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spaceorphan18 · 4 years

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Kurt Duets Ranked

Part 2 of my Kurt Performances series, we move onto duets -- which will probably the least exciting of conversations, because this isn’t going to be much different than my Klaine Duets rankings. I didn’t go check that, however, so we’ll see how I feel about them now that more time has passed.

Meanwhile, the thing about the duets section is that while there are a ton of great songs in this one, it feels limited. Glee didn’t like to stray from what it knew worked, and therefore, we get Kurt having only a handful of duet partners, and only two of them make up a majority of the songs. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get more Kurt and Mercedes duets, but even more unfortunate that Kurt didn’t sing with a larger variety of people. I mean, could you imagine a season 4 Kurt/Santana duet? Or something season 1 or 2 with Kurt/Quinn? Lots of possibilities, little room for experimentation.

That said - I do enjoy a vast majority of these songs, and like the solos, most of them complement Kurt’s story nicely.

Kurt Duets Ranked:

27. Candles (Original Song, 2x16)

You guys can’t seriously be surprised by this, right? As with all of these numbers, I went back to listen to see if I’ve changed my mind. Nope. And here’s the funny part - I actually do like this song. But the arrangement, production, and context of this number is terrible. My theory is that Original Song had so many songs in it that they were rushed to get this one done. Coupled with the fact that that the arrangement was redone (by Darren? - idk, Darren’s usually better than this.) and probably rushed means that it was just sloppy by the time they got to production.

From a music point of view, the arrangement is not complementary to either of their voices, and both of them clash on harmonies and go out of tune multiple times throughout the song. On top of that, the emotion of the song is completely off. It’s a break up song -- purposely more tailored for the Finchel story line at the time -- but doesn’t mesh well with Klaine’s getting together story. It feels awkward and out of place, and one of those times where I think who ever picked this song made a bad choice.

I know there are those out there who like it -- and that’s great! Don’t let me slow you down. But it will remain a weak link in an otherwise solid discography.

26. Get Back (Tina in the Sky with Diamonds, 5x02)

While this is way, way better than Candles, I do think it’s a weaker number for Kurt, and Kurt/Rachel, seeing that you’ll see they have some fantastic numbers coming up on this list. Not a favorite Beatles song of mine in the first place, not helping is the fact that this song should have a grittier and harsher sound than either of these relatively more classically trained vocalists can give it.

There is some fun with the choreography (weird NYADA piano tuning thing aside - that’s not how you tune pianos...), and Kurt and Rachel’s voices mesh just fine, but the rest of songs on the list just offer a bit more.

25. Memory (Old Dogs, New Tricks, 5x19)

This one is... rough. And it makes me sad to say that about a song picked specifically by Chris Colfer. For Kurt’s part, it’s a perfectly adequate rendition of Memory, though I think it lacks any of the deeper emotion that Kurt normally brings to his solos. But marring it further is the addition of June Squibb (who doesn’t have the same caliber of voice) and the fact that the scene itself is a bit of forced sentimentality. I get what Chris was going for in the script, but we’ve barely met these people, and they’re not memorable enough for us to get a tug on the heartstrings that this song wants us to have. The scene just kinda falls flat. (I’m sorry Chris!)

24. Lucky Star (Old Dogs, New Tricks, 5x19)

I promise, I’m not picking on Chris, even if the two songs he specifically wrote for himself are down here at the bottom. At least this one has more entertainment value even if I think it’s not a great performance. Kurt flying around as Peter Pan is super cute, and the song choice works relatively well with the scene. Once again, though, June Squibb’s Maggie is not a vocalist (And that’s fine - she’s a super cute old person), as well as this is bogged down in that weird sentimentality Memory was going for. It’s not really good, but at least it’s entertaining.

23. Story of My Life (The Back Up Plan, 5x18)

On a list featuring the what works and doesn’t for Kurt’s performances, this one just... oy. First of all, technically, the boys sound fine. Their voices mesh just fine, as usual, though Blaine’s voice is better suited for these slightly melodramatic boy band numbers. It’s a fine song to listen to in the car. Watching the performance, though, is rough. It’s done that way intentionally, to fit the context of the story -- and while it’s supposed to be comedic, to me it comes off as awkward and cringeworthy. Kurt has some odd performance choices, but normally a good performer, and this makes him kind of a bumbling idiot for the sake of the story, to the point where I rarely ever watch this one. I get what they were going for, and enjoy the song as just a song, but am not really a fan of the actual performance.

22. It’s Too Late (Jagged Little Tapestry, 6x03)

This one I definitely have some mixed feelings about. The song is fine, albeit a little on the pop-y side, though that’s intentional for the theme of the episode. And it’s the first time one of these songs directly commentating on the story that’s actually going on with Kurt. On the one hand, the angst of the scene is played well, and these boys pining for each other works for this part of the story. On the other, the vocals are a tad on the generic side (though these boys always sound great each other), and I’m still not sure I understand what was going on with the fantasy element during the middle of the song. Still, it accomplish the feel the story needed, which is why it gets bumped up here.

21. I Am Changing (New Directions, 5x13)

We only get two Kurtcedes duets on this show, which is a damn travesty. But what makes it harder is this one is, well, a little one sided. Mercedes freakin’ brings the house down with her half of the song -- clearly Amber Riley deserves all the credit she got for doing Dream Girls. Kurt, on the other hand, sounds a little rough here. I’m not sure if it’s because Chris’s voice changed during the show, and it actually got deeper, or if it’s due to the weird production values of season 5, but Kurt’s solo verse is a bit harsh and unrefined, and not in a good way. Mercedes saves it and steals the show, and when the two come together they sound fantastic, but this one gets dropped a little further down because it’s just not a strong one for Kurt. Add to that the fact that they’re trying to make Rachel and Santana be friends again, and the song is unfortunately a weaker one.

20. I Believe In A Thing Called Love (Frenemies, 5x09)

Look, I love Elliott, and I love that Adam Lambert came onto the show. He and Chris had some great chemistry, which actually does show through this performance. It’s fun and crazy and a bit out of Kurt’s normal repertoire, but that’s okay, because Kurt lets loose a little, and it’s really fun to watch. No - Kurt can’t match Elliott when it comes to the heavier rock material -- this is much better suited for Lambert than it is for Colfer, and there are times when Kurt kind of gets overshadowed and out performed, but that’s fine. We get to see Kurt pole dance - I think that’s justification enough to have it where it is on the list.

19. White Christmas (Glee, Actually, 4x10)

Believe it or not, out of the three Christmas duets Kurt and Blaine have, this is my favorite to listen to. I love this song, and I love this arrangement. They sound gorgeous on it as it highlights the strengths of their voices when singing together. My biggest issue is, really, with the scene overall. Look - it’s not easy choreographing people who aren’t used to doing routines on ice skates, and I get that. But due to that fact, the performance ends up being a lot of shots of people who aren’t Kurt and Blaine, and that’s a shame. The other two Christmas duets are much more in sync than this one, and this one is really being held back by the technical difficulty. Still - I like the song, and the context that it’s in, which is why it’s as high as it is.

18. Let it Snow (Extraordinary Merry Christmas, 3x09)

While lower than it perhaps deserves, upon watching it again, I know I’m placing it higher on the list of Klaine duets. It’s an incredibly hard number to do with all the dance steps and vocal runs, and the two of them nail it while being in character as their characters and as the Christmas special characters. I’m kind of in awe at the technical ability of this one, and it’s a shame the writers didn’t always play to Kurt and Blaine’s (and Chris and Darren’s) strengths. It’s not a personal favorite of mine, nor does the song hold much weight with their story, but it’s an incredible embodiment of what makes Klaine - Klaine, and showcases how well they can work together when given really good material.

17. You Make Me Feel So Young (New, New York, 5x14)

This is one of those songs that I go back and forth on, and really could write a dissertation on it, because I think there are a lot of elements both internal and external going on, which makes the onscreen performance... weird. But I feel like that would get way too long for the likes of this already too long post. So, I’ll say this. Vocally, they sound fantastic together, which is why I think it deserves to be up there on the list. It’s also one of the few times that we get to see genuine domestic Klaine being themselves with each other, which is also very cool. My issues with the acting and directing of the scene are very nitpicky, and it all lines up with my growing consensus that one of the weaker elements of season 5 were the musical numbers, but if y’all want more, I’ll do another post on just this song specifically. For now, I’ll just say that I enjoy the good things about the song, even if some of it leaves an awkward taste in my mouth.

16. Animal (Sexy, 2x15)

Animal is one of the few truly comedic performances Kurt gets to do. Between the silly sexy faces, euphemistic foam, and overkill addition of plastic balls, it’s hard to take this one very seriously, but that is the point. Both boys sound great on it, and it’s a lot of fun to watch -- being cringy in a good way. I really don’t have any criticisms of it besides I just prefer the others on the list just a bit more. But we’re getting into that territory where I think all of these songs are solidly good, and on any given day, I could rearrange the whole list.

15. 4 Minutes (The Power of Madonna, 1x15)

The second, and original, of the Kurtcedes duets, this is the first time in the show that Kurt gets to turn his sexy on, and it’s really awesome that they give him the chance to shine in such a way. Despite the fact that Kurt is doing the occasional weird hand gesture and choreography in this one, he and Mercedes play off each other incredibly well, and it’s a shame they never let these two really get to do anything once the juggernaut of Hummelberry came along. No, the song isn’t the best for Kurt’s voice, but sometimes it’s the spectacle of what’s going on during the number rather than how it sounds.

14. Love is a Battlefield (Tested, 5x16)

Showing that not all Season 5′s numbers were, well, not up to par as everything else, we’ve got this Klaine duet, which might be one of my favorite pieces of choreography and showmanship on the show. I really don’t like the song, at all, which I know goes against the grain of a lot of you, but it’s a testament to how powerful this number is visually that I’ve ranked it so high. (It’s about anger sex guys, and more sexual than the scarcely few sexy time-ish scenes we actually got.) The boys sound great on it, and the layered acting in it is pitch perfect. I love this duet, even if I’m not a fan of the song.

13. Ding, Dong, The Witch is Dead (The Purple Piano Project, 3x01)

Well, there is a reason Hummelberry was what it became, and this showcases that to perfection. The song isn’t worth much story wise, but it does show just how wonderfully these two play against each other, as well as sounding great together. This song is playful and light and the perfect showcase for what real talents they both are. I have my issues with Hummelberry (really, I do) but I can’t deny that they’re standout performers together, and everything about this number comes together to show that off.

12. Perfect (I Kissed a Girl, 3x07)

Look, this list is subjective. Yes, there are a few that stand over the rest and a few that are really not that great, but most of Kurt’s duets, like his solos, are really all solid performances. And I just happen to really love this song. I’m not going to defend Blaine’s questionable rapping or the context this song is performed in the episode. But what I will say is that I love what the lyrics have to say about Klaine’s relationship at the time, and the fact that they both (but especially Kurt) sound so great here. Plus, I enjoy jamming out to this one in my car.

11. Daydream Believer (Dreams Come True, 6x13)

This just happens to be one of my favorite songs ever, and I’m so glad this got to be the last Klaine duet. I have no issues about how well they sound together. As cute as they are dancing with the kids, I do wish the context would have been totally different -- I wish that they were singing this to each other -- or their own child. But I still think it’s a pretty meaningful song, and I love it, so here we are.

10. Just Can’t Get Enough (I Do, 4x14)

I unabashedly love this song. Sure the song is rather repetitive and is going on during other people’s plot lines, but every time I hear this one, I just want to get up and dance along with it. The boys sound great on it, and they get to be rather flirty in the moments that the camera is actually on them. If only the had more screen time, I probably put this one higher near the top.

9. Somebody Loves You (Transitioning, 6x07)

A lot like Just Can’t Get Enough, this duet is flirty and adorable and I love everything about it. They sound great together and, as usual, play off each other well. On top of that, the song itself plays nicely into the Klaine story of the moment, which I appreciate. It’s not a perfect performance, but an incredibly enjoyable one, and that’s what matters.

8. American Boy (The Untitled Rachel Berry Project, 5x20)

Are either Kurt or Blaine suite for Rap and R&B? No, not really, but do I care? No. As you’ve probably noticed, I love these flirty duets, this is one of the best ones. Sure, they don’t really capture the style or tone of the original very well. But they’re having a lot of fun out there and being adorable while doing it. And Kurt simulates having sex. I mean, do I really need to say more? But really - I actually enjoy this song a lot, so there we go.

7. Popular (2009, 6x12)

This is easily the best performance of Kurt’s limited performances in season 6. Kurt and Rachel haven’t head a duet together since Season Five’s Get Back (interesting right?) but they’re able to turn right back on the magic that was going on in the earlier seasons. This song is near perfection -- the acting is solid, the performance is layered -- being both comedic and a commentary about the both of them, and they sound wonderful together. This is truly a treat for the end of the series, and I’m a little sad the rest of the season didn’t put as much effort into its musical numbers.

6. Come What May (Girls and Boys on Film, 4x15)

The thing about Come What May, for me, is that it’s deeply a romantic song - and shot (intentionally) in a very movie-like way. I love so much about this, from the staging, to the bit of flashbacks setting the tone at the beginning, to the misdirect and reveal that it’s really Kurt’s fantasy and not Blaine’s. Vocally, there are a few weaker spots towards the beginning, but that can be overlooked when visually and lyrically there is so much wonderful things going on here. I love when a performance can have layers to it -- and this one say so much about Kurt as a character and the head space that he’s in, while being deeply romantic without being vulgar, that it firmly takes a spot near the top of the list.

5. Got to Get You Into My Life (Love, Love, Love, 5x01)

The thing that’s so great about good Klaine duets is their push and pull of each other. This duet has a ton of that -- each of them playing against each other in such a flirty way. They sound great, they look great, the number has a ton of energy, and the bright tone is a nice change from all the somberness that came along with season 4. It’s a visual treat as well as a aural one, and nearly flawless in execution, which is why it’s ranked so high on the list.

4. Rockstar (New, New York, 5x14)

Is this really one of Kurt’s best duets? Technically, probably not. I don’t really care - I. Love. This. Song. Really, I listen to it all the time, and it’s just a song I never tire of. It’s really Adam Lambert’s show, and Kurt is kind of dancing around like the littler brother of the rockstar that is Elliot ‘Starchild’ Gilbert. And I do think Kurt and Elliot’s voices mesh rather well -- even if Kurt’s overshadowed a bit here. But that’s all fine - because this song makes me happy for no other reason that it does, and that’s a fine reason to be near the top of the list.

3. Baby, It’s Cold Outside (A Very Glee Christmas, 2x10)

I keep trying to think of reasons not to put this as the number one Klaine duets. I keep looking at the list thinking that something else about one of the other duets will stand out more, and I just can’t. This scene and this performance is damn near flawless. I’ve already talked about this scene at length, and I really don’t have anything new to add, but here’s the thing -- this song sounds wonderful, the game of cat and mouse they play with each other is one of the best scenes on the entire show, and I can’t say enough at how brilliant and layered and amazing this scene is. Hands down, best Klaine duet, and one of the best overall duets on the show.

2. Happy Days Are Here Again/Get Happy (Duets, 2x04)

The thing is, about this duet, is that it’s iconic. Just hands down iconic. Not only were they able to take an old school mash-up done by Babs and Judy and make it their own, but they gave it the same amount of power and emotion the original had as well. I don’t think it’s easy to sit on a stool and make any kind of song engaging but these two are able to do it. They sound flawless on a technically difficult song. There’s subtly and nuance in the performance. There’s balance and give and take. And contextually, it fits in nicely with where each of the characters are at. On top of that, it’s a really great arrangement of these two songs in the first place. I have nothing but good things to say about one of my favorite songs and favorite performances on the show. And while Hummelberry has so, so many issues as a friendship -- their ability to make amazing performances together was not one of them.

1. For Good (New York, 2x22)

I went back and forth on what the order of the top three would be -- they could easily be interchangeable they’re all so good. But here’s the thing about this one. I feel like this one just takes an extra step up in, well, everything -- the performance level, the context, the layers of emotion woven through this song, it just hangs itself up a little higher than the rest of them. Yes, Kurt and Rachel sound as good as they ever do -- playing off each other and meshing with each other brilliantly. But this song is a grand musical theater piece that they pull off masterfully.

But on top of that... The weight this song has is given is higher than pretty much any other song on this list. it’s a perfect fitting song that punctuates their paralleling journey throughout the season. This song is a final statement and thesis of everything that became before it, and because of that, I’m ranking it as the best of Kurt’s duets.

#finding kh #kurt hummel #non link no photos version #because tumblr is the worst and has a million restrictions

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shirtlesssammy · 4 years

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5x18: Point of No Return

Hey-our first request episode! It’s a good one, considering Adam might (?) be coming back this season, and then there’s the whole fathers are shitty theme. Oh, and Dean and Cas are fighting.

Then:

Remember Adam?

Now:

In an empty bar in Nowhere, USA, Zachariah commiserates with a man about The Man. Then the walls start shaking and the other guy wonders if it’s an earthquake. The place lights up and Zach sullenly admits that it’s his boss. Before you know it, the bartender and other guy’s eyes are burned out and Zach is back in the heavenly business.

On the alcohol train to Sad Town, Dean packs his only belongings (minus Baby, I guess) in preparation to saying yes to Michael. We say goodbye to the leather jacket (for good --well, I think we see it in Swan Song too, but --like, how crazy is it that there was a fundamental shift in the storytelling of the show when that jacket was stolen after season 5? Would Dean still be wearing it to this day? I would like to think that isn’t true.) He boxes up the jacket, Baby’s keys, his gun, and writes a letter. Oh, and he downs hard liquor straight from the bottle the whole melodramatic time he’s doing this. (Side note: he’s staying at Mike’s Travel Inn which is wonderfully fitting since he plans to become Michael’s own personal travel inn. Wanek!)

