#but as far as canon goes. i just think that if some ghost came out of nowhere possessed me for several weeks

[fruit-colored-ninja]

I think my most unpopular ninjago opinion is that in canon I just genuinely can’t see any way lloyd and morro would ever end up being friends

[mamaclownhunter]

I read a few but I am kinda soft for the idea of System!SY but like a player in a Video game.

Specifically I am thinking of the game Off! Where the player is their own entity the character it kinda aware of.

So SY dies and wakes up when Binghe lands in the abyss. He is given the objective to help Binghe out of the Abyss and steer him towards the best ending!!!

SY is excited because he!!! Gets to help Binghe!!

Binghe is pissed his seal came off and now he is being ordered around by some green spirit. His powers are still sealed and slowly being released by said kinda annoying ghost.

The worst part other then the Ghost being overly excited to be in Hell and seemed to be too elated about one of the worst fucking moments of his life-

The Ghost is actually fucking helpful. ‘Shen Yuan’ (what a fucking joke to give him a ‘Shen’ as a guide) knows more about monsters and their weaknesses, has an idea on what is edible what isn’t, he knows what plants to avoid, what areas are safe- and he also seems to genuinely want to keep him safe.

SY has a the video game advantage of either knowing when attacks are coming or knowing how heavy an attack will be. He also knows what Binghe can do at anytime/is controlling the attacks to some extent- either pokemon style or like the game OFF! Where is auto attacks or manual where Binghe can’t attack unless SY! Chooses.

For the first little bit Binghe resists or does the opposite where SY directs him only to- shockingly- get hit.

So I feel like for the longest time they were just at odds and bickering before SY puts it on auto and just plays it like a turn based game. Like for him sometimes time is slower except for Binghe, so he has faster reactions and honestly is more in canon with the “protagonist halo”. Where he can spend points and has his own little influence if things are dire otherwise he is more or less following his favorite protagonist through the story.

And Being such a big Binghe fan he is more than happy to just Let Binghe have the power only taking control when things look dire. He is the biggest hype man, offering information and support, offering insight or knowledge only him as a strange green figment that only Binghe can see.

He vanishes when Binghe flirts with women though. He goes off and explores or watches monsters, he hated this aspect of the book and if Binghe wants then he should- he only gets protective and sticks around if he feels like Binghe is getting taken advantage of- (though the first few times Binghe snapped at him and told him to scram- so he did in his own pissy fit) they go right back to Bickering but fuck SY still cares and he kinda likes how he can see this part of Binghe’s story.

They can’t go far from each other (I am thinking about as far as camera can scroll out) but SY can turn off audio and stuff on his side.

Though eventually Binghe just starts to trust SY. If SY says right he is moving right, if SY says between the eyes his sword is inbetween their eyes, if SY says run and hide he vanishes from the field. Because for all the bitching, raging and ranting- Binghe does notice a lot is on his sake.

And you know…. In the Abyss he isn’t alone. He isn’t figuring this shit out by himself he has someone who floats next to him asking what he wants to improve. Attack? Speed? Health? He has someone that he can mentally connect with and they just both viciously attack low IQ villian and plots where only they can hear.

The angst that the only person to interact with SY is Binghe. Who he can’t hold when Binghe has nightmares, who he can only heal if he has the resources and to produce medicine/fast heal, but is also the only person who sees and hears SY. So if he is ignoring SY- SY is alone- and I think deep down he is a social person. Binghe is subjected to a flood of questions SY wants to ask.

And Binghe has one person who cares about him and is always at his side (even forced SY never implies he feels forced in fact he seems always excited to be next to Binghe)- and Binghe can’t touch him, can’t feed him (‘I would love to try your food- but I can’t.’), can’t cherish him.

SY who is nice, who is considerate, compassionate, he cursed like he lives in a brothel and rages like a demon- but he also scolds Binghe for ignoring people, he snaps when Binghe doesn’t actually help- just takes what he wants and leaves, he believes Binghe is so much better for the world if he only got over himself and stopped thinking with his rage and anger. He thinks Binghe is smart, he thinks Binghe is strong, he thinks even half demon- Binghe is meant to be good.

What a kick in the stomach.

They can’t touch but Shen Yuan is trying his fucking best to get Binghe through hell. He apologizes for bad calls, he gets better himself, he takes his hands off the reigns but I think there are times he can’t help it. They fight, they talk, they are together.

Shen Yuan always loves Binghe and maybe he still ends up a little blackened but Binghe is quietly determined to make SY corporal. Pull him from that control panel and somewhere Binghe can hold him close. Maybe tuck him away in a nice little cottage where there is a little farm and greenhouse with all the plants SY can tend to, bookshelves filled to the brim with books and stories, in a place where SY can see all sorts of creatures to his hearts content.

The “Video Game” character being protective of their “player”

SY being a rage gamer also is so funny to me, Binghe is the only one he hears the absolute filth and insults SY throws at their enemies and frankly he either repeats it or relents that he isn’t as creative.

Binghe maybe not aware of his protagonist halo but aware of the little green ghost who can just barely manipulate the world if Binghe is in enough trouble. Shen Yuan being the only one who gets quests and updates of things Binghe needs to do and being limited on what he can tell Binghe.

The soft apologies when SY can’t control where they go or what happens can only help Binghe respond.

This is long and I am still pulling thoughts but I am slowly getting brain rot

[jackdaw-sprite]

Hi, @ep-10 ! I was your truce gifter this year for @phandomholidaytruce and I decided to use your prompts for a Japanese ghost--kinda, but mostly for a biopunk fantasy au. You're getting some character designs for a biopunk fantasy AU set in a world suspiciously similar to Sengoku era Japan! And also backstory. Mostly backstory, really.

Warning for someone getting baked alive in a kiln.

I mean, we all know who.

Jack and Maddie Fenton are a married pair of researcher/alchemists who've been brought into the country with the influence of an old friend of theirs, Vlad. He wants them to figure out the secret to producing porcelain, an expensive and magically versatile ceramic with a production process that's a closely guarded secret in a nearby, much more economically powerful country.

To this end, Vlad has supplied the Fentons with enough wealth and resources to not ask things like "where did you get this?" and "what exactly is going to happen when it gets out that we're trying to make porcelain?"

As it turns out, this is a very important question, because together the pair piece together how to build a kiln that burns hotter than any they've ever seen before and for the very first time make the coveted porcelain.

The victory is short lived: their son Daniel goes missing that very day, and then their search for him is waylaid by another discovery: some of the porcelain is coming to life, animated by a horrific amalgam of flesh and vitriol. They must find Danny, but first they must make sure the monsters they've made are destroyed…

So! The three big players in our cast of characters here are Jack, Maddie, and poor, poor Danny. They are coincidentally the only ones I had time to do a character design for, so let's look at Jack first, who is holding an experimental porcelain vase:

That's quite an outfit. It's, uh. Not quite standard in the Sengoku: while he's wearing a hitatare, it's been modified, and he's chosen not to wear pants because it's technically not, like, a crime. I chose this for him because Jack:

a) Does not care about what everyone thinks of what he's wearing, or he wouldn't wear a jumpsuit all the time in canon b) Hates the feel of most clothes

Hitatare were growing in popularity during the Sengoku because of how comfortable they were, so it seemed a good fit for Jack. They didn't necessarily need to be worn with hakama if you were of a lower class, but it would be frowned upon to go without if you were off a higher class.

The modifications he and Maddie have made to it make it even less restrictive than a standard hitatare, and a bit more suited to their work of experimenting with kilns and clay.

The obi is stitched into place, so it doesn't actually act like a belt and put a line of pressure across Jack's stomach, and they've added a button to the side to hold the hitatare closed, instead. The stitching around the sleeve openings is pretty archaic by this point, but they've kept (or added) it so he can draw the openings closed when he wants, and a second draw string runs along his sleeve to let him draw the sleeves away from his hands when needed, while still letting him let them extend to their full length to act as a barrier between his skin and unpleasant textures.

He's got some leather gloves and a pair of very early goggles to protect his hands and eyes from the heat of the kilns.

The geta act as an additional layer of protection against bad textures, since they should keep him above mud.

Maddie, here holding a shattered fragment of porcelain, is dressed far less eccentrically, because this (left) is before the porcelain came to life. She's just wearing a kosode with hakama and a leather apron. (She has gloves too, they're just tucked away at her back) The smaller sleeves stay out of the way while she works, and the hakama are roomy. She's wearing waraji, because she prefers what I assume is more stable footing and a lower center of gravity.

This is especially true after they start fighting the porcelain. Pictured here, you can see she keeps her hair out of her face with a standard low ponytail, and the Fenton Anti-Creep stick manages to still exist in this world, despite all odds.

This Anti-Creep stick is a bokken with embedded teeth of broken porcelain for a better shattering potential--metal, especially enough metal of sufficient quality for a sword, is expensive, and they're dealing with something that's only a stronger ceramic…

Which brings us to the kiln. And, to his great misfortune, to Danny.

This is a multi-chambered climbing kiln. While I don't think it's the first kiln that allowed firing temperatures to reach that required for porcelain in Japan in our world, it's the most common and appeared around the same time as that first one. The design of it encourages airflow in a way that traps and directs heat to build it on itself and distribute it reasonably evenly.

The kiln chambers would get filled with the pots to be fired, then they would set a fire in the little step down in each chamber. Then they would seal the kiln chambers entrances with fire bricks, except for a small stoking hole to keep the fires fed.

Then they'd light the main fire at the mouth to the first, lowest chamber called the stoke hole and the fire box respectively.

And then they would keep the fires lit, and feed them, wood upon wood upon wood…

Until eventually, the kiln warmed, grew sweltering, grew hot, hot like fire, like iron in a forge and then hotter still, until the whole of the inside glows.

Like the center of the earth.

…

At the lowest, porcelain requires a firing temperature of 1000 degrees. Celsius.

Brass melts, at that temperature. Porcelain itself gets its strength from melting.

And Danny…

Danny tripped. Danny was loading one of the chambers, and he tripped and he hit his head and by the time he woke he was sweating.

He tried to crawl away from where he knew the fires were. The flue, where the spent air left the kiln, has charred finger marks where his burnt away after the carbon dioxide and heat drove him unconscious a second time.

It was a mercy.

By the time he woke again, his body was cooling.

