#god ok so with this i do think 'D' stands for dreams rather than desire

[moonpaw]

god all the speculation about who was the traitor and it ended up being the vegapunk full of desire RIGHT after stella's "we owe everything to desire!" speech, like the irony of it all

[meshugana1]

Re-Write Strikes

"Give up now, there's no hope of escape," Wonder Woman said as she descended from the sky and struck her iconic pose. The small, brave crowd that had gathered immediately retrieved their phones and snapped pics of the scene. She addressed the Woman, clad in a green dress and holding two large duffle bags in a single hand. She adjusted her round-rimmed glasses and smirked at the heroine.

"I don't know that I agree, Wonder Woman. I think my chances are decidedly in my favor. I mean, look at my opposition, piece of cake." Wonder Woman's gaze remained steely as she continued the stare down. All villains bluff at first, but this fresh face is being particularly obnoxious about it.

"I have faced many villains over many years. The likes of 'Re-Write' hardly rank among the most intimidating." Wonder Woman had no idea where this Woman got her confidence. According to the Justice League database, she was a meta human with the ability to reprogram electronic systems to function the way she desires. Sadly she only seems to put this ability to use by hacking into government systems and robbing banks.

"I doubt that. I mean, why should I be scared of a grown woman who still wets the bed every night." Wonder Woman's body remained stoic, but her eyes betrayed her shock. How could this Woman have known? Her night time issue was a secret more closely guarded than her civilian identity. Even her mother and Amazonian sisters were in the dark.

"L-Lies will not save you! I don't do that!" Wonder Woman countered, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. Re-write continued smirking at her foe.

"Maybe I was wrong. Soaking the sheets every single night isn't something a responsible adult would do, is it? Maybe you aren't an adult after all. No, you look barely look eighteen, if that." Diana's stoic expression rattled slightly as this Woman guessed her age exactly. She had just turned eighteen last week, and less than that, she was finally able to acquire her own apartment and no longer live in fear of exposing her nighttime secret to her American friends, the Kapatelis family.

"So you know how old I am, big whoop. You're still not getting away with this." Wonder Woman said as she drew closer to Re-Write. Re-Write made no aggressive moves, and she just continued to smile and attempt to bluff her way out of the youthful heroine's grip.

"Now that I say it, it's so obvious. I mean, just look at those ridiculous braces and all those angry little pimples all over your face." Wonder Woman balked and stopped mid-stride, nearly tripping. It wasn't as if she wanted to get braces. When she arrived in Man's world after living a life devoid of modern dental care, obviously she would need some adjustment. The dentist assured her that the rig she received was standard. Nobody had ever mocked her for it before. As she ran her tongue along the intricate metalwork across her teeth, a hand unconsciously moved to cover her mouth. And You could hardly blame wonder Woman for having acne. Everyone has it. She tried for years to be rid of it, even with the aide of proactive and washing her face every day didn't help. Every morning, aside from waking up wet, she found even more zits than the day before.

"S-Shut up! At least I'm not some petty crook using her powers for evil!"

"Oh, real scathing comeback, Princess. At least I'm not a nerdy little immature high school freshman."

"W-What?!"

"Obviously Wonder' Woman', real women have these," Re-Write said as she leaned forward and made a very sensual show of grabbing her sizable breasts, easily more than several handfuls, and presenting them to Wonder Woman. Diana's pimpled face turned blood red as she looked down at her pancake-flat chest. She had waited and waited and prayed to the gods for them to grow in, but her pleas went unheeded. Memories of her mother, Queen Hippolyta, and her bountiful breasts tormenting her with their promise of coming womanhood for years before she stole away to Man's world. And here, she even attempted online remedies and ointments to make her breasts grow in; if anything, they made them smaller. All the girls at school made fun of her enough for everything else. She just wanted to take one thing off the table. But as that thought crossed her mind, another intersected it.

"Wait. I know my breasts are s-small, o-ok non-existent, but I'm not a freshman. I-I graduated last month, Valedictorian!" Diana said, for the first time doubting the observational skill of her foe. And for the first time, Re-Write's composure slackened and she showed a strained expression as she straitened her posture. She closed her eyes and held her forehead as if a migraine had suddenly struck her. A moment later, she had collected herself, and her cocky expression returned.

