#I doubt they'd go by different names if they liked their original one

[robby-bobby-tommy]

Local Messiah won't stop dead naming people

PLEASE, SOMEONE TELL HIM TO STOP, IT'S NOT POLITE!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[adventuringblind]

A Little Lost

Liam Lawson x Reader x Oscar Piastri x Logan Sargeant

Genre: fluff and hurt/comfort

Summary: With her ADHD driving her mind into a whirlwind, she ends up slipping in public and unable to find the one person she needs. Luckily Oscar and Logan are there to help.

Warnings: non-sexual age play, agere/age-regression, panic attacks, implied trauma, non-sexual use of daddy

Notes: I needed this for myself, honestly!! I hope the requester finds comfort in it like I did!

Side note: age-regression is NOT a kink. If you're going to request it, please don't make it a smut request. It gives ya girl mixed signals. AGEPLAY is a kink and has dd/lg dynamics. Please remember this when requesting... I'm begging T_T

Masterlist // Request Form // My Website // buy me a Ko-Fi

Everything is overwhelming at the moment. He thoughts are running in a million different directions. The noise and bustle of the paddock is pulling Her every which way.

She needs Liam. Without a shadow of a doubt, she needs him right this second.

Her mental state is dancing between headspaces. Her little self is attempting to break free of the confines she's put the girl in. To young and to alone to be out in this environment.

The alphatauri garage feels so far away. It's an endless walk she's been attempting to make for what feels like hours now. Liam, she just needs to get to him.

Panic rises every time someone bumps into her. She squeaks out a sorry, only to be met with annoyed grunts. She needs her daddy to make it better. No - Liam - she needs Liam.

The catalyst is someone shoving her away and complaining that she should pay more attention. She is paying attention. Her brain just has thirty tabs open, three of them have commercials playing, another is driving her senses wild, and where the heck is her da- Liam?!

The shove sends her tumbling to the ground. Her elbow hits the hard ground on impact. It's bleeding, and she's officially offline.

Her little self takes over, tears welling in her eyes as she hides around the corner and tugs at her hair. A desperate attempt to settle the whirlwind of her thoughts.

She needs her daddy.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Logan and Oscar are animatedly chatting about the race as they walk through the dwindling crowd. Liam had texted about a longer debrief and had asked them to check up on his girlfriend since she wasn't answering her phone.

They'd been an item the last couple of years like Oscar and Logan have. It's an interesting and often tense dynamic. The four of them are all extremely close, but neither of the couples have openly talked about any kind of open relationship.

Oscar and Logan have. It's often a source of interesting fantasies and warm fuzzy feelings. They say nothing, though. Scared of losing their closest friends in the pursuit of something mildly taboo still.

Logan is lost in his thoughts when Oscar stops suddenly. He hushes him and listens intently. It's then that Logan catches the muffled sobs.

They take off in the direction of the crying. Neither of them are ones to let somebody suffer when they can help it.

They turn the corner, and there sits their original target. She curled up with hair in every direction, and her fingers rake through it in a violent manner.

Logan approaches her like she's a wounded animal. He's not at all hurt when she curls farther into her corner.

"Osc, we're gonna need to call Liam."

"Already on it!"

She perks up at hearing Liam's name. Eyes wide and teary, but at least she doesn't look scared of the Logan for the moment. "Daddy? Are callin' daddy?"

Oh. Oh.

She's - how did they put it? - regressed, in age. They talked about it in passing but never elaborated. Logan and Oscar had never bothered to look into it. They were protective over it and they wanted to respect that.

He's regretting that decision just a tad now. He might be more prepared on what to do if he'd bothered to figure out what it is that happens to her.

The obvious thing is that she's vulnerable and scared. "Yeah, we're calling him." He smiles warmly at her. "Can you tell me what happened? Why you're so sad?" He keeps his tone calm to hopefully ease her into a less anxious state.

She untucks herself and shows Logan her red and bleeding elbow. "Was pushed."

It's not a terrible scrape, not one to be worried about, but it is getting on all her clothes. He'll have to ask about the pushing later.

Oscar comes back and sighs in annoyance. "He said another thirty minutes at least of debrief. I feel bad for worrying him now."

Oscar sees where the two are crouched and throws Logan a confused look. "Is everything alright?"

"Well, I think someone needs a band-aid for her elbow and somewhere to wait for daddy." Logan tries to communicate that there is more going on here. Oscar looks between the two, and then his face lights up in some kind realization.

"Lando already left for the day, so my room should be safe. And I know he has crayon band-aids in his room."

She considers the idea. Carefully studying both of their faces for some hint of malicious intent. "Daddy said no strangers."

Logan exaggerates a pondering face. "Are me and Osc strangers? I thought we were best friends!"

She shakes her head yes and moves closer to the American. A reassurance that she does consider him a friend. "More then friend!" She leans up to Logan and motions to lend his ear so she can whisper into it. "Daddy says loves." She giggles, and Logan has to use all his strength not to look dumbfounded at the confession.

Oscar and Logan wrangle her the back way to the McLaren motor home. Their success in going mostly unnoticed has both males breathing in relief as they step into the saftey of Oscar's room.

The Aussie ducks out to grab the band-aid from his teammates' room, and Logan is left to sit with the girl currently looking confused and intrigued. She hesitantly grabs the stuffed koala sitting on the shelf. The one Logan had gotten for him as a joke before they started dating.

"Has name?" Her fingers stroke the soft fluff of the toy.

"I'm not sure. Should we ask Osc when he gets back?" She nods once, then comes and sits on the couch with him. The stuffed koala cradled in her arms like it's the most precious thing she's ever seen.

Logan is still trying to comprehend what she meant earlier. Is it just her small brain misinterpreting something Liam said? Or is this an honest confession that she doesn't currently understand the implications of? He doesn't want to get his hopes up and settles on the second option for now.

Oscar sneaks back in the door and starts unwrapping the bangade. It is, in fact, shaped like a red crayon. Her eyes light up even as he washes the cut and places the band-aid on it.

"There we go, all better now." Oscar smiles at her as she hugs his koala.

"Thank you."

She's completely entranced in the stuffed toy again. Logan taps her on the nose to get her attention. "Did you want to ask Osc your question?"

She makes an 'o' shape with her mouth. "Does koala have a name?" She looks up at him with expectant eyes.

Oscar considers. "Hmmm, I don't think he does. Would you like to give him one?"

She takes careful consideration, weighing all the possible options. "Koko."

"Love it."

"Very creative!"

Her expression changes into something sad. Her eyes once again glassy like before. "Will daddy like?" She curls up in Logans lap with the toy.

"Yeah, he'll love it. Certainly not as much as he loves you."

She hums and closes her eyes. It's adorable and peaceful. "Do you think Liam might let us do this with her again?"

"If he doesn't kill us first. Speaking of, I should let him know where we are."

♡♡♡♡♡

Liam likes to think he's relatively quick. He runs often enough and has good stamina.

This is the fastest he's ever moved in his entire life. He grabs all their stuff with a speed that shocks both Daniel and Yuki.

"What's got you in a hurry, mate?"

"Just eager to see my girl, is all."

Daniel shoots him a wink. "Have a good time!" Liam can only laugh nervously in response. It's certainly not the good time he's thinking of. No, he'd promised her a nice dinner tonight.

Now he's thinking he might have to shift plans. Which - he's not upset about. Liam loves when she's in headspace because it gives him an excuse to do things he wouldn't normally. As in, she's obsessed with cars, and he gets to spend time building the most intricate tracks with household items, blocks, and an ungodly amount of Legos that they have at home. She's always sad when they have to leave them for long periods of time, but he brings a portion with just in case.

He makes for the McLaren garage and is greeted by Oscar out front. It's odd, knowing that their secret is out and yet the Aussie is looking at him affectionately.

They make light conversation while they venture into the building. It feels normal still, nothing to awkward aside from the fact Liam goes on rabbit trails every ten seconds. It's the reason Oscar knows how to handle Lando and his chaotic communication tactics.

Liam mentally slaps himself. Now is not the time to be drooling over his friend's stability and emotional intelligence. He should really just confess. They'd talked about it, they both want it, but that could result in rejection.

Oscar opens the door and slips inside. Liam takes a second to observe the scene in front of him. His girl, happily laying her head in Logan's lap rambling about the koala in her hands.

"Look who I found!" Oscar gestures to Liam. Her head perks up and she scrambles off the couch, slipping to the floor before throwing herself at Liam.

"Hi, love bug." Liam attempts to get on the floor without falling as she clings to him. He fails miserably as the topple over. "Were you good for Oscar and Logan?" She hums something into his chest that he can't decipher.

"She was an angel, honestly." Logan leans forward on the couch. It looks like he's contemplating something, shooting stead looks at Oscar.

With effort, Liam finally gets them situated on the floor. "Do you know what might have triggered this?"

"She scraped her elbow, was that it maybe?"

Liam ponders the suggestion. His eyes find the crayon band-aid that wasn't there the last time he saw her. He sighs, hopefully she was just overwhelmed, and this wasn't an altercation of some kind. "She's struggled with - uh, being shoved around - I guess. You know, home life things."

"Maybe she was shoved and fell which caused the panic attack." Oscar eyes them sadly.

"Well, you two feel up to helping us get out of here?"

♡♡♡♡♡

Oscar doesn't understand how Liam makes this look normal. HAs this been going on under their noses this whole time? If only he could go back in time, rewind a bit and do some research. He and logan could help out if they wanted.

She was falling asleep in the car and still looks like she might clock out in the elevator. Still, Oscar can't help imagining the four of them together, like this.

Liam twirls her around as they walk until she almost falls over. She falls into him, laughing and smiling, the injury from earlier forgotten about.

Their space is comfortable and lived in. The two even slip into a routine, pulling out food for dinner. He whispers something to her, and she skitters off.

They pull chairs out from around the small table. Liam offers them water and something to eat. "So, about... this."

"Which this? The four of us or her specifically?" Logan raises an eyebrow.

"Both."

The girl returns and climbs into Liam's lap clutching a notebook. She flips open to a page and excitedly hands it to Liam to hand to the two across the table.

Oscar isn't sure whether to laugh or melt, so he mixes the two together. The pages are lined with drawings of the four of them. "She's quite the artist."

"You've no idea. Our fridge is covered in artwork." Liam chuckles a bit and wraps his arms around her.

"Told you! More than friends!"

"Do you know what that means, love bug?"

"Three people to cuddle!"

Oscar really does laugh this time. "Well, you're not wrong!" He shoot a look to Logan.

"Count us in." The American smile.

Liam sighs heavily in disappointment. It's a confusing reaction that Oscar wasn't expecting. "She's going to murder me later for not having this talk when she's big."

"Can't be mad if you make me dessert!" A devilish grin spreads across her cheeks.

"Only this once."

"You said that last time."

[yanderes-galore]

Yandere hybrid twins? Would they be conjoined since their both part Zippleback. . . But them x reader :>

Httyd

I suppose this AU didn't have enough body horror, huh? Sorry for the long wait... here's some HCs. It's mostly just me playing around with the idea.

Yandere! Zippleback Hybrid! Twins Concept

(Ruffnut and Tuffnut)

Pairing: Romantic/Platonic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Body horror, Manipulation, Possessive/Protective behavior, Stalking, Violence, Murder implied (On accident), Kidnapping, Mentions of hermaphroditism, Dubious companionship/relationship.

Honestly, no matter how I look at this, they would have to be conjoined, wouldn’t they?

Both of them share a body due to being a Zippleback hybrid.

I don't really have an official design in mind... but it's probably disturbing.

They no doubt have the abilities of a normal Zippleback.

They have the sparking ability, they have the gas ability, and they're volatile in ability and emotions.

Like normal Zipplebacks they often fight with one another.

I also imagine taming them would be similar to the original dragon, too.

Perhaps like the Hiccup hybrid fic... you save them from being hunted?

Which you know what that means... life debt.

Until they can return the favor... they'd both be obsessive about you, even as a hybrid.

They'd be loyal towards you.

Even more so if you provide them with attention and/or they view you as a mate.

I imagine the twins are an interesting case.

Their heads retain their genders.

So I imagine they as a hybrid are... what's the word... a hermaphrodite?

Do with that info as you will.

They are probably the oddest hybrid I can think of in this AU.

Well... any Zippleback hybrid would be, actually....

You probably came across them injured, the two bickering bitterly with one another as they try to fly again.

When you reveal yourself, a normal human... they panic.

Are you going to hunt them!?

They can easily nuke this area, don't come any closer!

Yet... you don't harm them.

Instead you offer food and try to get close enough to offer supplies.

Well... after that the two can't seem to leave their new human alone.

Honestly... conversation is a bit weird at first, but you begin to see them as an ally of some sort.

You learn the female head is named Ruffnut and the male head is named Tuffnut.

They are a unique Zippleback hybrid with mischievous tendencies.

They see you as a friend since you helped them.