For Drama Llama Dean Science:

Sam finds Dean and confirms Dean’s own plans to him. Sam wants Dean to wait on this plan of letting Michael take him. Bobby has a plan. Okay, he doesn’t, but Sam is going to stop him anyway. Dean gets in a good dig about Sam not having demon blood to help him. Sam counters that he still brought help. Before Dean can react, Cas has flapped in and he zaps Dean back to Bobby’s.

Urgh, those were the days. Sometimes I REALLY miss flying Cas.

At Bobby’s we have a pissed off Dean, pissed off Cas, pissed off Bobby, and a peacemaker Sam. Bobby calls Dean “son”, and Dean counters that he isn’t Dean’s father. OUCH and a HALF. Bobby then shows Dean the bullet he wants to put through his brain. He doesn’t though because he promised Dean that he’d keep fighting.

Cas is suddenly hit with a massive wave of angel radio goodness and he’s gone. (I just love the editing of when Cas flaps away. Sigh.)

Cas ends up in a field somewhere.

For Side-profile Science:

In his attempt to investigate something coming out of the ground, two other angels attack him. He is an effortlessly badass angel though, and dispatches them with

I’m sorry, what was I saying?

He pulls someone from the ground and takes him back to Bobby’s. It’s Adam, Sam and Dean’s long lost/dead half-brother. Okay, the dramatic camera zooms and swelling music was just A+ soapy drama there. Cas engraves angel warding on Adam’s ribs and wakes him from his graveyard coma. Adam knows who Sam and Dean are --because the angels warned him about them. He demands to see Zachariah. Wherps.

They let him clean up, give him some hard liquor, and ask him to tell them his story. He tells them that he was in heaven (or prom to him) and angels interrupt to tell him he’s going to save the world. He’s the archangel Michael’s vessel. Dean thinks that’s insane. Cas points out that Adam is also of John Winchester’s bloodline, and Sam’s brother. Dean forgets he’s with company and propositions Cas.

Sam tries telling Adam that the angels are lying to him. Adam doesn’t believe him. Sam asks him to give them time to prove they’re right. He tells Adam that “they’re blood” and that’s why they should be trusted. (Dean’s little smile at that...like I get how that’s important to Dean, but also, I love how SO much about this show is how important these bonds are despite there being no blood between this found family.) Adam is appalled. They’re not family. John wasn’t his father (AND can we talk about how fucking jealous Dean was that John actually did things, like baseball games, with Adam, and Adam saw those baseball games as nothing? John wasn’t there for him on a day to day basis and so he wasn’t Adam’s father. Ugh, John was the woooorrsst.) (Dean’s little half-smile about John was also worth watching.)

Later, Adam tries making an escape but Sam catches him, and sits him down with a beer to discuss John.

Sam thinks Adam was lucky to not have John around all year (Ahem, you didn’t either, Sam…) Adam was alone a lot because his mom worked. He raised himself. Ugh, kinda like you and Dean, right Sam? Then Adam makes a Family Vacation reference and we KNOW he’s related to Dean. Btw, where are Dean and Cas during this convo?

Dean’s checking out Bobby’s safe room when Sam and Cas show up. Cas silently flirts with Dean. Dean forgets he’s in front of Sam and flirts right back at Cas. These two are killing me this season. They’re in that sweet spot of flirting before it all goes to hell. SIGH.

For the record, I’d like to point out that Cas was making that face at him the whole time they were in the living room with Bobby before Adam showed up. Also, I’d like to point out that both Dean and Cas were missing when Adam tried to escape.

Dean and Sam talk in private about not letting Adam let Michael in. Sam lets Dean know he’s not letting him do it either. Um, then Dean lists all the people that they’ve “gotten killed”, and I’d like to give a big shout out “Fuck you” to Chuck himself. According to Dean they got everyone killed! He’s “also tired of fighting who he’s supposed to be.” UGGH. Dean tells Sam that he doesn’t think Sam will be able to withstand the devil, so he’s got to be there to fight. Sam walks away.

Upstairs, Cas watches Adam intently as though making sure he won’t sleep walk away. When Sam heads upstairs, totally wrecked, Cas makes his way back down to the basement. (To finish their assignation - right, Boris?) He hears a crash. Dean Bean’s nowhere to be seen in the safe room so Cas opens the door. Dean directs his attention to a cabinet door with a bloody angel banishing sigil on it. BOOM! Cas out.

Dean creeps out of the basement through the cellar hatch. JellyDEAN noooooo!

Sam heads out to track down Dean, leaving Bobby to watch over Adam. In his dreams, Adam chillaxes at a playground when Zachariah smarmily flaps in. Zach tells Adam that he’ll see his mom soon, but first he’s got to figure out how to escape. Zachariah warns Adam about the Winchesters, describing Sam and Dean as dangerously codependent and more interested in saving each other than the world. Which is sorta...valid? “They’re not your family. Understand?”

Outside a bar, a street preacher shouts at random passerby when Dean runs up and asks if he knows who Dean Winchester is. “Dear god, yes,” the preacher replies (for all of us).

The preacher starts to pray to the angels about Dean’s location when Cas zaps him unconscious.

Cas flips the fuck out. “I rebelled for this?” he shouts as he bashes Dean around in the alley. “I gave everything for you. And this is what you give to me?”

Dean, always a glutton for punishment, eggs Cas on. Cas should destroy him! Why not? Don’t you know who he is??? He’s Dean Winchester, PROM KING of Self-Loathing High. Cas stops punching out his feelings. His fist uncurls.

He zaps Dean unconscious instead.

Back at Bobby’s house, Adam’s disappeared and Sam is a leeeetle bit stressed out.

Cas flaps in with a majorly roughed up Dean and announces that he was the cause of Dean’s injuries. Hashtag Dangerbird-of-the-Lord. About Adam’s whereabouts, Cas speculates that the angels nabbed him and took him to the Beautiful Room from season four.

Cue the close-up on baroque art, beer, and burgers. Adam’s enjoying his last meal when Zachariah flaps in to hand him a pink slip. “You’re not so much the ‘chosen one’ as you are a clammy scrap of bait.”

“Son of a bitch,” Adam mutters, Winchesterily.

Adam’s starting to realize that Zachariah is a pretty terrible friend. Zachariah reinforces this conclusion by making Adam cough up blood.

Down in Bobby’s panic room, Dean’s chained to the bed.

Sam fills Dean in on the situation: Adam’s being held prisoner at a location which is CRAWLING with angels. To Dean’s surprise, Sam unlocks Dean’s manacle. They need him for the fight ahead and Sam has faith that Dean will make the right choice - even if nobody else believes in him. Dean rewards this touching show of faith by swearing up and down that he’ll say yes to Michael at the first chance he gets. DEAN. BEAN. Sam’s faith in Dean is simply derived: “You’re still my big brother.” (*crying noise crying noise*)

Outside the warehouse, Cas flaps in with the Winchesters.

Dean’s surprised to learn that the Beautiful Room is in Van Nuys, California and not on Jupiter or (bless this boy) in a blade of grass. Cas tells them there are five extremely good warriors inside and he can’t fight them all off. He starts to take off his tie and IS IT GETTING HOT IN HERE?

Cas tells them that he’ll take care of the angels and then they can rescue Adam. Cas BBY.

Devastating dialogue alert:

Dean: Whoa, wait. You’re gonna take on five angels?

Cas: Yes.

Dean: Isn’t that suicide?

Cas: Maybe it is. But then I won’t have to watch you fail. I’m sorry, Dean. I don’t have the same faith in you that Sam does.

Cas whips out a box cutter. The next scene sees him striding into the warehouse alone. His spidey sense tingles. It’s an angel! Cas kills one of them and then makes his way to the middle of the room. Quicky, he’s surrounded by the other angels. He drops his blade, rips open his shirt, and blasts them and himself away with the angel banishing sigil he carved iNTo hIS sKin.

Dean and Sam hear the commotion and when Dean heads inside, the coast is clear. Inside the Beautiful Room, Adam’s slumped by the wall. “You came for me,” he mutters, surprised.

“Yeah, you’re family,” Dean says. But it’s too late for hugs and lollipops, because Zachariah shows up, stroking his metaphorical evil mustache. Zachariah starts bleeding out Adam and Sam while Dean is EXPERIENCING STRONG EMOTIONS. (Boris: When Dean says “Damnit, Zachariah” I only hear “Dean” from The Real Ghostbusters, and realize what a great job he did impersonating a character he had only read about.)

Dean agrees to say yes. While Zachariah calls down Michael, Dean takes one last look at Sam. Thoughts and feelings flit past like clouds and suddenly Dean arrives at a Realization™. He smiles, then winks at Sam.

Dean starts issuing his demands before he’ll turn over his body but number one on his list is that Michael destroys Zachariah.

RECORD SCRATCH

Dean refers to himself as a “sweet ass” which is not wrong, while Zachariah presses close to Dean threateningly, boasting that Michael would never kill him. No worries because Dean’s gonna smite you instead. With Zachariah close, Dean whips up Cas’s dropped angel blade and jams it up into Zachariah’s jaw.

The room shakes as Michael approaches. Sam, Dean, and Adam make for the door. Sam and Dean escape but the door slams shut in front of Adam. A bright light suffuses him and...that’s it.

Later, they recap in the Impala. Adam and Cas are in the wind but finding them is an issue for another episode. Because right now Sam needs to address Dean’s almost-yes moment. Dean explains his sudden change of mind. “The walls are coming down on us, and I look over to you and all I can think about is, ‘this stupid son of a bitch brought me here.’ I just didn’t want to let you down.” Dean apologizes to Sam for treating him like a kid. “Screw destiny right in the face. I say we take the fight to them, and do it our way.”

Battle brother mode ACTIVATED!

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Is That a Quote in Your Pocket or are You Just Happy to See Me?

You know, eight months of turned pages and screwed pooches but tonight, tonight’s when the magic happens.

Blow me, Cas.

We’re working on the power of love.

Maybe you could take a half a second and stop trying to sacrifice yourself for a change?

You pray too loud.

Watch your tone, boy.

Don’t piss of the nerd angels.

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jennikkugoesoff · 5 years

Text

Jennikku goes off about a Sonic the Hedgehog Reboot.

If you follow me at all or have read many of my other rants, you’ll know I love Sonic the Hedgehog. A lot, with all my heart. I met my friends through Sonic and it’s a franchise that’s changed a lot in my life, for better, for worse and everything in-between. It’s the reason I started to draw, to write and to really give creativity a chance.

It’s a series that has been through many twists, turns, up and down and all arounds over the course of it’s long, 28 (as of the time of writing) year lifespan, and has stood the test of time, being heralded either as one of the best video game franchises of all time, or, well, one of the worst out there, becoming more and more dated by each passing day.

But, it didn’t start out that way. Everyone’s told the long, terrible story now about Sonic’s massive rise to the top of 1990s American Iconography and his massive plummet into the depths of Hell, dragging his now-bitter fans down with him following the turn of the century and segwaying into the modern age, so I won’t bog you with the details you already know, but here’s the main point.

Sonic the Hedgehog... kinda sucks.

And that’s because it’s a mess. An astronomically confused, tired, and beaten mess. In the 28 year lifespan of Sonic the Hedgehog, it’s canon has become massively tangled in knots. Inconsistent games, inconsistent comics, inconsistent cartoons, and so on and so forth. Anyone who’s a fan of Sonic comes from a place where they heard about Sonic, be it the games, the cartoons, the comics, and so on, and therefore, have a different mindset about what Sonic the Hedgehog should be, which is the cause for much of the heavy, almost unpleasable climate the fan community gives off.

Really? The only way I see the series being salvageable is to wipe the slate clean and begin... at least somewhat anew, and see how these scatted pieces of broken glass we call the ‘Sonic canon’ can fit together.

This has been tried once, with Sonic Boom, but it didn’t really end well, and I’d like to change that, so let’s have this hypothetical reboot take the same form as Sonic Boom, as a potential ‘new face’ for the entire series, rather than a spinoff continuity. (I feel like this was the original intention of Sonic Boom, but due to the backlash, was revoked.)

Are you comfortable? Let’s go. It’s gonna be a long-ass, tiring, winding post.

(Seriously I spent fucking 3 days just writing this post. For that reason, there may be a few gRaMatTcul eRors here and there, just bear with me, okay? I’m tired and I just wanna heave out this monster of an idea.)

Housecleaning and on wiping the slate clean

Ok, before we actually get into redoing the series, I wanna make this clear, when I say I want to ‘wipe the slate clean’, that’s sort of an exaggeration. I don’t think Sonic needs to be completely rewritten from scratch, and certain elements of the series DO work very well, so it’s more we’re gonna ‘wipe the slate clean, but immediately redraw things back on, except bigger and better than they were before.’

The reason why is, Sonic the Hedgehog has a kind of ‘hoarder complex’ when it comes to his franchise. As I established earlier, the main problem with rebooting Sonic the Hedgehog as compared to another franchise like, say, Ducktales, or Ghostbusters, is that Sonic the Hedgehog has a lot of lore. Too much lore. Think about the crazy amount of lore surrounding Solaris, Mephiles, Dark and Light Gaia, the Wisps, Chaos, and Tikal, Shadow and the Black Arms, Silver, the Sol Dimension and Blaze, Eggman Nega, the Nocturnus Clan, the list goes on and on and on. It’s head-spinning, it’s confusing, and most of all, obtrusive to what’s actually important in the Sonic Canon versus what seems important.

This isn’t helped by the fact that Sonic has never really had a consistent ground to stand on in terms of his world and where he lives because where he lives changes with every game or new thing Sonic is in. So, introducing these new, complicated gods and grand, sprawling history all of a sudden doesn’t give the world Sonic lives in any ground or any real meaning if it’s just going to be ignored later on when Sonic Forces completely rewrites the world map from Unleashed. (This is a problem I have with the Mario and Kirby series too.)

Even if you claim something like the Sonic Archie comics have consistency in their setting, think about how much the comic’s version of Mobius changed over the course of its lifespan after not only being completely rewritten (thanks Ken Penders. I’m sure your horrific 3d render children are proud.) and two crossovers, not to mention all the subtle shifts and changes the comic made from its debut comic to its cancellation.

So, if we’re going to do this, we need to get this straight right now.

A new Sonic reboot will NEED to cover EVERY base of the Sonic continuity. Games, Comics, Cartoons, Merchandising (with the exception of maybe some anniversary stuff), The Whole Echidna- er, Enchilada.

If the problem with Sonic as it is, is that the continuity is messy because it keeps adding new stuff? THEN STOP FUCKING ADDING NEW STUFF!!

NO ONE’S GONNA LIKE THE NEW STUFF ANYWAY!!

PEOPLE FUCKING HATE CHANGE!!

THIS FRANCHISE IS SO FUCKing MiSTReATED!- FUCK!!

Nah, but seriously. If this reboot is gonna work, then it needs to BE a proper reboot. Not a side-series like Sonic Boom, not an ‘alternate dimension’ to dip into for mainline games, not a one-off series of animated shorts, no quills, no pillows. If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna go all in. At least in terms of continuity.

So, you know what we’re gonna name this reboot?

Sonic the Hedgehog

Just, Sonic the Hedgehog. Yep. All in, indeed.

Audience, Tone, and Genre

I feel maybe I should’ve split these into multiple sections, but, they really all go hand-in-hand.

If we’re gonna remake Sonic, we gotta first decide how Sonic should feel, and who he’s going to appeal to. So, let’s consider what we’re working with first, based on the history of who Sonic has appealed to.

The whole point of Sonic’s young, hip, snarky personality was to appeal to the American youth of the 1990s (kids, teenagers, and young adults), the young, hip, snarky and coolest people around. Sonic sought to identify with these kids by being a little bit ‘edgier’ and ‘cooler’ than most other cartoon characters of his era, but still with the capability to be as cute, wholesome and inherently charming as his competition. Like the perfect little blend of the sarcastic wit of Bugs Bunny and the lovable personability of Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat.

Many Sonic clones of the 1990s like Bubsy, Aero the Acrobat, and Zero the [CENSORED] Squirrel tried to piggyback off of Sonic in this manner by trying to play up Sonic’s edgy, snarky appeal, but what they lack is that more wholesome, laid back, simple, round and friendly aspects of his design. It’s why Sonic can look like this:

but also like this

like this

but also like this.

It’s why Sonic works so well as a cartoon character in animated shorts and cartoons, as well as an action character in high octane blood pumping action anime, and one of the reasons why I think his design is so appealing. It’s this, this perfect balance between cool superhero and cuddly, wholesome cartoon character that makes Sonic such the iconic character he is.

So what’s the point of me telling you that?

Well, lots of people disagree on what Sonic the Hedgehog’s tone should be, and what audience Sonic should appeal to. Many argue Sonic is a series strictly meant for children, and therefore shouldn’t take any risks and be cutesy, wholesome and bouncy. Others argue Sonic should market itself to teenagers and young adults by pushing its envelope with it’s material and turning itself into a giant melodrama with three-dimensional characters, intertwining relationships and giant, epic Dragon Ball Z style showdowns with blood, guts and the crunching of noses and teeth.

You know what’s popular right now though and seems to have been for a while? A blend of those exact two things.

It sounds dumb but, think about it. Video games and cartoons have been taking this turn toward being a little bit of the best of both worlds. Steven Universe, Undertale/Deltarune, Star Vs. The Forces of Evil, even stuff like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, that sort of thing.

