#this is literally where the whole brainstorming for immortal fears originally started.......

[the-kipsabian]

the moment that changed my brain chemistry permanently

[ziracona]

Same writing anon as before! Tysm for the long post, it was really clarifying and good to read. It's started having some stuff make sense and revealed some stuff I need to rework. Do you have any advice on writing bare-bones like, general plot lines?

Hey! I’m so glad to hear that. 💙

I’m not 100% sure what you mean—advice on making your plot lines engaging, on figuring them out period, on how and when to structure them, on how to make them original, how to make them further the scenes you want to write instead of just be there as a support column for them, etc, so sorry if I misinterpret this question. I think I’m probably overthinking this, and you just mean “advice on how to come up with them/lay them out in the first place,” so that’s what I’ll answer. Sorry if that isn’t what you meant. TuT

So, writers all have different processes, but for most of us, it is very much not plotline first. Often you’ll get a great vague idea, or a scene you don’t know the total context for, or a character you like, or a finale, or a specific crisis, etc, and start there. Similarly when writing fanfic, a lot of the time you start with a very basic concept like “I want to see these people interact” or “I want this character to get to kill the person who destroyed their life” or “I want C character to get a happy ending,” and you build from there.

Honestly, there isn’t just one way to do structuring that works. Some people like a bare bones outline before they start, some like hugely detailed outlines, and some get a vague concept for how it will end, and then just start writing. And they can all work! I will say though, if you’re writing something heavily solution-based (like your characters spend the whole story trying to escape a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean, or are trying to fix a time paradox to keep themselves from being erased), it’s highly, highly recommended you know what that solution is before you begin. I don’t know that you /can’t/ figure out on the fly, but it will be so much easier for you as a writer to work towards a solution you already have, than to fly blind. Especially because most solution-heavy plots pick up elements to their solution along the way. This isn’t always necessary—like if the problem is it’s a horror script and there is a serial killer chasing them. “How do you kill a human” has infinite answers, so you don’t really need to pick out specifically how your protag finally takes them out ahead of time if you don’t want. If it’s like, Nightmare on Elm Street though, and your monster almost can’t be killed, you really gonna want to know how to put it in the dirt before you start, though.

That said, I’d recommend doing at least a bare-bones outline, personally for anything very long! It’s totally good and recommended even to edit that outline as you go, to add or subtract or alter upcoming content, but I find it helps a lot to have a vague idea of how much is left, and what the next step will be. It’s kind of reassuring. Again though, not everyone does this. Some skip outlines altogether.

As far as plotting itself goes, I would say start, again, with what you want to write—this might seem counter-intuitive, but trust me. Do you want to write a friendship, or a romance, or a personal journey for a character that leaves them feeling whole? Okay, well, even though most of those don’t seem very plot-creating, consider two factors: what would make this thing you want to have happen happen? And why do you want to write this thing?

For example, I wrote a horror comedy feature script, and my initial idea for it was just a gimmick—the main character can hear the OST, and uses that to help her stay alive. Okay, well, what’s the plot to that? There isn’t one—yet. But why do I like horror comedy in general—why pick that genre? Because horror comedy tends to be a deconstruction/reflective of horror as a whole, and a lot of those commentaries are very meaningful to me. Okay, well, what about horror am /I/ interested in reflecting on? And there’s a lot I’m interested in reflecting on, tbh, but at the time, the big answer for me was casual dehumanization. So, I know my topic/theme, and I know I am picking a wild world for that (as in, I want to write about not dehumanizing people, but I’m setting it in a world where the MC can literally hear the soundtrack to her story), but that can help, honestly, because if you can carry your point with a disadvantage, that’s even better. So I know my gimmick, I know my core issue, and I know my main character. Now, if I want to talk about dehumanization, that means it’s got to be what my killer is doing, and to an even more extreme extent than murder in general, so they must know the victims personally. From there, I worked out who would be best to cast as antagonist and a motive for them (considering other people not as significant as them/ethics are just created by humans mentality, justifying murdering even friends in order to gain serial killer immortality fame), and went from there to okay, so how would they (the killer) do this? And there’s a lot of ways to approach that scene detail plotting. Usually, I just kind of daydream. I make a cast first, then try to figure out what scenes would work well, and once I have a couple in line with my whole plot, string together an outline that supports all of them, and from there carve out a solid start to finish storyline—like, uh, like whittling down a carving, or chipping away to make a statue, kind of. Think of the starting process as a little like solving a mystery by taking clues and working through them to the next logical deduction, I guess, haha.

You can start from a bunch of different places though, not just concept/theme. For ILM, my original thought was just, “I want the survivors to get to escape, but HOW could they do it?” And I tried to solve that problem. Once I had a solution, which was genuinely one of the first things I found, I was like, okay, but it shouldn’t just be about that, because that’s got no real meat—it’s just an ending. What else do I want to see in a story about them? And Wraith was my favorite killer by far, so I thought, “I want to see Philip get to redeem himself and befriend the survivors and be kind and happy,” and that was it. From there, I worked out first where I wanted Philip at as a person/his motivation for how he ended up where he was, which plus some research created the resets for him, and then I worked out how it would start for him, if he was going to befriend survivors. I picked out relationships I wanted to see furthered, and decided if I wanted them to get a happy ending in hell and give Wraith redemption and peace, that meant I was writing a hope punk plotline for sure, and then with a basic idea of how I got from A-Z, started writing. A lot of individual plot lines��Laurie, Quentin, Jeff and Legion, Tapp, Anna, etc, I had not worked out before I began—maybe I had a kind of vague idea what I wanted for them (Laurie to regain her will to live and be able to save her brother too/get him to save herself, Quentin to get closure, Anna to find humanity, etc), but mostly I kind of brainstormed each the character arcs when I hit their first POV chapter, and crafted their personal story arcs there, then adjusted some as ideas grew.

