#the sidecharacters getting fleshed out

[blood-starved-beast]

honestly going into the twilight princess manga nobody ever told me it was gonna be shoujo as hell and that Link and Midna's relationship would be very clearly sub/dom dynamic. Or that there would be massive amounts of Link whump. Or that Zelda and Ganondorf would have their own humanized version of the Hylia vs. Demise rivalry. The ending where Link rides into the sunset following the Hero's Shade that is simultaneously sweet, nostalgic, sad, and all around ambiguous?

People were saying it was good, didn't expect it to be good and catered to me personally that's what I'm saying.

[dayasan]

These sidequests get emotional 😭😭😭 THEODORE???!!!?!?!?!!!?

[popculturebuffet]

Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: “Morpholomew” (American Dragon Long): Stop Trying to Make Am Drag a Thing (Commisson Done For WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people! And welcome to a brand new retrospective/story arc/thing from yours truly, comissoned directly by WeirdKev27. If you’d like to comission your own review or set of reviews like this one, it’s 5 bucks. Just contact me via my ask box or direct messages on this very blog or my discord technicolormuk#6550.

With Shadow Into Light in the books, Kev decided he wanted to comission something not duck related and a bit smaller as a buffer before the next big arc, ALL of three arcs from season 2 of Ducktales, and decided to go with something he suggested to be a while back as a possible future retrospective: The Lilo and Stitch Crossover episodes! 

That’s right for the next three weeks, with TWO reviews this week since I had a spot open up and Kev paid for this one in full and way in advance, we’ll be taking a trip to Hawaii to visit everyone’s faviorte little girl, her best friend/pet/killing machine as they try to find homes for his 625 cousins. 

I loved Lilo and Stitch when I was a kid: Disney admitely got their hooks in me on that one with their cool prequel comics in disney adventures. These comics set up the movie, showing Jumba creating Stitch and the events leading up to both getting captured. The movie did not disapoint with cool character designs, a drop dead gorgeous recreation of Hawaii, and a really heartfelt, heartbreaking and heartpumping story of loss, family, and ving rahmes voicing one of the few heroic child services workers i’ve seen in a medium, a refreshing change of pace. The film is a masterpiece and I really do need to watch it again sometime. 

Given the series was a huge hit and that thsi was before the big lull in the late 2000′s and early 2010′s where Disney refused to make any tv shows based on their movies, a series followed, given a lead in by the direct to video movie Stitch.

The movie set up the basic premise; 624 capsules containing Jumba’s previous experiments, cousins as Stitch calls them, ended up raining over Kauai, awakening when dropped into water or any other liquid. Lilo and Stitch, with help from Jumba, his live in boyfriend Pleakley, her tought but fair sister Nani, and her boyfriend David, who dosen’t show up as much as i’d like but is my boy so he gets a mention here. But anyways our heroes try to reform the various engines of distructoin who all have unique powers and find them their one place they truly belong. 

So yes the show was a Mons-type show clearly captalizing off pokemon.. but the slice of life setting as opposed to the shonen style of most shows following in pokemon’s wake, gave it it’s own unique feel: while our heroes did fight, it was more about shenanigans, adventures and what not with these unique creatures and the purpose is very heartflet: Lilo simply wants to give these guys the same kind of love and support she’s given Stitch and a chance to do good. 

Opposing them is Gantu, the shark bounty hunter from the first film who, now out of a job, is working for Dr. Hamstervile, an imprisoned sceintest and a character I really don’t like that much as he’s not funny or a genuine threat or both and feels like a waste of time. Thankfully he’s not the focus and Gantu is instead partnered with 625, my faviorite Lilo and Stitch character. 625, as the name suggests, is stitch’s immediate prototype.. but unlike Stitch is too lazy and peaceful to be a real threat and isn’t even really a villian despite being on Gantu’s side. He’s busy making samwitches, his calling to the point when he gets a name in the finale movie it’s naturally Ruben, and snarking at gantu. He’s sadly not in this one but hopefully it’s JUST this one. 