So, I think a new Sonic reboot should be an Action/Adventure-Comedy. It’s a series about long, lengthy quests and the ongoing war between nature and machine, but it’s also about a quick-witted cartoon character having fun picking on an overconfident evil scientist and his lackeys.

And you know what? I think Sonic is and has shown that this is the environment he flourishes in. Think about why Sonic Mania Adventures and Team Sonic Racing: Overdrive work so well, or why OK KO: Let’s Meet Sonic! is so great! It places Sonic and co. in an environment in which they have the opportunity to be funny and cartoony, but also leaves itself open to lead into more strict action sequences or serious, emotional moments, should it feel the need to. It lets the characters be the characters, without being impeded by everything needed to be babyproofed, but also not interrupted by fanfic-tier melodramatics every 2 and a half minutes. And, considering how much any media featuring Sonic relies on its characters to garner appeal, this is important.

Besides that, this is also important for something I think is going to make this reboot go from good to great.

: ✧･ﾟ: U N I F I C A T I O N ! :･ﾟ✧ :

I’ve said this before in my other essay on how I’d reboot Sonic, but I truly feel that bringing together a lot of different elements of Sonic’s history together for this reboot is a top-notch idea for not only bringing the series back together whilst maintaining a wide appeal but also broaden the scope of potential characters, settings, and plot points we can work with, rather than just limiting it to just the classic era, or just the modern era, it also might leave veteran fans wondering just who or what was going to show up in the next game, or next episode!

Why limit ourselves to just a classic-style series or just a modern-style series? Why not mix it up a little?

Let’s take the cute classic stuff and mix it with some of the cool modern stuff!

I mean of course there’s gonna be purists but, hey, if we have a little bit of both we might just start seeing eye to eye!

So, what does that mean for the audience? Well, I think in that sense, Sonic should be able to appeal to, about anyone, really. Adults, Kids, Teenagers, anyone. It’d be like going to see a Marvel Superhero movie in the theaters or watching Spongebob on TV, yeah, it’d be something kids enjoy, but also something young adults can appreciate too. Although if we absolutely have to stick to a demographic, I’d say the ideal targets for a Sonic the Hedgehog reboot are two groups of people specifically.

Older fans of the series who grew up with the Adventure and Classic games, and Younger people who are more familiar with the modern games. As far as drawing new people or embittered old fans in?... Well, we’ll get to that.

Plot synopsis

It may seem like a no-brainer what the plot of Sonic the Hedgehog is, right? Well, of course it is. It’s been the same for over 20 years, and, I think the premise? Is fine.

“Sonic the Hedgehog is the fastest thing alive and a protector of nature who loves adventure. He’s smarmy and mischevious, but with a heart of gold and an unshakable sense of justice with a can-do attitude. His archnemesis, Dr. Eggman, wants to take over his natural, sprawling home and begin building his planet-conquering empire in its place. It’s up to Sonic and his group of friends to defeat Dr. Eggman, and restore peace to the world, and the green back to the hills.”

This? Right here? This is Sonic the Hedgehog. No matter who you ask, from any branch of the franchises thousand-foot tall family tree, this is Sonic the Hedgehog. There’s a couple of doodads and twists here and there depending on the specific game, but that’s really honestly it when you break it all down, that’s the plot of almost every Sonic game. But this can easily get lost and bogged down between all of the God-summoning and all that shit that other Sonic media does.

So, let’s keep the focus on this, and this alone. Just the ongoing misadventures, setbacks, leaps forward, threats and triumphs between Sonic and Co. and the forces of evil.

...(But let’s add the Chaos Emeralds and Master Emerald, I don’t think I can stand having a Sonic continuity without them and they make for good plot fodder, plus, I’ll be damned if I’m not seeing Super Sonic by the time a series finale or end-of-game hits.)

Setting + Background Lore

So, to set a location, let’s dumb down where Sonic actually lives. (Figuratively anyway, Sonic has no true home, just places he likes to be at any one time.)

In the Genesis days, Sonic lived on a tiny island called South Island, and the game’s settings often took place on South Island or on it’s neighboring islands Westside and Angel Island, and, given how important these old zones, like Green Hill and Chemical Plant Zone, are to the current Sonic Canon, I propose that maybe the setting for this potential reboot takes place on said islands, with one island for each of the cardinal directions on a compass, but also some of the other islands that are included in the Sonic series (as well as some adjusted ones!)

And, as a reference to the days of yore, we could even call it

The Mobius Archipelago

Each of these islands would have their own unique areas (referred to as ‘Zones’ for both nostalgia and convenience’s sake) based on the different levels from Sonic games. I’m unsure of the exact geography of these islands in question, but, you get the idea if you’re at all familiar with the canon, South Island has all the zones from Sonic 1 (16 and 8 Bit), Sonic Chaos and Sonic 2 (8-bit), Westside Island has all the zones from Sonic 2 and a couple from Sonic Mania, Angel Island has all the Zones from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, North Island is essentially a fusion of all the different Eggman Zones (Crystal Egg, Sleeping Egg, Scrap Brain, Metropolis, Eggmanland, Robotropolis, Robotnik Winter, the zones from SegaSonic the Hedgehog, etc.), Flicky’s Island has all of the zones from Sonic 3D Blast, Cocoa Island has all the zones from Tails Skypatrol and Tails Adventure, Mirage Island has all the zones from Sonic 4 and also Never Lake, and Little Planet (and hence all the zones from Sonic CD) you get the idea.

I’m unsure what exactly Eastside Island would have on it, but I figured that Sonic games have so many zones and levels across so many games, surely something would find a nice home on that island, perhaps some of the zones from Sonic Mania, Sonic Blast, maybe even the Adventure games, who knows? But, inevitably, space is going to run out on those other islands and we’ll likely have zones or locations that’ll be good for the series to have.

And then, we also have a mainland sprinkled with City. This is where your Adventure/Modern style cities are, Station Square, City Escape, that sort of thing.

It may not seem like much, considering some Sonic games have settings that span entire planets, but when you think about how many zones are crammed into a few little islands in the genesis titles alone, it’s hardly a limited setting.

The natives of this island chain would be Mobians and Mobini. Mobians are your typical Sonic characters, your Sonics, your Tailses, your Knuckleses, and so on and so forth. They’re the more humanoid animals. Mobini, on the other hand would be all of the smaller animals, the kind that Sonic frees from badniks or are just knockin about doing little woodland creature things. For more information on Mobini, I’ve included a little blip about them in the ‘Side Protagonists’ part of this little shanty ‘pitch guide’.

Humans would live on the mainland, although some researchers and scientists would visit the Archipelago every so often because of it’s mysterious ‘new frontier’ kind of appeal, even if Mobians find their research a little weird.

Generally, Humans also keep to the mainland, and Mobians keep to their islands, but, make no mistake, Mobians and Humans don’t hate each other. Some Mobians and Mobini have taken to the urban lifestyle, whereas some humans have taken to the natural wonder of the Archipelago, starting environmentally friendly cities and towns in the sleepy groves and corners of this untamed wilderness.

This Archipelago would be the point of focus for our Main Characters because, well, it’s their native home, and it’d draw our Main Villains because this island is also home to the Seven Chaos Emeralds, and their Master Emerald.

The Chaos Emeralds are the main MacGuffins of the Sonic series, and for good reason! Gathering all seven of these things grants their holder infinite access to chaos energy, a kind of force that will turn their thoughts into power, whether positive or negative. While most Mobians would prefer to leave the Chaos Emeralds alone, due to them causing, well, chaos, villains seek these gems out on purpose so that they can easier accomplish their goals. However, if a hero were to gather all seven chaos emeralds, and had enough purity, desire for good, and strength in their heart, the emeralds will grant them immense power, too.

Upon a vast amount of energy being used however, the Emeralds will scatter across the Archipelago, waiting for their next holders to come, and initiate chaos once more.

And then, there’s the Master Emerald. The Master Emerald is very similar to the Chaos Emeralds, and contains tenfold the amount of energy of a full set of Chaos Emeralds, but also acts as an on/off switch for the Chaos Emeralds. The Master Emerald can completely drain the Chaos Emeralds of their power, or multiply their power exponentially if one knows how to control it, making the Master Emerald incredibly valuable too. However, villains usually tend to opt for the Chaos Emeralds instead, not only because legends of the Master Emerald are believed to be false, or even if it is real, no one knows how to control it, but the Master Emerald is also said to have a guardian. A very, very angry guardian.

There’s also the lesser-known Time Stones.

The Time Stones reside on Little Planet, an anomalous celestial body that appears only once every year over Never Lake on Mirage Island. These stones seemed to have formed in a similar fashion to the Chaos Emeralds, but rather than bending SPACE to the will of their holders, the Time Stones will instead, bend Time. The Time Stones, for this reason, are even more dangerous than the Chaos Emeralds and are responsible for many of the temporal anomalies within the Archipelago. Due to their danger, the Time Stones see much more infrequent use than the Chaos Emeralds, and keeping them on Little Planet as opposed to bringing them to the surface of the Earth is much safer, as the Time Stones will only seemingly affect the time stream of Little Planet and not the Earth.

The Time Stones won’t matter until later in the series when Sonic and Co. start tampering with time, and for a while, the focus will remain on the Chaos Emeralds and Master Emerald.

But enough about where Sonic lives, let’s look at him and the rest of our colorful main cast, shall we?

Main Protagonists

Hooh, boy I am not gonna make many friends with this decision, am I?

This is kinda where my reboot starts to get a lot little tiny bit more personal, but, I have reasoning behind picking who I pick. The characters I’d pick to be the main protagonists, as in the characters that the viewers of the cartoon series, readers of the comic, or players of the games are going to be:

A) Playing as

B) Rooting for

C) Following throughout most of the adventures.

are as follows:

Sonic the Hedgehog

Miles “Tails” Prower

Knuckles the Echidna

Amy Rose

Mighty the Armadillo

Ray the Flying Squirrel

The first two seem obvious enough, Sonic and Tails are the two spotlight protagonists of most Sonic games and are the two chief playable characters in most games of the Genesis Era. Knuckles should come as no surprise either for the same reason, although I’ll touch on Knuckles later when I assess the protagonists on an individual level.

I chose Amy as one of the leads because, well, Amy frankly hasn’t seen that much time in the sun as a true character, and I feel like that’s a shame given her longevity in the series, being with us ever since CD. Her most complex appearance was in Sonic Adventure 1 and even then, she’s kinda reduced to the same traits as her white-bread, palid, boring, Genesis counterpart. While I would like to have another female character so Amy isn’t a ‘token chick’, I don’t really want to shake up the formula too much.

Mighty and Ray are a little bit different. With the release of Sonic Mania Plus though, I feel that Mighty and Ray are more relevant now than they ever were, and considering their placement as main characters in Mania Plus, I think that we could really benefit from their addition to the main lineup of Sonic’s friends! Sure, Mighty and Ray don’t have much personality, but maybe this is where we can change that and give these lost stars a chance to sparkle as main characters after spending so long in the shadows of the past!

However, I do wanna state, that I understand if some people feel Mighty and Ray are irrelevant. I get that, really, I do. It’s one of the things in this projected reboot that I feel is much more personally appealing to me than it is ‘what I think is best for the Sonic franchise’. Put plain and simple, Mighty and Ray are just... not as popular as other Sonic characters. And, adding these two to the roster of main characters means that the main character count skyrockets from an easily manageable 4 to 6, which can seem like a bit much to some people I’ll agree, and means that they’ll likely see more screentime than other popular protagonist characters like Cream, Silver or even Blaze. But, at the same time, I also feel that if they’re popular enough to be included in Sonic Mania Plus, then there at least is some interest in the fan community of them being relevant, regular characters again. And, what better niche for them to fit into than being two of Sonic’s close friends again while going on adventures with him regularly?

(Side note, I also felt like including Sticks as a main character, and I may come back to that idea later if I end up making any content for this reboot, but as it stands I felt 7 main characters were just a bit too much, although it would’ve been cool to have a character for each Chaos Emerald, and I think there are a lot of real, genuine comedic possibilities, as well as some unique action choreography from her.)

I also don’t think Sonic’s design or the design of his friends need to be changed around too terribly much for a reboot? (Although there are some characters I think could benefit from a rework, but Sonic and MOST of the main characters are okay imo) There’s a lot of contention on Sonic’s design in any sense but, personally? I think Sonic’s designs can actually be pretty well unified, all things considered. I think Sonic could benefit from a few design ADJUSTMENTS, but maybe not a full-scale redesign like Sonic Boom.

For instance, these early concepts for Dreamcast Sonic are an excellent starting place, as I feel they capture the spirit of all three versions of Sonic pretty well all things considered, save for their quills being a little long. the proportions on them are a little off, however, with a couple of adjustments, I think this could actually be a really good idea.

Nendoroid Sonic is also pretty close to what I think a unified Sonic design could look like, if someone held a gun to my head and told me to pick an ideal new design for Sonic, it’d probably be very close to this.

(Credit to JaysonJeanChannel on DA for this render of Nendoroid Sonic.)

Or, even moving back a little bit, “Toei Sonic“, although kind of overrated in my opinion, is a really nice compromise between the cutesy, cartoony nature of the original versions of Sonic, while still updating Sonic to be more obviously sleek, sharp and spring-loaded for his modern audiences, and is full of personality. That’s not to say I think Toei Sonic should be the new face of Sonic the Hedgehog for years to come, but it’d be a great starting point to work from, given that Toei is a version of Sonic suited for intense, rubberhosy, slippery animations.

In the end, the only thing that truly matters is that Sonic looks like Sonic, and not like a weird little blue goblin if the backlash on the first pass of the Sonic Movie is any indication? We shouldn’t try to fix what isn’t broken, I just think that maybe trying out a hybrid between classic and modern Sonic to see how people feel about it might be a nice compromise between those who prefer Classic Sonic vs. those who prefer Modern or Adventure Sonic, again, unification, the best of both worlds.

That being said, let’s have a look-see into each character individually, shall we? For this, I’ll give a name, my projected voice actor for them, and a little blurb about their personality, as well as a short list of their abilities.

I’ll also try to justify my reasons for some stuff that people may consider odd after all of the character bios.

Sonic the Hedgehog:

Voice Actor: Ben Schwartz/James Arnold Taylor

Sonic is heroic, ambitious, and a complete adrenaline junkie. He'll take on any challenge that's given to him in the history of forever, even if absolutely knows it's impossible or he could get hurt trying to do it or he's absolutely not skilled enough at what he's doing to do it. Hence, Sonic is extremely competitive and gets easily absorbed in things he does, even around friends. Sonic tends to not look before he leaps as he's able to get himself out of situations so easily, preferring to live on his feet without thinking too hard about anything, although he's not dumb by any stretch of the imagination and will slow down and strategize if he absolutely needs to, and will always be willing to slow down for someone in need. Sonic is cocky, snarky, and believes a little too much in himself, he has an ego the size of the sun and will do anything he has to protect his image, especially how he views himself. Sonic also has an incredible amount of attitude and makes fun of people he doesn't like or thinks deserve it with insulting nicknames or cruel jokes, often being sarcastic and witty even at the worst of times to be. Although Sonic tries as hard as he can to keep his cool a lot of the time and prefers to live without consequences or regrets on his mind, when he's angry, sometimes he can lash out at people and can become downright completely rude when upset. Sonic is also something of a juvenile delinquent, often breaking rules just because he can or he thinks it's fun or funny, which often gets him into trouble. Sonic EXTREMELY Dislikes being called 'slow' or things being faster than he is (often wanting to prove his mettle against whatever is faster than him even if it hurts him), and has even less patience for slowing down unless he absolutely has to. He hates to wait and hates to be kept waiting, oftentimes getting bored and leaving in mere seconds if a situation doesn't matter that much to him, although he's known to show much, much more patience when people are hurt, or upset, and has an affinity for relaxing for long periods of time with friends after lengthy expeditions and adventures. Sonic hates to see innocent people cry or have their feelings hurt and will often get extremely upset at the cause depending on the person/situation, and believes that any situation he can tend to is important (as he often can do things so quickly it's often no trouble for him.)

Abilities:

Insta-Shield (Allows Sonic to deflect incoming projectiles with precise timing. This also extends Sonic’s hitbox a bit so it can inflict damage, and gives him invincibility frames!)

Wall Jump (Sonic can wall jump, but they need to be timed properly, as when Sonic lands on a wall, he’ll begin to slide, sliding down a wall for too long will cause Sonic to slip and eventually fall.)

Super Spin Dash (Sonic can rev his spin dash up much faster and much more efficiently than other characters, Sonic’s spin dash also has higher maximum propulsion, and will break walls much quicker.)

Super Peel Out

Light Dash (Using the light dash on a trail of rings will allow Sonic to pick up vast amounts of speed instantly by traveling along a trail of rings, being slingshotted out of the trail at an intense speed, the longer the trail of rings is, the faster he’ll be when he comes out of the trail, but also the more vulnerable he’ll be when he’s flung out of the trail. Sonic can also easily reclaim his fallen rings by light dashing, but there’s no guarantee you won’t go flying into the hazard you just tried to avoid when you do.)

