#i already have like. a general idea of her backstory for her bio

[infernal-feminae]

Me, listening to a bunch of podcasts and watching video essays on Old Hollywood to use for inspiration for Allure's backstory

[thedarkone121]

Behold! Drafts of Anne-Marie’s Biological Parents!

This was meant to be a design study since I already designed Anne-Marie, so I wanted to see how her bio parents would look like. Also I wanted to give a face for these a-holes so we can all hate on them for giving the girl trauma.

However, this also transformed into an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone, so I have decided to make it canon to Anne-Marie’s backstory.

Everyone, meet Anne-Marie’s birth parents: Isabella and Simon Stride…

More undercut to hear my design notes.

In my head, I always had a clear image of what Isabella looked like. Anne-Marie was always meant to take after her in looks so it wasn’t that hard to pin down the face. All I had to do was change her nose.

Now, she originally had a purple color scheme with green eyes — since purple means royalty and Isabella often had visions of living a luxurious life — but I was given a note in Discord that it made her look too much like Rachel and maybe I should warm up the colors, so that’s what I did.

Honestly? I love it. It gives Isabella Mother Gothel vibes and I think it fits her perfectly. Two women who have no right to be mothers.

Now, onto the man of the hour himself.

So, to put it bluntly, I didn’t planned for Simon Stride to be involved in this story. Originally, Anne-Marie’s bio father was meant to a generic rich slime-ball who Jekyll had only seen in passing at parties.

But then my mind played around with the idea of: “What if it was Simon Stride?” Suffice to say, I couldn’t escape that brainworm.

So yeah, this is my Simon Stride design for TGS. Who, as the words of @definatelymrhyde (hey 🤣) described him: “punchable and French”

[spacetime1969]

TOAxDC anyone?

I've been a part of the MariBat fandom for years now, and more recently become a part of the BatPham fandom since it grew into a full fandom of it's own.

In all that time I have been sitting on an idea for another crossover with DC that I think has just as much potential to become something entirely its own.

So, allow me to present the idea of Tales of Arcadia x Batman, which I've been affectionate calling the BATHUNTER crossover in my head.

More ramblings and fic recs under the cut.

So, first and foremost:

We have a bat bait, blue eyed, black haired, protagonist with trauma. Comparing this to the other two fandoms we've already hit the ground running.

We also have a reason for them to be in Gotham. At the end of Trollhunters we have Claire and Jim going with the trolls to find a new heartstone in New Jersey. Gotham is in New Jersey.

The trolls traveling across the country and founding New Trollmarket right in the Bat's territory doesn't even require an explanation beyond 'They found the new heartstone under Gotham City.'

The opportunities for identity shenanigans are still just as present as ever. If you stick to the full canon of the Tales of Arcadia universe, sans the time travel reset, then Jim, Claire and possibly Toby are both human and the bats could meet them as human civilians and as vigilantes who go around with glowing face covering armor and the ability to just disappear.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of canon past the first half of wizards. So I like the idea of Jim using a glamour mask to go to school while being a vigilante in his half troll form. Make the bat's even more confused.

I also feel like the dichotomy between the three rules of trollhunting and Batman's usage of fear as a weapon and no killing rule would be fascinating.

Just:

"Fear heightens your senses. Fear keeps you alive. Arrogance gets you killed."

-vs-

“You prefer to call me Batman. But the reason you can never escape me … is that my name is fear. And I live within you.”

“Always finish the fight.”

-vs-

"Heroes should never kill a villain, no matter the depths of his villainy."

They would probably agree on rule three, though: “When in doubt, always kick them in the gronk-nuts.” Since Batman identifying weakness in both his teammates and villains is a whole thing.

Lastly, the potential for bio-dad aus is fascinating to me. Specifically, not with Bruce as the bio-dad, but with Commissioner Jim Gordon.

For anyone who hasn't happened on Jim Gordon's backstory, allow me to give some context. Jim Gordon's wife was named Barbara Eileen Gordon. They had two children, Barbra Gordon and Jim Gordon Jr. Barbara Eileen divorced Commissioner Gordon because she wanted to get her son out of Gotham.

From what I understand, in canon she keeps the name and eventually moves back to Gotham after her son becomes a serial killer and inmate of Arkham Asylum.

But this is an AU, canon is what ever we want it to be and Jim Lake being the biological kid of Commishionre Gordon and little brother of Barbra Gordon aka Oracle has some real potential in the right author's hands.

Fic Recs:

Loose Lips, by NerdofSpades

Batman wants answers. Jim wants to be left alone, so he can go back to his not so normal life. Too bad those two things aren't at all compatible with each other. At least Jim gets some new friends out of all of this. Probably. Maybe.

One of my favorite fics in general. Jim becomes friends with the Young Justice team while trying to convince Batman that he's 'just a civilian'.

three teenagers are loose in gotham (what will they do), by clayr_of_the_lillies

sometimes you become a vigilante deliberately. sometimes its twitter's fault. aka a tales of arcadia/batman crossover that wouldn't leave my mind.

Very funny and well thought out. I particularly like this interpretation of Gotham's trollmarket and the friendship between the trollhunters and the batfam.

In Their Blood, NerdofSpades

Barbara Lake saw an uncomfortably familiar pattern in the behavior of James Lake Junior. She saw it in almost everything he did these days. She had seen it in her friends growing up. She had lived it herself. She just wasn't sure how to help him, so, instead, she calls in a friend.

Another fun one by NerdofSpades. Barbara, having been Batgirl, recognizes Jim's behavior in herself. It's a shorter one but still a lot of fun

I'm also working on a couple of my own fics set in this crossover, but their still WIP for now

[alwaysyourqueen]

okay hi @haunteddollco hello!! im gonna tell you about my ocs because you've given me the prime opportunity. this is mostly gonna be about their romance story because tavaris's backstory is pretty much just The Dark Urge with some flavor from me. but anyways

my main oc here is my dark urge — Tavaris Ravengard née Surana (they/she tiefling aberrant mind sorcerer). they actually start the story only with the name Tav, since their memory is so fucked up. but once they reach the underdark, they learn their full name from a memory they receive from the flower there

Tavaris is a generally kind and often mild-mannered woman who has some ridiculous violence welled up inside them! they bond very quickly with a lot of the party, though it gets a little complicated with astarion. he seduces them at the same time wyll is trying to begin courting them, and things get a bit…awkward. when astarion breaks things off in act 2, they step back gracefully and let wyll continue his romance.

except that it doesn't progress like a canon breakup at all. because, you see, everyone in this little group has caught feelings Bad. so after their night of suffering at the hands of the Urge at the end of act 2, she and wyll go to astarion and tell him they want to be together with him. they love him, and life might be very, very short.

the three of them face their demons together in act 3, which i'll keep to a minimum because i think you haven't played it yet? but all 3 of them end up going to help karlach with her predicament, and only start their life together when they come back

they all get married. obviously. Wyll Ravengard(-Ancunín, if the situation calls), Astarion Ancunín-Ravengard, and Tavaris Ravengard (also -Ancunín if necessary). they are adventurers! they do eventually find a place in the country near Baldur's Gate to settle, not too far from some of their good friends

Tavaris finally gets magical gender body alteration (they're transfeminine and never got it pre-tadpole) with the help of Gale and Rolan, and then they get to start their family life together. having children is something tav and wyll both REALLY want, but astarion is more nervous. they convince him, with the promise that he won't be made to be beholden to anyone he doesn't want to

Along the way to their first child being born, Astarion really warms up to the idea. He loves to help caretake for both his loves, and he starts getting excited for the baby!! They're all excited, really

their first child is wyll and tav's biologically, Saida Ravengard. she's purple-haired, like her mother, with her father's hair texture. she looks so much like her father, but has all her parents' free-spiritedness. she's also transgender, like her mother, and the name Saida was agreed on with her parents' input before she was even four years old

of course, one isn't enough when they're loving their family life together. so they have a son, Fyndal (Fyn to his friends). (he's supposed to be more purple than his older sister but unfortunately I can't do my mental images justice so you simply have to imagine) he's much more mellow than his sister, a responsible young lad and very much a people pleaser. he's especially his father's son, always wanting to be very much like wyll even if he loves all of his parents.

years later, astarion decides that hm…maybe…he'd like a bio kid. sure. it sounds nice and he loves his kids so fucking much already. so they do!

Priscilla and Maeve, respectively. the twins! dhampir, with the red eyes to show it off, and the apples of their fathers' eyes. Priscilla is a bit more bookish, while Maeve is more adventurous.

and then finally, the baby of the family, created using magic and biology together: Lily. part-vampire part-ravengard part-tiefling all-loved. she's beloved by her entire family, and she is spoiled not rotten but certainly past what she should be.

together they're all very happy and also get into a lot of trouble — Saida looks after her little siblings, but they run into troubles fairly often. I haven't fully detailed everything about them yet but I adore them so much. I love their little family so much…

(I also headcanon that Wyll is functionally immortal due to being transformed into a devil, and that Tavaris doesn't age normally, so this family will have a very long and happy life together. for my enjoyment)

[nitewrighter]

Hey, uh, about the "retcons" in Overwatch's story, do you know which ones are genuine retcons and which ones are additional lore added into the story?

That's a good question, because I've been in this fandom for 6 years and I've seen a lot of people call things retcons that were really just lore reveals that went against fanon. Like for example, when Moira was introduced to the game, a lot of people were saying that it retconned Mercy being the creator of Reaper, when that's not true--a lot of people headcanoned the idea of "Mercy created Reaper" into fanon because Reaper had an elimination line for Mercy that said, "Don't forget, this is all your fault" but it was also never clear if that was an elimination line he had for Overwatch members in general, or if that was referring to something else, or if it was just a taunt. In any case, there simply weren't enough details on Reaper's condition before for Moira's addition to the cast and her corresponding lore of giving Reaper his abilities to call Moira's entry into the lore a retcon. (Also it's just fucking dumb to saddle literally every medical science thing Overwatch was up to onto Mercy I mean come on, people.)

Reaper having a family? Also definitely not a retcon, we see him stalking what is presumably his son and his family in the Christmas "Reflections" comic way back in 2016--and his family is mentioned again in Ana's "Bastet" short story.

Is the Cassidy Name change a retcon? I mean there had been hints at Cassidy using pseudonyms before in certain voice lines and also in the "Joel Morricone"/"My name's not Joel" bit with Sombra. But anyway I think the meta factor of not wanting to associate a fan favorite character with a predatory Blizzard employee is justifiable enough to just... hand wave the name change. I mean they still have the old name on his "Trainhopper" comic so I guess the Pseudonym lore bit is just there so they don't need to worry about changing it back in older media---but also that just shows that Blizz is lazy as hell because if I can edit and replace over a 1000 mentions of Cassidy's old name in my 300k+ word main fic continuity, I'm pretty sure they can edit a 10 page comic.

I feel like they've also always been a bit iffy on the whole status of God AI's, particularly Anubis. Like the lore says "Anubis and other god programs were quarantined in Egypt" but we never hear anything about any other God AI and it's Anubis that kicked off the omnic crisis, apparently, But I'll have to read the Sojourn novel to be clear.

For me the most egregious and clear retcon is the changes they made to Widow in what is clearly a hamfisted attempt to give her more 'agency.' In the previous lore, as we see in Ana's comic "Legacy," Overwatch thought Amélie Lacroix was either kidnapped again or dead following the death of Gérard LaCroix. She disappeared off the face of the earth (presumably doing super secret assassinations for Talon) and basically didn't appear again until she put Ana's eye out. In Widowmaker's new bio, which came out with Overwatch 2, they say that the police were pursuing Amélie as a suspect in Gérard's death and Amélie willingly went to Talon because she had nowhere else to go and quote, "Killing Gérard made her feel alive." Like, when you're being pursued by the cops, and you've literally already been brainwashed to kill your husband, I don't think there's actual agency there.

For me the old Widow backstory was a lot better because it made her scarier and more nuanced as a character, it made the stakes feel higher in the universe, and it doesn't make the timeline confusing with what Moira was up to at the time. And also Widowmaker taking out Ana's eye is vital to Ana's character because Amélie is part of the body of Overwatch's failures. All of Ana's thoughts leading up to the point where Widowmaker takes her eye out indicate how Talon has been in Overwatch's blind spot, both figuratively and literally. So all around it's just kind of a dumb choice that turned a genuinely eerie character who partially represents the failures and vulnerabilities of Overwatch into a boring generic Femme Fatale.

But yeah anyway I would say, compare the new Overwatch 2 bios to the old comics and kind of make your own judgments from there.

[moodr1ng]

did not expect how much effort actually typing up the backstories & bios of all the characters from my oldest (still active) story would take.. esp bc aside from the main 4 characters i only had like a general idea of their circumstances (for some of them its just like. yeah this chick exists and shes among the friends of the main character. i have a general idea of her personality and ik she has two brothers. but then i need to come up w paragraphs and paragraphs of her life and interests bc ive done it for the other characters 😭).. so its actually a lot of fully original writing whereas for the main 4 it was mostly just writing down shit i already knew about them

[velvetwarfare]

while my fever lowered a bit I wanna talk about the differences between my bb girls long post ahead

I differentiate them by both icon border and by referring the default to Betty whereas COS is Bethanne ✨

𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐘

- A humanoid strand of vampirism. She was willingly turned by an ancient vampire in an effort to save the Leathe townsfolk better, growing tired of her squishy, mortal body and watching her family constantly die around her.

- LARP based. More crack shit friendly. Lighter themes.

- Stats ✨

- Shavali (homebrewed version of Vistani). Slavic-Romanian. Speaks mainly Russian.

- Victorian gothic aesthetic. Feminine lean. Can dress androgynous, prefers dresses and makeup more. Very elegant and fanciful, likes to douse herself in jewelry and wine to feel more uppity (PTSD from her past).

- Her backstory consists of formerly being a bard in Al’Hazir, practicing jests and crude humor only to earn extra coin rather than produce her own content due to the rich despising how light hearted it was. Because of her poverty and lack of home as well as family, and due to her intense desire to survive no matter the odds, she unwillingly changed her entire persona to fit her boss’ needs. Eventually, she went mad with how many times she had to strain and break her true self in order to just live, and came across the last performance for Deity’s Eclipse (Halloween). Seeing that the richer folks could afford prosthetics and costumes, Betty was only left with a dingy vampire cloak and begging for any sort of fangs. Being denied and told if she fucked up her performance in front of the neighboring city’s higher ups, she’d be cast outside to die in the winter, Betty resorted to shaving her canines into fangs herself with only a nail filer. This proved to be foreshadowing for when she became a true vampire — nobody telling the difference due to her canines having already been shaped to be fangs.

- Melancholic, pessimistic, has an awful view on humanity. Covers it all up with crude humor as a defense mechanism. Severe BPD. Doesn’t know how to take shit seriously because she has been masking for literal decades. Secretly VERY empathetic and gets attached easily from loneliness. Mentally incapable of not being a downright bitch with sharp sarcasm 90% of the time (ingrained defense mechanism). Wants her own children but can’t biologically create one as an undead so she’ll just adopt any fucking person she deems worthy LOL. Pansexual, no lean. Likes to sleep around. Does not give a shit about social normality.

- The Forgotten Realms brought out her serious side though — blood magic and becoming a sort of general and all to a bunch of Skaven. She’s very much used to violence and death due to this. Doesn’t bat an eye at bloodshed. Isn’t opposed to it either. Just don’t ruin her carpet or attire.

- H.arley Quinn, H.ormone Monstress, and S.pinel coded.

- Noel’s Lament as a theme song. Memory by Cats is her human theme.

- Easy to ship with. Easy to interact with. Very laid back and flexible.

𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐄

- An unwillingly turned vampire spawn with a heavy strand of animalistic Nosferatu (beast-like spawns turned from a beast of a vampire lord, the most severe and fatal out of all the covens. usually, people don’t last long as this version of undead due to how it wrecks the body and mind. those who live are absolute killing machines.) . Lived in a very healthy vardo and settlement before they were slaughtered by her vampire lord.

- DnD (Curse of Strahd) based. Dark themes present. Both controversial and touchy subjects. A grim turn on the default Betty.

- Vistani and highly spiritual, doesn’t care for the Gods (they both share that tbh). Speaks in Patterna and Romanian. Has Celtic traditions. Was never a city folk, she has 0 idea how to socialize with people, was raised off the grid.

- Stats and bio ✨

- Very androgynous. Muscled as fuck. (see s.triga or k.arlach) Literally just wanted to be a pretty princess before her body got disfigured and cursed as all hell. Extremely insecure over her appearance due to the looks she always gets from people (unwillingly intimidating). Barbaric and vintage vampire aesthetic. War paint. Envies other vampires for looking more normal and humanoid. Her wild shape is corrupted as well — to be a giant bat beast just like her vampire lord. Dreads how monstrous she is, just wants someone to find her pretty again.

- Bethanne grew up in a decently small sized vardo and settlement before being turned. Mama Andreá, a small elderly woman, was a psychic who ran a traveling business where she would read fortunes and read people’s souls. Catarina was her elder sister who taught her how to read nature and defend herself in the dark forests. Florin was her younger brother, who she mainly raised when Andreá fell ill. They all made up who she still is today — and without such humane love, Beth would have fell complete victim to the fatal strand and turned fully into a beast. Any souls that Noctus takes will never rest in peace due to his curse — and Bethanne is prophesied to be the one to behead him and set all the souls free due to escaping from his grasp and actively fighting the strand that’s always trying to corrupt her body.

- Pessimistic tendencies, but tries to stay optimistic for the sake of her party and hope to lay her family to rest by killing Noctus (her vampire lord). Any modern reference goes right over her head. Any social aspect goes right over her head. She is so fucking confused by society, I swear to god. You’re going to have to teach her everything normal. She knows how to read and write though, she loves to write poetry to vent. Excellent crafter, made all the toys for her vardo. Excellent at weaponry and archery. Knows tarokka. Was given a deck by Cassandra (Strahd in disguise as a Vistani woman, but no one knew it was her at the moment) as well (on request, but she already knows how to use it due to Mama Andreá having been a literal psychic who dealt with fortunes and divinity.) Humanity treats her like shit out of fear due to all the undead attacks, but she still loves humanity and continues to protect them despite her reluctance to. Highly and openly empathetic but has sarcastic tendencies. Usually pretty stern and serious, exhausted 25/8. Literally dreads her own existence because of how tiring it is to live with the curse and constant death around her. Everyone she’s loved so far has fucking died so she firmly believes her existence is a curse in itself that causes anyone who gets close to ultimately die. Is petrified to love. Wants to be loved so bad it’s ridiculous.

- When I fucking tell you she is HELLBENT on the hero complex. Not only was she forcibly turned, forced to leave her vardo at the City of Judgement, got this heavy ass prophecy shoved into her arms, and gets the nastiest backlash from the living just for existing as a vampire spawn, and having everyone she loves die around her, she believes that saving her loved ones and setting the souls free will be enough proof that she’s fucking worth something other than misery and failure. It’s not going well LOL this is COS everything goes wrong. She protected her first love interest until the very end until he caught feelings for her then got straight up kidnapped by one of the main antagonists — where he’s been actively tortured and experimented on slowly in an unknown location. She just found out about Cassandra and her true identity and is about to beat her ass silly for forgetting her Vistani ties but then she’ll try to save her ass too. It’s even worse because Vistani are so built on this foundation of acceptance and love and these two were originally two innocent Vistani women who may have even known each other in the past before getting entirely DESTROYED by vampirism and status. They both have the WORST mental health and PTSD too rest in pieces holy shit

- Hates violence but will instigate it over a short temper. Jokes about needless violence just to be a cunt with her weirdly dry sense of humor. Verbally harsh as hell and dangerously outspoken. Her intimidation comes from both her tongue and appearance. Has made a kid shit his pants before, and that was actually unintentionally JGHFHCVCH ,, has told a God and a devil to go fuck themselves, regrettably told Cassandra on their first meeting to fuck off because she was in a real shit mood at the time and Cass was joking about the fates not telling her if Beth would be tall or short (she’s 3 inches taller than Beth and Beth apologized later on and said she’s a train wreck to which Cass just stares at her and asked if the only reason she wanted to speak to her was to say she’s a train wreck and followed it up w it’s obvious you’re a train wreck and Beth just dead panned and asked her if she’s always such a cunt I fucking LOVE them LMAO) , has threatened an ENTIRE FUCKING AREA OF ROYAL GUARDS with her axe because one of them was being racist and threatened her party’s safety, threatened Ireena’s fucking brother too because he was just as bad as the guards and she HATES authority. Vaguely threatened the council of Ravenloft for corrupting Cass in conversation only. probably will threaten them in person honestly, especially if it’s just a group of pompous dudes. she hate hate HATES men in power — and so does Cass LMAO these two are going to be HORRIFIC

- Low key C.armilla coded, M.erida, K.arlach, A.lucard, and E.da coded.