You see, the Fentons enchanted the kiln to make it try to repair pieces that were falling apart during the firing process. And, if one piece was destroyed in the firing anyway, to use the fragments to reinforce the other pieces in the kiln.

Danny was in the kiln. Danny's body failed.

Bone ash is not a critical ingredient in porcelain, but its presence makes it much, much stronger.

Danny woke up made of porcelain.

His sandals left black on the soles of his feet and the fingers on one hand that had burned looked skeletal. But he woke up.

And he ran.

Later, he'll find help. Later, he'll find a way to fight the other things in the kiln that day, and the results of later firings. Later, he'll meet a boy who loves puzzles and information and who teaches him how to use a bow and arrow to keep his fragile body intact. He'll meet a girl who loves foraging (partly because it gets her away from her parents) but loves justice more.

(Whether he'll stop wearing his clothes like a corpse is another question.)

Danny here is wearing something hitatare adjacent and hakama, along with a yugake.

Happy truce!

[mail-me-a-snail]

kicking my legs in the air. tell us more abt silvervance i am fascinated with whatever they've got going on

i mean. god where do i even begin.

so first off there's their main tag where i put all the posts that even vaguely remind me of them............like there are posts in there i would not show to my irls let alone god.

anyway. silvervance is the ship ever. they're both products of arasaka's influence, whether thru their own free will (in vance's case, or so he'd like to believe) or otherwise (in johnny's, vis-a-vis his eponymous prosthetic arm). they both manufactured their identities for an audience wider than themselves. they both recognize this similarity between them.

when vance came back 2 life with johnny in his head, he saw himself in johnny and he didnt like what he saw.

but as u know, in game canon, vance had no choice but to suck it up and bear the ghost's anti-corp, anti-capitalist, anti-night-city, rambling. oh woe! woe! is johnny silverhand, night city's last rockerboy turned co-pilot for arasaka's missing asset.

the thing is. the thing is. with everyone telling vance that the best course of action would be to excise johnny--with hellman telling him point blank that its not possible as well--he doesn't want johnny gone.

johnny becomes second nature to him, more than just a poltergeist who offers him snippy quips and lame one-liners. who likes annoying the hell out of him or who likes making him laugh by doing bits of physical comedy that johnny knows only vance will see.

he just grows to have so much. affection for this man. this man loser who he wishes he had known when things might've been simpler between them.

in the hypothetical good ending for silvervance where they get their own bodies, they're gonna move out to some colder state, somewhere that snows. they're gonna move as far away from local civilization as possible. but they're still gonna find merc work together because neither of them are quite suited to a domestic life.

they take each other's poisons when they finally separate; vance grows wolfish and snarky and johnny goes quiet and smiles a little too much like a dog, lips curled over his teeth. vance is brash and a risk-taker; johnny is loyal to someone other than himself for once.

they'll eat each other alive one of these days. they could not think of a better set of teeth to do it than one that so closely resembles their own.

in my heart n soul i know they find each other in every universe. not that they will happen upon each other; that they'll actively look for the other, not knowing who it is they're looking for at first, but just knowing that there is someone out there for them. i don't usually like throwing the term soulmate around but it's something a lot like that.

they'll find each other in the corpo rat au, they'll find each other in the father vance au, they'll even find each other in the ending where vance stayed with arasaka. there's no separating them and it drives me bonkers. insane, even. i wrote four fics in a haze for them bc of how much they drive me up a wall

anyway ty for the ask <3

[amratsu]

oh yeah. this came up somewhere else so I might as well share some POWER LEVEL DISCUSSION. explanations under read more. Not sorted within the tiers.

Singularity Tier: doesn't need explaining, especially with recent MSQ where grandjeet can basically D4C their way into being the literal perfect version of themselves across all multiverses

Juiced Up Tier: Astral + some extra juice. Needs multiples of the tier below to take them on. Avatar Belial is however notably unstable and can be stalled out. Bubz is a hilarious jobber but is supposed to be strong. People here could feasibly delete an island as a general feat of power. Lucilius, Cosmos, six dragons, and so on would go here too

Inner Teachings/Eternal Tier: Prime fuckos of the sky. Top class mortal + top tier extra juice (primal or eternal weapon). Luminary Knights are about here as well. Could render an island uninhabitable. Cag belongs here but probably couldn't straight up fight anyone else in the tier; on the flip side she's capable of more raw destruction given time, and is the win con vs higher tiers in group scrambles. Boundary accessed eternals would go to Juiced Up. Narmaya is the other anomaly here but she's considered about equal to Octo and Funf.

Combat Focused Primal or Primal Hunter Tier: Self-explanatory. Could demolish a landscape. Society members don't need much explanation, they're powerful + their weapons are extremely strong, but not Revenant tier (if they got access to the automagod forms more easily, this would likely bump them up). Siegfried punches above the rest of the dragon knights by virtue of dragon blood. Belial I've never considered to have too much raw power, he's just smart. Anila's here by virtue of extrapolation; spars between Zodiacs have been shown to fuck up the area around them without much effort on their part (and that's between Kumby and Vikky, who consider themselves pretty weak). Grimnir is called a War God but I don't think he has many explicit displays of power so far. Charlotta eats her vegetables. Yuel and Socie canonically can make skyscraper high pillars of flame with their dances as a normal thing, and their story villain is pretty high up there.

Paragon Mortal Tier: Could destroy a town/make it evacuate. tbh Metera could cheese out people higher tier than her since she can fly. Otherwise, she's never really shown any explicit feat of power. I've never considered the Dragon Knights SUPER powerful as far as the whole cast goes, and they generally don't solo any of their threats, but they're the best within their groups.

Strong Combatant: Could destroy a building. Ladiva and Soriz don't have anything going for them besides martial arts. Ferry's not really ever indicated to be a strong combatant besides being a ghost and having a bunch of support summons.

Civvie: dude that's our fucking mess hall cook.

[thir13enghosts]

Do you think any of the women are feminist or support feminism? I know for a FACT Royce is drinking "Respect Women Juice" all day everyday

uhhh kind of? i mean i feel like the only one who actively considered/called herself a feminist would've been jean, coming from the vantage point of being from the late 2000s - early 2010s and having more access to feminist material (both from the past and the present) compared to everyone else

as for the others...

(also disclaimer: i'm going with My versions of the ghosts which tend to differ a bit from canon. just roll with it)

billy michaels: billy was like at most 10 years old when he died. he was probably still in his "ewww girls have cooties" phase. he had no concept of feminism.

jimmy gambino: ngl to you, not really lol. i mean he more or less supported women both then and now (at the very least he wasn't Actively misogynistic, which is the bare minimum), but at the same time i feel like he's the type to call a woman he Just met "sweetheart" or "honey" so yeah. he says stupid shit every now and then, but he'll also listen to you when you call it out and make the effort to not do that again (or at the very least not do it in front of you). might roll his eyes or even laugh at you at first, but he'll still make the effort. like the guy's not perfect by any means but. he's trying.

dana newman: that's a complicated one. on one hand, dana strikes me as someone who probably dealt with a Lot of internalized misogyny, and this goes for both my version & the canon version. probably lowkey prided herself on (whilst also hating herself for) her attempts at being a "good woman" which was basically: keep your head down, keep your legs crossed, keep your mouth shut, remember the man is always right, and maybe this time he'll be nicer to you. hasn't really worked for her so far, but third fourth fifth time's a charm! but on the other hand, i also think that dana was at least Aware of the feminist movements taking place during her time (the 1960s) and likely supported feminist goals, even if she never voiced it out loud. like she wanted to believe that things might get better for her and other women but didn't really hold out much hope for it Actually happening.

royce clayton: i feel like he was better than most boys his age when it came to Not Being Shit To Women (which...unfortunately isn't saying much considering this is the 1950s we're talking abt here), but i don't think he thought much abt feminism itself aside from whatever he might've heard on the news or from the papers. he's kinda like jimmy where he'll say something kinda Ehhh every now and then, but he'll also listen to you when you call it out and make the effort to not do that again. his mamá taught him to be respectful after all, and even after all this time, even after all the ways being a ghost has changed his personality, he doesn't wanna let her down.

susan legrow: kind of? like if you told her some feminist talking points without telling her they were feminist talking points, she'd probably agree with them, but she definitely wouldn't have called herself a feminist. remember, susan was around during the reagan administration; she probably only knew feminists as the stereotype of like bitter, man-hating, lonely Bitches with hairy pits (oh the HORROR!!! /s) and harsh voices and no sense of humor who at best were trying to ruin everyone's fun and at worst were actively trying to Exterminate All Men. it was very much like "tbh that does make a lot of sense...but if i started talking Like That, then no guy would wanna go out with me and i want guys to go out with me! that's definitely what i actually want for myself after all and not just me imitating what i've been taught all Normal Girls want!"

isabella smith: feminism wasn't a Thing during her time. however, i imagine she did have somewhat progressive views for her time (which was probably part of why she was so ostracized), and i do feel like if feminism as a term/social movement was Around back then, she definitely would be a feminist

amelia shelburne: i feel like amelia had Heard the word "feminism" and maybe even had an idea of what goals feminism was striving for (at the time), but idk how much she really knew abt it—mostly bc i still go back and forth on how much she knew abt life outside the circus she & her mother travelled with in general. and even then i feel like she was probably a passive supporter at most, like "that sounds great and i wish them luck but i've got Other Things to worry abt"

margaret shelburne: no but in a very resigned kind of way? as far as margaret was concerned, this feminism idea was for the """normal""" women in the big cities, not for a "circus freak" like herself.

george markley: i don't think george would've identified as a feminist, but that's not to say that he would've been a misogynist. i do think that he at the very least thought that women should be respected as the fellow human beings they are. however the feminism movement that was going on during the time that the markleys lived and died was first wave feminism, and first wave feminism was primarily focused on the rights of white women. intersectionality—such as considering the plight of women of color or working class women and how that would further impact their experience with misogyny—wasn't a priority at the time. and since both george and his wife (i've been thinking her name was ruth) were working class black ppl living in rural late 1800s virginia, they weren't ppl that a lot of popular first wave feminists would make space for.

lenore howlett: no bc part of being a feminist requires caring abt other women/other ppl in general and lenore just...doesn't.

horace mahoney: oh fuck no, absolutely not. horace doesn't see women as people—he sees women as machines with parts that he can disassemble and put back together as he pleases. literally.