Can use the abilities of elemental shields

Miles "Tails" Prower:

Voice Actor: Collen Villard

Tails is Sonic's closest friend. Tails is very intelligent and is something of an amateur technician, roboticist and mechanic, although he specializes in work with aircrafts, small-scale robotics, and computer systems. Frequently he prefers a much slower, methodical approach to problems as opposed to rushing into everything headfirst like Sonic does. Often relies on his intuition over instinct. Tails feels he and Sonic hold a kind of 'mutual responsibility' over each other to keep each other safe, hence Tails keeps Sonic out of trouble or from doing things that are REALLY REALLY stupid, but most of the time, Tails likes to indulge in Sonic's antics with him and even enjoys being kind of silly or being a rebel with him. Tails really looks up to Sonic and wants to have the same kind of respect, cool and wit that he does, however, in doing this, because of his low self-esteem, Tails will often ignore a lot of his more positive traits and attempt to mimic Sonic instead in an effort to seem 'cool', which can really make him do some out-of-place or seemingly strange things at times when he doesn't mean it because he can be a little shy to be himself. Tails is a firmly humble inventor and often attributes his successes to the support of others more often than his own work, and he will not ever invent anything for the purpose of competing with someone or for the sake of jealousy, believing that his best work comes from his heart.

Abilities:

Flying (This would be nerfed significantly from Sonic Mania and S3&K so Tails couldn’t just fly over everything. Tails’ gameplay should encourage exploration in more ways than just one.)

Spin Dash

Tinkering (Allows Tails to reverse conveyor belts, turn off sawblades, and do other shit to help him get through mechanical levels.)

Ring Bomb (Short range projectile at the cost of rings, explodes in a small radius)

Remote Robot (Allows Tails to explore places he can’t otherwise get to at the cost of 1 ring per second)

Knuckles the Echidna:

Voice Actor: Dan Green

The key word to Knuckles is STRESS. Knuckles is the guardian of the Master Emerald, and boy does he take his job seriously, being the very last living Mobian Echidna, and being very in-tune with his family and extended tribe's history. He has an inherent connection with the Master Emerald that allows him to sense it's location, wherever it might be, if this feeling of his is tampered with only slightly, it sends Knuckles into an incredible, panicked rage that can only be quelled by returning the gem to where he left it, or by retrieving the gemstone from whoever stole or moved it. He will only leave the emerald alone for long periods of time once he is one-hundred percent confident no one will touch it or move it (and even then he oftentimes gets worried about it anyway) and hence, interacts with Team Sonic on a more infrequent basis because of this (although he still has plenty of moments dedicated to him.) However, when not guarding the Emerald and forced to loosen up and relax, one can find that Knuckles is rather stoic and full of quote en quote 'sage-advice' (or rather stuff that seems and can be profound but can also be kind of insane ramblings from someone who spends too much time alone with some rock.) He often doesn't understand Sonic's more urban lifestyle, preferring his more traditional, simple 'off the fat of the land' kind of life, but he's surprisingly receptive to new things (unless said new thing gets the emerald stolen of course.) Knuckles is also incredibly suspicious and paranoid of people, even believing people he's close to having the capability of turning on him, and because of this, he's incredibly gullible when it comes to people 'changing' or 'turning evil' or 'wanting to take the Master Emerald', although he's usually smart enough to not fall for the same trick twice... or at least, not for a while after it happens once. Because of his ability to be tricked so easily, and because tricking him often leads to bad things, Knuckles' temper and patience are very short, and very small things easily can make him very upset. Knuckles actually has a weakness for romance, being such a lonely soul, he often gets shy and acts noticeably different (read: Happier) around people that can charm him, but often won't admit it.

Abilities:

Gliding

Climbing

Spin Dash

Burrowing (works sort of like the burrow mechanic from Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, except Knuckles can remain and move underground for a bit to be invincible, although this ability is very limited and cannot be done on metal or synthetic flooring.)

Melee Attacks (Knuckles can punch things in a short range, nuff said.)

Amy Rose:

Voice Actor: Kristen Schaal

Amy is positive, bubbly, loud and honestly kind of a silly airhead sometimes. Although at first, it seems there's very little to her, there's actually a lot more to her than her outward appearance would suggest. Amy tends to not judge people by their looks or by their behaviors, and is very open-minded and emotional, often getting choked up over things she really doesn't need to. Amy is also pretty selfless, willing to help people without any benefit to herself or any reason besides being a good person, although that's not to say she just lets people walk all over her. Amy is also something of a social butterfly, having connections with about everyone anyone else even remotely knows, and can easily tell you all about them and will want you to meet them upon even the mention of their name. Her inherent energy makes her a lot to deal with at once, even people like Sonic, Tails, and Mighty can get tired of her very quickly, even if it's very clear that she means well. She also makes for a great therapist and is willing to help anyone with problems they might be having, even if they push her away at first. However, Amy isn't all the girly girl she seems sometimes and has kind of a violent edge, anyone who pushes her around or says anything bad about her friends is gonna get walloped with her hammer, and believe me, you don't ever quite forget a feeling like being Piko'd by Amy Rose. On this note, Amy also kinda... doesn't know her own strength, and can seem stronger than Knuckles, or even Mighty at times because she just absolutely does not know her limits, expect lots of spine-crushing hugs.

Abilities:

Triple Jump (Amy can jump three times in succession, however, each jump significantly degrades in height boost. Her normal jump will go the highest and her third jump will go the lowest. Because of this ability, Amy also does not spin when she jumps, meaning she can’t defeat Badniks or damage enemies by jumping on them, she won’t take damage from bouncing on them, it just won’t destroy them.)

Hammer Smash (A mid-range melee attack that will destroy most enemies instantly.)

Hammer Spin (Both an Aerial attack to make up for the fact Amy can’t spin jump and a dash attack to make up for the fact Amy can’t spin dash.)

Peel Out (Functions similarly to the peel out in Sonic Advance or Sonic 2: Pink Edition, replaces the Spin Dash.)

Mighty the Armadillo:

Voice Actor: Beck Bennett/Travis Willingham

Mighty is one of Sonic's oldest friends and is his foil in a lot of ways. He prefers to take his time with a lot of things and doesn't really mind going slow. Mighty is something of a 'meathead', he's naive, and kinda absentminded at times, even if he doesn't mean to be. Mighty is very strong and takes incredible pride in his abilities much like Sonic. He adores his own strength and quote en quote 'manliness' and will do anything to keep his ego inflated and his muscles bigger than everyone else's' (as opposed to Knuckles who views his strength as a humble reward for his years of training). Despite this, he has a very brotherly (read: dudebro) sense of personality though and likes to call people 'bro' and 'sis', and has a habit of saying 'not cool' when things don't go right or when people wrong him. Most of the time, Mighty's slow and naive ways can make him easily influenced into believing things (like conspiracies and the idea protein powder actually does things), and he's not afraid to speak his mind, often coming off as insensitive (which is how he got kicked out of Team Chaotix), when really, he just doesn't happen to know any better, although most of the time he really does mean well. Mighty also really likes to hear himself talk, oftentimes telling long-winded stories or going on long-winded rants or explanations. He tends to butt heads with Sonic and Knuckles, who get annoyed sometimes by his easygoing, borderline dim-witted nature, oftentimes reminding him of obvious things that are happening/have happened. However, Mighty greatly cares for his friends, and the one thing he absolutely will never bend on is he will not ever hurt someone who didn't do him wrong, and despite his naivety, Mighty's incredible sense of justice always triumphs over his unassuming nature. He's also Ray's best friend and will defend Ray over any other person.

Abilities:

Natural Armor (Allows Mighty to take one free hit from spikes, and defeat spiked enemies without being harmed. If a projectile hits Mighty while he’s spinning or jumping, the projectile will bounce off of his armor. This is only while Mighty is spinning, attacks from the back or while Mighty is running will still land.)

Hammer Drop (A ‘stomp’ attack that allows Mighty to crush most Badniks instantly, and will also instantly crush breakable objects and solid blocks much faster than other characters.)

Spin Dash

Mighty Arm (If Mighty presses an action button near an enemy, monitor or breakable item, Mighty will pick it up. While picking something up, Mighty will move slower and his jump will be downgraded, but he can throw the item to deal heavy damage to whatever it hits! And, picking up certain enemies or items may just come with some surprises!)

Super Wall Jump (Mighty can wall-jump much like Sonic, but upon sticking to the wall, Mighty will hang there, and will only slide down at the player’s discretion.)

Ray the Flying Squirrel:

Voice Actor: Debi Derryberry

Ray is neat, quiet, shy, easily disturbed and has a bit of a stutter to his voice. Ray tends to be sort of asocial compared to other members of Team Sonic and prefers not to get in the way if he thinks he's being a bother. However, despite this, Ray is much smarter than he might seem and has a level of resourcefulness to a point that even trumps Tails (who is much more intelligent) at times. Despite being so shy and cowardly, when he gets the chance, Ray is more than willing to do whatever it takes for the greater good, even if he's afraid to do so. Mighty is his best friend, and he gets obsessively worried about Mighty when he's not around, often worrying that he's wandered off or might have been hurt, kidnapped, etc. this often leads to Ray trying to find his friend or panicking that he's 'gone missing', even if Mighty was right under his nose the whole time, ironic, given his intuition and incredibly eagle-eyed nature. Much like Mighty as well, Ray can also be a little bit naive, although usually less so than Mighty himself.

Abilities:

Soaring (Ray will glide and can sweep upwards to gain height at a cost of speed, but also dip downwards to gain speed at a cost of height.)

Lite-Climbing (Ray can climb, and he can climb much faster than Knuckles, but players will need to position themselves carefully, as Ray can’t climb forever, and will eventually slip and fall, the more speed Ray has when Ray collides with the wall, the faster and longer he can climb it.)

Scout-Sense (Ray is able to detect hidden items nearby like Giant Rings, 1up Monitors, and power-ups, once Ray moves close enough to an item, an exclamation point will appear above his head, and the item he notices will be outlined in yellow.)

Dismantle (With similar timing to Sonic’s insta-shield, Ray can choose to land on a badnik instead of destroying it (even if he lands on something like a Shellcracker’s claw or Bubbles when spiked out), and he will begin to unscrew the badnik until it breaks. This rewards Ray with rings or more hidden items, and can make tricky badniks like Asteron and Shellcracker more bearable to deal with! This also works on bosses, except dismantling a boss will only cause a hit of damage to the boss, although Ray can stay latched on to deal multiple hits of damage if he isn’t knocked off!)

Hookay, if you’re not winded by all those character bios, let me try to explain some of my reasoning. I won’t be doing this with later characters because this post is already the size of a fucking dump truck, but, here we go anyway.

Yes. I chose Ben Schwartz over Roger Craig Smith and Jason Griffith for Sonic. No. I don’t hate Jason Griffith or Roger Craig Smith’s voices for Sonic. Yes, I realize Ben is going to play Sonic in the Movie. I know. But, you know what? I think Ben is the perfect person to play Sonic, he’s able to inflect a real smarmy teenager vibe and I DO like that a LOT. But Ben can also play a deeper or moodier teenager too, and I feel like that’s important for Sonic’s character just as much. Jason Griffith and Roger Craig Smith make a 15-year-old sound like he’s 24. Moving on.

I think Sonic needs to not be such a prep sometimes like he is in Colors, Generations, and Forces. Like, I get that Sonic is all about doing the right thing, but, Sonic is also a smarty-pants delinquent who disrespects authority because he can. There’s this great video on the design analysis of City Escape from Sonic Adventure 2 that shows just how much of a jerk Sonic is toward people he doesn’t care for, and how he feels about obeying rules and regulations. I feel being an asshole toward people he doesn’t like, is part of Sonic’s character, it’s just we need to make him an asshole in the right direction. Sonic can be a Bugs Bunny if we let him, it’s just that it shouldn’t be completely overblown... otherwise, we get STC Sonic.

Tails needs to do more things, and not sit on the sidelines like he does in Unleashed, Colors, and Forces. He does things in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Boom, hence this version of Tails is based more on those versions OF Tails. I don’t hate Unleashed and Colors Tails, but I feel the objectively superior version of Tails comes more from Boom (who I also feel captures all of the good things about Modern Tails ANYWAY) and Adventure (which is Tails at his most resourceful, intelligent and helpful.)

Knuckles needs to be not stupid. We can make other characters stupid, but Knuckles is not stupid, Mania made Knuckles stupid and I hate that because it’s never been who Knuckles is. Sure, he’s a bit of a dense knucklehead, but he’s not dumb, just dense, which is my problem with Boom Knuckles. There’s more to his reasons for why he does things the way he does than he doesn’t know better. He’s stubborn, he’s prone to anger, he’s traditional and very much centered on the past he never had, he worries, he panics. I don’t think Boom Knuckles is a bad character, I just think making KNUCKLES the character to get this personality was kind of a bad idea.

Amy just needs a better-developed personality. Seriously, she’s, already kinda set in stone in terms of who she is, it just needs to be expanded upon. But, Amy kinda already has the groundwork laid out for her with Boom and Modern, it’s just it needs to be molded a little bit.

Mighty comes from the classic era, and he, therefore, has no real, defining personality traits besides being a wall-jumping armadillo. I think Mighty could easily inherit Boom Knux’s personality, (as I feel a character named ‘Mighty’ would have kind of a strongman, meathead personality) but maybe changed up a bit. Instead of being just, dumb, I think Mighty being more oblivious than just stupid is better, plus, at any one time, most of the characters in-game or onscreen are able to deduce what’s going on instantly, having Mighty be a contrast to that is interesting. I also think a slow, easygoing lifestyle is kinda befitting to the Mighty we’ve seen recently, given that he doesn’t seem to emote all that much when Ray finally finds him after he’s been missing for, well, a good while, and doesn’t seem to know his own strength all the time. The only other information I know about Mighty is that he doesn’t like to fight all that much and he’s similar to Sonic, so I tried to include aspects of Sonic in his personality, but also make him kind where he can be.

If Ray’s SegaSonic sprites are anything to go by, Ray just might be a little bit of a scaredy-cat. And, I think this would make for an interesting dynamic between Ray and the rest of the team, he’d make a nice Luigi to everyone’s Mario, a character who is afraid, but willing to set aside his fears for the greater good and even for himself. He’d also be #relatable to the stressed-out teenage and young adult audience he’d be appealing to.

Side Protagonists

Here are my choices for side-protagonists in this reboot. These are ‘friendly characters’, characters that the main 6 characters regularly interact with, but are just not focused on as much. These characters would probably not be playable (except for Silver and Blaze MAYBE.)

The Mobini

Espio the Chameleon

Charmy Bee

Vector the Crocodile

Cream the Rabbit (and Cheese the Chao)

Big the Cat (and Froggy)

Silver the Hedgehog

Blaze the Cat

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

wHerE’s TeaM DaRK?!

Just, chill out..., okay? I’ll get to Team Dark in a minute.

I’d also like to clarify if this became a series, Silver and Blaze are probably not going to become relevant characters until much LATER in? I feel like Silver and Blaze should be saved for a very specific time in the reboot’s continuity and I’ll explain that later when we get into how I’d set this series’s continuity up, but there’s a very specific reason why I want to save Silver and Blaze for when the time is right, not because I hate Silver and Blaze, but because I think it’d make the most sense.

I also feel like the Chaotix should appear a lot more and play more of an active role in this new hypothetical reboot than they do in most modern Sonic games... and let’s make them a team of vigilantes instead of detectives. A team of vigilantes that uses TEAMWORK!... And combi-rings!

...Oh and while we’re here, let’s make Cheese a Hero Chao, mkay?

But enough talk about general things! Let’s dive into each of them individually!

The Mobini:

Voice Actor: Various, it’s likely mobini won’t need voices so much as varying sound effects.

The Mobini are the local, native, feral fauna of the world of this new Sonic reboot, all your normal birds, insects, lizards, fish, mammals, et cetera are all Mobini. Mobini, are mysterious creatures, as they harbor an inherent connection to the Chaos Emeralds, and are believed to contain small fractions of the Emeralds’ infinite energy. The Mobini are what first drew Dr. Eggman to the Archipelago in which South Island resides, as with this small portion of infinite energy within them, they can be used as organic batteries to power machines indefinitely!... Although this makes them very unhappy. Contrary to what you may think, Mobini are actually sentient, and remember friendly faces... and unfriendly ones too, so be kind! If you’re ever in trouble or lost in the sprawling forests of the Mobius Archipelago, Mobini may just be able to help you out. The most curious kind of Mobini are Flickies, small little birds native to Flicky’s Island and South Island (although they’ve seemed to branch out more recently), who are said to have an even closer connection to the Emeralds, and can even hold a super form! The phenomenon of Super Flickies is incredibly rare, but when it happens, Super Flickies will be more than willing to lend their power to someone who needs it.

Chao are a special type of genetically unstable Mobini that have no ‘Earthly’ counterpart. From the time a Chao is born to the time they pass away, a Chao will gain the traits of its parent, it’s friends, and or it’s caregiver. This makes Chao ideal pets, as their personality will adapt to suit their owner, this makes Chao not only incredibly diverse but surprisingly intelligent. Just be kind to Chao... you don’t want to know what kind of horror being unkind to these little creatures can lead to.

Espio the Chameleon:

Voice Actor: Phil LaMarr

The de-facto leader of the Chaotix, and the most responsible of the team, Espio is a lot quieter than most of the main cast, and much prefers the sound of a rushing, serene stream over loud, punchy rock music. With a powerful, free-flowing fighting style inspired by martial arts, Espio is an honorable fighter, believing only in fighting fair and straight and without exploiting an opponent’s extreme weaknesses. While he tends to be sort of reclusive and becomes easily annoyed by the antics of the Chaotix and Team Sonic, he’s a lot more unshakable than he looks, and actually kind of likes the excitement from time to time. He also has a long, sticky tongue which he happens to be embarrassed by, but sees more use as a tool than he’d like to admit. Espio will often dictate his mood or state of mind to people by changing his color.

Espio’s weapons of choice are giant shuriken, which he seems to be able to pull out of hammerspace.

Abilities:

Color changing

Partial Invisibility (Espio can cloak himself to appear invisible, as long as he stands still and isn’t connected to anything. This ability sees more frequent use when Espio is alone, as it doesn’t really apply much when he fights with his team.)