- All the Saints of Notre Dame theme. The entire Brave soundtrack. Any Celtic or Viking song. Skål by Fuimadane.

- Not that hard to ship with, she’s just heavy baggage and looks like a monster for the most part so not many people cared to ship w her.

[sinkingtime]

Rewriting the DCU, part whichever

See also: previous entries, in no particular order.

Mostly, today is about Saturn Girl, who doesn't quite work with how I've set up the metaphysics for this setting. I believe I've found a workaround.

It involves giving her considerably more backstory than any other character yet, which is also considerably more useless than anyone else's. I love it!

But before that, a bunch of additions and corrections, because that, too, is par for the course.

...about Dr. Pamela Isley

She's definitely the Static spin-off, but first I need to make a few changes to that one.

She will indeed be a scientist, not a protestor. Part of the team that was developing the crowd control gas that caused the plot of the movie. She's not the lead, but her contribution is significant, and perhaps unfairly overlooked.

She's also Francis Stone's ex-girlfriend, currently on cold but cordial terms. She may instead start as his current girlfriend, the relationship deteriorating as part of his negative character arc, while Virgil and Daisy's advance as he grows as a hero. That's only if there's enough screentime to showcase the parallel arcs, of course.

Either way, Isley always calls Stone "Officer" and he calls her "Doctor", which will serve to obscure her actual identity. Her real name may show up on-screen on some document or something, but probably the after-credits is enough.

She is also the one to say he "always had trouble controlling that hot streak" or something like that, which is where he gets the idea for his superhero (supervillain) name.

Since she's from Gotham, we can say he used to visit her there or they visited her family together or something, which should be enough to justify his eventually running that way (for the loose thread in Jokerz), which in turn means this movie is free to be in its own city. I prefer to give one to each hero, generally speaking.

The after-credits isn't her being inspired to do good, as I had first suggested, since she doesn't have any powers. Instead, she's at her appartment, depressed about the project failing miserably. It was actually suppressed and all documentation and samples destroyed, but I am not sure if we would have gotten to see that.

The appartment is full of plants, naturally, including some rare specimens that are considerably more expensive than anything else she owns. Maybe we had seen that place already, or she kept a few at the lab or something.

She reaches into her clothes or hair or something, to pull a small vial containing what may be the last existing sample of the gas. Cut to black.

As for her actual movie, we start with that info about the program failing and getting swept under the rug. Very important if that particular fact wasn't explicitly established back in Static, but honestly it probably needs to be repeated here either way.

We also see that she didn't randomly gas herself, as that after-credits scene was deliberately trying to imply. Rather, she continued her research as best as she could, in secret, in her appartment. She mixed in a variety of plant extracts, some other chemicals, etc, until she reached something she was content dosing herself with.

It will be an injection, to make it extra clear that this is completely deliberate.

Her skin becomes green, and actually photosynthetic. If she does end up wearing the bikini uniform, it will be specifically so she can take in more sunlight. She should make a comment about that to someone.

Though I also enjoy the idea of her wearing a lab coat through the entire movie.

She's stronger and faster and generally more athletic than before. Not necessarily to a superhuman degree, but more than her appearance would suggest.

She gets conscious control of her bio-chemistry, which lets her intentionally synthesize various substances. Not "anything", but several different things; we will still show her working at her lab to actually create most things she needs, with her power providing materials that would be expensive, difficult and/or illegal to acquire.

Also she either only emits the various stuff through her hands, or she can intentionally control what parts of her skin will do so at any given time, because otherwise she'd be constantly ruining her clothes. It's okay if she does that once, early on; and if we want that kind of fanservice I'd certainly rather that than an enemy cutting them, but later she needs to be able to wield acid in melee without trouble.

Early on she's simply enjoying the many perks of her new condition, both in a simple hedonistic sense and out of scientific curiousity. She does soon get roped into a random fight and immediately sides with the innocent party, to show us that she's a basically decent person, but she's not particularly motivated by heroism.

She should visit that family that hopefully got established earlier. They will reject her and cast her out, but she doesn't take it personally and, while hurt, is hopeful she can mend things with them, later. Maybe a single member reaches out to her, in secret from the rest.

Other people in the community can have more mixed reactions. I kinda want a mostly negative reception, but not enough so that it'd be jarring when she doesn't mind it. Ultimately she was never a sociable person, the little acceptance she gets here and there is still nice, but not something she would seek or care about.

She should fight the Jokerz at some point, to remind us about Harley's existence. She doesn't get to show up, though. Alexis ("Punchline") isn't with them anymore, either.

Also want to make clear she used to be a vegetarian, but isn't anymore. Maybe some fake horror hunger scene, but actually she's overreacting and it's just a burger or something.

After enough prancing about that we start getting comfortable with her, she's randomly attacked by a plant monster. She's able to kill it, in part by grappling it while sweating some acid or poison.

Afterwards she drags it to her appartment for study. She's very interested in what makes it move, but unfortunately there's nothing for her to find. It's just a bunch of different plants, roughly mashed together in a vaguely doglike shape. All tests she can think of show nothing of interest.

After some consideration, she decides to destroy it, just in case. She quickly brews a small bottle of something, grabs all the remains of the monster, and goes out to a poorer part of the city, where a bunch of homeless guys are gathered around a fire in one of those metal barrels.

She tosses the plants in there, pours about half of her bottle in, and the flames burn brighter and taller. All the while she's mumbling that she can explain, but everybody is busy looking the other way. These guys know better than to get involved with a weirdo like her.

She ends up staring at the remainder of her fuel, unsure what to do, and is about to just tell them they can keep it when another monster appears. Her immediate instinct is to jump in and protect the people, but it quickly becomes clear that it's only interested in her. She runs away, and after a small chase ends up pouring the remainder of her fuel on it, then lighting it with a still-burning cigarrete that happens to be on the ground.

Over the next few days, she keeps trying to resume her normal life, or what it had been after she changed herself, but the attacks keep happening. We also see her growing obsession with them; her appartment now features a huge map of Gotham, where she marks each event, hoping to figure out where they come from. There's no pattern she (or we) can discern.

Over time she'll get less worried about some sort of Trojan Plant and start actually holding and studying samples. She cannot find anything special about them, but keeps filling papers and whiteboards and whatnot. She may even harvest some of them for materials, though they're all species found within Gotham.

She also starts preparing tools and weaponry. I picture mostly thrown bombs, but it'd be funny if she gets a dart gun and then the first time wastes most of her ammo because she's a terrible shot. Could also get a nice human interaction scene out of her trying to go to a range to practice.

Could also devote a bit of screentime to her practicing parkour or similar, as every good (non-flying) super should.

Eventually she manages to escape from one creature, doubles back to observe it and hopefully follow it back to its base, but instead once it has no further idea how to find her it immediately falls over, de-animating and losing cohesion, apparently "dead". She approaches it cautiously, but it's just normal plants.

Cut to her angrily erasing one of her whiteboards full of equations and diagrams. Instead she writes "MAGIC????" and then starts pacing frantically, pulling at her hair and rambling.

We should see that some news and/or newspapers start almost picking up on the monsters. Nobody but Ivy has actually been attacked, so there are reports about the rumours of plant monsters, but most believe it's some sort of hoax or publicity stunt or something like that. The only source to report them as actual events also claims they have been seen to obey her.

Monsters start coming in groups, as well as bigger ones. At some point she kills one with blunt force trauma (I'm picturing some sort of construction site shenanigans) and it also falls over and dies like a living creature before falling apart like usual. This also leaves her professionally offended, complaining about how they don't even have organs or any anatomy or anything.

As the groups get bigger she spots a humanoid shape hanging back, apparently being their leader. That's Swamp Thing, there's no way for her to know that but I see no benefit in hiding it. Once she defeats some creatures he charges at her, and he is superhumanly strong, to her surprise. She's barely able to hold him back, by liberal use of secreted chemicals.

As he retreats he says something to the effect that he won't be destroyed so easily, which leaves her surprised since none of the others could talk, naturally. I actually think it's better if they don't make any noise at all, thematically, but for scene design they probably need to growl or something. She yells at him to wait, but he retreats, yelling back something defiant.

Something that, as she thinks about it later, gives her the impression that he thinks she's the aggressor in this circumstance. Naturally her immediate reaction should be annoyance, but we need her to consider it seriously so either something about the way he said it makes her think it's legit, or it's just her curiousity getting the better of her. Either way, she spends the next few encounters trying to get him to stop and talk to her.

I'm not entirely clear what she would do to prove her sincerity, short of the obvious third party that they team up against, but I'm specifically trying to avoid that cliché. It's kinda important that he be the genuine antagonist, right until the end.

I'm thinking as he attacks she takes a personal risk to prevent damage to innocent bystanders, probably a burning building except she's the one that has been using fire so preferably not? Dunno, something.

That said, if we do need the common enemy to unite them, I'd say internal politicking at the Parliament of Trees, the bad guy having engineered this whole incident. Presumably that introduces the Floronic Man, though I think I'd prefer to dig for someone more obscure.

Anyways, what we learn is that Swamp Thing is the (formerly human) champion of the Green, more or less protectors of nature. In the comics it's specifically plants, and there's other Parliaments, but this version can probably be all consolidated as nature in general, since we're unlikely to ever use the others.

They detected her making herself a half-plant and thought that was an attempt to usurp him as champion, or possibly the Parliament at large, that was why they were attacking. There exist protocols nature mages can use to operate without incurring their ire, but since she doesn't know anything about magic and doesn't actually have any she was unable to invoke them.

Possibly we can even establish she received notice, before the attacks happened, in a way she wouldn't have recognized as such; assuming we can think of a good idea for what form that would take. As of yet I have not.

Naturally, after they've talked, he brings her to do the proper ritual/paperwork so that she can continue to operate without future issue. Possibly physically brings her into the extra-dimensional forest that is the Parliament, but even if she's not quite that trusted we should see it at some point, since it will be important that the set design be reminiscent of the one for the Rock of Eternity, from Shazam. I would have to check the set for that, but hopefully there is some manner of interesting layout that lets us clearly show that it's the same, but trees.

Also, it's probably better if the trees don't literally talk, but if Swamp Thing is ever shown speaking to them, it would become important that they answer him. Probably better if he never has a chance to do it, but the point is that the movie must not allow a possible interpretation in which he is insane or making it up or something.

Anyways, they're all friends now, the end.

After credits, Swamp Thing and Shazam are hanging out together at a bar that also conforms to the same architectural design that we now know signifies extra-dimensional magical places of power. It's probably more of a restaurant, especially since Billy is a kid, but its name is "Oblivion Bar" either way.

Shazam has been checking in on other important magical groups that protect Earth, since he's now not only the Champion but also the Wizard. This is good worldbuilding to introduce, since it readily excuses why such a powerful character isn't doing much; he has, behind the scenes. I suppose that also means if I ever want a widespread magic crisis, the inciting incident can be that he has died, been tricked or otherwise failed.

He mentions that there hasn't been a Champion of the Green for a few decades. 40ish years, the previous one took a side in a human war, and that eventually led to the Parliament being bombed, so it withdrew from human affairs. Not sure I want to commit to which specific war, though if we do Billy would know the exact year that happened, and the fact that the previous Wizard had no further contact with them after.

Sometimes it's part of his powers to have knowledge of the goings on of magic, specifically on a "wider picture" sort of way, so if we want to establish that this is the ideal time to do so. Otherwise, he may just have notes and documents that the previous Wizard kept, which he's been going thru now that he's also assumed that responsibility.

Swamp Thing tells him that he was chosen after Zod's attack. Not really in response to him, there was no possible way the bureaucracy was going to respond that fast, but that was the event that convinced the Parliament that they can't not have a Champion at the ready.

Ideally something about their conversation should hint that he's thinking about Ivy to be the next one, if something should happen to him while she's still around; but while that's probably important to justify the scene being in this movie, really what I care about is the reason why they didn't defend against the kryptonians. I wouldn't be comfortable introducing this faction to the setting without an excuse for that.

...meanwhile, in Earth 2

Swamp Thing probably doesn't exist, given that Zod didn't attack. Jor-El and Lex did end up building and using the World Engines, briefly, but that's not necessarily the part that riled up the Parliament of Trees; and they're specifically trying to use it to restore Earth's atmosphere to a previous version of its own, which could conceivably be something the Green would approve of.

Plus I already established that the atlantean ruling caste was mobilized to war by that, where they had not been by Zod, so it feels right to have the Parliament be conversely less offended.

That doesn't necessarily mean the character doesn't exist, or even that he's not a vegetable biomass monster, since whatever version of what made him like that is separate; just that he's not Champion of the Green, and probably there still isn't such a Champion.

That said, I will definitely take this chance to establish there definitely isn't an Ivy, or Static, Hot-Streak, any of them; the entire experiment with the gas didn't happen, because LexCorp won out the contract with the lab that was doing it, rather than the Dakota City Police Department.

Possibly they still did that experiment, but testing was better controlled, so we get one super whose origin is that. More likely, though, they just worked on different stuff. Either way, Dr. Isley is happy with her career as a civillian science researcher for the Society, and has no powers.

And I thought there would be mention of those characters that I'd need to retcon out, but in checking back it seems I never added any. That's convenient. Thanks, past me!

...about tamaranian currency

From the scene when Earth 2 Komand'r threatens with denying the kryptonain survivors aid, in order to pressure Koriand'r into taking the throne. I have decided she says "not a single lace", that being their small coin name.

This on the grounds that the larger one is "gown", both in reference to the several real-world countries that use (or have used) "crown" as the name for their money. I doubt any have used a physical part of a crown to name the smaller divison, but whatever.

Naturally there is no possible way this could come up in-story. This did nothing to keep me from thinking about it a lot. Therefore, here it is for you to read.

...about Victor Stone

Earth 2 again, as part of the montage for Power Girl's introduction to the world I said she would save him. But on second thought, that doesn't quite work.

She arrived 2 years before Superman's death, and therefore 3 and a half before Bruce showed Diana that video with the cube and his dad. This makes him a little too old in the franchise proper. I'm aiming for about a year between the accident and Cyborg's joining the League.

More specifically, I'm thinking he was almost finished with high school, and definitely pre-approved for a college scholarship, on account of his sports, when the accident happened. So when we actually meet him, he's just college age, 18 or 19, though actually a drop-out.

Well, legally dead, to be precise.

In Earth 2 Power Girl still saves him and prevents him from further mattering, it just cannot happen so early in her career. She'll have to do it later.

And I'd like to replace that with someone else, to highlight that some character exists or doesn't exist that wouldn't in other timelines, due to no real superheroes having been active back then. I'm thinking maybe Alan Scott. The Watchmen/DC crossover establishes that he died or almost died in a train crash, depending on Manhattan's meddling. She could save that train instead, then he becomes a super after.

I don't exactly love it, not having a convenient train crash established in previous movies, but just the fact that she's helping with that and we know there didn't used to be superheroes active at that time may be enough?

...about the cube

I have decided it's not related to the end of the world, but rather to time/dimensional travel. It is some sort of crystallized time-space anomaly, created as a side effect of the martian teleportation experiment, which had been orbiting Earth since and which S.T.A.R. Labs randomly found embedded in one of their space probes.

In Earth 0, Cyborg had it originally so the Legion got it from him; I don't want them having his rotting corpse or anything, but it definitiely should be modified in some way. Maybe it has molded itself as part of his chestpiece, though it still would have the weird sort of "breathing" protrusions that the cube form had.

More importantly, they have some wiring in the back, among the Science Props, that should ultimately recur in some way in most or all dimensional technology. I think it could be modelled roughly on the pattern of the wires behind young Victor Stone, in the BvS scene, like that's what his dad was trying to do.

I'm also thinking the first two times we see that room it's not visible, covered in tubing and metal, but further in the future, after it's fallen in disrepair and Booster Gold fixes it up, that's when the cube (or whatever its new shape) is exposed for us to finally see.

Prometheus would also have a similar setup in his interdimensional spaceship, but the materials would be different. Where the Legion has highly utilitarian, bare metal pipes, his are highly ornamented, more reminiscent of a church organ or greek columns or something. His cube is in clear view, and didn't pass through a human's chest before he got it.

He also needs to have a few other dimensional-capable ships, with cubes collected from other universes. These ships are the true bottleneck of his invasion; they have captured and killed versions of Cyborg, but so far cannot extract an useful cube from him. All the ones they have so far are from universes where he wasn't created, which mostly means versions of the Amazons Attack timeline.

As he moves towards canon, those get rarer and rarer, because of course the hyper-geometry of the multiverse roughly corresponds with differences and similarities between timelines. That doesn't really make sense, but it sounds like it would, so there we go.

That does probably mean he's specifically after Earth 2, out of the ones we care about. I don't think he should be able to detect it from multiple universes away, beyond the basic fact that time travel dimensions are easily detectable; but certainly if and when the army comes into contact with these worlds, that one will be of special interest, should they learn about that.

Meanwhile, in Earth 3, Booster figuring out dimensional travel will have involved studying Cyborg. He won't take him apart or otherwise remove the cube from him, but did take some readings and whatnot. And the same type of circuitry pattern is now on Skeets, though it doesn't need to be visible from the outside. Maybe we can see it on some sketches as he was working on it.

And I feel the need to stress that this doesn't mean he's individually superior to all of Prometheus' scientists put together. He is good, but he also has a thousand years head-start on them, and specifically comes from a civilization that already did strides on this particular problem.

The traitor from Lanterns didn't have a cube or cube-analog, the machinery was specifically creating its own distortions in time-space in this universe, but the systems on the outside should still have some variation on the same pattern, there's just not a central Important Object that they all connect to.

Also the tubings shouldn't have an obvious material theming, because I wouldn't want that to be a clue as to the traitor's identity. So again just raw industrial metal, I guess? Or some sort of pure energy nonsense that implies the systems were carved out of spacetime itself or something.

If Orange Irons did recur as a dimensional traveller, his suit also features the same dimensional circuitry as all others, but he also doesn't have a cube, and probably didn't even figure out that Cyborg was useful. His system is derived from the info they collected on the traitor Lantern's systems, and is powered by his magic like everything else he carries.

On the other hand, if he was the traitor, then nevermind.

And then I need to actually introduce Saturn Girl before I can talk about her implementation of this technology. But there's more, first.

...about the end of the world

I have decided that that is instead related to KORD Industries. Mostly I was never completely satisfied by pulling yet another millionaire industrialist scientist out of nowhere for Booster Gold's supporting cast, but I had to do it anyways. Because even if I wasn't going to ship them together, I'd still want them to be friends.

Also, why would I not ship them, if given the chance?

Anyways, it's not exactly that they are responsible for it. Even in Earth 0, the company failed on its own at approximately the time when Irons took down AmerTek. Ted Kord just wasn't that good of a CEO and/or scientist. But something they left behind would later be picked up by some other group(s) and developed and ultimately leads to the explosion of the planet in the 27th or 28th century, plus maybe to some of the social and/or technological hardships that humanity had been suffering from in the centuries prior.

So when both Supergirl and Power Girl team up with their respective rich dudes it's because they need the help guaranteeing that all relevant documentation is found and destroyed. We don't see Ted himself, but the building they're raiding is a (former, for Supergirl) KORD Industries lab or storage facility, so there would be the logo on the wall and on boxes or stuff.