In fact, it's in their nature to be loyal towards you... all due to what you've done for them.

Despite them being classified as "intersex", they can still see you as a mate if you want.

I find it funny if both head have two different opinions of you.

Maybe one views you as a friend while the other wants to court you?

Awkward, isn't it?

Even funnier if only one of them wags their tail.

I imagine they'd be fiercely protective and possessive of you, often squabbling with one another on what to do for you to show they care.

You're given fish as a gift... often.

That and they stare down other hybrids, humans, and dragons....

They're like (sometimes stupid) bodyguards.

You can never have a,conversation with one head, the other is always there.

For example, maybe one of them is courting you... and the other just likes to sabotage them.

It's... all a chaotic mess, really.

Since they hate leaving your side, even if you ordered it, they'd stalk you.

They're big too, so it isn't like they're going to hide very well.

The two may kidnap you... but it's very dysfunctional.

Eventually they may trap you in a cave, alone from others, but they're still bickering.

It's luck they even succeeded.

They fight over your attention but can sometimes work with one another.

The whole hybrid is a chaotic mess... just like them normally.

In terms of would they kill? They could.

Their abilities are explosive... set them off and someone's in trouble.

They'd attack to protect you... but may accidentally cause someone's demise in the process.

Overall, these Ruffnut and Tuffnut would bicker but be as loyal as any other Zippleback...

Which soon proves to be problematic to you and your freedom.

[the-raindeer-king]

Original Soap Anon, cause I will take every excuse to babble about my bestest boy ever

King, in the future when I send asks I'll make sure to tell you 'share your thoughts' this is your blog my guy, say the things you wanna say <3

✨ Share those thoughts ✨

AND NOW THAT IVE GOT THE GREEN LIGHT

Could we all just COULD WE JUST TAKE A MOMENT

Say you're dating Johnny. Johnny, not Soap. Soap is his name when he's geared up and ready to break bones and skulls. Johnny is the one that's gonna sneak up on you at home, grab you from behind, hike you up and spin you around to make you laugh. Johnny is the one that's gonna kick his leg like a dog when you play with the hair of his Mohawk, a bit theatric, and if he's feeling cheeky enough 'ruff' in a low huff to imitate in a way that has you laughing. Johnny is the one that's gonna 'accidentally' toss flower at you when you're baking together, start a food fight, and then offer to help clean up after, with some flirtations in between.

It's Soap that's gonna raise hell for you, though. And you'll never know that unless something happens. You'll never know what he'd do, how far he'd go unless someone was stupid enough to corner you both, to do anything to threaten you and next thing either of you know, it's Soap who's got this person by the collar, slammed into a wall- twice for good measure, the back of their head no doubt busted even just a bit by the force while Soap in all of his malicious intensity swears towards them in the most chilling teeth barred snarling growl of what he'll do to them if they don't take off then and there.

And the individual leaves. And it's Soap that guides you home, but it's Johnny that gives you a cuddle afterwards, crooning so sweetly about how you're perfectly safe in his arms.

I'm having feelings and I'm stuck at work I'm sorry if I'm bombarding your inbox.

Tumblr was no longer safe from me when asks had no word cap anymore XD

DON'T APOLOGIZE THIS WAS SO GOOD!!! I'm at work too rn lol so this is a welcomed distraction while I'm on break.

But yes!!! I love expanding on how different they are during work vs at home because the job is so intense, they'd have to be different people. And could you imagine being Johnny's so and finally meeting Soap?

I'd probably be a little scared. Imagine your sweet, playful boyfriend beating the crap out of of someone for trying to mug y'all. It'd be a light bulb moment of "Oh shit, yeah. This is what he does for a living."

He's still got blood on his knuckles, when he gingerly leads you away, promising you that you're safe. That you'll always be safe as long as he's here.

[eddsworld-the-masquerade]

SABBAT!

New designs for Bing and Larry, designs for the other two members, a relationship chart...more art and info under the cut! (trust me, there's a whooole lot)

A curious bunch. Kind of an unlikely match (I mean Lasombra and Ventrue under the same roof sounds like a recipe for disaster..lol), but circumstances played their part. They may not be ideal for each other but it's all they have. Family, woof 👆

Why would I assign them with animals and elements? First off, it makes the designing process so much easier, since it creates direction. Second, it makes thematic sense. They've been denied humanity, and then they chose to keep it that way. "You see me a monster, well then, I'll be the monster" kind of situation. So, they'd rather associate with animals and elements than humans.

I could go on, but I'd rather have you experience the thing first hand in game (also doubt people would read further into this post otherwise lmao). Onto the characters!

Bing

Animal: Serpent

Element: Earth (Nature)

Main shtick: Change; Pain

Bing has more backstories than he does fingers, so nobody is quite sure on his origin. The one thing that seems certain is that he spent most of his existence in Russian Empire but fled when the civil war broke out in the 1910s. You'd think a Tzimisce of this age and history would be up to something nefarious now in Britain, but Bing is more concerned with "self search" and identity crisis. You could say he spends his retirement days here, or rather...used to spend, before one thing happened. But this, you'll learn more of playing the game XP

Bing dresses up kind of similar to the way he used to, back in the XVIII century. The outfit is rather loose (before I added clips onto the coat, I was told it looked more like a bathrobe...which, I suppose, is kind of fitting too XD), in order to leave extra room for when Bing uses Vicissitude (more on that later).

Bing's main gimmick is Tzimisce's signature, Vicissitude and the way he chooses to use it. Instead of turning his head into a giant pickle (Andrei lmao), Bing turns into different people. Not just appearance wise, it also includes voice, mannerisms, even personality. This is what I mean when I say he doesn't need to make clones - he IS the clone.

What he chooses to turn into most of the time are personas he used to "play out" during his glory days, XVIII century coups. Sometimes when prompted, sometimes just to troll others (if they dislike certain mannerisms or find the general idea of shape-shifting weird/scary).

These were crafted in accordance with the "ruler of the week", to win them over and then later "direct" them towards what Bing's Tzimisce sires and mentors needed. In a way, they are "clones" of these rulers (except maybe appearances), cuz imitation is the highest form of flattery lol

Though Bing also likes to experiment with his default form, as he doesn't find it ideal (his "true face", the one he forgot). Bing switches pronounce depending on current form (he/she/they, or anything else he feels like at the current moment).

Bing's battle form, aka the pinnacle of his Vicissitude mastery. If you happen to see it, usually it means you'll die a painful death in the next five minutes X)

Larry

Animal: Jackal

Element: Water

Main shtick: Loyalty and betrayal

Larry was dealt some shitty cards and forced upon the life of crime since early childhood. First a pirate (where he got his tan, scars, and vision problem), then a mercenary for a, uh, "dubious company" sponsored by Lasombra clan. Certain events made him overly sensitive to betrayals, so if you betray Larry, or hurt those he swore loyalty to, he will loathe you. And Larry's hatred runs deep. He always means business.

Larry's outfit is like, a modern take on pirate fashion. A bit rough around the edges, just enough to give him that "jackal" look. Larry's second name is practical, so he carries lots of belts. Never know when you mind need one.

Larry's signature, Obtenebration, comes from the Abyss and runs on his negative emotions. Which is why he's prone to lashing out and general bad mood. Needless to say it is extremely unhealthy, but power is power.

The story behind him coming to know Bing is fun. Originally, Larry was sent to kill him, but it was a set up, since Larry didn't stand a chance against that. So they kind of bonded instead, "enemy of my enemy is my friend". And after a while Larry just grew attached XDD He still goes on about murdering Bing "one day", but at this point everyone is aware it's not gonna happen like, ever.

Adella

Animal: Raven/Crow

Element: Fire

Main shtick: Control

Adella is half-chinese born in Britain. Do I need to say she didn't have a particularly fun time or is it obvious enough? From a very young age she was forced to believe she can only count on herself. Adella strived to climb the corporate ladder and get on top. To "burn her way through the obstacles". Might be lonely up there, but she was used to it either way, and she'd have the power and control to smack down anyone who tries to harm her. For now, let's just say she ended up upsetting the wrong people and had to run for her life. Sabbat was "kind" enough to let her stay under their wing.

Adella's relatively fresh meat, so her grasp on Sabbat "culture" is rather small for now. Though she is attempting to fit in more. She's determined to stay, despite whatever Larry says about her "looking for the opportunity to dump them". Adella insists she'd rather die than go back to the cammies. Bing is willing to give her the chance to prove herself.

Her and Larry's relationship is quite fun in how disastrous it is. Both constantly looking for jabs to throw at each other. The irony is, their stories and goals are kind of similar. But they're also different in ways that make their blood boil when they have to interact.

Zephyr

Animal: House centipede

Element: Wind

Main shtick: Security

Zephyr is truly a victim of circumstance. Lost ability to speak, lost all his loved ones, lost his home. Not a penny to his name, and no name either. His mind in ruin. He roamed around in the wild, until Bing found him. Seeing something familiar in him, Bing let him stay by their side. Found him a new name. A new purpose. A reason to keep on existing. Slowly, Zephyr is learning ways to communicate again. Perhaps he'll be able to remember, and tell his story one day.

Zephyr is the least human-like kindred, and looks like an atom bomb fell on his face. Despite the first impression he might create, Zephyr is a rather meek soul, doesn't seek conflict and is fine with following orders. That attitude changes when something threatens rest of the "family", though...

Zephyr is generally adored by his packmates, one could call him the "gentle giant" of the pack. Adella loves spending time with Zephyr, even Larry tolerates him. Though I'd say the most sympathy for him comes from Bing. As mentioned earlier, Bing sees a kindred spirit in Zephyr, so he is most invested in Zephyr's well being. Bing was the one to give him his new name. He's also the one learning sign language with him, so they'd have a better way of communication.

[evilpenguinrika]

Fuck sorry no okay I thought of something more for my Hosie Jujutsu Kaisen AU

ok ok ok so Mikaelson family are like infamous. So I think in this AU, it would make sense if they're part of the Big Three Families (like Gojo clan, Kamo clan, Zen'in clan).

The other family that would be part of the BTF would I think be the Gemini Coven (I think I'll leave them as that name instead of like idfk listen I only watched LGCS and TO bear with me here I'm so sorry) as that is the only logical thing in my mind (also, I have decided that everyone in the Gemini Coven's Domain Expansion is called Prison World--because again, iirc they're the only ones on the show that can create a prison world so it would make sense--but like each of their Prison World Domain would be different/represents the person themselves. So like Josie's Domain Expansion: Prison World would maybe have something to do with school library/studying to reflect her character from LGCS or IDK I didn't think THAT far ahead other than everyone in the Gemini Coven's Domain Expansion is called Prison World)

For the third family that's part of the Big Three Families, I think it'd be interesting if it was Malivore.

We didn't get a lot about Malivore in LGCS other than he's just a goopy goop that wipes out a creature's existence if they fall into him. So I think if I were to just make Malivore into just. A guy or more like, a powerful family (I've already made some Malivore lore for my Hosie Omegaverse fic that I haven't touched in a while) would help me figure out a better way to write this apparent Hosie JJK AU fic that I've decided I will now hyperfixate on. And it would be nice to rope in other characters and figure their story out and their relationship to the main premise of why I'm writing out this long-ass ramble about a niche AU/crossover lmao (like maybe Landon and Rafael get accepted into Jujutsu High after they experienced some deep shit with curses--kinda similar to how they got brought to Salvatore school. Landon, like in the show, doesn't know he's actually from the Malivore family and discovers this along the way with Hope and the twins and Super Squad and oh man if this supposed one-shot AU fic becomes a series I will punt myself into the sun)

And I think it would help me figure out even MORE on how to turn this AU into a Hosie thing.

Originally I was wondering--because of age--Hope would be a 3rd year while Josie and Lizzie would be 1st years, but I wanted Hope and the twins to be more of like a team. I don't know I'll try and figure this bit out. But I think maybe they knew each other when they were younger and ofc Josie has a crush on Hope since childhood because of how cool and pretty Hope is and as they grew up, that childhood crush turns into like full on Josie is pining mad hard for Hope.

Oh yeah, so, Hope would 100% without a doubt be a Special-Grade Sorcerer to reflect her Tribrid status. it just makes sense.

The twins, because I've decided that they do have curse energy but it's so fucking faint that it feels as though they don't... Maybe they'd be 1st or 2nd-Grade Sorcerers. I'll have to go back and read up on the different Grades (or maybe use this as an excuse to rewatch JJK teehee)

Anyways, sorry, back to the Hosie wow I'm sorry I am rambling anyway

So yeah, I think it's a "they fell first but they fell harder" thing. Though I do want to bring in the canon fact that Hope had a crush on Josie in her teens into this AU somehow. I mean maybe she still does. Maybe Josie continues to crush on Hope and sees how amazing of a sorcerer she is and wants to get stronger as a sorcerer so she can feel worthy to stand beside Hope and fight alongside her.