Which was a super different process form my feature. While my feature more or less hit “what’s the theme/core concept” right off the bat in planning, ILM was “What’s the goal” and didn’t hit theme really until partway through writing, so the process won’t even always be the same for you as a writer. But I definitely recommend, no matter what you’re starting with, to go about it by looking at what makes you want to write what you are writing. For New Dawn Fades, my initial starting point was literally just wanting to write a scene between Quentin and Joey—that was it. I had no framework, or theme, or story goal—just a scene. But I was like, okay, well, if you need a story to back this once scene and further it, not just give it an excuse to happen, what is the story? Well, the reason I wanted to write the scene was because I liked how Joey and Quentin interacted. Quentin’s a bit of a martyr and constantly overwhelmed with guilt and trauma and had to grow up way too fast, and Joey’s a decent person at heart that has let himself slip way too much into bad territory out of fear, and together, they kind of bring out the best in or for each other; Joey is like, the single most likely character in DbD to be able to remind Quentin he’s legit just a teenager actually and should cut lose and just be okay for at least like fifteen damn minutes a day, and might actually be able to get him to do it, and Quentin’s the right mix of uncompromisingly ethical and genuinely forgiving to get Joey to look at and reevaluate his choices without spiraling into hopelessness and self-hate instead of self-improvement. So the answer was I wanted them to get to help each other. From that starting place, I just kind of went step by step with “Okay, how could they logically meet in such a way they are forced to spend time together and it gives them a chance to reach some of this,” and the rest came pretty easy. A lot comes step by step too, I find, and sometimes I have a whole super solid outline before writing and sometimes I don’t know beyond the next chapter except in the most general of terms. So what I would basically always recommend with making a general plotline is consider why you want to write what you want to write, and move from there to, “Okay well how do I get it.” And that process will be wildly different from story to story, but as a basic start, it helps me a lot. I wanted to see Claudette reach out to Wraith? Okay, why would she do that, and how? How would he react—what are the consequences, both from other people, each other, and the Entity? I guess I kind of go at plotlines like a puzzle. If this happens, what are the characters’ next choices? Which would they pick? And if I know where I want them to end, how do I steer their situation towards that point? For doing this, I highly recommend listening to music and daydreaming/just watching and trying scenes out some in your head. Also, if you get stuck, watch or read similar stories and let that inspire you! I don’t mean you gotta or should like, trace over someone else’s scene or something, but all fiction is intertextual, and that’s a good thing. We write based on our existing knowledge and love or ambivalence or distaste for other stories, and in communication with them, and it can add a lot. Stuff with Laurie & Michael in ILM didn’t end up like a single Halloween film in any of the six+ damn timelines, but I /did/ draw inspiration from the H20 line, and H2, which were the closest those two ever got. Watched the end of H20 and went, okay, if they’d had a better chance sooner, what could have happened, and played with that. Watching a lot of well-made fight scenes is also great inspiration for writing action—highly recommend.

I’m not entirely sure how helpful all of this will be, because plotting techniques tend to be pretty varied from writer to writer, but I hope it helps. If it hasn’t, here’s a quick compilation of more technical-side based tips that hopefully wil:

One technique I see recommended a lot and that can help/has before, is to start with your core concept. Now, I would disagree that you must always start here, but it can be a very good place. The idea is to be able to sum up in one line what the meaning of the story is. Like, for the film Holes, it would be something like, “Evil in this world is caused by treating people inhumanly, and the only way to break that curse is to treat your fellow man with decency and value and love.” Basically every plotline in the film backs this idea—Kissing Kate, who is a kind and happy woman until the man she loves, Sam, is murdered by her town for being a black man in a relationship with her, a white woman. That inhuman act drives her to become an outlaw. You have the Yelnats, who get cursed to be followed by misfortune forever when Stanley doesn’t honor his promise to Madame Zaroni, none of which would have happened if he had listened to her in the first place & not gone after a girl based solely on her looks, or if she had cared who either suitor was as a person, and could have been avoided had Madame Zaroni been more to Stanley than a means to an end. You have a whole cast of delinquent boys being mistreated and not at all healed by a juvie system that treats them all like they’re no longer humans worth anything. You have Zero, not even treated as human by juvie standards because he doesn’t talk, isolating himself—all of which stems from growing up on the streets impoverished with a mom struggling to do her best and failing. Stanley is falsely convicted for a crime he didn’t commit and mistreated over it, and has his life ruined. Even Grace, the main antagonist, is who she is because her family has been obsessed and abusive for generations, and she grew up a tool to her father. Then in the end, almost every one of these wrongs, even the ancient wrong of Sam’s murder, is corrected by people choosing to be better and break—in two cases quite literally—the curses on them and others by just being kind and choosing to love and treat others with respect and care. Stanley chooses to befriend Zero to be nice, and Zero reciprocates. Then when Zero runs off, Stanley runs off to help him because he’s afraid he will die, and simply because he loves him as a person, fulfills his family’s ancient promise unknowingly by carrying Zero up a mountain in search of water to save his life. This gives his family and him luck again, and ends up saving everyone. Zero tells Stanley the truth about himself and stops self isolating and being just sad and alone because he had a friend who treats him with value, all the boys end up okay and semi adopted by Stanley’s family in the end and out of abuse and juvie and treated well and live up to that faith put in them, and justice being finally brought breaks Kate’s curse and lets it rain again for the first time since Sam’s death and gives Kate’s spirit peace. —and that’s the idea. To have all your arcs and themes back your one core concept. Now, sometimes people find this super helpful, sometimes they find it overwhelming, but it can be worth a lot.

Another is to just kind of try the dartboard model, which is getting an idea you like to start with (like uhhh, Dogfighting dog is injured so it is going to be put down, but it escapes it’s master and runs off into the woods. Out there, it wanders until happening on an injured human child). Okay, so the plot is about a dog that has been abused choosing to connect to a human in spite of that, and probably about how the kid survives getting out of the woods with the dog’s help. But what actually happens? Dartboard method is just come up with a bunch of potential scenarios for the two characters and play them out in your head, keep your favorites, and then see if you can find a way to string those scenes together. You like a scene where the dog fights off a mountain lion, a scene where the kid and dog huddle together for warmth in a cave during a storm and the kid gets to be the one doing the looking out because the dog is terrified of thunder, and you like a scene where the kid is walking with a branch to help them keep going, sees a road up ahead which means help finally, but passes out from exhaustion, so the panicked dog has to deal with intentionally attracting the attention of adult humans after the abuse it has suffered, in the hope it can lead them to the kid and get help? Great. Okay, what basic order do these scenes go in, what can fill the gaps between X and Z? A lot of thing, you’ll have fun scenes you end up having to reject, because they don’t fit, but it’s a pretty laid back if chaotic method.

Then of course there’s just the classic. Outline. As in, take whatever idea you have, and force yourself to pitch a complete A-Z set of steps like you’re in a writing class. IE:

Dog is introduced. — Dog is inured and going to be put down. —Owner is distracted by a fight breaking out, and dog manages to jerk leash free and escape. — dog flees to woods. — Dog is alone and skittish. There is a storm and it freaks out and holes up. — Next morning, after the storm, Dog hears human crying & is afraid, but curious. Goes to peek. Sees kid who has must have been out here in the storm because a branch snapped and has pinned them by the leg — Dog wants to help because dog instincts, but is afraid of even small human. Eventually peeks head out. — Kid is terrified too, because scary huge scarred dog and they can’t run. Dog scared because human. — Eventually, kid gets over fear and tries to call to dog, and it comes out. Kid pets it and it’s afraid to be touched, but then accepts the affection. — Dog tries to help kid out by digging their leg free. Kid, who hand not thought of that, helps, and gets free.

(Usually you do this more branching and pretty, IE: Scene 1: Dog is in a dogfighting match.

—1A: Dog loses fight and suffers a bad infury to its eye, making it no longer fight for fights.

—1B: Dog’s master angrily comes to collect them. Dog tries to get affection, but he’s mad at it for failing & mutters about putting it down.

Scene 2: Owner takes dog out back to put down.

But that would take up a ton of space on this already massively long post.). There’s also a more simplified version of this, where you just kind of go like Chapter 1: Dog is introduced, loses fight, then escapes being put down and flees. Chapter 2: Dog is terrified of a thunderstorm and from having been almost killed & forced to fight for so long. Runs out of town to the woods as the storm breaks. Hides out under bush. Chapter 3: Dog wakes up to hear human crying. Goes to investigate hesitantly. Finds human kid trapped unde fallen branch. Kid is afraid of dog, dog afraid of kid, but eventually kid coaxes dog to come over and befriends it. Dog tries to help kid and dig them out, and together they get the kid free from tree.