As you can tell I liked this show a LOT at the time. I haven’t watched it since, mostly because disney scarely replayed it after it’s run, but it was vibrant, fun and intresting and a nicely laidback and creative take. The fact I came into the franchise with the comics and thus 625, who was introduced there in fact, and had a hunger to know more about the other experiments certainly helped. It was great fun. 

But while I grew up with the show and the four shows it teamed up with, i’ve never seen these episodes before these reviews. I wondered why for years as I caught the tail end of the kim possible one and saw images ocasionally, but never saw them. 

Turns out it’s because in general Season 2 got screwed over. While Season 1 was pushed out the door fast and aired at a rapid pace Season 2.. was portioned out over several years, and the Recess crossover one, the last one aired and the last one i’ll be covering never even got to Disney channel, only airing on ABC kids, DIsney’s saturday morning block at the time I rarely watched. I did watch it’s predecessor one saturday morning though. Good stuff. 

Since I couldn’t find any making of stuff for why these episodes happened, my best guess is DIsney wanted some cross promotion, and the shows used were chosen because they were the most popular at the time and honestly all 4 represent some of disney’s best, with Recess being in heavy reruns at the time, hence i’ts conclusion despite the show being finished before Lilo And Stitch the movie came out, let alone the series. 

So yeah i’m taking this ride for the first time.. but I was happy to. While Kev pays for a lot of my work, I still have to accept the idea.. and this was a great one. It allows me to cover 5 amazing series and gage how much people would want to see reviews of said series on this blog in one fell swoop.

So to kick us off we have American Dragon: Jake Long, a series I waited forever to come to Disney + as I loved it at the time, badly need to rewatch it (Been busy ), and find it genuinely great: It’s a great teen superhero story about the magical protector of new york, with a charming lead, a great setting and horrifcally great villians in the violently racist magic creature hunting huntsclan.. and their top agent who happens to be jake’s love intrest Rose. It’s really excellent and i’m glad it’s now widely avaliable for all to see. I will say ahead that all four shows in this crossover arc are excellent, and were fine choices for this. 

So what happens when an action comedy about a hip hop teenage dragon meets a slice of life show about aliens? Find out under the cut. 

So we open at a fancy hotel where Lilo’s bringing lunch to her sister Nani when she runs into.. Keoni Jameson. 

The second I remembered this kid all the hate just came flooding back, coursing through my veigns. Just pure liquid hatred for this little perosnalitiless little punk. Keoni is Lilo’s crush and local “stupid white audience stand in”. He has no real personality other than “generic cool kid” and “likes skating”, and just sucks the air out of the room anytime he’s in an episode. Keoni is part of a recurring problem in cartoons across the ages, one that’s slowly going away: the bland love intrest. Intorducing a character whose only traits are being cool for the lead to fawn over with usually no intent of either getting the two togehter or just ending it. IT’s annoying, it was in a good chunk of my childhood, I wish it’d stop. I cannot tell you how many shows used this trope. There were exceptions, American Dragon Jake Long actually used it well by not only making Rose a fleshed out character..  but making her jake’s nemisis in their other lives, and thus making things increidbly difficult on both once the truth comes out, with Jake grappling with if he can trust her or not and Rose grappling with the slow relization eveyrthing she was taught her whole life was wrong.

And again I have seen GOOD storylines using this as a tool: Dipper and Wendy ended with her having been aware teh whole time, but simply not knowing how to let him down given the age gap, and Regular Show rebounded the best from it: it turned the stop and start relatoinshpi of Mordecai and Margret’s relationship into a character flaw for him, openly explored it.. and ended up having him work past it and actually date her for a bit. Before she moved away, he got an even better love interest, then they destoryed the relationship in the worst way posisble and I wil lbe getting to that at some point. Some point. 

