's still going to make six or seven more books and also reprint hundreds of comics he doesn't have all of the rights to, then show up to cons with that foul Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows banner and sit in front of it beaming with pride, fully aware of his critics but saying "fuck 'em, I know I'm hot shit," then you can do fucking anything. Tell the weird, sincere, cringe story of your dreams. If Ken Penders doesn't have imposter syndrome, then nobody should.

And lesson two: Don't buy Ken's books.

[invincibledc]

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐧.ᐟ

────୨ৎ────

𝐉𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐐𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐍 (𝐎𝐂) 𝐗 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐒𝐈𝐒!𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐑

── .✦ summary: what’s worse than the boogie man? A obsessed clown boy. All cause of grown man couldn’t keep his disgusting words to himself, Jack has some things to handle on his own.

── .✦ genre: oneshot/Yandere

── .✦ info: kidnapping, Yandere themes, OC work. this OC is an OC I’m written for my own amusement. He’s the son of Harley Quinn and joker. Full name, Jacklyn Oswald Quinn. I got bored. Reader is the twin sister of Damian, but Damian is the older twin of course. Im only a writer so you can imagine who he looks more like but all I can is he is handsome canonically in my head and anything. Boy’s crazy but handsome.

── .✦ word count: 625

Vision blinded by some kind of sack on a man’s head. Jack ripped it off, showing his crooked smile and clown face with green hair. His hair slicked back as he chuckled at the scared look.

“Rise and shine!” he exclaimed in a cheery voice, moving back with a bounce. He couldn't help but stare at the wide-eyed man who tried to get up but couldn't due to the chains holding him down.

“Oh yeah. Don't even think about trying to get up silly.” the cheerful expression on his face then melted completely off as his eyes darkened. “You ain't going anywhere.” his scruffed voice lowered, turning his back to face the table of objects. It went from a crowbar, pliers, a drill, and a hammer.

The man seemed to notice as he screamed, but no sounds came out due to some cloth wrapped around his mouth. “Shut the hell up,” Jack says coldly, glancing at the man with emotionless eyes.

“You should’ve thought about your actions before catcalling teenage girls off the streets.” grabbed the crowbar, and a crazed smile spread across his face. “Especially my girl.” He taps the tip of the crowbar against his flat palm.

“Man… Ima have a fun time with you.” wide-eyed, the man screamed as Jack got ready to aim at his head. Soon a phone ring echoed in the air. Raising a brow, Jack pauses his mid swing and goes over to his phone. There he sees it says “Puddin`” with two red heart emojis and a picture of you and him in bed together making funny faces.

It seemed this made Jack immediately drop the crowbar and grab the phone with a sick love expression. He answers it with no reluctance.

“Yes my sugarplum!?” he exclaimed happily, jumping onto his table, and swinging his legs back and forth as he heard your sweet angelic voice from the other side.

“Hey, I was wondering if you can do an errand for me?” you asked, going downstairs of the Wayne manor to see your older brother arguing over who gets the last piece of food. You had already eaten so you didn't need to eat again.

“Of course my love, what pleasures do I owe you.” he purrs hearing you chuckle. “Okay, I just need you to get me some ice cream. I'm just craving it.”

“Of course love!” he says after listening to you, he hops off the table and walks over to the man. The man seemed to freeze and try to scream, Jack immediately muted himself, putting a gloved finger to his lips, his eyes narrowed as a dark look washed over his face.

“Be quiet. And I might be gentle on you.” Jack takes the man’s wallet and moves back, still looking at the man as if he were worth nothing. Which he is.

Unmuting himself, Jack smiles as he hears you. “Hello?” you questioned due to how unusual it was quiet.

“Yeah sorry about that hon, anyways yeah I'm going. [fav.flavor] ice cream right? Your favorite to just stuff your face in?” he says as he turns his back.

“Yeah! That's the one, thanks Jack. You’re the best. And of course, just try not to start a fight with Jason. You both were bruised and bloodied.”

“Of course, I always listen to you. I’ll be there.” as Jack hung up, he threw an ace card at the man, the man jolted as the card was sharp enough to stick to the wall beside him.

“You get to live approximately 35 minutes. And then it's show time for me.” a malicious laugh rang out from Jack’s mouth, sending dread all over the man who was still gagged and chained up.

“Cya later.” and with that, Jack left the man in that room.

Just to save him for later.

[pezinvests]

clinical trial spoilers because there is somewhat of a following now here on tumblr and i want to make my mark. long opinion post. if you're reading through the tag and haven't played, please play the game to the end first i beg of you

so obsessed with how limited our true knowledge is of lee. for what we all know lee has done this kind of thing before and how he just might be more dangerous than he seems. a man in his 20s who got his nursing license during the bush administration (2007-2008ish), ex-mormon/ex-christian/ex-catholic with a slightly strange upbringing and carries himself so seriously and does things so meticulously.

in the bedroom scene he says he just moved out a year ago into a house full of hand-me-downs and old stuff he has kept forever, followed with him saying "a lot of stuff in my life doesn't make sense."

man. that is by far the most vague yet perhaps suspicious thing you could say if you were in his shoes. of course, some have speculated this is just him having some form of autism (in which i welcome this theory and would make sense), but i do think he has just done this type of thing before.

of course, he has fantasized about dying in those hidden walls and has dreamt of studying heavily on orthopedia and pursuing this as his career path, this is canon. maybe in general has studied these kinds of ideas of murder, torture, etc. that relates to it as well.

however he was covering up everything so well by driving brandon's car in a lake. (and hopefully covering whatever tracks he made after driving into the ditch like footprints and maybe tiretracks of his own car to leave the scene??? he seemed to have thought so far ahead to bury his body anyway in there because no one will come looking so. there's also that animation from the dev themselves on twitter that show how angel & lee disposed of brandon. my god. it's so meticulous and careful)

he was also quick thinking on his feet getting a signal jammer to block angel's cellphone from pinging nearby towers. he was only so lucky that their phone died on the way to his house and probably was able to set up the cell jammer before he brought in groceries.

or worse yet, he already had a signal jammer with him. like he just had one already and he set that up really fast before he could even get a charger for angel. lee never mentioned the full circumstances of him having it and when he set it up. he just said he was lucky that angel's phone died on the way there. him being so vague as well as the game not telling us much on that front really sells it.

i get that we don't really see angel's day-to-day life outside of the clinic either (minus the home scenes where you see their art posts and texts on their phone) + it's an RPGMAKER game, can't be that detailed, so we don't usually see what happens in between those times anyway (masterful story technique i must say). but it really leans into the idea that whatever lee says, we really just have to take his word for it now especially with the amount of things he tried to hide.

looking at the bigger picture, yes, lee's actions are inexcusable and disgusting, who would trust someone like this afterwards? and that really rings true throughout the entire game's story. angel giving lee a third chance really is an act of mercy from a god. hell, them walking away on ending 1 was also merciful, especially at their expense if the authorities don't believe angel as to what happened.

so uhh. main takeaway? i love the way lee was written. i'm so glad homie went full send on his character being a little bit of a pathetic creep (lmao the cum-stained jacket being fully written in, really sold it for me) and on purpose him being very vague about his true nature. it plays on the idea that "when someone says who they are, believe them". we have the same amount of info angel has as the player and through it all? we just have to take lee's word for everything.

[libraryraccoon]

So I got this idea of an Idia Reader who is an overlord (making some high tech prosthetic or another things that Vox himself can’t make easily) and forced to go attend an overlord meeting and imagine the panic attack he would have if Alastor or worse Valentino interacted with them.

Probably locks themselves in a their room for three months after the meeting.

Gender : GN

Pronouns : None

Message of Raccoon : I can just imagine Vox and Idia!Reader being two bestfriends that have rivalry for fun.

Info : Idia!Reader being an overlord in the Vees.

General Headcanon

You were one of the Overlords of the Vees.

But compared to the others, you didn't like the attention.

The recluse of the Vees, that's who you were.

You hated leaving your room, preferring to use your tablet to see/talk with others.

But one day, you were forced to show up at one of the Overlords meetings. Irl.

When you entered the room, all the overlords asked you who you were.

"Who are you ?" -Carmilla.

"The one who almost doxxed all of you. Idia!Reader." -you, already wanting to go back to your room.

It was the first time they saw you, like really saw you. Not through a tablet, but irl.

You sat between Rosie and Alastor, a mistake.

The two kept talking and adding you into the conversation. You wanted to die again.

They were nice and polite, yes, but you didn't like socializing. You preferred solitude and calm to having to socialize.

You regretted having taken this place instead of putting yourself next to Zestial, who is calm and silent.

"Oh ! Did you hear about what Jack did ?" -Rosie.

“No, what did he do ?”-Alastor.

"He fucked his wife's sister, then ate the said sister. His wife found him and then ate Jack." -Idia!Reader.

If there was tea, it would have been perfect.

Carmilla give you a look that can be translated as "Good luck, we're not together."

You will doxx her later as punishment for not helping you.

The meeting was pretty good, except for the moment you had to talk and socialize.

Your social anxiety suffered greatly during this meeting.

When you entered the Vees tower, you wanted to go to your room but the others Vees stopped you.

Valentino and Velvette congratulated you for coming out of your shithole room.

But you know what was the worst ? When Vox saw you, he asked why you had placed yourself next to his enemy, Alastor.

Vox gave you an hour-long lecture on why what you did was wrong.

You just wanted to stay cooped up in your room for the rest of the eternity.

But you couldn't.

Why ? Because Rosie and Alastor have come for you.

Apparently you have become their friends, without your consent.

Once a week you had to go out and spend time with Alastor and/or Rosie.

And you couldn't even run away because the two always know where to find you.

You are gossip friends. I will not accept otherwise.

You have the pass to touch Alastor. You use it to touch his ears because DEER EAR !!

You do the same with his tail, because DEER TAIL !!! (He tries to hide his tail from you)

I headcanon that you have a picture with you, Rosie and Alastor on it.

Let's pretend you were there during the meeting about the angel.

…

Carmilla paid you $3000 (or whatever the money is in hell) for not talking about her killing an angel.

You took the money before telling to Rosie and Alastor everything.

If she ever finds out, you're dead, but don't worry, it was worth it.

I headcanon that your hair (or at least a part of your hair) is made of fire, and that the Vees, Alastor and Rosie want to touch it.

Alastor and Rosie love seeing your hair changing its colors depending on your emotions, it always betrays you and they find it amusing.

Alastor using the Aromantic charm on you to see you get frustrated and see your hair changing its color is canon.

Alastor has already brought you to the Hazbin Hotel..

When I say that you said what you thought out loud and you were brutal with your words, I don't think you realize how much that was-

You were banned from the hotel by Vaggie while Alastor was just watching and laughing.

You felt hurt, betrayed by your friend.

“Oh yeah, that’s how it is now, every man for himself.”

[onwhatcaptain]

I still have tons to say about the Garashir Goes Canon™ moment in Lower Decks so here is my big meta post about it! Below the cut is a meta discussion about the penultimate Lower Decks episode, contextualizing what it means for something to become canon.

To be clear, this is a mostly positive post with analysis included. You’ll see lots of love for Garashir and Lower Decks and also oodles of fandom meta below the cut, since we have a complicated relationship with Paramount. My analysis and graphic is based on a recent lecture about Star Trek canon I gave at KiScon!

First, I have to say that both Unification and this Lower Decks episode following mere weeks after of my lecture panel at KiScon titled Fuck Paramount, about what Star Trek canon really is and what its place is in relation to us as slash fans, is absolutely mind-blowing timing. I wish everyone in both the K/S and Garashir fandoms had been able to attend it because it was absolutely designed to serve as a framework for both of these major fandom moments. And also it was just funny as hell. But most importantly, it was relevant, and existed to give us a sense of understanding when navigating Paramount hell, particularly when they play Gay Chicken (will they, won’t they — most of the time, they won’t).

Since not every single Star Trek fan on this website was at KiScon last month, I want to expand on that a little more here, this time in Garashir context, since last time it was centered on K/S, though Garashir came up several times! When I was giving my lecture, I asked the audience what it would look like if K/S were made canon tomorrow. Everyone had different ideas—but the most common theme that came up was sheer distrust of Paramount doing it justice.

For those of you that are reading this, the thesis of Fuck Paramount was that you as a fan and a viewer have more control over what is and isn’t canon than you think, and that our role as fans is to take ownership of our stories back from corporate interests. I also developed a four-sided framework to describe how we interact with canon to take power back and make sense of canon. Both Unification and the very, very fresh Lower Decks episode have already been controversial for a number of reasons, the primary one they share being: “Wait… does this make this canon?”

So far it looks like the main reactions for this Lower Decks episode (especially considering how sudden and late in its run it is) are mostly “HOLY SHIT THEY REALLY DID IT” and “I AM DISAPPOINTED BY THE MERE SCRAPS.”

And my position on it is that both of them are completely reasonable reactions that don’t contradict one another! I’m going to make the case for both sides as I try to explore the implications of this episode with respect to the episode’s subtext, corporate storytelling, and so forth. I’m not going to go too much into the academic aspects, but I am happy to make the original slides available for anyone who is curious about my canon analysis framework.

Why It’s Enough

On one hand, this episode is done well. Undeniably. It’s a lot of fun. I have also said many times before that the only way I’d want K/S or G/B to become canon is if they suddenly randomly drop the info that they were married and don’t bring it up again, because otherwise they might do more harm than good! This was an example of it done incredibly well, in my opinion.