As you can see, that basically gets the same information across, it’s just much shorter, but also has less solidly set as far as details of how stuff happens. Again though, if you go for an outline method, please don’t feel like you have to be married to it. It’s just a resource to try to help you, not actually the story itself, and stoeiws pretty much always evolve as you go, so it’s normal and also kinda fun and good to have to adjust outlines.

Anyway, this was already a mouthful, but I hope it helps, or at least some of it does! For me personally, the best techniques have always been to daydream scenes and events, and to approach writing things I get stuck on either like a deductive puzzle of “Well if She does This, then her friend can do either X, Y, or Z, and Z makes the most sense. Now, I need to figure out a way for them to escape the building. What are th options? Window, door, roof? Technically they could bust down a wall. They’ll never make the roof in time, so that’s out. They have about two minutes before dying, and one of them is injured, so they can’t go fast. The arsonist is going to be watching the front door and the windows carefully though, just in case, so they need a diversion or—Wait—the cat door in the garage. Perfect.” —or by trying to get very into the headspace of whoever is running the scene, and just literally think through why they want and are feeling and going to do. (Though again, I personally approach writing from a very acting-heavy standpoint). Anyway! Hope this helps some, and you find what works best for you. If you want clarity on any of this ramble, or I misinterpreted the questions feel free to let me know! TuT 💙

[fannishcodex]

Putting these guys in a separate post (x): an even more literal role swap--and gender swap and species/race swap--with Princess Toffee of the Royal Butterfly Family and Star the Immortal Monster of Septarsis:

Man, I ultimately did not care for the S3 “The Battle for Mewni” TV movie, but brainstorming headcanons for this AU so far has used stuff from that TV movie (while admittedly criticizing said TV movie in a more meta way during the course of said brainstorming). It’s also pulled from some other AU ideas I’ve had but haven’t shared before (maybe I’ll pinpoint the origins of that some other time). Also, this ended up getting long. Also, I now feel bad for mewman Princess Toffee in my AU. I apparently can’t let Toffee be happy ever in my AUs. Also, feeling bad for Septarian Star in the AU too--but then again, I always feel bad for the monsters in SVTFOE.

@komododragonhustler​ (who first inspired me with her mewman Princess Toffee AU to just share my stray AU thought of more literally swapping Toffee and Star so that Toffee was the mewman princess and Star the monster)

@colorwizard​

@detectiveashcroft​

@lemonadesoda​ (who helped me brainstorm a lot of this)

It was actually really interesting to try to imagine their original personalities still existing in some way under these different circumstances. (Though granted, my headcanons on and preferences for Toffee and Star and SVTFOE still influence this.)

Anyway:

Princess Toffee:

-Her birth was a scandal. Her father isn’t River. Her father is a low-ranking castle guard whom an unmarried Moon had one night of passion with.

-Moon’s love life was even more complicated; and it was only later that she and River fell in love, got together, and married, when Princess Toffee was four years old. River is Toffee’s step father/adoptive father.

-Princess Toffee inherited her dark hair, dark skin, and yellow eyes from her commoner father. (Playing fast and loose with the sci fi of an alien species in a fantasy world: the yellow eyes were just a mutation of mewman genetics that Princess Toffee inherited from her father.) Features underlying that coloring are mostly inherited from Moon, i.e. face shape, eye shape, etc. 

-The queen having an illegitimate child with essentially a mewman commoner was bad enough. Any marriage with the father was out of the question. 

-There has never been an attempt made to hide the basic truth of her heritage from Princess Toffee. She’s known her father was a commoner and that she is Moon’s illegitimate daughter her whole life. 

-Princess Toffee never met her biological father. She’s been told he fell ill and passed away while Moon was pregnant with her. Deep down, Toffee is extremely paranoid about this explanation.

-Princess Toffee knows very little about her biological father, Moon refuses to talk about him, no one talks about him. All she knows is that he’s where she gets the color of her hair, skin, and eyes from; that he was a castle guard; that he wasn’t of royal or noble birth, just a commoner, little more than a peasant. 

-Queen Moon did face pressure to finally wed someone fitting her rank and produce a legitimate heir when Princess Toffee was born. The royal court essentially only willing to hold on to Princess Toffee temporarily until a more legitimate heir was born, and then advise the queen to quietly send her firstborn away to some noble’s estate, or somewhere else, anywhere else, and remove her from the line of succession.

-Moon does not want to send her firstborn away, she wants to keep her close. But she is more willing to accept removing her as successor to the throne.

-While Princess Toffee wasn’t even a year old, a magically maimed but still actively fighting General Star dramatically put an end to such thoughts and that specific pressure from the court. In the last fight he had with Moon before she finally subdued him, and then had him imprisoned and banished, Star the Immortal Monster caused her grievous injury in another attempt to kill her, and came very close to succeeding. Queen Moon survived, largely due to the efforts of the royal medical staff. But though they saved her life, they found they could not repair all of the physical damage General Star had left--his blade and mace had cut deeply enough to permanently make the queen unable to have any more biological children. This was not even something the correct use of magic could fix, since General Star had secured enchanted weaponry in his latest assassination attempt, weaponry that at least proved effective enough to make Moon unable to give birth again, even if it had failed in the Septarian monster’s one goal: slay Moon.

-That left Princess Toffee as the only biological heir Moon would ever have. Princess Toffee became the only biological heir who could directly continue the Royal Butterfly line. (Toffee is aware of this too, and it gnaws at her.)

-Princess Toffee faces more direct pressure to perform well given her low-born father, her status as the queen’s illegitimate daughter, and place as the only biological heir the queen will ever have.

-Moon has no idea why, it struck her as another part of Eclipsa’s seemingly eccentric and candy-fixated nature--but the old queen added another element to their contract, one that was clearly going to happen. Eclipsa made Moon promise that even when she just used the spell she was about to share with her, Moon was bound to name her firstborn “Toffee.” Moon found that a foolish name to give anyone, let alone her own future child. But Eclipsa wouldn’t budge on this, and at least tied what seemed like a small and innocuous demand to an inevitability, rather than tying the larger demand (her freedom) to that inevitability. So, Moon agreed, and years later, after she had used Eclipsa’s spell against General Star, Moon had the unsettling sensation of her mouth moving against her conscious will to name her firstborn according to Eclipsa’s wishes.

-Princess Toffee initially tries to do well and obey under the heightened societal pressure. As a young child, she’s sensitive and thoughtful, and wants her family to love her, and make them proud. She doesn’t want to be disliked, or belittled. She thinks that if she does well, she’ll earn less dislike, and earn more love and kindness.

-Queen Moon and King River are often busy, leaving Princess Toffee in the care of servants and guards. When she was little, Toffee often wanted more attention from them.

-Princess Toffee’s first question about Mewnipendance Day was where mewmans came from before they lived here, because the picture book says they came to this land, they weren’t living here already. No one can give her a satisfactorily clear answer. They soon basically tell her to be quiet and stop asking so many questions. Princess Toffee looks at the picturebook more closely, and has more questions that no one can really answer. Her great curiosity is still ultimately treated with disdain and irritation. 