[ailendolin]

Thanks for tagging me @viola-halogen!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

199 at the moment. Which is a little insane.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,054,233

3. What fandoms do you write for?

At the moment, I mainly write for BBC Ghosts, Yonderland and Bill (2015) and Horrible Histories. I have posted a few Loki fics recently as well because the new season came out and inspired me but it's back to Ghosts now.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. When Sorrow Sang (6,806 kudos - The Witcher)

2. Helpless (2,215 kudos - Thor Movies)

3. For The Best (2,190 - Stranger Things)

4. Here With Me (1,952 - Thor Movies)

5. A Moment (858 - Loki Series)

All those fics were written for large fandoms so it's no surprise they gained more attention than, say, my Six Idiots fics)

5. Do you respond to comments?

Absolutely! Fandom thrives on interaction and the reason I post my fics online is because I want to talk about my favourite characters with other people! That's how I have found my closest fandom friends :)

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Mhm, I think my Capvers fic Missed Chances probably fits that bill. Also Attentions (Kendall/Ellis of Woolworth), my 1917 fic God is not here and my Hornblower fic Cast aside.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Since most of my stories end on a happy note, it's hard to pick just one out of the 199. I think I'll go with my Thomas-centric fic The Storyteller because it focuses on Thomas finding his place in his family through storytelling and ends on a very heartwarming note. The same goes for Renovations.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I haven't so far, thank the gods. I honestly don't get why people would comment hateful things on something other people share for free. If you don't like something, just close the tab and move on. It's as simple as that.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No and I never will. I have alluded to it in some stories if it was necessary for the plot (like in Compromise which was all about Thomas and Julian needing different things from their relationship) but I have no intention of ever writing it in detail because it's just not my cup of tea.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I do - very rarely because I like to stay true to canon as much as possible. Crossovers or alternate universes often don't work for me because too much gets changed and the characters often become unrecognisable in the process. But I am very fond of my Button House Museum AU which is essentially a crossover between Ghosts and Night At The Museum where Button House is an old museum that comes to life every night thanks to ancient Stone Circle magic.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know.

12. Does not exist apparently

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Have I? I don't think so. I have collaborated with an artist before for an event but that's it, I think.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

I don't have one all-time favourite ship because I don't move on from fandoms. Once I love something, I love it with my whole heart. There might come a point where it stops consuming my every waking thought but it will always stay with me. Some of my oldest ships are Janeway/Chakotay from Star Trek Voyager, Sam Carter/Jack O'Neill from Stargate SG1 and Mulder/Scully from the X-Files.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have had a third installment for my The Pacific series Moments of a Different Past planned years ago. A part of it is already written and I know exactly where I want the story to go but I'll probably never finish it which makes me a bit sad.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Oh this is difficult. I'd say conveying emotions and writing fics that feel like a warm hug? At least that's what people tell me they like about my stories - that they almost always end on a warm note and make them smile.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Dialogue, probably. Getting the voices right. English is my second language so dialects etc. often go straight over my head. Writing in a second language can be quite frustrating in general because you're aware your knowledge is limited and you keep catching yourself using the same phrases over and over again but don't really have the skills to shake it up a little.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I'm honestly not a fan of it. I think the odd word or phrase here or there is fine but as a reader, I find it very tedious to have to go to the end of a fic/chapter for the translation all the time so it's something I personally try to avoid (both when reading and writing).

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I honestly don't remember. Perhaps Digimon? Or Yu-Gi-Oh? Though tbf I've daydreamed fics even before I knew what fanfiction were or even thought about writing them down, so if we were to go that far back, it would probably be Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Oh, that's so hard to say because I pour my heart and soul into every fic I write. That being said, I am very fond of the multi-chaptered fics I've written, so Grace and This place (I never thought would feel like home) are definitely among my favourite BBC Ghosts fic. The Sound of Voices Two and The Rivers Between Us for The Pacific are two fics I also love to go back to and re-read. Sometimes, it's not a specific fic but rather the universe that connects them that I have created. My Yonderland fics fall into that category and it's always a joy to return to it.

Tagging: @magicaltear @ginevralinton and @i-am-a-world but as always no pressure💙

[wfagamerants]

A thing I often see people bring up and have also had some…questionable experiences with, is the concept of Mario canon and lore.

Because of it, I wanna give my take in a more detailed manner, to have it out in the open.

Right off the bat, I do think Mario has a degree of lore, because frankly, a certain base amount is normal to have. We do see concepts revisited and older games referenced. Every once in a while, we even get some surprising examples of tighter continuity.

The shining example of this is the Mario & Luigi series. These games are remarkably tightly knit into each other, with many recurring characters, original and established, as well as genuine arcs for characters like Fawful, Luigi and Bowser. There is also Super Mario Land 1, 2 and Wario Land all following up on each other or WarioWare calling back to old stuff in a surprisingly tight manner a lot.

Those are some examples and here is a key thing: this tends to happen more when a series keeps the same developer. A sub-series can have surprisingly continuity at times on its own, but how much we see of that elsewhere varies strongly. Luigi’s ghost hunting career has gotten plenty of acknowledgement, but Mario being the head of a toy company? Not so much.

While there is something there, I do heavily, heavily disagree with the idea that Mario has a consistent continuity and canon, because frankly, it doesn’t.

This Miyamoto quote says it best:

He doesn’t say the characters are actors, but more so compares Mario to old cartoons that could always do their own thing with say, the characters taking on new occupations every episode, without needing to fit in with what came before. Mario is very much like that.

To add to this, Mario has no officially recognized canon. There is no Mushroom Kingdom Hystoria or leaked internal documents or interview statements or TailsTube kind of shows that give us a timeline of when what game happens or which ones ‘’count’’.

This especially goes for the spin-offs. Nothing ever stated them to be lesser or any kind of ‘’non-canon’’, Mario is Mario and Nintendo has never made a hierarchy of how much each game ‘’counts’’ or ‘’matters’’.

The only games I’d genuinely call out of the picture are Smash, due to official statements that the characters there are toys and old licensed stuff like Hotel Mario or the edutainment games, which Nintendo has distanced itself from.

Aside from that, I firmly believe every game is fair game to take into consideration and not be dismissed, which often happens with the spin-offs when discussing inconsistencies, which Mario has a lot of:

Dry Bowser

While multiple versions of the same character appearing on spin-off rosters is nothing unusual, Dry Bowser has some more oddities to him.

In the first New Super Mario Bros, Mario Party 10 and Jr’s Journey, Dry Bowser is Bowser’s undead form, simple as that.

Meanwhile in spin-offs he often appears as his own character, but that isn’t where it ends. He appears as a explicably separate character in the Mario & Sonic games, even in a story mode capacity, Puzzles & Dragons has him as a bonus boss and unlockable character, with Bowser already in your party at this point and Mario Party Island Tour goes as far as to call him a close family friend:

It extends outside of spin-offs too, since he also appears in Super Mario 3D Land and New Super Mario Bros 2’s special worlds, even kidnapping Luigi in the former right after Bowser is defeated. What’s notable here is that Bowser is shown alive and well in the credits of both games:

So yeah, there is no consistency here. 3D Land and NSMB2 are more of an implied case, since we never see them together, but it does show how Dry Bowser is just whatever the game needs him to be.

Where did Mario come from?

The Yoshi games and Mario & Luigi Partners in Time portray Mario and Luigi as having been born and grown up in the Mushroom Kingdom, even knowing Peach since toddler days in case of the latter. Many take this to assume that the original backstory that Mario is from New York, was a western invention, with no basis in japanese materials but that is not the case.

Miyamoto himself has confirmed that Mario Bros takes place in New York:

And Perfect Ban Mario Character Daijiten, a japanese Mario character guide book, written in collaboration with Nintendo, further states that Mario is italian, Foreman Spike an american and that Pauline lives in New York, indicating that Donkey Kong Arcade, Mario Bros and Wrecking Crew all take place there. Most recently, we found out the movie is gonna go with the New York backstory.

While the movie is it’s own take on Mario, Nintendo is directly involved with its creation, so them accepting this backstory in Mario’s biggest mainstream outing outside of video games yet, is telling. It’s even specifically Brooklyn, which was only specified in western materials, showing once again those do matter.

Worth noting is that the series has had other instances of a real world too. The GBC and GBA Tennis and Golf games have story modes centering around humans in a real world, who compete to earn the right to travel to the Mushroom Kingdom. The Mario & Sonic series is also a thing, as odd as the series is, it has never been singled out as not counting and the same can be said about Mario Kart Tour’s real world themed tracks.

Super Mario Odyssey meanwhile goes for an odd middle ground with New Donk City. The New York inspiration is blatant and it is said to be the place Arcade Donkey Kong took place in. At the same time the New Donkers are at odds with the otherwise cartoony Mario humans and we previously already had Big Ape City in Donkey Kong Land, as the city implied to be where DKArcade took place in. It’s not impossible for them to be the same place, but there is nothing official that confirms or denies it.

Dr. Mario 64’s Wario Land Cast

In Wario Land 3, the mooks you were facing are eventually revealed to be the people of the music box world, cursed by Rudy and once he’s defeated, the curse is broken.

In Dr. Mario 64 meanwhile, these same mooks return, either explicitly as minions to Rudy or hanging out, away from the music box world. There is no explanation for it, it’s just a very different interpretation of them.

Paper Mario

The Paper Mario series was never really implied to be a different world from regular Mario. Several PM64 characters even show up in other games and things like Mario’s paper abilities are contextualized as curses, rather than natural abilities, with nobody ever pointing out someone being made out of paper.

Sticker Star onwards change the latter at least, significantly. The paper gimmicks go from visual gag reminders of the artstyle, to being a main attraction and the characters are so fully aware they are made out of paper that they not only regularly point it out, but part of Origami King’s plot even hinges on it.

That said, while this is a big shift in the series, it still makes it little more than an increasingly more stylized take on the Mario universe for the day. It’s not unlike how Yoshi’s Story and Yoshi’s Topsy-Turvy gave a story context to the visual style of the games, while Woolly World and Crafted World just treated it as being how the world always was. It’s just how the world looks for the day, like a special cartoon episode to call back to that Miyamoto quote.