And since it turns out Power Girl arrived when the company was apparently fine (because I want it to be on the brink by Booster's time, so that he both needs to and can save it), that means Earth 2's Luthor engaged in some underhanded business moves to help her. Definitely helps with the characterization I'm aiming at for him.

Naturally, it doesn't actually matter what KORD Industries was doing that would inevitably lead to the end of the world, but I'm thinking some version of OMAC, since I already gave this company the "Brother Eye" branding.

Comet, the Superhorse

The movie's probably not called that, but he's the kid whose planet was destroyed and that Supergirl is helping avenge. Well, a heavily modified version of him.

The comics version is from Earth, but this one will be an alien from a planet who randomly happened to have horse-looking people. That is stupid, but not any more than any of the already established planets full of randomly human-looking people, which makes it ok.

Or they may be weird-coloured horses instead. I prefer the pure white one as in canon, but either works.

He has telepathy, all his people did. But since Supergirl can magically speak all languages we should still get at least a few scenes of her doing horse noises to talk to him.

He also has superspeed, but that's not a normal thing. He was a young superhero in his society, which is also how he was the one survivor/escapee, and why he feels he can go fight the villains but not without support. He already failed once.

This also means "Comet" was his superhero name, not the real one. You know, as translated from horse noises. The real one could probably be one of his human aliases from the comics, appropriately modified of course; or he can refuse to say it. His civilian identity died with his people, all that's left is the vengeance, etc etc. That may work.

He will not have any of the various other powers he's sometimes had.

Also I feel compelled to acknowledge that he was one of her love interests. I'm honestly not against that in principle, it would be hilarious, but in this case I say no because I insist on making this one a kid. He's about twelve, or the alien horse equivalent, making this more of a mentorship relationship.

The opening attack would involve an older hero dying, whom Comet was the sidekick of. Or he may have been on a team with other young heroes instead. More or less depends on how many other horse superhero concepts we can come up with, I guess.

As for the actual plot, she's not going to actually counsel him against vengeance. She's not a pacifist, in fact she was a soldier and is currently empowered by the magical essence of wrath, so she absolutely understands and agrees. She will ultimately kill the boss, plus possibly some other bad guys along the way.

She will, however, counsel him against being reckless. Probably he almost gets himself killed at least once. She'd be the one trying to make sure he has some plans for a life after his vengeance is complete, which would admittedly be easier if the bad guys are slavers and so they can look forward to the people they will rescue.

It's for this reason I'm now more inclined to say they were not, and Comet is in fact the last of his people. You know, for extra drama. Not 100% sure either way, still.

She could also be concerned about him getting lost to his anger in the sense that anger must be righteous, in accordance with my version of the Red Lanterns' ethos. I'm not sure I want him to actually have an issue with that, though. I think I prefer not, if possible, but it may be necessary to pad out his character arc.

Finally, the bad guys will now be specified to be the minor, inconsequential villains from Red Daughter of Krypton. I don't remember their exact names, they were Worldbreakers or Worldkillers or something silly like that. Whatever, they're just space pirates; the only thing that matters is the finale, which I want to steal.

Their leader turns out to be not the apparent leader, but the power armour he's wearing. The living dude inside is being mind-controlled and mostly worthless. After Supergirl kills him, it jumps her to try to take over her body instead.

For my version it barely succeeds, but cannot take hold of her magic as it hoped to; the ring doesn't respond to her under mind-control. I don't necessarily want to say it's impossible to steal a Lantern's magic, but it should be very difficult. I guess we can just say this guy could never do it because it doesn't wear any clothes, being that it is clothes. I always had wanted to establish that is also a requirement, in the sense that if a culture didn't have a concept of clothing then those people would never be able to become Lanterns, no matter how otherwise eligible they may have been.

Related, now we can say the tamaranian Lanterns aren't merely refusing to wear their rings normally. If one of them put it around her finger, the magic wouldn't work, because for their people that is "carrying", not "wearing".

Anyways, Comet arrives to see her wearing the enemies armour, she shows him the former leader's corpse and tells him she will be taking over the organization, he should join her, etcetera. He's able to reach the real her mentally, help her fight it off, etcetera.

That does mean the climax of the movie is her tearing apart the clothes she's wearing, so we have to be extra careful to make sure that it be tasteful. But then, all the important circuits were probably in the helmet, right? It's probably ok.

...about an unnamed planet

The world where Earth 1 Koriand'r brought Supergirl in case she freaked out is the same one she gave to the kryptonians in Earth 2. It's barren and featureless, but there still should be some sort of establishing shot on each to show the repetition.

I don't think there's a reference to be made out of that, but I do want to say it legally belongs to her personally, independently of any titles she may or may not have. It was a gift from her parents at some previous time.

In other timelines, generally Komand'r makes sure nobody breaches her sister's ownership, as part of a general show of respect that is very transparently an attempt to lure her back in order to yield the throne to her. In timelines where Koriand'r never returns I'm going to say it's kept for her for all her sister's life, then afterwards someone strip mines it or something. It really wasn't a good choice for habitation.

In the timeline of Blue Komand'r, if she was the traitor, it's where her scientists mustered to research and ultimately set up the plot of Lanterns. If she was not, it will be where they will do so, afterwards, to receive the intel she got and plan their (hopefully less villainous) response.

Challenger of the Unknown

First off, the name of the movie is now in singular. It refers to the ship, not the people aboard; they may colloquially get called "Challengers" by someone, but they should really protest. Or at least the most pedantic among them. I have also been mentally calling the larger organization they spun off from "Challenger University", but it needs to specifically be Not That. No idea what though.

More importantly, I have decided it is them who are the modern descendants of the martians. In part because I never did get any other ideas for that world's movie, but mostly because that culture is already established as coincidentally having names that sound almost like english names. I guess Tamaran also does that, but only for words ending in -ander. The Bottled City was already a stretch. Anyways!

The crew of the Challenger are K'yll, M'att, L'esst, W'altt and C'rinn. C'rinn is specifically the one that knows about magic; this version of her doesn't need to have a power source or actual powers, but another alternate appearing in Lanterns probably should, since that event was supposed to draw in important, powerful people.

Inventing a power source for her will be left to a later date, if ever, but it has led me to realize that martians cannot ever become Lanterns, because they don't wear clothes. By which I mean, those guys will be shown as "wearing" a standard superhero suit based on the comics, I think the version with an off-center yellow band, based on covers I've been looking at. But that's not clothes, they're just shapeshifting into it.

In this version those are the colours and logo of their parent scientific organization. Scientists in Lanterns also should be generally "wearing" that, at least the random science extras local to Earth 1 and most alternates of the main five, though I guess it's also useful to have one or two versions who don't fly that flag. And the Challenger itself should be painted those colours, or at least prominently display their logo.

Supergirl is going to recognize them, in that she met a martian briefly. It's not impossible they think she met a current one, or even that it all happened so long enough ago that they don't even know their society used to exist in a different planet; but since they have telepathy it makes most sense that they realize what she means.

That would mean they would both be interested in where each other's world is, for scientific reasons and for the purpose of offering J'onn a ride there, respectively. That's honestly a better reason for her to go to Earth than a sudden renewed case of missing her brother. I like it.

As for the timing of J'onn's teleportation accident, I still don't have a clear idea but I see three possibilities.

At minimum, it needs to be several centuries back, to avoid humanity having knowledge of their cities. Would be kinda funny if it was literally moments before Galileo pointed his telescope there, but in honesty I would feel obligated to give it a few centuries more to protect against some earlier culture having had observations that were maybe forgotten or supressed. Unless we were doing a "the mayans knew!" plot, but I wouldn't want to.

Except, I think I would be okay with the atlanteans knowing. That they had observations of the cities on Mars, but never made contact or anything. Then one day they saw them disappear without warning, leaving nothing behind, and that's what made them panic and go into hiding.

In that case that would need to be old enough for them to have forgotten, since we already saw that they believe the sinking of their cities to have been an accident. So, several millenia ago, in this version. Did Aquaman had a specific date for when the sinking happened? I doubt it. Easy enough to say they are mistaken, if necessary.

And my last idea, which was actually my first idea but is probably stupid, is that the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs passed close to Mars, back when J'onn was a child. He wouldn't remember much, but there were doomsayers and cults and general chaos that he'd have vague memories about.

The Challenger of the Unknown has another cube installed into it, a result of when they teleported the cities. Naturally this is an unintended and unexpected effect, teleportation technology is not supposed to do that; the cube could be smaller, because this was a later, more perfected attempt, or bigger, because it was a much larger project. For now I'm going to say those cancel out and they are about the same, until and unless an idea comes that builds up on either of the other possibilities.

We're also going to say no other version of teleportation or dimensional travel we've seen yet does that. There can exist other cubes, somewhere in the galaxy, but they'd have to be extremely rare. In particular, if Prometheus learned about it he'd try to replicate that version of the experiment, we can't let him have that, except maybe right before his ultimate defeat.

The Challenger of the Unknown's dimensional circuits are in the same general pattern as all the others, but with the weird semi-organic materials that martians in DC sometimes have had. Supergirl may or may not recognize it as the same thing that her people used to send her back, she's probably not a good enough scientist to do so on sight but if they explain she probably should remember something. Importantly, she doesn't know that Cyborg currently has their cube in his chest.

Also important to establish that other versions of New Mars (not actually called that) don't have their own version of the Challenger. These guys are specifically from the timeline where they figured that out, that's the specific difference. The local version has the cube, probably their study of it was what first brought the organization to fame, but they never found the way to breach dimensions with it. Probably it's used as a power source, or even just left in storage after they exhausted what they could learn from it.

...about the future of humanity

I never really thought about it before, but the Most Probably Future would have to be the same as Earth 0, but without sending people to the past, no? It's either that or Prometheus, since that's the only difference so far that doesn't depend on time travel.

Well, there's also Orange Irons. But I don't think he changes anything relevant. Lanterns aren't any more long-lived than normal, mostly because even with all my nerfs they still have too many powers already, so without any info about what was going to happen he wouldn't be able to change it. Nobody was expecting that.

I guess we're establishing that the crew of the Challenger will have motivation to go check out that star system, may as well say that in their specific timeline they saved humanity. J'onn also exists and is in hiding among the Watchtower's civillian employees, they would logically make contact with him. Supergirl told them enough that they can send him on that mission, we already know she's open about future stuff, and of course they'd be curious.

But in general, unless a named character interceded during those few years or the entire history was changed long before, most timelines end with the planet exploding, the last few survivors hiding out in the moon for a few more centuries and then dying to a stray piece of planet.

I guess the main difference is that the three time travellers don't get to go away, and also the two official ones don't get superpowers. But they, too, wouldn't change anything important. The resources they invested in creating those superpowers are allegedly vast and may have made a difference, but I don't think I want to establish that; thematically, that moves the Legion's attempt from "noble" to "foolish".

So in the end, we keep this implication as canon. A little bleaker than I originally wanted, but honestly that's probably good. Makes certain the time travellers are important, and their resulting timelines are special.

...about other Comets

Because now that I have a multiverse, everything needs alternate universe versions, right? Right!

Since Supergirl is specifically the one difference that defines the Earth 1 timeline, obviously their movie is actually an unique and strange version of this storyline. In most timelines Comet would have found some other great warrior to help him, generally succesfully. I'm thinking that should usually be Lobo.

In Earths 0 and 3, since Koriand'r never abandoned Earth, he eventually gave up and left. Comet's call for help was probably the next job he took after deciding the princess thing wasn't going to work out, if the timing supports this. We know he waited about a (human) week in Earth 1 between the League launching their space detection systems and Koriand'r shutting down hers before deciding it was probably not a trap, or at least worth the risk. So he's patient.

But of course if the timing doesn't work out, he can just have had another job in between. I guess that would depend on where exactly Earth 1 Comet originally heard about each of them, since he would logically have been on the same trajectory until he meets the part where the timelines differ.

Their adventure together is more or less the same as with Supergirl, actually. The two of them are oddly similar in their attitudes towards violence, he's more of a jerk about it but not actually any less responsible, when it comes to that. That would be a funny parallel to have.

I'm also going to say the finale is basically the same, except he cannot fully fight off the suit, even with Comet's help. He has just enough control to stick his head inside some machinery, they're inside the Worldmunchers' flagship at the time so the power core or whatever, and he tells the kid to activate it and kill them both.

He probably starts giving him some inspiring final speech, but can't and instead laughs at himself for even trying.

Mostly I'm now thinking that every appearance of a version of Lobo should end with him dying by decapitation.

Meanwhile in timelines where it wasn't him, Comet should find another great warrior to recruit, or at least attempt to. If the Apokolips movie happened, at least one version of Orion should be on this list. Other than that, no idea.

In Earth 2 Koriand'r left and settled things with the Star Sapphires before Lobo could even take the job, so he may or may not have been free to help horse world. And in Green Lobo's timeline, this movie is probably starting at approximately the same time as the second half of Lanterns or thereabouts, so he's already gone to Earth 1.

I think either or both of those could be a time when Comet learns about Lobo, decides that's who he needs to recruit, but cannot find him. Then he'd eventually give up, go at it alone and get himself killed. Because we do need at least a couple failures.

In timelines where Princess Koriand'r did become a Violet Lantern but didn't go to Earth, such as Prometheus', I'm going to say she originally moved to horse world. It was her second-to-last vision, so in this case the last one. I feel compelled to point out here that this doesn't mean they're the best and second-best; she just literally goes to the most recent place she saw, once she's ready to leave.

Since hyperadvanced tamaranian make-up isn't quite good enough to let her pretend to be a horse, she's openly an alien in this world. She ends up doing heroics and joining their super hero team, not the young heroes Comet was with (if applicable) but the main one; though she would still know him.

Her superhero name is "Star Sapphire" again. By which of course I mean the alien horse language translation thereof; she also can speak all languages, can't let that opportunity go to waste. Her costume will just be her regular suit, since she doesn't have an identity to hide in this world, and with the ring in her necklace because she also didn't swap it out nor does she have any reason to hide it.

I'm also going to say this was an uncontacted world, she's their first alien. And she'll be the only one, since the planetary detection beacons she deployed are enough to send the Worldkickers away. That does mean they had been horse world's First Contact, in other timelines, which is good for more bonus drama. But also it does make perfect sense that they'd prey on solitary, vulnerable planets, rather than for example one apparently belonging to, or otherwise being of special interest for, the largest empire on the galaxy.

In Blue Komand'r's timeline, horse planet was one of the worlds she took her mother for tourism. They also made peaceful contact with the superhero teams, but did not establish oficial diplomatic relations, so the world was still targeted. Afterwards Comet sought them specifically, the princess was unavailable (also being in Earth 1 at the time) but Queen Luand'r was outraged, and it was the full might of the tamaranian armies that hunted down the Worldscrappers and killed every single one of them.

If she was not the traitor, she comes back to Comet now living in Castle Tamaran, along with any other rescued survivors if applicable, and news of what happened.

Finally, I feel we do need a version where he became a Lantern.

Actually, I first started thinking he would be exempt on grounds of space horses being a nudist culture, but then I thought if they're going to have superhero teams and all the tropes, they need costumes. They need at least masks, but ideally more general clothing defined in their culture.

This detour is what eventually led me to add martians above. I actually had to rewrite a lot of paragraphs to add them.

So, in one timeline he'd become a Green. His Test kept him from contacting Lobo, until he decided to just go at it alone then. At that point he was given the magic, let's say it resides in his old superhero costume, no ring for him.

Sadly, I already established that Worldstomper One can defeat and take over Lanterns, so it does. Without a fellow telepath to help him fight it off, he spends the rest of his life trapped as the apparent pirate leader. The magic remains in his costume, but the armour never manages to access it, and eventually it flies away when he dies at the hands of the next one.

...about The Authority

They are a team from a competing company (Image, I think) that eventually got bought out and unified with DC. Therefore, I want them for the main generals of Prometheus' army. Each gets one of the dimensional ships they have.

The ships themselves should also be visually inspired by the Carrier from Authority comics, though they won't be nearly as large nor absurdly overpowered. They can still be called Carriers.

Jenny Sparks will have to be referred to as "the spirit of the century", without specifying which century, but other than that she works out fine, I think. The empire probably has their own calendar anyways.

Since earlier I made Hawkman be a regular human with a magic flying belt, we can just have Swift hold that same item. May as well be ancient egyptian, then. He used to be a common grave-robber until he found that thing, made it work, and upgraded himself to general robber. Add some of that info to Task Force X.

In this timeline, the belt was found by Diana. This also helps establish that she always had an interest in archaeology, despite all the differences, which is nice. As for Swift herself, she's a trusted friend, may be an amazon but doesn't necessarily have to be.

Apollo gives me pause, given my existing alternate Superman with a greek mythology name. Almost tempted to switch things and combine them. Ultimately no, because he has a canon romantic relationship, and I really want to keep the God-Imperator married to the job.

Plus I don't think I'd want to make the one gay Superman also be evil Superman. That's kinda going to happen anyways, since he's an evil minion, but it still feels different. I guess if earlier movies had already shown us that this Superman swings both ways, I'd probably be trying to find an excuse for Diana to name her infant child Apollo and merge the characters. But since that didn't happen they will have to both exist.

Also since our Superman isn't powered by sunlight, bringing in a character who is seems poetic, probably.

I don't really have anything to say about Midnighter, sorry.

When I was first considering giving generals to Prometheus I thought there should be one that doesn't have a ship yet, but has been promised the next one after they capture the next cube; who therefore is the one the heroes mostly interact with, since that's the one that has something to prove. This will be Hawksmoor. If any Carrier actually has a city on it, it should be his.

The Engineer is one of the most notable scientists in the empire; while she operates at basically the same level of hierarchy as the others, she's not technically a general and her ship and crew are considered non-combatants. She was also the one that actually figured out the interdimensional travel capabilities.

Since she worked on the cube, her appearance should be less of a naked metal doll and more similar to Cyborg. She doesn't contain the cube, but she did modify her body in a similar way to what happened to him, only considerably more intentional.

The Doctor is their Champion of the Green. That's part of the reason why I wanted to extend the Parliament's authority to be over all of nature, to blend them with this guy's backstory. Since the point of divergence is at the end of World War 1, he doesn't have the empty spot right before him, but rather his canon antecesor from Authority comics. Others in his past can also come from that line, until we get to Diana's arrival, from then on back it's Swamp Thing ancestors.

He's also not a plant monster; his magic is more nature-focused than in the comics, but his character design should abide to the canon one as much as possible.

In their universe, the Parliament of Trees itself recognizes the God-Imperator's authority, and their Champion was appointed, in part, with his duties for the Empire in mind. As they travel through the multiverse, he also conquers other Parliaments in their name; if we need to show off the Empire being a problem that the heroes definitely need to deal with, part of that can be Earths that suffer strange ecological issues as a result of that.

If any of them is to turn sides and become a good guy, my personal favourite is Jenny, but probably one of Apollo or Midnighter would be best. For the drama.

...about Saturn Girl

Finally! I'm not sure how much I should get into the canon one. Her entire story is deeply connected with the Legion of Superheroes, being both a founding member and usually the leader, but they will not exist in this version.

What's important is she's a powerful telepath, from a civilization of nothing but telepaths, a charismatic and inspirational leader, and there seemed to have once been a running gag of her trying to do a noble self-sacrifice only for someone else to steal the opportunity from her at the last moment.

Also at least once she couldn't speak, except by telepathy. I'll definitely bring that in, she's mute and deaf. Maybe doesn't have ears, digitally removed from the actress, unless that would look too weird?

And at least once she also had some technopathy, or I think maybe in the future they had computers meant to interface with telepaths? Point is what I'm about to do with that isn't completely unwarranted. Technically.

We start at an alternate version of Prometheus' timeline, where the difference is that they didn't figure out dimensional travel. Or I guess that is more normal and the one that did is the special one? Anyways, without that outlet for his ambitions, his empire did eventually go to war against Tamaran. Ultimately he and princess Koriand'r killed each other in battle, then queen Komand'r ran away, but for real this time.

Without a clear line of succession for either empire, both fragment into civil war, generals and other power holders grabbing what they can while still technically at war with the other, also crumbling, empire.