So yeah even at the time it was done better, hindsight haas only made it worse and it made watching the first few minutes tough because I had to keep pasuing because I hate him so damn much. He just adds NOTHING to the show and is a blank yanwing void from which no good came out of and I was terrified he’d be in the rest of the episode. Thankfully while he drives the plot he’s only in this scene.. but it’s still one more scene than both 625 and Pleakly got. yeah both are missing, as is nani. 

I did uncover one fun fact that made things a bit easier though: The crew ALSO hated Keoni. No really. Disney forced the character on them as they wanted an audience surrogate, and this abomination is what popped out. They DID NOT want him here and likely only used him as mcuh as they did because Disney forced it on them. And Disney would NOT learn from this as Star Vs got saddled with Alphonso and Ferguson soley because of network mandate. The two aren’t TERRIBLE characters but they aren’t great and feel as tacked on as they were. And part of this does fall on the crew: you CAN twist a stupid mandate like this to work well: Joe Murray was asked to add “A female character with a hook”, as in some sort of dumb gimmick to Rocko. He used those words, meant to create a superfical girl power cardboard cutout.. and created the wonderful Dr. Hutchenson, a bright cheery doctor, the series best sidecharacter.. and someone with a hook hand. But I won’t go too hard on them: they probably didn’t have as much room to manuver and the fact Keoni was sitll being shoved into episodes in season 2 tells me they likely had a set number of episodes he had to show up. I’m suprised they didn’t demand they have characters ask “Where’s Keonie?” any time he wasn’t in an episode. He was unecessary and it comes across with a massive chunk of unforutnate implications: that they didn’t think a series with a mostly hawaiann cast would work, that they wanted at least one other “nice” white character to offset myrtle instead of having the only major white character be a bully and antagonist, and that they thought tehir mostly white audience coudln’t enjoy a series without a white character, which as someone who was in the target demo at the time, I call bullshit on. As I said I hated him then, I hate him now and his involvement is the worst aspect of this episode. 

So after Lilo fawns over him for a bit we find out this chonk of wood’s purpose in the episode: to set up the plot. There’s a massive Skate Competition coming to town with the prize being a really cool skateboard.  This plot point itself.. I don’t mind. Jake is a skater, it’s part of his character and one of the things he loves doing in what minsicule spare time he has. And while it was a common trope at the time having a character skateboard really dosen’t harm most works. We’ve gotten great characters like Jake, Jackie Lynn Thomas, Branwen and Ronnie Anne Santiago out of it, and it feels like natural parts of the character, and frankly An Extremley Goofy Movie wouldn’t be NEARLY as awesome without having skateboarding bizzarley attached to the plot via the college x-games. Granted somtimes you get Rocket Power out of the deal but that’s the price you pay for the good stuff. I only regret it’s involved because Keoni has to be there and I had to pause multiple times to get through his scene. He’s just a sampler platter of terrible decisions made in 2000′s cartoons and he irritates me more than this guy. 

And anyone whose read my Loud House reviews can tell you that is a high bar to clear. 

So naturally Lilo wants to enter the Hawiann X-Games to get the board for Keoni. Though I will give the writers credit for having Stitch voice their thoughts and the audiences thoughts by having him take Keoni’s picture and throw it in the garbage. Where he belongs. 

Lilo’s not great at it as they practice.. and said practice naturally ends up waking up a new experiment, 316.. who i’m just going to go ahead and call Morpholomew. Stitch eventually catches him though like many of the experiments he’s not actively malevelolent and is easy enough to get home. 

Jumba gets to his schitck of breaking down what the experiment of the week does: In this case Morpholomew is  a shapeshifter though he has a VERY intresting twist on those powers: while he can naturally morph himself into anything he’s seen or has a picture of, he can do the same to anyone he touches. It dosen’t effect their voices, but otherwise it’s a perfect recreation. 

So Lilo instead of finding him a home right away.. decides to wait until after the compettition because we need him for the plot. 