This episode serves as all the confirmation you could possibly really need of Garashir. Yes, there are quite a few gimmicks involved—it’s all AU, all the way. Garak is now a surgeon from another dimension, and Bashir is from an entirely different dimension, and also not really himself, but a hologram. Here’s how they’re introduced:

WILLIAM BOIMLER: “Elim Garak, a brilliant Cardassian Surgeon—and his husband, an emergency medical hologram based on Dr. Julian Bashir.”

What I really love about this moment is that it actually does more than it looks like it does, at face value. For most of us, our first instinct is to go, whatever, he’s based on Bashir, he’s not even the real one! But what they did here was brilliant—it serves as implicit confirmation that our man Bashir is also bisexual, and loves Garak. He is indeed not a corporeal human being, but as the DS9 episode where the LMH is designed based on Bashir tells us, the hologram is designed and based on who he is. It has his personality traits. Interviews are conducted to make sure that the hologram is as authentic and true to the real thing as possible:

O'BRIEN: “You mean this programme is going to have all of his personal likes and dislikes?” ZIMMERMAN: “That is why we bother to choose a human template in the first place.”

William Boimler, from the prime Star Trek universe, doesn’t say the EMH is based on some Bashir, he says this one is based on Dr. Julian Bashir. Again, this serves as clear confirmation that he is modeled on recognizably the same character from DS9. They’re not that different in essence from their prime universe counterparts, or it wouldn’t be fun for the writers or the audience. We learn that Garak is still former Obsidian Order. They are still the same people, in essence. They may be AU characters but the point is for them to be similar to the originals, or they may as well just have been some guys!

The important thing, for me, is that it’s a clear, unambiguous acknowledgement. It’s played straight. Well, not straight—but not as some elaborate joke or filled with contempt. It doesn’t tease and doesn’t dance around the issue and wink and nudge, begging the viewer to question whether or not they’re together. That much is made immediately very clear. In the episode, AU Garak and AU EMH Bashir are a married couple, and they kiss. Every moment of their relationship is sincere, the comedic moments being not about the fact that their relationship exists, but about the dynamics it brings to the story. It also tells us very clearly that they’re not even from the same universe, and that their compatibility remains nonetheless:

HARRY KIM: “Are they from the same reality?” CURZON: “No, but they love to brag about how statistically unlikely their marriage is.”

Again, I tend to see this as a positive nod to the compatibility of these characters rather than a brush-off that says the prime universe Garashir couldn’t be together. And then Garak tells us his universe’s Bashir is like the original: still a racquetball player and competes with Chief O’Brien—again, revealing quite a bit.

And the B-plot is about them squabbling, acknowledging very clearly to us that Cardassians really do just love flirting via argument, which serves as a brilliant nod to everyone who complained for three decades that the DS9 writers never really admitted that Bashir and Garak were just flirting. Finally! The writers seem to understand quite well what’s important to us, even if this isn’t the ‘Real Garashir.’

What satisfies me ultimately is that this doesn’t in any way look like a rejection of the possibility of Garashir in the prime universe. It looks to me like it supports the text, not a mean-spirited denial that it could only happen under bizarre AU circumstances. To sum it up with another Boimler quote:

BOIMLER: “The multiverse is just a rehash of stuff I already know.”

Hm… :)

And as I pointed out in a prior post, the whole point of the episode is to show that even in different circumstances and worlds, the love characters have for one another remains a constant and is utterly transcendent. The episode straight up tells us that some relationships are so powerful that they span dimensions and realities, and then Garak and Bashir say they would follow one another to any reality!

In my panel-lecture, I said, “[Paramount’s control over the text] suggests that certain readings require their endorsement or confirmation to be true.” But this doesn’t feel like that to me, and so I accept this. It leaves room for possibilities of all kinds, and opens more doors rather than closing them. I can appreciate that.

I also spoke about how canon isn’t one thing—not a binary yes or a no, and that there is no singular meaning. I call this multiplicity:

“Multiplicity is about the continuous proliferation of ideas and the rejection of the text as having a single meaning. It rejects mere viewing or the consumption of media in favor of dialogue and participation rather than a one-way communication.”

This episode served to defy singular interpretations of the text. It tells us that there are infinite possibilities and it took a route that challenges the single-story interpretation of Garashir = Not Canon. It made room for new perspectives and affirmed what “the stuff we already know.”

Why It’s Not Enough

Now for the other side of the coin: why it’s not enough. As exciting as it is to have this kind of confirmation from the current writers for Star Trek in a frankly increasingly conservative storytelling environment, it’s still disappointing for many people that even in the most progressive Star Trek that exists, they cannot or will not openly state that the prime universe Garashir got the ending and acknowledgment they deserved. 

It feels like begging Paramount as a corporation for scraps and thanking them for what really doesn’t feel like enough—it stops short of full, sincere, complete validation of Garashir’s queerness. As I said in my panel, it’s normal for us to want confirmation from the writers and creators that what we’re seeing is real and not just imagined, even when the role of fanfiction is for us to transform canon and reject it ourselves.

It’s absolutely exhausting for us to say we see something that is continuously denied by those who ‘own’ the story in favor of mass appeal, and to me, that is a legitimate perspective that can coexist with the idea that fandom is designed reshape the canon to fits its own needs, and that we don’t need confirmation from the creators for something to be true. Fandom exists to defy corporate ownership of stories, but to have to fight for mere moments where marginalized perspectives are foregrounded causes anger for good reason. We may not need confirmation from them, but saying that we should never expect anything from Paramount releases the corporation of accountability and obligation to respect the audience and their own characters. We should be able to expect and trust that these characters and their relationships can be done justice by those who have the privilege of steering that ship.

It’s one thing for me to say that this episode affirms the reality of Garashir, but it’s also true that prime Garashir probably could not be given complete canonization because this is the best way they knew how to ‘get away with it’ all while maintaining its mainstream and popular appeal with heteronormative audiences that would have a problem or reject it if it happened to ‘real Garashir.’

Slash fans, for decades, have existed in the lane of compromise—firmly between having our truth validated and entirely rejected in favor of a Star Trek that is designed to be sold as a product to as many people as possible. Rarely do we receive more than a bone tossed to us by the powers that be, and when we do receive it, it’s on their incomplete terms, often with massive concessions made to make it happen. For Garashir to receive their blessing, they had to twist it into an AU. The reason they could do this episode is because it gave them the neat plausible deniability to also say this has nothing at all to do with prime Garashir, so that it didn’t entirely alienate audiences who wouldn’t support a queer narrative.

This is their way of having their cake and eating it too. In some ways, it looks like they’re just trying to make everyone happy, but the story shouldn’t have to make everyone happy, and a compromise can really just feel like everyone loses, or like prioritizing the status quo again. For decades, the status quo has always left those with marginalized readings of the text unhappy, sidelined by a narrative that is supposed to be progressive and supposed to look to a future where queerness is natural and not taboo. And if this is the best they can do, it’s only reasonable that it should still sadden us, disappoint us, anger us. It’s hard not to resent that reality.

What Now?

I urge folks to continue negotiating the text, as I did above in the first section. I made sense of it in a way that fits my understanding of Garashir! You do not have to assume that there’s no more to it than that because it was all that was said on screen. We don’t have to look at canonization as the final say on the text. My perspective is that we should take it as a wonderful and deserved affirmation, and continue to transform the canon as we see fit. This is your time to decide what it means for these characters. Personally, I see it as a massively positive step forward. Just remember that where canon is concerned, you are in control of what it means.

Canon is still transformable, multiplicative, negotiated, and timely. Holders of the ‘IP’ are only one piece of the puzzle where the truth of a story is concerned. So take this as a beginning to more, not an end! As I like to say, “canon is a means to an end, not the end itself.”

Also, please don’t hesitate to add your thoughts, questions, comments, or anything else. I hope you enjoyed this meta post, if you read this far.

[diamondwerewolf]

I Also Wonder

Since AZ was an underutilized character in Pokemon XY, it's very easy to miss information about him. [I have a quick post with some bullet points on canonical details very easy to pass over if you aren't looking for info across all official materials.] Now that he will be a staple character in an expanded city, will they go in depth about his past, or still leave those previous blanks?

yes i'm gonna talk about this again i'll get to a point stick with me If you're new to him, or need a refresher:

---- AZ was the former King of Kalos from over 3'000 years ago. During his rule, a terrible war between unnamed regions broke out, in which lots of human and pokemon lives were sacrificed. It escalated so terribly, that there became a demand for more and more powerful fodder. This was at a time where pokemon were still considered tools or 'monsters' rather than creatures to be cherished and respected. Eventually, Kalos' own soldiers forcibly ceased AZ's beloved Floette, a gifted pokemon from his mother, to fight in the war. She did not return to him alive. Desperate to have his beloved partner back, AZ, who had already contributed miraculous technology to ancient society, built a crystalline machine that could harness the infinite energy of powerful pokemon, and bring her back to life. He succeeded in bringing her back, however...He was still deeply enraged with the state of affairs. The enemy and his own army be damned, he adjusted the machine, the ultimate weapon, to obliterate the war in its entirety. Friend and Foe, turned to ashes.

The price of reanimation is very steep. He was no better than the war for using pokemon lives in such a selfish way. This wasn't her partner anymore. After AZ's actions, Floette rightfully found him wicked, and left. Both cursed by the radiant energy of the machine, AZ's and Floette's life became eternal. For 3,000 years he wandered the world in search of his soul mate, until finally, at the end of pokemon XY, he battled the champion, and remembered how much he cherished pokemon. The wickedness in his heart was lifted, and with this, Floette finally returned to him again.

----

Quite a story. So what was the point in me saying all of that? There is...an entire additional subplot of the 3,000 year war that you can blink and miss. You can only find this if you take time to read books on one of the floors of Lysander's lab. The text is very brief, but the implications are significant.

What on earth...was going on between AZ and his brother. I want, more than anything, for AZ to mention something about that in PLZA. Or at least, be able to read about it somewhere. I am speculating based on what text we were given, but His unnamed brother MAY HAVE BEEN the cause of the war, and POSSIBLY the reason why AZ's own army betrayed him. I can not stress this enough, Floette's inclusion in the war was forced by Kalosian army. I assume there was some erosion of respect for the king for that level of insubordination to occur. Shouldn't something like that be forbidden?

In the Lab notes, AZ's brother was using the war to take Kalos for himself. He was so guilty after his brother disappeared, that he took it upon himself to burry the ultimate weapon. Why are you so guilty....what the hell did you do...?

The idea of 'family' and lineage is a theme I find prevalent in Pokemon XY, and I feel like they ran out of time to flush it out. I mean duh, it's 'france' kings and queens and all, but, still.

It's on the back burner when it =feels= like it's significant that all of these issues do appear to be family related. The fact that AZ and Lysandre are relatives is certainly an interesting choice, but I can't articulate what about it that makes me circle around it in wonder.

Info Text in game is stated so casually and matter of factly, but wait wait wait hold on just a fucking minute... what do you mean his own brother-

I hope that was followable ^^;

[lemonstars8583]

hello 😈😈 uhh ppl are gonna see this and be like “huh” but i don’t ❤️ care very much at all ❤️

so remember that CTW AU is posted abt well here’s where bonbon is 😭 !! hooraaay!!

there’s that weird minigame in into the pit (the game) that has bonbon so i was like okay in this AU millie isn’t even dead so like. that minigame wouldn’t exist but what if… bonbon… in real life instead..

so Oswald finds bonbon deactivated in the weird ballpit world (and yes i have an explanation for this i’ll leave it under the cut as well as some extra info), accidentally wakes him up, and bonbon does not fucking like him but he’s like “okay you’ve been here before and left?? let’s make a deal i’ll help you survive and you get me the fuck out of here”. so it’s like a reluctant alliance turned eventual friendship.

TLDR: Freddy gets in a fight with baby, badly injured, thrown out, taken in by Jeff’s Pizza when it was a bit more popular, kids climb on him daily and eventually break his arm off, bonbon falls into ballpit and freddy can’t find him. he gets thrown out again because kids have trashed him. a few years pass while he’s stuck in the junkyard and bonbon is unconscious in the ballpit world in the past. Oswald finds him and they

If that sounded interesting here’s the full ramble ⬇️⬇️

Considering one of bonbon’s functional purposes on funtime freddy being a lookout (bonbon is described as “parental tracking/360 pivot” on freddy’s blueprints.) I think he’d use that to help Oswald and act as a lookout, keeping track of where threats are and informing him when one’s coming closer and from what direction. he would try to trick him sometimes out of pure mischief though.

also i think bonbon himself probably wouldn’t have that “kill kids when they’re alone” programming just because he’s so small so he wouldn’t get the job done quickly, he would probably only tell freddy “hey nobody’s around, get that kid” so with freddy not even there he isn’t much of a threat to Oswald unless he chooses to be.