Hope probably develops a crush on Josie when Josie comforts Hope and is there for her when something happened to the Mikaelson family--or more specifically Hope's parents, leaving her an orphan. Hope appreciates Josie's warmth and kindness and maybe notices her more now (kinda also like in the show, ESPECIALLY the "quiet things heard" episode. like Hope being hyperaware and perceptive with/about Josie in that quiet way and secretly looking out for her is hella cute).

The brain bees are ruminating. I'm gonna have to really plan this out properly if I'm going to make this AU work

hopefully this will just be a one-shot fanfic but you know what. wouldn' be surprised if I end up making a whole multi-chapter fic for this.

[ratlesshonret]

Here goes then, bare with me this got right out of hand:

In dantes notes ep3, Faust gives Dante a little extra knowledge, and what I focused on most was when she said "When you return from your trip, you will trace back through that way." which ended up reminding me of the lyrics of "I walked down a path Leading to the past" from IHWL,L - a song I feel is rather heavily tied to Dante.

This idea of a return trip was originally one I was stuck on for a while, with all the development they've been getting as Limbus' manager, I doubt they'd just snap back to how they were before their clock head - and from the other things Faust says its probably something much more solid, something they can have a much more clearly defined destination.

However! With the final scene of chapter 7 I think I have a bit more of an idea of how it'll pan out, namely that returning is referring to Dante going back to the "skies", with Demian's annoyingly and yet expectedly vague words.

Thinking on it, I could connect it to the lyrics "Not so different from our hell Not so different from our home" as well, with hell and home either being the City and the Skies in that order or vice versa. And given the song's insistence on the theme of loops, and how there's an implication from the occasional bit of narration from a future Dante in some scenes (as in, when the screen goes black and they say something giving hints to a future they haven't reached yet), as well as the occasional time where they just feel like they needed to this or that, like with them in canto 4 telling the Sinners to fight the bull because they feel like they should.

With the exsistance of the Flow, Faust™️, the company seemingly being able to find and secure just the right sinners at just the right times, FAUST™️ and the general feeling of some sort of structure in place - or map if you will - for how this is meant to go leads me to belive that this indeed is the return trip. In the Commedia, the trip is taken through hell and up to heaven, from the City to the Skies.

And from here on out there'll be a few streches:

Which could then connect to "Then I realized someone's heaven Could be the source of my torment", or as I take it, the world's new birth Demian talks of, the ending of the age Dongrang talks of (in a one sided conversation with Dante of all people) is in fact the doomsday Dante's clock is ticking down to, and the start of which possibly being the cause of the huge death count in the trailer. This however relies on the assumption that it has some connection to nebulae or stars more generally, and that all of what I mentioned is in fact connected, but for now I don't really have reliable proof of that.

I have a bit more to say if you'll hear me out, but this is incomprehensible as is and I think I could write better if my usual time to sleep is no longer approaching at a terrifying rate

i forgot to respond to this for three days, but very interesting.

[quirkwizard]

Do you think someone can go through multiple quirk awakenings? We know that if someone has a near death experience, they can go through quirk awakening. But if someone that already had a quirk awakening and was unlucky enough to have another near death experience, can their quirk awaken again?

Do you think someone with more then one quirk could have more then one awakening?

I do think that multiple Quirks could be Awakened if the user has multiples Quirks, such as Lady Nagant. I could see reasoning that they could both be Awakened at the same time, but I believe that the user's original Quirk would take precedence because that is a natural part of their body and they'd have to Awaken the second on later. I doubt that there could be any stage after Awakening. To me, Awakenings are something that are the pinnacle of whatever the Quirk is. You've gone as far as a you possibly could with it and had to undergo immense physical, mental, and emotional strain in order to break it. Even the name implies this, having "awakened" the true potential of your Quirk. Having yet another level beyond on just feels unnecessary and can make it feel tacked on, especially after the user has to go through so much turmoil to get it. It's like how Super Saiyan was this legendary form and now there's a dozen different users and variants of it.

[musette22]

Hey sweetheart, how are you doing? Busy and overwhelmed, I assume, I hope you're getting enough rest though, sorry for adding even more asks to your inbox, you can answer this whenever you want/can, or not at all. I mean it.

So, this morning I wrote an entire ask and was just about to send it, when my mom called and I just tried to click "send" but I doubt it ever got sent. But if it has (I highly doubt it), then ignore this haha.

https://www.tumblr.com/musette22/757098480109043712/the-fact-that-everyone-is-talking-about-it

Oh my god, may I add something to this? (Side note: don't expect a 'point' and how it's related to the other post in this paragraph, but I'll get there I swear 😂) I have given a lot of thoughts to Seb and Chris playing a couple in something, where they're in good hands of people who just see their chemistry like we do, someone who gets it, you know? Not because they wouldn't exude sexual/romantic aura (?) through the screen in the shittiest projects, no, but this pairing deserves to be portrayed as a couple in something well written and well-produced, and again, someone who brings their chemistry to life onscreen to its full potential. Like, imagine them playing a married couple with a daughter in a black mirror or something (no I know, but hear me out😂) where they're two educated people who just want to protect their daughter and themselves from the modern society where it seems like they're the only sane ones, and everybody is so insane with this age of technology and how stupid people are getting every single day, you get the idea, classic black mirror. And I know there's nothing original about this idea, but they would absolutely nail it. Hell, I have this whole episode in my head with so much detail that it's embarrassing, just because I WANT EVANSTAN. Like I can literally see it in my head, their looks, their outfits, set design, the story, some very specific scenes, everything. Wow, it really is embarrassing. Jesus..

Anyway, I said all of that, just to say, imagine if that happened, their chemistry would make everyone go insane; I just know that so many people would be like "holy shit how did I never pay attention before?" Or just about how PERFECT of a couple they make.

I don't know, I just think about it quite often you know? The general public would have an eye-opening experience for sure and I would be sooo satisfied to see that. 😂 ugh.

Hiiiii sweetheart!! 💖💖 I'm doing well thank you, very busy like you said, but overall feeli g very good (and the boys' unexpected reunion played no small part in that, of course 😍). I hope you're doing wonderfully yourself, darling, and thank you so much for this delightful message!!!

I actually LOVE this idea so much, I love that it's a slightly different take on what we've all been saying for years, namely that Chris and Sebastian should be playing a couple in something to utilise their chemistry and make literally everyone happy by finally reuniting them properly on screen! But usually we talk about romcoms, or romantic dramas, but while that obviously holds its own appeal, there's something about the scenario you're proposing that's maybe even better?

Like, it wouldn't be quite as much of a spectacle (like a romcom certainly would be), and it would instead feel more real and more powerful, you know? An episode in an ongoing, well-written and made series, in which them being a couple is just a given, and it's them (and their daughter 😫) against the world, and it would give them the opportunity to show just how GOOD they are together, how well they work together and how easy and natural, and they'd absolutely nail the drama & intensity of a plot line like that ❤️

So yes, I can absolutely see why you're so invested in this idea, and I would LOVE it if I could just see all those images and scenes in your head because it sounds so wonderful 😍

And GOD, it would be so satisfying to see everyone losing their minds over their chemistry again, but this time like times a hundred, because it would be like EXTREMELY obvious all of a sudden, even to those whose eyes hadn't been opened to it before. I want it si bad 😭 Which deity/exec do we have to pray to to make this happen!?

Thanks again for sharing all of this with us!!! Sending lots of love and hugs, sweetheart 💖💖

[crazykacey]

Different possibilities of future Sera Myu

Since it is the 30th of June, Usagi's birthday, I thought I might finally post this thing that has been in my drafts for some months lol

Let's go!

So ever since the end of Musical Festival Chronicle, I've been thinking about what would be the next Sera Myu we get? During the Senshuuraku of Chronicle, Riko mentioned that when Kaguya-hime no Koibito ended, they weren't sure if Sera Myu would continue so most likely the same thing applies now. It might be possible Myu might end but we had Super Live this year so there are chances. Many might think that since the Crystal series finally comes to an end, so does anything else related to Sailor Moon, but it is very much certain that they will keep pushing out merch as it has been very profitable so far and even the Sailor Moon Museum announced that it will reopen in 2024 so there might be more musicals just like back in the day! Although we still haven't gotten any news regarding it and I for sure thought we would get some new info today... ANYWAY we have gone through all the main 5 arcs, one short story and one original so what next? I have a few ideas. (check terms at the end of the post if confused)

1) Third installment in the Snow Kaguya series

For me, it didn't really seem like Snow Kaguya was fully defeated in Chronicle, as she was defeated in the same way as she was in KHnK so it feels super random that she would be defeated NOW so maybe they could do one more musical to finally defeat Princess Snow Kaguya (maybe as Eternal Sailor Moon)

2) Something completely new

It could be possible we might get something completely new and original. Who knows? lol

3) R movie or SuperS movie

Ever since KHnK, people have been wondering if the other two movies would be made into a musical, although KHnK bore no resemblance to the movie as it pretty much followed the manga short story to the T, it is still possible that the other two movies will be made into musicals.

4) Another Story musical

ah the forgotten gem in the SM universe. I really love Another Story and I wish it would get more recognition. And since they are going with the Super/Mugen arc theme as KHnK takes place around that time and Another Story is supposed to take place after the Mugen arc so it could be a possibility. How it works in action is kinda ? as Another Story featured every major villain from Dark Kingdom arc to Mugen arc but they could focus it on the Oppositio Senshi and Apsu. It also would be cool if previous Senshi actors would return as the Oppositio Senshi (for example, AE Inners)

5) Kaguya Shima Densetsu/Snow Kaguya hybrid

So this is kind of similiar to my #1 idea but I feel like this needed to be its own thing. It could be possible that they'd fuse these two stories into one where Snow Kaguya replaces Dark Plasman and she is somehow connected to Kaguya Island since they have the same name(although she was given that name by Kakeru but who knows. Myulore tends to be confusing sometimes lol). And the reason for this is that I think that we will not get Kaguya Shima Densetsu remade and I will get to that soon

6) The Dracul series remake

I have my doubts about this since the Dracul series tends to be kinda confusing and since it's a story that requires all 3/4 musicals to be watched and that all to happen in the span of 3 years would be kinda hard to follow (during BanMyu it only took about a year and a half as they did multiple musicals in the span of one year but now they are doing only one musical a year, not counting Super Live). And the 4 musicals had way too many plot points in them so it would be fairly impossible to put that all in one musical. Also, it had kinda dark stuff in it so not sure if it would be allowed to be performed in this day and age lmao. (But I actually had a dream some time ago that Sayaka Okamura(Snow Kaguya) sang Muma no Oodri as Death Lamia so yeah lol)

7) Sailor V musical

I think the best point for a Sailor V musical would have been in 2018 after LMF as the main story has ended and the cast at the time had had their "graduation". So as much as I want a Sailor V musical I do not really see them doing it now when they have a cast of all the Senshi (unless they decide to do multiple musicals a year)

8) Kaguya Shima Densetsu remake

I do not see this happening as of now cause I just cannot see Dark Plasman played by a woman. I do not mean this with the intent to hurt anyone's feelings or to attack those who are fans of the all-female cast. It's just that Dark Plasman has such a deep voice that I just don't think it would be possible, or if they did, I think I would personally not enjoy it. I mean, if there is someone who has a deep voice like that, I would be happy to see it, but it just seems kinda unlikely as the deepest voice we have had in NewMyu this far are Syu Shiotsuki (UNV-LMF Sailor Uranus) and Kei Oogi (UNV Kaolinite). So unless they return to the mixed cast they had in BanMyu I do not see Kaguya Shima Densetsu happening in its original form in any way in the near future.

9) Other side stories

This is kinda random but maybe they could make musicals from other side stories. This seems very unlikely tho as the other side stories are a lot shorter and KHnK (unless they decide to make the Exam Battles into one musical or something idk) Demon Tree arc is also a possibility

10) NogiMyu R

Don't really see this happening as it has been quite a long time since the previous NogiMyu (although Super Live made a comeback so who knows). The only things to support this are the facts that at the end of NogiMyu they teased us with the Black Moon arc and ever since then it's been a possibility. Also on the Official Sailor Moon website, NogiMyu is still listed in the "Stage" section even after all this time so maybe they could be planning something with it. But if NogiMyu does make a comeback, I hope they do not do the DK arc AGAIN.

So there are many possibilities but will any of them come true? Who knows lol

Terms

KHnK: Kaguya-hime no Koibito musical from 2021

AE: Amour Eternal, musical from 2016 based on the SuperS/Dream/Yume arc

BanMyu: Sailor Moon musicals made by Bandai 1993-2005

UNV: Un Nouveau Voyage, musical from 2015 based on the Super/Infinity/Mugen arc

LMF: Le Mouvement Final, musical from 2017 based on the Stars arc

NewMyu: "new" Sailor Moon musicals by Nelke 2013-2017/2023 (some consider NewMyu to be only the five musicals of the first five arcs but some consider since 2013 to be part of NewMyu)

NogiMyu: Nogizaka46 Sailor Moon musical from 2018-2019 based on the Dark Kingdom arc

[the-sky-queen]

How would Scourge and Duke fare in your Cosium AU?