"Valedictorian? What an imagination you have, little Princess. You have to have good grades to be a valedictorian, and if I were a betting woman, I'd say you're a D student on your best day. Yup, I can tell; you must have flunked quite a bit. They probably only let you into high school out of pity in the first place." Re-Write said, beginning to seem somewhat unsteady on her feet. Wonder Woman's blush only deepened as she heard this criminal's accusation and only prayed that her expression wasn't letting on that she had her dead to rights.

Diana was forced to enroll in middle school after she arrived in Man's world, and she began staying with the Kapatelis family. Her placement exams put her in eighth grade despite being a year older, much to her dismay. She was a princess in her homeland and was given much care and attention by her tutors, but her education was of a more practical nature. It was only due to Ms. Kapatelis's intervention with her friend, the principal, that allowed Diana to progress to High school, despite her almost total failure of all her academic courses. But there were no friends for Ms. Kapatelis to lean on for Diana in High school, and Diana was forced to repeat her freshman year three times, and this year was the fourth. It was like no new information would stay in her head.

"I can't believe your Mommy lets you do this every night; I mean, don't you have homework to fail and a bed to pee in?"

"S-Sh-Shut up!" Diana said in a more embarrassed tone rather than an authoritative one. "My Mommy doesn't even live here, and she's still on the island I came from!" Diana said with folded arms and a smirk, failing to notice that she referred to her mother as Mommy in public at her age.

"Oh, Wonder Woman, still trying to push that fake story? You know no one believes you, right? You need to be tall to be an Amazon, after all, and you look like you barely hit five feet in heels. I'm sure most of this crowd saw your Mommy drop you off before you arrived too. I'm sure she wanted her little angel to be safe on her very first night as a wannabe superhero. Let me guess, big ol' chubby lady? Loves to embarrass you? How predictable." Re-Write said, bringing a hand to her face and whipping away a small dollop of blood leaking from her nose. Diana's knees touched as her posture betrayed her nervousness. Her shaking hands were evident to the entire assembly as they gathered to watch the small girl's heroic debut. It wasn't going well. She spent nearly ten minutes being scolded by her first criminal and having almost all her secrets exposed to the masses and any news crews that had gathered. 

Diana's eyes became misty as her debut continued to fall apart. She had worked on her back story for weeks. Her Mommy was the initial inspiration for it, what with her old name. But everybody just called her Polly; it seemed to fit a modern woman more than Hippolyta. Her Mommy was never really on board with the whole hero thing, mainly because of her consistently low grades, but Diana's pouty face was legendary, even covered in acne. Before tonight, Diana had relegated her costumed activities to rescuing kittens and helping little old ladies across the street, literally. The most action she had seen was an argument with some girl scouts trying to earn merit badges that resulted in her being pushed into a garbage can.

But finally, she had worn her Mommy down and convinced her she was ready for the big leagues. She cast a shy glance into the crowd and saw her Mommy there with a concerned look on her chubby face.

For the first time since their meeting, Re-Write advanced on the nervous young heroine. This caused Diana to literally jump and take a step back before she reminded herself that she was the one with authority. Diana did her best to resume the heroic pose she had practiced for hours in the mirror, but as Re-Write drew closer, Diana only crumbled more. Re-Write was right in front of her. Diana looked as if she was about to burst into tears. The smile on Re-Writes face was predatory, and the Woman stood nearly a full head and shoulders above Diana. Diana looked up, her lip trembling as Re-Write literally looked down on the frightened green hero.

Re-Write moved quickly and suddenly. Her arms reached out to Diana as her feet squared up. Her smile never left her face as she spoke softly and speedily, "Boo." 

Diana fell back on instinct and collapsed onto the ground, curling into a tight ball with her arms coving her head as she unleashed a girlish scream for help. Diana was sure she was dead, a foolish little girl who got too big for her bloomers. Her dreams of becoming the greatest heroine in the world and standing shoulder to shoulder with the Justice League would all end in a bloody mess. The tears flowed unabated, and all the onlookers could hear her sobs. Diana didn't feel anything but the cold ground and warmth growing from her homemade star-spangled cotton bottoms.

A minute later, she opened her eyes and found herself to her amazement to be still alive. She looked up from the ground and saw the smirk of Re-Write even wider than before as she stood over her with hands-on wide hips.