-Princess Toffee does end up resenting Moon, and this resentment builds. Toffee has a very strained relationship with Moon, something that just deteriorates as time goes on. Toffee starts wanting to just be a better queen than her mother out of spite; and to prove wrong those expecting her to fail, shut up those who scorn her because of the circumstances of her birth, justify her accidental existence. Wanting to be the better queen, Toffee more actively looks for where Moon is lacking in areas of her reign, so she can see where she can improve when it’s her turn. To her growing cynicism, Toffee finds a lot of flaws. Such thoughts expand to thinking the whole system, her whole society, is terribly flawed. Her desire to improve things becomes more complicated, and develops into a true desire to help.

-The negative treatment Princess Toffee faces because of her illegitimacy and lowborn heritage does help make her more open to others her people treat badly, and far worse than her.

-Princess Toffee tries not to think that her turn to rule--according to what she’s heard--hinges upon her mother’s death. Toffee’s relationship with her mother really deteriorates, but not to the point that Toffee wishes her dead, and the thought of losing her still frightens her on some primal level. Though she heard this happens less often in the line of Butterfly succession, Toffee hopes for this option--that Moon will retire when she grows too old, and Toffee can take over then.

-When Princess Toffee stopped believing her literal grandmother--Moon’s mother--was sent to a home for grandmothers, she asked to know a little bit more about her, and what happened to her. Moon refused even to talk about her, and Toffee gave up, feeling frustrated, but also thinking Moon probably felt the sting of her own mother’s death after all this time, enough that it still made it hard to even talk about her.

-Princess Toffee never learned of General Star’s existence.

-As Princess Toffee’s resentment for and disappointment in Moon grows, so does her belief that Moon is just as disappointed in her. She believes her mother is ashamed to have her for a daughter and heir.

-Princess Toffee has what she ultimately considers an irrational and humiliating fear of warnicorns. It’s just, when she was very little, they seemed terribly big and their long horns terribly sharp and just overall terribly mean-looking; she also thought the picture books made them look scary too. Just, for some reason despite what grown-up mewmans tried to tell her with their own words or their books and such, the warnicorns terrified the young princess more than any stories of monsters or depictions of them--perhaps because she saw warnicorns first, up-close and personal, and could literally understand how their great size dwarfed her, how sharp their horns seemed, and how mean they looked in the flesh. It’s a fear that lingers, and makes the warnicorn stampede spell difficult to do later. Toffee can barely ride a warnicorn, and she feels it’s just another thing for her mother to be disappointed over.

-Princess Toffee is actually more fond of her stepfather/adoptive father River. He doesn’t understand her, but he’s a little more supportive, and that’s appreciated. But even he ends up disappointing her when she realizes how incompetent he can be, and even unthinkingly and ignorantly cruel to others; and she grows to dislike his monster hunts. Still, he’s a bit more supportive, and Toffee continues to appreciate that on some level.

-Princess Toffee can’t escape the disdain the majority of her environment--the royal court, noble family on both sides, even much of visiting royalty from other kingdoms--has for her illegitimate status and lowborn heritage. She ends up reciprocating their disdain. She does not really get along with her cousins, or any of her extended family. For a long time, Princess Toffee grows up pretty lonely.

-Princess Toffee’s bookworm nature, struggle with her shy streak, and then ultimately her different way of thinking--it all doesn’t help attract any friends or companionship either, she comes off as very strange to most mewmans, and then there’s still the scandal and disgrace of her birth that they won’t forget.

-Princess Toffee bonds with a companion animal at least. She cares for and rides a runty winged manticore mount that had been born in the royal stables, and would have otherwise been disregarded if not for her attention. Toffee cares about this animal a lot, and calls him “Flow.”

-Princess Toffee doesn’t make friends with Princess Ponyhead, they have no relationship to speak of. They are just acquaintances made during royal functions.

-Princess Toffee never dates or befriends Prince Tom, though the royal court encourages their relationship. After she is made to dance with him at a ball, Tom develops an infatuation for her that she does not understand. Princess Toffee regularly rejects his request for a first date, and grows increasingly irritated with him for not listening to her clear refusal, even as her way of stating it has grown less polite and more blunt every time she has to repeat herself.

-Princess Toffee hasn’t developed any signs of romantic interest in anyone. Sometimes she wonders if something’s wrong with her. Sometimes she wonders if she can get away with being a better queen without getting married or producing a  biological heir. Sometimes she wonders if she could go down as the best queen by being the last one, and abolishing the entire system and establishing a better one to replace it. 

-Princess Toffee eventually makes friends with the “Alternative Monsters”, who seem surprisingly friendly, friendlier than most mewmans she’s encountered. It adds to the young heir’s growing disillusionment with her mewman kingdom and how they think of and treat monsters. Toffee sneaks out to spend time with them, also bringing them food and clothes too. For anyone interested and willing, she helps teach them writing and reading, either the whole thing or just a little more to refine what they know.  

-Princess Toffee’s Secrets Closet includes a makeshift lab for mechanical and technological invention. The technology she’s seen scattered around Mewni, and more of in the wider multiverse--well, she’d like to see it grow on Mewni. She thinks it could be very useful and helpful, and another way for her to prove she can be a better queen. Also, she’s just interested in the subject matter. 

-Princess Toffee tries to help her kingdom run better, more efficiently. She tries methods of policy and mechanical invention. But when she tries to turn her ideas into something, they fail in a couple of ways. Either no one from the court listens to her. Or she goes ahead and at the first sign of a small or big error, or when her efforts aren’t met with immediate success, the royal court shuts her attempt down. Queen Moon faintly praises Princess Toffee for her initiative and desire to engage with how the kingdom functions--but then she doesn’t really back her up, give any real support, or truly take her seriously, underestimating her daughter and thinking she’s too naive, too impatient and impulsive, too immature, and simply not ready. This all deeply frustrates Toffee, and further damages the relationship she has with her mother.    

-When Princess Toffee makes any effort to provide relief to monsters, no matter how she tries to phrase it--it’s only charity, it’s only to further our own reputation (she thinks to try any lie to make this happen)--the resistance she meets from the Butterfly kingdom is even greater and rather more vitriolic.

-Princess Toffee tries to use royal lessons on restraint, composure, biding one’s time, building up support, and even deception, etc., to bite her tongue on what she really thinks about mewmans and monsters until she’s in a better position to make real change, but the young heir finds this hard to practice. However, she is learning. 

-Princess Toffee largely keeps all of her hair behind a cloth headband because she feels more comfortable that way. She has briefly considered a haircut, but then settles with her current hair length--not too long, not too short, and just combining it with her usual cloth headband.

-Queen Moon at least thinks Princess Toffee is ready to be personally trained in martial combat with her. Learning the sword and other weapons and fighting styles from her mother is one of the few things Princess Toffee still enjoys about their relationship. Toffee finds that Moon feels more bearable when she’s teaching her how to act in battle and sparring with her, things feel...nicer and easier between them. Princess Toffee looks forward to meeting Queen Moon in the training hall most of the time. She considers it one of the few bright spots left about her mother.

-Outside of the training hall, things go back to normal: strained, bad. As Princess Toffee grows older, she and Queen Moon keep getting into more heated arguments.