Approximately one thousand years later, the solar system isn't the center of anything, and only a few fools even tell any stories about the past glory. Earth itself is lifeless and barren, but specifically not broken. Some sort of radioactive accident a few centuries before.

I think I want that to specifically be kryptonite. That's sometimes (usually?) been established to also be bad for life in general, in the long term, even if non-kryptonians don't have the ridiculously accelerated allergic reaction.

But then, these people have the kryptonian spaceships and the corpses of Zod's people; while we could say Prometheus forbade experimenting with those, it logically would have happened at some point after his death. So it's not unreasonable for their descendants to have at least some kryptonian dna, alongside the human, atlantean(s) and amazon, plus whatever alien types they picked up over the centuries.

The kryptonite irradiation would have been an act of war by someone against someone. Probably retaliation against the Doctor or his successor(s), they'd definitely try to hold on to that specific planet. Failing that, weapons testing or something. Though I guess the best answer is that it was too long ago, nobody knows for sure.

Of particular interest to us is Saturn's moon, Titan, home of most telepaths in our solar system, and exclusively telepaths (minus the occasional visitor). At some point they all moved there, either on their own or forced by the rest of their societies; historians disagree on that.

Nowadays people who are randomly born with telepathic powers don't need to go to Titan, but they are welcome there. Whether and how much their home expects and/or pressures them to do so varies per location. It would be a rare occurrence anyways.

Titanians are a single people but don't have a species; each of them is cloned from their various parents, once again thanks to technology mostly derived from the kryptonian remains, and the only genetic engineering they allow on that is to guarantee the child will be telepathic, any further thinkering is verboten.

That does mean the world would be full of weird and interesting body types, which in turn makes it extra-sad that the one character we get out of it is a normal human-looking woman. Oh well.

I'm also going to go ahead and say titanian culture believes romance should be a 3-person affair, in the same way that it's 2-person for us. Allegedly for reasons of genetic viability, given the re-mixing of random species, though mostly it's what's encouraged by popular media, well-meaning parents, probably some of their ancient religions, etc.

And normally I would dedicate a few paragraphs for how that may have affected their language, but in this case I'd rather say they don't have one. Their telepathy can transmit pure meaning, they don't need any syntax or grammar or whatever.

So our protagonist, Imra Ardeen, was the daughter of an important wealthy philanthropist, plus two others whose identities don't particularly matter. All three of them die in a spaceship accident, likely an assassination though it's never confirmed, when she's about half a year old, which is to say 15 or 16 in Earth time.

I also feel compelled to add that titanian society cannot possibly have minimum ages for things, because just about everyone is a weird and original genetic abomination of their own, and on the other hand it's not unreasonable to say their telepathy allows them to just check people and know whether they have achieved maturity. But Imra's psychology is basically human, so it doesn't come up.

She inherits her mother's wealth and takes command of her charitable organization(s), to some opposition on account of her youth but utlimately whoever is in charge of deciding this does decide in her favour. She ends up being extremely enthusiastic about charity, and basically spends all her personal finances on helping as many people as she can, becoming both extremely popular and pretty much poor.

Volunteer members of her organization end up supporting her alongside it, maybe some of them also spending irresponsible amounts of their own resources, though Imra always encourages them to not put themselves at risk and dismisses everyone who tries to tell her to take her own advice. Some people start referring to her group as a cult, mostly disparagingly.

They also start drawing some attention from powerful people and groups who maybe don't approve of all her "helping everyone" agenda, along some sympathetic people who want to advice her to temper herself. She refuses outright, if there's anyone who needs her they will receive her aid. That's what attracts the attention of the Indigo Light.

Her telepathy is augmented to reach everyone in the solar system. Every single person in every planet, moon, station and whatnot. We will also say the magic protects her from going insane by overload. People on Titan obviously understand even if they can't really know how she's doing it, but at least many know her and most know of her. But for most of the rest of the system, it's their first time experiencing telepathy of any kind.

She will never again shake off the accusations of leading a religion and/or being some sort of divine being. (until she ditches this universe, that is) That's also when they start calling her "the girl from Saturn", which is ultimately where she'll derive her superhero name from.

Naturally the idea was for her to get a first-hand look at the magnitude of the responsibility she was trying to claim, so that she would check herself and ask for help. But instead she tells everyone to come to her, promising that everyone in need would be saved by her, personally, thereby spectacularly failing her Test. The magic goes away, cutting her off mid-sentence. (well, the telepathic equivalent)

The government of Titan panics about that display, also maybe receiving threats against Imra and her cult from other governments and/or criminal organizations, so they ultimately settle on forbidding their activities, disbanding the organization and exiling her. She is gifted an extremely advanced ring spaceship, partly as a concession to the fact that this is tremendously unfair to her, and partly in hopes that she will use it to go very very far away.

That's basically a version of the Legion Flight Rings from the comics, except it cannot have their logo because they don't exist in this universe, and also it cannot time travel (yet, kinda). It does provide her excellent life support, free flight both in atmosphere and deep space, and travel fast enough to cross interstellar space on her own. The technology is mostly derived from the science done to the cube, dating back all the way to the Promethean Empire, which will matter later and so should be mentioned among the data she gets with it.

It's also going to be important that the ring is one person only, because she's going to want to use it to move other people. Because I need her to be skilled in its internal mechanics later, so this is the excuse for why she studied it obsessively and learned hyperadvanced engineering and so on.

She does not leave for other stars, of course, but rather joins with various like-minded people from various local worlds who want to help her help people. Some of them do in fact worship her for real, though not all; her trying to discourage it mostly just gets her praise for her humility and whatnot.

Also I should obviously populate this list of followers with characters from the actual Legion of Superheroes. At least the other two founders, Cosmic Boy and Lightning Lad, both of whom were romantically entangled with her at different points in time but in this version they won't because she would only begin to consider it if it could be all three, which she can tell it can't.

They're also from random fictional planets, but for this version we will change that to somewhere within this solar system. Since their powers are magnetism and electricity, respectively, probably two moons of Jupiter. But since they're the first two Imra meets after starting her exile, maybe instead one or two other moons of Saturn. Doesn't really matter, I suppose.

They meet more like-minded people, as usual some being versions of comics characters, a few being originals, maybe a traditional villain. The group doesn't call itself "Legion", that name will not occur in relation to this character at all and arguably I should stop bringing it up. They don't actually call themselves anything; outsiders refer to them as "The Cult of Saturn", Imra always complains about that but at least a few members are genuinely joining for religious reasons.

The group goes on to become more of a Scooby Doo type thing, exposing injustice and whatnot, now that they don't have the vast resources for more traditional charity that they used to. Imra is very good at that, because it turns out telepathy is kind of overpowered unless you live somewhere that literally everyone has it.

This is also when she starts wearing her superhero suit, the red and white jumpsuit with the stylized image of Saturn on her chest, because while she will continue to insist she's not a religious figure and shouldn't be worshipped as such, she's also not going to let all that free brand awareness go to waste. And it does amuse her a bit, personally, the implication that she speaks for the planet when the whole issue was that she very much does not.

She should also acknowledge the fact that that's not actually an image of her homeworld, she lived on a moon and nobody really lives in the gas giant, but that would be much less visually recognizable, so.

After a few more adventures they do end up finally getting hunted down by some of those corrupt governments and/or crime syndicates. Most of them die, preferably all but it's ok if one or two escape or betray the group or something. Also important that at least a couple specifically die by sacrificing themselves to save her from sacrificing herself to save the rest, against her protests.

That's what finally gets her to internalize the lesson the Light wanted her to, that it's ok for her to also take care of herself, though for the record it's much too late. The magic isn't coming back.

She ends up hiding out in Earth, her ring's life support lets her do so, and since the helpful pamphlet she got and/or her original research thereof mentions the ancient labs here, she goes to check them out, mostly for lack of anything better to do.

The old lab is on Themyscira, because that's where Prometheus put it to take advantage of the hiding magic, and nobody afterwards saw any reason to move it. The magic faded away long ago, Imra doesn't even find out about that. She finds the cube still connected to a machine, the last thing they were going to do or had just failed to do, before the place was abandoned for whatever reason. Presumably the radiation, but not necessarily, or at least she can't know for sure.

Sidebar: because this is a timeline that will have time travel, it's also one that can't have dimensional travel, even in the past. The physics are subtly different in ways that mean it wasn't really the old imperial scientists' fault. But mostly what matters is I am now tempted to say it was something they did, and which the Legion people on Earth 0 (or their predecesors) also had done, while attempting to figure out what they could do with that thing.

This would have split off their timeline into a (mostly) unreachable state, sort of a higher-dimensional black hole-like trap, which would also be why both settings feature no further interference from the rest of the galaxy. The entire rest of the universe doesn't exist for them, except for whatever debris need to be postulated for them to not realize this is the case.

I'm ultimately deciding against making this canon, because I don't really think that's a question that needs answering. It's a big galaxy, small backwater planets get ignored all the time, sometimes the people in them go extinct. It happens. But if ever I come up with something else to derive from this fun fact, then it would become canon.

Anyways, Imra finds enough in that place to succesfully augment her ring for time travel. She's not going to actually modify it, but rather constructs a spherical shell to stand in, based on the time spheres from the Legion of Superheroes comics, though of course with the same dimensional circuitry embeded in it. She inserts her ring on a special receptacle, to serve as the power source, and then it teleports her away.

The sphere only transports her and doesn't come with, more or less for the same reason that ring couldn't take any other passengers through space. And furthermore, the sphere is wrecked by her leaving, collapsing as if by immense gravity, though nothing else in the vicinity is affected, only the parts that were actually part of the machinery. This way she still can't bring anyone with her across dimensions, nor really smuggle anything that doesn't fit within her clothes (within the invisible forcefield that provides her life support, to be exact).

More importantly, she needs to build a new sphere each time she wants to travel, even if she's going back and forth between two known dimensions, though in that case I suppose the remnants of the previous attempt may give her a head-start. But that's still complication enough to fulfill my instinct that it shouldn't be trival and immediate.

Lastly, each trip drains her ring's power source. It'll still recharge automatically, but it takes a while, which she didn't know about the first time.

Second timeline is about 11 centuries before. The first thing that happens is that she panics about her life support having shut down, plus maybe falls down on account of the (ruins of the) building she was standing on not having existed yet. The atmosphere is mostly fine, for the record, since logically something like this was the target they had in mind when they terraformed Titan. Maybe she's a little uncomfortable, but not in any danger.

She specifically arrived a couple days after Steve Trevor's death at the beach, and as she senses people and approaches them she finds them gathered at their town's central plaza, where Diana is recruiting amazons for her crusade. Hippolyta is sort of arguing against that, trying to get her daughter to not go, though we can see she's mostly given up already on that. By which I guess I mean that Imra knows that Hippolyta believes her attempts at dissuading Diana are in vain.

Imra walks in and everyone goes on guard, though again her telepathic communication is strange enough to shock them and give her time to explain. She's overheard enough to understand who they are, specifically who Diana is, and tells them about their near future/her ancient history. She wouldn't remember everything, but she should know enough (presumably as an extension of her research into the ring, or maybe one of her cultists could have been a history nerd) to tell them that she can't succeed.

All the amazons that were ready to sign up for the mission are dissapointed, Hippolyta is sad but oddly relieved, and Diana screams "Liar!" and stabs her with her sword.

Obviously Imra sees it coming, but her first instinct is to fly away, and the ring isn't ready yet. She has just a moment to look at it, surprised, as she's impaled through the chest and falls to the ground. All the others stare at them, confused, as Diana visibly struggles to retain her anger and fight off the coming guilt.

Then Ares tells them the stranger wasn't lying. Everybody turns towards him, he's standing behind Hippolyta so several of them draw their weapons. Diana also reaches to her back but her sword is still stuck in Imra. He and the Queen stare at each other for a moment, then she announces that they are being visited by the God of Truth.

She does not say his name. I have decided only she and Diana knew about that, Zeus mentioned it offhand but then quickly changed subject, so she never knew Ares' goals, only that he used to be Truth and became War. She never told any of the amazons save her daughter, and all they know is he didn't wanna talk about it.

(i've also decided Zeus used to shapeshift into Hippolyta, per her request, but that's beside the point)

With everyone relaxing, as their Queen evidently vouches for him, he goes on to admit he can't see quite that far away, in neither time nor space; he's much too diminished for either. But still, he knows she's sincere, and that she's not confused. Her words are True. This much, at least, is still within his powers. Possibly Imra delivers a bit more exposition now.

Also, everyone can feel Imra's pain. She doesn't want to do that, is doing her best to keep it contained, but she's both suffering significantly, possibly the worst she ever has, and is getting progressively weaker as she bleeds out, so it's hard for her to do. Everybody occasionally flinches or doubles down as her control slips, then she notices and focuses again.

Anyways, Ares finishes explaining his original plan, how all the other gods are gone and he's about to go too. One of the amazons, a random unnamed one, should ask about the visions they've been getting since the soldiers crashed at their beach. He admits they're from him, and the soldiers too, but he never expected them to succeed. There can be no success, as the visitor says.

All he wanted was for his niece, Diana, to learn this truth and give up on this world and go to the new one with him. The two of them are the only ones left that can. He extends his hand towards her, but she refuses.

Instead she points towards Imra, asking him if she'll recover. He looks at her for a moment and says that no, it's taking her a notably long time to die, but that is a lethal wound. She nods sadly, she suspected as much. Diana demands he heal her then. She tries to claim that it's all his fault anyways, but can't bring herself to say it. Instead she asks him to do it as a favour to her, which is why he came here anyways, right?

He shrugs sadly, says that he's never been a healer, but he'll help. He probably grabs Imra's shoulder or taps her with his cane or something, and she turns to stone. Before anyone can complain about that, he tells them all they have to do to release her is remove the sword from her chest. But then she'll resume bleeding and dying and so on, so don't do it until there's someone at hand who can help with that.

He also says that, normally, something like this would be like sleeping without dreaming, "but you are special, aren't you?". He says that bit telepathically, gods can do that, it's fine. She answers that this is extremely weird, none of her senses works, she can't feel her own body at all, all she has is her telepathy.

He gets up again, solemnly announces that that will be her blessing and also her curse, "as per long-forgotten tradition", and with one last sad look at Diana, he disappears forever.

So this version of Diana will not leave the island, which means Sidebar: if Doctor Poison exists, something probably needs to be different. I don't have anything in mind, and in fact the future needs to be superficially the same for things to work out here, but the fact stands that her bombing would have been succesful if not for that meddling demigoddess.

Add this to the list of reasons why she should be removed from Wonder Woman, I guess. Currently my only reason to keep her around is so she can befriend God-Imperatrix Diana, in relevant timelines. Back to the plot!

Diana stays in Themyscira, getting to know and befriend and eventually will romance the petrified Imra. She also learns sorcery, eventually will be the main mage of this world's superhero team, but for now she's mostly just frustrated that the power of Zeus also isn't particularly good for healing. They'd need a child of Hermes or Apollo, but Ares assured them there are no such anywhere in the world, so she doesn't have much hope.

Obviously Imra knows future technology can do it without problem, but she never did study medicine and has no idea exactly when this sort of procedure was first available. Also the fact that she changed the past, which may or may not affect anything regarding that.

Over the decades they also build a nice house around her, since they don't think they can move the statue, which would also mean the plaza got moved. Some other buildings probably also got moved, or at least rotated around or something.

Also during this period she will make telepathic contact with J'onn at the center of the Earth. I feel it's important to point out neither of them is actually that good a telepath, normally; it's only while they are literally cut off from their bodies for decades and untold centuries, respectively, that they can focus intensely enough to reach such ridiculous distances.

They also become friends and he's her other love interest, which is why I had Titanians hold normalized throuples. The other two are weirded out by this, but ultimately both agree to give it a try, if and when the opportunity presents itself, for her sake. They've also never spoken to each other, except through her relaying messages.

Imra didn't know Mars had a native people, but she knows humanity was going to colonize it within about a century and a half of her arrival in this era, more or less, so she quite reasonably assumes the Empire met them and eradicated them. They should be able to show each other images of the planets in their respective times, to see that none of his buildings are there; but again, it's quite logical that they would have been intentionally destroyed.

Finally, she notices when Koriand'r's solar system security systems go online, which is why I wanted the mild technopathy. She can't properly interact with the energy fields that it has, but their presence is clear to her. Possibly she intentionally trained to detect this sort of thing, back in her Meddling Youth era. She doesn't realize it's alien and is mildly suprised that such a thing would be available so early, but admits her knowledge of ancient scientific history is cursory at best.

Half a year after, she does sense the shift in the fields' direction of information, being when Koriand'r moved from Brasil to the States. With that Imra is able to trace its direction, correctly assuming that's where the system's controller will be. Over the next couple years she's able to narrow it down to a rough position on the planet's surface, relative to Themyscira; they don't know what's there but if they had a map she'd basically be able to say "somewhere in Jump City".

Unless the soldiers had maps. Steve was supposedly being chased because he had stolen important documents, if I recall, and World War I was recent enough that I don't want to say the city didn't exist yet. Maybe it was "Jumper's Town" at the time, something like that. Or we can just say their maps were not detailed enough, since it wasn't a strategically important location.

When Zod arrives and J'onn materializes in Metropolis, he takes a moment to learn what's going on from the minds of the people around, which I guess we're establishing he also did that in other timelines, but instead of pretending to be a local and hiding this one flies out, directly towards where they know the center of the world's detection system is. He floats above the city, since all he knows is that it's somewhere in here.

His telepathy is already decaying, thanks to the newly reinstated distractions of the flesh, so he already cannot reach Imra. But he still has enough focus to communicate with everyone in the city at once, to tell them they know about the planetary surveillance, and beg the help of whoever is in charge of that against the invading planet destroyers.

(meanwhile, Imra felt him being janked out and then lost contact, doesn't know any more. she's probably panicking and making the amazons panic with her.)

Koriand'r was at work, which is to say it's time to establish what her job on Earth is. By which I guess I mean I should have given this some thought a while ago. It would have been relevant for Earth 3, at minimum, but really any time Dick is shown to go see her would have been a good chance to have him pick her up from work.

She's a shop clerk at a small, independent business. Needs to be something love-adjacent, her Lantern instinct drew her attention there. My first idea is sex shop, specifically so she can make a point about the differences between sex, romance and love. There's no possible way that can fly, though, so it'll have to be flowers or chocolates.

We already knew, from Man of Steel, that people around the world were anxiously watching the news about Zod's attack, so everyone is staring at the store's little tv, and then when J'onn's plead hits they start sort of half-heartedly speculating about who it may be. "Star" starts playing along with the others, but she was already on the fence about interceding so she doesn't take much convincing.

(i think i only ever said that part in noncanonical asides that have since been removed, but that particular fact had always remained. in my mind at least)

She sighs, walks out from behind the counter and out of the store. Some friendly coworker who I'm strongly tempted to also further develop is about to ask her what's up when she starts shining and flies straight up.

Next we see the Batman V. Superman flashback, when Bruce Wayne saw Zod's ship fold into itself and disappear. This time, just a moment before, it is impacted by a violet light from out of nowhere, which displaces it by about twice its size, from this perspective. That also causes its beam of light to be shattered. Then the ship is wrapped by violet tentacles, which drag it away, beyond the horizon.

(i'm tempted to say we also see this from the perspective of the army/science guy/Lois as they are going to destroy the ship and just barely miss it, but having both would be too much, and i feel the ground-level is more interesting)

Next is the alien ship, broken and emiting smoke, having crashed on Themyscira's beach. (J'onn knows how to get in, Imra told him, Diana told her). The kryptonian soldiers are being marched in by Koriand'r and J'onn, still in their suits, hands over their heads. At the front is their medic/scientist, the one who was going to dissect Superman to get the stolen codices, and who they're going to force to treat Imra's wound. They briefly explain this to the amazons, and Diana pulls out the sword.

Everybody doubles down in Imra's pain. She's over three years out of practice containing it, which is to say about a century in Earth time. That should last a minute or so until she can push that under control enough for the doctor to operate.

