#I'll bet it's strange to be famous for surviving

[bumblingbabooshka]

Voyager’s Crew is so special to me because they range from the most average people alive, fresh-faced newbies and criminals who never signed up for any of this. They are not Starfleet’s best (half of them aren’t even Starfleet). They are not uniquely suited to anything about the situation they’ve been thrown into. They were not prepared in the slightest for this. It’s just a ship full of people who were meant to be going on a quick pick-em-up mission suddenly having to fight tooth and nail to survive together for ostensibly the rest of their lives. And even though they do somehow make it back their entire lives have been changed by the experience. Even though they’ve come back home they haven’t returned. They never will.

[gorbalsvampire]

Character Build: OMG THIRD VOERMAN SISTER CONFIRMED

Bet that got your attention.

Six years ago when I was first coming back to fandom and ficcing thereof, I was working on a Life Is Strange: Before the Storm/Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines crossover that involved a character being picked up to be Therese and Jeanette Voerman's body double (among other things). Lots of dark and sexy ideas spinning off that (using Possession to let the sisters "see" each other eye to eye). One day I'll actually get to reworking it (and you will be the first to hear, follow @fatal-allegiance if you wanna).

Independently, my dear @gwenynen-bach was workshopping ideas for her lil' thinblood Malkavian girl Beatrice and what she could be getting up to in LA. The topic of heterochromia in Malks came up, as it does, and as an IRL heterochrome herself, m'pal wanted to say "stuff the cliche I want representation," or words to that effect. Which got us both thinking... here's this girl, and she's blonde and heterochromic and kinda dresses slut-goth anyway and... what if. What if?

Anyway, an hour later and there was a character build tuned to our own personal brain rot. Enjoy.

We started this one in an unusual position, with the Thin-Blood Merits and Flaws, because when one participant doesn't know about those and you have ninety minutes to kill, ol' relleytrots here goes into exposition mode.

The package needed to be "diet Malkavian" enough for the character to pass for a full Kindred, if she was careful and clever, and fool even herself for a while. Hence: Discipline Affinity (Auspex) and Clan Bane (Malkavian), paired off against each other. We doubled down with the dreams-and-prophecies angle shared by Malks and Thin-Bloods: Lucid Dreams and Night Terrors. The last layer is a unique advantage: to work as a body double for a semi-famous night-time figure, it would help to be a Day Drinker, which we countered with Twilight Presence. Beatrice is a weird girl - not super freaky, but off-putting somehow, and a small malus to Social rolls fits there.

Now. By the books, Thin-Bloods are all fledglings and don't get a Predator Type, and for #content like this I'm sticking to those rules. IF I WASN'T, she'd be a Sandman, and she'd enter play with one dot of Auspex, because she has the Affinity for it. Beatrice has seen play and we know she likes to break into places and do chomps. I almost gave her Vein Tapper for one of her mandatory Flaws, but I was running out of space on the character sheet so I leant on another area of her backstory: Shunned (Camarilla). She got out by the skin of her teeth and there's a reason she's hanging out deep in the Free State now.

Merit choices were easy. If you're playing a Thin-Blood, you have Bloodhound. You need Bloodhound. Without Bloodhound, you're on Even Harder Mode. Beatrice here doesn't have Alchemy at character creation, it's something she's currently working on in her text adventures, so she's running mostly on the Disciplines she picks up from feeding, which means Resonances are vital, which means: Bloodhound.

The rest is all from the Voerman Loresheet. Somewhere to stay and hunt, a job to do, and a Baroness who's noted their resemblance and will stand up for her mini-me.

That's as far as we got together, but then I chewed into stats and skills on my own time. Attribute distribution leant heavily on the Composure to resist questioning, the Wits to stay alert, and enough Charisma and Manipulation that the minor downside of being a creepy weird girl wasn't a problem. Strength as dump. Lookit her. She's a schemer, not a fighter.

For Skills I flipped the Artist template around, putting more into Insight and Awareness than Performance and Academics. Her Life Event was "cheated on her spouse," because Streetwise and Survival fit with a character who lies all the time, and has been on the lam at least once. Hobby skills were Finance, Medicine and Occult, given the clinic business she's dabbled in and her burgeoning interest in Alchemy, and then it's utility for the rest. Stealth and Larceny at two, Subterfuge, Investigation, Etiquette and Drive at one.