-Princess Toffee initially does put more conscious effort in trying to keep her distance from the servants and lower classes in an attempt to make up for her lowborn heritage, and because Moon directly asked her to, and also heard the same from others of the royal court. That attempt gradually breaks down, but not easily, she had grown used to it; in any case, she manages to make Arts & Crafts friends later--Ruberiot the Songstrel, Foolduke, and the genius Mime. They’re generally more respectful of her being royalty and just consider that; they actually are interested that she has partial lowborn heritage closer to their own lower rank; and grow fond of the princess herself. Princess Toffee likes Ruberiot’s music, and Ruberiot actually grows more supportive of her different thinking and efforts/desire to change the Butterfly Kingdom. Foolduke appreciates it whenever Princess Toffee cracks a dry/deadpan/sarcastic joke, and tries to teach the princess about the art of comedy and using it for social commentary. Mime is just generally almost as kind as her artistic genius, and is open to befriending the young heir. 

-Getting to know the Butterfly princess longer and better, Ruberiot runs into a dilemma. He wants to perform a better Song Day, especially for someone he considers a friend, and believes will be a great queen, and would like to use music to gain support for her and spread her ideas farther. But he realizes that Princess Toffee still has a shy streak and still would like to have her privacy. Even what Ruberiot considers her uncharacteristic resistance to making Song Day work for an objective tells him she’s really anxious about the whole thing and would rather not have it happen.    

-Princess Toffee struggles to balance her public persona--and using that to enact public change--with her desire for privacy.

-Princess Toffee straight up finds common ground with Ariel, princess of another Disney story--she becomes fascinated with and feels closer to a people her royal parent(s) harbor disdain for, becomes entranced by remnants of what they build. Part of this involves Princess Toffee stumbling upon the ancient monster temple, and exploring it, and finding refuge there. Her method of transport to there is Flow, the runty winged manticore mount from the royal stables that she cares for.  

-Princess Toffee thinks a lot, and some of her thoughts spiral into something like this: I actually feel miserable Why do I feel so miserable, there are others worse off than me, I’ve been born into a family and people that profit off the misery of others, I don’t have the right to feel unhappy--I should do more, I need to take action, not be this emotional, but...what? how? I don’t -- This temple, what they built is amazing--but am I only interested in it as a novelty, am I reducing their culture to a novelty for my own amusement?--I should share this with actual monsters--how many monsters could this ruin still house--what if it was restored, repaired?--but I don’t know how to even approach them about this, how to bring this up--and I still want this to myself, I can come here and just be--but it’s not mine, it can’t be mine, I can’t claim something my ancestors destroyed and left to rot, that doesn’t begin to help anything at all, I’m as bad as them, I always will be--this should be a safe harbor for monsters, not me--but -- am I still rebelling out of spite, just to be contrary with my mother and everyone, do I really truly care enough about the people my kingdom hurt?--am I just trying to make myself feel better doing this?--am I just using this to prove myself the better queen?--but I don’t want to be in charge forever, or--that is--monsters should make their own choices, they should be actually free, so much of this is because they’re not, they’re not free, I should at least help them get to that point, but to stay as a queen above wouldn’t work with that, it couldn’t--I can’t just be a queen that continues to rule them and try to avoid cruelty or apathy while everyone else pretty much went crazy with that--I can’t keep ruling them, they should get to rule themselves--for corn’s sake, they had their own royalty before, Avarius for instance, and probably more real than that pushover figurehead puppet king my mother deals with--and other forms of rule, they may have had that too -- I wish I could run away from all of this--and I shouldn’t, I should make things better--but sometimes I really don’t want this, all these problems Mother left behind and doesn’t care about, all the problems my ancestors left behind, why do I have to deal with this, why couldn’t Mother or Grandmother have dealt with this, why couldn’t they see, why couldn’t they care--

-When Princess Toffee is 13 years old, Queen Moon straight up ends up pulling a King Triton, and this severely damages her relationship with Toffee further. Moon was already growing aggravated by what she considered her only daughter’s increasingly poor attitude, vitriolic and unbecoming dissent, and her skipping classes with tutors. When the queen realizes Princess Toffee has been running off to some ancient monster temple and wasting time there, and is actually fascinated by relics of some sacrilegious barbarian cult--well, she snaps. She can’t have her only daughter feeling so attached to monsters, and possibly prioritize them over mewmans, the Butterfly kingdom. The queen still remembers the violence General Star continued against her until Moon finally imprisoned and banished him. The queen still remembers the news that General Star had killed her mother. The queen still has the prejudices against monsters she was raised with and was able to swallow and accept. Moon first sends Toffee’s manticore Flow away through a portal via dimensional scissors, then addresses her daughter alone. She and Toffee get into one of their worse arguments yet. Toffee actually starts feeling a little scared of Moon’s rage, she’s never seen her this angry before. Queen Moon bodily drags Princess Toffee out of the temple, and this action further disturbs the young heir. Then the queen raises her wand toward the temple, and Princess Toffee is hit with terrible realization, and immediately begs her mother to stop. But Queen Moon destroys the ancient monster temple with the wand, despite Princess Toffee’s increasingly desperate and frantic pleas for her to stop. When it’s over, Queen Moon is only shaken out of her rage when she sees her normally vocally rebellious daughter crumple down sobbing. Queen Moon tries to make her come home, but Princess Toffee won’t move, and again Queen Moon bodily drags her away, through another portal cut by dimensional scissors, and leaves her alone crying in her room back at Butterfly castle.

(-Moon feels some guilt that it came to this, but she can’t bring herself to think she did anything but what she had to do. She would not apologize for this, she doesn’t think she did anything wrong.)

-Princess Toffee refuses to speak to Queen Moon for a month after that. When she’s finally speaking to her again, her words are initially just even more detached from her mother.

-Princess Toffee hates and blames Moon for destroying what had remained of the ancient monster temple. But she also hates and blames herself for that destruction of monster culture, feeling it was her fault too.

-Moon tells no one of the ancient monster temple, not wanting anyone to know that Princess Toffee had been so fascinated by that place.

-Princess Toffee starts marauding for monsters in a disguise, sneaking around at night and stealing food and other supplies for them. She manages to keep this a secret from everyone.

-Princess Toffee manages to steal Hekapoo’s scissors. Hekapoo doesn’t seem to notice, especially since Toffee doesn’t go scissor crazy.

-Princess Toffee avoids combat training with her mother for months afterward, and Moon makes no serious attempt to make her go. Princess Toffee trains in combat by herself, but doesn’t trust herself in a physical spar with Moon...and deep down, she doesn’t really trust Moon either, though this is something she can’t articulate, isn’t that consciously aware of. Deep down, Princess Toffee now actually fears that her mother would be driven to turn the wand’s violence against her, if she angered her enough--but again, this is a thought so deep in her subconscious, she can’t recognize it yet. (Moon has no idea of this. Moon can understand Toffee’s negative reaction to her destroying something she cared about. It does not occur to her that Toffee could--on some level--now think she would ever hurt her.)

-Queen Moon’s show of furious force also leaves Princess Toffee with a certain fear of the wand itself. When she inherits it on her 14th birthday, her hand is hesitant and trembles slightly before taking it. She only does one small--even pitiful--show of magic with it because that’s customary, at least one demonstration is Butterfly tradition. After that, Princess Toffee shuts the wand in her Secrets Closet and doesn’t use it the rest of the day.