AAANYWAY how bonbon got in the ballpit ❤️ keep in mind a lot of this is entirely from my brain. at this point we’re getting into “entirely canon divergent” levels of AU so be warned

i thought it would be funny if freddy and cb got into a fight and cb just beat the shit out of him. based on 2 things: 1. the fight when they kicked baby out of the ennard hivemind and 2. a roblox rp i was in 😭😭 LOLL it wasn’t a serious rp (at least not on my end, i think the person playing CB was being for real) but it was so funny i loved it

SO anyway i figured the only reason they were able to beat baby was because it was all the funtimes working together and because they were kind of all equally distributed in ennard. i think if it was just funtime freddy trying to fight circus baby he would 100% lose she’s like a foot taller than him

so freddy gets his shit rocked, and management is like “we’re done with this guy he sucks” and throws him out. Jeff’s Pizza picks him up like “hell yeah weird mascot thing” and puts him in the ballpit room to stand there and let kids climb on him. eventually because he’s still pretty broken his arm breaks off from the weight of a bunch of kids hanging on it and it falls into the ballpit. later on he goes looking for his arm and bonbon and can’t find either of them.

the pizza place ends up throwing him out because the kids are just trashing him and he ends up in the junkyard where millie’s grandpa finds him years later. I’d imagine in that time he would become an urban legend of sorts, wandering around looking for things nobody can find, and taking the life of the occasional kid who’s out past their bedtime. He’d become more jaded and cynical instead of his former silly self during this time too.

HI GUYS FUTURE LEMON HERE i had this in drafts and now im looking at it again. there’s a detail i forgot! while time passes in the ballpit world, no time passes in the real world 😃 fuck! SOO that kinda fucks this story up but ALSO. this is an AU. i can do what i want. and i don’t think the story will be too horribly affected if i just disregard that? so that’s what im doing ����

[rassicas]

Frye is not a Vampire Squid.

It's one thing to headcanon something, but it's another to pass it around a fact, which is why i have to say: Frye is not canonically a vampire squid. This idea originated from a popular twitter thread made at the time of Splatoon 3's direct, and the evidence it's based on is...weak. And yet I still see this info passed around... Yeah I think Frye is just supposed to be a regular Inkling.

the splatoon team has shown us that inklings, like humans, can have a lot of diversity. while our player character models are limited, in-universe its a different story. these are all considered regular inklings. look at the varied eye masks, faces,...they can even have blue skin! So i think that frye is just the splatoon team showing us how more diverse inklings can be.

I made a google drive folder of Inkling hairstyles with a lot of concept art, you can see many diverse examples. To address the other specific points of evidence used:

Long fangs: All Inklings have sharp "teeth"/ beaks. Inkling beak shapes can vary. the last one appears to have a snaggletooth.

Long ears: Ear shapes can vary as well. compare ears of the squid sisters with the player character. Pearl has short ears. hell even the player inkling ears between s2 and s3 are different.

purple fingertips: prior to S3, fingertip coloration was something only seen on octolings, not on inklings. with how her and Shiver can freely change finger tip colors according to their ink, it seems like just a thing inklings and octolings can Do and we just haven't seen much of until now, like how we didn't see much varied hairstyles until s2. Perhaps with how integrated octarian culture is in the splatlands, inklings have caught onto this style as well? Her earrings, the sharp pointy bits in her design: Yes this was used as evidence for the vampire squid thing. That's all eel motifs.

Now the biggest reason she cannot be a vampire squid... vampire squids are NOT squids! They're more closely related to octopuses, but really, they're their own thing (also they're called 'bat octopuses' in japanese... the language the splatoon developers speak. nothing to do with vampires or squids)

With how splatoon's designs have been so far, other species of cephalopods are not guaranteed to look like inklings, especially if not closely related to ink-producing squids and octopuses (and vampire squids are not) Here we have a dumbo octopus (not octoling). also nautiluses. In the case of a species that would be more closely related to the playable species, what seems to be an octoling based on a blue ringed octopus.

Going off this, if the splatoon team were to make a vampire squid character, it most likely wouldn't be a subtle 'inkling/octoling but 2 inches to the left,' For such a unique species, I think they would be pretty explicit about it in the design itself. And considering that they are deepsea creatures that do not produce normal ink, a vampire squid in splatoon might look pretty odd! In conclusion...please stop claiming frye is "supposed to be" or "canonically" a vampire squid, it's a flimsy headcanon based on superficial traits at best and there is zero evidence that was the developer's intent.

(And while I'm here, Pearl is not confirmed a pygmy squid, marie is not confirmed to be a firefly squid, marina is not a webfoot octopus etc. That's fanon based on their japanese names, not canon. As far as we know, the player inklings and inkling idols are all just one species of inkling. inklings and octolings seem to take inspiration from multiple species, but it's not confirmed if they are those species.)

[monodramatic-cannibal]

Orca's ref

info post about Memento Cadre

more info under the cut

-Uses He/Him may also use They/Them

-head canon voice: 

-He’s a Crossfell variant (Crossfell by Jakei95). So has a different experience from the og Cross. 

-Joined Memento Cadre due to the fact his au had basically been destroyed, and he didn’t want to be apart of X!Gaster’s plan to revive it. He doesn’t talk about his life before Memento Cadre, and wants to keep it that way. Somewhere in the beginning of him joining the group him and X!Chara were split into two beings. Wasn’t allowed near the other 3 when Omen (Nightmare) first took him in, as he was violent at the time and would have hurt the other 3, had to be slowly introduced to them.

-Has less magic than the others, but makes up for it in physical prowess. Being physically stronger than the others as well as being able to take a lot more hits than them too. Paired on with the fact he is now LV 10 he’s a lot stronger than the others in the group (Other than Omen). A solid/good punch from him is like getting hit by a bullet train. And due to his armour/cape his Def is high as well. Often being able to walk through most attacks, including gaster blaster beams.Though he can’t do it consistently. 

-His Name was originally ‘X’ but Omen (Nightmare) started to call him Orca, which after a while Orca became his new name, allowing him to distance himself from his old life. He’s never seen/heard of an orca before, doesn’t even know what his new name means.

-The tallest in Memento Cadre. Will slouch slightly from time to time when talking to others. Often getting told by the rest of the group to straighten his back or he will mess it up.

-Best way to describe his personality is like a honey badger mixed with a chihuahua. Needlessly aggressive, and acts like everything is out to get him so kicks off to keep everyone away from him. But only lets a few select people/monsters come close. He can be seen as a fighting dog that is still learning to act like a normal dog.

Or a pray animal that has nowhere else to run so has to fight.

Though a weakness of his is head pats. Doesn’t want anyone knowing that. If someone doesn’t attack him and gets close enough to pet him he’s basically the equivalent of a kicked puppy. 

-His personality when it comes to those he likes is basically like a teddy bear. Very soft and protective. He acts as a guard dog for them, and always tries to do his best to protect everyone and keep them out of trouble. He’s willing to put his life on the line for them, even if it means he might die, if it gives the others time to get away in his eyes it’s worth it.

-Never really learned to read/write, learned a bit when he was a kid, but never continued to learn. Omen (Nightmare) did offer to teach him when he realized Orca didn’t know. But Orca refused due to being embarrassed. Though Omen would teach him anyway at random times in a nonchalant way making Orca feel less awkward about it.

-Was basically created to be a walking loyal weapon. He’s loyal to a scary degree, this is why he was in such a bad spot in his au for so long. But when things went to hell and he realized he had no one to place that loyalty in it gave him major trust issues. Omen (Nightmare) was able to gain Orca’s trust over a long period of time. And slowly the rest of Memento Cadre he began to trust with Omen’s help.

-Will sometimes get annoyed at Omen, yes Omen doesn’t treat him as a weapon and will actively go out of his way to protect Orca so he doesn’t have to fight, but Orca feels somewhat useless without being able to fight, since it’s all he’s ever known. He knows Omen is trying to teach him how to be more of a person than a weapon, but he also wants to do the things he’s good at for Omen. “Let me fight, I’m good at fighting.” “But do you want to fight?” “...”

-Spends a bit of his free time with Omen whenever Omen is in the archive, since he likes to hear stories about the aus from Omen. Prides himself on the fact he’s the one who has gotten Omen to talk the most. 

-Wears a spiked collar to keep people away from his neck. Hates anyone getting near his neck/face. He had problems with people in his au trying to go for his neck, so uses the collar as a way to keep them away.

-Wears fingerless gloves to protect his knuckles, as he has a habit of biting his knuckles when nervous. 

-His cape is really heavy, its a similar weight to 3-4 weighted blankets (not including the spikes and fur on the cape, which also add to the weight) Will; throw it at others to knock them over. 

-X wound on his face, from time to time the wound can hurt and also give him bad headaches. The wound never fully healed so if he catches it on something it could start bleeding again. The others in the group have each tried to heal it, but couldn’t and it made the pain worse for him for a short time. 

-His normal resting face looks like a glare, which tends to scare off most people, without him meaning to scare them off. 

-Hates being alone, has to be hanging out with someone, so is often seen following the others like a lost puppy. He’s sort of fine when it comes to going to sleep on his own, but if he awakes during the night he will seek out Omen as he knows Omen doesn’t really sleep. Will normally fall back asleep in whatever room Omen is in.

-His tail wags when happy, in the past he never used to wag his tail before joining the group. Has once sprained his tail from wagging it to hard, was extremely embarrassed about it, and once he got healed he wasn’t seen for a few hours because he was so embarrassed. 

-Used to be a royal guard/samurai, was so caught up in fighting honorably that he would fall for tricks/others fighting dirty. But since spending time in the group he no longer cares about this, and will 100% do anything he can to win. E.g. throwing sand/dirt/snow into others eyes/eye sockets, throwing his cape (which is heavy as hell) at peoples faces to blind them/catch them/knock them over. etc. Though he is also aware when to back off from a fight he can’t win.  

-Is part dragon, often runs off of the instincts of his draconic side. So will sometimes act more beast than monster/person.

-Due to running off instincts half of the time he may do things that are closer to what animals will do. E.g. he will groom the ones he likes, he bites/scratches/purrs/growls, he collects/hoards shiny things. Gets possessive over people/things. 

-May have LV flares that are mainly effected by his mood. And due to him running on more instinct based he will often become extremely destructive during these flares. Or may get very protective of the group/over one specific person. He can’t really help it. When he’s being more destructive than protective Omen will take him to a dead au to cool off. 

-Used to sleep sat up, being on edge even when sleeping. He’s started to rest better now and will lay down now, but does so curled up into a ball, may even curl up around things, including stealing one of Alloy’s (Killer’s) cats to curl up around. 

-Will pick people up that he likes. Will also wrap his cape around people he likes too. May also steal people this way too, throwing an arm/the cape over someone to hid them then dragging them away. Does this often to Soot when Soot is hallucinating. 

-Will also let people lean on him, e.g. will stand behind the others so they can lean back on him. Normally the MTT will grab either side of his cape and pull it over themselves too to hide in Orca's cape. Omen will lean back on Orca but won't really mess with his cape

-When walking around an au, especially in Snowdin, the MTT will follow behind him in a line stepping exactly in the places where he steps. E.g. in Snowdin it will look like one set of footprints. Orca is unsure on why they do this or when it started, but doesn’t question it since he knows it keeps the others close to him, and also he feels almost honored that they’re following in his footsteps rather than Omen’s. 

-Was very iffy with food before joining Memento Cadre. Would basically eat anything put in front of him. Even if it was to make him ill. He never really had a good consistent food source in his au, and also when joining the group he also would hoard food, and hide food as well, which he slowly grew out of, though sometimes he still does hide his favorite snacks. 

-Very warm, the equivalent of a furnace, this heat comes from the fact he’s part dragon. Often when it’s particularly cold Soot, Cleaver will huddle up to him. Them often dragging Alloy into the huddle knowing Alloy isn’t aware when it’s too cold. When they’re back at the base Alloy’s cats will also hang out with him due to it being cold.

-Alloy (Killer) will mess with him a lot. Gets annoyed at Alloy the most. Though at the same time he can’t complain as Alloy will show him things he’s not seen before. Or show him how to do things. He thinks Alloy just likes watching his reactions to things rather than actually helping him out with stuff. 

-Often will hang with Soot, finding comfort in hanging out quietly with him. Since there’s never any pressure of either of them to speak. Knows a little bit of sign language, and sometimes Soot will teach him random signs, mainly how to swear in sign language, both of them finding it funny.

Inspos:

-Yuji from JJK, specifically when Yuji gets serious and the frames go black and white. He's also inspired by the move black flash from JJK as well

-orcas, mainly how they will punt things out of the ocean and generally only bigger whales are the thing that can stand up to them.

-Crossfell by Jakei95 is also a huge inspo obviously lol

-

[puppetwoman17]

Billy in the Watchmen AU (spoilers for Watchmen Chapter 1)

For anyone who already knows who the Watchmen are and avidly read and generally consume the media, this is a post from a newbie, so don’t expect any nuance, lol. I’ve only watched the recent animated movie. Also be forewarned that this does mean the timeline is way more recent. This takes place in at least the 2010s, not the 80s like in canon.

If you don’t know who the Watchmen are, they are a group of “heroes” from an alternate dc universe where it’s the 80s and superheroes are outlawed. There’s also a group called the Minute Men who were there before them, who were all either taken out or had their lives wrecked.

The second Nite Owl got the permission of the first to dawn the name and costume. The second Silk Spectre is the daughter of the first. The Comedian was part of the Minute Men along with the first Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, and he is known to be part of the Watchmen. There’s also Rorschach, who’s like a darker version of Question. Dr. Manhattan is like if Martian Manhunter didn’t feel emotion and also cannot shape shift, but his power set is still extensive. Ozymandias is apparently a hero turned villain, and I already see that playing out a bit in the animated movie—

Holy shit he kills people. So many people. He has a warped sense of justice and he kills a whole bunch of people under the guise of an alien invasion just to unite the population. Yeah, now I get it. Anyway before he was a member, and after retiring he has this huge company called Veidt, where he sells toys and stuff.