Okay, first thing you need to know is that Cosium isn't my AU. Cosium was created by LiyuConberma on DA. I made this big masterpost if you're interested in checking it out or here's a playlist for a more casual introduction to things.

That said, let's get into this because oooooo this is an interesting thing to think about!

Alright, let's assume that Scourge and Duke somehow end up getting transported to Cosium (which is the name of the country, not the world btw). Honestly, unless they appear within the castle itself, they're probably not going to get noticed for a while. Duke was created by the Master Emerald, so he almost definitely doesn't have counterpart here. Scourge is just different enough from Sonic that no one's gonna recognize him as the prince and as long as he gets him and Duke some new clothes fast, they won't raise any suspicions.

In all honesty though, Scourge probably isn't going to realize he and Duke stand out like a sore thumb. XD The moment these two come into contact with anyone someone's gonna figure out they're not from around here. Actually, wait, let's make this interesting! Ben tends to hang out in Cosium Town a lot from what I remember, so what if he bumps into Scourge and Duke? Ooooooo!!! Ben is pretty perceptive, so if anyone is going to recognize Scourge as an alternate Sonic, Ben would!

Ben is definitely confronting Scourge the moment he sees him and a fight is definitely breaking out. Scourge (and Duke) will try their best, but come on. This is Ben we're talking about here! Ben, the Protector-Assassin of Cosium! He's winning without a doubt. Probably knocks Scourge out, and might be able to get Duke to calm down. Possibly. Either way, they get to the castle, Scourge wakes up, introductions to the royal family and then we get to start the shenanigans! >:)

I think everyone would love Duke immediately. They'd try to play with him or otherwise hang out with him all the time, resulting in one very disgruntled Scourge. Depending on if Darren is here or not, (because spoilers) he might realize something's up with Duke's origins 'cause of his royal gift. Once he's spent a bit of time around him though, I think Darren would like Duke as well. Scourge meanwhile, is not gonna be happy at all.

Scourge has some angst when it comes from his family. If remember right, we don't know anything about his mom, and his dad was king of Moebius until Scourge straight up murdered him. So yeah. He's not gonna be happy about being around another Sonic AND having to be around his family. A family that's just so darn HAPPY to be around each other. To be together. They all love each other SO MUCH and it makes Scourge sick.

Sonic tries to reach out to him but Scourge keeps shutting him down. He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't need this. To have a FAMILY like this. Scourge has Duke. A family member that (despite being forced on him) Scourge CHOSE. He CHOSE to take care of Duke. To love him. To become his brother. Scourge totally could've just abandoned Duke, but he didn't. He made the choice to keep him.

Basically, Scourge doesn't like Sonic's massive family and the fact that they're all biological (aside from Ben and Trails).

Aaaaaand that's all I've got for now! :D

[12percentspider]

No you know what, I'll slap it together.

So our first bit of evidence comes from the new blog itself.

Now if you compare to the other insulin scammer I've looked at, this one acts a lot more like that paypal-jumper scammer from a while ago. About that time, though, I got an angry anon (lol) to mind my own business. Funnily enough, I had at the time assumed it was from the insulin scammer that was going around then, but actually, I may have been hit by "apollo's dodgeball"...

The cipher at the bottom of the reply?

"But Spidermod, that doesn't-" Hold on. Let's get back to the current scam for a second. [And here's where I put a cut, because it's going to get long and very uh, "Charlie in the mailroom".]

So the first thing of note here is that it's the same exact scammer. But I didn't go looking up Key's post until AFTER I had found the old URL. I needed the url in order to do that. See, it turns out that my twitter investigation turned out a reply that upon donating, someone got harassed by money requests. The user denied this and claimed to be unable to do so. [Reminds me of someone!]

I had a name to work with from the twitter and stumbled across this. Of course, the OP was deactivated. So uh, that's when I decided "I bet Key's got it archived". CORRECT. So if you look at the original version of the post with the archived "old paypal", a smashed-in version of the name given looks a lot like uh... wanngera.

Which happens to be another scam blog that I tracked to a twitter with an extremely similar twitter-matching situation. It just so happens that this time someone called out the scammer for spamming, and I was able to see that before it was deleted. This previous one though, that went down really fast before there could be any further slip-ups.

So I think it was last Tuesday 11/7 when a blog had the exact same scam as the wanngeras blog up. I had not registered the url in my mind and there wasn't proof yet so I didn't make a proper post about it until I remembered it was familiar. I also uh, was out for the count that day. HOWEVER. The only blog that didn't have THAT good of proof yet was 'milkydonutsh'. //Laura admitted to being milkydonutsh.

Below link: LONG AS HELL but it has a detail that I further want to take into consideration. It's important and probably a helpful read but the whole thing isn't immediately relevant to this post, most of it is context at this exact moment.

So there was the "cancer girl that didn't get very far" and that blog was deleted very quickly. I propose that that particular blog was wanngeras. Laura's known for taking her crap to twitter.

I propose that since the widelys blog (also Laura) whose story mirrored a twitter I found and the fact that I was able to get the exact same situation for the wanngeras blog, AND the fact that the same thing came true for the current scammer... the current insulin scam is in fact Laura Deramas.

If you research/know Laura's general tactics/behaviors it matches up actually pretty well. To the point where even if anyone else were to admit to this [extremely likely not], they'd have to be absolutely hellbent on copying her for some weird reason or another, and I doubt anyone would attempt that.

[agentemo]

Quickie Review: Netflix's Avatar the Last Airbender aka NATLA

Now, these reviews are usually a few short sentences followed by a rating but I don't think that would do my experience with NATLA justice. Two people who I'm close to from different avenues of my life that also grew up with the animated series chose not to watch the Netflix adaptation and the reason they both separately gave was that the original was "perfect." So why make a new series? Well, because the original was not perfect. We're all just wearing childhood nostalgia glasses. Nickelodeon's Avatar the Last Airbender is magnificent and an important animated series of its time and one of my favorite television series period. But as a grown ass grown up, I would love an adaptation that addresses some of its flaws while keeping true to what made the original special -- though I can't name what exactly that is right now while still processing NATLA and having accepted some changes they made.

I started out excited for the show all those months (if not years) ago but as time went on and I learned more about it, that excitement morphed into doubt. Still, I went in with an open mind, knowing that a lot of people - including fans of the original - worked hard on the show. And if I was looking for something to make me feel exactly like the animated series did, I should go watch the animated series.

I'm not going into specifics. I am going to speak on what generally went right and what generally went wrong. I wanted a season of television that fixed flaws from the original while being able to stand on its own. They did not succeed in this, though there were some decent attempts at the former. Major reasons for that include some awkward acting and writing. I hate to give young actors a hard time but it is what it is. The writers have no excuse. THE major reason for the failure was only having 8 episodes. It was sometimes too rushed. I think they did well to trim some excess from the original, combining storylines and putting characters in places I wouldn't expect them but that actually worked for me. A couple of episodes did it so well, I genuinely loved them; one episode was so clunky, I wished they'd split it in two. I won't harp too much on the CGI. Sure, it wasn't great at times, but it mostly worked for me especially with the creatures and spirits. It got scary! A lot of the huge changes worked for me too; I see the vision and it's a cool interpretation. I was confused at times, not knowing if what I knew of the original applied or there were new rules at play. This is bad. But I did laugh and cry and jump off my seat and want to watch the next episode desperately, each more than once. This is good.

I don't know if I want a season 2 but I know I'll watch it. I doubt there won't be one; this is surely doing numbers and that's what Netflix cares about, not quality. I just felt there was something fundamental they didn't do in this season that absolutely needed to be done (and another episode or two were needed to do so). For this reason, it feels like this was not a good first season. That said, I'm going to rewatch it so I can really wrap my head around the specifics that I loved and disliked and liked and hated.

Rating, I guess, right now: 3/5, and that is generous. But I generally enjoyed it. It wasn't terrible. The bar was low after the film that shall not be named. But if you have some time to spare and an open mind, I'd say give it a chance. There are moments that it shines where the original didn't. It's just unfortunate that these moments were rare.

[goombasa]

Everything Actiblizz Owns and What's Happening With It

Hey all.

So a big topic of discussion last year, especially near the last fourth of the year, was the fact that Microsoft had successfully acquired Activision Blizzard for around $69 Billion dollars.

Despite what the number might suggest, this is most certainly not nice. Acti-Blizz was far from a perfect, or even good, company, but a single company consolidating power is never a positive.

However, beyond the horrifying, monopolistic implications this could have down the road, this did get me thinking… Activision-Blizzard has been around for a very long time, in multiple incarnations, and they own a lot of different IPs. So I thought it might be a good idea to go over what they own, or rather what Microsoft now owns, and what's actually been done with these series and IPs recently, if anything. Because Activision-Blizzard owns a lot of stuff, but they don't necessarily do a lot with them, as seems to be the case with a lot of larger game publishers who have chewed up and spat out smaller studios.

I'm going to do my best to cover all of what Acti-Blizz owns, but I don't think this list is going to be entirely comprehensive, because beyond the big names that everyone knows about, companies this big often have nebulous piles of acquired IPs that they just quietly sit on and do nothing with, content in the fact that no one else is making money off of them, even when they're just rotting there in solitude. So if you see any sort of omissions that you think might below to Acti-Blizz, or any big, glaring ommissions, please let me know, because I'd love to know what sort of stuff a company this large, and with this long a history, is just letting waste away in their copyright office. I'm well aware of how prolific the company was during the early days of gaming for things like Atari 2600 and DOS computers, but I wasn't sure if I should include them or not, and because of their sheer volume, I decided not to for now.

Also, while many of my personal thoughts in this moment are pretty negative, I would in no way be disappointed to be proven wrong on my personal predictions here, many of which are a bit sour. But hey, the gaming industry itself has been souring on me for a good long while. I love games, I love the people who make them, I just hate the companies that run things.

So, let's get started:

Caesar

First Game: Caesar, 1992 (Developed by Impressions Games and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Caesar IV, 2006 (Developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment, Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: Historical RTS games don't feel like they're very prevalent anymore, do they? I don't know how well this series did because, to be honest, I had never heard of it before. I'm assuming it did decently well, as a sequel cropped up every now and then, but consideirng that the last game in the series was  released not long before Vivendi Games, who owned Sierra at the time, got gobbled up by Activision, I'm guessing this is an IP that got lost in the shuffle. Always there, just buried deep in the vault with a majority of the rest of Sierra's back catalogue.

Personal Hopes: We aren't exactly hurting for good RTS series nowadays. Civilization, Anno, Age of Empires, Northgard, Supremem Commander, Starcraft 2, Driftlands, Tropico, we're not hurting for good strategy. While I could potentially see this coming back considering that Microsoft pushes games just as heavily on the PC as they do on console, They'd be wading into a pretty crowded market, and Caesar isn't a name that resonates very strongly nowadays. I doubt a lot of the wider gaming market that Microsoft often targets would even know that it's based on a pre-existing series of games at first glance.

Call of Duty

First Game: Call of Duty, 2003 (Developed by Infinity Ward)

Latest Game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfae III, 2023 (Developed by Sledgehammer Games)

Personal Thoughts: I've never played a single game in the series. It is interesting to me as an outsider how it continues to be one of the highest selling series for the company when anyone I ask about it says that the series hasn't been good in years now. Not in any danger of having production ended, but eventually I do think it's going to become a console exclusive. I don't believe a word of what Phil Spencer says when he says they want to keep putting the games out on rival consoles. It might not happen right away, but I'm pretty sure it will happen eventually, even if they have to make a whole new series to justify it.

Personal Hopes: I have no interest in the series myself, but I do hope that those who play the series get some games down the line from here on out that they can say are genuinely good, rather than people buying it out of obligation and just thinking the game is mediocre.

Candy Crush

First Game: Candy Crush Saga, 2012 (Developed and Originally Published by King Games)

Latest Game: I… THINK this is the only game  in this series? Correct me if I'm wrong, but despite how big it is, I think Candy Crush might be standing alone.

Personal Thoughts: What do you want me to say? It's Candy Crush. It basically came pre-installed with Windows for a while. It's one of those things where it's been around for so long and is apparently super popular, and yet I cannot think of anything good anyone has said about it. It's not even that unique of a concept. Match-Three games are so synonymous with mobile games now that there's an absolute deluge of them whenever you look around any app store. Heck, I don't think it's the only candy-based match-three game anymore. And of course, like every game made by King, it's designed to be predatory and push you towards microtransactions for helpful little tools you can use to get past those super hard puzzles that are holding you up, so it's already there on my shit-list.