"Who's intimidating now, Wonder Wetter? Maybe you'll know when you're out of your league better now. I wonder if a public spanking would hammer the message home better. What do you say, piddle pants?" Re-Write said as she reached a hand out to the cowering girl. Her smile turned sinister as her hand drew closer when suddenly another hand slapped hers away with a thunderous clap. Diana finally felt safe enough to open her eyes, and she saw a new figure standing between her and Re-Write.

"How dare you say those hurtful things to my little girl!" Polly said as she stood between her precious bundle of joy and the spiteful Woman tormenting her.

"Well well, far be it from me to stand between such a large woman and—"

"Don't give me that, you nasty little tramp! I know I'm a big fat woman. Congratulations, you have eyes. Where do you get off thinking you can drive my poor little sweetheart to pee herself and ruin her reputation on her first night as a real hero? Do you have any idea how long it took her to work up the courage to do this? How nervous she was even to leave the car? Or even how much she just wants to help people? No, you don't, do you? You probably don't even care as you do your silly little crimes and make life hard for everyone else? You probably still don't even realize that you just crushed a poor little girl's dream tonight. I feel so sorry for you that you need to steal and flaunt your fat tits and ass in front of an insecure young woman to feel better about yourself." Polly didn't take a single breath as she unleashed her motherly fury onto Re-Write.

The villainess was shocked as she backed away from the fat mother's accusatory finger. Polly continued to press and wag her finger at Re-Write as she defended her daughter. Only when Re-Write had been driven ten feet away, and Polly was red in the face, did the diatribe finally cease. Re-Write had her hands up in defeat as Polly semi-waddled back to her still cowering little girl.

"It's okay Little Bird; let's go home," Polly said as she knelt as best as her fat belly and thighs would allow and lifted her blubbering daughter to her awkward feet. The makeup Diana had experimented with to give her a more mature look had been entirely ruined by her tears, and she looked more like a clown as she waddled away, clinging tightly to her mother's thick arm.

She felt the squish of her underwear and heard the snickers of the crowd they passed through, and it brought new tears to her eyes. How was she ever going to live this down? She wasn't Wonder Woman, she was just a silly little girl playing dress-up. She'd be lucky if the other kids at school didn't recognize her on tv and start picking on her again.

It felt like miles before Diana, and her mother arrived at Polly's car. A beat-up old Jeep Cherokee that had rust along its tire rims and a faded red paint job that had all but given up. The door creaked open, and Polly lifted her daughter into the back seat. Diana winced as she felt the rapid cooling of her soaked briefs press deeply into her skin. In the rearview mirror, she was finally able to see what everyone else was snickering at and brought fresh, heaving breaths. Polly sat in the driver's seat, the Jeep visibly listing with her added weight.

"Don't you worry, sweetie, Mommy's gonna drive us home, and we can get you out of those wet shorts and into a nice bath. Then after a little slice of pie, we can forget about this whole night. You can try again next weekend, after your homework, of course."

"NO! I never wanna be a superhero again! They all laughed at me, Momma, they all laughed and pointed and…" Diana said as she cried anew.

"Don't be like that, sweetheart; it's just a little setback, is all. I'm sure with a little more confidence; you'll be tossing them in prison left and right. In the meantime, I'm sure Ms. Tracy's cat needs help. You know how Snookers likes to climb trees, and of course, Mrs. Halloway always appreciates you helping her around her home. You know how hard it is for the older folks. And don't forget babysitting little Katie from next door, under her older sister's supervision, of course. You don't see that big Mr. Superman out there doing those things do you?" Polly said as she slowly put the crowd and that horrible Woman behind them. She continued her words of encouragement to her blubbering daughter as they drove to their modest home.

Re-Write's stunned expression shifted back to smug self-assurance as she watched the beat-up old car leave the scene. As she returned to the bank to collect her goods, she couldn't help whispering.

"Sometimes I really scare myself with this shit."

***************

The apartment door opened, and three duffle bags filled with cash were dumped onto the floor. Re-Write heard the clicking of keys as she stumbled into the small living room. The Woman at the computer in the corner of the room took no notice as Re-Write opened the fridge, grabbed an ice pack, and promptly collapsed onto the couch.

The throbbing pain at the front of her skull was by far the worst she had given herself in over a month. Her hand searched the wall for a moment, finding the light switch and flicking it on and off for a few seconds. The Woman at the desk looked up with a start and searched the room, smiling when she looked to the couch. She moved to her and placed a gentle kiss on Re-Write's forehead, causing a genuine smile. The Woman began gesturing with her hands as she sat next to Re-Writes smooth legs.