Whole lotta other stuff to say about the Minute Men and Watchmen, but I’m sure you get the jist.

SO, with all that out of the way. TIME BUBBLE, people. Maybe it pops sometimes, maybe the bubble isn’t a bubble but it stops the aging process until it pops, idk. But Billy joins the Watchmen and goes through all the tough shit they go through, like Dr. Manhattan not understanding human emotion so he watches The Conedian kill a woman pregnant with his child.(I know, but I’m too lazy to explain every single detail lol).

He’s in the background while everyone starts hating their team and watches the Comedian wreck their whole image. Keep in mind that he’s not in his Cap form for his stint as a member because it’s way too flashy. He’s like their tech guy, but the tech is actually magic.

After the law against supers, Billy hightails it for Fawcett and leaves a note for the Watchmen who he actually like(everyone but the Comedian, fuck you Edward Blake). When Superman comes into the scene, he brings a new vision with him, and new and old heroes are able to come into the limelight. However, with three members working for the government (Manhattan, Comedian, and Silk Spectre 2), one on the run(Rorschach), one staying away,(Nite Owl 2), and one going into mass producing himself (Veidt)…Yeah, they think better of that.

A decade goes by and Billy’s(looking like) an eighteen year old living it up with his JL pals. Meanwhile, a retired army veteran, Edward Blake, has just been murdered. He doesn’t have the best thoughts on the US military, so he doesn’t pay much mind. That is until Amanda Waller kidnaps and takes him to a remote facility and decides to info dump that yes, she knows who he is, and yes, she knows he used to work with/for the Watchmen. Also, Edward Blake is the Comedian, surprise.

Yeah, Billy gets the hell out of there as soon as possible. Waller says she wants his help bringing in the members who aren’t on government watch, but he’s firm with his refusal, and she can’t just keep Captain Marvel locked up without facing the wrath of the Justice League and Squadron of Justice.

A couple days later, the JL are in Fawcett and planning to go to one of those magic infused restaurants with performances and everything, but Billy has to make a pit stop at his apartment. They’re cool with it and go with him, and guess who’s sitting in the dining room inhaling canned beans?

Iiiiits Rorschach!

Billy is FREAKING out because the Watchmen can’t be seen together! He rushes the JL out as quick as possible and says he’s “so sorry, but something’s come up, I can’t go. Just tell the front desk fawn that I sent you and she’ll know.”

Naturally, Diana is the first to say that she is not leaving him alone with someone who BROKE INTO HIS HOME. Billy waves her off and says that “it’s totally cool! This happens all the time in Fawcett!” before slamming the door closed.

Billy: what the hell were you thinking?

Rorschach: Im here for good reason, B.

Billy: Save it, I know about the Comedian and Blake.

Rorschach: You don’t think this is a one and done thing, do you? Someone’s clearly gunning for masks, and for some reason, they started with one of us! Why not those new flashy heroes you hang with? Superman? Batman? Wonder Woman? Why one of us?

Billy: In case you forgot, we operated during the Cold War. We made enemies. And even without that, Blake was a military man who enjoyed making people suffer. If he had no enemies, I call bullshit!

Rorschach: I’m still determined to make sure this doesn’t happen to the rest of us. I’m going to everyone’s homes, and—

Billy: Okay, now you’ve blocked me. No one is going to listen. Daniel(Nite Owl) has moved on. Laurel hates the guy and Jon(Dr. Manhattan) does whatever Laurel(Silk Spectre) wants. Adrian(Ozymandius) is perfectly happy with his company. And I swear, if you bring any of the Minute Men into this…

Rorschach: I have to try. Even if they don’t believe me, I have to get it into their heads somehow. The Minute Men went through the exact same thing.

Billy: no offense, but your wording does not get across to people as “caring.” You’ll just as soon make them throw you out.

Rorschach: Agreed. So, I’ll need to bring along someone who’s better at that than I am.

Billy:

Rorschach:

Billy: Damn it.

Cue the cancel out duo of Billy and Rorschach going to the home of the former second Nite Owl and freaking him the hell out. Daniel and Billy reminisce about the old days while Rorschach gets across his point. Daniel naturally thinks it’s a flimsy take, and Billy says he gets it, but being a little more careful never hurt anyone, right?

They also talk about Blake. Dan says he’s thinking of going to the funeral, but he also has mixed feelings. Billy says he isn’t going. After what happened with Sally Jupiter(the first Silk Spectre, and Laurel’s mom), he can’t look at any pictures of him the same way.

They leave, next going to Veidt Inc.

Predictably, it does the same way. Except this time, Billy is able to glean that something is off about Adrian. He can’t put his finger on it, but he tells Rorschach to leave as soon as possible.

Laurel and Jon are a little less angry(they have good reason tho) because billy is there. Laurel’s so happy to see him! Jon on the other hand doesn’t know what to do.

They used to be close. Billy was used to speaking to higher beings who didn’t understand the concept of human morality and the like. Jon’s a little different, because gods are able to feel, but it’s as close as it can get. Billy stood up for him on multiple occasions, except when Jon cheated on his gf with Laurel, that got him a two month no-talking period until it didn’t seem right to do so and he got to know Laurel.

Then the island stuff happened. The Comedian may be an asshole, but he doesn’t lie. Jon just stood there while that woman bled out. Billy just…couldn’t look at him the same anymore.

Unlike in the movie, where Rorschach says something stupid and Laurel tells Jon to make him leave, Billy stops Rorschach from making that idiotic mistake and says that they don’t have to hide themselves or actively look for danger. It’s just important that they generally keep themselves safe by any means that they want to. They readily agree because wow, boundaries!

Meanwhile, Bruce and his gaggle of detectives found out who that weird guy sitting at Billy’s dining table is. A member of a team that hasn’t been talked about in decades. Of course, there are no articles or pictures involving the Watchmen interacting with a kid with magic. So, they naturally want answers from HIM. Billy is tight-lipped when they see him, and is somewhere else in his free time(with Rorschach).

Unfortunately, that’s when shit really takes a turn. A former villain that Rorschach and Billy spoke to tells them that the Comedian, without a mask, was in his bedroom weeks before he died! Spouting nonsense about Dr. Manhattan, an island, a list, people who were apparently worse than him, so much worse that he started begging to be forgiven.

Dr. Manhattan goes on live television for the first time in decades. This is the first time the JL has ever seen him. Billy’s watching it carefully with Rorschach and just about has a heart attack when some reporter gets up and tells him that several people who he used to know have contracted forms of cancer. At least a dozen. There’s a list.

A list. Oh shit!

Jon cries out in anger and disappears, rushing who knows where(Mars).

Meanwhile, Adrian kills someone. At least, it looks like he did. The other guy attacked him and his assistant, and was biting his tongue to keep from saying anything. Adrian puts his hand in his mouth to stop him, but he’s too late. He’s been framed for murder.

With all of this happening, Rorschach gets a message from Moloch saying that they need to talk. Cool, have fun. Billy’s at the Watchtower and he’s swiftly avoiding the topic of that weird guy in his apartment.

Two seconds later, Rorschach is on the news. He’s been caught. His mask is off. Billy is screaming internally.

That is the exact moment when he turns to the JL.

“…I need your help breaking someone out of prison. And presumably stopping a mass killing. And that mass killing kind if sort of includes me.”

Yeah, they’re gonna need more info. Like hold up, you were in a team before us😠?

Anyway that’s where the brain rot ends until the second movie. Jeez this was a lot.

[tsams-and-co-memes]

Frank is Pisces

I made a thread for this theory on TSBS Discord server and it blew up (it blew up so much more than I ever thought it would, like Jesus Christ. I'm super happy about it though). I figured that since I moved all my canon info stuff over here from the server, I might as well move my theory stuff over too

Long post warning, since there's a lot here. A lot of this exists because I was possessed by my adhd demon one night, noticed something about Frank, and then ran wild with it

(Last two pictures are part of a chart that SqarletGecko made for this theory. If Sqarlet sees this at any point, hi, hello! I appreciate you for feeding into this, Sqarlet)

There will be more images tacked on later. I'd add them now, but unfortunately, there's a 10 picture limit to posts. As stupid as that is. ANYWAY

Frank’s strong enough to kill two different witherstorms. Although him outright killing them was never verified, it was one of the only ways he could’ve come back so soon. The only other way would’ve been to wait by the portal, but assuming Moon would’ve closed it off due to the dimensions that Frank was in housing witherstorms, Frank would’ve had to find another way out

His name is neither Frank nor Forkface, so it’s entirely possible that it could be Pisces

Sqarlet pointed out that Castor said “Pisces is probably off doing his own thing”, which could be anything, and it certainly doesn’t preclude Pisces being on earth as Frank, doing whatever he’s been doing

In the “Lunar Gets Friendzoned” vrchat episode, Castor mentions Pisces again, this time saying (in reference to how Lunar’s “final test” would go, and how someone would be sent to judge his ability to control his powers) “Could be Nebula, could be Libra. Could be Pisces, but I doubt that. Hell, it could even be Taurus.” This is the second time Castor’s mentioned Pisces, as if he doesn’t have a whopping 10 other signs he could pull names from (minus Gemini and Pisces, obviously). This could be a case of simply sticking to a smaller pool out of the 12 names, but still

Castor has mentioned Pisces offhandedly two different times. Yeah, there could be a really simple explanation for that, but it sticks out to me, and I can't pinpoint why

During an Uno video, they did a “one breath for yes, two for no” thing with Frank, and he confirmed that he had a bad past. Given some of the things that Castor has said about Taurus, it’s a possibility that Frank/Pisces was trying to get away from him. Some other Pisces traits are that they’re supposed to be super empathetic and deeply emotional. If Taurus said or did something that impacted Frank/Pisces enough, he could’ve chosen to leave

For a while, Frank didn’t seem to react much when people acted scared of him, but as he’s spent more time with the channels, he’s developing more emotionally, which would make sense if he was younger. According to a google search I ran, “Pisces emotional sensitivity is high, helping them to remain in tune with others also leaving them vulnerable to criticism, worrying about about the effects that their actions might have on others,” which could explain why he acted so sad when he briefly appeared in the lobby in an FFFS episode and everyone acted scared of him

Pisces has a heightened emotional sensitivity, they're very in tune with the emotions of those around them, and this in turn makes them worry about how others might react to them

In another Uno video, Foxy made a lighthearted comment to Frank about how he reminded him of his son, since he has a habit of inserting himself into situations and things. There are other characters who do this too, meaning that Foxy could’ve compared Frank to literally anyone, and yet, he chose a character that’s a child. If Frank is Pisces, he’d be the youngest of the astral bodies

If you watch him, Frank does have some childlike mannerisms and behaviors. The first thing is the way he sometimes wants to show someone something, but then gets upset when they touch it. It’s like when a kid gets a new toy and shows their friend, but then gets upset when their friends tries playing with it because it’s theirs. The second thing is him apparently drawing on the wall underneath Earth’s bed. Drawing on walls is something that kids do. The third thing is him trying to feed Earth a piece of pizza. Kids will sometimes try to feed people too, though it’s typically only with people they’re close with, that they know pretty well

If Frank is Pisces and therefore the youngest of the astral bodies, there’s a chance that he chose to show up in the daycare because he knows it’s a safe place for kids, and that there are good caretakers there (Sun, Moon, Earth, and Lunar). He could’ve chosen a daycare attendant-esque form to blend in better with the daycare environment, or he could’ve copied what he saw of the caretakers there, much like how kids copy the adults they see

Pisces is the youngest of the astral bodies, so everything that Frank does that seems like something a kid might do,, could sort of tie in with that. Frank has seemed to somewhat mature and "grow up" in a sense as of recently though, so these childlike habits and behaviors have begun to become rarer and rarer

Pisces has ties to illusions, dreams, and the subconscious. This could explain the times when Frank appeared in both Monty and Earth’s dreams, and then dragged the Stitchwraith into his own mind. In the case of Monty’s dream, Frank knew that they’d had problems with their dad and he’d even offered to be their listening ear, so seeing the shape Monty was in emotionally and mentally after their dad died, Frank may have guided them to an image of their dad to try to promote a form of closure and emotional healing and recovery before Monty woke up (did I mention that being a healer is also a Pisces trait?). He was silent in the dream, so Monty’s mind couldn't have heard his signature heavy breathing and did something funky with that. In Earth’s case, Frank somehow knew that she was having a nightmare and he came to wake her up, repeatedly saying “no fear”, as if he was telling her not to be afraid. With the Stitchwraith, the Stitchwraith wasn’t aware that he’d been pulled into his own mind. Frank didn’t confirm that he was until he told the Stitchwraith that “It’s just a bad dream, a nightmare”, and told him to wake up

More Pisces traits are wanting to help people and being a healer. Adding in the ties to illusions, dreams, and the subconscious, I feel like creating dreams to help people recover from things wouldn't be too farfetched. In the case of Earth, Frank knew she was having a nightmare and wanted to wake her up so that she wouldn't be scared anymore. To this day, I have no way to explain how he could've possibly known about her having a nightmare, aside from sensing her distress and/or having some kind of connection to her subconscious

I found a snippet of an article that said “When we meet Pisces, we are taken aback by their remote coldness; they often act like confused geniuses or oddballs who have trouble interacting with others.” It’s confirmed that Frank is highly intelligent; he somehow knew how to get into Moon’s computer and registered himself as the primary user, and he somehow swiped Foxy’s voicebox and installed it in himself, then took it back out and reinstalled it in Foxy. Frank is also an oddball, but I don’t really need to explain that one