Hippolyta and her girlfriend, same one as usual, loom over him as he works, trying to say something threatening should he try something against "our daughter". Daughter-in-law, basically, but I wanna say that amazons don't have marriage; love is not related to property, the Queen's lover isn't counted among her heirs even though their eventual daughter would be, stuff like that.

The kryptonian doctor just laughs at them, and says that if he even thought of anything the first thing anyone would notice would be the Lantern having already killed him, since there's a telepath. Imra replies "...two telepaths" and he says to stop distracting him.

Imra also reassures the Queen that he's going to do his best. He is fascinated by the prospect, and at this point he'd do it for pure professional pride, even if nobody was forcing him. He can't help but nod discreetly at that.

It works, and once everyone is clear that she will be fine, Koriand'r gathers the prisoners again into the ship, promises to come back soon, and flies away. She's going to take them to the same planet that she used in other timelines, but this time without telling anyone what happened. She's already sabotaged the ship so that it cannot travel through space, though the life support will still work, so they can live in it, or try to settle the planet, without bothering anyone.

Meanwhile, back on Metropolis, Zod and Superman also saw the ship getting taken away, and the former correctly guessed that that was a Lantern. He is again outraged that they let Krypton die without comment, but would defend Earth against it. Possibly he assumes this is some sort of official action, since the Star Sapphires specifically maintain the fiction that they are a central government.

What matters is that this changes his attitude, enough to change the fight so that they both kill each other. Just for fun, the killing blow is going to be a more accurate recreation of the Superman vs Doomsday fight, from the Death of Superman comics. I'm torn on whether Superman should take Doomsday's place in that part of the choreography. That would be fun, but I don't really have anything for it to mean.

After that, Imra, J'onn and Diana go to Jump City, to wait for Koriand'r's return and plan their future. She won't get involved with the Star Sapphires so it won't be that long, but still probably a couple days; despite her anger, she can't quite bring herself to leave the kryptonians without making sure they won't die. Possibly she'll keep checking in on them every now and then.

While they wait, the three make their presence known publically. J'onn is already a renowned hero and local legend, for his intervention. They form the Titans, with Imra as their leader. They're not teens, it's a reference to their homeworld.

They should get the T-shaped tower, if that can look good enough in live action. If it can't, I'm thinking a more regular building complex that looks like a T when seen from above.

Imra already has a suit and a superhero name, so J'onn just shapeshifts into a version of that, with Mars instead of Jupiter, and calls himself "Martian Manhunter". I've probably used the name to refer to other versions of the character, but I'm pretty sure never in-universe. I want to go ahead and establish now that this is the only version of him that answers to that.

Diana takes the name "Jupiter's Daughter", and they do make a suit for her in the same style, but she rarely wears it. She also won't have the armour bikini anymore, though, since she's a mage, not a warrior. Should usually be in a mix of a cultist's robes and greek-ish toga, I think.

Koriand'r becomes "Princess Venus", to fit in with the other's planetary motifs. Since two of the other three are literally from their respective planets, the general public will also assume she comes from actual Venus but probably isn't an actual princess; she should get a chuckle out of that.

Other supers that join up don't need to use that naming convention. They do receive an uniform in the style, but its use is not mandatory.

Koriand'r can trivially bring J'onn to Mars, so she does. Imra tags along, on her own flight ring. Having verified that no relic of his civilization remains, he now believes his accident was aeons ago. I'm not sure if this should mean that is right or I should make it be the most recent it can be, for drama. Still undecided on that one.

Zatanna either doesn't even try or is beaten immediately, thanks to the telepaths, not sure which. But probably it doesn't even get that far.

Prometheus attacks. It's actually perfectly logical, since this is a time-travel timeline that's so close to his, that it'd be the very first one they detected and invaded. Its very existence is probably part of the reason why that particular version of the Engineer was able to figure out dimensional travel in the first place.

Imra at this point still thinks there is only one history and that she changed the future by preventing Diana from leaving and meeting whoever was to be Prometheus' father (history doesn't say, at least as far as she knows). So now she thinks he's coming back to undo that change, presumably "before" it can affect him, in a Back to the Future 1 sort of way.

After the Titans and Earth's armies are both overwhelmed and the planet is added to the Empire, she runs away to construct another time sphere, to go back a couple years and use what she learned to prepare them for the upcoming future invasion. Naturally, she can't time travel anymore so she instead lands in some alternate universe where either Diana or Prometheus still rule, but don't have dimensional travel.

She'd keep trying to go back, jumping around multiple universes and eventually figuring out how that actually works. Possibly she recruits a scientist from some universe to help her with that. Meanwhile time has kept running, the empire has been slowly but steadily growing, so once she has a grasp of hyperdimensional geometry she'll move away from its center, hoping to meet someone that can help stop him, eventually making her way to our "normal" continuity.

Which serves to remind me that this is all backstory for the first time we meet her, and I don't actually have anything to do with this character. Fun!

[zuko-always-lies]

I’m probably going to regret doing this, but I felt like I should, in good faith, explain why people argue that. It has nothing to do with the comics or abuse apologism, because the people who argue that generally believe that the comics aren’t canon and base their understanding of the characters solely on the show.

Perhaps I should clarify why many people choose not to include the comics in their canon. To put it simply, they are poorly written, and they suck.  Most notably, there’s a massive amount of character assasination which goes on in them.

For instance, “The Promise” has Aang not only promise to kill Zuko but nearly go through with this promise twice(!) on incredibly flimsy justifications, all with zero thought about what would happen to the Fire Nation if Zuko died. Meanwhile, Zuko violently attacks his friends for no reason whatsoever, and nearly restarts the Hundred Years War. And of course the whole story basically seems to endorse settler-colonialism, but that’s another issue.

Likewise, “The Search” has Zuko apparently have zero understanding that Azula is suffering from a serious mental illness and is badly delusion, even though he institutionalized her and she repeatidly hallucinations right in front of him. I know Zuko isn’t always the smartest person in the room, but that’s ridiculious. Likewise, Sokka is given a bizare obsession with making Azula fear him so that he can control her with fear, for some reason. It also features an incredibly ableist depiction of mental illness, to the degree that reading the commentary and seeing Gene Yang talk about a mentally ill character as “nutty” is very chilling, but that’s another story..

There are good reasons why people don’t want to include this kind of character assasination in their understanding of characters from the show. Moreover, there is good reason to believe that “The Search” directly contradicted everything that was previously established or implied about Ursa. For instance, Ursa’s official, public bio at the time ATLA was originally airing read like this:

Character: Ursa

This is Zuko and Azula’s mom, and the wife of Fire Lord Ozai (before he became Fire Lord). She is a very sweet woman and a wonderful mother, but she is also very protective – especially of her favorite child Zuko. Ursa was born to Fire Nation royalty and was raised as such. She was the perfect match for Prince Ozai and soon became his wife. Ursa spent most of her time raising her children to be good Fire Nation citizens and the ideal royal family. Ursa mysteriously disappeared on the same night as Fire Lord Azulon’s death. Some say that she was somehow involved in Fire Lord Azulon’s death – and that she did it to protect Zuko. But the truth is not known.

This gives a good idea of what the show writers were thinking about when they wrote the episodes Ursa appeared in, and, needless to say, it heavily contradicts how “The Search” depicted her. Moreover, you could do very interesting stuff with this backstory(”Zuko reunites with his mother, but it turns out she strongly supported the war!”), which is why many people like it.

Of course, the Avatar comics are official, and for some people everything official must be treated as canon. However, I don’t share that viewpoint, personally. I think it’s valid to not incorporate poorly written and bad material which seeks to milk more money off an established, high quality work as canon. For instance, if what Avatar Studios makes is very poor quality and assissinates a lot of characters, I expect that many ATLA fans will end up treating it as noncanon. Already, very few fanfic writers treat the comics as canon.

As a final note, I want to say that, among people who do not think the comics are canon, there is a lot of disagreement on what Ozai’s relationship with Ursa might have looked like. There’s simply not a lot to go off in the show.  Some people still think, based off of Ozai’s abuse of Zuko and Azula, that he probably abused Ursa; other people disagree with that and point to the lack of any direct evidence.

Again, I have tried to engage with you in good faith and explain why certain people take the stance that they do. I hope that you respect that.

i'm seeing multiple people say that ursa "was ozai's equal" and that she had "power in their relationship"

like did we????? read the same comic????????????????

i mean it's been years since i've read the search but didn't ozai basically kidnap ursa threaten to kill her fiance and cut her off from her family members???? because that does not sound like an equal relationship to me lmao

like at this point i feel that the ATLA fandom (but specifically azula's weird stans) is being deliberately obtuse about everything surrounding ursa at this point like the entire comic is a super on-the-nose depiction of a woman being abused but the fandom keeps turning it into a massive victim-blame-fest

[siren-of-redriver96]

Villian Heights (Part 1)

(reading Wuthering Heights for the first time and trying to figure out the deal with this book with some assumptions from previous summaries of the story)

Today: until the point where Nelly Dean recounts little Heathcliff getting sick

(spoilers and kind of heavy themes - also strong language)

Heathcliff seems to be a hoarder for dogs and in general it seems - first glimpse of the psychology aspects of this book, I’m interested

the narrator is kind of a fancy obsessed - and yeah not that likable but I think he’s not supposed to be

kinda caught up in etiquette

Cathy (I’m gonna call her Cathylin from now on to avoid confusion) is kinda cool - you can tell she’s trying to keep herself alive by at least trying to follow orders - but boy does she not take shit from anyone! And I love the part where she threatens everyone with witchcraft!)

the narrator having a gothic horror nightmare after reading Cathy’s diary was unexpected but cool (also the previous dream of a church mass where he has to fight everyone trying to beat him up was kinda funny)

Heathcliff loosing it over Cathy’s possible haunting of the room was interestingly written - kinda reminded me of what I heard about the adaptation ... I’m also filing this under possible villian backstory

was kinda wondering as to how old everyone is/was in Cathy’s diary entry, and though it was cleared up soon, still have to remind myself for all of this to make sense of the time this was written, and the very different ideas of childhood, adulthood, expectations, a shorter average lifespan and people hitting puberty much later than today (mostly because I really don’t like the older brother acting as a father to his sister trope) - but from what I can heard, the characters will always be more or less immature throughout the story, and won’t go past what most people would nowadays call “a kid”

I can see why her and Heathcliff hate Hindley already - props to both for not taking any bs from him too.

Cathy is only six in the flashback but can ride horses? Now that confused me.

the staff at Heathcliff’s house being so few and so old reminds me of the king from the last unicorn - also a heck of a scrooge with an adopted son and a girl who knows of his criminal energy, so works (The Last Wuthercorn)

Mr. Earnshaw, the flashback - I kinda wonder how he could loose both his kids’ presents because carrying little Heathcliff (dude - you’re rich, you’re on horseback most likely, buy a rucksack!)

the way the Earnshaw kids behave reminds me of the aforementioned rules of this time (also I wonder if they may have additionally grown up only with each other mostly, but that’s still out there)

Mrs. Earnshaw only appears when making a racist remark of not wanting to keep Heathcliff around, then fades away again

the way it’s pointed out that Earnshaw didn’t spoil Cathy because she was so strong-willed and favours Heathcliff over both his kids/treats him better - there are two things here: 1. he really doesn’t consider any of them as thinking people, or that his actions and not trying to actually explain stuff to them will pit his bio kids against Heathcliff from the start and 2. is it just me or does he favour Heathcliff because he doesn’t make him aware that he’s a thinking human yet? It feels like the paradox of people being obsessed with babies, but overwhelmed and exhausted as soon as they become too much of a person with own opinions - Earnshaw kinda sucks

Nelly Dean explaining how Heathcliff always pretended not being hurt when Hindley and her hurt him - caught me off guard, and her pointing out that it seems he’s learned his behaviour (this is beginning to really feel like a psychological thriller, I’m taking notes)

she’s happy that a doctor praises her nursing him back to health - took a note of why this meant so much to her, again, the time

And that’s that. A lot of psychology and taking no bs, I like it. We’ll see how things go

[lucky-sevens]

mechs deep lore compilation post

so! maybe you’ve read the other compilation post i made of basic lore/how to get into the mechs! maybe you want to know more! or maybe you’re a fan already and want to see how deep down this rabbit hole you can get!

well, good news for you: i have gone down the rabbit hole and hit bedrock only to find maki yamazaki standing by my side with a pickaxe! it is time for mechs lore part 2: electric boogaloo also known as ‘wow blue have you considered sleep’

rest under the cut!

i’ve tried to organize this, but given how many random facts there are, it’s hard! decided to start off with lore for each character (in order of them joining the mechs in-universe), including all the carmilla lore at the end; then move into general world lore/a bit of album lore, and finally more obscure/unknown facts, such as explaining the whole scuzz thing! also, citing the sources has been difficult, as a lot of things are from, say, old twitter posts and the like. there might be less links here than you all would like, but bear with me- compiling all this lore is quite difficult!

disclaimer: unlike stuff like the wiki, this includes a lot of my own theories and red stringing, and while i’m noting if something’s fanon or canon, the fanon may occasionally make its way into my theories!

links to the songs will be mostly TheVoidSings’ youtube lyric videos, as i don’t want to find the links to all the different platforms they’re on and the videos are lovely and accessible!

also- i’ve done some significant editing on the mechanisms wiki, as have other talented people- go check it out! it’s a good source of lore!

now on w/ the actual post!

crew

jonny d’ville

his lore is fairly concrete, but since he’s an unreliable narrator, we don’t know what bits can be trusted! his backstory song is one eyed jacks, which gives a pretty clear picture of events, but here in his crew bio he says that he made up new texas, and doesn’t have a very good memory of events in general. (it’s implied that he didn’t lie about killing his father, but we don’t even know that for sure.) a note: unlike the others, we don’t know what happened to his heart in order for him to be mechanized.

the aurora

the aurora’s lore is a mess. here’s what we know for sure, which is an edited version of what i have on her wiki page, (where i have also given a list of her known physical attributes);

she started off as a moon, but was weaponized and turned into a ship. she initially was a navy ship, but mutinied and joined the rebellion, participating in the october revolution, in which nastya died and was mechanized. this may have been her choice, but it is more likely that carmilla and/or jonny forced her into it, as they are the ones who won her from the cyberian navy.

when they stormed the ship, a woman was trapped inside- specialist 278 tereshkova, presumably aurora's programmer. What her and aurora's relationship was like is unknown, but aurora did not make any attempt to save her, so it may have not been positive. before dying, tereshkova managed to program a final distress message into aurora, as well as coding the mechanisms' blog.

she’s likely to be based off of the historical battleship aurora, like nastya is based off of the historical russian princess anastasia.

now, it’s time to get into the main theory about her: that aurora used to be briar rose! i’m collecting all the evidence on it, as well as all the evidence that can disprove it.

here’s a refresher on briar rose’s whole deal, taken from ‘the aurora strikes’-

The Rose Reds were the most effective of the soldiers created from Rose's genetic material, but they were not the first. Rumours spoke of an early prototype, known as the Briar Rose, that had malfunctioned and slain everyone on the desert moon of Briar, where she was being grown. But she was not dead. As the Mechanisms discovered, instead, she slept, at the heart of the defence grid that surrounded New Constantinople. The grid was composed of Thorn-class gun emplacements and was virtually impenetrable. And in its centre, the Briar Rose slumbered, plugged into the system, her anger, her rage, her hatred and her fear, fueling the machines, and focusing their gun turrets.

the main support for the theory here is that over time, briar rose could have fused to the moon, which is one of the very few conditions in which a biomechanical weaponized moon seems plausible and not just like a collection of vaguely cursed words. however, in the fiction ‘by any other name’, which is some collected lab research on briar rose, there’s this line- “During transportation and integration of the specimen, take all precaution and care.”- key word here being transportation. so she must have been moved off the moon.

the fiction i cited to disprove the theory actually has something that further supports it, though- the presence of a mysterious woman in king cole’s lab, who could be carmilla. hood, the revolution’s hacker, notes on a picture of her ‘[No idea. The others I’ve been able to find evidence of, but she’s a fucking ghost]‘. the description is a bit off, though, as she’s described as a short, pale, woman with hair long enough to be pulled back and carmilla is quite tall and has short hair- as well, in a later part of the fiction, the woman is killed and does not revive. however, there’s also another who could plausibly be her, noted here- ‘A tall woman sits opposite Prof. Root with a tray of her own. From her stature, it is conceivable she was one of the figures in the chemical suits. They talk sporadically, but the audio is heavily corrupted.’ she isn’t one of the ones killed later on, either, so that’s possible.

we know carmilla knew aurora when she was a very young moon and raised her practically from birth, so if she is one of those two people, it would make sense.

in ‘the aurora strikes’, aurora pushes to save briar rose- nastya explains this as ‘she can not bear to see another biomechanical organism in pain’. in my own writing about aurora, i interpret that as her having very high empathy, but there could be a more personal connection here. this is also notable as the only time aurora is mentioned in-album beyond jonny calling the mechanisms ‘the crew of the starship aurora’.

nastya rasputina

nastya’s backstory song (cyberian demons) was only performed when they were still dr. carmilla and the mechanisms, so it’s harder to find! thevoidsings has made a lyric video of it here, though, and it gives another very clear picture of her backstory! there’s also the fiction of the same name, which i didn’t understand upon first read-through but is basically a nastya character study, covering different points in her immortal life.

her performer went on hiatus for a while, and as an in-universe explanation, the cyberian sequence was written! in which nastya flies aurora to cyberia, infects herself with a computer virus, and transmits it to the entire planet, causing it to explode. this is all in the cyberian demons fiction i linked above, and with it are two other tangential fictions- one presumably just before those events, and one that’s an outsider pov.

there’s also out, which i’d suggest reading rather than just looking at my summary; basically, nastya has a crisis over aurora changing so that it’s harder to recognize her love, and ends up leaving the ship to float away into deep space- this is presumed to be her death, but that is never confirmed and nastya seems to assume she will wake up at some point.

ashes o’reilly

ashes’ whole deal is quite straightforward, which is a nice break from aurora and (to a lesser extent) nastya! their backstory song is lucky sevens, and it’s elaborated on further in their crew bio; interestingly, ashes was the one most into the idea of immortality at first, and also gave clear consent to carmilla.

ivy alexandria

we don’t know that much about ivy, which is fitting, as she doesn’t either! the most clear information we can find about her is in her crew bio, which can be summarized as: she grew up in a library!

archive footage explains more about her memory situation. she has no memories of anything before she was mechanized, according to this line ‘[...] she can tell you dates, and places, and body counts, she can list for you the exact circumstances of each event of her long, long life (at least, every event since that time, long ago, among a maze of bookshelves in a library that, awake, she can no longer describe to you, though once she knew its every turn by heart, when a woman stood over her and offered her eternity: before that, there is nothing at all).’ she also processes her memories differently than most people- they’re more like records, instead of things that affect her emotionally. (archive footage is also beautifully written and very much worth reading!)

the toy soldier

would say it has concrete lore, but it’s also almost solely responsible for fucking up my timeline and the album lore, so i’m rather angry at it. nevertheless, its entire backstory can be found in the fiction ‘the story of the toy soldier’. additionally, there’s a short story about its time fighting in the revolution of once upon a time (in space); presumably, this is the first time it did so, though it was likely in the war at least twice and possibly even three times. the mechanisms were only watching the second time, though it’s not out of character for it to have participated in the war again, and there’s also the dr. carmilla song, eleven, (which is about a war and uses a lot of rose symbology so it’s likely the revolution) where it is present. notably, carmilla had left the mechanisms by the time once upon a time (in space) takes place on their timeline, and the toy soldier is the only one there. at first, i interpreted that as carmilla meeting the toy soldier before it had met the mechanisms, but there’s two inconsistencies there: firstly, it doesn’t recognize her when it joins the band, and secondly, in the song they leave together. this increases the likelihood of it having been in the war three times.

we actually have a recording of the toy soldier’s first time joining the band- the mechanisms @ lashings! (part one / part two / transcript) there’s also a note of that show in the story of the toy soldier! they bought it because jonny was in jail (x). interestingly, that show is the first recording of rose red, and it’s later noted jonny was in a rose red prison!