Combi-Ring Fighting Style

Tornado Spin (Similar to Sonic’s Spin Dash, except Espio spins horizontally instead of vertically, the tornado spin is very slow compared to the Spin Dash, but it’s just as deadly.)

Tongue (Much like Yoshi, Espio’s tongue can be used to grapple onto things with a surprising amount of force, either to pull them toward Espio, or Espio can ‘tongue punch’ things. He hates to do this.)

Charmy Bee:

Voice Actor: Sam Lavagnino (Ideally anyway, I understand if he’d be unable to, but imagine it! Catbug as Charmy Bee!)

A ‘junior member’ of the Chaotix, Charmy is a little bee in training to become a vigilante! However, he’s a little too excited about that fact sometimes. He’s meant to be cute and lovable, but also a realistic child fighting against things he probably shouldn’t be fighting against. It’s hard to hate him when he means so well though and tries his very best at anything he does. In this new reboot, Charmy also gains a small affliction toward electricity!

Abilities:

Flight (no duh.)

Combi-Ring Fighting Style (Charmy is surprisingly adept at carrying his fellow Chaotix members around with a Combi-Ring in hand, with Charmy around this can make for some high-octane, high-momentum fighting due to Charmy being so lightweight and quick.)

Volt Sting (Charmy can use his stinger, and believe me, it hurts. Fortunately, Charmy can sting more than once! and his sting will deliver an electric shock to anything it touches, this is bad news for anything mechanical, or wet!)

Thunder Shoot (Charmy can instantly ground any flying enemy by electrifying an ally and tossing them at the flying enemy!)

Vector the Crocodile:

Voice Actor: Keith Silverstein (Although I’m open to someone else if everyone else if sick of FIND THE COMPUTER ROOM!)

The Chaotix’s greedy, but fiercely defensive ‘leader’ (he’s able to make tough decisions a lot better than Espio, but he isn’t very responsible in many ways). Vector got into the whole vigilante business because of the money he could gain from it, but after meeting Charmy and Espio, his whole world changed, and the rough-and-tough reptile has found a new calling, being a leader. Although Vector is often harsh, blunt, and dismissive, he’s also incredibly resourceful and has an eye for small details, so if he does push you away, it’s likely because he has a hunch on something related to it.

Abilities:

Air Dash (Vector can dash in any direction while in the air. This does not protect him from harm.)

Death Roll (Vector’s trademark donut-like Spin Dash, it’s a bit less controllable than a traditional Spin Dash but it’s immensely powerful because of Vector’s spiked back.)

Combi-Ring Fighting Style (Vector specializes in a ‘wrecking ball’ sort of display with his fighting style, performing a Death Roll followed by his opponents flinging him into something by way of Thunder Shoot or Espio’s speed.) Vector can also achieve the same effect by flinging Charmy or Espio into an opponent, or by ‘holding’ (think Knuckles Chaotix) them.

Fire Combination + Volcanic Dunk* (While Espio is tornado spinning and Charmy is spinning as well, Vector can grab the both of them to make ‘fighting gloves’ of sorts. With this, Vector can perform the Volcanic Dunk, in which he turns Espio and Charmy into powerful fireballs which can smash into enemies to deal tremendous damage!)

*Yes I know this is what Team Sonic uses in Sonic Heroes but do you honestly want Vector Breath to be something that’s regularly used?

Cream the Rabbit (and Cheese the Chao):

Voice Actor: Michelle Ruff (I’d list a voice actor for Cheese too but... do I HAVE to? Chao can be easily voiced with stock squeaks or Chao sounds from SA2.)

A pleasant little girl who seems to get caught up in the ongoing war between Sonic and the forces of evil. Like Charmy, she’s a kid, although Cream is much more patient and polite than Charmy. Cream in this reboot would sorta fill the niche that Tails filled in SatAM, rarely going on adventures, but looking up to the main cast and always being ready to support them in times of need.

Abilities:

Flapping (Cream can flap her ears to gain a little extra height, although it’s made very clear this isn’t exactly equal to Tails’ flight and is very limited.)

Cheese (Cream can sic Cheese on anything she wants, although Cheese isn’t very tough, he’ll do his best until he’s knocked away!)

Big the Cat (and Froggy):

Voice Actor: Jon St. John

Big is large, and not very bright, even less so than Mighty. But he’s terrifyingly strong, he may just be one of the strongest characters in this new reboot in terms of raw damage output, probably second only to Omega actually. But, Big’s not a fighter and prefers to spend his days by the lakeside, fishing with his companion Froggy.

Unbeknownst to him, though, Froggy harbors a dark secret, and, in fact, is the current owner of the tail of the ancient God of Destruction, Chaos. How Froggy exactly came upon Chaos’ tail is unknown, but it’s gotten Big and Froggy into trouble before.

Abilities:

Super Strength

Fishing Sense (Big can sense what kind of fish or how many fish, or even foreign objects or other animals are in bodies of water. It’s unknown how he does or knows this, but he does.)

Silver the Hedgehog:

Voice Actor: Scott Menville

Silver is from an alternate future, a long-forgotten timeline in which Robotnik succeeded in conquering the world, But his massive cities and factories were later laid waste to by the sands of time, and ancient forces of nature, throwing the future Silver resides within into complete Crisis. And now, filled with a sense of vengeance and justice, Silver has come back to the past, determined to find the one responsible for whoever did this to his future, but... there’s just a couple problems.

He’s only fourteen years old.

Silver is also rather bright-eyed and gullible, and him messing with the streams of time might have a bigger domino effect than he realizes, even if he has no intention of messing anything up.

Abilities:

Psychokinesis (Silver can move, and throw objects with his mind. Silver’s telekinesis is limited only by his focus and stress, as if Silver gets too stressed, he may release some of the objects he’s holding, the same goes for if he becomes unfocused. Using said telekinesis can make Silver very physically exhausted though, especially if Silver moves HIMSELF with his mind, which he can do to hover in the air for a while. Objects held by Silver will freeze, suspended in whatever state they were in when Silver grabbed them, and the objects Silver holds are denoted by a cyan aura.)

Psychic Knives (Silver can condense his energy into crescent-shaped blades of energy, which he can fire off at his discretion, again, only limited by his physical exhaustion)

Teleportation (Silver has the limited ability to teleport short distances, although he doesn’t seem to have a very good handle on it, as he often messes up his positioning and seems to almost... forget he can do it?)

Blaze the Cat:

Voice Actor: Tara Strong

Like Silver, Blaze is from an alternate future. Blaze is Silver’s best friend, but also kind of a sisterly figure to him. Blaze is older than Silver, and is much more reserved, mature and wary than Silver is, although she’s still more than happy to help Silver, and ensure a good future for both him and herself. Blaze is proud, trying to make the best out of her situation by trying and believing herself to be the best around, in a way, she sort of views Silver more like a sidekick, even if Silver does tend to pull his weight.

Abilities:

Pyrokinesis (Blaze can summon, control and is immune to fire. Her ability to do so is limited, although her fires are known to become more intense whenever Blaze is enraged. Blaze can use her fire either for offense by spraying jets of flame from her hands, or defensively by cloaking her entire body in flame, or using the power of fire to float for short periods of time.)

Tornado Spin (Like Espio, Blaze tends to spin horizontally rather than vertical, this, combined with her pyrokinesis, makes her incredibly fearsome to deal with.)

Main Antagonists

You know what the fuck’s going on already. These are all my picks for Major Villains in the reboot. The big bads. The guys who are gonna come in and try to take all those Chaos Emeralds and Time Stones and shit I was talking about and wreak havoc on the peaceful Mobius Archipelago.

They are as follows:

Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik

Orbot and Cubot

Metal Sonic

Heavy King (And the Hard-Boiled Heavies)

Great Battle Bird Kukku XV

Chaos

Emerl

Mephiles, Iblis, and Solaris

In the end, it was hard to decide on what villains to choose to be big bads, Sonic has so many good ones, but this is what it all bled down to eventually. I feel kinda like Dragon Ball Z or... like, any fucking action anime or cartoon ever tbh. I wanted to give some more underrated villains a chance to shine like Kukku and Emerl, while also bringing back some old favorites like Chaos and Mephiles.

...ALSO, I’M GONNA GET TO TEAM DARK DON’T WORRY!

Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik:

Voice Actor: Mike Pollock (as if there were any other choice.)

Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik is the biggest bad in this reboot, as he should be. Robotnik was formerly a young, gentleman scientist, who arrived on South Island with his colleague, Dr. Madonna to study the Mobini that lived there, however, using the grant money meant for his research, and not much caring about nature himself, Robotnik instead betrayed Dr. Madonna to begin forging an empire with his own two hands, an Empire he believed would eventually be able to conquer the world. And he would’ve gotten away with it, too... if all not for a meddlesome blue hedgehog child, who REALLY liked to compare the doctor to an egg. Since his first outing against the blue blur, Dr. Robotnik tried tirelessly, day and night, to get his empire up and into the air, coming back with bigger, and better firepower each time, even succeeding in conquering South Island and collecting six of the seven chaos emeralds at one point, but he was thwarted by this blue hedgehog, and later, his friends each time. This war has gone on for over 5 years now chronologically and maybe more in the actual scheme of things, and all those years of trying have really quite nipped at the doctor, who had gained a significant amount of weight, became a social pariah and had torn all his hair out, save for his mustache, which has overgrown and has become frayed, and the doctor had taken the name ‘Eggman’ as a shallow attempt to mock the blue blur. It’s not to say that Eggman hasn’t succeeded, his conquest and lust for power had bled everywhere, his Badniks, a series of small robots built by him, are an epidemic across the archipelago, he has factories, operations, and eyes everywhere, and Robotnik eventually succeeded in taking one of the Archipelago's many islands for his own, renaming what was once ‘North Island’ into ‘Eggmanland’, this little island is only a twisted glimpse into the madness of what a world under the doctor’s control could look like, his own personal carnival of evil, smog and dust, celebrating him, and only him. It’s these little successes, as well as his never-ending stubbornness and undying believe that man can and will always triumph over nature, that has warped Dr. Eggman from a nefarious, dashing gentleman, into a balding, crazed, nasty old coot. If trouble’s brewing on the islands, and you smell smog wafting by, you can be assured Dr. Eggman isn’t very far behind. To call him a ‘mad scientist’ is an understatement, but even through his delusions and megalomania, he really is a genius.

Orbot and Cubot:

Voice Actors: Kirk Thornton, Wally Wingert

Orbot and Cubot are the Doctor’s trusted aides and second-in-lines, and... probably the Doctor’s only friends as of current. Orbot and Cubot have special AI hand-crafted by the doctor and are arguably his most advanced and most sentient creations crafted by his own two hands. Orbot is serious, intelligent, and bitingly sarcastic, as he was meant to relay information about factories, schemes, and developments back to Eggman, whereas Cubot is dim-witted, slow, and lazy, as he was more meant to perform basic duties like keeping Robotnik’s living space neat and tidy (although he doesn’t always do the best job at this.) However, Orbot and Cubot have become more than that as time has gone on. Unlike the Modern games, Orbot and Cubot can actually hold their own in combat... well, sort of. They have their own unique ‘Scratch and Grounder’ style of dealing with Sonic and Co. and they don’t usually make much progress or get much done in this regard. In this reboot I want Orbot and Cubot’s designs to be updated besides being just ‘ball’ and ‘cube’ so that they can fight alongside Eggman and just look a lot more interesting in general.

Metal Sonic:

Voice Actor: Ben Schwartz (with an intense, robotic filter) if we HAVE to give him a voice. I’d really just prefer Metal to be silent or voiced by music cues and sound effects.

Metal Sonic is Dr. Eggman’s greatest creation. Designed and built by a Dr. Eggman from the future, Metal was sent back in time to aid the Eggman of the past, this, however, proved to be a mistake, as with Metal under his belt, the Doctor became easily overconfident in his victory, thinking now that he had his supposed greatest creation to aid him, nothing could possibly stop him.

Which made it all the more disappointing when Metal Sonic inevitably failed and was defeated by Sonic.

However, that wasn’t the end of it for Metal Sonic, after being recovered from the future on Little Planet, Metal was repaired, and sent to do reconnaissance on Sonic and Tails during their visit to Mirage Island. In the process of getting there, however, Metal absorbed an artifact while patrolling around the Lost Labyrinth Zone, which superseded the limits of Metal’s hardware, and not only restored Metal to his former greatness but gave Metal something that few of Eggman’s creations can ever claim to have. True sentience.

Now fully aware of who he was, and what he was doing, Metal easily made it to Sonic and Tails, and upon seeing his organic counterpart for the first time in so long ever since their duel on Stardust Speedway, Metal was filled with rage. Rage, unlike anything The Mobius Archepeligo had ever seen.

The artifact has given Metal all sorts of mysterious abilities, like the ability to manifest a near-indestructible shield, the power to harness the electricity flowing through his circuits to send himself into overdrive and utilize his own overloading as a weapon, and along with being a creation of a Dr. Eggman who has seen the fall of the Earth...

Who knows what kind of sadistic, inhuman thoughts lie behind those synthetic, glowing eyes?

Abilities:

Hyperspeed Thrusters (Metal’s thrusters easily make him as fast as Sonic, and, like Sonic, Metal can still spin, although Metal can also fly with his thrusters.)

Black Shield (Metal can form a defense matrix around him using the power of the artifact he absorbed in Lost Labyrinth, the Black Shield is completely indestructible. Nothing can break through it. Not even something as powerful as Super Sonic could even crack it.) The only caveat is, using the Black Shield renders Metal completely immobile, and unable to attack, and it has a slight warmup and cooldown period.)

Overdrive (Metal can use the artifact he absorbed to utilize the electricity flowing through his circuits to send himself into Overdrive. While in overdrive, Metal Sonic’s entire body sparks with electricity, and Metal can manipulate how he uses that electricity, whether it’s to cloak himself in sparks to beef up his physical attacks or create pillars of sparks and arcs of electricity to attack foes from a distance. The only thing is, Metal cannot do this too much, as doing this can easily cause Metal to overheat, or completely overload and have a ‘blowout’... in other words, explode.)

Heavy King:

Voice Actor: Jim Cummings (Yes, I know Jim did SATAM Robotnik but that’s not the voice I’m imagining for Heavy King. Jim can do more than just Robotnik you know, even though my decision was partially influenced by it being a nice callback. Again, these voice actors are only projections.)/Barry Humphries

Heavy King used to be EggRobo, a robot (which later became a line of Robots) built in the image of Dr. Eggman himself and meant to serve as a decoy for him, and as a stand-in to carry out his own ends.

But the energy of the Phantom Ruby changed that.

Now, Heavy King is the leader of an elite squadron of his EggRobo brethren known as the Hard-Boiled Heavies. They used to serve Robotnik, before breaking free of his control and serving their own ends, beginning a new (albeit, much, much smaller) empire under their own names. He and the other heavies are a force to be reckoned with, few are able to match the ruthless, cold, metallic hand of Heavy King. Despite this, however, Heavy King is known to be much more diplomatic and reasonable than Robotnik, ironically enough, because he believes himself to be vastly superior in every way to organic life. However, his inflated ego pays a steep price if you catch him at the wrong time. However, Heavy King is the current holder of the Phantom Ruby, and that alone should scare you.

(Also I won’t go over each of the Heavies individually because I don’t feel like it, but, I will list their voice actors.)

Heavy Gunner: Patrick Warburton... or at least a cheap impression of him.

Heavy Rider: Eliza Schneider

Heavy Magician: Alexia Khadime

Heavy Shinobi: Seth Green (I picture Shinobi having much more of a nerdy weeb voice than having a serious Japanese accent like Espio.)

Great Battle Bird Kukku XV

Voice Actor: Tom Kenny

A lesser-known big bad, or rather, big bird, Great Battle Bird Kukku XV (he gets upset if you don’t say the full name), is the leader of the Battle Bird Empire, a battalion of birds who, at one point, sought to take over the archipelago in a similar manner to Dr. Eggman, however, Great Kukku XV was thwarted by Tails. Tails, funnily enough, doesn’t remember him at all, in fact, no one does. As a villain, hardly anyone takes Great Kukku XV very seriously, even with his massive armies and capability. Fact is, Great Kukku XV is just a little too immature to be a leader, and hence, he’s not very dangerous. However, his battalion did give rise to a certain, screwy, trigger happy, fellow green bomb-throwing bird who happens to be a defector of his...

In this reboot, there would probably be a lot of jokes about people not knowing who Great Kukku even is, or how dangerous he is, but don’t worry, he’ll get his time in the sun eventually.

Chaos

Voice Actor: N/A, Chaos only speaks in water sloshes.

Chaos is one of the many original forces of nature that populated the Archipelago many years ago. Legend has it that Chaos was responsible for the mass extinction of the Echidna on Angel Island, and was the one responsible for flooding Hydrocity Zone, and the former Hidden Palace Zone. Chaos was formed when a Chao, who happened to be very old and unhappy due to the Echidna tribes of the day treating his people very unfairly, mutated due to the exposure of Chaos Energy to the Chao’s genetically unstable body. Chaos is a being of pure hate and pure destruction. It’s almost entirely composed of a thick, water-like substance that can take on liquid or solid properties at Chaos’ discretion. His body hungers for Chaos Energy, and he is willing to destroy anything that stands in his way to have it, specifically by absorbing the Chaos Emerald. With each emerald Chaos absorbs, Chaos only becomes bigger, and stronger, becoming harder and harder to defeat. And if Chaos gathers all Seven of the Emeralds? You’d better hope you can find some way to calm this Great Old One down, otherwise, your world may just end up underwater. Luckily, Chaos was sealed inside of the Master Emerald by its former guardian, Tikal, and there he shall remain... for now, at least.