Specialties are at player discretion: there's one in Academics, one in Performance, and one to go anywhere.

There she is. One little fledgling Voerman impersonator, ready to go.

[another-sonic-blog]

The Fanfictioner

Prologue

Synopsis: Amy Rose secretly writes fanfiction out of the not so famous 'Sonic Boom' show in which she and her friends are the main actors. Everything was fine, filming the show and then writing. However, everything changed when the famous actor, Shadow the Hedgehog, showed up to participate in the show. Just like Amy, Shadow hides a secret. He loves to read fanfiction but will never admit that out loud. Shadow one day stumbles upon Amy's fanfiction and without knowing, they develop a friendly bond over comments, likes and messages of support. On work, Shadow and Amy have a normal co-worker relationship that will never develop more than that.   They fight in real life but are best-friends online. Will they ever find out each other's identities? And if they do, will things change between them?

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When the romantic movie ended, Amy just couldn't stop thinking about the great acting in 'The Forest of Dreams.' Her friends and she had decided to get together for a well deserve movie night after battling Eggman for the whole week. With the hopes that he wouldn't burst into Hedgehog Village as he usually does. "It's a shame that we ended up seeing that indie movie ..." Sonic said as he opened the door to exit the movie theater. "I wanted to see Chao in Space!" "Yeah, too bad they ran out of tickets. Critics say that it is one of the best movies in the last decade." Tails looked around his group of friends, making sure that no one was missing. Nonetheless, he noticed that his pink friend was awfully quiet, looking at the ground. "Everything alright Amy?" As if his words didn't reach her ears, Amy kept looking down at the ground, silent. This time, Sonic noticed Amy's unusual mannerism and decided to investigate. "Amy?" Sonic's voice was all that she needed to get back to reality. The rosette hedgehog snapped her head and met emerald eyes. "Yes?" "You are very quiet ... That's not like you." Sonic said. Team Sonic had already begun their journey to go back home. It was late at night but the village's light poles gave them enough illumination to know their path. Walking through the village, they encountered a few Mobians still out, doing their thing and helping the atmosphere to be more vivid. "Sorry, I was just thinking about the movie ... The acting was amazing, wasn't it?" The pink one had a soft smile placed on her face, showing her excitement. "The actors were so young too, they look around our age ... 17 and they are so talented already." "I have to admit that batgirl was very beautiful." Knuckles let out an enamored sigh. "Yes and her acting was admirable," Amy said. "But the one that got my interest was that black hedgehog ... He indeed will become a great actor soon." Without the pink hedgehog knowing, Sonic rolled his eyes in annoyance. There was only one hedgehog she could fangirl about and that was him. "He was alright, I could do better," Sonic said. "I mean he was in an indie movie that's no big deal. I am sure we could all do it ... Right Sticks?" Sonic looked over at his badger friend who was way too quiet. Such an unusual thing of her. "Don't look at me, I fell asleep during the whole movie," Sticks said. "But if we ever become actors, I would love to be in Chao in Space." The team had come to a sudden stop, they had reached the end of the village. This is where they would part ways to their own perspective homes. "Good luck with that, I read that the casting process to get actors for Chao in Space is extremely difficult," Tails said as he faced his friends. "Two years ago, the directors conducted castings all over the world .. Out of thousands of participants only three main actors made it." "Ha, see Ames! There's no way that black hedgehog with average acting skills would be in a movie like Chao in Space." The blue hedgehog looked at the pink one and for the first time in a long time, he saw that Amy was utterly offended. For someone that she doesn't even know nonetheless. "I see great potential in him!" Amy said, her voice raises a little. "I bet he will become a great actor! I dare to say he will be in Chao In Space 2!"

. . . When the pink one got home, she immediately showered, got into her pajamas, and laid on her comfortable bed with her laptop on her lap. She began to browse more things on the 'The Forest of Dreams.' She found interesting things. For example, the name of the beautiful bat protagonist was Rouge the Bat. And then the black hedgehog's name appeared ... Shadow the Hedgehog. He was the co-protagonist and in all honesty, it was been a while since Amy felt such admiration for someone. Could you blame her? Shadow was an excellent actor. His profound words as he confessed his undying love to the protagonist were just ... So pure. It wasn't only the dialogue but the way he delivered the message. More than anything, Amy felt her heart skip a beat at each word he said. As if his confession was meant for her.