So at the Skateboard Competittion Lilo tries to enter, but finds she’s too young.. but since she has a picture of Keoni, which is a nice way to use her photo hobby from the movie for plot reasons and thus dosen’t feel like an ass pull. Why Keoni’s not in town to skate is as his dad left because it’d be too crowded.. even though the event is at the resort he owns. 

So while Lilo commits identtity theft, our guest star appears. He’s cool, he’s hot like a frozen son, he’s young and fast he’s the chosen one, people i’m not braggin, i’ts the American Dragon. Jake is here for two reasons: the first is that Grandpa Long got reports of magical creatures out in the open, so naturally they need to look into that. It’s a clever way to get him, along with Grandpa, Fu, Trixie and Spud, over to Hawaii. The Dragon Council would defintely be suspcious hearing about this, and my guess to why they hadn’t sent another dragon over is they simply dont’ have one on the islands. As for why the Huntsclan didn’t get involved in any way, it’s simply too public for them.  With the magical community in new york, they don’t have to worry about exposure because neither side wants it, so neither side can out the other. Here with a bunch of creatures out in the open it runs the risk of the Hunstclan being dragged into the light.. and given the populace dosne’t care about the “magical creatures” alongside them, it would make them look like the monsters they are. 

Spud and Trixie tagging along also makes sense besides “they needed them for the plot”: While they’d obviously want to come to Hawaii, the skate competition is likely Jake’s cover for why he’s there, as well as one for why it’s just him and grandpa going with a couple of his friends so they don’t have to deal with manuvering around jake’s dad. That sad them never TELLING jake’s Dad is it’s own can of worms as it feels cruel, made things harder for jake and there was no real reason not to. At worst he’d want Jake to stop for his own saftey but given ther’es an active threat in  the huntsclan for the first season and a half, NOT helping people would be the right thing and I feel he’s a sensible enough man to understand eventually. 

And it’s stuff like this that already makes this crossover really work for me: they don’t really have to strain to get Jake over there or tell the audience heavily, the blanks fill in themslves. Or I am but that’s because it’s my job and I love doin it. 

So everyone goes off to their corners; Jake to do a few practice runs, Foo Dog to bet on his friend because of course, Trixie and Spud to go to the beach (even though Spud’s terrified of sharks so I question why Trixie needs him for this), and in a delightfully adorable subplot, finds a lady to woo: local fruit stand vendoer and crankly old lady Mrs. Hasagawa. 

I am here for this subplot: While Grandpa not focusing on the mission is weird for him that’s the entire point.. and their just really cute together. He’s smitten with her entirely because he sees her chewing out one of the people running the contest for making her sign too small. And he performs one hell of a romantic gesture by, while everyone’s back is turned, using his dragon fire to make an add for her on the skate ramp itself, and they have a lovely montage of their time together.. which also weirdly includes grandpa using his dragon fire on stage inf ront of everyone which makes no sense for his charcter but is so cute and does feature david I really don’t care. The writers of Lilo and Stitch probably weren’t deeply familiar with the show and likely just wanted a fun gag. Could be wrong there but it’s cute. He continues to act grossly out of character by trying to avoid going home at the end.. but again I find it simply because he’s in love, they have genuine chemstiry and I like to think they stayed in touch and he retired out there at some point once Jake was old enough to handle things himself. This may not be a ship I expected to support going in but I will die for it going out. 

So back to the main plot, Lilo uses Keoni’s body to imitate him which... she’s only loosely called out on and realizes is bad by the end only because she gets stuck in another body. And that’s not even getting into the fact she BREAKS UP WITH KEONI’S GIRLFRIEND. Yes really.. she just does that to get her out of the way. She comes around and realizes she was wrong and tries to fix it which would be fine.. if hte episode didn’t try to cop it out by revealing “Oh she’s not his girlfriend, she’s just someone who keeps telling people that”. It just feels lazy and dumb and a way to keep Lilo’s crush on Keoni for reasons I DO. NOT. GET. But the identity theft is just brushed aside by everyone: Keoni never finds out, and Jake just brushes it off. The real issue is more her trying to bribe keoni into likng her which while something kids need to learn is not the only thing she did wrong here. It feels like they didn’t think all the implications out here and it hampers the episode