Frank has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t like Ruin. He’s had many opportunities to take him out or even just attack him, but he hasn’t. Castor has stated that astral bodies typically don’t get involved with things or associate with people unless they really need to. If Frank is Pisces, he may have avoided going after Ruin because it’d go against the rules

There are some mixed messages on whether or not Pisces is a rule follower, but a couple things I found that stuck out to me implied that sometimes they follow the rules, and sometimes they do whatever they want as long as they’re satisfied. We were given a glimpse of this with Frank when Lunar tried to run him over with a car in a vrchat episode. Frank didn’t seem to care as much about the fact that he was nearly run over, and instead, became agitated with Lunar for parking incorrectly. He also made Lunar get in his car, and then proceeded to move it out of the alley and to the drive thru, where Lunar was supposed to be anyways. He might’ve also reacted poorly to Monty and Earth bringing a goose into the restaurant they were in, since animals don’t belong there. Beyond that, Frank’s also gotten upset with Sun and tried to menacingly follow him around the room when Sun cheated during a game of Uno, showing that he doesn’t like cheaters

Frank seems to have a knack for interrupting people’s dates. Most of the time, he’s trying to help but doesn’t seem to grasp that his behavior might be making people uncomfortable, BUT according to google, the Pisces sign is known for being jealous of other people’s love lives. After the death of Ruined Monty, Frank may have started to feel a little jealous of others

According to google, “most Pisceans are very good at earning a stable living,” and “they are usually very effective in any career that needs collaboration with others or inventiveness.” It’s been stated before that Frank works in at least three different restaurants, and a restaurant type environment would require collaboration with others to keep everything running smoothly. He’d be earning good money from those three restaurant jobs, and another Pisces trait is wanting to help people, so working in a restaurant would be a way for him to do that

Strengths of Pisces would include being selfless and thoughtful, passionate and creative, gratitude and self-sacrifice, tolerance and a keen understanding, and being kind and sympathetic. Weaknesses of Pisces include being influenced by their surroundings, being careless, rash, and ill-disciplined, having an inability to confront reality due to an absence of confidence, being insecure, sentimentalism, indecisiveness, and a lack of foresight. These are all from a chart I found, and although I don’t think we’ve seen too many of these weaknesses in Frank yet, we’ve definitely seen a lot of the strengths

We have no idea where Frank was before he first showed up at the daycare. Fazbear apparently had him shipped in to replace Moon, but with how easily he got into Moon’s computer, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to assume that he could’ve possibly also hopped onto a different device and sent a fake email, posing as Fazbears to keep people from asking too many questions about why he’s there

Like Sqarlet has said, we’ve noticed a pattern of astral signs following the usual astrological descriptions, but it’s not necessarily a rule, nor is it to a T. It’s very possible that Frank mostly follows the general tendencies of Pisces, but still has individual quirks and such that are different. It could be a case where perfectionism or a preference for rule-following/organization is just a lil personal thing of his, unrelated to astrology

Another thing suggested by Sqarlet is that the Pisces dealio might explain why Frank’s general choice of appearance is generally uncanny/unsettling. Astral bodies don’t necessarily have a spectacular grasp on how to Aesthetic effectively, at least from an earthling’s perspective

Eclipse once used star power to get into Puppet’s dreamscape, when Puppet was on his way to get Lunar. If star power is what makes dreamscape stuff possible, then Frank would need access to it in order to do the same (see: all the dream stuff he did with Monty and him showing up in Stitchwraith’s dreamscape)

Whenever Frank appears, whoever he appears around is usually experiencing a negative emotion of some sort. Some instances of this can be seen when he showed up and tried to talk to Monty after Monty had a fight with their dad and was frustrated, when Earth and Sun were worrying about Lunar when Lunar lost his voice, when Sun got turned into a dragon and was panicking, and when Earth had a nightmare and was freaking out over it

Foxy’s implied that Frank was probably trying his best to be helpful, during all the dates that he unintentionally ruined. Which… means that although Frank is trying his best to be helpful, he might not understand what “normal” behavior looks like, then he messes up, and then he gets upset when people misunderstand him and his intentions, or when whatever he’s doing ends up backfiring in some way. Pisces’ loves to help others and can’t stand being misunderstood, so this lines up beautifully

During a podcast episode, Frank breathed heavier when Castor and Pollux were mentioned, implying that he may know them. Given how he even attempted to speak again, he likely had some kind of thoughts or feelings toward them, too

The astral bodies are typically aware of almost everything that happens. This might explain how Frank (if he’s Pisces) knew that Foxy would be alone on Christmas. It was only Foxy, Freddy, and Francine present when the Stitchwraith took FC, so unless Frank was spying on everyone or has taken to watching the channels like Ruin apparently does, he shouldn’t know what happened

If the Foxy’s Intervention episode is anything to go by, no one ever knows where Frank is, and yet, he still knows where he’s needed and goes there to help

With the way that Pisces deals with illusions just as much as dreams and the subconscious, it’s possible that the Frank that the Stitchwaith saw was just an illusion. This could explain why Frank wasn’t hit by Stitchwraith’s weird chest laser thing (unless he quickly teleported out of the way), and why we never saw him go up to the Stithwraith and try pushing him around or anything, despite how Frank was acting toward him. We’ve seen Frank physically interact with people before, so we know he can, but if he was an illusion, that wouldn’t be possible

Something else to consider that I haven't shared with the theory thread yet (that I can remember) is that when Pisces feels hurt or betrayed in any way, they can be incredibly vengeful. Their vengeance, according to a search I ran, could be intense enough to break trust and damage relationships, if they're not careful. In killing ruined Monty, Bloodmoon may have unknowingly made Frank feel so deeply hurt that Frank has now decided that he needs to get revenge on him. He kept saying things during their encounter that made it feel like he may be entertaining the idea of getting rid of one of the twins, which... follows a very "you took away someone who meant the world to me, let's see what happens when I do it to you" sort of logic

[quackity1999]

# — THE MAILBOX is open for business.

i take care of those who take care of me. why do you think i have no one around?

jesus, put two and two together.

this is a c!quackity ask blog :]

SEND ASKS! feel free to pester c!quackity thru asks— general questions, LN reports, dsmp lore refs, tomfoolery and such are encouraged.

i HEAVILY support spamming the inbox.

happy to answer both anons + characters (dsmp, ocs, multiverse: film, musicals, videogames, etc). if ur a reoccurring anon then grab an emoji !

#quackitychirps indicates quackity replies. #charlieposting indicates slime replies.

[ TAG SYSTEM: HERE ! pls check it out. ]

↓ IMPORTANT INFO UNDER CUT. ↓

[ hiii. i'm prophet! he/it/rez prns. biggest cquackity kin known to mankind. yes i am australian 😎😎 ]

rules: literally fucking none. go ham!!!!!!! just please no godmodding. i'll delete anything that goes too far. 18+ mentions are fine — i'll tag accordingly, but it won't be the main focus. sooo have fun go crazy ( admin is 21. keep that in mind thanks )

this blog functions on dialogue instead of written out paragraphs of literature.

IMPORTANT: i don't write any literate rp ( eg; *character sits down and does a thingy* etc etc ) unless it's preplanned in dms for an event. if i am sent starters or asks with literate rp they'll most likely be deleted.

sometimes i throw in a bit of action in brackets, but this is an ask blog first and foremost so i focus on dialogue to communicate action / location / etc.

and in order to keep my blog tidy i don't respond to reblog replies. threads tend to get real lengthy + clutter up things. so— please send another ask instead of reblogging with a reply :) thank you for understanding!

there will be occasional nsfw topics. anything indirect or at the very least suggestive goes into #vaguely 18+. anything explicit will be tagged with 18+ mention. proceed with discretion.

details about quackity :

+ las nevadas era, mainly. if there's specific asks that require a response from vice pres quackity or manburg era q, i can adjust to that: #viceqchirps !

+ he's an avian hybrid! he nests often (usually within an amethyst geode). quackity has a history of being mocked for his instincts and avian attributes, much thanks to a certain ex-husband :/

+ this bitch loves a good debate. motherfucker is a lawyer (sorta) so hit him up with a challenge every now and then. give him fun facts. Threaten him. ask whats going on in his life! throw in curveballs.

[ his chat / asks often show up as pop-up ads. ]

+ my portrayal is canon aligned! las nevadas is important as hell to him, so here's a post that explains in-character how quackity runs LN: HERE. so. yeah, we do business around here. and also torture dream for the revival book but that's not important /silly

+ on that note, i would prefer to avoid interaction with positive/good depictions of c!schlatt for this blog. no disrespect to those who do prefer that, i just personally want to uphold the importance of how schlatt's abuse informed a Lot of character development for quackity. same goes for dream— he's a villain, not a kicked puppy. thank you!

+ i violently swerve between serious interactions and utter hysteria in my replies to asks. its like a fucking lucky dip here 😎 also soz for all the links but it Does make it easier

+ shipping isn't a goal here, so attempts to woo quackity will not end in a romance plot. ofc there'll be some flirting, especially w / canon characters he's had past relations with (schlatt, wilbur, eret, karl, sapnap). i hc he's had a fling with technoblade at least once LMAO. note: apologies to dapduo shippers but they're strictly friends in my portrayal for a reason. :]

+ during las nevadas he has fortnightly gatherings with foolish. he wouldn't fuck a citizen, but he'd fuck a coworker! morals, what're those again?

overall i'm not looking to write romance plots due to c!quackity's view of love during the LN era. (he despises it.)

all anons welcome!!! ADMIN IS 21.

for art references:

my dude's got big big wings such as the first two. no other wings anywhere else though! white / blind in the eye that’s scarred. he got gold fangs to replace his upper canines; to replace the actual missing tooth from techno’s axe but also for congruence. it's also a mockery: piglins love gold.

PLENTY of gold jewelry. quackity focuses so much on his appearance, so— earrings! a brass knuckle made from the rings of schlatt, karl & sapnap. he will never use his own feathers for decoration, though. he's got some necklaces, ofc, no piercings. maaybe an eyebrow piercing but idk . debatable

usually wears a white silk shirt, regular suspenders, black pinstriped pants / slacks, deep red tie with gold intricate detailing & a gold clasp to keep it together in the middle. a fancy pocketwatch with the las nevadas star engraved on the front. his blue or puma beanie obvs! shoes are either dark red (near black) snakeskin or italian leather. steel toed for dropkicking drea—

[ PAST EVENTS: AVIAN PINNED. ]

[lay-z]

Flight of fancy ~ 1 | call of duty:mw

SUMMARY: Sometimes dreams can become reality. PAIRING: Ghost x f!Reader x Soap WARNINGS/INFO: 18+ ONLY | smut; strong language/cussing; threesome; some fluff; praise kink; size kink; unprotected sex; soft!dom/sub; non-canon/pre-canon

The intense throbbing between your legs and lower belly, accompanied by your increasing heart rate, make it harder for your subconsciousness to keep the grip on the intense scene you are experiencing.

The rough touch of gloved fingertips tickling along your arched spine and squeezing your heated flesh, sounds of your swallowed moans and needy whimpers, the feeling of a man, thick and warm, deep inside you as he takes you from behind – all of it real, forbidden, and so very sinful. The Sergeant says you must be quiet but does everything to make you mewl in the same breath. It makes your toes curl, dig into the floor, and tears well in your eyes.

Then, there is another strong hand grabbing your chin, squeezing it lightly while his gloved thumb strokes your lower lip before you open your mouth oh so eagerly. The Lieutenant shouldn't be here, but he is, of course he is. You hear a low chuckle, muffled by his skull mask, as he towers over you, watching with a kind of hungry intensity that causes you to tremble.

The Sergeant joins in the teasing. They say something, mutter praises and profanities to you; filthy things you hear but cannot quite make out. He's next in line, judging by the outline of his large erection straining against his dark combat pants. Your pussy clenches around the cock inside you, and the man behind you sputters curses under his breath.

Images and figures start blurring together into surrealism, no matter how much you try to cling to them, while the delightful pulsing in your groins lingers when your eyes start fluttering, regaining sight as you eventually wake from a deep, heavy slumber.

You squint your eyes against the dim light of the room, sniffling as you notice the tip of your nose is numbed by the cold while your body seems to be burning up. It takes another few seconds of absentness before you realize someone's been shaking you by the shoulders.

"Ah fuck...what? Wha – "

"Steamin' Jesus, lass, what kinda nightmare were ye havin’?”

Soap kneels at your side and helps along as you struggle to sit up straighter in the tattered armchair; now painfully aware of the slickness between your thighs and thus your soaked panties sticking to your pussy. He was inside you, fucking you throughout, just a moment ago; what the hell is he talking about?

You rub your eyes more forceful than necessary, until the delicate skin on your face burns from the contact, and the young Sergeant's eyes study yours for a moment, not missing your flushed cheeks and heavily dilated pupils while you avoid his worried gaze.

"Those pills knocked ye out good, huh?" Soap snickers to himself as he grabs the canteen attached to the side of his belt. "Here, have a drink", he says and unscrews the flask before holding it up to your lips.

You swallow hard and notice how dry your mouth has gotten. It was just a wet dream. A fucking wet dream! Your stomach drops as reality finally hits you like a Humvee going full-speed, and you hope Soap doesn't notice the shaky breath you exhale. You’re on a bloody mission, you caution yourself; sex should be the very last priority on your mind right now!

