#chloe turned out more butch than in the game

[chimchiri]

The new Life is Strange came out, caught me completely off guard, and all the love I had for the game bubbled up again! (Hence also the extreme pleasure to take part in the Zine ahhh <3) Minor spoilers, but if you choose to save Chloe, she is revealed to be friends with Victoria - even so far as to invite her to a concert if I remember correctly. Victoria and Chloe being an unlikely couple that start out as sort of friends with benefits, which then develops deeper over time just sounds SO good. -> Patreon if you'd love to give a tip & support or just wanna see some NSFW ♥

[fairymascot]

Personally, BTS just cemented how much of S1 I had problems with. Chloe as a deep voiced baby butch in men's hand-me-downs came off as way more genuine than Chloe dressed like a punk model from a European fashion mag. Which I mean I'd argue is more a result of how intrinsically male S1 was, but thats neither here nor there. Plus, even with the clear time crunch in the back half of Ep3 and the tacky af 10 seconds after the credits, BTS had a shockingly solid story structure all things considered.

hi, anon! thanks for the message. i didn’t mean to write this much in response, but i guess i’m in a chatty mood today, so oh well! here ya go.

yeah, on the whole bts gave chloe a lot of new traits that instantly became ingrained into my perception of her, even the few that override her lis1 traits. the fantastic thing about it, though, is that most of them don’t. i love that she’s into poetry, d&d and science – they all tie believably into her geeky childhood spent with max and william, and are unexpectedly harmonious with her destructive and brash personality. chloe price loves science… for blowing up shit, and sabotaging her enemies! chloe plays d&d…. by strong-arming and threatening her way through the campaign!

it makes sense in the context of her lis1 characterization – because we know she was dopy enough to play pirates and superheroes with max, and because we know in the reality where william survived she got straight a’s in class, but at the same time they’re things i doubt the original writers would’ve come up with on their own. it turns her into a very rarely seen kind of character – ‘rebel punk’ and ‘geek’ are usually on the opposite ends of the character archetype spectrum, and i think it’s awesome how deck9 blended them together. that’s what i mean when i say i’m glad bts is fanfiction: it gives us the kind of unique spin on the characters that’s obviously born from the hearts of fans who spend a long freakin’ time thinking about them, and coming up with little details to fill in the parts we don’t see in canon. it’s like scrolling through tumblr and seeing a ten-paragraph headcanon post. you don’t come up with shit like that unless you’re passionate about the source material, and it’s often stuff the original creators would’ve never even thought of.

and yes– i absolutely love that chloe’s a dirty gritty baby butch who wears hoodies with holes in them and cut-up jumpers from when she was in middle school (if you look at this concept art). i love that even though she’d like to be cool and smooth she’s an absolute disaster who can’t handle small talk with a pretty girl – which, again, definitely has its roots in her tryhard attempts at flirting with max, but elevated to a much higher degree. and it makes sense, given that she’s young and awestruck by rachel in a way she wouldn’t be with her childhood friend, not to mention still figuring out her sexuality, and generally stupid as hell.

i definitely have a harder time buying chloe’s ‘hipster girl monthly’ presentation in light of bts (that femme as-fuck lingerie? the nail polish? please), but i don’t fault dontnod for that. first of all, she was obviously designed to contrast max, who’s mousy, plain, and doesn’t stand out. playing from max’s point of view, you’re supposed to be kinda awestruck by chloe – like, wow! she’s so cool! she’s got so much style and flair! and when playing bts from chloe’s point of view, you’re supposed to be awestruck by rachel, which is why her first appearance is in that totally badass, if not slightly over-the-top punk getup. so that contrast between ‘plain player character’ and ‘dazzling love interest’ is ultimately retained between games. deck9 also created the pretty blatant implication that rachel was a big style influence for chloe even early on, what with her lending her clothes, and the tragically-scrapped scene where she was the one dyeing chloe’s hair for her. so that evolution makes sense, too.

secondly, independent of male influence, the fact of the matter is that fictional characters will always have a coat of glamor encasing them. as consumers of media, we don’t want to see real-life humans like us: we want a more idealized version, even for characters that are supposedly realistic and down-to-earth like the cast of lis. did you ever see that one robert pattinson quote, where he talks about how in twilight they put this wire in the collar of his jacket, so they could bend it to be just the right kind of frumpled? people made fun of it (and it does sound ridiculous!), but in truth, the overwhelming majority of fiction is like that.

chloe in bts is glamorized, too– it’s why the cut audio with taylor tells you she looks raggedy and poor, but her clothes fit just perfect with no visible holes or stains in them. it’s why she can wear a beanie from the glove compartment of a truck in a junkyard and not get comments about her body odor, or quickly discover an infestation of lice in her hair. it’s why when she’s ‘forced’ to wear her dad’s old clothes, she looks like a lesbian style icon instead of, you know, an awkward teen in old oversized shirts. i mean, look at that denim jacket. what dad wears all these badass pins and patches on his clothes? please.

in short: i’m definitely with you in that that bts has added a lot of wonderful things to chloe’s character, and a lot that makes her feel far more organic and relatable to me as a lesbian. but i see it as bts adding onto the canon, rather than lis1 retroactively detracting from it. let’s be fair, yeah?