Speaking of which as Gantu captures Jake, he sees him transform into dragon mode and assumes he’s the experiment, Jake’s charactization is pretty shallow.  And why yes it DOES feel weird writing sentences about a character with the same name thank you for asking. I wasn’t expecting a deep character piece or anything: This is a guest spot, the writers here are not the same normal ones for American Dragon. That’s fine. The problem.. is that they clearly did not get Jake. Grandpa being partly out of character is half the joke, Trixie actually gets a really nice moment towards the end, and Spud.. is eh. But out of them Jake just feels like a basic character description: He likes hip hop, he likes skateboards, he calls himself Am Drag despite that sounding like a good name for a drag act but a terrible name to shorten your title, he fights.. that’s it. 

While jake is all of that in the main series, he’s also a kind young man who while sometimes irresponsible does the right thing when the chips are down.  He’s someone weighed down by a responsiblity he didn’t ask for, often makes his life more difficult and often finds himself in trouble because his mother and grandfather won’t bother to tell his dad he’s a dragon. Yes that part still bothers me, and I don’t see why we couldn’t just have a superhero show where both parents know. But regardless this just dosen’t feel like Jake , like they just watched the intro and that was it. Jake feels more like a plot device in his own crossover. 

That being said there is some good stuff: The minute Jake realizes some Sci Fi stuff is going on instead of hte normal magic stuff he tells him “The am drag’s show isn’t about sci fi” a nice meta bit and then breaks out. Meanwhile Lilo takes on his form.. and ends up stuck after badly botching her run again, as Gantu finds the real shapeshifter. 

We get the best stretch of the episode from here though: Lilo awkardly tries to play jake and like jake we get a nice meta nod to how diffrent their show is as she’s worried about his belief in magical creatures.. and is startled out of her charade when Foo Dog talks, a really nice bit especially since it’s tame compared to the weirdness he deals with. Spud and Trixie have questions... only for Jake to show up and his agressive behavior leads to the best bit of the episode: Jake Vs Stitch. The catlyst is understandable: jake has no idea why Lilo’s taken his identity and Sttich is just protecting his best friend from harm. The animation is fluid, the fight is fun and quick and uses both’s powers stellarl. Whle “two heroes get into a misunderstanding and then fight” is a well worn cliche at this point, it’s moments like this that show why: you get to see two heroes who in this case never have interacted before or sense, duke it out, why each is special and it’s fun to watch. 

Lilo breaks it up, and admits to the whole thing.. including the whole give Keani the board stuff. While Jake and Spud, being awkard with girls and a loveable moron don’t see the problem with that Trixie gets a moment to shine. As far as I can remember she really didn’t get much on the show proper so it was a nice suprise to see her mentor lilo her, telling her trying to give someone gifts to love you is not okay, she should just be herself all that good stuff. It’s a nice character stuff and tha’ts the kind of character interaction this episode needed more of. 

With the misunderstandings washed away our heroes team up and storm gantu’s ship leading to another great sequence as Stitch rides on Jake’s back while the two keep him busy and Lilo gets turned back, Trixie complimenting her dress “Thanks I have 10 just like it at home”. It’s such a sweet and genuine moment” They head back out and gantu semeingly grabs morpholmew from where they hide.. only to find out when he gets back it’s spud, our adorable little blob monster transforming Gantu into a bunny and our heroes leaving. How does Gantu get out of being a bunny?

But it’s a nice enough gag. So we end the episode. We get another nice gag as grandpa had himself and his lady transformed to try and avoid going home, and Jake is fine with having lost out on the board what matters is he made a friend. Sadly we did not get a followup in ADJL., but spud does name our experiment, Morpholomew. 