Emerl

Voice Actor: Various (copies the voices of others. To speak it splices lines that it’s heard together.)

Originally created directly to counter Chaos whilst the Echidna tribes were facing extinction, Emerl is a Gizoid, a kind of Robot created to copy the physical data of others. Although one can initially defeat Emerl pretty easily, it’s advised not to vary your tactics too much, as Emerl’s original purpose, and his ultimate capability, is to copy any behavior he’s seen, in order to not only replicate it, but replicate it better, and hence, conquer its original user. Terrifyingly, Emerl can even copy phenomenon that he otherwise wouldn’t, or shouldn’t be able to use, such as Chaos Control, Sonic’s Maximum Speed, or Tails’ intellect. The only thing truly limiting Emerl... is the kind of opponents he faces. And, if you give Emerl to someone who understands him and knows how he works, you may just be dealing with one of the most fearsome fighters the Mobius Archepeligo has ever known.

Mephiles, Iblis and Solaris

Voice Actor: Dan Green (Mephiles only) (This is just because Dan also voices Knuckles ideally but, again, if Dan doesn’t wanna come back to Sonic after being replaced, I understand that.)

If Chaos was the patron saint of water, Solaris is the patron saint of fire. Born from a sacred flame created by the Echidna, Solaris was worshipped by the surviving Echidna as a force that could potentially vanquish Chaos, as the ‘’sun’ to dry the rain. However, the tribes’ malicious intents caused their newly formed ‘God’ to become more of a beast, and it only helped Chaos in driving the Echidna extinct. Solaris later retreated to the bottom of the ocean after all was said and done, slumbering beneath the surface in an underground cave, in a damaged, unstable state.

Solaris has re-awoken twice since this has happened, and both times, his unstable shell split and formed two halves, it’s raw power, known as Iblis, and it’s mind, and spirit, known as Mephiles. The two halves of Solaris first re-awoke in an Alternate Timeline where Robotnik had conquered the world, re-awakening as the folly of the dictator had driven the Sun God’s split soul to awaken when the intense greenhouse heat began to boil the ocean. Mephiles’ primordial form simply died off in the intense heat, but Iblis remained awake, laying waste to the already horrible wasteland that was Robotnik’s Bad Future. Many survivors who reside within this future came to blame Iblis for their problems, even though Robotnik was what had destroyed it centuries earlier.

As for the other time The soul and body of Solaris re-awoke?...

Well... we’ll get to that. Let’s come back to someone I’m sure you’re all waiting for.

Antiheroes

HERE HE IS, OKAY? YOU HAPPY? I was saving him for a good reason! I actually want Shadow (and Rouge, to an extent, she kinda keeps her evil side tbh) to start out as a big bad! After Shadow’s done BEING a big bad though, he’ll become similar to his post-adventure 2 self, specifically how he behaves in Sonic 06 and Sonic Heroes, except with a bit more sympathy. Modern Shadow has a lot of brooding, edgy bite to him, and while that’s cool and all, I feel like there should be more to Shadow than just brooding and standing around crossing his arms and saying ‘tch’ all the time.

Shadow the Hedgehog

Shadow the Hedgehog:

Voice Actor: Anyone that’s not Kirk Thornton. I actually don’t have a good answer for who Shadow’s voice actor should be but, honestly, anything would be better than his current one in my honest opinion.

Shadow was synthesized fifty years ago on a small, man-made satellite called the Space Colony ARK by the brilliant scientist Dr. Gerald Robotnik. He was born from a desire to find a cure for the seemingly incurable disease for his granddaughter, Maria. However, due to an accident when splicing the genes of the quill of a Mobian Hedgehog, and experimental biomaterial found on the fragments of an asteroid that collided with the Earth millions of years ago, the doctor accidentally created something he absolutely didn’t intend, Life. And thus, Project Shadow was born. Gerald felt attached to his creation, viewing the resulting creation, which he called ‘Shadow’ as one of his own. Shadow developed rapidly, quickly maturing into an infant, and then juvenile, yet seemingly normal Mobian Hedgehog. Shadow’s equivalent age later capped once Shadow was done growing, and he remained that way, immortally perfect. The Ultimate Lifeform. Tests with Shadow later showed his destructive capabilities, as it seemed the asteroid’s DNA had morphed Shadow to be far beyond the capabilities of any normal Hedgehog, even in peak physical condition at that age, capable of creating explosions, firing bolts of energy, and even freezing time, appearing to ‘teleport’ in the process. Despite these curiosities, Shadow grew fond of Maria in his stay at the ARK, although Shadow couldn’t help her recover, he did make her much happier. However, a raid on the Space Colony by the mainland’s military led to a massive capsizing of the project, with the intention to destroy Shadow, who was viewed as a dangerous, alien, unholy abomination. Before he could be killed though, Maria shot Shadow down to Earth in an escape pod, where he subsequently landed deep in the jungles of Cocoa Island... but, Maria was murdered in the process of doing so. Shadow was later recovered by Gerald’s other grandson, Ivo Robotnik, 50 years after the tragedy. Hesitant to release Shadow immediately, it’s known that Robotnik has spoken to Shadow in his pod, although about what matters is unknown. For now, Shadow slumbers deep within the confines of Eggmanland, waiting for his proper, strategic time to be unleashed and to wreak his horrible vengeance upon the Earth.

I’ll bring up Shadow again later when we talk about how I project the series to actually go, for now, just sit tight and let’s talk about the rest of Team Dark... and some familiar faces.

Abilities:

Spin Dash

Homing Attack (Shadow can automatically home in on opponents while also performing an Air Dash.)

Burning Rollout (Inspired by the flame ring of Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow can cloak his spinning form in fire by turning on his shoes when rolling, doing this will significantly up the strength of his spin, and make a nice little ring of fire around his spinning form.)

Chaos Control (Can be used as short-distance teleportation, as a way to buff Shadow’s speed immensely, or as a way to freeze or dramatically slow Shadow’s relative perspective of time by dramatically increasing his speed.)

Chaos Spear (These are green bolts of pure, chaos energy. The energy used to form these bolts is so unstable that once hurled at something, the ‘spear’ will likely explode, although, if it doesn’t, it will easily pierce through whatever it hits. Shadow likes to shout ‘DISAPPEAR!’ before hurling these at things for some reason.)

Chaos Blast (Shadow’s Chaos Blast can be considered his ‘ultimate’ attack, Chaos Blast sees Shadow creating a kind of ‘mini-singularity’ with chaos energy that will detonate after a short time, easily eradicating anything caught in the explosion’s radius, even the ground around Shadow. The only problem with this is, doing this is a huge strain on Shadow’s natural supply of Chaos Energy, so a lengthy cooldown period is inevitable.)

and of course, we can’t forget

The Roundhouse Kick

Minor Antagonists

These are characters who are villains but are also more likely to show up in arcs that are only a couple episodes long or are side or off-boss fights.

I’ll be honest, most of you know these characters already, so I’m just gonna run through them super quickly and give my suggested changes and my justifications for them.

Rouge the Bat

E-123 OMEGA

Dave the Intern

Fang the Sniper (Nack the Weasel)

Bean the Dynamite

Bark the Polar Bear

Rouge the Bat:

Voice Actor: Karen Strassman

Rouge is a thief and a treasure hunter but is also working for the military agency of the mainland, G.U.N. Rouge is sly, sneaky and has a silver tongue, easily able to manipulate people into what she wants by pure wordplay alone. Rouge is a lot less active of a fighter than Sonic and Co. as she prefers to stalk quietly in the shadows, and strike when the time is right. In this reboot, Rouge is gonna wear something a bit more modest. I’m sorry, I hate Rouges’ clothes in canon. That fucking catsuit? has gotta go. She can still look cool and... *gag* “”sexy”” but, I’d rather her not wear... THAT? But, I do want her personality to remain mostly intact because in full honesty? She’s not a bad character on paper. Like Shadow, though I do kinda want Rouge to be a straight-up antagonist at first, and a very greedy one at that.

E-123 OMEGA:

Voice Actor: Vic Mignogna

What can I say? Omega doesn’t need to change much at all, really. He works in about any Sonic setting tbh. He’s loud, and he likes to blow things up, and he doesn’t emote very well, what else is there? In this reboot though, Omega will be the only E-Series Robot, or rather the only... surviving one. And, yeah, like Rouge and Shadow too, I think Omega should start out as an antagonist.

Dave the Intern:

Voice Actor: Ben Schwartz (What? We gotta keep up the tradition of Dave sharing a voice with Sonic!)

An odd choice for a minor antagonist I know, but Dave the Intern is REALLY funny? And I love the idea of a character just hating Sonic for no discernable reason other than ‘he’s popular and cool and I’m not.’ I also thought it’d be cool if Dave frequently got way in over his head with the shit he does, and put himself into trouble that Sonic (reluctantly) had to get him out of. Plus, I really wanted to include some representation of Sonic Boom in this reboot because Sonic Boom as a show is really funny and really good, and I think taking a page from it might be good, plus, Boom is a part of Sonic’s history too!

Fang the Sniper (Nack the Weasel):

Voice Actor: Dwight Schultz

Fang is the leader of Team Hooligan, and in a similar vein to Great Kukku XV I think he’d take himself way too seriously, but would play off of other characters. In Fang’s mind, he’s a trained assassin, like an evil Aussie-accent Batman or something of that stretch. But, really? He’s just a sleazy conman with a popgun. I feel like a good joke to make in this series would be Fang reaching for what he thinks is his actual pistol, but then he’d pull it out and fire it and it’d be one of his fake popguns. And, do I even need to make a joke about the comedic possibilities between him and Shadow using guns? Also, his real name being Nack the Weasel but he wants everyone to call him Fang the Sniper is funny. I’m sorry but ‘Fang the Sniper’ is just a silly name and I like the idea of Fang being the equivalent of one of those nice guys with Otaku Katanas who think they’re WAY cooler than they actually are. I wanted to choose Fang as a minor antagonist in the reboot just because of the kind of character I think he is, he thinks he has everything under control and has all the cards laid out in front of him when in reality, this setup of his just fails dramatically. The kind of interactions between him and Sonic this could spell out are amazing.

Bean the Dynamite:

Voice Actor: Eric Bauza

What do you get when you throw Daffy Duck and Woody Woodpecker in a blender and make him an unstable arsonist? Bean the Dynamite, that’s what. I’d want Bean in this reboot to be an off-the-wall, screwy, but surprisingly resourceful and clever, explosion-crazed maniac. He wouldn’t be... *gag* ‘insane’, so much as he would be just hyper and unable to calm down, again, like Woody Woodpecker or Daffy Duck. He’d be quick-witted, fast-talking and zippy, even more than Sonic himself is. (In the end, Sonic would always outpace him, but the reflexes on THIS bird are crazy.) Also, I feel like the idea of Bean being a defector of the Battle Kukku Armada is just... great, considering they’re all bomb-throwing birds, but THIS one was a little too off-the-handle for even them? He’d be a real character and a surprisingly dangerous threat for Sonic and Co.

Bark the Polar Bear:

Voice Actor: I’m... actually not too sure who to cast Bark as tbh. Mostly because I see him being very quiet and not... speaking, much at all?

Bark is a quiet tough guy. He’s smarter than he looks, but he’s big, he’s mean, he’s tough, and he will Hulk slam at least one character in the length of this reboot. I don’t really have much idea on where to take Bark, I just think he deserves a place as a minor villain.

Projected direction for canon

So, we have all the pieces of the puzzle, let’s see how they all fit together! I’ll be going through these with the assumption that one game can be made to represent each season of the show in its entirety.

For this, I honestly think it would be best if we split this reboot up based upon Sonic the Hedgehog’s current history with its elements. Think, almost, the way Sonic Generations told its story. We’ll start with something with a more Classic Vibe to it, then move into something more Adventure-like, and then, finally, we do something a bit more Modern! It’ll be a little less linear, and we’ll double dip here and there, but it’ll all line up!

Because of this, I’d like to establish what games have already PASSED before going into this series. This is what all has happened going in, in roughly the chronological order they happened in.

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 (16-bit)

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 (8-bit)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit)

SegaSonic the Hedgehog

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-Bit)

Sonic CD

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles

Sonic Chaos

Sonic Triple Trouble

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episodes 1, 2, and Metal.

Sonic Mania

The intention is to begin sort of... around the time JUST before Sonic Adventure 1 happened in the old rudimentary timeline before Sonic Forces came out and clarified Classic and Modern Sonic were different beings.

Season 1/Game 1: Genesis

The first few episodes of the series will be more dedicated to introducing the characters and Sonic’s new home. We’ll see the new Sonic, the new Tails, the new Knuckles, Amy, Mighty, and Ray for the very first time, and we’ll also get to see some of the characters’ new capabilities as they take on some minor villains or assaults led by Orbot and Cubot for the first couple episodes; but not at all subtly tease at something bigger and better coming, although we’re also shown how frequent scuffles between Sonic and Eggman exactly are, as we see plenty of mention of the Doctor, but he never physically appears.

Then, I’d say at about Episode 5 or 6 out of say, 22-24? Eggman steps in and introduces us to his new Master Plan, as he does. To build a new Death Egg (which, Sonic obviously chides him on doing the same thing a THIRD time.), but, as Robotnik does, he turns out to be serious, and the episodes from there on out are a race against time for Sonic and co. to gather all the Chaos Emeralds from various different zones of various different challenging geographies, fight off villains and giant robots, learn valuable morals, run into some familiar faces, and have a couple laughs along the way.

The climax of the season would come with a few episodes left, where Sonic and Co. finally have all the Emeralds, and they chase Eggman down to the New Death Egg, maybe there could be an encounter with Metal Sonic along the way because nostalgia and to introduce Metal into the continuity, and of course things’ll play out from there, Robotnik gets the upper hand and shows his shit, gets in a giant robot, dukes it out with Super Sonic, and BAM! End of Season/Game!

At the very end of season 1/Game 1 though, I’d like to include a little teaser for Season 2/Game 2 in the form of a familiar-looking escape pod in the middle of a jungle, full of green bubbling fluid, and a flash of red eyes.

Season 2/Game 2: Chaos Emerald Chaos

Right out of the gate in Season 2/Game 2, we’re back in the game as Sonic and Eggman are seen duking it out a while after the first game/season has ended, but in a much different area than we’d seen in Season 1/Game 1. This fight would lead up to the pod in the teaser after Eggman lures Sonic into a dark room with the green glow in sight. By one way or another, maybe on purpose or on accident, this pod breaks open, and something is released from it. Sonic is understandably confused, but then, is knocked down, and a panning shot reveals one of three of our major antagonists for the season/game, Shadow the Hedgehog.

Shadow fucking wipes the floor with Sonic in this first encounter, but instead of finishing him off, Eggman instructs Shadow to leave him be and search for the rest of the Chaos Emeralds instead. Shadow nods and simply leaves via Chaos Control. Eggman, on the meanwhile, begins transporting Sonic back to North Island via dropship, revealing by surprise that this isn’t on North Island, but rather a much smaller place Eggman was using as a trap.

Meanwhile, Sonic’s friends (with Knux noticeably absent) are confused to learn that Sonic has been... committing crimes, upon his return back from a scuffle back with Eggman, and seeming very much unlike himself, always hiding away in the dark and staying away from everyone. When they go to confront him, it turns out that this was actually Shadow, disguised as Sonic, who was simply searching for the emeralds for Dr. Eggman.

Sonic’s friends demand to know where Sonic is, but Shadow kicks all their asses instead, and something about the Master Emerald is mentioned after the fight. We then cut away to Knuckles, who is soon confronted by Shadow.

Shadow puts up a hard fight, but, with the help of the chaos emerald he already had, defeats Knuckles, and goes to take the Master Emerald. But, in a last ditch effort to save the gem, Knuckles shatters the Master Emerald, causing the shards to scatter all across the islands. Shadow, understandably frustrated by this, scoffs and leaves, seemingly fooled into thinking the Master Emerald WAS destroyed. Unknowingly, however, shattering the Master Emerald caused Chaos, slumbering within the Emerald, to awaken.

Knuckles, obviously horrified by what he’s done, abandons Angel Island and sets to work on finding both the pieces of the Master Emerald, and any Chaos Emeralds he can, to stop Chaos before anything goes wrong.

At this point, we go back to Sonic, who finally escapes as the dropship taking him to EggmanLand and, by extension, escapes from the city as he hurries to try to reunite with his friends and tell them what happened.

From there, a combination of the events of Adventure 1 and 2 (with the addition of Metal Sonic and some other characters of course.) would transpire, with Rouge the Bat getting involved with Knuckles due to her finding the shards of the Master Emerald, and the Chaos Emeralds trading hands several times, all up until the Season/Game’s climax.

It would all build with Robotnik planning to use Chaos to terraform the Earth by transforming him into Perfect Chaos, who, once he takes form, begins wreaking havoc on a coastal city on the mainland. At this point, the Chaos Emeralds seem shut off, and even though the Master Emerald is restored, it seems like there’s nothing that can be done. Shadow, having already begun to go through a change of heart when he sees the kind of destruction the doctor’s plans have wrought, and after some choice words from Amy, decides instead to join Sonic and Co. in what seems like their darkest hour. And, Shadow mentions that Chaos only absorbed the negative energy of the emeralds, being in-tune with Chaos Energy himself, he’d know this.

And so, Super Sonic and Super Shadow defeat Perfect Chaos together, Knuckles and the spirit of Tikal work together to seal Chaos back inside the Master Emerald, and the city begins to drain.