Personal Hopes: It's Candy Crush. It's going to be fine, so long as it's still making money. If I have any hopes for this at all, I hope it just goes away, along with most of its micro-transaction pushing ilk.

Crash Bandicoot

First Game: Crash Bandicoot, 1996 (Developed by Naughty Dog, originally published by Sony Computer Entertainment)

Latest Game: Crash Team Rumble, 2023 (Developed by Toys for Bob)

Personal Thoughts: They had such a good setup for a comback with this one. Activision gobbles up Vivendi, who gobbled up Sierra Entertainment, who had the rights for Crash at the time, they did nothing with the IP for years, then bring it back with the N.Sane Trilogy, a very warmly remake of the first three games. Follow that up with a remake of the equally as beloved Crash Team Racing (subtitled Nitro Fueled), and then they release a long awaited original continuation with Crash 4: It's About Time. And then what? They turn Toys for bob and Vicarious Visions, the studios responsible for this excellent resurgence for the character, into support studios for CoD, release a maligned endless-runner mobile game that barely lasts two years, and take a scrapped multiplayer mode for Crash 4 and turn it into an online only MOBA game. They've squeezed the blood from this stone and they're happy to just put it back into the vault until they need another big of nostalgic goodwill. And I don't think that's going to change now that Microsoft owns the IP either. Microsoft has a few kid-friendly, or cartoonish IPs and they aren't chomping at the bit to do anything with them because those games don't appeal to their primary base. I just don't see this series continuing in any meaningful way under Microsoft's stewardship. It is still early days, though. Crash 4 was only a couple years ago, and despite a rather small player base, Crash Team Rumble is still active and getting updates, so there is a chance that we might see something more substantial in the near future.

Personal Hopes: Well after all that belly aching and my pessimistic outlook, my own home is that if they do continue using Crash and friends, I want to see more like Crash 4 in the future. Maybe do away with the more egregious 100% requirements and just focus on making a fun, straightforward platformer. Make it a smaller, more budget conscious project, something that doesn't mess with the formula laid down by 4 too much rather than trying to make it a big spectacle. And if they decide to remake other games in the series down the line, I would love to see a more complete version of Twinsanity, a version of that game with some of the cut content reintroduced would be real interesting I think.

Diablo

First Game: Diablo, 1997 (Devloped by Blizzard North, PS1 Version by Climax Studios)

Latest Game: Diablo IV, 2023 (Developed by Blizzard Team 3, Blizzard Albany)

Personal Thoughts: Hoo boy. If ever there was an example of a game company's shift in ideology. I have not played the most recent game. My experience mostly comes from the first two games, which were great dungeon crawlers. Never tried the third, or the remaster of 2, and let's be honest, Diablo has not been in the best place as of late. A horribly received mobile game in Immortal was released, which was hideously grindy, and then IV comes out and is just littered in microtransactions, like a disgusting amount. No matter how good the game itself, and I have heard folks saying that the game itself is a fun enough dungeon crawler, you just can't excuse how much is being charged for cosmetics in this game. It's terrible. The game also has battle passes and has an expansion coming out some time this year, so I'm going to watch this one carefully to see how its monetization pans out as it continues to be updated.

Personal Hopes: Look, the game sold really well, and it's apparently great for yanking more money out of people's wallet. I just want to see a diablo free of these nasty monetization practices, but considering that this is becoming part and parcel for a lot of Acti-Blizz's games, I don't see that happening, and I don't think Microsoft has any incentive to stop this sort of practice considering that now, they get a slice of that pie. And if the game can continue to be expanded with more expansions and battle passes and such, I highly doubt we'll be seeing another new Diablo of any form, in quite a while. So for this one? I don't have a lot of high hopes at all.

Empire Earth

First Game: Empire Earth, 2001 (Developed by Stainless Steel Studios and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Empire Earth III, 2007 (Developed by Mad Doc Software and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: Didn't take us long to run into another historical RTS series. This one had about just as much staying power as Ceasar, and in fact, most of the games in the series came out in the time between the third and last game in the ceasar series.

Personal Hopes: Most of my thoughts and hopes are pretty similar to Caesar. It's more similar to Age of Empires rather than focusing on a single civilization, but other than that, I feel like it's in the same boat as Caesar.

Gabriel Knight

First Game: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, 1993 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra On-Line)

Latest Game: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition, 2014 (Developed by Pinkerton Road Studio, Originally Published by Phoenix Online Publishing)

Personal Thoughts: Ah, our first example of an IP that Activision has acquired and has owned for a good long while now (around 10 years) and has done nothing with it. They've had this IP, a classic point and click series from Sierra, for a decade and I'm willing to bed most folks at the company don't even realize that they have it. Now granted, point and click games aren't exactly flying off the shelves, but adventure games in general have been making comebacks in recent years. We had that King's Quest game that was released piecemeal a while ago, and I think that Gabriel Knight could work in that sort of style if someone wanted to take a crack at it. But let's be honest, this is a series that doesn't have near the reach, fanbase, or history that its contemporaries at Sierra had. It's not a King's Quest, it's not a Leisure Suit Larry, it's not a Quest For Glory, and don't get me wrong, that doesn't make this game any less important than those titles, but it's not a series that has the same draw strength as any of those names, which makes Activision taking a chance on revitalizing this series, even with, say, an N.Sane style remake of the first three games, very unlikely. And despite the original creator, Jane Jenson, stating that she's interested in making a fourth game, she admits that the legal tangle with Activision-Blizzard makes that very unlikely. Doubly so now that Microsoft owns Activision-Blizzard, who ate Vivendi, who ate Sierra.

Personal Hopes: I just want a new game to come out. Again, it doesn't have to even be a lavish production. A small digital-only point and click would be great. Or some remakes of the first three games. Get it out where more folks can see it, already! And this is coming from someone who is garbage at Adventure games. I just want to see what a more modern take on this series and genre could be like.

Geometry Wars

First Game: Geometry Wars, 2003 (Developed by Bizarre Creations, originally published by Bizarre Creations)

Latest Game: Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved, 2016 (Developed by Lucid Games)

Personal Thoughts: I'm honestly surprised that we haven't seen more from this series over the years. You'd think that occasionally dropping a small, arcade-style experience like this would be an assured means of making something comparatively quick and easy compared to the constant deluge of AAA ‘blockbusters’ splurging forth from Activision's maw. Yet the series has been dormant since 2016, since basically every massive game studio only knows how to make massive games now. They don't want to make smaller, more digestible experiences, because those aren't the most profitable or something like that.

Personal Hopes: Considering that this game was originally a Microsoft-made series, a darling of the Xbox Live Arcade, I do think that we're going to see this series come back in some way shape or form. The question is going to be whether or not it's going to be more worth it compared to the indie space, where we've seen plenty of 2D twin stick shooters come out over the years, quite a few of them having a look or feel pretty close to what Geometry wars is. Still, I'd like to see another entry in this series, even if just a little bonus game you can play over on Game Pass or something.

Guitar Hero/DJ Hero

First Game: Guitar Hero, 2005 (Developed by Harmonix, Originally Published by RedOctane)

Latest Game: Guitar Hero Live, 2015 (Developed by Freestyle Games)

Personal Thoughts: All right, this one, I get why it isn't around anymore. Guitar Hero was THE rhythm game series to have back in the 2000's, what with its awesome controller and having a rhythm game based around classic and contemporary rock songs, rather than the typical pop, dance, or house music you saw in series like DDR… and also whatever Donkey Konga was trying to do. But between Guitar Hero, its attempted sister series DJ Hero, and its future rival Rock Band, the genre quickly became very oversaturated, the popular bands were mined clean, and we were drowning in a sea of plastic peripherals. No one is really eager to see this series return, and I don't see how you could easily bring it back. No one wants to have to buy a bunch of peripherals to have an optimal experience anymore, and while you can technically play the games with an ordinary controller if you really want to, the whole draw of the games was being able to feel like you were actually playing something resembling a guitar.

Personal Hopes: None here. Guitar Hero had its time in the sun, it was a fun fad, but I think that's all it was. We have plenty of other rhythm games to play now and the genre has been expanding out into other mixed genres as well. We have rhythm beat-em-ups like No Straight Roads and Hi-Fi Rush, or rhythm FPS games like Bullets Per Minute. And traditional rhythm games are doing well enough too with things like the Theaterythm series from Final Fantasy, or independent and free games that are still decently big and infinitely more customizable like OSU! and Stepmania. And then there are the funny weird ones like Trombone Champ, which lets you experience playing an instrument (badly) without the need for an extra set of plastic in your home. If they could find a way to make the experience still feel engaging without the need of peripherals, maybe there's a chance of it coming back, but I don't have high hopes for this one, even under new management.

Gun

First Game: Gun, 2005 (Developed by Neversoft)

Latest Game: Uh… there's only one game in this IP

Personal Thoughts: I'm kind of surprised with this one. This is an Activision Original, they've had it since before they merged with Blizzard, and during its hayday, it was pretty warmly received, basically got ported to every sku possible at the time, and it's even still available on steam right now. It's certainly a bit on the clunky side, and twenty bucks feels like a lot to be asking for an old PS2 era game… but that's also sidestepping the fact that it also does not have the best portrayal of Native Americans, to the point that it was boycotted by the Association for American Indian Development for the stereotypes portrayed in the game. It's a game that, even in its most recent re-release, still has that problematic element, that was still problematic when the game was released. So yeah, I'm surprised that we haven't seen other games using this IP… but I am surprised that the game is still up for sale in a time where such problematic content is more uncomfortable than ever.

Personal Hopes: I mean, the game might have legs for the future, but you'd have to definitely revamp that image a bit. Go back and start from scratch, with a more sensitive perspective in mind, and maybe there might be some legs to this, but I doubt anything more will be done with this IP. Big publishers don't strike me as really wanting to put the work in to address the insensitive nature of some of the things that were made in the past in hopes of giving such an old IP legs again.

Hearthstone

First Game: Hearthstone, 2014 )Developed and Originally Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Same as above, it's an IP with one game to its name… unless you consider it part of the greater Warcraft ecosystem

Personal Thoughts: Hearthstone is one of those games that I remember thinking was real interesting when I first heard of it, but even after trying it, it didn't grab me. It's longevity at this point is a very good indicator of just how ingrained it is to its players, even if at this point it is nowhere near as large as it once was, at least from the outside looking in.

Personal Hopes: This one's gonna be fine. It's still around, even if it is more in the background nowadays. I don't see a lot of big Hearthstone news circulating is all I'm saying, but the fact that it's still around suggests that it's still profitable enough to keep going and I don't see Microsoft changing that. The reason it's never gotten another game or a sequel or anything is because it's never needed one, and I don't see that changing now. Unless of course, Blizzard decides to apply their current philosophy on Overwatch to this game. We might see some issues then…

Heroes of the Storm

First Game: Heroes of the Storm, 2015 (Developed and Originally Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Yet again, one game here

Personal Thoughts: The game is basically dead at this point, as Blizzard ended development on it and put it into maintenance mode halfway through 2022. Near as I can tell, the game can still be played for now, but a game entering into maintenance mode is never a good sign. I admit, it had a better run than most live service, battle royale, and MOBA games nowadays have. It managed to make it for a full seven years, and most live service games WISH they could last for the better half of a decade at this point. But it was a game that was entering into an over-saturated market, even at the time, and it just didn't have the same sort of draw power that other big crossovers had. At least in my opinion.

Personal Hopes: The idea does have legs. I say that as someone who absolutely loves big, dumb crossover games. I love seeing a bunch of characters from different universes clash together, no matter how little sense it made. Even so though, if this IP wants to have any legs underneath it, I think it should reconsider its status as a MOBA, which at this point is a notoriously hard genre to break into, and maybe, now that they have Microsoft as a parent company, consider throwing in characters from the big M, or the other companies that Microsoft owns. I mean, I'd play a MOBA where I could play as the Doom Slayer, that's for sure. Probably won't happen and I doubt anyone's chomping at the bit to try and revitalize the storm, but the option is always there, and I would love to see another crack at a large-scale crossover.

Heavy Gear

First Game: Heavy Gear, 1997 (Developed and Published by Activision)

Latest Game: Heavy Gear II, 1999 (Developed and Published by Activision)

Personal Thoughts: Did you know that Activision made a pair of really cool mech games based off an old sci-fi tabletop RPG? I sure didn't! And hey, it's once again an activision original, so it's something that's been with them for a good, long while! However, this one is a bit more straightforward, I think. Since the games are based on a pre-existing, cross-media universe held by Dream Pod 9. So the games were only one piece of a much larger universe, including a tactical war game, an RPG, and even a card game. So it's pretty obvious why this one isn't showing up anymore, the rights are probably in flux, probably not helped by the fact that the second game sold like… horribly compared with the first.