[fountainpenguin]

Do you subscribe to the theory that "The Fairly OddParents" and "Danny Phantom" take place in the same universe? What about the theory that all the "Fairly OddParents" characters somehow turn into "Danny Phantom" characters (maybe due to one of Timmy's wishes) - Trixie becomes Paulina, Tootie becomes Sam, A.J. becomes Tucker, Chester becomes Dash, Mr and Mrs Turner become Jack and Maddie, Timmy becomes Danny, that sort of thing?

I tentatively like the idea that they exist in the same universe due to the cameos of Danny and Dash in “Poultergeeks” and “Fly Boy”, respectively:

I guess the popular life wasn’t over for him after high school after all. Acting!

I know nothing about Nicktoons Unite though, and I’m still trying to decide if I want to research the game and make elements of it canon or just disregard it altogether. I bring this up because I know there’s universe jumping involved.

I might throw in a few crossover jokes in my fanwritings (Ex: Youngblood wanting to visit the dinosaurs after he learns the Ghost Zone portals can take one across time as well as space, only to be told that the dinosaurs were killed by a fairy, who would of course have been Wanda in line with Season 0).

I’d like to use the joke from the “Brat’s Entertainment” DP comic about Butch Hartman being the one on the ghost money, me using the joke partially to point out Youngblood’s inability to read cursive, and also because I thought it would be funny for one of the other ghosts to be stunned that Youngblood doesn’t know “the famous fairy Butch Hartman”, and just slide that in there.

Not sure if either of those will actually come up, but they’re in the back of my head. Basically, if I can squeeze a crossover cameo joke in, I will, so if I ever write a one-shot about “Poultergeeks”, there will probably be a Danny or Box Ghost or someone in it. Norm might reference Desiree one time? Who knows.

It’s still a tentative idea because of details like, why wouldn’t a kid with godparents simply wish the Dis-asteroid away? And what does this mean for Jimmy Neutron, who lives in the U.S. just like Timmy does, but clearly comes from a universe so different that both characters actively commented on the different animation styles?

But I’ll take any chance to put all of an author’s characters in the same universe if at all possible (if any of you read through the “52 Thursdays” pieces I have on my dA, you know how all my personal works connect via Kima, the Quill, the boy who jumped the gate in the Fourth Wall, the avatars, and so on).

I kind of like the idea that there is a Jimmy Neutron in Timmy’s universe, but in that universe he doesn’t have his smarts, whereas in Jimmy’s universe that Timmy doesn’t have fairies, and Danny doesn’t have powers in either of them, but… I don’t know where I’d really go with that or why I brought it up here.

So “yes”, on some level they do exist in the same universe in my work (as does “Gravity Falls”, and anyone who read “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” probably caught the golf course joke), but don’t take it too seriously. I prefer to write for one fandom at a time. The only crossover I would dare consider writing at this point is one between FOP and “ChalkZone” (I believe I mentioned my finished eight-page-long outline of it last year, but I wanted to see Season 10 through to its end first since Chloe and Sparky are in it, and I’m debating how many of you will roll your eyes about the Pixies being in it. Look, Jimmy got the Anti-Fairies. If more of y’all would write Pixies, I wouldn’t be shouldering this burden myself. Plus, Skrawl and Sanderson would be awesome friends).

Though admittedly, I am tempted to do a “Phantom”/“Chalk” crossover since both those shows feature the main characters traveling through portals to different “zones”. I can just imagine Rudy letting slip that he has a chalkboard (read: portal) in his bedroom, and Danny freaking out because, “You sleep next to your portal??? Isn’t that dangerous???”

I kinda wanna draw Rudy asking the other Nicktoons if he can be part of their group but everyone just sort of shuffles around awkwardly because the magic chalk only works in ChalkZone and he’s also the only one who has to give his parents logical excuses for sneaking out now so that ties him down a bit.

I really should write some “ChalkZone” ‘fics since I’m slightly a bigger fan of that show than “Danny Phantom”, but the problem there is the same one I have when faced with the possibility of writing “Gravity Falls” or “Star vs. The Forces of Evil”- the show was SO GOOD and the world-building and characters SO FLAWLESS that I have little left to work with. There’s a reason the show stopped after four seasons. They fleshed out the world until it was all fleshed.

I latched onto Youngblood and his parrot because there’s a story there- they’re a pair. How did they meet and why are they still friends when they sometimes rub each other the wrong way? And FOP is my jam because there’s a lot of decent world-building, but it’s scattered in so many pieces that there are holes and inconsistencies everywhere. I made it my job to sew up those holes and design a magic system that made all those details part of the same consistent canon. “ChalkZone”, “Star”, and “Gravity Falls” just don’t need me.

And I’ve heard parts of the second theory you mentioned, but I support it 0%.