So how did your little adventure go? Is capitalism dead? And are the corrupt and evil sufficiently inconvenienced?

"Har-har-har. And yes, it went pretty well. The villains using that bank to fund all their little terrors are now half a billion dollars poorer, thank you very much."

I saw on the news that you had to humiliate some poor little girl trying to debut as a hero. Was that necessary? She seemed really upset.

"Oh, Her. Don't worry, she'll be back to normal by morning, I think."

Normal? Wait, was she different before tonight?

"Oh yeah, lots."

No way, you did the thing with your powers again? I thought you said you couldn't affect people or whatever?

"Before, yeah, but I think I'm getting stronger. A month ago, I would have lost consciousness doing that much to one person, let alone two people."

Two people?

"I'll tell you all about it later. The world should be fine without 'Wonder Woman' for a couple of days. Nothing I do seems to last much longer than that." Re-Write said as she felt the hand of her companion rest on her midriff. The throbbing in her skull began to abate as she felt her friend's hand begin to float lower.

I seem to recall one thing that usually makes you feel better.

*********************

Diana felt the clammy sheets before she opened her eyes. They were cold and doggedly clung to her skin. The pull-up her Mommy had fitted her into the night before once again utterly failing to do its duty. After so many years, she could hardly count the times her Mommy had threatened her with diapers at night, but nothing ever came of those. She didn't even bother with removing the soiled underwear as she gathered the wet sheets and did her daily walk of shame to the hamper in her Mommy's room.

She thought about how she might announce this morning's accident. She would probably do it as she always did. Bashfully creak open the door and tiptoe along to the hamper as her mother snored away. Then slowly circling until she grabbed a few of her Mommy's pudgy fingers and gently shook. She would, of course, leave out the part about how she was still so upset as Mommy tucked her in that as she lay sniffling, she didn't even bother to try as her Mommy bid her goodnight and she proceeded to let the floodgates flow. What was the point after all? They were going to be wet in the morning no matter what.

She dragged her feet along the bright hallway, dreading her Mommy's blind optimistic fawning. She passed the hallway mirror, absentmindedly casting a glance it's way. She froze with a yelp stuck in her throat. She shivered for a moment as she looked at the stranger she saw carrying sheets looking back at her. The wet sheets hit the floor as she covered her face, flashes of the previous night rising up and fear reasserting itself. Her bottom hit the floor, and her hands covered her face, praying that this person would ignore her and move on.

When no sound other than her whimpering could be heard, she braved to open her eyes and saw the intruder do the same. Her hands fell away, as did the mystery woman's, and her slow mind began to throb with activity. The full-figured Woman was wearing precisely the same pajamas as Diana was. She raised herself onto her thighs and blushed as she felt her clammy trainers were no longer quite as clammy. The Woman copied her exactly. She even had the same acne spots on her face and the same brand of braces on her teeth. Her mind had nearly connected the dots when suddenly a pointed scream spooked her yet again.

She turned her head, expecting to see her mother emerge from her bedroom and scream again at the sight of this intruder. Instead, Diana saw the prettiest Woman she had ever seen come out of her Mommy's room. She was tall, had a beautiful face and curly hair that flowed like water around her. She was dressed so strangely. Her pajamas looked like expensive purple silk robes and a lot of golden jewelry. She was even wearing a crown like a princess, just like in the back story she made up for her superhero identity. 

The Woman's eyes locked onto Diana. "Diana? What has happened?"

"How do you know my name, Lady?" Diana asked, rising to her unsteady feet.

"Diana, this is not some jest. Last night I was walking along the beach near the palace then I was suddenly exhausted, and now I've awoken here in man's world? And now I see you here with a spotted face and metal in your mouth? And, are you wearing a diaper? Explain this, Diana."

Diana's mouth hung open as she listened to this lady talk. Why was she talking like someone from a Shakespeare book, and why did she act like she knew her? Diana cast a wary sideways glance to the Woman in the mirror one more time, and suddenly all the pieces came together in her mind at once. Diana looked at her body in the mirror. She fought away the desire to dance for joy at the sight of her full, round breasts. She had had them before, for years. Her head hurt as she raised a hand to feel the flesh that both was and wasn't there before. She looked at her acne-ridden face and her metal-covered teeth, at her kitty covered pajamas and the saggy, clammy pull-up around her waist. Diana had seen more than her fair share of horrors in her life but never before this morning had any of them caused her to lose her balance, blur her vision, and make her fall into unconsciousness with only her soggy pull up and wet bedsheets to break her fall.