-So Princess Toffee is not sent to Earth right on the day of her 14th birthday. She’s sent there later.

-Queen Moon actually let Princess Toffee sit at the adults’ table and allowed her to participate in Game of Flags for the first time when she was 14. Moon had thought she was ready. She comes to regret this later, when the family game grew too intense and Princess Toffee lost a finger in the fighting.     

-After her first Game of Flags, Princess Toffee is sent to Earth.

-Princess Toffee is less than impressed with her guide, Marco. His insistence that he’s some kind of bad boy while showing the opposite just exasperates Toffee and makes her thinks he’s just rather...lame. Also she’s still not entirely sure what he means by a “bad boy,” maybe that’s the Earth way of describing someone as reckless and rebellious, based on what he’s trying to say he is anyway.

-Princess Toffee catches sight of Jackie riding away on her skateboard, and is entranced--she has no idea what the girl is doing, what is that contraption she’s using to move, it has wheels like a carriage, but it’s decidedly not a carriage, etc. Deeply curious, Princess Toffee just silently follows Jackie, walking out on Marco while he’s still ranting and no longer paying her any attention.

-Princess Toffee learns about Earth skateboards from Jackie, and then they talk about history books. The two become friends. Princess Toffee generally admires Jackie’s calm and enjoys talking about books with her, and learning Earth’s history from her.

-Princess Toffee and Marco never really warm to each other. Marco thinks she’s a grump, a jerk, stuck-up princess, boring, etc. Princess Toffee thinks Marco is irritating, worries too much about stupid things, and is just...lame. They never really become friends, just reluctant house mates. Toffee likes Marco’s parents fine, they’re remarkably nice. She later realizes that though they love Marco, they also seem as absent as her own parents, and maybe this partly explains Marco’s annoying insecurities. But Princess Toffee still thinks Marco is lame.  

-Princess Toffee first meets Ludo and his small army when they try to steal the wand just as she’s leaving the school library. She had never met them back on Mewni.

-Princess Toffee didn’t care for Marco’s attempt to protect her against Ludo’s small army. She could take care of herself, she wanted to try to talk her way out of the situation first, she didn’t want to immediately respond with a punch to the face like Marco freakin’ did--she snaps at him to stay out of mewni affairs, and tries to speak with Ludo and his soldiers like she first wanted.

-Ludo doesn’t back down, and Princess Toffee grows to find him really irritating, from his general nature to his constant mistreatment of his soldiers. But she tries to drive back Ludo and his soldiers without great force. The young heir is at a loss on how to resolve this with words alone.

-Princess Toffee has considered multiple times to use the first spell her mother taught her to destroy the wand. But even she’s not ready to do that against her kingdom and her family and their system yet (among other reasons--like, she’s still not entirely sure if there are any side-effects that could prove really disastrous, since Moon’s explanation hadn’t been that clear, irritatingly enough).    

-Princess Toffee doesn’t care for Marco’s crush on Jackie either. Toffee’s even less impressed the one time Marco gets desperate enough to try being nicer to her in an obvious attempt to get closer to Jackie. Her housemate apologizes for it afterward, but Princess Toffee still doesn’t like him any better.

-Princess Toffee is at least relieved that the next time Tom comes to again ask her out on a first date, something happens between him and Marco, and it seems to end his infatuation with her, and even turn his attention to spending time with Marco instead. The young heir doesn’t really care what happened between those two, as long as Tom is out of her hair. 

-Princess Toffee sometimes bonds a little with Janna in teasing Marco. But the young heir doesn’t care for Janna's great interest in her family’s ancient spell book or the wand.

-Princess Toffee likes using dimensional scissors to explore and learn about the multiverse, different dimensions, different worlds. She likes going to Quest Buy, and the dimension of Wonders and Amazement. She also uses them to sneak back to Mewni to visit the Alternative Monsters, Art & Crafts Friends, and Flow the Runt Manticore Mount.

-Since Princess Toffee wouldn’t celebrate Mewnipendance Day on Earth, she was made to do her usual public appearance alongside her family for Butterfly Castle’s annual celebration of the holiday. And as usual, Princess Toffee put on her emotionless mask and hated every minute of it.  

-Princess Toffee mostly refers to Glossayrck as “old man.”

-Mewberty happened for Princess Toffee while on a trip to Quest Buy. Other than walking past Princess Ponyhead rushing about through the aisles on what she assumed to be some important errand, it felt like a normal day there. Toffee was just browsing, considering maybe buying a magazine there, when a large Septarian monster stumbled out of a jagged dimensionally sliced portal in the aisle next to her. He picked himself up, lowered his dimensional chainsaw, checked and banged on a scanner device, then turned to her and asked if she’d seen a Princess Ponyhead around. Princess Toffee had stared--and immediately felt some form of romantic attraction for someone else. She was smitten. She fell hard. Her first crush. Every cliche she could imagine. Princess Toffee stammered out that she thought she had seen Princess Ponyhead a couple aisles back, and she pointed in the direction she meant. Watching the stranger go, Toffee had blushed, felt her stomach squirm weirdly--then she felt extra hearts grow on her face and the rest of her body, and long story even shorter, Toffee later woke up to find herself crawling out of a pile of gray heart flakes, Quest Buy a mess, and a very confused Septarian monster stranger untangling himself from gray heart-marked vine-webbing. Horrified and humiliated, Princess Toffee had fled back to Earth, without getting the name of her crush. But later when she thought of him again, it brought a smile to her face. Princess Toffee hadn’t realized having a little crush on someone could feel so nice.

-Although Princess Toffee was at first angry over being sent to Earth, she grows to really enjoy her time on the alien planet. No one really pressures her or treats her negatively like the illegitimate, lowborn princess and sole heir to a kingdom she is. She’s fascinated by all the technology on Earth. She likes that there’s a system of public libraries open to everyone. She’s interested in learning the history and current status of their different ruling governments, from familiar monarchy to the more new democracy. She wants to see what she can use from Earth to improve her home planet. Earth is really the escape from Mewni she’s been wanting. She thinks if she could, she would choose to live here.

-When Ludo shows up with a new soldier, the Septarian monster Star, Princess Toffee finds him eccentric and very friendly, charming, even funny. She thinks he’s harmless.

-Princess Toffee learns that Star being eccentric and friendly doesn’t mean he can’t be dangerous, when she witnesses him grab Ludo--interrupting his typical rant viciously blaming his soldiers for another botched attempt to steal the wand--and throw the smaller monster into the void with dimensional scissors. Toffee believed Star was fed up with Ludo’s abusive behavior to his soldiers, since she herself had seen Ludo do it enough that it wasn’t unbelievable someone finally rebelled against him. She thought she could understand why the Septarian did it. But Princess Toffee was still kind of unnerved by how casually and easily Star tossed Ludo away into the void, with seemingly no hesitation or regret.

-Eventually Princess Toffee runs across Ludo in the wilderness of Mewni, and gradually the two form a strange friendship.

General Star, the Immortal Monster of Septarsis:

-The Monster King was even more thrown by General Star going rogue, because he had always found him so friendly and pleasant. Very talkative, always willing to engage with his troops. All right, given how talkative and outgoing he was, General Star had also been the most vocal about how mewmans treated monsters and never really knew his place or when to keep quiet, but the Monster King had thought...well, the Monster King realized too late that maybe he should have listened to General Star’s grievances more, instead of dismissing them.