We end on Morph getting his home: a costume shop where he gets paid in fried chicken, he was shown to enjoy it throughtout the episode and changes people into things. It’s a nice little button to the episode and one of the funnest parts of the show was figuring out where the experiment would end up at the end. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode is a really mixed bag. There is some good character interactions, two tremendous fight scens and Trixie gets a chance to shine for once if only for a scene or two, and the clashing genres end up making for some great jokes> The shows do go well together as while Lilo and Stitch is more laid back both have slice of life elements. And hasgawa X Grandpa is just oto cute for words. 

The episode is held back by Jake and Lilo’s lackluster characterizatons: Jake is simply the theme song as a character, which in theory is awesome because that theme song slaps but in practice is pretty lame, and Lilo is selfish and irresponsible even for her in a way that dosen’t feel at all convincing. It drags down what’s otherwise a fun crossover and Morpholomew is truly a unique and wonderful experiment. Still if you like either show it’s worth a watch even if you have to suffer through Keoni for it. It’s worth it.. I just wish it was better and hopefully the next 3 will keep the good parts but take out the bad. Granted this was produced last so I could be wrong, but here’s hoping.  Oh this episode also featured Miranda Cosgrove as the girl who claims to be Keoni’s girlfriend. This is also Keoni’s last episode meaning I do NOT have to worry about accidently running into him. Thank fucking christ. 

Next Time On American Dragon Jake Long: Jake’s dad drags him and his friends on a camping trip and Jake ends up encountering the Jersey Devil. Now all they need is a sexy lady devil cake to lure it out... what it worked for the Cake Boss. And yes that happened, Allison Pregler did an episode on that episode. Check it out. 

Next Time On Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: It’s the family, the family, proud familllyyy as the Prouds take a vacation at Peakly and Jumbas bed but not breakfast and we get some kind of squirrel demon for our experiment of the week. We also get Wizard Kelly appearing...

See you at the next rainbow. 

[breitzbachbea]

☕ your ocs

I love the dumbasses. That's it -

Send me a ☕ and I'll talk how I feel about it

Okay, so, I've been writing since I've been ten or so. Probably tried to tell stories even longer. I had a BUNCH of OCs over the years, but retired all of them other than the LFLS ones. I still sometimes think of my old fanfictions and attempts at original work, but have zero interest in reviving any of it. One day I'll however write an essay on how my Card Kingdom Stories/Universe was definitely the Predecessor to the Like Father Like Son Universe.

I've had the current fuckers since 2013. My earliest OCs that are still in use are probably either my Hetalia City OCs (who've made it into LFLS as secret agents & police officers) or my Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales OC. I can't remember how big the list I made in Excel is, but I think it was around 240 OCs. (Not sure if that is before or after detracting Hetalia canon characters or my friends' OCs for the AU. Hugo is Jonah's OC and Jani is responsible for pretty much all of the Icelanders in LFLS).

I love the kids so much and how different they are. I love how Hetalia lays the groundwork for me to explore the world we live in. Team Turkey is a Turk, a Kurd and an Assyrian! Team Belgium consists of Agnés Reynard, Charlotte Biayenda, whose a trans woman from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Luus Ratu Kikkert, a Dutch trans woman whose family came to the Netherlands from Indonesia generations ago! (She's the youngest sister of the Dutch right hands! Tim and Agnés are still brother and sister in the LFLS Universe). Team Belgium likes to go to the Place du Luxembourg on the weekends to fuck shit up, rub shoulders with lobbyists and parlamentarians and have a good time! Cocktail baby gay, Shots Older Sister and Wine Aunt are on the loose!

I could talk about every OC at least for two minutes, even if they're underdeveloped or THAT much of a sidecharacter that I can only give you very basic infos, some anecdotes or their general character concept. If they're very developed, god help us all because we'll be here for hours. (Help girl, I have concepts for the Norwegians, Danish, Egyptians and one Persian & Iraqui already. We'll work on the other half of these two teams when I did the barest of research on the region and characters). I'm having so much fun using my story as a vehicle to learn about the world and using what I learn about the world, its history and cultures to flesh out my universe & turn it into interesting stepping stones to exploring personalities & relationships.