Personal Hopes: I don't think we'll be seeing a Heavy Gear game again, even if Activsion still technically holds the publishing rights to video game adaptations. They'd probably have to renegotiate a licensing agreement with the original publisher, and while they're still around, I think their stuff has become a lot more niche than it used to be. Activision isn't the same company that they were back in the 90's, so doing something this niche just isn't seen as something in their wheelhouse anymore, which is a shame. We need more fun mech games out there, and Microsoft has had some success with their own sci-fi games before. But this particular universe? Yeah, I don't see it coming back in today's climate. It's a shame, but this one seems like it would be more of a licensing issue than anyone's willing to go through.

Interstate '76

First Game: Interstate `76, 1997 (Developed and Originally Published by Activision)

Latest Game: Yet another single-game IP

Personal Thoughts: You know, I'm not sure why this one didn't take off. It was a Windows only game in the late 90's, so while it didn't have a massive audience, vehicular combat games did tend to be pretty popular around this time. This was two years after the oriignal Twisted Metal, and the same year as Carmaggeddon after all.

Personal Hopes: Vehicular combat games are kind of a rare breed nowadays. Not entirely unheard of, but not something that shows up very often. It'd be a good time, especially considering that there isn't a huge amount of competition kicking around anymore. Not much else to say on this one, I just think a modern vehicle battle game would be nice.

King's Quest

First Game: King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown, 1984 (Developed and originally published by Sierra On-Line)

Latest Game: King's Quest, 2015 (Developed by The Odd Gentlemen)

Personal Thoughts: I love the old King's Quest games. While the Moon logic needed in order to get through some of the puzzles could grate on the nerves now and then, it's another quintessential adventure series, and the episodic return of the series in 2015 was a fantastic way, I felt, to modernize the old flavor of adventure games. It's both important to the history of the medium and still a beloved example of early adventure games. The fact that it's been so quiet is odd to me, especially with how well the revival went over.

Personal Hopes: The remake didn't see any great big revival for the series going forward, but I do think it was a step in the right direction. King's Quest is probably one of, if not the most well known of Sierra's old adventure game catalogue, and if the Odd Gentleman reimagining is any indication, there are still a lot of interesting stories that could be told in this world and with these characters, or with new characters here and there. The question is, though, Is Microsoft going to indulge more in the colorful, cartoonish games of this sort? I doubt it, but hey, if they gave Battletoads another shot, if only for a single game, if they let the right creative team handle this one, I think an occasional episodic adventure in the kingdom of Daventry wouldn't be too bad.

Laura Bow Mysteries

First Game: The Colonel's Bequest, 1989 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: The Dagger of Amon Ra, 1992 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: Only two games in this series, and this is one of those IP that I would probably call a ‘deep cut.’ It's something that is beloved by those who have experienced it, but that group is fairly small, and the series itself was pretty short lived compared to other Sierra series of the same era, whcih would often get five to six games. I feel like this was one that was hanging out in the background long before Activision acquired Sierra's back catalog.

Personal Hopes: We're probably never going to see this one again. Like I said, there are folks out there who remember these two games very fondly, but in terms of an IP that would be likely to be revived by a major gaming conglomerate? Hate to be blunt, but no, this one is just going to be shoved to the bottom of the pile and they're not going to touch it again. Thankfully, both of the original games are available over on GoG, so who knows, maybe if there's enough interest shown over there, that might change. As it is now though, I just don't think we'll be seeing Ms. Bow or her adventures again any time soon.

The Lost Vikings

First Game:  The Lost Vikings, 1993 (Developed by Silicon & Synapse and Originally Published by Interplay Productions)

Latest Game: The Lost Vikings 2, 1997 (Developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Originally Published by Interplay Productions)

Personal Thoughts: If anyone knows anything about Blizzard's early days, before the Warcrafts and Starcrafts and such, back when they were called Silicon and Synapse, they probably at least know the name of the Lost Vikings, one of the first puzzle platformers I ever played growing up. I never got very far into it when I was a wee lad, but damn was it fun. And while I knew it had a sequel, I was kind of surprised that we didn't see more of it later down the line. But nope, two games is all we get, and while this series has cropped back up in recent years, thrown into the Blizzard Arcade Collection… which is digital only and feels like it only exists to sort of remind people of some really obscure IP that Blizzard owns? It's strange.

Personal Hopes: This is one that I really hope would be coming back at one point or another. While multi-character puzzle games aren't really unique nowadays. Things like a Tale of Two Brothers, Toodee and Topdee, and of course multiplayer experiences in the same vein like It Takes Two, but I don't feel like it's a particularly oversaturated genre, and LV's take on it with three different characters, or even more given the other characters introduced in the second game, might even make it stick out. I think this is something that could have legs in the future, so I think it's something that could come back, though again, I don't see it being a very high profile production if it does return.

Overwatch

First Game: Overwatch, 2016 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Overwatch 2, 2022 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: I don't think I'll be adding much to the conversation on this one. I'm aware that Overwatch still has its fans, but from the perspective of someone who has watched Blizzard and Activision slowly piss away all of the good will and good press that the game got upon launch, I feel comfortable in saying that this is the first time I've ever watched someone take a diamond and just grind it into dust in front of my eyes. I don't think it's necessarily going anywhere for right now, but it just feels like Blizzard has been slowly removing all of the personality out of this game and this franchise. It bothers me because when the game first launch, it really felt like it set itself apart, and pretty much all of the characters were, at least from an aesthetic and personality point of view, interesting and unique. I can't comment on how the gameplay has changed since then since I never played the game, I'll leave that to someone who knows what they're talking about, but purely from the standpoint of how the game's image has been handled, even disregarding the company's overall behavior (and you really shouldn't disregard Blizzard's overall behavior), man did they screw this one up royal.

Personal Hopes: I'm begging you, just do something with a more coherent storyline. Make a more traditional shooter. Give folks what you initially promised for the sequel's story mode as something like a standalone game or something like that. These designs are too good to just waste away in a hero shooter that I've only heard people describe as aggressively mid since the sequel came out.

Phantasmagoria

First Game: Phantasmagoria, 1995 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: I know that a lot of older media tends to not age particularly well as our understanding of certain social stigmas and the history of other peoples in relation to ourselves comes to light as time marches on, but I thing Phantasmagoria and its sequel are two excellent examples of just how poorly a game's content can age. These FMV games were both made with the purposes of rocking the boat, being very dark and touching on subject matter that games nowadays really don't want to touch upon, especially from major AAA publishers. I haven't played these games in years now, well before I developed any sense of social grace for myself, which probably means I was too young to have been playing them in the first place, so I can't say just how poorly they've aged, but I do know that i think back to my own experience with the games and it makes me shudder a little bit.

Personal Hopes: It's an FMV game series from the 90's that does have some merit to the history of the genre, if only for the risks it took in its subject matter, but the fact that it hasn't aged well, FMV games are seen more as memetic throwbacks nowadays, and the fact that the subject matter the games were famous for probably wouldn't fly today. Horror games in their many different iterations are seeing a big resurgence in popularity and while games nowadays can push the envelope at least a bit in terms of their content, I don't think invoking an actually controversial PC game from the 90's would be something they'd want to do.

Pitfall

First Game: Pitfall!, 1982 (Developed and Published by Activision)

Latest Game: Pitfall! 2012 (Developed by The Blast Furnace)

Personal Thoughts: I had no idea this series… was actually a series. Pitfall to me has always just been one game, the original Atari game that helped to codify the platforming genre, but no, there were several games released, all the way up to the PS2 era, and then it just sort of drifted off into history, with the last game using the IP that I can find being an endless runner from 2012.

Personal Hopes: Again, I don't see this coming back in any sort of big way. While the endless runner is no longer available, the original Atari Pitfall is available on Android at least, but pitfall could maybe make a comeback as a Tomb Raider or Uncharted style game, but we already have Tomb Raider and Uncharted for that and Pitfall has more of a historical legacy than a big brand identity, so not much hope there.

Police Quest

First Game: Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel, 1987 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game:  SWAT Elite Troops, 2008 (Developed by Rovio Mobile, Originally Published by Vivendi Games Mobile)

Personal Thoughts: One of Sierra's classic adventure series that wasn't meant to be more on the comedic or fanciful side of things, Police Quest was well known for being a proper police procedural game; if you didn't follow the rules and proper protocol, you could end up bricking your game for something as simple as not showing your badge before you started questioning a suspect. It was wild, and a hell of a lot more involved than it ever had to be. I applaud the older games for their wish to stay as accurate as possible to the idea of being a cop, but I do feel that it makes the series kind of impenetrable to anyone who didn't grow up with it.

Personal Hopes: I don't think that this series would come back in any form mostly because the series is pure copaganda. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of that in video games and in media in general. Video games in particular have a real problem with fetishizing how awesome the American military is, for example. Now, if they brought it back and gave the series a seedier bent, I think it would be more interesting, maybe something more along the lines of This is The Police. However, I don't see it coming back in its original incarnation. I don't think stories where cops are portrayed as the out and out good guys resonate with a lot of folks of my generation and below, and while we do have examples of games where being organized and filing paperwork can be enjoyable (Papers Please, and Death and Taxes come to mind), I don't think a police procedural where missing even a single step in a lengthy process could kill a run hours beforehand is what folks are really looking for these days.

Prototype

First Game: Prototype, 2009 (Developed by Radical Entertainment)

Latest Game: Prototype 2, 2012 (Developed by Radical Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: Edgy generic duology all about binary good and evil choices as well as some really well done animations and transformations and powers that you can attain as the game goes on, along with a free-roaming map hiding a bunch of secrets. There was an explosion of stuff like this at around the same time when the first game came out. The same year we had Assassin's Creed 2 and the original Infamous, so it simultaneously came out at the perfect time for a game of its type, and yet at the same time, I feel like it was always just sort of in the background and never really did much to stick out. I actually remember thinking for the longest time that this game was coming out of Ubisoft for some reason.

Personal Hopes: The second game, which came out 3 years after the first, apparently underperformed so badly that it was used as the justification to lay off a lot of the people at Radical, and turn it into an assistant studio for their large projects, primarily COD. It's one of those series that I see as a creation of its time, and I can see Microsoft showing some interest in the property given Xbox's perceived base. It's a shame that Radical Design wouldn't get another crack at it, since they're probably busy helping others with their own projects, and while I don't see it happening any time soon, I do think that this might be something that could see some sort of revival under a new regime. Maybe.

Quest for Glory

First Game: Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero, 1989 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire, 1998 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: This is the other big-name adventure series from Sierra, right up there with King's Quest, and while it didn't run quite as long, it has quite a big legacy, and is just as famous for it's many, many quirky death scenes, much like King's Quest, but often with a more personal bent to it with the ability to choose your class and customize your main character a little bit, with stats that can actually effect how you have to approach some of the puzzles, many of which have multiple ways of solving them to account for your stats, but it also allows for a certain level of creativity on the part of the player.

Personal Hopes: I do hope we see another one of these games in the future. We're inundated with a lot of games that have binary choices that affect the game superficially, but what I would love to see would be an adventure game more along what they did with the King's Quest revival, which did something similar, giving players multiple ways to complete a task depending on what sort of virtue you were going for. I think there's more fun to be had here, and while it's been a while since the King's Quest revamp, I think this would be a logical follow-up.

Singularity

First Game: Singularity, 2010 (Developed by Raven Software)

Latest Game: Yep, one game again. One could say that this particular IP is very… Singular?… where'd everyone go?

Personal Thoughts: It's a shooter for the PS3, during that horrid time where the brown and beige shooter kind of ruled the world, where because they could do pretty realistic, for the time, graphics, well, the real world isn't super colorful, so let's make our future-war, realistic world really boring to look at. Singularity, while its looks didn't really set it apart from a lot of the other military shooters that were out at the time, but it does at least have some mechanics that set it apart, with a sci-fi/horror bent to it that seems the main character hopping back and forth through different points in time. But even with that, I kind of see why this one didn't spawn a franchise. It sort of disappeared into the same sea that a lot of other shooters of the time sank into.

Personal Hopes: I think this does have a chance to come back. Shooters are still big business, but we aren't quite drowning in the genre as much as we were back during the PS3 and 360 era. And while we've seen these sorts of time manipulation mechanics before, a fresh start for the series, a shooter that keeps the ability to jump between time and place, that could work. It could be like Bioshock Infinite if the dimension hopping were an actual gameplay element instead of regulated to set pieces or story moments. The odds of it happening are slim, since the IP has languished for 14 years, but hey, there's a spark of an idea there.

Ski Resort Tycoon

First Game: Ski Resort Tycoon, 2000 (Developed by Cat Daddy Games)

Latest Game: Ski Resort Tycoon II, 2000 (Developed by Cat Daddy Games)

Personal Thoughts: The idea behind the Tycoon game has kind of fallen off in recent years. The idea of owning and operating a very specific business as sort of a faceless CEO who makes all the big decisions, fires and hires the people, and makes decisions about how your business operates. There are a ton of these now, from developers of various sizes, and of various levels of quality and seriousness. That is to say nothing of those tycoon games that have their own series in and of themselves. It's a bit of a mess, all things considered.