-Buff Frog/Yvgeny served under General Star, and he along with Rasticore were General Star’s most relied upon soldiers. Also, his friends.

-Star whole-heartedly considered Rasticore his bestie. And though Rasticore would never use the same term, he reciprocated the feeling, and would be willing to call the general his best friend.

-Getting past first appearances, Rasticore can actually be a goof off, willing to be humorous, be more casual, down to earth, prone to trying to cheer up his comrades when they felt down. (Also a bit clumsy still, despite training and battle experience--though still not as clumsy as he had been before all of that.) But when next to his general, Rasticore often looks normal and serious.  

-General Star with a reputation for being extremely eccentric. Also friendly. He looks out for his comrades.

-General Star also has a reputation for being an extremely fierce soldier in battle.

-General Star’s natural impulsiveness and rash behavior has grown tempered with more strategic thinking and observation skills as he’s worked his way up to general. He’s not a perfect leader, and his natural rashness can still get the better of him. But he actually is a fairly good leader, both in how he works and treats those under his leadership. 

-One of Star’s many hobbies seems to be casual matchmaking, he seems to take pleasure in encouraging and lightly teasing any romantic entanglements that crop up in his army. Despite this, no one in the army has ever witnessed any hint of the general himself harboring romantic feelings toward anyone. 

-Yvgeny/Buff Frog is older than Star, and deep down, does regard the Septarian monster as if he were his own son. Star does reciprocate, seeing Yvgeny/Buff Frog as not just an older adviser, but also a parental figure.

-While General Star is largely cheerful, he is also normally visibly and vocally angry about Mewnipendance Day and what mewmans have done to his people, and continue to do. 

-At times Star’s general friendliness can make others--like the Monster King--fail to appreciate the sincerity and depths of his hatred and aggression toward the mewman kingdom.

-General Star is genuinely friendly, kind, open, optimistic, etc. He’s just also 1000% ready to fight the mewman kingdom, which he hates for how they have hurt his people, and wants to stop them.

-More on General Star’s optimism: He believes that with monsters standing together, they can defeat their mewman oppressors and free themselves. He believes in personally maintaining joy, compassion, friendliness, etc. in his life. Feeling anger, despair, and darker emotions are fine, that’s part of feeling in general, it’s all right to feel hurt--but General Star does not want to become trapped in that, he doesn’t want to give up his appreciation and zest for life and others. Things suck for monsters, but General Star searches for the good things, and becomes even more protective of that because of how much life can absolutely suck for monsters. He’ll find and work to keep what joy he can get, and share that with others.

-If General Star had to pick a favorite weapon, he would select the mace.

-When the newly crowned Queen Moon came to confront him, Star never let Moon speak her mind. He immediately attacked her, seizing on the chance to fully end the direct Royal Butterfly line. 

-Star had left his tent when he heard his troops laugh, brightly asked them what was going on, and mildly reminded them to keep him in the loop, given he was their leader. When he spotted Moon, he struck while she spoke, catching her off guard and fully intending to kill her. He didn’t even bother with the weapons he kept on his person, his favorite mace and dagger.

-More on General Star’s decision to kill Moon as quickly as possible when given the chance: 1) Star was fresh from the death of the mewman queen, the new one had just shown up in front of him not long after, he could end the direct Butterfly line right there. It would be critically key and appropriate for defeating the kingdom that oppressed his people and seeking revenge/justice, if he could end that line, that source of direct hereditary leadership among the enemy. 2) General Star believed the full context of the mewman-monster conflict had to be considered; the mewmans had invaded his people’s homeland, they had massacred so many of his people and had the gall to celebrate that, they continued to oppress them and make no effort to alleviate his people’s suffering or try to repair the damage they had caused--the situation was enough that the mewman ruling kingdom and their leaders were fair game as targets marked even for death, there was nothing to require that he spare them, he owed them nothing. 3) General Star felt he could read enough in his brief time with Moon directly, by what little of her nature and actions he could see, that she would be closed off like the majority of mewmans and not open to his people’s suffering or how her kingdom was directly responsible for that. He didn’t see her willing at all to look beyond her own mother’s death or the exclusive well-being of her kingdom at the larger picture that couldn’t be ignored, the fact that the status quo mewmans enjoyed had driven Star and his rebels to violent resistance when most other options had been exhausted. The “peace treaty” was a joke, nothing that would truly help monsters or make mewmans give up what they had taken from them. The thought of a useless treaty with invaders galled Star. The thought of them never fully acknowledging the extent of the wrong they did to his people galled him. And so, General Star tried to kill Moon.

-Chauncey had moved to defend his princess, but Star had grabbed the animal with his tail, while the rest of him quickly beat a surprised Moon down with a few hard and fast strikes.

-Moon had dropped her wand, and General Star quickly grabbed it in his claws.

-His troops had watched on with delight, and a heady rush of triumph and awe had pierced through the battlerage that had descended upon Star, he’d taken the royal wand pretty easily--though wait, there were...rumors, about what the wand could do to monsters that held it...but those were just--

-Then the wand acted strange, treacherous--it shifted into a shape that stared at him, painful veins ran up from where he held it to the rest of his arm, Star knew the wand spoke to him, tried to order him around, and wouldn’t let him open his claws to drop it. When he tried to fight back, the wand sometimes shifted into a shape that fittingly had a star, and wings--he never got a good look at it, as it swiftly switched back to the eye shape that spoke to his mind and stared at him. General Star, struggling madly and thoughts going wild, tried to claw at the hand trapped around the wand with his free hand--then he pulled it close and tried to bite at it--

-Buff Frog came from behind and struck, and that external help was enough to make General Star let go of the wand and stumble back into his adviser's arms, weakened by the fight with the wand.

-(*The ending of “Lobster Claws” will stick in my mind forever. That wand looked alive and like it wanted to possess its bearer for a moment. Still think the wand is hiding something sentient and malevolent, and it built up some kind of level of anti-monster defenses after being used against them for so long by mewmans.)

-Moon took her chance, after watching in shock, and after General Star had dropped Chauncey--her attacker was sufficiently distracted--Moon took up the wand, and shaken by how harshly and quickly General Star had taken her down, Moon fires Eclipsa’s spell without thinking to choose a specific target on his body to aim for, forgetting even the possibility of avoiding Eclipsa’s freedom while getting what she wanted. Or to even think to aim only at the Septarian, and not Buff Frog who hovered worriedly over him.

-Though out of it, General Star at least notices Moon’s attack, and immediately shoves Buff Frog out of the way, but as for himself--

-Rasticore moves forward and grabs his general’s arm, tries to yank him out of the way. Rasticore partially succeeds, enough that Moon’s spell only strikes General Star’s eye and the area of flesh around it, rather than a direct hit to his head.

-(A lot of the above is happening very fast, faster than the amount of words used to describe it.)

-Star’s eye doesn’t regenerate as expected, and while his army initially grows confused and disturbed, and Moon begins to feel some victory and lower her guard, Star takes maybe a few seconds to basically acknowledge, “well, that’s a thing,” look at Moon and notice the dark marks on her arms, and then just immediately attacks her again, pulling out his dagger. Star slices the hand holding her wand off, right about at the border where dark marks meet bare skin, thinking he still needs to separate her from the wand--especially now--and trying to figure out what is up with those marks...