********************

Diana awoke to a gentle nudging on her shoulder. Her eyes refused to open as she raised her arms high and twisted her torso into a stretch. She met resistance as she grunted in an attempt to pull her comforter over her eyes.

"Diana. Diana! You need to wake up or you'll be late again. I do not want to attend another conference with your principal over this, so get out of bed immediately! You need a change and a shower, again."

"Five more minutes, mommy…"

"No, how have you become so lazy? You were never like this at home."

"It's not my fault; it's whatever that lady did to me. To us," Diana said with a yawn as she scratched at the clammy night diaper she wore. Her friends at the league could come up with no explanation as to what exactly did happen. The best the more cosmically inclined heroes they know could come up with was that somehow, Re-Write could interconnect and stitch together different parts of countless realities. But the universe prefers order, and thus the Gordian knot that is Diana's reality is slowly unraveling to normal, explaining her partial physical shift back. However, it seems her reality is being repaired on a triage basis. Her new acne and braces, as well as her status as a high school freshman, and even her nighttime incontinence, have been deemed by the universe to be non-essential to Diana's impact on fate.

Hippolyta seemed to have faired better than her daughter, aside from a recent inclination towards sweets wreaking havoc on her diet. Though, due to Themyscira being almost impossible to find, returning the Amazon Queen to her throne is proving a complicated matter. That is how Diana Prince, the Wonder Woman, found herself adjust the skirt of her school uniform in her hallway mirror, desperately trying to remember what her math teacher had assigned as homework. As well as her English assignment, and she couldn't even recall what time her history teacher set her. 

"You look very lovely, my little bird," Hippolyta said, brushing her daughter's hair. 

"Yeah, right. I look like such a dork. Everyone at school says so." Diana said crestfallen.

"And just who is everyone? Are those girls picking on you again? Do I need to call the school again?"

"No, Mom! Jeez, I think I can handle some high school girls."

"I wouldn't be so sure, especially after the janitor had to pull you out of your locker. Or that time they poured oatmeal into your panties at lunch. And let's not forget the glorious time they told you in Spanish class that 'Hola, soy una Gorda fea perdedora' is the formal way to introduce yourself."

"That wasn't my fault! It sounded right…at the time."

"Diana, the gods gifted you with the ability to understand all languages."

"They just sounded so sure…"

"Well, if they do bother you anymore, just tell one of your teachers and let them take care of it," Hippolyta said as she patted her child on the back. She could hardly believe that the sweet, gullible Woman in front of her was her willful daughter. They lived in this new situation for a little over two months, and it had started to become frighteningly routine. Absentmindedly she reached a finger into the waistband of Diana's skirt and pulled, observing the condition of her thick underwear.

"MOM!"

"Relax, little one; I'm just checking.”

"I'm not a baby anymore."

"Well, our little nighttime ritual would say otherwise. And of course, there was the state of your pants after the locker incident."

"That wasn't my fault! I was in that locker forever!"

"According to the janitor, you were only in there for twenty minutes at the most."

"…I got scared…" Diana said, her eyes becoming wet. Hippolyta gently embraced her daughter.

"It's okay, I understand. Just find a teacher next time, okay?"

Diana smiled as she rubbed her eyes as she turned and nodded. The screech of familiar worn brakes alerted Diana, and she firmly hugged her mother back as she grabbed her bag and rushed out the door. Hippolyta looked down as she saw her daughter rushing and fall flat on her face just feet from the yellow transport. Even three floors up, she could hear the children's laughter as Diana boarded and took a seat in the very front. The window near her seat rolled down, and Diana shoved her head and arm through and began waving violently at Hippolyta. The proud mother smiled and gently waved back as she saw her daughter make her way to school.

She returned to the living room and slid onto the couch, a bag of cheesy potato chips in one hand and a bowl of skittles in the other. She turned on the TV and began the unexpectedly difficult task of trying to choose a streaming service to watch until her precious daughter returned home, inevitably in tears, whether because of the difficulty of basic subjects or the cruel tormenting on American teenagers. Regardless, she would be here, for better or worse, homework or bullies for her daughter. 