Personal Hopes: There are. So many. Tycoon games. Don't believe me? Go on steam and just search Tycoon and take a look at how many games pop up, and what sort of themes and businesses and ideas they use. Then think about something as basic as Ski Resort Tycoon being brought back. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but even with the backing of major names like Activision or Microsoft, I don't see it doing much, especially not when there are just… SO MANY alternatives to something like this, and I don't know if a Ski Resort sim would be able to stand up against them in terms of interest. Maybe something niche, but ‘niche’ is a bit of a dirty word in the AAA game industry.

Skylanders

First Game: Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, 2011 (Developed by Toys for Bob)

Latest Game: Skylanders: Ring of Heroes, 2018 (Developed by Com2Us)

Personal Thoughts: It's kind of hard to believe how hard Toys-to-Life has flopped in the last few years. Wasn't that long ago that it felt like everyone was trying to get in on this grift, and now we're at a point where no one's really doing it anymore beyond Nintendo, and the only real reason it feels like Nintendo's held onto it is because their characters are recognizable enough that people outside of the game sphere are interested in them… and they can be used across a bunch of different games. At least, some of them can. Point is, they aren't locked down to a single game or series the way that something like Disney Infinity or Starlink or Skylanders was. Skylanders was the first big one that I remember coming out, the first one to really sink its teeth into kids, and while the series basically never changed much from just being a series of basic beat-em-ups for children, they were decent enough for what they were, if a little on the slow side. Each new game tried its best to have a new gimmick with the toys to keep giving people a reason to keep investing in more plastic around the house. The problem was there was just too much plastic…

Personal Hopes: As far as games aimed at a younger audience, they weren't terrible, but there were a lot of them in a very short amount of time. From 2011 to 2018, with the exception of one year, there was at least one new Skylanders game a year, and with them, a deluge of new toys to grab. It flooded the market all on its own, even before competition started to appear. This isn't going to come back, at least not in its original form. It lived on as a mobile property for a while, which as much as I hate the mobile market, it does fit right in with. The multitude of characters and heroes makes it a natural fit for the Gacha style of a lot of those sorts of games, but as it originally was? No. It even attempted to branch out into other genres briefly with stuff like the racing game Super Chargers, and from what I recall, that did next to nothing. Skylanders, I think, is done, and Activision doesn't seem in a hurry to try exploiting kids again, at least not on the console market.

Soldier of Fortune

First Game: Soldier of Fortune, 2000 (Developed by Raven Software)

Latest Game: Soldier of Fortune: Payback, 2007 (Developed by Cauldron HQ)

Personal Thoughts: I'm not really sure what to say about this one. I didn't play it at all, though it was a series that started before the PS3 shooter flood, and I understand that it was pretty well liked for the fact that enemies would react differently depending on which area of the body they were shot in. It did well enough to get a couple of sequels, and a very short lived MMO FPS (only released in Korea), but apart from that, was there anything that set it apart from its contemporaries or the contemporaries of its sequels?

Personal Hopes: Again, I haven't played any of the SoF games, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but from the outside looking in, I'm not seeing anything that would really set this one apart from the shooters that we have today. And I'm not saying that ‘Call of Duty’ is a title that really stands out in a crowd, but ‘Soldier of Fortune’ feels just as generalized and generic, but without the massive sales numbers to keep itself in the limelight. So I really don't think Microsoft would bother trying to pull this one out of obscurity.

Space Quest

First Game: Space Quest I, 1986 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Space Quest 6, 1995 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: This series was to science fiction what King's Quest was to fantasy, though I often feel like it somehow managed to be even more absurd than the series that was based around a fairy tale land where magic bridles could turn snakes into horses and sugar cubes could make you invincible. It was fantastic.

Personal Hopes: I would love to see a revival of the main series of this. And again, I feel like the King's Quest reboot would work for it. However, it should be noted that the original co-creators of this series have, after a long decade of development are allegedly close to releasing Spaceventure, a spiritual successor to the series. as it hasn't released publicly yet, I can't say whether or not it measures up to that moniker, and the fact that it took so long to develop doesn't help matters. While I'm always excited to see developers try and give us a well loved, long absent series successor, but I will always hope to see the series itself make a return as well. There is, in my mind, room for all these games to coexist, even if they only reach a niche audience. It's just a shame that Microsoft and Activision think differently.

Spyro

First Game: Spyro the Dragon, 1998 (Developed by Insomniac Games and Originally Published by Sony Computer Entertainment

Latest Game: Spyro Reignited Trilogy, 2018 (Developed by Toys for Bob)

Personal Thoughts: This one is pretty similiar to the Crash Bandicoot situation. Popular series, goes through a lot of hard times, ends up with Activision, they make a few cursory attempts to cash in, including using his name and likeness to help jumpstart the Skylanders franchise, but otherwise has allowed the series to remain dormant, until Crash Bandicoot's successful revival. A few years later, hey, Spyro gets the same treatment with the Reignited Trilogy, which does ‘well’ according to Activision in its launch window. And now… now he and a few of the other characters from his games are DLC for Crash Team Rumble.

Personal Hopes: This is another one that just makes me made. At least Crash got managed to get one brand new game out of the deal after his revival. Spyro? He got the revival treatment just in time for the studios that helped make it to get turned into CoD assistance studios and now for all we know, the series has once again gone dormant. You had a perfect setup to continue that train of success, and you blew it, ActiBlizz. Fuck you. Microsoft could, maybe do something with the series, like Crash, and I pray that they do, but considering their reluctance to do anything with other beloved kid-friendly characters they've acquired over the years (hello Banjo-Kazooie), all I can do right now is just hope.

Starcraft

First Game: Starcraft, 1998 (Developed and Originally Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Starcraft: Remastered, 2017 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: The sci-fi equivalent to Warcraft, and still a major beloved series for Blizzard, despite not really getting a truely new game since 2010. Starcraft II received a LOT of expansions from 2013-2016, and then we got a remaster of the original Starcraft the year after, but that's been it. And why would they need anything else new? Starcraft and its sequel is still played really often, it's doing just fine, to the point where Blizzard even did a good back in 2017 and made the original Starcraft (the non-remastered version), the Brood War expansion, and the vanilla version of Starcraft II completely free, if you download and play it from Blizzard's website over on Battle Net. And guess what? As of my writing this sentence, they are still available for free there! That's honestly nice to see.

Personal Hopes: I don't think that we have to worry about Starcraft going anywhere for a good long while, as its popularity as a competitive RTS game keeps legs underneath it, and ActiBlizz's willingness to keep a majority of the game free for people to play at their leisure (so long as they're playing using their proprietary launcher of course) has no doubt done a lot to keep the game fresh in people's consciousness. However, five years have gone by without any sort of new games or even new expansions for the existing games, and I worry that once people start to get tired of what they have (and they will, no game sticks around forever) that there won't be another new game on the horizon for the series. I don't think that's going to happen any time soon, but it is an inevitability that I think should be accounted for. I mean, they could always try to expand it out to other genres… might be a good time to revive Starcraft Ghosts, yeah? 

Tenchu (Kinda)

First Game: Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, 1998 (Developed by Acquire)

Latest Game: Tenchu: Shadow Assassins, 2008 (Developed by Acquire)

Personal Thoughts: I wasn't entirely sure if I should add this one because technically speaking, Actiblizz, and therefore Microsoft, don't own the Tenchu IP itself, instead, they only own the games that they publushed before they sold the rights to the IP to FromSoftware in 2004. So while they can't make new games, they do have the rights to a lot of the classic Tenchu library. But I don't think they're doing anything with the games that they actually own.

Personal Hopes: I just hope that they make the games that they have the rights to available to find. Throw them up on game pass or put them together in a collection or something along those lines. I did check all of the digital storefronts I could think of (Steam, Playstation Store, Xbox Game Pass, etc.) and I could not find a single Tenchu game, Activision-owned or otherwise, so at least for now, it seems like the entire series is basically locked to physical. If I'm mistaken there, I do apologize, but I genuinely could not find a legitimate place to purchase any of the games in the series digitally at this point in time.

TimeShift

First Game: TimeShift, 2007 (Developed by Saber Interactive and Originally Published by Vivendi Games)

Latest Game: Single game IP again. Lot more of these than I thought there would be, to be honest.

Personal Thoughts: This was another one that came around during that infamous PS3 and 360 glut of shooters all trying to vye for the top of the shooter stack. Considering that this was the only game in its IP, that didn't work out too well. Whatever information I've managed to find on the game suggest that it really did not have the best development cycle, changing publishers, and being delayed multiple times, eventually just dropping out of the news cycle entirely and missing a lot of hype because of that. And after all of that, the game only really managed to do ‘okay’ which is pretty unexceptional when it comes to AAA gaming.

Personal Hopes: I really don't know what to say here. Like other shooters I've highlighted in this list, I just don't think this will be something that comes back. The idea itself does have some legs, and without having to compete with a glut of other shooters, it might have some legs to stand on, but with Gears of War, Halo, and Call of Duty all under the same roof, TimeShift's chances of getting another roll of the dice doesn't seem very likely.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

First Game: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, 1999 (Developed by Neversoft)

Latest Game: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, 2020 (Developed by Vicarious Visions)

Personal Thoughts: The fact that the latest release of this series is also a remaster of the first two games kind of shows how much staying power the original formula has, as the series sort of got bogged down in itself as time went on, relying more and more on outlandish comedy and scenarios, or gimmicks like the plastic board controllers for Ride and Shred, the horrible online for Pro Skater 5, or even just getting off the skateboard and running around the environment in several of the later games. Going back to basics was probably one of the smarter things they could have done with the series, but…

Personal Hopes: Given Activision's track record when it comes to remaking or remastering classic or beloved titles, to much fanfare, and then just not capitalizing on that to reintroduce new entries in the series to a new generation, so while I'd love to see more classic style, smaller skating games. I know that the status of the Tony Hawk license name has been a bit in flux as of late, so a rebrand might potentially be in the works as well. Maybe.

True Crime

First Game: True Crime: Streets of LA, 2003 (Developed by Luxoflux)

Latest Game: True Crime: New York City, 2005 (Developed by Luxoflux)

Personal Thoughts: A duology of open world games where you play as law enforcement in the named city. They're pretty close in gameplay to the GTA games of the time, something that the first game actually got favorable comparison for. First game was mixed in reviews, but did financially well, second game wasn't so lucky. Other than that, the only cool thing I can find about the series is that the cancellation of a proposed third game taking place in Hong Kong led to the creation of Sleeping Dogs over at Square Enix.

Personal Hopes: If the failure of the second game wasn't enough to state that this series probably isn't coming back any time soon, there's the fact that we don't really see a lot of GTA-esque games anymore that aren't GTA. Saint's Row did attempt a comback recently and unfortunately that didn't pan out well. Doesn't seem like there's a huge amount of open world city games anymore. There's also the fact, and I'll admit, I don't know how much this would effect their ability to make a new True Crime game, but apparently Activision basically abandoned the trademark for the series. If that doesn't say that they aren't really interested in this series anymore, I don't know what does.

Ultimate Soccer Manager

First Game: Ultimate Soccer Manager, 1995 (Developed by Impressions Games and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Ultimate Soccer Manager '98, 1998 (Developed by Impressions Games and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: I have absolutely no interest in sports games at the best of times, unless they have some sort of gimmick or are more arcade in nature. Closest thing to lrea life sports games I play are things like Mutant League Football or Mario Tennis. Even with my bias, I just don't think this will be coming back any time soon. First, this is a pretty niche idea. Sports fans like the fantasy of playing on their favorite team, or being able to put all their favorite players on one team, but it's a very specific group of people who wants to be more a part of the management side of things. Add to it, making sports games nowadays is difficult mostly due to the fact that Electronic Arts still holds a monopoly on most popular sports league licenses, and if you want a game to sell well, you either need to have the backing of an organization within the sport (NBA, NHL, FIFA, ETC), you need a well known character or franchise that can help draw in people who aren't necessarily sports fans (See the Mario sports games), or you have to have a really well executed gimmick that intrigues people to try out the game. As someone who doesn't travel in sports game circles, I unfortunately do not have a good example of this last one. Maybe the Pangya series? Even though that really is just anime golf… still fun though.

Personal Hopes: Even if this were a game that was aimed at me, I really don't think that it will be coming back because it's a topic that's very niche. Playing a sport in a video game has a certain amount of appeal to it that even folks that aren't necessarily fans of the sport can appreciate, but being hit with the management side of the sport, that is, I feel, much more niche, though admittedly it's a niche without a lot of competition. There's Sega Football Manager, but that's about it, and like… maybe you could branch out into other sports? Maybe? How have I put so many words into this particular game?