now it’s time to get into the main theory regarding it, which also will factor into the write-up of ulysses dies at dawn later! i personally subscribe to this theory, or at least, most of it.

here is frankie @byron-von-raum‘s post- the theory here is that the toy soldier is the rebodied mind of the widow’s fiance. i’m not going to get too into that part, as i don’t personally incorporate it into my lore and more importantly frankie already has a post on it! read that if you’re more interested!

the most important bit here is the evidence it collects regarding the toy soldier living near labyrinth; in one of the pictures from the toy soldier’s backstory, there’s a dionysus brand wine bottle. the consensus he comes to is that the toy soldier lives in a colony of earth that trades with labyrinth, and while i think that’s possible, the all-encompassing nature of the city makes it more likely that they would have a minimum of outside communication, so the toy soldier would just be from the city proper. i will get into the impacts of this/expand on it more in the world lore section!

another thing: the angel has an out of character explanation! if you look at photos of old mechs gigs, jessica law looks similar to the drawing of the angel in the story of the toy soldier! their voice being stolen was most likely a reference to that.

drumbot brian

brian’s backstory is laid out in his crew bio! i’d summarize it, but to be honest, it’s already a summary, so i’d suggest just taking a second to read that! sadly, this is all of what we know about it. the priest from his backstory was apparently made almost immortal in some twisted form of mechanization, and has never forgiven brian for it/is still trying to hunt him down (x).

his bio is also where his morality switch is introduced! (interestingly, it takes a far lower role/is mentioned far less in canon than in fanworks.)

there was originally going to be a backstory album about him called indistinguishable from magic. this never happened, but ben below is working on a new one called the wanderings of drumbot brian! no more knowledge on this currently. 

the main theory about him is that he had some kind of alliance/is lying about something to do with carmilla! we know from maki that carmilla didn’t go out of the airlock (more on that in her section), and when brian is questioned on what happened to her, he doesn’t give a concrete answer. this is in contrast to all the other mechanisms, who assume she fell out an airlock. here’s what he said:

I will not point fingers and lay blame. I do not know how it came to pass that Dr. Carmilla left this vessel, whether by fair means or foul, and so I will not engage in this painful discussion. I hope she did not suffer, and that we may forgive the perpetrator of this deed.

he’s speaking very formally here. (fucking nerd). well, no; legitimately, this is not the normal way he speaks in other contexts. he could be masking something. we know that even when he’s lying, he’s not good at it, and this comes off as clearly odd. in support of this, i believe one of the songs on his unwritten backstory album was called ‘the doctor’s demise’ (though i could be remembering incorrectly).

there’s not much more evidence we can draw on here to come to a consensus, though!

something else to note- i’ve written this other meta about his prophetic powers! feel free to read if you’re interested in that aspect of his character!

gunpowder tim

of course, tim already has a whole mini-album to himself (gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser), but there’s a couple more niche things about him, though not as much as aurora and ts!

mainly, the implications that he destroyed the sun. there’s an old mechanisms tweet that states he 'was floating in the wake of a detonated star’. additionally, there’s this old blog post, which turned into a bit of a fiction! the figure speaking is not named, but given the other mechanisms who speak (therefore knocking them off the possibilities list) and the fact that the post was made around the time tim joined, it’s likely that it’s him. now, he says this:

“It wasn’t the deep space that drove me crazy,” he said, his voice low, calm and polite.  “It was the sudden realisation that I was entirely responsible for the destruction of my entire civilisation, and happy for it.”

though destroying the moon and his other actions in gptvtmk could possibly count for this, it would fit more if he had destroyed the sun.

both those posts also imply that he was floating in space for an incredibly long time. i don’t know how he survived if so, but it seems very likely that’s what happened.

i considered these posts being too early/having a changed canon now, like the odd use of different pronouns for some characters in the earlier fiction, but they seemed to have gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser mostly worked out by the time tim ledsam officially joined, as they perform it at the only recorded gig from that year with him (port mahon 2011), which was around when the second blog post was made!

marius von raum

we don’t have a written backstory or backstory song to go on for him, but kofi young (his performer) is working on a full album about him called ‘the death of byron von raum’!

the blog post kofi made about it as a summary is the main source of marius lore that we have! i’d highly suggest reading it, but the main points are:

1. it’s going to be very dark and tragic, and shows that marius at heart isn’t really the kind of comedic figure that he comes off as in the band! ruth @thedreadvampy (the mechanisms’ official artist, as well as morgan’s sister and kofi’s partner) has also made a tumblr post that connects to this!

2. the world he’s from used to be high-tech, but has devolved over time into 18th century levels of technology! what this boils down to is; what we assume is marius and an unknown friend (more on this in raphaella’s part) manage to discover ancient technology and attempt to use it! all we have here is this quote om the blog post- ‘In the middle of this, two kids hiding from the soldiers discover an army of ancient mecha and use them to fight back, but only end up plunging the world into further chaos.’.

3. anime protagonist marius!

we also have this small piece of writing, screenshotted here (monogoggle...)-

[image id: a screenshot of writing, most of it out of view/hard to make out. it’s also in the middle of the line, so the breaks are off. however, it looks to say ‘at the controls of RISML/cockpit is cramped and d[...]/has his monogoggle over his/controls are uncomplicated/the neural interface. They [...]’ end id.]

raphaella la cognizi

i’ve been very deep down the mechs rabbit hole for over a month now, and yet i’ve found hardly anything about her!

there’s a small theory i have, though it doesn’t have too much supporting evidence! in marius’ backstory, it mentions two kids, and raphaella and marius joined together (first mention of either of them is together, in this facebook post!) when questioned about marius and raphaella, nastya says a story instead of stories (x). (that post also clarifies that carmilla was not involved in either raphaella or marius’ backstories!) this could potentially point to raphaella being the other person from marius’ backstory. the evidence against it is that if raphaella featured that heavily, r. l. hughes would have said something about the album as well instead of it just being kofi talking about marius, but it’s still interesting to think about!

there’s also a theory that she was the preacher’s daughter from brian’s backstory, but the only real evidence there is that she could have used his tech to mechanize herself (which her doing is only fanon!) and that she performs ‘lost in the cosmos’.

dr carmilla

this is most likely going to be the shortest section, as it’s basically another crew member; that being said, there’s a lot of lore here!

if you haven’t listened to the carmilla albums, i’d really suggest doing that! there’s two- exhumed and (un)plugged and ageha prototype edition! the story there is harder to put together than in the mechs backstories, especially because the songs are mostly out of order, so i’ve decided to just straight up summarize my interpretation, along with what we have to go on from maki, instead of framing it like a theory, as that’s the easiest way! still, please bear all this with a grain of salt- it’s most likely to be contradicted in the new album maki is working on.

carmilla and her girlfriend loreli lived on a planet called terra. for their childhoods, it was a fairly okay place to live (though i elaborate on this a bit in the world lore section!) however, it was bombed; most likely taking the role of an alternate universe hiroshima, as the blurb on her bandcamp says ‘Dr. Carmilla tells the twisted tales of a dystopian future following WWII having ended very differently.‘ after this, the planet sunk into a nuclear winter.

loreli got sick and died; or, she should have, but carmilla saved her by turning her into a vampire as well. this resulted in loreli losing her morals and becoming abusive towards carmilla. carmilla was too deep in love to see this, and stayed in the relationship for several years.

we don’t know what happened to make her strike out on her own, but eventually she did, and created the mechanisms. while with them, she recognized her own failures with loreli, and left the mechanisms (which they all believe was caused by jonny d’ville pushing her out an airlock, rather than her own volition.)

from there, she traveled back in time to the point where loreli was dying, and let it happen- potentially burying herself and loreli alive, which she survived due to her immortality and loreli did not.

however, she was trapped underground for a hundred years. when she is finally found and dug out, she starts enjoying herself (i.e. committing murder). for some unknown reason, she clones herself multiple times, creating the in-universe version of maki yamazaki.

the mechanisms assume she pursued them after she was pushed out of the airlock, and that that was what eleven was about, but i’m not sure why she would do that, given that she left them of her own volition. because of time shenanigans, it could have been far later on her personal timeline; maybe she simply wished to reconnect with them after all those years.

that’s all we have; we don’t know if she died, or anything like that!

world lore

all the folktales and normal history the irl mechs work off of also exist in-universe! (for an example- the toy soldier and ivy start reciting the walrus and the carpenter together in lashings, and the mechs also do alice in wonderland as a song.)

we know the alternate universe theory is correct, mostly because of this piece in the fiction on kofi’s blog-

In those burning instants, he’d feel the weight of it all, and know it was true. The golden age that never came; the city that stood at the dawn of a world instead of in its dying embers. And beyond – to a myriad of Camelots and a thousand thousand Arthurs, unfathomable worlds apart, each different, each fighting the same hopeless battle.

He’d feel the burden of that task pressing down until it felt like it’d crush his chest, and he’d wake every day gasping for breath, feeling older than he ever had, older even than Ector.

And as he screamed inwardly, Galahad would meet his gaze with those crazed eyes of his and grin, and Arthur would know again that whatever had spoken to Galahad was moving him too.

the mechanisms are most likely traveling between several alternate universe versions of folktales, and occasionally alternate versions of earth! (cyberia, tim’s earth, terra...) this is likely why everyone in their stories is human, and is actually low-key evidence against drawing them as aliens (though ofc feel free to have fun!)

i was initially going to put all the album lore in its own separate sections, but a large amount of it is how it intersects with other pieces of lore, and the rest isn’t necessarily niche enough to cite here? my personal advice is that if you want to learn more about the albums, read the fiction! i have a compilation post of all the fiction up on this blog, and you can find it on the website here!

let’s start with the mechanisms’ roles in ulysses dies at dawn, though! we know for sure ashes is hades, brian is the oracle of delphi, and the toy soldier was a nymph (which is actually quite worrying, considering what that means and the inherent issues with consent there, but i digress.) tim most likely took on the role of achilles (more on that here). then, we know some of the mechanisms’ activities and can guess their roles from that. raphaella was helping athena on her research, marius was psychoanalyzing the olympians, and jonny was committing mass murder. it’s a common theory that one (or three) of the mechanisms was cerberus, but sadly i couldn’t find any evidence towards or against that.

i said in the toy soldier’s section that i would talk more about the implications of it being from labyrinth here! the main thing is the fact that, for it to join the rose red war, the city must have interacted with king cole at some point. it’s a risky thing to pose a theory on the toy soldier’s allegiance towards a certain group, but the fact that it seemed to stick with the rose reds here might also mean that the city was, in fact, under king cole’s power. this fits in nicely with the greek mythology aspect of it all; king cole, in that universe, could have been a stand-in for the figure of kronos/saturn!

a few other theories on how the lore intersects:

1. high noon over camelot takes place after the bifrost incident! in terminus, we see communication breaking down, and that could have been the reason the station was isolated. the mechanisms go from it to the bifrost incident, but as they canonically travel in time, that’s not enough to disprove the theory!

2. arthur becomes king cole eventually! this is mostly going off of the fact he’s called ‘the once and future king’, but also the fact that cole used to be considered a good king.

a few loose pieces of worldbuilding:

people from new constantinople seem to be longer lived, and their culture is built around age as a concept. the older you are, the more wise and important you are. specifically, in this fiction, snow is dismissively noted as ‘barely fifty’ and king cole’s age is held up as evidence to why he’s a good ruler.

terra, carmilla’s planet, has two major languages; high terran and low terran! high terran is a more regulated, formal way of speaking, specifically something that only the rich and privileged tend to know. there are many dialects, but the grammar is dictated by the capital. low terran is a creole language formed from several others, including high terran, that most children are taught in school as the baseline. (though they might speak a completely different, less widely spoken language at home!) carmilla speaks low terran but not high terran (although she pretends to know the latter.)

the mechanisms were all (or mostly all) at fort galfridean at one point; don’t have the source to hand, but marius apparently became a prophet to the saxons for staring into the sun for a very long time.

if you’re looking to draw album fanart, there are a few things i know aren’t as widely known; the ones i can think of off the top of my head is orpheus having a ‘foppish haircut’ (the type of thing that falls under that definition is narcissus’ undercut), and snow’s disfiguring scar. there is also official album art; i, personally, have not seen much of it, and i’d encourage coming up with your own character interpretations.

one last theory- it’s highly likely carmilla was involved in the events of the bifrost incident. in the mechscord (sadly, invites are closed due to the difficulty with handling the boom in the fanbase) maki yamazaki has mentioned that part of the criteria for picking a mechanism is ‘good friend for lyf’. at first, i assumed that she meant good friend for life, but when asked on that she was worryingly cryptic (as tends to happen), and she made a joke earlier in character as doc c about accidentally calling odin. though immortal lyfrassier edda most likely became fanon just so they could become a mechanism, this is a piece of evidence towards them actually becoming immortal.

my personal headcanon is that to gain true immortality (which maki has said king cole and the olympians do not have) you have to have some kind of eldritch component, so carmilla had to go to odin for aid. this is supported by the fact that in drive the cold winter away and cyberian demons, their mechanisms are noted as having a rainbow sheen to them!

other lore

scuzz nishimura

scuzz has built up a bit of a reputation for being the ‘cryptid mech’, but her lore is really quite simple! she was a member of the band back when they were doctor carmilla and the mechanisms, but left before they became more popular, so there’s not too much knowledge about her. she appears in this fiction and the only two recorded gigs from that era (lashings and homesick). she’s also visible in several photos!

i know i’ll get people in the notes asking for photos of her if i don’t include any, so have this;

[image id: a cropped picture of scuzz nishimura, looking tired and resting her head on her hand. she looks to be wearing white gloves and some kind of sweater or waistcoat, and her hair is cut short. her cello is also visible, as is someone else’s hand. end id.]

we don’t know too much about her; all we really have is that she was their cello player!

assorted things with no explanation

there’s this old piece from the wayback machine-

[image id: a screenshot of what looks to be the fiction page from a old site for dr carmilla and the mechs. the writing reads;

Writing

( The Aldwich Horror } A short story in which Dr. Carmilla attempts to solve the mysteries of the Aldwich Horror, the strange appearance of a new crew memeber and several zoologically dubious pets.

( Disinterration } A cautionary tale about exhuming corpses.

end id.]

‘disinterration’ is most likely a reference to the carmilla song exhumed, but i’m unsure about ‘the aldwich horror’. the most intriguing bit there is ‘the strange appearance of a new crew member’. i’ve researched the other aspects in an attempt to figure this out. aldwych is a closed london tube station- it served as a bomb shelter during the blitz, which is interesting as both carmilla and tim have backstories involving the world wars (though only carmilla’s is world war ii specifically; tim’s is wwi). the zoologically dubious pets are most likely the octokittens, which we know the toy soldier brought on board, so it would have to be in a place on the timeline after ts joined and before carmilla left. the only mechanism that joins in that space is gunpowder tim, so it’s possible that he is the new crew member.

the mechanisms blogs have a lot of incidental lore, so if you’re this deep in i’d suggest looking at my compilation post of some of my favorite posts of theirs!

and that’s it! we did it! i can finally go to sleep now. i’m so tired. please. i am going to die. i have homework. thank you all so much. please consider coming to my funeral service.

[clarenecessities]

As my followers may have picked up from my long, spiraling rants, I’ve undertaken a new research project, courtesy of the death grip She-Ra has on my brain. And guess what? It’s finally at Disseminate Information Stage! So I’m going to lay out all of the gods, demigods, and godbeasts of the Masters of the Universe. With sources!

This table is more of a cheat sheet. We’re gonna tackle this god by god, with a section on Actual Lore & a meta section to help you decide how valid you think they are, because frankly some canons are more canon than others.

Asklepia, Benevolent Snake Goddess

Lore: Asklepia is one of two snake goddesses, the benevolent twin sister of Serpentia. We know very little about her abilities, but the Snake Clan (a clan of human warriors) were said to worship her, and they were famed for their architecture and healing. She had the ability to curse and deform people--to what extent is uncertain, but she’s known to have condemned a fallen priest named Ka, whose disfigured likeness now adorns Snake Mountain.

Behind the Scenes: First appearing in the 1987 comic “Il Nero Cristallo Del Potere“, Asklepia remained nameless for over 30 years, until Masters of the Universe Classics (MOTUC) released a few choice bios. For the unfamiliar, MOTUC seeks to reconcile the often contradictory canons into one overarching narrative, which is great in theory, but in practice is kind of like putting ice cream on a hot dog. And calling it a Chilly Dog ® as if that makes it taste better. But I digress. In 2019 they released a bio for the Staff of Ka which finally put a name to the less-evil Snake Goddess, in an obvious nod to Asclepius and the asklepian (that staff+snake icon people put on medical stuff).

Sharella, the Green Goddess and/or “Avatar” of Asklepia

Lore: Contradictory

Long Version: Okay I’ve put avatar in quotes because it is... contentious. Basically, and you’ll see here why I felt the need to make this post instead of relying blindly on the wikis, Sharella was introduced (in the ‘87 licensing guide) as a tribal leader who had joint custody of Gray, the original name of He-Ro’s alter ego, while he was growing up. This was further developed by Emiliano Santalucia’s concept work, wherein she was the leader of the Green Tiger Tribe (GTT) specifically. While the comic concept was not run through licensing & is thus not “canon”, the idea of her leading the GTT persisted. This teeny tiny image of her from Tytus and Megator’s 1987 Italian box art was all we had until 2008, when one of He-Man’s accessories described her as the “warrior woman ally” of Queen Veena, “who had been changed into the immortal green-skinned avatar of the Goddess Asklepia”. In 2009, MOTUC released a figure for The Goddess, apparently forgetting they’d done that shit the year before because the packaging did say “K’yrulla” was her real name. They had to cover it up with a sticker. 

So who’s The Goddess? Way back in the days before Mattel solidified any of the lore around MOTU, there were mini-comics released with the toys. Initially, the Goddess served a similar function to the Sorceress in the cartoon, and was in fact sometimes called the Sorceress. She facilitated He-Man’s transformations, gave him missions, was generally magical and mysterious, etc. If you know who the Sorceress is, and you can picture Teela, but green? That’s about it.

Back to Sharella, though. The Third Ultimate Battleground rolled around in 2015, and for the first time since some packaging in the 80s, we saw Sharella in action! She was shot through the heart with a poison arrow. Yeah. But don’t worry, she received a blood transfusion from Moss Man (who we’ll get to later), and was transformed into the Green Goddess! She’s immortal now. How Asklepia figures in here is sort of unclear, which is weird since this is still part of the MOTUC line, but whatever. Whatever! Queen Grayskull (the aforementioned Veena) received a bio in 2015 as well, which described Sharella as her apprentice who became “The Goddess”.

Horokoth, Aspect of the Mother Goddess

Lore: DC went a little batshit (pun intended) with the lore for the Eternity War. Here the Goddess is three combined aspects, “Serpos” (Serpentia) for the Snake Men, Zoar for the human “Eternians”, and a third, invented deity called Horokoth, who represents the Horde. Horokoth is “the coming destroyer. The darkness at the end of days.” and is represented by a bat.

Behind the Scenes: That last link has a clearer picture of her, it just didn’t crop well. Also, I confess I couldn’t bring myself to read Eternity War. As thrilling as the prospect of a cohesive narrative is, if I wanted to see Adora slit her brother’s throat there’s the edgier side of deviantArt to peruse. Therefore I know little of Horokoth outside of a few still images of Hordak. The bat was almost certainly selected for the Horde’s vespertilian emblem.

Hordeous, God-Beast of Horokoth

Lore: A “primordial”, bat-like godbeast of Horokoth, created in response to the god Saz’s feline races. Their face was “forever infused“ on the surface of Horde World by Horde Lord (Hordak and Horde Prime’s father in the MOTUC canon) to grant their family power and immortality.