"Thanks", you mutter swiftly before taking a big gulp of water. The coolness calms your heated body and edgy nerves enough to collect yourself momentarily; you let out a profound sigh as you hand the canteen over again.

"Remind me never to touch that stuff again, yeah? Fuckin’ hell!", you cuss, rubbing some feeling into your frozen nose tip.

Soap chuckles as he gets up, now holding his gloved hand out to you, and you seize him up involuntarily, wondering for just a fleeting moment, if his touch on your bare skin would feel the way it did in your dream, if his cock would fill you up as deliciously as it did then. However, you force the thought away from your mind, ignore the shudder running down your back as you grab his hand, and Soap pulls you up effortlessly while he talks into his comms.

"No need to worry, Lt. She's fine, all clear."

"Affirmative, Johnny."

Ghost' response comes just a second later as if he has been waiting for that info.

"You told the Lt. that I was having a... nightmare?", you ask tentatively, brows furrowed in mock amusement to mask the discombobulation arising behind your meticulous façade of professionalism and toughness; one you have built for yourself after years of serving as a SAS operator and working with TF-141 especially.

Soap sees right through your bullshit though as you see the corner of his mouth twitch upwards.

"Course I did. Thought ye were havin' a seizure or stress-related episode or somethin’ like that", he answers nonchalantly, adding a shrug. "Lt.'s on watch, so I had to tell him, no? Besides, ye looked pretty ah... restless."

Then Soap turns his back to you, saunters over to his corner in the living room of the abandoned single-family home, your makeshift hideout for the night, and flops down on the ragged couch, crossing his arms behind his head. He doesn't bother taking off his tac-vest first, or any other gear nor armour for that matter.

“Yer alright though, right?”

“Aye, I’m fine... I think.”

You sink deeper into the armchair as you briefly think about recounting your dream to him, though as soon as it crosses your mind, you bite your tongue to keep yourself from telling on yourself.

“Mind if I, uh, step outside for a moment? Get some air?”

Soap drapes one arm over his eyes then and gives you a thumbs-up with the other.

“Turn the light off when ye leave, aye? Am pure done in.”

You smile to yourself as you put your gear back on and grab your rifle before turning off the small, dimmed camping lamp in the corner of the room.

The fresh night air clears your hazy mind and seems to grant you a boost of new energy with each deep breath you take.

There is no sign of civilization here, the next road is some klicks away from your position, the next village or town even further and the only sounds surrounding are those of wildlife you can only assutheis there and the wind blowing through the old, wooden window shutters.

Yet you notice the presence of another human being lurking in the deeper shadows, someone who naturally becomes one with them, and even though you know who it is, the thought of Ghost stalking you makes your blood run hot and the hairs on the back of your neck stand at attention.

"Evenin', Sergeant. Feeling any better?"

The Lieutenant's low, baritone voice cuts through the silence along with his heavy footsteps coming towards you. Him and you have established an awfully formal and gratuitous way of speaking to each other on missions.

You spot the white of his skull balaclava before anything else.

"I'm fine, yes. Thank you", you lie through your teeth, now glad for the darkness covering up for you. You can still feel the evidence of your arousal with every step you take, though you try to ignore it. It feels like a dying flame too eager to be lit up again; all you need is air, someone gently blowing on it.

"Wanna talk about it?", he asks gruffly as he comes to stand next to you, scouting the darkness ahead. To outsiders, it may not sound like it, but Ghost genuinely cares about his people; he's just always so serious around you.

You consider your options, every possible outcome, and perhaps you're silent for a brief moment too long, or Ghost knows you too well already.

"You're overthinking again, Sergeant"

"I'm just contemplating my answer, sir"

He scoffs quietly and you feel his piercing gaze on you though you don't dare to turn your head to look up and make sure.

"Should I be worried then? We're in the middle of a mission. I need ya to be focused, but if you're having any troubles then –“

"No, sir", you cut him off sharply. The last things you want any one of your comrades or superiors to do is worry or question your abilities and mental state. "I... I wasn't having a nightmare."

He seems taken aback for a moment, or simply pissed at you for disrespecting him. Either way, he silently waits for an explanation, or so you think and you cringe internally, biting the tip of your tongue, as you crumble like house of cards under his sheer presence.

"It was quite the opposite of a nightmare", you blurt out eventually, and you can only imagine the huge question mark now floating above his head.

"Answers, Sergeant. This ain't no children's Q&A", he demands.

"Perhaps not, but if you want to know, questions would make it easier to talk about", you insist, fully aware you're making a big mistake though your mouth seems to move on its own now.

Silence again, and then you think your comms crinkle to life as someone, perhaps Soap, tries to radio in, but nothing follows.

"It was a good dream then?", Ghost asks then, fully ignoring the sound that came through both your comms.

You hesitate, embarrassed at last, but nod anyway.

"Affirmative"

"Family friendly?"

"No, not at all", you answer, shaking your head as you try not to laugh. What an odd way of phrasing that question, you muse.

"So, let me get this straight, you had us worried 'cause you had a wet dream? Like a bloody teenager?"

There's a hint of amusement in his voice, professionally covered by the sternness of his tone. You clear your throat awkwardly, busted after all.

"Basically, yes, but I do appreciate your concern, Lieutenant"

The matter is done for you, you shouldn’t be playing with fire that openly anyway, though you notice the sudden tension in the air around you, and when you try to ask him if you should take up on guard duty next, he cuts you off this time.

"So, who was involved then?"

Now you're the one taken aback by that question, and Ghost notices right away, but he insists.

"MacTavish?"

You swallow hard as memories of your dream flash before your inner eye; Soap eating and fingering your pussy to prepare you for his thick cock, licking your juices off his wet gloves and slathering his shaft with them before sliding in with one firm thrust of his hips. Him bending you over the nearest table and fucking you until your vision gets blurry with ecstasy.

"Affirmative", you reply meekly and clear your throat once more. He doesn't react much, but his voice becomes lower, huskier, as he continues his interrogation.

"And what did Sergeant MacTavish do to you?"

"He took me... from behind, uh, doggy style, and we had to be quiet because we couldn't get caught doing it... obviously"

"Ah, yes, good ol' policies and regulations, innit?", he mocks wryly. "And did you enjoy it? Soap fuckin’ you doggy?"

You cringe and hesitate; you’re not used to the Lt. using such colourful language in that context, though you must admit, it only adds fuel to your unfortunate state of horniness.

"I mean...yes. I guess my subconscious mind did enjoy it. A lot actually, according to the evidence in m–"

Stopping yourself before the words can get past your lips, you ignore the way your heart skips a violent beat and try to regain your composure instead. That’s one too much inappropriate info, you figure.

Albeit, it seems Ghost has taken another step towards you because now he is practically towering. The way he's standing in front of you, mask on his face, assault rifle in his mammoth hands, a permanent aura of authority surrounding him – this man is nothing short of an enigma. Yet again his presence is enough to make you talk.

“Anyone else involved?”

“Yes”

“And what exactly did I do to you?”

It’s the clichéd quiet breath that hitches in your throat when the Lieutenant asks so very smugly, and then you’re gritting your teeth to resist the urge to rub your thighs together. He must be smirking, you judge, there’s no way he isn’t, as pleased as he sounded though his reaction is once again carefully hidden by his balaclava.

“You... you caught us”, you stammer eventually.

“How unfortunate for you, Sergeant”, Ghost replies with the slightest hint of a chuckle.

The sound gives you flashbacks, and suddenly, you have the phantom feeling of his gloved hand gripping your chin, his thumb stroking over your bottom lip, and the sound of his combat pants unzipping echoes in your ears.

“Yes, sir, very unfortunate”, you dare to tease and watch his reaction though there is none; Ghost simply accepts your response. Perhaps he didn’t pick up on your sarcasm...oh, well.

“You should get back inside, catch some sleep maybe. We’re leaving before sunrise. Price contacted me, I got new orders for us”

His voice is dry, strapped from any humour or undertone; he rolls his broad shoulders and adjusts his stance before nodding at you to go ahead.

“Yes, sir”, you affirm as you straighten your own shoulders, gripping your rifle more firmly again before turning on your heels. Back to business it is.

“And Sergeant?”, Ghost calls out to you after you’ve passed him by a few paces.

“Yes, sir?”

“Better keep your hands off those sleeping pills from now on.”

To be continued...

[trashisstillhere]

Woooo! After a few days on working, I finally got these two finish for the NN AU!

No, they’re not new characters! These two are actually one of the original canon characters you all already know of! The two main boys and mcs themselves!

Randy and Howard!!! ✨✨✨✨✨👏👏👏👏

Aw yeaa!!! Surprise!!!

I have finally got to their looks in 12th grade in the NN AU! It wasn’t easy but it’s done now!! Let’s gooo!

And yes, Randy has other outfits. They were first concepts for what his outfit should be but I kinda liked all them a lot so I Just made them two different outfits- he also has a little ponytail!! Cuz why not? It fits him! Plus it matches with First Ninja in a way :3 like father like son

But yeah!! Let’s get to a bit of their info, shall we? It isn’t that much and crazy….or anything!…. Teehee~

—————

The two main bros themselves! Now in 12th grade at Norrisville high and NN’s first friends ever since they first started going to their school! With Randy being the kids current ninja mentor! (Besides the Nomicon-)

How the hell did these two even get to 12th grade after everything they have done back in 9th grade? Beats me, lol-

——

Howard info: Howard Weinerman himself, in 12th grade, so far is still the same old laidback and cool short chubby guy we all know him as. Even after growing up a bit, he still hasn’t changed a bit…..well…okay, maybe he HAS changed at least a LITTLE..

Especially his hair…

While he hasn’t been possessed by the Tengu for so long now, it still is somehow linked with him in a way, giving his hair a slight new look…even his eye color seemed to have changed a little bit too! This makes things a bit…worrying….but hey, he’s okay! It’s not like he’s feeling any pain from it or anything! He’ll be fine! He can handle it!..

Besides, he hasn’t had to deal with that damn demon bird in a few years!..

Until one day, the Kitsune was freed by a certain Jock (by accident) during a field trip…

Alerting the said demon bird…

Oh yeah, Tengu Howard makes his return!.. all thanks to the Kitsunes own return!

However, this isn’t the only bird kind of form he’ll be having…

One day, both Howard and Randy ended up in an argument. Just a typical bff argument, ya know?.. however, this one didn’t end as nicely as the last ones they had… instead, it ended up with a familiar pink stank following up to Howard…

Leading him to becoming Stanked for the first time ever in his life….by none other than the sorceress herself.

Stanked form!! Yeah that’s right, he getting Stanked in this AU!

A rooster. A wild one, that is. With extra sharp teeth and a slight interesting color palette… wait… now that I think about it, it is a little similar to the Tengu!

Damn, even when stanked, Howard STILL can’t get away from his Tengu possessed form.

Anyway, this guys mad MAD. Like a normal rooster, he will immediately go attack if he sees anyone as threatening in any way, which in this stanked monster state, he ALWAYS will.

Of course, it is up to NN and Randy (who not only feels bad for this since his argument with him is the reason why this happened in the first place but also cuz of his fear of chickens and roosters-) to go stop and destank him!

———-

Randy info: ah yes, the one and only, Randy Cunningham! You all know him! He was the ninja of norrisville! All through 9th grade up until he got to 12th! The role is now NN’s but even so, since the kid has a whole new different mask and not exactly the one he has, he still gets to be a ninja himself! Just not the main one anymore… but hey! He’s the new ninjas mentor now! And friend! :)

Actually, he wasn’t supposed to be their mentor to begin with. Once NN got the role, he was supposed to have his mind wiped in the ultimate lesson just like every other ninja (expect Mac Antfee…but now he has!) and let his ninja journey finally end…. That is exactly what The Nomicon told him was gonna happen once NN would start their own ninja journey.

But after seeing how much the new ninja was struggling with both their new ‘job’ and personal problems and struggles of their own, he absolutely REFUSED to have his mind wiped and started protesting against the Nomicon, telling it that he wanted to go help NN as he could tell they wouldn’t be able to handle it all by themselves even with the books help. NN needed another person to help them, someone who was a ninja with lots of experience. He thought he would be best for the job. After some more arguing, the Nomicon finally agreed to let the boy be their mentor for now on. BUT! Once NN finally is fully independent on themselves and brave enough to continue on their own, he HAS to go mind wipe himself. for good. With a slight hesitation yet relief, the boy nodded and agreed.

As NN’s mentor, Randy is, or at least always tries to be, sweet and patient to them as he helps them with their new ninja duty. At first it was just him trying to be a teacher to his ‘student’ and nothing more but as he went on with it, he ended up being more attached to the kid then he thought he would. It went so far that he started calling them tons of little nicknames here and there, ‘kid’ being the most common. He also got very overprotective over them, it mostly happens whenever either the Nomicon makes NN do something that could be too dangerous or any of his former enemies tries badly hurting them in any way. (Ya already know the rest, I mean, I had written a bit about this before lol)

As for when being just himself? Like Howard, he hasn’t changed one bit! He’s still his usual lovable dork self! And so far with this ninja mentor role of his, he’s doing pretty good! Yeah….good… he’s alright, he can handle it! He has many times before!…

Oh yeah, yup….he’s…alright…

Oh who am I kidding, he isn’t doing alright!