Also hey, you don't even have to know my OCs to ask me about them, you can ask "Who's Team [Nation]?" or "What about [Nationality] subordinates?" Now, there's a lot of Hetalia characters I don't have OCs to accompany (yet), but especially in Europe, you could get lucky.

I fundamentally just love people. I love us in every shape and size we come in, I love how much we love and how much we hate each other. I love the Hetalia characters, I love the transformative aspect of fanfiction where I try to adhere as close as canon as possible while tweaking it for the AU - So I also then love to give them found families that explore facets of their country they simply cannot be. (e.g. Team Turkey, but also Adriana as Black American and Amitola [Name probably changing some point] as Wiyot Person. Selim, as person born to Turkish parents in Germany, is another favourite example.) More importantly, I like the creative freedom that isn't bound by the laws of Hetalia or anyone else, for that matter. They get to be anything I want them to be, without any further qualifications. It's the freedom of original fiction, which I love just as much as the fanfiction aspect. My kids give me the best of both worlds.

Thanks for asking, Shai! Also, if anyone is more curious about the kids, my storie nostre tag is all about them! Includes reblogs of posts that I feel represent them & my own writing with them. Every character also has their own tag.

[someplace-that-is-else]

Warren Ellis’s Excalibur: Joys (and Curses) of Side Characters

I really used to love comic books.

I was a big X-Men collector back in the late ‘90s. The very-detailed costumes on the superheroes. The multiple part crossovers. And usually, writers had nice long runs on the books. And I followed the writers, not so much the artists. Okay, Ken Lashley…but…lol.

One of the runs that has always stuck with me was the British writer Warren Ellis’s run on Excalibur.

In hindsight, I could honestly admit that Excalibur never got a fair shake with fans, including myself. Most fans only saw the book as a place for third-tier superheroes. Yes, a lot of x-fans loved Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, and Rachel Summers Phoenix…but they were so separated from where they started from that no one took them seriously. That is…until Warren Ellis brought a sharp, dark direction to the series with the first arc of his run, titled the Soulsword Trilogy.  Not only did it focus on Shadowcat, the girl next door of the X-men family, but it used an old plot thread to reestablish the books’ connection to the main x-books of that time.

It was just a roller coaster from there. An awesome one at that. What stood out for me was an interview that he gave during that time where he talked about the characters and how he chose to approach the characters. He wanted them to be the European X-men. Not weak, secondary characters, but equal to the X-men proper. And a team was only as strong as each member. Ellis throughout his run took each character and developed them. So strong was his development that when the book reached issue 100…there was no doubt that this was a powerful team due to all the character/plot development that he had established from his first issue (issue 83) to that point. Third-tier no more, they took on a London Hellfire Club as a team with no weak links.

That got me thinking about side characters. My Darkenverse had a lot amount of them. The more books that I wrote, the more I had.

But was that a good thing?

JOYS OF A SIDE CHARACTER

A character is only as good as the supporting characters around them.

Sometimes a side character could be used to bring your character into focus. The arc for my character Aidan in Darkchilde has to do with him dealing with his witch heritage. The side character Bethanny was a foil for that, a woman who continued to challenge Aidan throughout the novel. There were times when she was wrong of course. But there were times when Aidan saw that she was indeed right, and he had to deal with his past…and his mother.

A side character could also be a catalyst for action to occur if your novel should…shall we say stall? Ebony in Darkened Soul started my main character Daniel exploring the world of the Nosferatu by her very appearance. Since his lover/creator Jared disliked being around the Nosferatu world…INSTANT CONFLICT!!! Bonus…it propelled the plot (why was Daniel hidden from his kind?) toward its reveal.

But of course, a side character should not be only one dimensional. And sometimes they are not. Jonathan Araby was a Nosferatu who has some answers to Daniel’s questions in Darkened Soul. His scenes are few and far in-between. However, his way with words and his general vibe revealed a hidden depth that the book only lightly rubbed up against. Best of all, when readers of Darkened Soul have talked to me, they mention Jonathan specifically. They felt it.