Behind the Scenes: Yes they’ve used some words wrong, but they’ve got the spirit, right? Hordeous was (allegedly, this is secondhand) an invention of the MOTUC crew in answer to Horokoth. Now, the Horde Supreme bio predates Horokoth’s introduction by about 3 years, but obviously the comics were in production already. There’s an undated sketch of Horokoth Hordak from an undated interview (thanks for nothing you useless website) but in that same gallery there’s an orko sketch labeled 2012 so. We’re good right? That makes sense, timeline-wise. Anyway the comics slam dunked Horde Prime out of existence and combined him with Horde Lord so it’s contradictory anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Serpentia, Malevolent Snake Goddess

Lore: The evil counterpart of Asklepia, Serpentia is the goddess of the Snake Men. The priest Ka of the Snake Clan forsook Asklepia in her favor, destroying Asklepia’s sacred orb and stealing the Serpent Ring (an artefact capable of transforming humans into Snake Men) from the Ophidian Spire with King Hsss. In DC’s triune interpretation of the Goddess, Serpentia (here ‘Serpos’) is blood, passion, and desire. A primal and primordial force appearing to the Snake Men in their own image.

Behind the Scenes: Okay yes I’ve reused the Asklepia pic but in my defense they are twins and this is the easiest one to crop. So here’s the thing about Serpentia: we only got a name for her in 2019. We knew there was a snake goddess, and she was pretty evil, or at least hostile towards mammalian life (see: the source of the pic I chose for her). Where Asklepia references the asklepian, ‘Serpentia’ is a much more heavy-handed snake reference, even though Anguis was right there. Those Masters Mondays came through for us, though, with the shield and staff of Ka, Ssssylph, and of course MOTUC’s Dark Despot Skeletor, which is. something. Though only recently named, Serpentia has been a shadow over Eternia since the Snake Men’s introduction in 1985 (or, depending on how much of the presented backstory you accept, even sooner in the form of Skeletor’s lair, Snake Mountain).

Serpos/Sarcedon, God-Beast of Snake Mountain

Lore: Contradictory, but the gist of it is he’s a very large snake with elemental magic and a grudge, that was turned to stone and became Snake Mountain.

Long Version: Snake Mountain was conceived of towards the end of 1982, but wasn’t revealed to the public until September of 1983, with the debut of the Filmation cartoon. For another year, the snake coiled around its summit was simply a carving, its mouth hollowed out for Skeletor to stand in and loom. But in 1984 the Snake Mountain toy was released, completely discarding the Filmation design in favor of the hewn face of the figure we now call Ka. Instead of a snake carving winding its way up the peak, the Mattel toy featured a ‘striking serpent’, alive and attached to the mountain itself. From there, it was an easy leap to make to ‘this carving comes alive’. So easy, in fact, that they did it twice!

First attempted in 1985 in the newspaper storyline “Vengeance of the Viper King”, the snake was here called Sarcedon, the World Destroyer. At the dawn of time, he was said to crush Eternia within his deadly coils. He burrowed deep into the ground, causing fearsome storms that nearly destroyed the planet. Only a fearless hero (implied to be He-Ro) could defeat and imprison Sarcedon. Using a macguffin called a Mirror of History, He-Man forced Sarcedon to behold his own reflection in a reference to the Medusa myth that kind of missed the point of it being reflective. Sarcedon was sent back in time, Snake Mountain was restored, the good guys win, blah blah blah.

That was the last of it until the MYP cartoon in 2004. Serpos as a name was actually first invoked by Mer-Man in a 1982 minicomic, but like it probably wasn’t about the snake. Anyway in the MYP cartoon the Snake Men get this thing called the Medallion of Serpos that lets them un-petrify the snake around Snake Mountain, grow two more heads, and unleash his godly wrath. He breathes fire, trashes Eternos, beats up He-Man, then turns his attention on Castle Grayskull to consume the Orb of Power (containing the strength and wisdom of the Elders, who had first trapped him in stone). He-Man cuts off Serpos’s extra heads with a sword upgrade, the Elders are somehow magically restored to life, and they re-petrify him. Snake Mountain is restored, the good guys win, blah blah blah.

Zoar, the Fighting Falcon

Lore: Contradictory, but it sure is a bird!

Long Version: While Sharella’s backstory is fraught because of the comics couldn’t decide what they wanted her to be, Zoar was similarly tangled up by the toyline. Initially male, he went through several color schemes, some prettier than others. Though there was a vague association with the Sorceress before the cartoon (recall that pre-Filmation, the Sorceress was just the Goddess), Filmation made them literally inseperable by designating Zoar as the Sorceress’s falcon form, to which she was confined when leaving Castle Grayskull.

Some of the comics and Golden books showed Zoar as being flipping enormous & ridden into battle as a steed by Teela and Man-at-Arms. Pre-Filmation, Zoar was always referred to as male, but post-Filmation, always female, as an incarnation of the Sorceress.

The Eternity Wars comics describe Zoar as the third aspect of the Goddess, the ‘Great Preserver’ whose light would shine through the universe for eternity. They pull off a sort of tripartite priestess thing where it’s Serpos/Zoar/Horokoth represented by Teela-Na (the Sorceress)/Teela/Evil-Lyn.

MOTUC, of course, had to reconcile all of these contradictory canons. How’d they do it? “In the folklore of Eternia, the golden falcon symbolized the godhead Zoar, a powerful deity of Preternia. As a god, Zoar could appear in both male and female guises and while the blue-tipped female falcon was associated with the Sorceress of Grayskull, the golden falcon represented Zoar's masculine nature.” So Zoar is genderfluid now, and the Sorceress is merely borrowing their form when transforming into a falcon. This bio also established that Zoar had anointed the first Sorceress, Veena (Queen Grayskull), which explains why she has wings for no apparent reason.

Also it’s not offically MOTUC but the scultors of the line, Four Horsemen, made a single anthro Zoar for Power-Con 2013. In case you need that for some reason.

Glorybird, Emissary of Zoar

Lore: Many millennia ago, there were three siblings, who were very poor and mistreated by their stepmother, but had hearts filled with kindness and love. Zoar, recognizing their resilience and desire to help people, sent an emissary named Glorybird. Glorybird bestowed upon each sibling a divine gift, but as they used their new powers to fight for good, their stepmother revealed herself to be a Celestial Witch & attempted to sacrifice them to Zoar’s “greatest enemy”, Horokoth.  

Backstory: Okay, so the Star Sisters (and Glorybird) were in exactly one episode of She-Ra, primarily to set them up as new toy designs. While prototypes were made for these, the figures weren’t actually produced until MOTUC released figures for them in 2012. Though they were referenced in Princess Prom, and we saw a brief cameo in a background, Glorybird was absent until the introduction of the Star Siblings in Season Five.

That’s right! This bird is a god, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Saz, God of All Felines

Lore: One of the “Gods of the Multiverse” (he is the only member named explicitly), Saz was a blue-furred, feline deity responsible for the creation of all cats, humanoid or otherwise. He transformed himself into an enormous cat-beast to defeat Serpos and Hordeous, whose progenitors created them in envy of his children. Though Serpos was defeated, Hordeous escaped into the cosmos, and Saz himself vanished mysteriously.

Behind the Scenes: “By the whiskers of Saz!” is a fun pseudo-swear made by various cat races throughout MOTU, first in He-Man’s “The Cat and the Spider” and later in She-Ra’s “Magicats”. That was the only real mention of him until... okay, so MOTUC bios aren’t always attached to the product. Starting in 2018, they did this thing called Masters Mondays where they put unposted bios on the org forums. So while we’ve had the sword since 2010, we didn’t get the background on it until March of 2020. And then a couple weeks later, the Cat Mask of Catra bio referred to him as a “mystical being” instead of a god, but the mask was from 2011 so. He may not have been a god yet. It really depends on when the bios were actually written.

Saz wielded a blade probably best described as a falchion, whose quillon & langet formed a vaguely triangular shape around a deep red gem. I want to be clear that while it looks totally rad, this sword would be very impractical and have poor structural integrity were it not made by a literal god. Do not make swords like this. Also it’s almost certainly riffing on the Sword of Omens from Thundercats (affectionate).

Sabe-Or, Son of Saz

Lore: A green-furred, orange-striped paladin, Sabe-Or is one of the only named Ancients. He inherited his father’s blade upon Saz’s mysterious disappearance, and lived for centuries more. Upon his death, he transferred his “heroic essence” into a group of Eternian tigers, forever transforming them into the Green Tiger Tribe, whence both Granger (steed of King Grayskull), and Cringer, steed of Prince Adam.

Behind the Scenes: So “Battle Cat Man” is a concept that’s existed since they decided to make their hero ride a wicked tiger into battle. If you show a kid a superhero, and a supertiger, apparently the natural inclination of most children in the 80s was to combine the two. There are so many custom action figures. So, so many. Sabe-Or is visually a clear reference to this concept, and canonically seems to be the closest we’re going to get outside of the Thundercats crossover, unless you count Cowarros from 4H’s Mythic Legions line (I do, because it means Purrrplor is also canon and I fucking love calling him that).

Moss Man, Ancient Eternian Nature God

Lore: An ally of King Grayskull, Moss Man was something of an Eternian cryptid in the centuries leading up to He-Man Times. He has control over all plant life, the ability to meld with plants, and apparently can imbue sentience to said plants.

Behind the Scenes: Moss Man wasn’t featured in many episodes, because he’s a little... incredibly over-powered. He’s literally Bigfoot from 5000 years ago with magic powers. And like, since I don’t think the writers appreciate how long 5000 years is, you know what happened 5000 years ago? Stonehenge. This bitch is Stonehenge-old. But sure, you can trace a direct line of descent from his contemporary. smh. Anyway according to MOTUC his real name is Kreann’Ot N’Norosh so make of that what you will. Also his toys were pine-scented. I just love that.

Evil Seed, Rebellious Creation of Moss Man

Lore: Created by Moss Man to help fight in the Great Wars, Evil Seed betrayed his master and turned to evil (who could have foreseen this...), finding joy in corrupting all forms of plant life for his own amusement. Moss Man imprisoned him in enchanted chains, keeping him restrained for many millennia.

Behind the Scenes: According to MOTUC, his real name is Sero Malustro, clumsy New Latin for “(to) plant evil-burnt“. Why his name is New Latin and Moss Man’s is... whatever that is, I have no idea. As you can see from the image I included, he originally had an artichoke head, which was upgraded for the Mike Young Productions (MYP) cartoon. Personally I think the artichoke rules.

Volcana, the Fire Goddess

Lore: Canonically, she’s a fire goddess, and the mother of the Volcano Magus. Together, they are a rising force that seeks to conquer Etheria in the wake of Hordak’s defeat.

Backstory: Volcana has taken a long a twisted journey, but was first revealed to fans at Power-Con 2016 in a panel revealing previously unseen concepts and characters. After the first wave of She-Ra toys, a second wave was planned with a snow focus, to bring more attention the Filmation-neglected Frosta. This began with the introduction of a fire villain, an “evil lady that glows with heat” who would attempt to melt Castle Chill. That concept actually refers to a character named Amber (not Ember, as one might assume) who was reworked into a benevolent counterpart, Volcana’s twin sister.

Volcana was later fleshed out to be a Fire Goddess with flame-red hair, x-ray vision, and arms sculpted with flames. Her cape flew up with flame detail that rose up to control the volcano (of Volcanica, a proposed toyset that seems to have been reworked into the Crystal Falls). She was emphasized by Mattel to not start fires, which, honestly, is probably why they scrapped the character. He-Man couldn’t use his sword as a sword; a woman made of fire was basically doomed.

Now, though, we’re several decades in and lines made for collecters that are largely in their 30s and 40s can say whatever they want! So she’s canon, even if Amber isn’t. Yes there’s only one mention of her. Amber technically was mentioned in an unproduced episode titled “Amber Waves of Flame”, but as it was unproduced, it’s noncanonical.

Volcano Magus, Sinister Son of Volcana

Lore: Living within a dormant volcano, the Volcano Magus of the German audio plays was the source of most of Catra’s power and all of her evil intent. He supplied her with magic for spells and schemes with which to assail the Crystal Castle, but neither she nor Clawdeen were aware of the dark influence he held over them.

In the MOTUC canon, he’s specified as the son of Volcana, a demigod from the “Region of Volcanoes” who craved the nature magic of the Whispering Woods. When he learned the Twiggets were inextricably linked to that magic, he used his powers to petrify the former Rebels (this was after the Horde's defeat) and kidnap three Twiggets to drain the magic from their souls. Twiggets, for the uninitiated, are like purple tree-elf things. According to MOTUC, Razz is a Twigget, though the ‘real’ name they assigned her doesn’t fit their naming convention. She is purple, I guess.

Kowl, who avoided petrification, read Razz's spellbooks to find a way to save his friends, and learned of an Entrapment Gem that she hid in a shoe, for some reason. He confronted the Volcano Magus, spoke in the ancient tongue of the First Ones, and sucked him into the Gem.

Backstory: Admittedly this stuff is second hand, as I don’t speak German & they only have transcriptions/translations for the He-Man tapes anyway, but if anybody can find me an audio file I will do my best to verify. The MOTUC stuff at least I can confirm 100% because it’s from 2019 & I do speak English, for better or worse.

Oak, the Jackal God

Lore: Oak was the terrible Jackal God worshiped by the denizens of Zhar, an ancient civilization that once existed in a remote, forested region of Eternia. Long ago, Oak was imprisoned within a statue which could be found within the Temple of the Jackal. When Skeletor removed the statue from the temple, Oak broke free of the enchantment which imprisoned him and wreaked havoc on Eternia. Although the Jackal God was immensely powerful, he could be weakened by the elements of nature and was ultimately foiled by a rainstorm conjured by the combined powers of He-Man's sword and the magic of the temple's guardian priest.

Backstory: I have lifted this from a He-Man guide word for word as I cannot for the life of me find a copy of the Brazilian Editora Abril comic he came from, O Templo Do Chacal (1986). The description is like, suspiciously similar to the plot of the He-Man episode The Cat and the Spider, except the Grimalkin was never described as a god. The rest of it--statue, Skeletor, storm defeat--plays out almost the same. True pity I can’t find the original source, but I do trust this guidebook. You may be interested in Ceres from the UK comics--another dog-slash-statue who frankly might as well be a god himself, but as he’s not called one in canon he’s not going on the list.

The Bitter Rose Goddess

Lore: As Man-at-Arms told the legend, “Every day, a woman climbed Rose Mountain to look for her husband to return from the war. Alas, he never came back. Her tears poured from her cheek and entered the ground. One day she disappeared, but where she stood was a single, solitary rose. It’s the only thing that grows on Rose Mountain.”

The Insect People, who lived at the base of Rose Mountain, believed that the Bitter Rose is all that held the mountain together (and when it was picked, they were proved right). After the flower was restored, it transformed into the Bitter Rose Goddess herself, who explained that she had been a prisoner of her love's sorrow, so bitter that she refused to allow anything else to grow on Rose Mountain. She blessed the surrounding area, blanketing the jagged peaks with roses, and disappeared.

Backstory: She’s kind of... barely a god. She showed up in one episode and no other media & has objectively less power than like, every single demon they ever brought in. I almost didn’t put her on this list.

Mask-Ra, Goddess of Masks

Lore: A goddess who created the magical Masks of Power.

Backstory: Mask-Ra was first mentioned in 2019 and like, look, I’m gonna be real. I don’t respect her. She’s an invention of MOTUC (unless they were drawing on this concept art of Maska-Ra, which I doubt bc he was a Man-E-Faces precursor) and they retconned her into having created Catra’s mask, which is kind of redundant given the entire episode Magicats. This mask did not need two bios. There are no other mentions of her in any canon.

Potential other Masks of Power: The Deemos and Tyrella masks from the He-Man episode “Masks of Power”, lizard and canine masks from the mini-comic “Masks of Power”, Lord Masque’s Demon Mask from the He-Man episode “House of Shokoti, Part 1″, and whatever the hell Red Shadow has going on.

Procrustus, Giant Guardian of Magic

Lore: During the creation of the various dimensions (5 in MOTUC canon but demonstratably higher everywhere else), the gods installed the four-armed, immortal giant Procrustus to guard their secrets at the heart of Eternia. There lay the Starseed, from which the entire dimension was created. It still held immeasurable power, and could be used to conquer entire universes. Hordak, in an attempt to access the Starseed, cracked Eternia in two with the Spell of Separation. Though he was (mostly) thwarted, from then on Procrustus was forced to hold the two halves of Eternia together from within, lest the planet break apart and the Starseed be exposed.

Backstory: First appearing in the mini-comic “The Magic Stealer!”, Procrustus is a lot more tangible than most gods. We know where he is, at all times, and he seems confined to one size. His powers appear to be largely physical, as he had to burrow out of the ground to investigate in the mini-comic instead of teleporting or like, magicking the dirt away. This was his only appearance until MOTUC released a figure for him in 2012. He also showed up in the Subternia map the next year, holding Eternia together.

Standor, Cosmic Creator of Power

Lore: “Before time began, the great Gods of the multiverse convened in the Hall of Power to create all that was and all that will ever be. Head architect of this great task was Standor. A cosmic being of unlimited imagination, Standor helped lead his fellow deities by fueling their energies with raw creative force.”

Backstory: Released for Comikaze 2013 to celebrate the partnership of Mattel and Pow! Entertainment, Standor is literally just Stan Lee But a God. The prototype was called Standar--idk why they changed it, but I think it’s because it’s too easy to confuse with “Standard”. They made a bio for his sunglasses. I don’t want to talk about it.

Bash-Or, Slain Mystic God-Beast

Lore: Very little is known of Bash-Or, the Ram. His last remnant was sealed within the Ram Stone by the ancient sorceror kings of Zalesia, imbuing it with his divine power to overcome any barrier, magical or otherwise.

Backstory: Bash-Or was revealed in the bio for the Ram Stone, September of 2020, but his spirit (previously referred to as ‘the Spirit of the Ram Stone’) was twice utilized by Skeletor in the MYP cartoon, to great effect, before the stone was destroyed.

[motionbound]

hiyo!! it’s melo again with a second muse, sad human dude seong uihyeon who’s been going thru it since the festival 😭 he moved recently from jeju to work with the aeternals as a therapist, only to lose his wife during the festival to a berserk aeternal. he’s always idolised eden’s aeternals as true superheroes but their response after the festival has totally cracked his worldview & he’s still grieving so 😔 pages here ( stats, bio ), tldr & plot ideas under the cut! hit the ♡ if you’d wanna plot, this is a sideblog so i can’t follow/etc but u can call me beep me at @iinksplit​ or ask for discord!

*tw death mention—much of his backstory is tied to his wife’s death & the impact it has on him, so this is a general warning for the tldr & plots under the cut!

TLDR

just a dude from jeju; he grew up reading lots of comics & generally believing in the good of people, the world, the superheroes out there!

he’s always wanted to come to eden to work with the aeternals, despite being a human. one of those 'i dont have a superpower but i can help the ones who do!! so they can help more people!!’ kinda people, so he went into counselling and found himself a job with the aeternal psych unit once he graduated

uihyeon had it all: working with the aeternals to help people, married the girl of his dreams, started building a life in eden & all that

at least, until pax centennial festival

his wife died during the event, one of the many? few? casualties while the aeternals were going berserk with their powers. in my head it was probably something pretty instant & irreversible, and he’s entirely traumatised from witnessing it

the aeternal who killed his wife simply slapped an nda down & sent him off with a whole lotta money in exchange for his silence. it’s confusion & uncertainty & a considerable amount of pressure placed on him to sign that’s the reason he agrees to it, but now that the dust has settled, he’s starting to question... everything, really

so now he’s struggling to reconcile what he believed about the world, his trust in aeternals & the good of people shaken up totally. it’s starting to affect his job too, questioning what he’s told in his sessions with aeternal clients & having to pull himself back from it, because he still wants to do good somehow & he used to think this was the path for him but—is it?

huge chara insp is hughie from the boys w a tinge of butcher!

personality / misc facts: aquarius sun, cancer moon, capricorn rising. before the festival, he was honestly a really friendly, chill dude. helpful & accommodating, with a whole lotta idealism packed underneath his sensible sweater vest. prone to withdrawing & bottling things up, which has only become worse since his wife’s death. right now, he’s very much in the anger/depression stages of grief, sharper around the edges. easily frustrated, mostly at himself, but also at the world in general. grasping at what used to be familiar instead of processing the feelings like he knows he should, & not coping well at all

lil notes on his wife! in my head they were childhood friends & he had a crush on her for forever, finally got the courage to ask her out way too late when they were already basically in love & they fast-tracked their way through dating & marriage after that hehe she had a similar sort of occupation, wanting to help people too? a lil more practical than him, the half who had all her shit together. i’m so sorry for fridging her rip she’s gna pop up occasionally in his thoughts but more a manifestation of his grief than a real representation of her!