Shadow, having felt satisfied with this, then decides to go off on his own for a while, and mentions something about ‘wanting to discover himself’, and ‘trying to decide what Maria would have wanted me to be.’

Oh, and Eggman is finally thrown in prison for literally capsizing an entire city. But don’t worry, he’ll be back.

End of Season 2/Game 2.

Season 3/Game 3: Triple Trouble!

This Eggmanless Season/Game would feature a ‘Triple Threat’, in the form of 3 major villains! And all three of them brand new to the series! We’re introduced to Emerl in this season, as well as Great Kukku XV, and Heavy King.

The entire season would be intense, Team Sonic rushing to get the Chaos Emeralds once again, while the Battle Birds (frequently interrupted by Bean the Dynamite, calling out to his ‘brothers’) and Heavies scramble to get them before the team does.

All the while... Emerl grows stronger and stronger by the minute.

And, in a surprise twist, Emerl, having copied the data of Great Kukku XV and the Heavies, among many others, grows the strongest he ever has, and, like Mecha Sonic in Sonic 3, uses the Master Emerald (likely stolen by Heavy King or Kukku at this point) to attain a Super form, and Emerl becomes a terrifying conglomerate of everything that has led up to this point, Perfect Emerl, the thing originally meant to take down PERFECT CHAOS.

But, luckily, Kukku and King realize when they’ve been beaten, and decide to help Super Sonic take down Perfect Emerl.

End of Season 3/Game 3. But like Season 1, let’s end off on a teaser. How about a small, flickering flame, with a visible shadow?

Season 4/Game 4: Return of Solaris

This is the final season/game I have planned out, although that’s not to say more couldn’t be done with this concept, it’s just about as far as I got. Essentially I was thinking this season could be a retelling and retooling of Sonic 06 with some details omitted or changed up like, for instance:

The romance between Sonic and Elise being outright axed! Matter of fact, while we’re at it, let’s just NOT make Elise a focus character so she doesn’t eat up screentime?

The weird time shit in this season/game being altered with Time Stones instead of Chaos Emeralds!

Less plotholes!

Focus on NONLINEAR timelines with LINEAR storytelling.

Silver is less silly!

Metal Sonic!

The Chaotix! AND THEY’RE HERE TO ACTUALLY BE HELPFUL!

Important Sonic characters being important!

Hey guess what? Eggman’s back and busted out of jail and he’s kicking ass! And he’s totally gonna release Solaris even though that didn’t work out so well for him last time!

Mephiles is still a cool villain! And he gets cool new designs for this series too that don’t stray too far from his original form!

I feel like this season/game would be kind of a hard fusion of Sonic CD and Sonic 06, with elements of Sonic CD being changing the past to ensure the future, and the future/present changing as a result.

The climax of this series would be, well, you know by now. Sonic getting shot in the back, but then revived using the Chaos Emeralds and Time Stones together. But, even with Super Sonic, all seems hopeless, but, Sonic and Knuckles seem to have an idea, and it leads up, to our grand finale:

Solaris, the extra-dimensional being of ultimate power.

Versus

Hyper Sonic, Super Shadow, Super Silver, Super Tails, Super Knuckles, Super Amy, Super Mighty, and Super Ray.

With Solaris finally felled, Sonic and Co. use the last of the energy of their super forms to do two more things.

Vanquish the flame of Solaris and Mephiles, and ensure that Solaris may never return to any Time Stream.

Silver’s future, although still broken, now looks much brighter, and the world is saved for the final time.

End of Season 4/Game 4.

I’m sure these ideas could be tweaked or changed around to span more seasons/games if certain characters or aspects of the series become popular, or if demand for certain characters appearing gets to be enough. Sonic has an immense library of games to do over or retell in this reboot, why not?

And, this is just my idea for it, it doesn’t have to go this way explicitly. My only goal with this was to try to unify the Sonic lore in an interesting, unique manner, but also in such a way that it was new, fresh, and it made sense, most of all!

Opening

This really applies more toward the cartoon part of this reboot, that’s not to say the video game COULDN’T utilize the cartoon’s opening or something, it’s just that the opening is more for the show than it is for the games.

There’s a number of ways to go here, but in my mind, the best way to open a Sonic cartoon? Is the way you’d open a Sonic game. How about a condensed ‘remake’ of Sonic CD’s opening, with a few short clips from the first few episodes thrown in there to get people curious and excited about the show when it first airs?

There’s a cover of Sonic Boom by Crush 40 and Cash Cash just waiting to be used for this very thing!

I also think a condensed (that is to say, censored. I hate to censor a great song but ‘kicking-ass fast’ is a bit much for a show that’s likely gonna be PG-rated.) version of the Zebrahead (aka the BEST) version of His World would make for a GREAT opening.

Or if we wanna piggyback off of the recent success of Mania, how about a condensed version of Friends? Maybe we could even end the intro off on a remake of Sonic Mania’s title theme if we wanna have like, a classic Sonic emblem at the end of the opening.

I’d say the opening should be about... 60% new animation with Sonic platforming around and parkouring like he does or whatever, and about 40% old animation of various clips from the show or maybe even the games if we’re feeling kinda frisky to show off the series we’re about to watch, but also for budgetary reasons and to, again, get people interested in what’s actually IN the show, or maybe we could even do it like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure’s part 1 opening or something where a couple of important scenes from the very beginning of the show or games are re-animated in a flashy way to achieve the same effect, but also wow the audience. That'd be a huge budget sink though and going a classic clip-show-and-new-shit route may just be the ideal compromise.

Marketing

This next part is also a lot more cartoon oriented, and kinda heavily depends on who’s gonna be sponsoring the show and who’s gonna be running it, but, hear me out.

Part of Sonic’s rise to popularity in the 90s was controversial, competitive advertising. And you know what? I haven’t seen anything really quite like this in a long time (except maybe for cleaner commercials), but, lots of people remember how pushy and in your face these commercials were, and how much they really pushed the superiority of the product they were advertising. So you know what? Let’s bring this back. Let’s bring back Sonic’s violent guerilla marketing campaigns.

It’d be a great throwback as well as a statement about Sonic REALLY comin’ back and comin’ back hot; which might get some new people interested to at least watch a few episodes, and in the process of that, they may find they like the new show/games a lot!

(NOTE: I DON’T HATE NICKELODEON, AND THIS ISN’T EXACTLY WHAT I THINK THE SHOW’S SONIC SHOULD LOOK LIKE, THIS IS JUST A PROOF-OF-CONCEPT OF WHAT I THINK THIS SHOW’S ADVERTISING COULD LOOK LIKE)

Or, if we want to opt for more positive, passive marketing strategies, why don’t we revisit an idea that was misused and make it better?

Idk about anyone else but I actually really like the ‘blue streaks to show where Sonic’s been’ idea that the movie posters did, and I think it has potential to make a really memorable-looking advertisement.

Or, why not opt for a more nostalgic passive approach and recreate some of Sonic’s old box art?

Again, it’d be a great throwback as well as a way to get people interested in the show. Although, if we go this route I WOULD say maybe we should make it a little more interesting than just ‘Sonic 1 pose on a black grid or popart background’? Maybe we should combine these box arts and add the pop-art details for little pops of color while Sonic bursts out of this black-grid frame with a richly detailed drawing of Green Hill in the background? I dunno.

Conclusion

Okay, so. I didn’t get to everything I wanted to explain (like other marketing stuff, merchandising, the new actual GAMEPLAY for these new games, how to write the characters and humor, how I think the general ART STYLE of these new cartoons and games should look, etc.) as a matter of fact, I still have a ton more ideas for this reboot, but, here’s the main point:

Sonic the Hedgehog, right now? Sucks. Because it’s such a mess. It has too many ideas that are going off in too many different directions. The best way to change that, in my eyes, is to start over and try to unify all these broken-up ideas into one. I believe this is possible, while still maintaining a pretty widespread appeal and giving broken, old ideas a second chance to shine, but still being fresh and new enough to have a lasting impact and leave the door open for new content later.

I’m really bad at ending posts like this, but, if you went into this post thinking that Sonic can’t or shouldn’t change, I hope I’ve at least provoked thought on the matter. And, maybe, all those hardworking people at SEGA will decide one day that things need to change, whether by a reboot, rewrite or just... doing something a little bit different.

Maybe then, just maybe.

Our blue blur will really shine again.

- Jenny, of @jennikkugoesoff and @jennikku

#Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic the Hedgehog Reboot #Sonic Reboot #Sonic #sth #jennikkugoesoff #my rants #my essays

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fastsalad · 4 years

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I just rewatched the Melodramatics production of anb and it’s so iconically 2006 I just had to make a post with every single thing that was iconic. This got really long so most of it is under the cut lol

-Gordon looks like my cousin Cassidy

-The sweater vest pattern

-All the stagehands are dressed as nurses which is really clever and blends really well.

-All of Rhoda’s outfits are so iconic and 2006

-Bungee’s little dance during calamari is the reason I live.

-Nancy D’s hairstyle gives me Tracy Turnblad vibes

-RHODA’S HAIR CLIPS

-Roger legit looks like one of those annoying dumbass boys I went to middle school with who would act out for attention I’m sorry I love him but it’s true

-Lisa is so short compared to everyone which makes everything ten times funnier

-The choreography for Heart and Music is also the reason that I live

-Gordon lowkey also kinda looks like John Mulaney

-The doctors facial expressions are the best thing

-Mimi’s voice is actually my favorite thing

-Mimi is so iconic her PURPLE EYESHADOW AFJLHSDL

-Mimi and Gordon’s interactions during Mother’s Gonna Make Things Fine give me LIFE

-BUNGEE’S FROG WALK I’M DEAD

-The little vocal swing thingies roger does during Sailing? Legit my favorite thing.

-Roger: “Yes iiII’d wanna go sail.” Me, sobbing: yes you go you funky little sailor man

-Richard’s face when Nancy D said she was the thin nurse was the actual funniest thing

-Roger and Bungee were in Gordo’s Law of Genetics and I lowkey loved it like it added another layer to the song especially since they were the only two doing the bass parts and they had different choreography than the rest

-get it minister

-Once again, a+ choreography

-At the beginning of And They’re Off Gordon wheeled himself onto the stage in a wheelchair and then dramatically turned his head to look at the audience on beat with the song and it made me chuckle.

-RHODA’S LOW-RISE PANTS AND LAYERED SWEATERS ITS SO 2006 I CAN’T

-Everyone was pretending to be old at some point? Idk

-Gordon’s voice makes me so happy

-The cast just overall has a very nice sound

-Roger’s dad wallet

-“Looking sharp looking fit” guys he’s not wearing a suit what do we say here

-~LisTeN tO RoGeERr~

-Just Go was just overall very cute and funny

-“He’ll be brave as Zorro” does a weird sword fight dance

-Cause it’s gonna ~scaAaAaAre~ them! (Cue Gordon having a heart attack)

-Bungee is iconic as always

-Sitting Becalmed in the Lee of Cuttyhunk was like a weird fever dream but I lowkey loved it

-Nancy D and the doctor getting so excited over brain surgery is my favorite thing

-Gordon looks so confused and weirded out and honestly? Mood.

-RHODA’S SCARF

-“Maybe we’ll lauuuughtooloud” listen I felt that ‘oh shit I waited too long and now I’m behind the music’ moment.

-Gordon and Roger’s voices go together so nicely

-Mimi is literally my favorite

-“What’re ya, stupid? Go and fly with the man!” Made me feel unexplained emotions.

-Roger looks so sad at the end of the song and it breaks my heart

-“Let’s just go over this. You have a home right? Cause I don’t.” This Lisa is iconic.

-Lisa’s facial expressions = also iconic.

-Mr. Bungee’s glasses

-“The preferred word in any kind of situation is- DON’T TOUCH ME!”

-The waitress nurse’s hat and Nancy D’s glasses

-The waitress nurse holding a copy of the actual script for the show during The Yes Song

-The little hand motion Bungee did for “get into my car”

-The zoom in for affinity

-THE FLIP PHONES

-The lighting for in the middle of the room

-The audience loosing it when Richard started singing

-Mimi struggling to get onstage with the crate

-The pictures on Gordon’s bookshelf

-The way Mimi says “asshole” so casually

-The horse head statue and seashell being used as bookends

-The lighting is back for middle of the room reprise

-Rhoda picking up the books Mimi dropped during the scene change

-Roger’s striped polo shirt that just screams sailor

-The return of Roger’s dad wallet

-Just the way Lisa did the “you love him. Too bad.” bit

-And her belting “when life turns out to be” it was different than most actresses do it and gave me chills

-Roger’s facial expressions

-The end of A Really Lousy Day in the Universe like holy shiT MY EMOTIONS

-Brain Dead was really fast and. Vibes.

-Also the minister and waitress switched costumes for brain dead? Strange.

-The waltz choreo

-The single water glass on the table

-“OH LOVERS START ROMANCING” and just the whole green teeth moment. Yes.

-ROGERS PIROUETTES. HE DID LIKE THREE IN A ROW THAT’S FRICKEN HARD

-RHODA’S RAINBOW SUSPENDERS

-Gordon’s little scoff-gasp thing after “tawdry”

-“Yes it is!”

-Just Gordon and Rhoda’s whole dynamic during Whenever I Dream

-The dramatic reveal that Gordon wasn’t puppeteering her at the end

-Rhoda’s clog dancing

-Richard’s superhero costume

-The fact that the video quality dropped dramatically when the lights came down

-The priest/waiter literally sparkling during Eating Myself Up Alive due to the UV lighting

-Richard’s attempted opera singing

-“YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYA”

-The end of eating myself up alive reminded me of the ending of The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals.

-The pictures on Gordon’s bookshelf that used to be of him and his loved ones being changed to just photos of Gordon’s face from different angles during the music still plays on

-Gordon playing the piano during the music still plays on

-MIMI TURNING OVER THE PICTURES OF GORDON AND THEN PICKING UP THE LAST ONE (which I’m pretty sure used to be of her and him) AND HOLDING IT BEFORE TURNING IT OVER TOO

-The bookshelf being empty except for the horse and seashell bookends is really chilling

-The whole apartment just looks so much more dreary and empty and lifeless than the first time you see it like props to the set and lighting designers

-Just the entirety of the music still plays on

-MIMI PUTTING ON SUNGLASSES AT THE END

-BUNGEES ENTRANCE

-HIS LITTLE SIDEWAYS HOP

-The way the frog eyes just jiggle around

-“okey dokey” (double ok sign)

-“s p a g h e t t i ! “

-(the biggest, funniest smile) “I L I K E S P A G H E T T I ! “

-THE HIGH FIVE

-Just all of bungees little hand gestures and dances

-Gordon’s little smile when he said “I’m ready”

-The fact that them singing “Richards gonna catch some hell for this” is very muted

-The audience slowly and subtly starting to lose it throughout You Boys Are Gonna Get Me in Such Trouble

-Richard’s weird little dance at the end

-THE LITTLE SMOOCH AT THE END OF SAILING REPRISE

-Lisa’s book advertisement

-“MY price? T w o b u c k s.”

-The gay history book

-Lisa having a feather boa for some reason

-THE FROG HAT

-Roger’s striped polo shirt that just screams sailor part 2

-Whatever the hell that shirt Gordon was wearing was

-LISA’S LITTLE SMILE WHEN SHE HOLDS UP TWO FINGERS

-The fact that she’s so short makes this song even funnier

-The little dance she did for “silly picnic”

-“YOU KNOW I REALLY HATE CRAZY PEOPLE”

-Gordon: (snatches a book) “HA. HA.” Lisa: (snatches the book back and throws Gordon’s cane into the corner)

-This Roger has a softer voice than most who have played the role and it just gave some of the lines a different vibe? And I loved it.

-Bungee coming on at the end without his frog head

-The fact that bungee looks about a third of his age with the frog head on? Like he legit looks ten with it on but like 30 with it off.

-Gordon: (dramatically throws the frog hat offstage)

-get it minister part 2

-Just. Every harmony in this show.

-“Finally there’s sun!” GORDON’S VOICE I’M CRYING HES SO GOOD

-The little clump they form at the end like agdlabkglsfkgak family

-Did I already mention the waitress’s sideswept bangs? So 2006.

-Bungee reminds me so much of my friend Phineas it’s scary

-AND GORDON LOOKS SO MUCH LIKE MY COUSIN CASSIDY ITS SCARY

-the frog noises in the credits

#i might do this for some other iconic productions ive watched #like french woods and east street players #is it just me or are all the song titles in this show super duper long #a new brain #gordon schwinn #mimi schwinn #roger delli bovi #rhoda anb #mr bungee #lisa anb #im not tagging the rest of the characters ajuhdskjab

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printscript · 5 years

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JoJo Shorts pt. 2

Pairing: Josuyasu Words: 1497 Rating: T AU: None Warning: Minor language Summary: Josuke is the biggest drama queen you’ll ever meet. A/N: I was fully planning to go more from Josuke's point of view bc I like writing for him, but it slipped into Oku and stayed there so here you have it. Also, Tomoko is underrated and writing for her is actually a lot of fun.

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18227726

Tomoko Higashikata was a generally put-together woman. Her childhood was average, she grew up, had a few jobs, dated a few people. She was usually short to temper unless aggravated, but her entire life had changed once she had a child. Yes, it had been 16 years dealing with said child, and yes, they sometimes had a falling out once in a while- as teenage sons have with their mothers.

But this time, her son was being a drama queen. Nothing new, surely, but it was grouped with raw rebellion and utter asshole.

“JOSUKE OPEN THE DOOR-” Tomoko pounded the wood with her fist, jiggling the doorknob but knowing that it wouldn’t do anything. When Josuke wanted to be alone, there was nothing you could do about it.