But of course, side characters also could be a problem…

CURSE OF A SIDE CHARACTER…

It happened across all forms of media…whether it was a book, a tv show, a movie, etc.

You know it.

There was the main character. And also there was the side character usually, a sidekick. And eventually, the sidekick started to get a bit of their own story. Then…the sidekick became more important than the main character.

My Darkenverse was no different. Darkchilde was a prime example. While the main characters were Ebony and Aidan, the main one was Ebony. In the process of writing Darkchilde, it felt like more and more of the major information was occurring in Aidan’s sections of the novel. Meanwhile, Ebony only appeared to be dealing with who to pick: Nicholas, the vicious rogue Nosferatu or Victor, the deadly and passionate Latino Nosferatu. The main theme of Darkchilde was identity. In Ebony’s case it was the question of when one was the person who held the people around them together…what happened when they were no longer needed.

Or what happened when there was a side character that was introduced as a way of revealing part of the plot and said character took off? Again, Darkchilde was a prime example of this in form of Antonio. There was no one like him in my Darkenverse before, a Nosferatu in transition from human looking to the Nosferatu a person would see in that old silent movie or even Blade 2 who was in the thrusts of insanity. He had been a beautiful way to reveal the main plot of the novel aka why Ebony and Aidan were being attacked.  

Then he appeared again. Unexpectedly.

I knew he would be at the masquerade party in the middle of the novel. So imagine my surprise (and Ebony’s) when he appeared in her suite at the hotel in a scene right out of Hellraiser. A dish of madness and horror. Clearly, there was interest on my part as a writer. Then when he met up with another of my side characters Epiphany, it was love (?) at first bite. They winded up having a little side plot in Darkchilde.

So what did one do when your side characters appear to take over?

COMPROMISING WITH SIDE CHARACTERS

By the time Warren Ellis finished his run on Excalibur, there was no one really who had not had any development except for (debatedly) Nightcrawler’s girlfriend Daytripper. All of the characters could stand on their own with their own story. The characters could also come together and form a powerful force, no one interchangeable. Watching a master work, constructing such a series from the ground up and seeing fresh and inventive ideas was such an inspiration to me growing up. I never forgot it. In fact, usually when I moved, Warren Ellis’s run was a run that I usually moved with.

So…I had to do the same. As the writer, I had to be able to use the knowledge of my side characters to know what was best for my books.

In the rewrite process for Darkchilde, Ebony’s past came more to the forefront. I had given hints in the first draft. In Darkened Soul, I had made a hint about a college experience with Ebony. In Darkchilde, I dove into it even more, fleshing it out through flashbacks. And those flashbacks were so developed that it revealed more her character. As I went back to writing the novel in normal time, Ebony felt more centered and less overshadowed by Aidan. I had found the way to strengthen her character.

That was the way to my side characters…compromise.

Jonathan Araby had depth. The exploration of that depth turned into Darkened Soul: Jonathan’s Tale. Epiphany showed an interest in Antonio and no time to explore because it took away from the main story? That was something I would be exploring in a forthcoming novella. Antonio kept randomly popping up, revealing hints about himself itching to be exploring? As I mentioned in my blog A Tale of Three ( http://someplace-that-is-else.tumblr.com/post/155053536518/a-tale-of-three-writing-update-12-27-16 ), I was working on a new Darkenverse short story collection. A lot of Antonio’s history would be explained in that.

So not only was I dealing with my characters one by one, I was getting new books out of it as well.

#winning

As for a team, I admitted there was one thing that I liked very much. The moment when Ebony and Aidan found met in the Bond Club, a Goth techno club that recurred in my novels. The fact that Ebony and Nicholas had been in one section of the novel while Aidan had been with Epiphany and icy Bethanny, and now they met? And from there, it was off to a dangerous night at a masquerade.

Superteam unite!!!

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