Paper Jam meanwhile specifically treats Paper Mario as its own world, which has never been revisited or acknowledged since. It’s just a one-time thing they did for the sake of the crossover, rather than something with big franchise-wide implications.

The lack of non-Sticker Star elements in Paper Jam and how difficult it can be to reconcile the old Paper Mario world with the current one (especially how much the current genericness of the species is being pointed out in the new games), invites the idea only the new games take place in the book, but that is again, never officially said in any capacity.

The Star Festival

The Star Festival in Super Mario Galaxy is said to occur every 100 years. Despite this, a new one happens in Galaxy 2.

I have seen many arguments that this is the result of the universe being reconstructed at the end of Galaxy, but not only has this never been officially stated, but it’s framed like Mario never met Rosalina before, with her even introducing herself during the ending:

And no, there was no implied memory vibe, Mario even hears her voice at the end of Galaxy.

King Boo.

Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon frames it like King Boo hasn’t seen Luigi ever since the first Luigi’s Mansion, since he just broke out since, which is framed like a twist:

In the context of the LM games on their own, this isn’t a problem, but it is strange given the many appearances King Boo has made between the two games as well as a line where he mentions Baby Luigi as if he was a separate person, like in the spin-offs:

Just an oddity since there is no official timeline that places the games into a particular order and no, LM King Boo and Spin-Off King Boo have never been treated like separate characters.

Those are some notable examples I can think of. There isn’t a clean way to reconcile things without jerry picking and I don’t agree with that practice because again: Mario has no officially recognized canon, so doing so would only end up being a series of pick and choose with no official backing on what sources are the correct ones.

And the thing is, that’s okay. As that Miyamoto quote already went into, Mario is a loose cartoon canon, where things can be altered as needed in the name of making a fun game.

There are plenty of series with a genuinely defined canon you can track, read up on and see officially set in stone. Mario is not one of them and it doesn’t need to be.

[overthinkingtaleblr]

My Toilet Toucher Headcanon Masterlist

Well to keep it short and sweet, I actually think that the TT isn’t actually from that far into the future from where Billy is now— I think he’s more accurately from the recent past… To be less short and sweet—

It got really long so, everything’s below the cut! Minus some pictures, have some.

General Powers / History HCs

(I mention canon in this but I do consider canon to be nebulous, so just consider it the building blocks of my arguments so nothing sounds like it’s coming out of nowhere <3)

I actually think that the TT isn’t actually from that far into the future from where Billy is now— I think he’s more accurately from the recent past. This is largely because of a few reasons, not least of which being that the Toilet Toucher is also Ghost’s uncle Ernie, meaning Ghost had to either see pictures of or meet him in the past. This is further backed up by the TT saying that Johnny Roast was his favorite member of PIE— a member of PIE in its early days, and one who had long since been uninvolved since the TT suddenly arrived on the scene. In fact, by the time the TT first appeared, there’s a chance that Roast had been perma-dead for years, depending on how you interpret canon. I think he found a way to travel through time using a similar power to the one he uses to travel through space (cough, touching the toilets… also possibly butts? Yeah I dunno how canon that second one is.) and I think both are just further expansions of powers Billy already has. We possibly see Billy use this power at the end of the ~Sally’s First Day Of High School~ video or whatever it’s called…

Basically, Billy is working for Darth Calculus, who tells him to wipe Sally’s memory and have the pair of them move into the Acachalla family to study their behavior so DC could figure out how actual families are supposed to work or something, an event that happens entirely off-screen but from what we can hear, something goes wrong and Billy is the one who’s memory is erased. However, while I know for a fact that the memory-wiping thing is a device, the pair are also immediately teleported away. This may have been through a portal, but I can’t remember if they state the method of transportation, so there’s a chance however Billy and Sally left that place was through the same method as the TT’s time and space travel… things. This actually isn’t the first time we hear DC being directly associated with portals, but now that I think about it, it is only really for a period of time around when Billy might’ve been working for him, so maybe the TT can do long-distance space travel with portals?

There was a time where I thought the TT came from the Billion-Year-War timeline, up until he started appearing in videos after the war was prevented, largely because Billy is completely gone and unmentioned after the war starts, despite being present when it first begins. He shows up at the end of the finale, meaning he was on the island with Sally, Papa, and (Action) Charlie (the Last Hope for Humanity During the Billion Year War Who Will Save Us All from Ourselves… Keller (<- HC surname)) when it all started. Because no one was coming back at all during the BYW, that does imply that Billy is straight-up gone in this universe, and the lack of TT, who can also do respawns, does imply that he either disappeared in a way that prevented the TT from coming back, or the TT just bailed… or was captured…? I do think traveling through large periods of time and space can affect his memory really badly and make him forget things, including his own identity and powers, but I also think that he hasn’t done any major space/time traveling since remembering who he is, so he’d be recovering his memories over time.

While I like the idea that the TT was a result of BYW, I don’t think it’s the best use of his character. It’s not antithetical to any kind of canon, since BYW Toast is still around after the war ends and that means time travel in VT doesn’t delete people in paradoxes, but I think we can do more with it. The Toilet Toucher does not appear during the Billion Year War arc at all, he is not present even for flashbacks when we have people from the 13th dimension making cameos. If that really was the world-ending event that sent him back in time, we’re missing out by not having him present trying to stop the alien threat or reacting to it in some way. Whatever made him choose to leave the Acachallas, whether it was an accident, intentional, or some third unrelated option— I want it to be something that he can not only point out but react to. I think this can range from DC trying to get Billy back in a number of ways causing him to panic and run away (whether it be an attempted hostile takeover, the family being pursued and Billy realizing they’re only after him and deciding to leave so they’ll be safe, DC going directly to Papa claiming that Billy was only ever a spy for him— making papa feel betrayed and push Billy away, or a good old-fashioned trick— there’s a lot one can do with this.), to some kind of hostile invasion making him go back to try to fix things but going Too far back and forgetting what he was there to do (Prince Fang, perhaps?), or it legit just being an accident where he was just trying to replicate the powers he sees the TT use and screwed up. There’s a lot that could be done here.

… I think I have an idea as to how his powers work, and I hope it’s less complicated than I originally assumed it would be. From how I see it, the respawns and the space/time travel function on the same principles. Space and time are actually pretty similar to each other— as time is theorized to be the forth dimension, and space consists of the other three. It seems that Billy’s powers allow him to manipulate a person’s standing in these four dimensions… or specifically his own. I think that the way that TT is able to move through space is not the toilets themselves, but the plumbing, using the toilet as a door. Similarly, I think that bringing people back from the dead is just. Pulling someone away from a door. People have argued to think of wormholes as folding space and punching a hole through it, but who’s to say you can’t consider it like a door in a wall? In Billy’s case, the door is already there, he just needs to open it… and in the case of coming back from the dead, that might be him forcefully keeping the door open for everybody… or closed? Who knows in this case. Either way, Billy can more manipulate time than he can space, but I still consider it space/time manipulation. He just needs an ending to do it. It does make me question how much of a ghost he is, though. He might just be legit immortal—

Anyways, despite his… issues with the Acachallas (he is a ‘ghost’ that haunts them specifically but i can’t remember if he has any spite toward them), I don’t even think he needs to have some kind of actual problem with them. I don’t think he remembered he was Billy for awhile after meeting the family and Maddie, so there’s a chance he picked up resentment toward the Acachallas from the other ghosts in the area. It could also help to explain why he was less and less hostile toward them as time went on, he gained more memories and realized he didn’t hate them. This might also have to do with his time being Ernie Ghost, since I do think he parted with the OG PIE on bad terms (how else would the man have gotten locked in a solitary confinement pocket dimension?)— even if he doesn’t have any negative feelings toward the Acachallas, another family he was apart of betrayed or hurt him and it’s put him on edge while his memories are blurry.

I think he does have all the same powers that Billy has now, meaning he does have the ability to bring people back from the dead, he just frequently chooses not to use it because he’s kind of a cynical old man. Also he knows how to control his powers where Billy does not. Billy’s just here to have a good time and I love him for it.

Ok more normal things now.

General Headcanons

Friendships - Billy is incredibly extroverted and charismatic, making friends everywhere he goes and melting cold hearts… and I think that isn’t a trait he outgrew. TT doesn’t have any group that he specifically works with, but I also don’t think he has many enemies outside of ones he had a prior history with like PIE and the Acachallas. He’s mostly just drifting around for now, trying to get his bearings in the modern day, but he’ll accept company where he can find it and values friendship where he can find it. (He ran for president in a video once. Idk why he did that.) Because of his being labeled as a ghost, he has interacted with and befriended a good number of ghosts… not including Maxwell Acachalla. Even though neither of them can put their finger on it, both of them feel there’s something uncannily familiar about the other. He spends a lot of time just wandering around and seeing what he gets into next.

Health - He’s genuinely surprised when he realizes he’s still not a ghost of any kind, especially after having people who are supposed to know ghosts call him a ghost to his face. He doesn’t really have to take great care of himself because of his own powers, but he’s starting to go out of his way to take care of himself more because he’s realized that life is generally more enjoyable if you feel good while experiencing it. He wants to find himself and enjoy himself while he does it, whether that ends up being through committing mass crimes or finally settling down again. Yeah— respawns don’t make you immortal, they just make it harder to stay dead, and even with them it doesn’t make general pain, exhaustion, etc suddenly go away forever.

Lifestyle - It would take some convincing to get him to settle down. He was dubbed the Toilet Toucher while in prison soon after escaping borderline solitary confinement in a pocket dimension. I can’t imagine he’s someone who feels comfortable staying in one place for too long, and with the means to instantly travel into almost any building in the general area from a public bathroom, why would he ever need to get his own house, or even a car for that matter? He’s all but set. I think he’s trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, and will overtime gravitate toward helping people who are sick and hurt. Even though he did use to live at this time, he experiences culture shock every time he takes part in a conversation with a normal person… He has an easier time talking to ghosts. He’s trying to figure out where he was before he time-traveled himself into prison, considering he wears a lab jacket everywhere but has no recollection of what science he could have studied to earn him it. He’s considered traveling, but he doesn’t tend to stay in far-away places for too long because he gets homesick.