PLOTS

the aeternal who killed his wife—lots of plotting needed for this but i’d love to have this connection

the boys / anti-aeternals agenda—part of his ( non- ) healing has been thinking about taking revenge on the aeternals & he entertains thoughts of actually seeking help, until. he actually does contact them & now he’s not sure what to do

siblings—i don’t see him as an only child, though he was quite an independent kid. as his now only family in the city, though, i think he’d rely a lot on his sibling

good friends—someone who knows just how badly he’s doing & checks up on him once in a while / is trying to help him process this healthily, even tho he’s fighting accepting their help

aeternal clients—i imagine it’s a small-ish psych unit, so he’s familiar with a lot of the aeternals, even if he doesn’t work directly with them! might even just see a couple as work buddies instead of clients? although their interactions now are tense & often angrier than they’re used to him being...

meta friends—he believes ( believed? ) really strongly that meta abilities have a purpose. that they can do good. he’s not sure about that anymore, but someone he used to help out / attempt to learn more about their ability to help them?

people who knew his wife—maybe they knew her better than him, or vice versa? super open to different kinds of dynamics stemming from this! or maybe even a sibling-in-law?

[infinite-xerath]

Runeterra Retcons 9: Shaco

The time has come to discuss League’s resident killer clown… Or killer jester, I suppose. There is a difference, not that it really matters because even the lore doesn’t ACTUALLY know what Shaco is. To be frank, Shaco is a weird character because he’s NEVER had a proper place in the story, even from his conception.

Shaco’s original lore paints him as a complete and utter mystery. Nobody knows who or what he is, where he came from, or what he really wants. All anyone has ever known is that Shaco loves killing people because he thinks it’s funny. He could be a demon, a rogue weapon, or just a homicidal madman who’s really good at what he loves. That’s where his character begins and ends, so there’s really not much to actually analyze here. Shaco’s second lore attempts to give us a little more detail but all it really does is say the exact same thing with more words added in.

Of course, Shaco’s first two lores were written at a time with the Institute of War and Summoners were still canon, so after the retcon back in 2015 Riot opted to give him a new backstory to make him fit in with the new world of Runeterra. That backstory, as we can see, is ultimately little more than a placeholder. I mean, his extended bio doesn’t even match the blurb on his Champion page!

In summation: Shaco is a haunted doll who belonged to an unknown prince of an unknown kingdom and was transformed by unknown magics for unknown reasons. This backstory now feels especially redundant with the introduction of Gwen into the game, a living doll with a similar backstory albeit far less evil. To be frank: there’d be room to have some interest thematic parallels between Gwen and Shaco if Riot had written these two in such a way that they were creations of the same person or belonged to the same kid but wound up becoming wholly opposite of one-another.

For example: perhaps in an alternate version of the lore, Gwen comes to embody the childlike innocence and hope of her maker/owner and seeks to spread joy and cheer while Shaco is a corrupt and perverted manifestation of those desires who seeks only to amuse himself in the suffering of others. This, I think, would have been a fantastic way to go about it, but given that Gwen is already so heavily tied to the Shadow Isles plotline and Viego is set up to be her primary enemy, I feel like it would be kind of difficult to work Shaco into that dynamic at this point.

Besides, it’s clear that Riot DOES have plans for Shaco: namely, that they aim to retcon him into being a demon. This is somewhat evident by his champion title, the Demon Jester, as well as his relationships are listed as being Nocturne and Fiddlesticks, the demons of nightmares and fear, respectively. There’s also that branch on the demon family tree labeled “Delirium” which would fit a murderous jokester pretty well.

To be honest, I was initially hesitant to even bother doing an episode for Shaco given that Riot clearly has at least some vague idea of what to do with him, but since reworks are coming out a lot slower now and Shaco’s not even on Riot’s priority list as far as we’re aware, it’ll probably be a WHILE before we actually see them do anything with this particular concept.

So, given what we know about Riot’s current plans, the general direction of this rewrite is simple: make Shaco a demon. Admittedly, though, that’s a little easier said than done. Demons in League are creatures who feed on mortal pain and suffering, but each of them has a different way of going about it. Fiddlesticks mainly uses paranoia and trauma to drive his victims mad while Nocturne takes a more Freddy Krueger approach of just invading dreams and turning them into nightmares. Tahm Kench likes to make Faustian Bargains by giving you everything you want and then tearing it all away from you, while Evelynn lures you in with seduction and then proceeds to tear you apart piece by piece.

Every demon takes a different form and has different ways of going about things, but all of them share a core concept: they feed on suffering and misery, be it physical or emotional. That said, there’s a bit more to demons in Runeterra than just that. See, back when Fiddlesticks was released, Riot went and released what the community has dubbed the “Demon Family Tree,” which appears to be a chart displaying the hierarchy of demons and different emotions that different kinds of demons can prey on.

Now, admittedly, there’s a LOT about this chart that we don’t currently understand, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if Riot doesn’t either. There’s a key that resembles the one around Zoe’s neck in the top-left, a bunch of circles in the top right we don’t know the meaning of, and a whole bunch of text written in what I think is supposed to be Old Noxian that we can’t currently decipher. There have been theories and discussions about this already, so I’m not going to get too deep into it, but the main takeaway, I think, would be the words on the chart that we CAN read: Fear, Delirium, Nightmares, Secrets, Bliss, Frenzy, and Obsession. There’s also the term “Azakana” at the bottom, though we know thanks to Yone that this basically just refers to a demon that hasn’t fully matured yet.

Tying the chart back to the demonic Champions in the game, it’s easy to piece together the connections that they each have: Fiddlesticks is fear, Nocturne is Nightmares, Raum (the demon bound to Swain) is Secrets, Evelynn is commonly believed to be Bliss, and Tahm Kench is most likely Obsession. That leaves Delirium and Frenzy untouched, which leaves us with two spots to fit Shaco into.

Now comes the hard part: the decision. Delirium refers to a state of mind in which one’s awareness of their actions or environment is significantly reduced, whereas frenzy is a sudden burst of frantic, uncontrolled emotion, typically rage or aggression. Either one of these could work well for a killer jester, but I personally think that delirium would suit Shaco better in terms of how his personality is portrayed in game. So, with that said, let’s dive deep into the realm of demonic and see what can be done to turn this cursed puppet into a proper Demon of Delirium.

It is often said that misery and comedy are but two sides of the same coin. Laughter often comes at the expense of others, and one person’s despair may be another’s delight. Most entertainers would tell you that walking the line between humor and malice is key, but to Shaco, such distinctions are a joke for which he himself is the final punchline.

The demon known as Shaco has stalked Runeterra for ages, spreading his twisted influence far and wide. There’s nothing Shaco loves more than to bring joy to those who need it most, often appearing to mortals who have experienced great loss or tragedy. Those coping with grief or misfortune may find themselves unexpectedly visited by a grinning jester, who assures that his only desire is to take away their pain with the power of laughter.

At first, Shaco’s antics are innocent enough. Some cheesy jokes to lighten the mood, some harmless pranks to lift the spirits of the downtrodden, all with an unyielding smile that one cannot help but start to imitate. Soon, those enthralled with Shaco’s antics are invited to play games with the jester to help distract from their worldly worries. Those who accept are whisked away to partake in a day of fun and merriment, playing all manner of pranks on friends, family, and even innocent bystanders.

When the games end, Shaco leaves his playmates cackling insanely in the aftermath, often surrounded by bodies and covered in blood. None laugh louder than Shaco, however, who delights in watching his playmates slowly regain their sanity and come to realize all the atrocities committed at his side. Some cry out in despair, while others break down laughing or crying harder than before. Some go mad, others are executed for their crimes, and some even opt to take their own lives. All outcomes are equally hilarious to Shaco, who soon sets out in pursuit of his next playmate.

Stories of the Mad Trickster exist all across Runeterra, often told as children’s tales to teach valuable lessons: don’t trust strangers, never give in to sadness or despair, and always be mindful to never take a joke too far. Few truly believe in Shaco’s existence, but those who fail to heed such warnings may find themselves to be his next playmate, as well as the butt of his joke…

So, this one was a bit shorter than normal, but I think it serves to get the point across. As the embodiment of delirium, I wanted to give Shaco a set-up sort of similar to Tahm Kench: he appears to offer help to those in need, only to end up ruining their lives in the long run. The difference, of course, is that Shaco lures people in to help them forget their troubles with fun and games, only to escalate to full-blown murder and mayhem.

In essence, Shaco drives others to delirium, making them believe the carnage is all just fun and games until his spell is broken and reality sets in. I’d like to think he particularly likes preying on the downtrodden because those who are suffering mental anguish already are easier for him to cast his spell on.

This is just my take on Shaco, though. Who can really say what Riot will do with him in the future? Who knows, his rework might end up even better than what I have here, but of course, anything is bound to be better than his current, non-existent lore.

[woulddieforperrytheplatypus]

Dan Povenmire, co-creator of Phineas and Ferb and the voice of Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, just did a zoom call for fans, and this is a link to it on Google Drive and a link to it on YouTube.

Here’s a brief overlay brought to you by my incessant live blogging, and because I was speed typing on my phone, I can guarantee not everything made the cut. If you’re interested in hearing Dan talk about growing up an artist and becoming an animator and trying to pitch Phineas and Ferb and working on the show and movies, I would definitely suggest checking out the full 75 minute video. The highlights from the call are below the cut.

They added Doof and Perry because they liked chase scenes. They realized fairly quickly that more than not, the pair led to good comedy, and found it much more interesting to see how their relationship developed. He also says that they are "the most important person to each other” and “they’re really good friends.”

They wrote the Perry theme song in an hour between meetings with Disney

They decided during the pilot that they weren't going to try to get comedy from the characters saying mean things to each other. Even Doofenshmirtz wasn't motivated by evil, he just wanted to get the attention he didn't get at home.

Doof’s backstories were not Dan and Swampy's idea. They were from Jon Barry and Chris Hendrick, who [itched the lawn gnome backstory. It was long and compliated and Dan and Swampy couldn’t stop laughing. They also provided the "it all started on the day of my birth” one the next day.

making the 2D movie while making the movie was the busiest Dan says he has ever been, and that's not even counting the PnF Take Two and Doof's web show and all the interviews. Basically, 2010ish was a very busy time in the Dwampyverse.

They decided to give each pair of writers their own section of an outline to work on, and each pair got to make up the dialogue and jokes based on it. it works well for the show, but writers kept going on their own tangents and the movie ended up like 6 hours long. Dan and Kyle Menke had to redraw 80% of the show because they had to cut gags out and rewrite it so it was still funny. Note: in the new movie, they did the opposite — they wrote a script and told the board artists that they could put brief gags in but nothing too long

He thinks the show became one of the most beloved shows bc it was innocent and the adult humor wasn't dirty so the whole family could watch it together. He also said the songs at the closest thing you get to immortality in a show. Those combined made the show as big of a hit as it was, and hopefully those things will get older people to watch the movie.

His advice if you want to follow in his footsteps are to draw (and suggest you check out Cartoon Animation by Preston Blaire and How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee) and to know that these jobs are out there

One of his favorite gags in PnF are the silent moments where something big happens and no one reacts (like something big fell in an early episode and crashed next to Phineas and co and at first they were all shocked but Dan changed it to them just kinda looking at it for a moment with no emotion)

Q: Did you ever want to quit what you were going?

A: "I don't really... do... anything else..."

He finished his new pilot today (July 2nd, 2020) and the movie is due tomorrow.

He would love to do more PnF and there's been talks of another PnF movie

He would love to do more Milo Murphy's Law, but it never got huge ratings and Disney's not too big on it but if people start watching it on Disney+ they might get to keep doing it. They did that with Family Guy, and it could happen to MML too.

The movie feels like old Phineas and Ferb and there are a lot of great songs! 

And now, the Q&A (in which he draws random characters are he talks)

How was the process of kicking the voices?

It was sometime easy but sometimes very difficult. For Phineas, they listened to maybe a thousand people. they actually recorded someone but they put it to animation and it didn't really work. He knew as soon as he heard Vincent that he loved him. They literally recasted the lead (Vincent) the day before they had to deliver the pilot.

He knew immediately that he liked Alison Stoner. She was the second Isabella he heard, and he listened to maybe 50 others afterwards, but he knew he wanted Alison Stoner

They decided on a different Candace and they sent it to the head of the channel and the guy asked if he heard Ashley Tisdale. He told Dan to have her come in and give her direction and Dan was hesitant bc he had one that he liked but he was lowkey forced to bring her in. It was his only audition that day, and after his big block of text Dan gave her like 20 notes and she wrote the notes on the big block of text and she did it again and it was perfect and obviously Candace (but he feels bad for the actress that was almost Candace bc she'll never know how close she was)

What was the most impactful episode you worked on?

Either the last (hard to watch w/o crying) or three moments that made himcey while doing them: the end of Summer Belongs To You when Phineas gives up trying to get off the island and decides to watch the sunset with Isabella which was what she always wanted and she exploded and talked him back up onto being the person he is even tho it's a sacrifice on her behalf. He later says he started crying while pitching to his wife the AYA scene of Phinabella getting together.

Do you regret any episodes?

There are some he likes more and some he likes less but he doesn't regret any of them. He was a little disappointed in an early episode without a sing but he watched it alter and decided it was actually pretty decent. None of them make him cringe or wonder why they did that.

How has social media impacted PnF?

He recently got on TikTok and found out that's where all the PnF fans are. He was thrilled to see the response everything was getting and it made him feel good about everything he accomplished. The fact that this generation knows what an aglet is is his biggest accomplishment in pop culture.

Favorite part of working on the show/movie

He likes editing, but writing the songs is the most fun bc it feels the least like work

Who is Ferb's mom?

Never established or really thought about Ferb's mom or Phineas's dad AND IT'S NOT DOOFENSHMIRTZ THEY MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR THAT TO BE TRUE STOP ASKING and Phineas and Candace are full brother and sister. The bio parents aren't interesting to them bc the family already has a mom and dad and the other ones are just out of the picture and not important.

Will there be a new character in the movie?

Super Super Big Doctor (and Disney keeps telling him what he can and can't talk about)

Are there any secrets or theories that he can tell them?

The freaking creepy pasta about schitzophrenic Candace IS NOT TRUE Phineas and Ferb do exist and are alive. There's also a theory that Candace is not based on the diary of a teen girl in Russia who killed herself, and that's not true either. He genuinely thinks they are really freaking stupid theories and they make no sense at all.

Who is your favorite guest star?

Writing a song with Slash from Guns n Roses was really cool. He also liked working with Ben Stiller, Christian Slater the delivery guy (he called and said he'd do any part in MML so they wrote him a role), Jack McBrayer (Irving/Fix It Felix), Wayne Brady (co-wrote In The Empire)

What is the motivation of Candace to bust the boys?

He's not trying to hurt them. She doesn't dislike them. She gets irritated but she's really just looking for fairness. If she built a rollercoaster in the backyard, she'd get in trouble, so they should get in trouble, too.

How did you think about hot to end the show?

Disney was starting to cool off on PnF. The merch wave had plateaued. Dan and Swampy had the next two years in the show already made, but Disney wouldn't pick up another season until they finished airing that season. They'd have to restaff for a new season and they didn't like that idea, so they turned one of their hour long specials into the finale. He wanted to be able to say goodbye and thank the fans.

[bluerosesburnblue]

I noticed the topic of kh parents brought up and I was wondering, do you have any headcanons concerning the parents of the kh characters? What about characters who don't have biological parents in the traditional sense, like Nobodies, Replicas, etc? Do you think the parents of their Others or Originals would count as their bio parents? Would Sora's parents count as Roxas's? And do you think any of the characters have siblings? Sorry I've just been thinking about this stuff A LOT lately.

Actually, not really. Which is surprising because I’ve said the familial relationships are some of my favorite. The most I have are that Sora gets his spiky hair from his mom, who I imagine to have more dirty blonde hair, and that Sora’s dad has been close friends with Tidus’s dad their whole lives (with Tidus’s parents just being the KH versions of his Final Fantasy parents. Jecht has a lot of energy and nowhere to put it except sports, but I imagine that without the fame he had in FFX that he’s a lot more mellow and closer to his personality in Dissidia. Still a troublemaker, but less of a fame-obsessed jackass. Closer to what he was like with Auron and Braska in the spheres)

For Kairi, I do think that her biological parents are dead and that she was raised by her grandmother. Sometimes I toss around the idea that they were killed along with Ienzo’s parents in an accident together, the only difference between the two being that Kairi still had biological family to take her in while Ienzo didn’t, so Ansem the Wise took him in

As for if they’d count as anyone’s biological parents, it’s hard to say since EVERYONE’S situation is wildly different. Roxas takes more after Ven in appearance but was originally Sora’s body, so do his genetics reflect Sora because that’s literally the body he’s in or Ven, who he appears as? Nobody knows what the deal with Namine is in terms of her body. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure she had a physical one before being placed in a Replica body. Xion’s body is clearly based on Kairi, but distorted. Is it distorted enough to be almost unrecognizable from a genetic standpoint? Not to mention the fact that she didn’t have a stable appearance at first (being able to appear as different people to others at the same time) and so shouldn’t have had anything resembling a genetic signature until getting her finalized Replica body in KH3. The only one who’d clearly be able to trace their genetics to someone is Repliku, who should be a 1:1 copy of Riku and he’s no longer in the picture SO...

I’ve said in the past, though, that the series generally doesn’t seem to care about genetics in terms of appearance, moreso the “impression” each character gives. Looks are simply a form given to the “heart” and can symbolize the connections between characters. So I think it’s ultimately a moot point. I mean, if we were to apply our universe’s understanding of genetics, then the situation is still that Xion and Namine may resemble Kairi and may, genetically, be similar enough to be considered biological sisters, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the changes in their appearance would align with Kairi’s parents, you know? Same with the Roxas/Ven/Sora thing. We just don’t know enough about anyone’s parents to make that call. It’s really all up to interpretation at the moment

I do think Sora and Kairi’s parents would be cool with adopting the Nobody/Replica kids. Sora’s because they’re probably very nice and welcoming people, Kairi’s because she’s already adopted (on Destiny Islands) and she can easily just claim “long lost sister(s)” and HOW could you break them up now that they’ve found each other? Riku’s seem like they’d be stricter to me and may have had some resistance about taking Repliku if he was still around, but I imagine Riku would insist on it

As for if any of them have siblings? Not Sora and Riku, at least. If only because siblings are never mentioned, not even when Riku says that they’d never see their parents again the night Destiny Islands fell. He specifies parents, not family. Kairi and the members of Organization XIII (sans Ienzo/Zexion because if he had a sibling then why didn’t Ansem take them in, too?) are the only original characters I’d say could have siblings that we simply don’t know about (I mean, just look at what they did with Marluxia/Lauriam... who I’m also excluding from this statement on a technicality BECAUSE I don’t think he has any siblings besides Strelitzia). Kairi due to how little we know about her home life on Radiant Garden (IF her parents were still alive, then it’s possible they could’ve had another kid after their daughter was abducted or she had an older sibling that she doesn’t remember) and the Organization due to how little of their backstories we know. I’m sure even then, not all of them have siblings. Maybe add Terra and Aqua in, but that’s entirely dependent on the circumstances that Eraqus took them in under, which we currently know nothing about. I’m more iffy about the two of them, though, because making a probability call is entirely dependent of the ages that Eraqus actually took them in (if I’m remembering right, the earliest possible are 14 for Aqua and 16 for Terra, but at least Terra was probably a good deal younger just based on how close he is to Eraqus)