[balioc]

Talkin’ About Outsiders

Riffing on my recent post:

If you wanted to keep something like the traditional D&D Great Wheel cosmology, and you wanted all the planes on the Wheel and all the various alignment-oriented races of outsiders to be cool and thematic and not-shoehorned-in, what would it look like?  Let’s give it a shot.  Maybe this will be useful someday, if I ever run a planar-savvy D&D campaign.  Or if you do.

Guiding Principles:

* All groups of outsiders should feel narratively resonant.  Players should have an intuitive sense of what they’re about, what role they would play in heroic fantasy stories, etc.  We want to avoid “oh yeah, those guys over in that corner, because of course there have to be some guys over in that corner.”

* Outsiders should feel otherworldly and mystical, like the spirits they are, not like Another Race of Monsters that’s been jammed into a planar role by fiat. 

* Outsiders should strongly reflect their associated alignment, but, like, in a cool way. 

I’m also going to be working with my own personal gut-level sense of how the alignment grid “should” work on a cosmic scale, which suggests that the “corner planes” -- LG, CG, LE, and CE -- are going to be the strongest, most magical, most populated, etc.  In a metaphysical sense, a strong good/evil commitment and a strong law/chaos commitment reinforce each other rather than diluting each other.  In a demographic sense, while in fact the plurality of mortals are TN due to vacillation or apathy, most noteworthy mortals with plane-defining levels of soul power have corner alignments.  In a pragmatic storycrafting sense, three of those four corners are way cooler and better-developed than anything else on the Wheel, so we should probably run with that.  The upshot is that the NG, NE, LN, and CN outsiders can and should be constructed such that they just have less impact on the universe overall.  The in-betweeny planes...well, they’re afterthoughts, we’ll get to them (briefly) but can ignore them for now.

OK.  Diving in:

Chaotic evil demons from the Abyss and lawful evil devils from Hell are being kept, more or less intact.  They’ve gotten more attention than any other planar races, by like an order of magnitude; they’ve got lots of existing lore and monster-design that people know and love; it would be a crime to throw that stuff away.  Fluff should probably try to present them with a somewhat more-philosophical, less-Flanderizing spin than they usually get.  The conceptual heart of demon-ness isn’t “graaaargh kill smash consume defile” (even if that is a popular instantiation), it’s something like “literally nothing matters except my desire and my vision.”  Similarly, devils would benefit from a little less “we’re all legalistic treacherous assholes” (even if many of them are) and a little more “the order of the universe is legitimate, the infernal hierarchy is legitimate, we follow the rules but we play to win.”  But fundamentally these are the creatures you know and love, don’t fix what ain’t broke. 

Neutral evil yugoloths can stay, too, more or less.  They’ve gotten a fair amount of good monster design too, and they’re popular, although I confess that I have no idea why.  A race of fiendish mercenaries who manipulate and prolong the Blood War?  Sure, why not?  I do want to give them a bit more character, though, and not the inexplicable apocalypse-obsessed death-spirit thing from Pathfinder.  Rather: as I understand it, neutral evil as an alignment is mostly about pure selfishness.  It’s not hard to capture the idea of “selfishness” in spiritual cosmic form -- that’s the gaki, the hungry ghost.  Yugoloths should be driven by intense insatiable cravings, presumably with each kind having a different general category of craving.  This will do a lot to define their politics internal and external, the means of treating with them, etc.  (Also, to be clear, “daemon” as an importantly-separate thing from “demon” is very silly and I have no truck with it.)

The collective term for demons, devils, and yugoloths is of course “fiends.”

The lawful neutral outsider race has already been covered in my previous post: that’s the fae.  Inhumanly perfect spirits obsessed with rules, oaths, codes-of-honor, etc.  Dangerous, and certainly not benevolent, but also not inimical to the flourishing of mortals in the way that fiends are.  Hard to understand, as all outsiders must on some level be, but probably easier to deal with than any other spirits if you know the right codes and protocols.  Probably we play down the “capricious nature spirit” thing and play up the bit where they have courts, monarchs, diplomatic ties to Heaven and Hell, etc.