Memory - I think the TT is a recovering amnesiac from three separate (major) occasions. From most to least recent; I think he lost his memory some time before he first appeared in the videos, chronologically some time between when Ghost accidentally released him from his solitary confinement pocket dimension and when he first appeared in a prison with no memories from before then. It’s very likely that there’s lost time between these two spaces where he did another bit of time travel, but whether he was traveling forward or backward or what could’ve happened between when he was freed and when he returned.. I’m not sure. Before that, I think he lost his memories after traveling backward in time from the Acachallas, which is why he had his name changed to Ernie. Finally, I mentioned this earlier, but he lost his memories right before joining the Acachallas. It wasn’t as severe as the other two times, as he at least remembered his first name, but he didn’t care enough to think about it anyways. Which. Valid. As a result of this, a lot of his memories are blurred together and he has a bit of a hard time remembering who did what when and why, sometimes even making it difficult for him to remember whose side he’s on sometimes. Memories from before he was an Acachalla need to be drilled back into his head, while memories from when he was apart of Early PIE are the easiest for him to recall and tend to blur with older memories as a result. Being able to witness his time as an Acachalla is doing wonders at giving him back memories from this period of his life.

How I use TT in relation to other Characters

This is mostly going to be focusing on character relationships held by the TT, but also important relationships held by Ernie Ghost in the creation of the TT. I think that Billy’s relationships are wholly his own to consider, unless stated otherwise, and don’t need to add on to this. However, Ghost practically states that whoever he knew as his uncle (Ernie) was the TT, either he was in some middle ground where he was approaching that period of his life, or he started being the TT at the same time he was Ghost’s uncle so,,, even with the memory loss, it’s instrumental to consider imo.

- Cardboard Friend -

This is only one of many ideas I have for the origins of CBF, but the one most relevant to this would be that the creation of CBF was the first step into making Ernie Ghost into the TT. The way I see it, Billy has the power to bring inanimate things to life— whether that just be him bringing inanimate objects to life on his own or him being able to sense restless souls tied to inanimate objects and bring them out. I think he may be able to bring things to life with more awareness than the ones we’ve seen, but I think it depends on who/what they’re brought to life for.

~ Watermelon Friend was created by Billy when he was a child, and though it was manipulative and terrifying in the end, it did come off like an imaginary friend until the danger was realized. If memory serves, this is largely because no one could hear melon friend outside of Billy. It is also worth noting Melon Friend was likely related to DC in some way, but moving on…

~ Penguin Friend was made when Billy was older and in a house full of siblings and conflict (not in a bad way ofc), and Penguin Friend is very familiar to Maddie-Friend in that it was stringently loyal to Billy and could get somewhat aggressive with anything that got in the way of that. I think that Penguin Friend is the biggest example of this theory, its originals are the most unknown and its reactions are the most familiar.

~ Maddie Friend doesn’t count I’ll explain later.

Cardboard Friend would be another one of these made for Gregory to have as an imaginary friend at a time when he was distressed in some way while Ernie was meant to be babysitting him. Likely during a move between houses, thus the Cardboard… and maybe even the kidnapping. In creating CBF, Ernie put Gregory in danger and possibly got T.Casket killed. During this time, OG PIE is growing more and more untrusting of the paranormal, and a fault in the old systems of early PIE makes every paranormal entity classified as a ghost of some kind, even if they’re just someone with powers. After witnessing a lot of pain and suffering from ghosts in general, and the leftover trauma Ghost got from his time with CBF, whoever is in charge of OG PIE makes the executive decision that Ernie is either a weak link or an instigator of some kind and needs to be removed from the equation for the safety of others… Because he created CBF.

Whether this is the idea of a surviving T.Casket who feels the creation of CBF was an active attack, or the idea of a disheartened JGS who only sees what harm Ernie caused to his newly adopted child and not that it might have been an accident… I dunno yet. because of all this, CBF could see TT as a father or uncle figure, depending on how married it is to the idea that Gregory is his brother. If CBF finds out Ghost considers Ernie an uncle (since Ernie didn’t have any familial relation to T.Casket in my canon stuff, Ghost wouldn’t start calling Ernie his uncle until after getting adopted), it might change its song from siblings to cousins.

- Darth Calculus -

I don’t think TT has any reason to remember DC unless DC reaches out to him first, and even so in doing that it’ll give him a massive headache to try to recall. That’s three bouts of amnesia worth of buried memories to try to work through in order to really recall who this man is, and who’s to say that he’ll even like DC once he remembers? Billy liked him when he was little, but he’s had a lifetime’s worth of experiences between then and now, experiences that could include learning that DC basically kidnapped him after killing his birth family way back before he was taken in by him, something he was never aware of.

Considering Billy’s powers, I could see DC risking the possible hatred to try to get the TT on his side for his power, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether that would go well. I do think that without the shared history, DC would probably be able to convince TT to his side for various reasons… not least of which being him being generally annoyed by PIE before knowing what their deal is, but also DC could offer him a job and stuff. I can’t imagine he kept it for very long, but it’s a job.

- Johnny Ghost -

The TT isn’t sure how to feel about Johnny Ghost, specifically because he’s so much like his adopted father, but also so much like the kid he remembers being his nephew. It’s complicated. Long story short: his feelings toward Ghost is muddled with family issues. More about those family issues below…

- Johnny Ghost (Senior) -

JGS and Ernie used to be borderline inseparable, brothers against the world, but things started going downhill when T.Casket died. They originally joined PIE with open minds and curiosity toward the supernatural, but differing experiences has led to the pair growing differing conclusions toward the paranormal. Ernie was frequently given special attention by ghosts who recognized him as also being supernatural and came to appreciate them as people, JGS kept losing friend after friend to the paranormal, culminating in not one but THREE different kids of varying ages getting severely hurt or DYING (gregory, kat, goober in that order— maybe even Ronnie Boast if JGS lived to see it or Toast if he was open about why he was in the states) because they were seemingly targeted by a paranormal entity. Chakalata being one of those paranormal entities was a breaking point for JGS (he was like the first ghost to actually communicate with them, and the first one T.Casket actually considered a friend), and when he found out Ernie created one of the other ones, even if it was an accident… the realization caused irreversible damage to their relationship. And thus; Ernie got banished for the “safety of everybody”.

That’s just one of many ways Ernie could’ve gotten banished, and this actually contradicts another hc I like about how JGS died… but I’ll figure out how I can make them both work someday! I think his issues with this incident can explain why he’s bitter toward characters he otherwise should consider family, since his last memory of a family member is a borderline betrayal.

- Maddie-Friend -

Maddie is curious about TT like a cat being introduced to a large fern for the first time, and the TT isn’t sure how to feel about her. Since there’s no order on what memories he can get back first, he both remembers playing and training with her when they were both kids under DC, but also his first time meeting her in a movie theater after moving in with the Acachallas. The two just need a couple heart-to-hearts to work everything out. Maddie wants to ask him if he ever recovered his first memories, but that’s kind of a hard question to ask an amnesiac. He thinks of her fondly, though, like a much younger sister he hasn’t seen in awhile. He thinks her antics chasing him around are pretty funny, though he does get uncomfortable when she turns violent.

- Maxwell Acachalla -

(All my own HCs) Maxwell and TT are kinda awkward around each other just because. They both kind of remind each other of things they don’t want to think about.

Billy impulsively brought Maxwell back from the dead, one of the only times he ever tried doing it on purpose, accidentally forcing Maxwell to be stuck as a ghost. He finds the reasoning dumb in hindsight, and he feels bad that he killed Spencer to do, it too (that part was less impulse, more that Spencer was really frustrating at the time and Billy needed a sacrifice. He didn’t think it’d matter since… ~back from the dead~ and all that, but Spencer was taken by surprise and holds grudges). Maxwell’s existence is kind of a reminder of all of that, like an uncomfortable trigger for his memory.

Maxwell and Billy look a lot alike when Billy is living with the Acachallas, and Billy was definitely the kid Papa felt the most kinship toward early on (possibly because Billy looked like his dead cousin coughcoUgHcOUGH—). So, Maxwell grew to recognize the similarities between himself and Billy, not just visually but as people… and TT is a prime example of who Maxwell could be if he had gotten to really life his life. Especially if the two ever interact without family or paranormal problems as a buffer… This is part of the reason why I like hc’ing Maxwell as being about 16-17 when he died tbh. Ig im big into ~Drama~ ^^;

However, the two are still technically family, so being frequently paired together has managed to get them to a point where they can actually interact with each other without feeling uncomfortable.

- Papa Acachalla -

(All my own HCs) The TT incredibly unsettled Papa and has a spotlight in his nightmares. Not because of anything specifically that the TT has done, but solely because the TT is proof that Papa fucks this one up too. He was originally uncomfortable with growing close with Billy because of what happened to Maxwell. Similarly to Billy, Maxwell looked up to Papa and saw him as a role model to follow, and in doing so it got him killed, and now Maxwell hates him and wants him dead. Papa was originally on edge about Billy, but was slowly beginning to think this one might be different the more the Acachalla family became… well, a family. However, unlike Maxwell— who died young— Billy lives a long, long time… and still comes back around to hating Papa. It’s like a cruel twist of fate, and even the idea that somehow he managed to screw this one over too made Papa pull away from the entire family again for awhile after the TT admitted to Billy they were the same person. TT isn’t sure how he feels about Papa. Something in the back of his head is convinced that Papa did or will do something wrong at some point, but he can’t put his finger on what or when, or how important it all really is. He tries not to think about it. So… he matches the energy of the people around him, and just chooses to be aggressive rather than figure out what’s actually going on.

Rapid Fire

I really want him to keep the wings, but I’m not sure how I want to take the aesthetic yet. I usually take Billy in the direction of angel imagery, so for the TT i can either stick with angel imagery, move up to ARCHangel imagery or something more “biblically accurate”— or I could move waaaay down to FALLEN angel imagery.

He was taken into the Ghost family after being found soon after traveling through time for likely the first time, completely disoriented and with no memories. They took him in, and they started seeing him as family. Whether this is because he married in or because he was adopted in, I have yet to decide, but I think both are interesting in their own right.

Something about him being a Smigglebug (which I see as some kind of magic family) is important in some way, and likely has something to do with some part of his powers. However, since Sue is also a Smigglebug (even if from another universe), whatever this is for Billy it should be for Sue as well.

Additionally, the TT does not know what a Smigglebug is, nor that he is one of them. He’d just assume you’re talking nonsense.