His words were strong and too real ... way too real. As if Shadow the Hedgehog was actually in love with Rouge the Bat.

And so this began.

Amy of course knew of the many wonders of the internet. One of them were fandoms and within fandoms were content creators.

The pink one wasn't unaware that many content creators wrote fanfiction. After all, Team Sonic had its own base of fans. They were the heroes of the village and Mobius nonetheless, always defending it against Eggman and other villains. So, it was natural that stories about them would be written. She read many of them especially the SonAmy ones, her guilty pleasure.

Although she had never written a fanfiction, Amy felt different about this one. In 'The Forest of Dreams' the ending was a cliffhanger. Amy desired more than anything than to provide a good conclusive ending. She had written before but only for school projects like essays and creative writing but never like this ... Never for a fandom.

Was it strange? That she wanted to see more of the exceptional romantic development between Rouge and Shadow?

Amy didn't care, it was just for fun. What was the harm in that?

And so ... Amy began to write.

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"Shadow, what are you doing?"

On the other side of the island, a tiny wooden house in the middle of the forest emitted enough light to be seen in the night.

"Reading a story."

The black hedgehog responded, not leaving his eyesight away from his phone.

"Since when do you read?"

"Someone has to do it in this house."

The black hedgehog who was comfortably sitting on his sofa was greeted suddenly by the warmness of a beautiful blue-eyed bat.

"Our movie was released a few weeks ago ... Do you think we did well?" Rouge asked as she tried to get a peek of Shadow's phone but she was slow and Shadow was fast to close the internet tab.

"We won't know until next week when our producer calls us ... Hopefully, we get enough money to repair Omega." Shadow said as he looked over to the dining table where robot parts laid scatter across the wooden table. Shadow frowned as he saw Omega's head, immobile and without life. He was still inside there but Omega won't be the way he was until reparations were made.

"We really messed up on the last mission ... Didn't we?"

Rouge's voice was soft and she showed such concern that it made the black hedgehog's heart shrink a bit. Shadow let out a heavy sigh, he hated to see the white bat like that and although he would often disagree, there was no option but to affirm her assumption this time.

"We did ... That's why we are never going to steal again ... Never." Shadow said as he felt Rouge leaning her head on his shoulder and he didn't mind the act at all.

"... I wanted to steal a Chaos Emerald."

The black hedgehog let out a small smirk as he placed his arm around Rouge's shoulders. "I promise that one day I'll give you a Chaos Emerald and I'll give Omega one of those lie detectors he wants."

"Hopefully, this acting thing comes out alright ... I mean all of those years acting to survive and steal must pay off in this movie we made."

   Small memories crossed the white bat's mind. She remembers all of those times as a child that she and Shadow acted on street plays to get a few coins to eat something. More recent memories of them acting like business people, politicians, and regular folks also popped in her mind. All of that just so their stealing missions could go smoothly and unnoticed.

How Rouge, Shadow, and Omega met was a very interesting story, one that will be told at another time.

"Let's hope for the best."

   A few minutes passed in which Shadow and Rouge shared it in complete silence. The dark hedgehog looked over his shoulder in which he found Rouge completely asleep. With his phone still on his hand, he opened once again the previous internet tab he had before.

It was just a matter of time before his curiosity overtook him. As far as the internet said, 'The Forest of Dreams' was an excellent film even if it was an independent movie. Even art and small stories were already created in honor of the film.

Eventually, he found himself on a page called fanxfiction.com. An internet page where writers could write whatever they wanted online and others could interact with these authors by liking, sharing, and commenting on their work.

Shadow scrolled through the webpage and a story caught his interest. The synopsis was captivating , the tale was about an alternative ending to the movie's original ending.

The Forest of Dreams: A Love Story.

By A Rose Without Thorns

And so ... Shadow began to read.

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A/N: I want to thank @redsunlight​ for the amazing artwork! Please go check out her artwork! 

The first chapter is coming out in a couple of minutes I just need to upload it in here. I recommend following me on Wattpad since Tumblr can be complicated at times and won’t let me upload. 

Also there’s a new chapter coming out for ‘By Accident’ really soon!

Next: https://another-sonic-blog.tumblr.com/post/621393925974999040/the-fanfictioner-ch1 

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/user/PeachesAndReams