The truth is, Randy doesn’t like all the new changes he has seen ever since this all has happened. Nothing against NN and them, it’s just…too much!

At first, he was just slightly afraid of the change that he noticed was going on but now, he HATES it. He isn’t a fan of any of the changes at all! Not only that, but he has problems of his own that he hasn’t thought so much about until now.. such as his parents literally being divorced, for a good reason too: his now distant father.

But instead of telling anyone about this, he just kept it all to himself. Every single problem, every part of it, all kept inside of him. It’s unhealthy but the last thing he wanted was to involve anyone in his problems, no matter what. Even if it was his best friend, the kid, his own mother or any teacher at school, not even the psychologist teacher who is usually good with this sort of thing….. he doesn’t HAVE to tell anyone, he will be fine dealing with it on his own…

He was able to keep it all to himself just fine until one day, he finally lost it.

It happened at spirit week, yes. Spirit week. Randy started arguing at NN about how he didn’t like any of the changes that were happening, he was so stuck on it that not him or the kid noticed what was about to happen next….

Before they knew it, he was suddenly covered in both sap and feathers. Right in front of everybody.

It was caused by the new bully ‘Maria’ with her own friends who planned on doing a prank that was supposed to happen to NN but instead it got to him since he was in the way, she found it funny anyway and started laughing at him. Expect for her friends….and everyone else who was around to see it.

Howard got mad at her and so did Martin, they both yelled at the bully who only yelled back while NN was trying to check up on Randy who just stood silent through it all…

The bully said such hurtful words that was meant towards Randy this time….

And that. Was the last straw.

Soon, Randy was no longer just an ordinary guy…or even a ninja..

But a new first time ever stanked victim of the sorceress!

Stanked form! Oh Yea! The main boy is getting Stanked too!! (Man was he hard to draw like holy shit-)

A Komodo dragon. A big one. No, a HUGE one. Literally fucking like Godzilla.

Unlike the other stanked victims so far, this one is the most biggest threat EVER. Not just because of his humongous size but he is pretty much even harder to destank! This guy has lotta problems after all!

But even so, NN isn’t going to give up! They, along with Howard and Martin too, will try their best to go after him and help him then get to finally destank once and for all!…if only it was so easy.

Out of all the stanked monsters, this is the biggest challenge NN has ever had to face..

(The whole idea of this ‘afraid of change and such’ part of Randy’s own part of the story along with the whole stank form ideas and what lead to them with both him and Howard, and the bit of the field trip part where the Kitsune was ‘freed’, was all thought out by @artistic-harlom-world once again!!)

———-

Woooo! All done! Now I would have done some size comparisons and all but due to tumblrs rule about only having like 10 images per post on the ‘mobile version’ or whatever (no I don’t use mobile to be here, only iPad), I’ll just have to show yall a pic of the boys with NN and Martin all together instead! (Tried doing their right sizes and everything! Yes, Martin is slowly taller than Randy. Well he’s supposed to be, he’s kinda a pretty tall jock)

The main gangs all here!

Me after finally doing and finishing the boys who are the other two main mcs along side NN and Martin in the AU after so many days and months of not doing so until now:

Did I really had to make this meme just for this? Yes.

Was it worth it? Also yes.

Welp that’s it, hope y’all like how they look! I did my best as always!

[catenary-chad]

Direct electrification and talking trains

(another nearly 5k word post)

A lot of people will make Electra mostly battery-operated (including the revival), but canon, through the lyrics of AC/DC and Electra’s replica design and “pantograph pose” pretty explicitly make them a non-battery electric engine that runs off overhead power.  Which imo is a very interesting and underexplored topic that affects a lot of dynamics.  Electrification has fascinating potential for a lot of social themes that aren’t seriously explored in Anglophone media, it’s a “fourth dimension” that impacts so much but is treated as a non-entity.

 It’s actually kind of… sad how train media seems to be quietly “batterywashing” electric trains that would be powered by overhead wire or third rail and really overselling a flawed technology while ignoring a proven, almost uniquely “train” power source with a fascinating history and practicalities. Early tech limits have a massive effect on even modern trains in the US and Europe, and countries’ adoption or rejection of electrification tends to say a lot about their political and economic outlook. It’s something that’s a no-brainer when rail is a public service focused on the long term, and usually a nonstarter when it’s a private business focused on short term returns.

So I’m going to cover some of the basics of it and my own takes on how it could affect a talking train society.

This topic is totally alien to a lot of people, so I’ll try and keep this as non-technical as possible. While this post focuses on Electra, a lot of these things would also apply to the Nationals or electric OCs.  And while this is mostly aimed at the Starlight Express physical setup and themes, a lot of this info could be applied to more realistic Thomas-style talking trains.  

(Note: I use “direct electric” because I’m not even sure there’s a specific term for non-battery electric trains besides just plain “electric”. I’ve seen “straight electric” which is hilariously ironic with Electra specifically. I avoid “pure electric” because it’s often weaponized to make the character a Malfoy-esque figure, which annoys me to all hell because it couldn’t be further from the truth. Electric trains have a notoriously liberal and diverse fanbase and it feels downright slanderous to make them out to be rich supremacists.  Those types HATE actual electric trains.)

On the most basic level, direct electric-only Electra (and most of the Nationals) would be like a whale.  Whales are almost unstoppably dominant outside of human threats… unless they end up out of the water, where they’re pretty much immobile and helpless.  Outside of areas with compatible overhead power (or perhaps third rail), or if their pantograph or other current collector was damaged, they would also be pretty much immobile and helpless. Usually electric engines like that have a small battery (akin to a combustion car’s) that can power lights and controls when disconnected, but that’s about it. So they might be able to respond to basic commands, answer yes/no, but not move without outside assistance.

Which leads to the VERY interesting situation where they would be bricked in 99% of the US, most secondary and smaller lines in the UK, and even a number of branch lines in Europe.  There’s major limits on where they can go, and even where they can go, the infrastructure they need is vulnerable to neglect and underinvestment.  It parallels disability accessibility in a lot of ways.  With the fascinating caveat that some countries like Switzerland and India are 100% electrified and with that accommodation omnipresent, being electric-only isn’t even “a disability” anymore, it’s just the norm.  Directly electrified trains actually dominate nearly all metrics of speed, strength, and power and are a nearly perfect metaphor for someone or something that excels in pure meritocracy but is repeatedly held back by institutional forces and government underfunding, and tends to be the first affected when programs are axed.  Half my fascination with the show and character is just how much better Electra fits the social themes they tried to implement early on, and how there could have been a story “just about trains” that also strongly mirrors human politics.  The broader problems of utilities being public services vs private businesses, and underfunded services being deliberately sabotaged by conservative governments to axe or privatize them have only become more relevant since the 80s in so many non-train avenues.  

(Electric trains in the Anglosphere are a Rorschach test of minority coding in general, with even more parallels in how they’re viewed as faceless statistics, their history has often been overlooked, forgotten, and outright erased, and are portrayed as an alien threat when they’ve been around for a century+ and have quietly done a lot of grunt work without much fanfare.)

A VERY different and more fanciful take is found in the “Electricity Fairy” of early 20th century France. This is a fantastic article about it in regard to model trains and French electrification, by an author who is incredible at characterizing electric trains in general (machine translation dampens things a little but his main points come across well). Electricity as a sort of Tinkerbell figure to a Peter Pan-esque Electra is a very compelling direction, especially with the thematic and personality parallels between the two characters.

EMUS AND LOCOMOTIVES

Before I go on, I need to address this distinction.  EMUs are self propelled electric railcars, basically coaches with motors attached. Like a subway train.  Locomotives pull unpowered cars.  This is why I keep saying the vaguer term “train” vs “engine” because most of this post is relevant to both setups. Diesel-powered multi units also exist… and bimode and battery and all three at once.  The MU/locomotive divide exists for those too, it’s just more prominent in electric systems since the advantages of electric traction are utilized so differently by locomotives vs MUs. MUs are almost exclusively for passenger use but have occasionally been made for freight use, and if you go all the way back to the trolley era you had some mixed/freight streetcars too. 

The main advantage of EMUs is faster acceleration/breaking and lighter weight, they’re often cheaper too.  They’re especially attractive for short trains of just a few cars. Passenger services, both commuter and high speed, have been increasingly replacing locomotive-hauled trains with EMUs because they’re better suited for the heavy start-stop nature of the task and can substantially increase train frequency.  Electric locomotives are far from irrelevant, but their main advantage is being able to haul fast and/or heavy freight trains like nothing else, ability to remove them from trains when they break down, and ability to pull double-decker coaches… which have been tricky to make EMU variants of.  EMUs are also a bit different maintenance wise (rail maintenance shops tend to hate change) and can be noisier due to motors being directly in/near the cars vs separate.

EMUs don’t really exist in Stex canon which is a shame, because they’d fit well.  They’re a massive wedge in the false engine/coach binary and just having the coaches converted to MUs as a way to permanently solve their engine problems would be an ending with a lot of irl train precedent.  Exploring how dysfunctional MUs (like the Metroliners) often end up unpowered coaches is also full of potential.  And then the whole streetcar/interurban/early electric era rarely follows any kind of freight/passenger, engine/coach, or heavy/light rail binaries, it’s just a spectrum of madness.  

You could also do some interesting things with class divides between loco-hauled trains and EMUs.  EMUs are often associated with very low-end trains irl, especially public transit and subways, but then you also have weird luxury exceptions like the Brighton Belle and some modern high-speed trains.  I think the Rockies are so subway car-coded it hurts, the perpetual underfunding of them in the US would fit Right Place Right Time so much better (freight is a profitable business) and the dance styles and graffiti are also right at home with the NYC subway (though SEPTA would fit their names better with the Philadelphia-Rocky connection). Loco-hauled trains in the present day seem to trend towards a weird midpoint, often old equipment that used to be high-end that’s now the cheap option for longer distance travel.  You can even get deeper into the independent locomotive vs power car and trainset divide, the latter is generally more prestigious today and the former more pedestrian. Coco or Bobo would likely see Electra as… kind of a big dumb lug because the Nez Cassé engines were used on lower end passenger trains and freight services after TGVs came in.

It’s personally hard for me to really make electric trains heavily divided though, they just have too much shared hardship in the Anglosphere to not be weirdly united despite their glaring differences.  But then again, the messy intricacies of inter-community conflict among them could be FASCINATING. 

Also, Caboose crashing the Shinkansen and pulling the “you’re no engine” speech would be funny because it’s accurate because that’s an EMU!  You are indeed no engine!  

TYPES OF ELECTRIC-POWERED TRAINS

Anyways, there’s a HUGE divide between direct electric trains, battery-electric trains, and bimode (electro-diesel) trains.  

There’s a very uncompromising, all or nothing aspect to the politics and economics around direct electric trains that sounds unreasonable from the outside…but becomes very reasonable and understandable the more you read into it.  There’s massive political friction against spending on them in the US and UK that doesn’t exist in much of continental Europe and Asia, advocates kind of have to take that relentless and uncompromising approach with how cyclical political and economic support for them is and how often projects are cut back or cut entirely when administrations change.  To have success like France you have to have a continuous, rolling program to create economies of scale and maintain a consistent, trained workforce.  Doing it in fits and starts every few years leads to dramatically higher construction costs and constantly training new workforce, which makes cost per mile/km much higher.  This all sheds a very different light on how Electra is so insistant and all-or-nothing, it’s not a cartoon villain wanting to take over the world, it’s someone who wants the equivalent of universal wheelchair accesibility when the government constantly pushes against that. Bringing hydrogen power into the mix has even more potential to be interesting, just look into the term “bionic duckweed” to see how the conflict between it and widespread electrification has been in the UK.  In a weird way, electrification has become the most conservative option in rail because its 100+ years of proven success is its main asset.  The oldest locomotives running on a non-tourist line in the US are likely the 1920s-era electric steeplecabs with trolley poles on the Iowa Traction Railway shortline!  There’s this bizarre and painful irony in how it’s viewed as both “inevitable and alien” and “antiquated and unglamorous” at the same time.  

(battery mining lokies my beloved)

Battery trains are actually even older than direct electrification (they go all the way back to the mid-1800s and are a very janky rabbit hole) and there were a surprising number of BEMUs and small battery locomotives as far back as the turn of the century.  They definitely have utility as switchers or on low-traffic commuter lines but the technology is nowhere near powering heavier, faster trains soon. Batteries just aren’t energy dense enough to power fast, heavy trains for longer periods of time. They have all the problems with battery power in cars and other things in regards to fire hazards, mineral sourcing, and the environmental and labor impact that involves (and unelected oligarchs trying to destroy world order for their access). 

There’s also a very double-edged aspect of “compromise” with battery power specifically with trains.  They can be a stepping stone for areas that aren’t fully electrified… or turn into a stopgap that never leaves, ala diesel power in the US and many parts of the UK, and impedes widespread electrification.  

(There is a third rail contact on this engine somewhere. Yes, this is the equivalent of Greaseball if he stuck a fork in a light socket on occaison)

As an important note, diesel-electric (not quite the same as electro-diesel/bimode) is NOT at all equivalent to electric-only trains.  They’re diesel-powered and use that engine to generate electricity for electric motors because giant gearboxes are impractical for road locomotives.  It’s like conflating lab-grown and conventional meat, same end product… but wildly different production and politics/economics. The power source and reliance on external infrastructure creates a massive divide, even though they have a lot of identical tech after the power supply.    

