#it's fun seeing rewrite christine in a circle! ;)

[britishchick09]

rewrite christine in the ag girls lineup! ;D

[callistochan87]

ly fewelp, I’m only a little bit behind now, bonus

if I were smart I’d try to steal away time at coffee breaks and lunch buuut that doesn’t always work when there’s other people around (and there are usually others around). i don’t work well with others around, asking questions and bothering me

also i like eating lunch

Day 13, Konnie and Serena (Alpha): I was really confused why @erinhime83​ put these two together, since all the weekend pairs are either couples, friends, or some other understandable grouping (siblings, I guess?) Then she reminded me there had been a Thing near the end with the two of them, and I was confused because I didn’t remember that, so I went to check.

Nothing there.

I was ???

Then I went to check the first version. The first version has all of the elements of CS that I actually like and that somehow wound up getting cut in the second draft rewrite, like Thanatos Omega getting brutally murdered and Thanatos Delta going insane about it. (There are a couple of elements of the second draft that I like, like Thanatos Omega kidnapping Christine and Eric without them even realizing it, because Thanatos Omega isn’t stupid, he knows Thanatos Prime sets incredibly easy password questions, so it’s really easy to trick them into thinking they’re going with another version of him.)

But I think the first version is--for the most part--the superior version. The only reason I wanted to rewrite was to incorporate more aliens into the research team on Veive (Chidyl and Dr. Max, mostly), mostly to give a sense that there were more than two species out there and that this was some proper interstellar civilization. Sure, they’re minor characters, not much happened with them at all, but they were there, and you will take my crotchety old man cat alien doctor from my cold, dead hands

But the major plot points were better executed in the first version.

Except for the ending. The ending was one thing I had trouble with, because it pretty explicitly incorporates @erinhime83​‘s Earthia universe into it. Which is fine for a story that won't see the light of day, but might screw me over if I ever tried to publish, self- or otherwise. (I keep saying this. I want it to be published, but not enough to actually do it.)

The actual concept is fine enough: Amina actually does what she intends to do and discovers a new dimension/timeline that’s so different from the one they know (the mythical “Elders”, which totally are not the “angels” from Sixth Epoch in a new name, at all, never left the planet and never stopped interfering--the Erebians are at constant war with them, and the few humans remaining are mostly their slaves/science experiments, hardly enough to make a co-civilization) that they can’t use their shared ciltural knowledge to figure out what’s going on, because this new timeline does not share the same history. If Prime, Delta, and Omega are essentially the same “basic” history up until a certain point, when things start diverging, then this new universe forked off long before them and went in a radically different direction.

But of course, the issue is that I explicitly brought in Earthia’s Alliance into it: in this universe, Erebus (and, I suppose by extension, Veive) is a part of the Cosmic Alliance of Worlds, the sort of “bad guy” (not really) equivalent to the Helian Federation of Planets. I’d hinted at it in the original story, where they were frequently contacted by the “Thanatians” wishing them to join their alliance, and every civilization there was pretty adamant that they weren’t going to do that and they could eff right off, so it was sort of a fun way to bring that full circle: this new universe is so different that ha, guess what, they actually did join the Alliance (and the Alliance is helping them out with their war against the Elders, because idk, something something, Erebus had some sort of mineral or element in abundance that the Alliance needed and the Empress of the Erebians would only allow them access if they helped out towards the war, something something diplomacy)

So Serena there was an Alliance crew member. The concept of every dimension having some sort of counterpart, and those counterparts having similar names, is something I’m absolutely rethinking (I’m thinking some people exist in some timelines, but not in others, or if they do, they don’t look identical or may be called something different), but that’s small enough that I don’t need to actually rewrite, just edit. But there was a Serena there, she was distantly related to the Empress, she was presumably from Veive and was thus the Veivean version of the Erebians (taller, skinner, more bipedal and with more hair, bigger eyes, darker skin), because the Erebians still established a colony on another planet. Anyway, Serena Alpha (the name for this new timeline, sort of cobbled together) was...not unlike Konnie in that she was a little fond of boasting: her species has more slow-twitch muscle fibres or lean muscle mass, or something that results in more brute strength than humans, kind of like gorillas--I imagine the catch is that they’re more prone to tears and damage, especially the more willowy, lower-gravity Veiveans, but the point is, she has more strength, and Konnie is impressed by that. Konnie grew up with...what, five? Six? brothers and so was used to roughhousing and disinterested in traditionally feminine stuff, so I suppose this was the appeal.

Since the story is from Christine’s POV, and she got there after the Alliance ship (Stargazer, afaik) had rescued them, she didn’t see the build up, but the group pretty explicitly joked that Konnie and Serena Alpha were girlfriends and they were staying in the same cabin, sooo

Well, it made sense once I reread that, but I’d literally forgotten I’d wrote that, and then I got mad at myself for rewriting just to include a couple more aliens when this was pretty good, Earthia issues aside. I mean, the ending was a bit too lighthearted (everyone shacked up with an Alliance member in a sort of “what happens in the Alpha-verse stays in the Alpha-verse” way! Although I have an absurd fondness for the antics of Zandy and Jaik and I know they will likely never see time in Earthia but they are there to me.) but it was still fun.