He has accidentally committed tax evasion. He also doesn’t know it yet because he kind of forgot how that whole system works, especially in the modern day.

I think waffles are a bit of a comfort food for him before he starts to recover his memory because it’s vaguely familiar.

Might be related in some way to Dark Pit (founding member of early PIE)/Agent Angel (one-off character I latched onto for no reason), considered making Ernie Ghost his dad and saying Ghost and DP/AA are cousins, but that means saying that the TT settled down and had a FAMILY for a little while and I dunno how I feel about that.

With this in mind, Roast is the TT’s favorite PIE member because Roast was actually friends with DP. Long story short, DP and Roast were the oldest members of the team by a couple years, so they mostly just acted as overseers for the chaos, so Ernie came to respect that in what is possibly his son’s friend.

Alt is that Ernie liked Roast’s more… ruthless ideas on how to handle ghosts, I’m not sure yet but it does worry me.

He is a genuinely good leader. He listens to people when they express discontent and he listens to people and learns about them. The downside is that he isn’t much of a team player, and this mostly winds up being used against people.

Depending on how open he is about being related to Johnny Ghost, he’s likely been approached by the DIE team before. Either that or they’re trying to approach him, I imagine he’s incredibly hard to track down and find.

Songs and Why

- Hymn to a Scarecrow by Tally Hall

It’s a soft song that feels like it hits home the general vibe I feel about the TT’s character, I sometimes picture it as Maddie-Friend observing her friend from the future and trying to figure out who he is now.

- Community Gardens by The Scary Jokes

The TT is considered to be a monster of some kind, and I think this is the kind of energy he’d have while trying to acknowledge it… while trying to give Billy advice on how not to end up like him.

- Godspeed by Shayfer James?

I think it needs to be considered in a specific way but yeah, I could see it. Man is allowed to set some boundaries, as a treat.

- Falling Up by Will Wood?

It’s four am and i think i just popped a blood vessel in my eye I can’t explain this rn nor can i remember my reasoning jghfdshfgkds

[abidethetempest]

Rise and Fall Ch 1 Retrospective

I've been wanting to do little behind the scenes style posts for my fics for EVER, and now i finally have a platform to do it >:D prepare to be subjected to my ramblings!!!! (link to the fic btw)

long ass post below the cut:

General Notes:

chapter 1 of any fic for me is both very fun and very nervewracking. writing the start of a project that I've been brainstorming for a long time can go one of two ways: i have All The Ideas right away and it comes out in one session, or i spend 600 years agonizing abt my ~vision~ and making sure everything is perfect. this fic was decidely the second. part of this is because im a big dumb idiot and planned everything except the opening for literal years. it took me probably 3 months just to get thru the intro stuff and feel like it was good enough to move on, let alone post.

Stuff I Cut:

unfortunately, there is actually a lot more i wish i could have included, but didn't for the sake of pacing. i wanted this section to include more of Risen's time alone on the road, her isolation from post-collapse society, and her deeply held guilt abt her role and self-percieved failures as a Lightbearer. i'd love to write some one-shots or little scenes about it! I wish we got to see more of what it would be like for a Lightbearer in the dark age that didnt want to be a Warlord, since timeline-wise we don't really see the emergence of the modern Guardian archetype until the Iron Lords or the early Titan orders. We hear abt it some from Drifter, but he is understandably reticent to speak on his past so we don't get much. Risen as a character feels very strongly about her purpose as the "Traveler's warrior", something that will be touched on next chapter, but she struggles to reconcile who she wants to be with the reality around her. The aftermath of this gets explored as time goes on, but i do want to revisit her very early days of life as a new light someday.

The Sanctuary:

the mission that Risen and Ghost are on at the beginning of this fic is,,,,, entirely made up by me, it's not from canon or remotely related to anything in the lore (as far as i know, at least). They're chasing rumors, driven by Risen's desperation for someplace to find a family and a purpose, and by Ghost's desire to keep Risen away from danger. I just needed a reason for them to be on the move.

The Town:

The town scene is... *sigh*. I struggled with it a lot. In part because it, AGAIN, was not something i had ever planned for until i actually sat down to write. I needed a scene to show Risen's desire to be a protector of others conflicting with her current modus operandi. I still feel like it's too on the nose when she talks to Ghost at the inn but sometimes you just gotta spell it out i think. Her reaction after running came out as I wanted, though. While running away to fight another day might be the logical choice, Risen definitely is the type to carry her guilt with her forever even if it was the "right decision". Risen:

I LOVE Ghost as a character. I want more Ghosts that are flawed, angry, hurt. More Ghosts who are afraid maybe none of the fighting and death is worth it. More Ghosts who go thru just as much development as their Guardians, please. I find it interesting that, as the first contact a Guardian has and their constant companion, a Ghost has a big influence over their Guardian's early development, and I want to see it explored more how they could push their Guardian down one path or another.

Warlords:

In case anyone is wondering, the Warlords in this fic are entirely OCs. The destiny timeline already gives me hives, I am NOT abt to try and find some canon characters to use in this fic when I can just.... make them myself. Warlords are such cool concepts! I want more lore about them (and the Dark Age in general).

I think thats all I have for now! Thanks for reading (assuming anyone is reading these lol)

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Hi! First off welcome to the mxtx fandom! Second, i absolutely adore that hualian lady and the tramp au fic! Cutest name for an au, and id love to hear some more about this au if you have some additional thoughts!

Thank you so much, thats so lovely of you to say!! I'd Love to talk about this AU honestly and as always huge amount of credit goes to @minky-for-short as basically every single Hualian AU I have is also hers :')

So the way I envision this modern AU working is that rather than being royalty, Xie Lian's family is very rich and his father is the head of a mega corporation that their family have been building up for a long time, called the Xianle Corporation. So Xie Lian is high society and has a lot of the same pressures and weighty expectations on him that he experiences in canon

Xie Lian came out as trans when he was about eighteen (mostly because he thought if the worst came to the absolute worst he'd have his trust fund and his mother wouldn't let his father freeze it). And his father certainly wasn't happy about it but Xie Lian is very close to his mother and she did a lot of the smoothing over, frightened of losing her son. It helped that Xie Lian was a straight A student, getting into the best universities and making sure he was the perfect child, as far as his parent's definition went. His father allowed him to present as he wanted and start HRT and get top surgery and change his name. But now Xie Lian is terrified of letting him down because he can just feel that sense of disappointment and resentment looming over him and he's really starting to chafe against his father

He meets San Lang after meeting him in an alley, seeing him getting attacked by some older kids. Xie Lian didn't hesitate to run in and help him, despite the fact that they'd still be outnumbered. San Lang is hugely grateful for him helping though he's evasive about Why exactly they were attacking him. He offers to buy Xie Lian a drink in thanks, then a coffee when Xie Lian admits he doesn't drink. They spend the whole time chatting and getting to know each other, so long that Xie Lian has to run off home when he realises he's late. Though he leaves San Lang with his number

Feng Xin and Mu Quing are instantly cautious when they hear about this new friend Xie Lian has found and after some digging they tell him why, the young man is Hua Cheng, an up and comer in the seedier business that goes on in the city. He's currently climbing the ladder at the famous Ghost City Casino which is known for its owners being all but criminal gang leaders. They warn Xie Lian to stay away but he's not so sure San Lang is all that dangerous? But it does teach him not to tell his parents about his new friend

Their friendship shifts to something more when San Lang steals Xie Lian away from his parents New Years party which is just a networking event. He takes him to the Ghost City casino for the first time, up to the roof where San Lang likes to come and sit on his breaks and as the fireworks go off from his parent's manor up on the hill, Xie Lian kisses him.

I think it all falls apart when his parents find out about Hua Cheng and his father is up waiting to confront him along with police officers as they're sneaking back in. Xie Lian doesn't hesitate, he just kisses Hua Cheng and tells him to run, jumping out of the car and letting Hua Cheng drive away.

I'm also considering it might be further complicated by Xie Lian realising one of the Hualian kids I have in my AUs is on the way...

But things all come to good when Xie Lian stands up to his father and tells him that he's done living a life he isn't happy with, he doesn't want to follow him, he wants to be happy and be with Hua Cheng. His mother stands on his side and they end up living happily ever after in a tiny little apartment, Xie Lian teaching martial arts to kids and Hua Cheng still...well still being kind of a criminal but he's hiding it pretty well

[pqrachel]

Well I just posted my organized Blanksford timeline (now pinned), and noticed some gaps. There's deliberate way I could figure those out but where the fun in that... let's get weird.

I'm gonna pick a few characters and randomize a year on the timeline for them, and whatever I land on I need a new story moment or perspective on an existing moment from that character. Don't exactly know how this will go but let's give it a shot.

Characters: Taylor, Madi, Gabby, Aeri, Artemis, Jake, Ultra-Dude and/or Off. Wheeler, Pyress, Twin, Blaine. I'll roll a d10 for character and then a d12 for year.

Long ass bunch of Blanksford moments below the cut.

*First roll: Madi in Y:12. So far the only canon event is the friend group going to the skatepark. I don't even want to commit to the Year 12 super that I made years ago in Splash. So for now lets keep it away from the super drama, maybe a family moment... Madi's an only child and her parents are divorced. Maybe her mother has finally met someone new and wants Madi to meet them. Madi's mom Zuri is 46 years old at this point and has been divorced for a little over a decade. I assume Zuri's been dating or meeting people in the meantime, but this is the first time it's been special enough for them to want Madi to meet them. I'd need to make a new character since I don't have any background characters close enough to Zuri's age. But Zuri lives in D-City, just like the main friend group does at this point so I feel like once it goes well Madi would be seeing them more often. Zuri's bi so whoever this is could be any gender, but I think I'll save the character creation for later...

-

*Next roll: Twin in Y:1. Not really sure too much of what to do with this one, but Twin (or Cathryn before they came out and changed their name to Charlotte to avoid their mother) was born in Blanksford. This is before they or their mom got their powers, but they'd be living in Blanksford around this time, not even started upper school. I do have it planned for Twin to attend upper school in Abbadon, but I didn't really have a planned transition for that. So maybe around this time once Ultra-Dude got his powers and proved the Blanksford Broadcast to be true. Twin decided to escape this, but their mother didn't want to leave. So Twin decided to start looking to apply for upper schools outside of Blanksford, so that as soon as she finished mid school, she could get away from the city. Later on once Y:2 came around and Technic was terrorizing people, Twin furthered her want to leave and finally got accepted at ABUS. She moved into her dorm early to get away before the Y:3 emergence event happened, and even though Ghost emerged and was generally good. Twin still felt good about not taking that risk and leaving the city early.