But that similarity means that if you add some kind of electric pickup to directly power their motors, they’re now bimode/electro-diesel.  Those are in the same “compromise” category as battery-electrics, just trade out the mineral politics of batteries for oil ones and greatly increase the energy density of that power source. They’re also fairly old, dating back to the 20s when diesel locomotives were in their infancy in general.  Some are glorified diesel trains that just have electric-only capability for tunnels or underground stations, some are mostly electric with limited diesel backup power.  

And then you can also have all three in one, which is also a 100+ year old setup.  Places like New York and London that electrified early and have weird, inconsistent systems often get some weird equipment to cope with it. This is foreshadowing, you have been warned

ELECTRIFICATION SYSTEMS

Anyways, now for some fun specifics on different electrification systems and why they’re important.  You may be familiar with how household power is 120 or 240 volts and 50 vs 60 Hz depending on country/region.  Rail electrification often predated the wider electrical grid and is so much weirder and less consistent due to the early tech limits that shaped it and the difficulty in changing things.  

THIRD RAIL

Heavily associated with subways and metros, but used on some suburban surface lines (NYC area, southern England).  Also used by three-rail model trains (like Lionel and Märklin).  

Low voltage DC for heavy rail use required the use of third rail vs overhead wire due to the conductor thickness required for the high current.  They were mostly used on early 20th century lines before catenary and AC power became established. The rails themselves are cheaper to install and maintain vs overhead wire, but they’re notoriously hazardous to humans and wildlife and vulnerable to icing over in winter.  They’re also DC-only, which requires more (and more complicated) substations, making the overall price much higher.  DC also majorly limits the power of trains they can run (AC can run far higher voltage, we’ll go into this later). They’re well suited to subway use though, since they reduce the tunnel size needed (VERY expensive), distances are shorter and trains are smaller/lighter, and there’s less risk of people/animals getting on the track.  On the surface, they’re rarely built anymore and outright prohibited in some areas, and generally being slowly phased out.  

I’m prone to giving Electra some kind of third rail pickup since it’s common on multi-voltage electric trains.  It’s a funny tie in to how model trains are powered by them and how static buildup on skates can be an annoyance.  The CC 40100 locomotives didn’t have one, but some related CC 6500s did for the Maurienne line.  Running a nearly 8000 hp locomotive on 600-750 V third rail systems like those around New York City or southern England would result in Electra being laughably weak/slow or just blowing out substations but could make sense for brief backup tunnel use (common in the tunnels around NYC).

Fun bonus: The exception to third rails being DC is actually three-rail model trains, which are usually AC.  There’s clearance issues with it on real trains, but it’s okay on that small of a scale/power.  The line between how model trains are run and full-sized third rail trains is… thin.  Especially when you factor in how some extremely early electric trains ran off two-rail systems exactly like oversized versions of other model trains.  A number of issues with regular electric trains also appear in model trains- like incompatible electrification systems and issues due to neglected maintenance.  A kid playing with toys is just a sillier microcosm of governments and businesses making rail decisions.  Voltage drops in DC power requiring more power sources/substations is also a shared trait, DC model systems often need additional power supplies connected.  

OVERHEAD WIRES

The modern standard worldwide, due to their ability to run AC power.  I’ll explain that aspect later, but the biggest thing is that AC is leagues better for long-distance power delivery and allows for more powerful trains.  Overhead wiring started with simple trolley wires and poles, but the catenary and pantograph setup largely replaced it for heavily applications. Far more expensive to install and maintain than third rail and design problems can plague systems for decades (fixed-wire catenary on the Northeast Corridor causing issues in hot/cold weather, widely spaced poles on the East Coast Main Line leading to more fragility and failures).  They also require more vertical clearance, a MAJOR issue in the UK due to their infamously low tunnels and bridges that cause them to have tiny trains in general. They also run into vertical clearance issues with double stacked container trains, though that can be remedied by well cars and purpose-built extra high wires ala India. 

The design of catenaries and pantographs is a deep rabbit hole of its own, but it’s pretty easy to mime aspects of them.  I’ve seen claims that some of Electra’s common poses were deliberately based on them and I’ve been calling some the “pantograph pose” myself.  Raising an arm to represent raising a pantograph, using both arms to represent older style “diamond” pantographs vs single-arm Faivley ones.  Lowering one arm and raising the other to represent switching pantographs for different voltages for Electra (the CC 40100 had FOUR pantographs).  Using an open hand to represent contact with the wire, coming loose if wire tension is lost and becoming tangled.  “Invisible catenaries” are an accepted convention with model trains because making functional ones is incredibly fussy so the wire doesn’t need to be there, just implied.  A laser beam might work though.  If electric infrastructure were a more important part of the show having catenary poles visible would be plenty to designate electrified vs nonelectrified zones, and so they could be damaged as needed.  Trolley poles also aren’t too hard to mime with an outstretched arm and balled fist or twirling fingers for the wheel.

Both catenary and third rail systems have issues of physical inconsistancy and incompatibility between systems even where voltage and frequency match.  Stuff like pantograph thickness, over vs under-running third rail adds yet another layer of complexity. That’s something that gets super regional that I don’t know all the complexities of though. 

OTHER SYSTEMS: You also have some oddball systems out there like fourth rail on the London Underground and some systems with overhead “third rail” with a rigid conductor that a tiny pantograph touches ala a bumper car on rails. Rail electrification is… a deep rabbit hole and there’s a lot of really weird stuff early on if you dig even a little.  Like this wacky three-phase AC railcar with three different pantographs that held the rail speed record for well over a decade in the early 20th century. 

My favorite wacky electrification method is just “giant extension cord”.  It’s mainly a thing on short industrial/switching yards in Europe but this example is from a mine in Chile and the Milwaukee Road had a homemade corded shop switcher used to pull electric engines from unpowered sheds to the powered main lines.  I’m not fully sure how it works logistically but it’s hilarious to imagine and makes sense for very short distances where it’s easier than building and maintaining catenaries.  

DC- DIRECT CURRENT 

If you use the water metaphor of electricity this is like a constantly flowing river.  

DC saw widespread use in trolleys and transit and early heavier rail electrification descended from this (the light/heavy rail divide is more of a spectrum if anything).  It was simple and durable for its time (early 20th century) and then-prevalent DC traction motors were simple to power and control with it.  It’s harder to implement over long distances due to the higher current needed and greater voltage drop and heat losses vs AC.  It requires far more (and more complicated) substations than AC because of this too.  AC can also deliver far more power.  DC has been gradually replaced with AC where possible, but sheer inertia has made it a slow process and it’s still common in Europe, usually as 1.5 or 3 kV mainlines.  There’s also some commuter railroads in the US with DC overhead supplies.  

Trains can be pretty easily modified to run on lines lower than their designed voltage, they’ll just be much slower/weaker.  Overvolting for short periods of time can increase performance but tends to be damaging in the long term.  The latter would be unlikely for a 3 kV-designed train though, since that’s about as high as most DC systems go.  

People talk about Electra behaving differently in AC vs DC modes, which is an interesting concept, but going off the CC 40100… yeah it didn’t make a difference since it was designed around running on 1500 V DC, the lowest voltage it took.  Newer trains tend to be mostly designed for modern AC lines and are notably less powerful on DC.

 The main difference would be… being more “digestible” for DC-motored trains?  Tech limits made converting AC to DC difficult in the early 20th century and being able to process it more efficiently was a huge step up.  Musically I think DC power would be more associated with Western convention since it mostly developed in the US and western Europe, and player piano ragtime is basically the default trolley/interurban ambiance music.  

Another more abstract, but interesting direction for DC mode would be the “ever onwards” mindset electrification has to have when faced with the back and forth of political will… kind of like how a rectifier “straightens out” forward and back AC to DC

AC- ALTERNATING CURRENT

is usually described as “like rising and falling tides” or “a reciprocating pump pushing water back and forth” in the water analogy.  

Transformers are the main reason why AC is so dominant in powering trains (and electricity transmission in general).  They can “step down” very high voltages, which are more efficient for transmission than lower ones.  Basically, it’s easier to deliver more power to trains and requires fewer, cheaper substations. The main issue is converting that AC to a usable form, and technology limits related to that have had HUGE impacts.  

Early AC trains often had “universal” AC/DC traction motors that required unusually low AC frequency to run, 25 Hz or less, which is too low for residential use and needed specialized equipment for generation or conversion.  It also requires heavier transformers in trains, but this isn’t as much of an issue since especially in the modern day, electric trains tend to be too light if anything.  Airplanes often use 400 Hz AC for the opposite reason though, they need the weight savings of the extra light transformers.  Around the mid-20th century, rectifiers became practical and it became feasible to use 50/60 Hz mains frequency for trains.  Most lines built after that have been that way.  But a lot of those earlier lower-frequency lines still exist due to the hassle in changing all that equipment vs just making dual/triple/quadruple voltage trains.  It’s like making tilting trains for old, winding rail lines vs building new straighter ones.  

Which is why being able to change frequency is an important feature for Electra!  Going over/under design frequency will damage equipment and trains will stop if they detect it.  Which is why I say that Electra and basically all other AC trains notice the frequency of light flickers and have perfect pitch because being able to detect exact frequency is like telling if food’s gone off for them.  

Musically I want to associate AC trains with Serbian music as a reference to Nikola Tesla and because you sometimes get some vaguely similar fluttering, bagpipe-like sounds from AC motors.  Balkan folk music is a fascinating rabbit hole in general and was popular in the prog rock sphere for how it sounds so alien to western audiences.  

AC vs DC: TRACTION MOTOR EDITION

Oh great, another layer of complexity with the AC vs DC thing, because this is also important.

AC motors are superior in basically every way and DC motored trains aren’t made much anymore.  Many of those that remain have been rebuilt to AC motors.  They’re lower maintenance and more efficient and powerful.  But before semiconductor technology, it was hard to control AC vs DC motors, so they didn’t become more widespread until the later 80s.  You’ll see some very old mountain drag freight electrics (N&W electric engines, PRR FF1) with three-phase AC motors that could basically just go one constant speed, which worked for that job and not much else.  They are about the peak of being “big dumb lugs” for lack of a better descriptor.  Universal AC/DC motors were also common in the early 20th century.  

DC motors have brushes that are more hassle to maintain and run hotter.  As said above, they are easier to control with older tech though.  It’s done by varying voltage with a combination of resistors and running motors in series vs parallel (look into Frank Sprague’s work on trolleys for details).  Regenerative braking isn’t possible on engines with AC/DC rectifiers since they’re a one-way device, so many have dynamic brakes. Dynamic braking is done by just sending that excess electricity through a huge variable resistor, like a giant toaster or space heater.  And that’s why DC-motored trains often have infamously loud fans (see the BR Class 91).  It’s pretty much fact that Electra would sound like an overheating computer as an 80s-era locomotive.  I see Electra as at least initially DC-motored and maybe converted to AC motors in midlife, around 2000.  

Bonus: AC motors after the 90s or so are controlled by variable frequency drives and make lots of fun noises depending on tech.

MODEL TRAINS

The line between how model trains work and full-sized electric railways is… surprisingly thin, especially early on.  Toy trains with onboard batteries have been a thing for years, of course.  But because electric toy trains existed before household electrification was prevalent or standardized, many of those had separate battery packs that powered the track vs plugging into a wall.  Not unakin to how some early electric railways were run.  Two-rail electrification (one rail positive, one negative) used on many model systems was used on some very early tramway systems, though it was vulnerable to being shorted by kids placing rods across it or frying women in long, soggy skirts and didn’t last long.  

Lionel uses a third-rail system similar to that on subways and commuter lines, though with a centrally placed rail.  Märklin has stud contacts for similar purposes.  Both are the big, weird exception to all third rails being AC- the vastly lower voltage remove the voltage issue.  

Two-rail systems can be DC or AC (usually for DCC).  DC has similar issues to voltage drop as on full size lines.  It was also the standard for years due to ease of control, varying the voltage on a controller changing the speed of the locomotive and flipping the positive/negative reverses it.  DCC is used for more precise control of multiple locomotives today.  Compatibility between the two is an issue, trains can be converted to work on the other system but running DC motors on AC only works when done a specific way, and if left to idle for long they’ll just go back and forth and burn out.  

Building tiny catenaries for model trains exists and is incredibly fussy and niche.  Model with functional pantographs are common, but making and running the actual system is often very frustrating even for experienced adults so it’s rare to actually use. It’s something I’ve even seen people who work in actual rail electrification balk at because of the tiny scale of it, but it reportedly has similar issues with pantograph contact and pressure and wires breaking, with the bonus of way more derailing and corrosion issues that require frequent cleaning to prevent due to the tiny contact area

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Here’s a relevant news story that’s got… battery and non-battery electric locomotives AND EMUS AND bimodes, and five seperate electrification systems ft. several different DC third rail and AC overhead voltages/frequencies.  All it’s missing is DC overhead, which I don’t think even exists in this region anyways. 

So go forth and use some of the more unique tendencies of electric trains.  If you do it on even a surface level you’ll be ahead of 90% of the rest because this stuff is just ignored or batterywashed SO much in Anglophone media.  I was going to include a section on power electronics evolution in regard to them but that’s going to go in a separate post.  They’re important to why use of AC power was limited 

Main sources: William Middleton’s “When the Steam Railroads Electrified” and this video by a longtime Amtrak employee.  

Also see above article for more sources on the northeast US and lots of specific numbers.  And anything by Clive Lamming is great for personifying this topic, especially if you know French.