Warcraft/World of Warcraft

First Game: Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, 1994 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Warcraft Rumble, 2023 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: You all know what Warcraft is, I hope. Out of anything that has Blizzard's name on it, Warcraft, or probably more accurately, World of Warcraft, is what most folk are going to think of when the company is brought up. WoW has fluctuated in both quality and popularity over the years, but it's always been near the top of the MMO pile, and is even still getting brand new updates and expansions about twenty years after its original launch. That's staying power. Or maybe stockholm syndrome depending on how you look at it. The original Warcraft series though, that hasn't been given nearly as much love as the MMO. Last year we did have that tower defense mobile game, Warcraft Rumble, and before that, there was the disastrous launch of the remake of Warcraft 3, but in terms of brand new RTS games, discounting the mobile games and the remake, there hasn't been a new Warcraft game as in a full PC/console game release since 2003. Hearthstone was a phenomenon for a time as well I suppose, but that's also sort of fallen off.

Personal Hopes: Look, WoW might not be quite as big as it once was, but it's still a very big, reliable money maker for the company, but when it comes to the main Warcraft games, I don't think we'll be seeing a new one of those beyond mobile games for a long while, especially with how poorly the whole remaster fiasco went over. I'd love to see the series go back to other genres that aren't just relegated to mobile games that may or may not be around a few years down the line, of course, as things stand, I don't see that happening any time soon, not while there isn't a reason to end the stagnation.

Zork

First Game: Zork, 1977 (Developed by Infocom and Originally Published by Personal Software)

Latest Game: Zork III, 1982 (Developed by Infocom and Originally Published by Personal Software)

Personal Thoughts: I have not played the Zork games. I know them more from cultural osmosis than anything else, and of course that's mostly just that one memetic line that continues to crop up every now and then. Zork was a series of three (or four?) text adventure games, back before even the most rudimentary of graphics was standard for games of this nature, and I think that lack of any sort of visual element to it is what really made it a special series. It was a weird and wonderful story that required a lot of imagination to make sense of what you were reading and seeing, and how best to react to whatever you're faced with. Of course, every text adventure is like this, but Zork's quirky and charming descriptions really helped to set it apart from everything. Again, I'm going off of what little I've seen of the games, as I've never experienced a full playthrough of them, but what I have seen is very fun and clever, if a little bonkers sounding out of context.

Personal Hopes: Zork is a pretty legendary series, but considering how long the IP has existed, and the fact that it perpetually has existed in this one singular for maybe suggests that no one really knows how to bring this series back. A text adventure on its own, no matter how well written and no matter what the attached IP is, I don't think would pull a lot of interest in a medium that's come to be so heavily defined by its visuals, save for a small niche audience. For an indie production, that would probably be enough to be satisfying, but not for a company as big as Activision or Microsoft. Zork is a nostalgia name, but not much else, and I don't see it losing that distinction any time soon.

Closing Thoughts

This was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Apparently I couldn't shut up about all this stuff. It was also incredibly sobering to go through as I realized, going through all of these games that the odds of a lot of them coming back in one form or another is pretty unlikely, even re-releases. 

I did my best to find as many IP that activision definitively own as possible, but I would not be surprised if I missed any, and I did make some exceptions like with Tenchu, which they only kind of own and can't actually make new games for. And yet, despite that, they're doing nothing with the games they do own, which is honestly just as annoying. Through my explorations of Actiblizz's back catalog (and there were plenty of places to look, considering that a lot of news sites were quick to put out lists outlining what Microsoft now owned), I did find a few that I wasn't entirely sure about and therefore did not include on this list. The two big ones that came up multiple times in my scouring were the Hexen and Heretic games. These two showed up on lists of IP microsoft gained in the Actiblizz acquisition, and yet when I looked up the series' myself, it seemed to suggest that they were currently owned and developed by Id software, which is currently owned by Bethesda, which is owned by Zenimax, which was gobbled up by Microsoft not long ago anyway. Either way, the games end up owned by Microsoft, so in the long run it doesn't matter, but I'm confused as to why these games kept coming up as something that Activision had ownership of when I couldn't find any conclusive information on whether or not they actually owned any of this.

While it was kind of depressing to see all these various IPs that are just laying dormant, I do have to remind myself that indie games have been picking up the slack. Despite this, one can't help but wonder what the added budget or manpower of a larger developer could do for classic series currently left out in the cold. I hold out hope for a few of these coming back at some point, but with the current corporate attitude of making nothing but absolutely massive blockbusters that have to sell millions of copies to be considered successes, and that are focus tested to hell and back to cast the widest possible net and get as many folks on board as possible, rather than taking a chance on a low-budget niche game… even though the risk would be low if the scope of the game was kept small and it was aimed at a specific audience, but hey who would want a more diverse portfolio made of more quickly produced smaller experiences that reach a smaller audience but overall would serve a wider demographic thanks to the variety?

Me.

I want that.

Do that, game industry.

And pay your fucking workers better.

[ralfstrashcan]

Heads Up, Seven Up!

Look who's showing her face again around here after almost a year of radio silence XD this smashing comeback is thanks to the one and only @silver-lily-louise who tagged me in a little writer's challenge.

(Before I get into that though I need to yell about your post for a sec because it sent me into a giggling fit. Not only the genius wordplay with Seven's name in the beginning but also the fic snippet itself because damn, you really nailed the characterization of both of them! I can see Seven's doubtingly raised eyebrow and Harry trying to play it off and being all breezy even though he is a cinnamon roll and can't fool anyone into thinking differently... I enjoyed every second of that!)

Now, the Challenge!

Share the last seven sentences you wrote.

Well, let's see. I'm currently (=since February) working on my German Attack on Titan fanfic (which is why I've been MIA on ao3, if anyone's been wondering...) Fun Fact, I've already mentioned that fic once on here a loooong while ago and the line from then doesn't exist in this form anymore, hahaha! Anyway, back then was chapter 3, what I'll share now is from chapter 18. I decided to leave it at six sentences because they form a unit of meaning and since they're German sentences they're still more than 1,5x as long as Louise's 9 - and almost twice as long in English, because of course - so I think we're good XD Here goes!

Levi examined his charges who were lined up in front of him like organ pipes. With their vastly differing level of knowledge it wouldn't make sense to provide Eren and Mikasa with the same training. Mikasa had already mastered much more than just the basics of self defense and if Levi recalled his little sparring session with Eren in the waiting room of his studio and Eren's subsequent performance on the punching bag then there was no doubt that Eren braved any fight on enthusiasm and overflowing anger alone, not on any kind of understanding of fighting techniques. Armin at least had a solid grasp on the essentials but nothing more. It was now around six thirty so there were roughly two and a half hours left until the Titans would likely tell them the place for the hostage exchange and they'd discuss their plan of action. He would make the most of it.

And of course, here's the German original:

Levi musterte seine Schützlinge, die aufgereiht vor ihm standen wie die Orgelpfeifen. Bei einem so unterschiedlichen Wissensstand war es nicht sinnvoll, Eren und Mikasa dasselbe Training angedeihen zu lassen. Mikasa beherrschte bereits weit mehr als nur die Grundlagen der Selbstverteidigung und wenn Levi sich an sein kleines Gefecht mit Eren im Wartezimmer seines Studios und auch dessen anschließende Vorstellung am Boxsack erinnerte, war klar, dass Eren jeden Kampf allein mit Enthusiasmus und überschäumender Wut bestritt, nicht aber mit irgendeinem Verständnis von Kampftechniken. Armin hatte zumindest ein solides Basiswissen, mehr allerdings nicht. Es war jetzt ungefähr halb sieben, also hatte er noch etwa zweieinhalb Stunden Zeit, bis sich die Titanen mutmaßlich mit dem Ort des Geiselaustauschs melden und sie ihr genaues Vorgehen besprechen würden. Er würde das Beste draus machen.

I'm pretty sure the expression with the organ pipes does not exist in English but I decided to go with a literal translation anyway XD

Thanks for reading, if you made it through all of my rambles ;D

[transingthoseformers]

So I'm vividly reminded of the "What if there was a character who wanted to be [faction] but was barred from joining [faction]" post, and tfp au Tarn is somewhat close to being this.

They wouldn't have let him join the Decepticons if he hadn't pleaded and begged enough. And, nobody will ever admit it, even the commanders are scared of him. Tarn has just been so loyal (well loyal up until this point) that they were willing to overlook the immense security risk his Voice was and the rancid vibes. In the TFP au, he came to the Decepticons preinstalled with the DJD, but in this au the DJD had existed before Tarn has, and they kinda just found him in the space woods like a coyote mistaken for a dog.

TFP au Tarn has a much different backstory and origin than what you'd expect. Damus was someone who originally was turned away from the Decepticons , whether it was for a lack of generalistic experience, bad luck, having failed some sort of entrance test (i severely doubt they'd have like a written test, that's not what i mean, I'm thinking some sort of small quest), or hell the Bad Vibes™️ that Soundwave had received but could never put a digit. (Nobody could've guessed Tarn had been Damus, hell nobody knows until the Tarn and Fallen fiasko when he blurts it in a monologue.)

He did not take this rejection. I cannot tell you for sure when Damus became a more recognizable shape, what he had done before fully becoming Tarn, but I can tell you how he was found.

The DJD was a project proposed by Shockwave, one that Megatron has always disliked. It ultimately functioned similar to the Wreckers in the Autobots— do the dirty work that not even Megatron wants to do, and he'll turn a blind eye to their methods. One of the conditions he agreed upon was that they stay away from the frontlines, as they are pretty much the clean up crew for those who have become disillusioned to the Cause. Originally, the ship's crew was the leader Kaon, Tesarus, Helex, Vos, and Prion (their medic, who looks a little familiar...)

They found Damus on a small moon circling a dead planet that had never developed complex life. He was thought to be a mercenary, but no he denied this. The DJD decided that hey this guy who wants to be a Decepticon should be a Decepticon! And dragged him with them. This is when he took upon the name Tarn (the symbolic meaning here in the tfp au is unknown as of yet) There is a possibility that his Voice had influenced this without their knowledge, as exactly nobody had guessed that as a possibility. Though, the DJD soon learned during the brutal disposal of a rogue exactly what Tarn is capable with this "gift". (Remember, in the TFP au outliers do exist but exactly nobody has really discovered this fact. Sometimes mecha pop up with inexplicable abilities and it always freaks everyone else the hell out) At first, they were struck with that instinctive oh-frag feeling, but this faded with the delight of them having a new method in their already rather unconventional repertoire.

Things were... special the next time the Peaceful Tyranny crossed paths with the Nemesis. Megatron was very suspicious of this Tarn, (actually in a very similar way as he was in canon of Predaking once the mech revealed his bipedal mod). But, eventually, he okayed the new addition as he wasn't going to question the DJD's methods. He didn't want to think too hard about what they do, only that they completed the job out of sight. Megatron couldn't afford to lose any more sleep than he already is over this.

Did Megatron call the DJD down to Earth? No, Tarn had tracked Pharma's signal and was delighted to find out his Lord is also on this blue and green planet. If I remember my timelines correctly, they arrived in the smack dab middle of the spicy battlefield dance arc. Meaning, the commanders already had so goddamn much to deal with that they agreed "fuck it, let them do whatever they're here to do, let them take care of the traitors wandering about so we don't have to". The DJD was explicitly told to not interfere with the war efforts, the autobots, or the ongoings of the Nemesis. (Probably in much longer polite and formal words than my synopsis of it)

For a long time, Tarn was considered in a similar manner as he was in canon. A dangerous weapon, but a currently manageable and loyal weapon. Some would say Tarn's loyalty to the Cause and Megatron rivals Soundwave's, others dare to admit that there has to be a catch. That nobody is that loyal without some sort of catch. Especially if that someone enjoys working with the fragging DJD, which among most Decepticons is practically a myth because of how infrequently the Peaceful Tyranny is sighted.

The events of Delphi are very similar as in the au, upon one divergence— nobody finds them. Every autobot except Pharma eventually succumbs to the Red Rust (or the DJD, in Ambulon's case) and Pharma has to find his way off planet. Eventually, he makes his way to Earth.

The rest of the DJD, as we know, was entirely content with these orders and did their own horrific murder thing. Tarn, though? Oh we knew he ultimately basically ignored this and turned his efforts to win his Lord with his winning personality (a lie), pure loyalty (a lie), and charming good looks (kind of a lie but kinda not)— and to find out where that autobot jet had went.

He started seeing the messages from Megatronus Prime a mere fortnight since he arrived on Earth. The Fallen had a reverse sort of reaction to Tarn, at first only seeing him as an easy to manipulate means to an end. After all, once the Fallen got out and destroyed Earth, what would this pathetic sycophant matter? But, as they started interacting more the Fallen ended up letting more and more of his guard down to this mortal. Tarn will not end up betraying Megatronus Prime, even as the reverse happens. This demigod encouraged the wrong mech.

Tarn will not visually see Pharma until further into the truce, pretty damn close in time with when he learns about Silverlight. And well... I've talked about what comes next.