-

*New roll: Blaine in Y:2. Blaine is Madi's SyVoice companion from "Madi's Story". He wasn't really as alive as he was after getting her macrotech installed, only really existing as a therapy chatbot that Madi's parents paid for after their divorce. I initially put him here hoping to think about what Madi might do with them as she grows up, if she keeps paying for their functionality, stuff like that since I haven't used him at all outside of that one story. But let's roll with this and see what I can come up with. The SyVoice chatbots are basically just generative chatbots with various purposes. I made the character Blaine a few years ago, when the idea was more novel than they currently are and the ethics behind how they exist currently weren't well known. I think in the Blanksford story though they could be something different. It takes place in a more advance future so maybe their chatbots have gone past the evil tech information pollution and have some sense of sustainability and hope going along with them. I do think Madi chooses to keep Blaine around after the upgrade trial period because of how much the SyVoice app helped her after her parents divorce. She was just a kid and already had so few friends in school, so having a chatbot able to talk to her and help her through things definitely meant a lot. Maybe for a specific moment like these prompts I've set up are asking for, maybe something specific happened that caused her to turn to the therapy app again. At this point in the timeline Aeri (who was one of Madi's tutors at this time) had started Upper School herself and would have less time to tutor Madi. That'd probably be an event that caused Madi to talk with the app a lot more.

-

*Dang that's a good roll: Jake in Y:8. So Jake is Gabby's ex. They started dating in Y:1 and moved to Blanksford together in Y:3 following Ghost's influence hoping either one or both of them might get lucky and get powers. Gabby did get them in Y:6 but later in Y:7 after Gabby stopped being as involved with the Supers Wing, they broke up because of a little bit of jealously regarding Gabby getting the powers and not him, as well as the fact that Gabby wasn't even using their powers with the Supers Wing. I don't really know why I put Jake on here, but yeah let's figure out what he got up to after leaving Gabby. I do think he stayed in Blanksford still hoping to get powers of his own, which doesn't happen as far as I have planned. This is only a bit after the break up of their 6 year relationship, so he probably he isn't handling it super well. Probably gets a little sad every time new powers roll out and he doesn't get them. Maybe he gets over that eventually, but as of Y:8, there's no way he has. He's roughly 25, out of upper school; lots of people have left Blanksford with everything that's happened with Artemis, so he probably finds his own place in Blanksford for relatively cheap, maybe he's doing the mid-20s bachelor thing. I don't know what he went to school for but after 7 years of upper school, he's probably found a job or an apprenticeship of some kind. I think mechanic or biker of some kind fits rather well. And with the majority of the vehicles being autocabs and autotrucks, anyone building or working on their own manually driven vehicles could be in higher demand.

-

But yeah that's a decent enough place to stop for now. Had fun and developed the characters and storyline a little bit.

[mahoutoons]

you know what, i'm gonna say it. the sonic fandom is sexist as fuck. as someone who's been here for years, i've seen the way y'all treat male characters vs female characters.

when male characters like knuckles and shadow are written in an unflattering way- such as shadow beinf unnecessarily edgy and knuckles being a complete dimwit - y'all are so quick to say "blame the writers, not the character!!" but when female characters like amy are written in an unflattering, suddenly that logic goes out the window and amy has always been a selfish bitch who only cares about sonic.

and speaking of amy, y'all are too comfortable acting like her character revolves around sonamy and nothing else. i'll never forget when the sonic frontiers trailer came out and amy was confirmed as the voice, y'all scrambled for evidence that the voice wasn't actually her but some ghost girl from some 4chan leaks, even going so far as to accuse the official social media team of lying when they confirmed it was her. all because y'all didn't want a ship you hate to become canon. shipping has rotten y'alls brains.

lets also talk about the new imposter syndrome issue. people were upset about how easily metal sonic was defeated. which yeah, i can understand, i know what its likw to have your favourite character be done dirty. but on the other hand, i never saw all of this complaining when scourge was easily able to overpower sonic and friends. no one talked about how op he was.

i recently saw a tweet praising surge saying that she's a female rival with sonic's potential and people immediately started bringing up blaze and saying she "did it better". sonic has had multiple male rivals who could keep up with him and no one compared them. i've never seen anyone say knuckles "did it better" than shadow or bice versa. but the moment he has more than one female rival you have to make it a competition.

everything about the sonic girls has to be a competition, and not even in just a shipping sense. you've got amy vs sally, amy vs blaze, surge vs blaze. you never see competitions like this for the male characters.

and ever notice how its always the female characters being hated on in shipping wars? applies to every fandom honestly.

i can't forget the slut shaming sally and rouge received. some people STILL see rouge as just "boobs the bat" when she's so much more than that. as for sally, i can't remember people complaining about the male sonic characters not wearing clothes. why does sally get hated on for it?

i'm talking about the fandom here but honestly the franchise kinda plays a part in all this sexism. the way i can only think of four major recurring female characters - amy, blaze, rouge, and cream - compared to the amount of male characters this franchise has. and those four are not even treated well. i have an entire essay on how amy rose is probably one of the most mistreated characters in this franchise. and the other three aren't treated any better.

also ever notice how every time amy's role of reminding shadow of his true purpose is taken from her, it was a male character who replaced her (chris in x, sonic in archie)? it shows that sega sees their female characters' roles as expendable, unless they serve as a love interest. and yes, i'm blaming sega because they allowed this shit to happen.

if i can say anything positive, at least the sexism isn't as bad as it was before. but its still there. people may want to deny it, but this fandom does have a sexism problem.

[sortofanobsession]

hellooo previous anon asker here!

the story takes place in the first season (could be continued to the other seasons if you’d like) frenemies to lovers trope, reader goes by she/her pronouns and is also latina and part of the umbrella academy and the story alters through 3rd and 1st person pov? essentially she’s a badass and is besties with klaus and five? I don’t really know what a good power would be so you can have creative liberty with that. hopefully this was enough details, thanks! <3

Author's Note: I can very much work with this. I'm still working on a plot outline but here is the establishing info for the story. But before we get into that please keep a few things in mind...

The power set was initially a hang up for me, so many different fics uses various power sets and I didn't want to accidently be too similar. But I think I came up with something not used as often in fics with supers. I have been listening to some Lore podcasts and while trying to figure out what type of powers the team somewhat lacked I got an idea. The Lore episode alluring details ghost lights and it seemed like a decent place to start and if you have read my writing you know I looooove folklore and mythologies. It also plays off, in a way, an idea I had back when season 1 was airing. I'm Caucasian of European decent, so please forgive any cultural confusion. I am not of Hispanic decent and really not trying to disrespect anyone. If anyone is willing to help with this aspect I would greatly appreciate it.

I really hope this is sort of what you were looking for.

Please note that since this is season 1 I will be using Vanya for Viktor. I fully support Elliot Page and have major respect for the show's writers for working a transition into the character Elliot portrays. I love how they handled in the show. But for sake of "canon" I use Vanya for now. BUT if you all would prefer I use Viktor and male pronouns let me know. I'm human and far from perfect, so I am always willing to listen and learn. I support all members of the LGBTQ+ community. I love and respect all my readers, but I do not tolerate hate so be nice in the replies, please.

Minors DNI

So as it goes, Y/N = your name. Reader pronouns She/Her.

Tag Requests are Open just message me.

Primary Pairing: Diego Hargreeves x Female!Reader

Part 1 of a new WIP Series.

Series Masterlist

Content Warning: Canon typical neglect, violence, death, depression, anxiety

Will o' The Wisp

Chapter 1: #8-The Wisp

Her powers are that she can create a being of pure light and seemingly energy, separate from her own entity. It started as a flickering ball of light. Pogo had said the faint light was like the Will o' the Wisp in old English folklore. But she would go on to learn that most cultures had phantom lights. The name Wisp stuck, but the light didn't stay small or weak for long. Sir Reginald Hargreeves trained her to give it form and capable of independent motion. She gave it a humanoid form to make it easier to manipulate when she took it over. But more often than not, she lets it clings to her like an inverse shadow. She eventually found that she could split her consciousness and control it. Something her father would push her to explore. She can will it in and out of existence, but it still sort of radiates from her if she doesn't give it an external form. It gives her an ethereal glow when it doesn't have its own form. She can weaponize the light in multiple ways. She can use it to blind opponents. It can temporarily stun and disorient someone. She can use it as a projectile. She can also use it to fight as multiple beings, something she tries to limit because fragmenting one's psyche can be both disorienting and unnerving. 

Her siblings had stuck with the Will o' the Wisp idea and jokingly called her Will, but she preferred the name Y/N that Mom helped her pick. They initially called the light entity Wisp due to a lack of creativity. Then they got more "creative", calling it her shining stalker, bright bugger, and many other weird and rude names. She would remind them it wasn't a sentient being. It only became so when she was the conscious one controlling it. And tell them they were just jealous they couldn't be in two places at once. 

Her arguments with Diego were usually more direct.

"You're just jealous I never run out of weapons or have to retrieve them," she would tease when Diego would start to bug her about it.

"At least I can blend into a crowd," Diego would shoot back. "You stick out like a glow stick even when your stalker isn't burning its image into people's retinas."

"And yet, they still like us more," she would shrug and guide her glowing glimmer to do the same, making it seem more like a twin or a doppelganger as she does. 

She had two siblings that were drawn to her by her light. They would cling to the light as the light clung to her. Ben and Klaus. Ben, because the warm light helped cancel out the cold darkness his powers seemed to bring with them. Klaus, because despite the ghost light jokes, her light actually helped keep his ghosts and demons at bay. It would remind him he wasn't in the dark mausoleum that their father would lock him in. So it wasn't unusual for one or both of them to hide from nightmares in her room. She didn't mind. If it helped them, she'd do it, even if Sir Reginald didn't approve. That was what they had their powers for, wasn't it? Helping people, being heroes, wasn’t that what they were supposed to do? For her, part of that meant putting up with Klaus drooling or Ben mumbling in his sleep. 