The chaotic neutral race should be...well, something better than the slaadi, that’s for sure.  “They’re infinitely variable and unpredictable, except that they’re all magic frogs who speak in word salad.”  Gee.  Useful for storytelling, that.  I don’t have any super-brilliant ideas here (and am open to suggestions), but I have what I believe to be a good-enough idea: genies.  Proud, wild, tempestuous spirits who treasure their own freedom and dignity above all else.  Binding them can be a road to great power, since they’ll do pretty much anything to escape, but it’s also unbelievably risky.  You can make up some cute lore about their anarchic ad-hoc anything-goes society. 

I’d like to use “angels” as the collective term for good-aligned outsiders, the equivalent of “fiends.”  We could go with “celestials,” I guess, but it’s awkward that the LG plane specifically is (sometimes) called Celestia, and really “angels” has a connotative punch like nothing else. 

Lawful good gets archons.  Yay archons.  Tiered choirs, divine armies, holy holy holy, the whole shebang.  The fluff for these guys could stand to be fleshed out some -- as far as I know it hasn’t been touched since the 3.5e Book of Exalted Deeds, and that version was kinda lame -- but there’s like infinite amounts of Christian angelology lore on which to draw, so I’m not worried.

Neutral good needs something better than guardinals, since “benevolent animal dudes” really had no spiritual resonance at all.  Fortunately we can do some conceptual repurposing here. I think we can just grab the beings that D&D currently calls “angels,” start calling them all “devas” -- even the planetars and solars, which I guess become “planetary devas” and “solar devas” -- and stick them all in NG.  No one really uses them as all-purpose divine servants anyway, as far as I can tell.  They are beings of pure benevolence, protectors and guardians and healers, etc. etc.  Possibly we call the NG plane “Celestia,” to fit with the celestial-objects theme of the devas, and just go with “Heaven” for the LG plane.

And then we come to chaotic good, which is definitely the hardest row to hoe.  CG has a very important spot on the Great Wheel, the CG outsiders need to have something akin to the narrative power of the demons and devils and archons, and...I just don’t think there’s any pre-existing thing that fits the bill.  “Chaotic good” is not the kind of idea that has been traditionally associated with mighty spiritual mysteries, which is probably why all the existing CG outsider races suck so much.  (Seriously, as far as I can tell, it’s always either “we’re elf knights who fight for freedom! but, like, planar!” or “uh, we’re spirits of art and beauty, I guess, sorta?”) We’re going to have to develop these guys from scratch. 

Rather than trying to come up with an “archetypically CG outlook” or something, I think it would make sense to start with an image of their world and society.  This is a good, lovely, beneficent version of the Abyss.  This is a place of tremendous diversity, where outsider lords carve out their own domains according to their own idiosyncratic specifications.  Which means you have, like, a million conflicting little paradises each defined by its own vision.  (But not, like, at war, the way demon lords always are, we’re all very Good here.  Just...different from each other.)  It probably adds up to a sort of hipster’s-vision-of-the-big-city vibe.  You imagine a race of cosmic Manic Pixie Dream Girls, essentially, always flowing into and out of each other’s circles, descending to the Prime Material Plane in order to experience delights / inspire greatness / find adoring mortal fans who will validate their coolness. 

I think it would be a mistake to give these guys a single strong visual theme, the way that the guardinals are “animal people” and the eladrin are “pretty elves.”  They’re a menagerie of weird-but-beautiful monsters, the way that demons are a menagerie of weird-but-ugly monsters.  The race needs a name, but right now I don’t have a good one.

For true neutral outsiders, I think we can just go with elementals and call it a day.  They’re mindless!  They do as they’re commanded, unless they don’t, in which case they have incredibly simplistic urges like “burn” or “flow!” 

The in-between planes -- y’know, Gehenna, the Beastlands, Acheron, etc. -- are cool, in some vague theoretical sense, and I don’t think we should scrap them entirely.  But I also think it’s a mistake to try and give them their own full-fledged native outsider races, to pretend that they’re going to have the same depth of inherent character as the main eight outer planes, etc.  Instead, I suspect it’s best to use them as divine domains.  Because they don’t have powerful native outsider races, they’ve all been taken over by gods.  Exactly which gods live on which ones is a matter of your particular setting’s theology, but it makes a lot of intuitive sense to say “these are the places where you’d expect to find gods by default, a god who lives on one of the main eight planes is doing something kinda weird and probably has a close relationship with the local outsiders.”