(Sidebar: I had a thought that what if there was a version of Ruth in the Alpha timeline of Earth, which is apparently Earthia’s universe I guess? Except she never got beamed to space and converted to antimatter in a horribly botched conversion that destroyed her physical body, instead she’s an old professor with tenure teaching astronomy or something at a university down south somewhere (Louisiana?), like she was before she was beamed up. Except I can’t remember if Earthia takes place a little bit in the future? Ruth was afaik beamed up in the...’70s? ‘80s? in our timeline and was old enough then to have had literal polio as a kid that caused her game leg, so if Earthia is in the future, she’d either be really old or dead. Unless Helian technology makes people live longer, but still, definitely retirement age, and not likely for Kai to meet her unless she achieved some sort of prominence, which...isn’t likely.

Although she seems like the sort of badass to keep her maiden name (Kendrick), even if she’d be married to someone else. In earlier versions, Theophanes was sort of a stuffy author type, a bit pretentious but not snobby, so I see Dr. Ruth Kendrick Alpha married to some poet from the English department or something, who writes pulpy sci-fi on the side. Sales went down when literal aliens showed up on Earth’s doorstep, not that he sold a ton to begin with.

That was a hell of a diversion but ANYWAY, that was the reason these two are paired up, and I like this enough I might try to draw a version where Serena isn’t in the Alliance uniform. I’m just glad I was able to find a reference for the new Alliance uniform. Tumblr’s search sucks and the infinite scroll sucks even more for finding old stuff.

(Note to self: I changed a bit more about the Erebians so it’d probably be useful to draw a proper picture someday. All it is is a lack of obvious breasts since their snout-like nose makes it less required but it’s still something--she’s still biologically female.)

Also I’d forgotten Konnie had been described as having eyes with a bit of a crease, like she had some Asian ancestry in her even though it’s really just genetics going WAUGH after so much mixing, but I tried to incorporate that, with the sort of puffiness under her eyes when she smiles.

Day 14, Gabby: The inks don’t quite look as nice as the sketch, but it’s workable. I like how she turned out. I think I referenced Mew Azama? If PGSM Sailor Jupiter isn’t good enough for Gabby, then who is?? :P Also thank goodness for brush pens, they make blocking in all that hair so much easier.

Day 15, Carmen: @erinhime83​ wrote some stuff about Carmen and who she was before, and that’s fine, but...I really don’t know what to do with her any more?? When you have a group of seven people but only one POV it’s really hard to find meaningful stuff for them to do, and I feel as if Carmen (and to a lesser extent, Julia and Keiko) just kind of got shoved off to one side? I think I was going for the “she’s socially awkward” angle at one point because there’s a mention that Carmen has to be reminded that not everyone wants to talk about the things she does and that sometimes you have to talk about other stuff, but I can’t remember her really doing anything notable. This picture turned out nice, even if her neck’s a bit long, but I picture her with a very round face and this nailed it.

Her story is a bit sad, in the sense that all of them are descended from a bunch of people who fled the antimatter universe (in fear of their lives), but like, her dad (the alien) just straight up left either when she was a baby or before she was born, plunging her mother into a deep depression that’s sort of coloured her entire world (never remarried, never so much as dated, Carmen’s just lived alone with her as far as anyone else knows). So everyone else can go to their families for answers, but Carmen’s mother is just a regular human and has no idea, the one person Carmen could ask just isn’t in her life. If I remember right he set up another family, a “real” family (inasmuch as he actually married this woman and has children that he didn’t abandon with her and shows up in public with her), sometime later (I can’t remember if I ever mentioned whether or not Carmen’s parents were married? Maybe they weren’t) and then contacted her on Facebook (as one does) but she’d never contacted him back. She seemed fairly conflicted about it but like, I don’t even know what it is he did back in the antimatter universe.

Maybe he was just a spoiled dick even there (when your mom’s a queen, even if it’s an elected one or whatever janky system I set up, you can probably get away with some shit so long as you don’t piss Mom off too badly), but like, I imagine he ran away because literally the...what, seven? Ten? other people living in the same city, that knew who he was and what he did, were all ready to call him out on his shit the second he got Carmen’s mother pregnant, because they all knew what he was like but Mommy wasn’t around to bust his ass for embarrassing her name, so someone had to. Jadi Samora (who took the laziest route ever and Anglicized his name to John Seymour, just saying) be held accountable for his actions? Or deal with his emotions? NOT TODAY, PEACE OUT Y’ALL.

But anyway, none of that really come through the story, and why should it, if it’s not Carmen’s POV? Like I said, I don’t know what to do with her sometimes, although the art is nice. (Sidenote: I picture her, at least in terms of facial structure, looking very much like her paternal grandmother, Eritha. She also had Eritha’s eyes, I think I remember correctly. I feel like this idea could be expanded on in-story but I’m not sure how.)

Also her outfit hasn’t really changed, I’m just lazy. Lazy enough that I just threw her hair in a ponytail and called it a day, but it looks pretty good.