-Their general’s continued battlerage and determination to fight lights a spark among his troops, and they all join him in combat. If they could strike hard and fast like the general, if they could support him, if they stuck together, they may have a chance still. They were all angry at the mewmans oppressing them, they had a right to be angry over what the mewmans had done; they had come this far, they had killed a queen, they could not back down now. 

-Moon saved from being mobbed by General Star and his army when the Magic High Commission and other mewman forces finally come to back her up.

-General Star has ignited a huge fight outside of Butterfly castle between his rebel monster army and the ruling mewman kingdom.

-General Star keeps a death grip on Moon’s severed hand with his tail, he’s keeping that, he needs to figure out what the hell she did, what is up with those marks...

-The fight ends up going badly for General Star and his forces, becoming a massacre, once an even more pressured and maimed Moon truly snaps and fully unleashes a wider strike of Eclipsa’s spell in a fit of desperation and rage. Her blast wipes out most of the monster army. Rasticore loses an eye and an arm.

-Snapping out of his own battlerage and realizing the day was lost, and he had to protect what was left and regroup for another attempt, General Star calls for a retreat. Buff Frog drags Rasticore away. Others do the same with their few remaining and injured comrades. Star viciously taunts Moon, even with her mother’s death, to goad her and her forces into focusing on him and distracting her from his surviving troops. 

-General Star and his surviving troops manage to escape the battle with Moon. They do regroup. They eventually manage to recruit a few more monsters, but never fully make up in terms of numbers for what they lost. Nothing ever makes up for the emotional cost.

-General Star and Rasticore confirm that except for where Moon hit them with the spell directly, they can still regenerate every other part of themselves.

-Queen Moon gains a mechanical prosthetic for her missing forearm, that she keeps hidden along with the dark spell marks on her remaining arm, with long gloves she wears.

-When thinking of Moon after the battle that permanently took his eye and slaughtered so many of his original troops and also maimed Rasticore, General Star’s thoughts are clouded with thoughts of revenge, wanting to make her pay for the monsters she slaughtered. Revenge has always been one of the motives that drive General Star, but now Moon is among those he wants a very personal revenge against. When he tried to kill her the first time, of course there was revenge then--but it was a general revenge against what she represented, and also a desire to end the direct royal Butterfly line, especially since he had recently eliminated the queen before that.

-But Princess Toffee gives General Star pause, when she’s first born. When planning attacks on Moon, General Star does consider what he’d do with the newborn heir should he successfully kill her mother, and thinks he would spare her, and keep her close. General Star has a weakness and fondness for babies; he realizes that applies even to mewman ones. And he thinks it would be okay when the new princess grew up, because General Star would have taught her the right things, the bare minimum being, “don’t grow up into an invading conqueror and cruel and-slash-or apathetic racist like your ancestors.” 

-General Star covers up his magically maimed face with an eyepatch. He jokes with Rasticore that they’re “eyepatch besties” now, and is pleased when Rasticore grins back. Star gushes over his friend’s mechanical arm, and always makes sure it’s in working order. 

-General Star continues to fight Moon, engaging in quite a few battles with her. During one of these fights, Star loses track of Rasticore in the chaos of battle. When he continues to fail to find him in the aftermath, Star reluctantly and bitterly concludes he’s dead too. Star grows more vengeful toward Moon.

(-General Star and the rest of the monster rebels don’t realize Rasticore was taken alive by Miss Heinous, and brainwashed into serving her, an extension of her brainwashing efforts with princesses and her guard dogs.)

-After the last fight they will have for a very long time, General Star grows suspicious of why Moon has him banished and imprisoned, rather than execute him, after everything he’s done. He’s aware she can do it easily with whatever anti-regeneration spell she had. But she hasn’t even used it since that first disastrous battle, and that makes him suspicious too. Though General Star had kept the queen’s severed and dark-marked arm preserved and stashed away somewhere hidden, he had not managed to learn much from it. Nor had he managed to find much information on why the wand had gone berserk and mind-controlling when he held it in his claws. The only thing General Star could ever think was that the wand really hated monsters, whose shit It constantly wrecked.

-General Star is imprisoned for the bulk of Princess Toffee’s life, until she turns 14 and inherits the wand. At that point Buff Frog--who came to work for the Avarius family and then Ludo after Star had been captured and the rebel army fully dissolved without their leader--learned Star was actually still alive and where he was being held. (Moon had it publicly reported that General Star had been executed, and also tried to ban talk of him and erase proof of his existence.)

-General Star almost withdraws from making connections to other people after what he lost, to avoid inviting more personal pain--but he manages to still connect to others, to still be willing to care and risk the pain that may invite. He also manages to maintain his optimism.

-Buff Frog frees General Star, happily reunites with him and helps him physically recover from prison, and gets him a job with Ludo’s small army.

-At first a recovering Star is content to work with Buff Frog under Ludo, whom Star at first assumes is a new monster rebel joining the fight against the Butterfly kingdom. Star still an emotional person, and after everything, his confidence in his ability to lead isn’t that great. He’s willing to go back to being a follower for now (he had worked his way up to the rank of general before, which had required following someone else’s orders for a time).

-But after watching Ludo’s mistreatment of his troops, Star gets fed up, grabs Ludo’s dimensional scissors, and throws the smaller monster into the void.

-Up to this point, Ludo’s army had largely grown very fond of the friendly ex-general--but with the way Star very easily banishes Ludo, they’re freaked out by him for the first time. Even Buff Frog is concerned.

-But eventually things work out with the group and General Star takes over, with Buff Frog remaining at his side. General Star resumes his research into the wand and mewman magic...

-When Buff Frog adopts the tadpole monster babies, General Star happily babysits for him whenever he needs it. General Star adores the tadpoles.

-General Star still hesitates with Princess Toffee, when he finds that she hesitates. He feels that he can read something actually more open with the new princess, more open than her mother. General Star tries to act less rashly with this princess, and take more time to observe and evaluate her. When he tries to learn more about what he missed while in prison, including gathering more intel on the new heir, he catches gossip of the details of what the kingdom considered her lowborn and illegitimate birth, and the generally negative response to that. It adds to the disdain General Star has built up for mewmans in general after a lifetime of being oppressed by them; they’re just so cruel. General Star also realizes this could partly explain why Princess Toffee seems more open to his people’s plight and seem more estranged from the mewman kingdom--and it’s something he can try to use.   

-Turning Princess Toffee against the Butterfly Kingdom could be really ideal.

-One of General Star’s super dark secrets: He’s part Mewman. His parents were a monster and half-monster; his half-monster parent was Eclipsa’s child. Yes, General Star can call Eclipsa, “Grandma.”

-Then what’s the approximate age of General Star? To be honest, I’m not certain about that in brainstorming right now. (”But even if he’s Eclipsa’s /grandchild/, he must be--” I will forever see time travel/being sent centuries forward in time as totally a possibility in this bizarre fantasy world. Also, there may be other AU things I could do with this.)

And that is it, that’s all I have for now. Thanks so much for reading!