Her other siblings mostly liked or at least tolerated her, other than Diego. Diego liked to argue with her almost as much as he did Luther. He often called her la bruja after the witch lights that taunt and trick people. Luther and Allison had told her he was probably just jealous that Y/N has useful powers. He is jealous that she has successfully molded her powers the way their father wanted her to. They told her she was as good at what she could do as they were, which was what pissed him off.

Luther didn't mind her as long as she followed orders and did her training. He liked her well enough, but she wasn't Allison. Allison liked having another sister with powers, but she wanted attention more, and since Luther was happy to give it to her, Allison spent most of her time with him. Y/N and Vanya got along well enough, but Klaus would usually drag Y/N and often Ben off on a whim and rarely left much time for the seventh sibling. 

Y/N and Five liked to challenge each other. It was a playful rivalry, unlike Luther and Diego. She and Five would see who could get somewhere faster, him or her speed of light Wisp. They would race, push each other, and make each other faster and more focused. They'd take turns critiquing their techniques as they trained and just genuinely got along. They could be competitive and still be companions. The competitions made them both better. They thrived due to their competitiveness but always ended the day as equals. 

A few days after Five vanished and failed to return, Vanya had come to her. Vanya was always observant, despite the neglect she suffered. Vanya had noticed how the Wisp wasn't out as much. The ethereal glow around her sister was dimmer, darker, it was less like a warm candle and more like the pilot light on a stove or a heater. A deeper, almost blue core to it. Blue as if tainted with her melancholy. And when the Wisp was out, usually in training or at their father's insistence, it was less of vibrant sunshine at high noon or a beautiful yet powerful sunrise. But more harsh like a wildfire flame at night. They had talked, cried, and missed their brother. Vanya gave her sister a sad smile the following day at breakfast. Happy that her sister's glow had warm colors back in it, but it still lacked some of the vibrancy it once had. 

The blue tinge returned and deepened after Ben died. The Wisp was now a being of blue light that clung to her as the loss clung to her soul. People found it eerie and ghost-like, a more authentic Will o’ the Wisp. But when she took it over, the Wisp was more like a vengeful house fire than a being of sunlight. It was unsettling. Sir Reginald had insisted she cease it at once. So she would will it to be different at times, but it always looked off. She would think more of the ghost light stories, the darker ones. The witch lights, or even luz mala or La Candileja. Maybe those were more accurate these days, a bad omen. 

When the Umbrella Academy drifted apart, she had moved to a small rental home in the suburbs. She found work in a local shop. Somewhere her glowing companion wouldn't bother anyone.

Klaus would drop by when he had nowhere to crash or needed general necessities. She would check in with Vanya and Pogo every week or so, but it was mostly solitary existence. After Vanya's book was published, she would catch her neighbors staring. They would keep their distance. Although a nice older woman named Joan who lived down the street would often stop by on walks with her dog. She was a fan of Allison's movies and was always happy to hear the stories the book didn't tell. She was the only person that didn't seem to think that her powers made her weird. Or at least she didn't think they were weird in a bad way. 

But it all changed when she was notified about the death of Sir Reginald Hargreeves.

[dayfalwastaken]

Look at her, she has such a simple yet cool design! Like an updated version of her in TSE novels, but with way more personality. I love all the little touches with the necklace, ghost club and Puppet pins and the patches. It gives Charlie this feel of struggling to let go, or refusing to forget, telling you most of her character at a glance, which is actually a great feat. Good job on incorporating that so smoothly^^! It’s hard to balance a character design and not cluster it, but here everything works very well. She looks balanced and has that flair that was missing from her original design in the novels, which is a great example of skill and talent on your part! This Charlie stands, is eye-catching, but not overly so to the point where it’s too much, so again, good job! This is awesome!

And oh, I love the picture in the necklace thing so much that I want to include it into the fic! It’d be like the perfect gift Matt could give Charlie for her ninth birthday, so um, this is awkward to ask, but could I 👉👈…? Hehe, it’s just a really neat concept that would work well, you know. But feel free to deny, you came up with it after all.

So, to answer your question on the Fritz submission, which I assume is how the AU would end, I have to first begin explaining how I see it start.

Sometime after Matt’s death and the kids being saved, William goes missing (courtesy of Mari and Cassidy). Guilt makes Henry attempt to scrap the Puppet, which fails, leading to him decommissioning it along with the Security Puppet, at Fredbear’s and Freddy’s respectively. Henry, being too much of a reck to bear it, and seeing his daughter’s pain, wants to leave Hurricane behind and start a new life someplace else, thinking that his dream has failed and brought too much pain to his family. He tries to adopt the Aftons despite knowing how hopeless of an endeavor that is, the three siblings now being orphans. By some miracle he manages to get Evan and Liz, but Michael unfortunately goes into the system. Some of the saved kids move on too, while others stay in Utah, but they all more or less keep in contact with each other.

Now, we skip to where they are all older, either 18 or over, sometime in the late 80s - early to mid 90s. In this time, even though William was never found and Henry stepped down as CEO of the company, another guy has taken his place. His name’s Frederick, a character I plan to introduce in the actual fic in the future. He’s the shady business man type that has kept Freddy’s going after Henry said he no longer cares about the company, attempting to rebrand and earn a buck by any means necessary. Whether he knows anything about the paranormal happenings is left to be seen.

Charlie, plagued by her traumatized childhood, wanting answers and believing that she can move on if she confronts her past directly, wants to go back to Hurricane. Liz is on board, more so than Evan, as she and Charlie have grown to be way closer than before ever since the adoption. They notify their friends, and a couple actually want to tag along. And so they go back, reuniting with the few kids that have stayed in Hurricane. It’s then that they find out of the strange things going on around Freddy’s (the pizzeria can probably be the fnaf 2 location since Matt and Mari would be there to prevent any “accidents” from happening, so it wouldn’t be closed down so soon like in canon). Intrigued, the group starts investigating, with Cassidy appearing to know more than she lets on. From there, it’s a goldmine of opportunities.

As for the main villain of the AU… idk. William’s not coming back, and let’s just say Shadow Freddy would be unavailable since he’s busy doing something else far away :)), so perhaps… Ennard would work. And maybe Frederick, but since the fic already has a business man villain in the form of Willy, eh, I’m not sure.

Ennard could be worked in with some context for the Funtimes’ destruction, and then there could be a ghost hunting local cryptid sort of deal.

PS: this is not that far away from what an actual sequel to ATSAT would be like 😅, but I’m getting way ahead of myself.

The ending, who knows? The gang learns of Matt and how he’s been doing in the meantime, maybe the animatronics develop some sentience like Mari for some fanservice, and well, if not happy the ending could be a bittersweet one.

That’s pretty much it. A short outline of how I’d see the AU going. Anyway, I’m really eager to hear what you think of it. This whole thing was been so awesome to discuss and brainstorm, and the fanarts have been a delight! Thank you so much for this!

Iike said! Here is Charlie! The used to be first victim of William Afton! She tried to move out of hurricane but..her heart couldn’t help but ache each time she attempts..she can’t just leave her brother here..

Many coffee filled and sleepless evenings were spent by her as she tries to find WHO murdered her brother..along with the mystery’s surrounding her fathers and uncle Williams restaurant..

One day,she decided to relax more and go to the good nostalgia..so she and the Afton siblings gathered everyone to spend time a bit..but that leads to a new lead on her brothers Murder and various other things~..

She’s the lead of the crew and is the one who connects clues and such.she also got various ghost tech from a professional paranormal named Sean! I wonder how he’s doing..anyways,she tries her best to keep everyone safe..but for how long?~

Here she is! :3 fun fact! The red patch is a piece of Matthews shirt when he was found in chapter 1,and inside the heart locket is the picture Charlie took ((remember? >:) ))

[askfallenroyalty]

I can't imagine the therapist's reaction to Chara telling her/he/them EVERYTHING. Like. Just imagine being a therapist going from thinking "oh this kid just has a savior complex" to "oh this kid has a savior complex because of a PROPHECY and they DIED and got RESSURECTED and has TIME POWERS. ALSO THEIR SIBLING IS A FLOWER??" HFHHHF a wild day in office/clinic amiright?

// YEAH thats also a huge in-universe reason why some characters are avoidant to therapy because HOW DO YOU EVEN START EXPLAINING

// also. added problem to consider. i wish this was touched upon more in canon but like, monsterkind gets modern tech from the dump and by whatever resources they have. they obvs don't have human internet because otherwise they'd already establish first contact with humanity

// and while it's not IMPOSSIBLE they can't get books discussing health and science, it's far, far more likely they get their modern info from what they can reverse engineer and their own scientist can figure out

// this means they can have a fridge (or in undyne's case, a hot fridge) but not know the earth is round.

// do???? monsters??? know about modern understandings of mental health? we know they're not influenced by human bigotry so there's aspects of the underground that are very socially different already.

// AND THEN how does being monsters, beings made of magic, dust and love, have their mental health differ? because we ARE our brains. we are our hormones, blood, neurons. its a cause-effect loop of physical and social factors.

// monsters are (?) sentient magic that take the forms based on real world biological (and... sometimes not) creatures. this goes into where did monsters come from? we came from evolution. where... did say, tsundre plane come from. (i've seen speculation shes a ghost in a machine or was something Alphys made, since ya know, anime.)

// we're MISSING SO MUCH LORE and it kills me. ANYWAY BACK ON TOPIC LOL

// part of why chara's therapy doesn't fully help them is because they DO have to be secretive about shit. they actually DO like their therapist and want to talk about things but they don't want to be seen as delusional for believing themself to be A Literal Super Powered God who can control time. you can't even prove time travel without using it so up until the story kicks in, Chara didn't have that power for 5 years. without explaining that, there's huge chunks of their life they can't explain.

// that and chara is going thru the slow, deliberate process of trying what meds work better. in my verse, i have an explanation of how magic is cultivated and grown which then can be made into potions instead of food. (thanks to that one anon who came up with the potion = meds idea) so it depends on what herbs and emotional intent is used to create what potions. then those can act as mood regulators and fill in the "physical" make up portion that brain chemistry works with

// honestly. this would be frickin cool to cover. there's obvs not a LOT of room to put this into the story and how it'd be told organically, but like, it's possible!!! after the time skip, or maybe during the Christmas arc, we can see Chara take a potion and they can explain to the reader a bit of what that's like. (with a limited understanding of how it all works)