Josuke began to sputter words though muffled sobs, something about how he didn’t deserve to ever speak to anyone ever again; he probably had his face in a pillow.

It made Tomoko sigh the deepest sigh she could muster and rub her temples with her fingertips. “Josuke, you are going to be late again, please get up.”

Her son just wailed. “Mom, you couldn’t understand, my life RUINED! I’m never going out again, I’ll die.”

“Josuke, you have to be kidding me right now, I have to get to work. If this is about your fucking hair, I think I’ll have an aneurysm.”

There was no response from Josuke, which meant that it was definitely about his hair.

“If you don’t go to school today, I’m gonna beat your ass, Josuke!”

“It’s better than letting anyone see me like this, in such a horrible state, everything is going to shit, I deserve this.” Josuke groaned into his pillow.

Tomoko was at her wits’ end. At this point, there was no use in arguing with her melodramatic teenage son, so she decided that she would just go to work and deal with him later. Yep, she had to deal with him later. For her own health. She made her way down the hall and downstairs, grabbed a light jacket, and moved to open the front door. She opened it to Josuke’s friend, Okuyasu, probably here to take him to school.

“Hi, Ms. Higashikata, is Josuke home?”

What a nice boy. So much nicer than Mr. my-hair’s-ruined-so-my-whole-life-is-too, who was sitting upstairs whining. Tomoko sighed, attempting not to sound too distressed.

“The idiot is in his room sulking about his hair.” She said. “I have to get to work, but if you could get him to leave the house, it would save a lot of stress, thanks, dear.”

“Sure thing,” Okuyasu said, hand on the back of his neck before he slipped into the door and into the kitchen. The front door closed behind him before he heard the car start up and pull out.

Josuke’s house was nice. That was one of the reasons Okuyasu liked to come here so often, also because his own home held so many bad memories for him, but this house only held good ones. It made him smile. He focused on the railing of the stairs as he walked up them, then went up to Josuke’s door, knocking lightly.

“Mom, I already told you, no one can see me like this!” Josuke groaned.

Okuyasu laughed, “Bro, it’s just me. Can I come in?”

There was a choking sound from inside Josuke’s room, the click of the door unlocking after a moment, then the patter of socked feet running back towards the bed. The blanket was settling over Josuke’s back by the time Okuyasu could open the door and peer in.

“Ah, come on, bro, you can’t look that bad, right? Your hair always looks so cool, no matter what you do to it.”

“Thanks, dude, but not even Crazy D could fix this one.” Came Josuke’s muffled voice from the comforter.

Okuyasu had walked across the room and sat at the foot of Josuke’s bed at this point. Josuke always looked amazing. He was just that kind of guy. You know, the guy who takes his physical appearance really seriously. Like the dude probably has more skin and hair products than Okuyasu could count.

When Okuyasu forgot to reply, Josuke spoke up again.

“Promise you won’t laugh, okay?”

“Mmhmm.”

Josuke sighed before he sat up, letting the plush blanket fall from his shoulders.

The first thing Okuyasu looked at was not his hair. He was drawn to Josuke’s long eyelashes and the overemotional tears in the corners of his eyes that just made them look bluer. He looked at his best friend’s mouth, and how Josuke’s right canine sunk into the skin of his bottom lip as he bit it in nervousness. He looked at his jawline, the way the muscles in his face rippled when he swallowed and at the hole in his earlobe where he earring usually was. Okay, now he was spacing out. Josuke was so pretty it made him feel a little too warm. Okuyasu had to stop himself from reaching his hand out to move the stray strand of hair that was blocking his view of Josuke’s other eye.

His hair... it wasn’t funny or ugly or ruined at all. Josuke was crazy. It was down, out of its pomp, framing Josuke’s face and brushing his cheeks. Sure, it stuck up a little in a few places, and it looked a little damp from when Josuke may have attempted to fix it earlier, but it was just a little bedhead. Not funny at all. Cute, if anything.

“I accidentally fell asleep when my hair was still air-drying, and so, of course, it had to go and get all smushed from sleeping on it, but now it’s just not going back to where it’s s’posed to be and since it was wet and had a little product in it to keep it up in the morning but didn’t realize it was my last bottle, now it’s gonna be sticking up all day, and I can’t let anyone see me like this because I’d die on the spot if my hair wasn’t perfect and how it’s s’posed to be, ya know? It’s like my signature thing, I just-”

“Dude.”

Josuke stopped the flailing and rambling he was doing to look at Okuyasu, his rant turning into an incoherent babble until he fell quiet, putting his hands on the bed between his crossed legs and looking a little embarrassed.

Okuyasu was suddenly lost for any words that could even tell him that it didn’t matter at all. What was he supposed to say, ‘your bedhead looks kinda hot?’ No. He’d get smacked, probably. Or at least he’d weird-out Josuke and they’d stop being friends forever, he couldn’t-

“W-what did you say?” Josuke was red, his eyes as wide as saucers, fully gnawing on his lip now, looking like he was trying not to scream, or faint, or both.

Shit. Okuyasu could have sworn he hadn’t said that aloud, but maybe he had, he sometimes forgot to filter his thoughts.

“I said your bedhead looks kinda hot.”

That sent Josuke mentally reeling, at least it looked like it because he had one hand over his eyes and one dragging through his hair to try and fix it again. His ears were red and he was mumbling again.

Okuyasu had failed a second time to keep himself from saying something stupid, and he thought he really should just leave the room before he made Josuke die right there and then.

Instead, his legs made him stand up and move in front of Josuke. He reached in his pocket and produced a rubber band. These were special rubber bands for hair apparently. Yukako would give him these when he kept dropping his pencils so he could group them all together. She always had a few of them on her wrists and Okuyasu just sorta forgot to give them back. But before he could stop himself, he had his hands buried in Josuke’s hair and pushing it back into a half ponytail. It was a little sloppy; Okuyasu was no hair stylist, he only slicked his own hair back every day, but he thought he did a pretty good job even as Josuke stared up at him with a dumbfounded look on his face like Okuyasu had just kissed him or slapped him or something.

“You could just try a new look, Josuke.”

Josuke had already been patting his head, trying to figure out what his friend in front of him had done with his hair, and upon not being able to figure out how the ponytail looked from feeling it, got up and shuffled to the bathroom.

“I mean- it’s not really my style or anything, but like, I guess since you did it, and it’s not that bad, I’ll just keep it for now-” Josuke made excuses from the mirror.

Okuyasu sat back down on the bed and laughed a bit.

“Dude, you’re such a drama queen.”

#jojo shorts #jjba #jojos bizarre adventure #jjba diu #diamond is unbreakable #jjba josuke #Josuke Higashikata #Okuyasu Nijimura #jjba okuyasu #josuyasu #jjba part 4

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flightfoot · 5 years

Text

Memories of Godly Selfishness Ch. 1

So I’ve been working on this for the last few days. The ideas been banging along in my head for the past few months. I remembered it again a few days ago and thought “hey, maybe I should submit this as a prompt!” and then realized “Oh wait, I’m a fanfic writer, I can just write the darn thing myself.” It was faster and easier to write than I expected! Still took a while though.

This will be a two-shot, though I’m not sure when I’ll write the second chapter.

The context here is that Apollo manages to accidentally drag Meg into his flashbacks, the same way Hazel took Leo and Frank along on some of her flashbacks. So they’re viewing these memories from a third-person perspective.

Meg and I stood in the middle of an amphitheater. Scraggly bushes populated the area beyond the stone of the amphitheater. It all seemed very familiar...

Before I was able to figure out why (curse my tiny mortal memory) I heard the twang of a ukulele’s string being plucked. Instinctively I turned around. As a god of music, I naturally grew curious whenever I heard music, plus the months I’d spent as a mortal had honed my sound identifying and threat assessment abilities... which was a nice way of saying that I listened fearfully for any sound I didn’t know the origin of and looked for hiding spots if I thought it was a monster... or worse.

My mind came to a screeching halt. I was looking at a highly attractive young man, roughly seventeen years old, with curly blond hair and a nice tan, mournfully plucking away at a ukulele. I was looking at myself. Me, before I’d lost my divinity, before I’d met Meg, before my children were kidnapped, before I dragged Meg out of the Cave of Trophonious, before Crest and Jason died, before any of the events that had radically altered how I behaved and my perception of the world.

That still didn’t tell me WHEN I was, though. My memory was faulty at the best of times, and trying to figure out what was going on just based on me sadly playing a ukulele by myself wasn’t much of a clue.

Wait... by myself?

I broke my gaze from my glorious divine self (oh, how I missed my true appearance), and cast my gaze from side to side. My eyes locked onto the form of a young teenage girl with long dark hair, whittling away on a piece of wood, forming it into a bow.

Artemis.

Before I could form another thought, I was scrambling across the floor to get to her.

“Sister!” I yelled as I ran at her, my arms open, desperately wanting, NEEDING to see her face and to feel her embrace again.

I passed right through her as if I wasn’t even there.

Reality reasserted itself. This was a memory. I couldn’t interact with anyone here. It only existed in my mind.

Meg caught up with me and gently took my hand. I turned to her. That’s right. Meg was real. She was here.

“You’ll see her again,” Meg reassured me. I wanted to believe her, but after everything I’d been through, I wasn’t so sure. I settled for studying her face, trying to memorize every detail, the color of her eyes, the expression on her face as she vented her frustration through her crafting. I wanted to hang onto my memories of my sister this time. I had to at least try.

As I was staring at my sister, I heard a yell from the edges of the amphitheater, “Don’t shoot!”

Startled, I looked up. Descending the stairs to the center stage were Leo, Frank, and Hazel.

Ah. That narrowed things down a bit. I remembered this, but vaguely. Leo had asked me for advice on his plan to defeat Gaea and for help with the Physician’s Cure. In exchange he had traded me the Valdezinator, that wonderful musical instrument of his. Sadly I couldn’t remember much beyond those facts. The memory itself was blurry and hard to get ahold of. I decided to give up on forcing myself to remember and just watch it instead.

As the demigods reached the front row where Artemis sat, she muttered, “There you are. We were beginning to wonder.”

“So you were expecting us, then,” Leo replied. “I can tell, because you’re so excited.”

“We were expecting to be found, bothered, and tormented,” my godly self interjected melodramatically, still plucking on his ukulele’s strings, “We didn’t know by whom. Can you not leave us in our misery?”

Beside me, Meg snorted and rolled her eyes. I had a feeling she was unimpressed with my past self. I didn’t blame her. This all seemed very silly and kinda embarrassing now. The demigods had had a FAR worse time than I had. It was ridiculous for me to be throwing a pity party for myself while they were risking their lives on a quest to save both camps and the gods, all with very little help from the gods they were protecting.

At least I’d been able to help here. I remembered that much. I had helped Leo survive. I had done SOMETHING right during all of this at least.

“You know they can’t, brother,” Artemis chided. “They require our help with their quest, even if the odds are hopeless.”

Meg jolted, eyes widening in realization. “That’s YOU?!” she exclaimed in disbelief, gesturing to my godly self.

Ah. Meg had never seen me as a god. She wouldn’t know the kinds of forms my divine self preferred. I nodded, putting my fingers to my lips in an attempt to quiet her. I was pretty sure there hadn’t been long pauses in this conversation for commentary by my future self and a young girl to talk during, and I doubted that I could rewind this memory. I didn’t want to miss any of this. We’d have to talk when there WAS a break in the conversation... assuming we had one before the memory ended.

“You two are full of good cheer,” Leo said. “Why are you hiding out here anyway? Shouldn’t you be... I dunno, fighting giants or something?”

I rolled my eyes. I WISHED. If Artemis and I had had the ability, we would’ve rained vengeance down on Orion for harming her Hunters. A memory resurfaced of myself holding Artemis as she cried, feeling the life drain from her friends’ bodies, unable to do anything to help them. I pushed it away before it could overwhelm me. I had my hands full with THIS memory, I didn’t want to get dragged into a different memory and miss this one.

Artemis glared at Leo. I began to feel a little nervous. I didn’t REMEMBER Artemis turning him into a woodland creature, but my memory was pretty faulty at the moment...

“Delos is our birthplace,” my sister said. “Here, we are unaffected by the Greek-Roman schism. Believe me, Leo Valdez, if I could, I would be with my Hunters, facing our old enemy Orion. Unfortunately, if I stepped off this island, I would become incapacitated with pain. All I can do is watch helplessly as Orion slaughters my followers. Many gave their lives to protect your friends and that accursed Athena statue.”

Meg turned to me, her brow furrowing, mouthing ‘Greek-Roman schism?’. I mouthed back, ‘Later’.

Hazel emitted a choking sound. “You mean Nico? Is he alright?”

I felt terrible seeing her like that. Knowing your sibling is in danger, and unable to do anything to help them... I know how that felt.

“All right?” my former self sobbed out. “None of us are alright, girl! Gaea is rising!”

I almost laughed. I sounded so ridiculous and pathetic. There I was, all my divine power intact, an Olympian! ...and yet I was losing my head more than the oh-so-squishy, oh-so-killable demigods, who had actually been forced to face Gaea’s minions. I’d just sat on Delos and sulked.

Artemis evidently agreed with my current self. She glared at my past self. “Hazel Lavesque, your brother is still alive. He is a brave fighter, like you. I wish I could say the same of my brother.”

“You wrong me!” my godly self wailed. “I was misled by Gaea and that horrible Roman child!”

I wasn’t sure how the demigods resisted busting out laughing at that exclamation. I sounded like a toddler that thought that the entire world had betrayed him because his mother wouldn’t push him on the swing.

Somehow they kept their self-control. Frank cleared his throat. “Uh, Lord Apollo, you mean Octavian?”

“Do not speak his name!” my former self exclaimed as he strummed another note on his ukulele. “Oh, Frank Zhang, if only you were my child.” I silently agreed. I’d gotten to know Frank better over the course of my quest. I would’ve been honored to have him as my son. “I heard your prayers, you know, all those weeks you wanted to be claimed.But alas! Mars gets all the good ones. I get... that creature as my descendant. He filled my head with compliments. He told me of the great temples he would build in my honor.”

My sister snorted. “You are easily flattered, brother.”

“Because I have so many amazing qualities to praise!” I felt my face twist in disgust. Yes, AMAZING qualities. Like my cowardice, my ignorance, my willingness to watch children die and treat it as ENTERTAINMENT... and my inability to save those children, even when I was trying my hardest. Death followed in my wake.

Meg looked over at me, her face scrunched up in a concerned expression. I smoothed out my expression as best I could. I didn’t want to worry her.

My past self continued talking while this was going on, “Octavian said he wanted to make the Romans strong. I said fine! I gave him my blessing.”

I looked down for a moment. Octavian and Commodus. I had given both my blessing. Both had gone crazy and died, one by my own hand. I had a terrible track record with my blessings.

“As I recall,” said Artemis, “he also promised to make you the most important god of the legion, above even Zeus.”

My eyes nearly rolled back in my head. Oh yeah, THAT was one of the things he promised me. How was I so much of an idiot that I didn’t realize that Zeus would take offense at that? He couldn’t stand ANY possible threat to his power, he’d never have allowed for my power to grow and his own to diminish that much, not while he had a way to stop it.

“Well, who was I to argue with an offer like that? Does Zeus have a perfect tan? Can he play the ukulele? I think not!”

I buried my face in my hands. Meg busted out laughing. I’d undergone a LOT of humiliation throughout my time as a mortal. It seemed ironic that the most embarrassing thing I’d been through so far was watching what I said and did when I was a god.

My former self continued, “But I never thought Octavian would start a war! Gaea must have been clouding my thoughts, whispering in my ear.”

Truthfully, I couldn’t remember now WHAT I thought Octavian would do. It never crossed my mind that my children would be in danger, but that may have simply been because I was in Roman form at the time, so my Greek children weren’t at the forefront of my thoughts.

“So fix it,” Leo said. “Tell Octavian to stand down. Or, you know, shoot him with one of your arrows. That would be fine too.”

I snorted. As if my life was ever that easy.

My past self quickly disabused Leo of that notion. “I cannot!” he cried. “Look!” He turned his ukulele into a bow. I watched enviously. Oh how I missed being able to do that, it meant I didn’t have to encumber myself. Alas, I was mortal now, and that was simply one of the many inconveniences I had to put up with.

He summoned a golden arrow (another ability I wish I still had, running out of ammunition was always a pain. And terrifying. Mostly terrifying) nocked it, and let it fly. It evaporated at Delos’s boundary.

“To shoot my bow, I would have to step off Delos. Then I would be incapacitated, or Zeus would strike me down. Father never liked me. He hasn’t trusted me for millennia!”

Trust.

I bitterly wished that I could trust Zeus not to torture me when I displeased him, . At the very least, I wish I could trust him to set his priorities straight. He might have decided that this was a good and just punishment for me, turning me mortal and making me go on a quest in order to regain his favor. Fine. But preventing other gods from helping was causing more mortals to die in the Triumvirate’s attacks than was necessary. But he didn’t care. He had faith that whatever happened, it wouldn’t get so far that it threatened himself directly, nor his power. Loss of life was of little concern to him.

“Well,” my sister responded, “to be fair, there was that time you conspired with Hera to overthrow him.”

“That was a misunderstanding!”

It hadn’t been a misunderstanding. I was bitter over being shocked for nth time that year, and when I saw a chance to stop from being shocked again, I took it. I should’ve known better than to side with Hera though. Honestly, she had tortured my mother, what was I THINKING siding with her?

“And you killed some of Zeus’s Cyclopes.”

“I had a good reason for that!”

I looked down at my shoes, not wanting to meet Artemis’s eyes, even though she couldn’t see this version of me. I hadn’t had a good reason. I’d just told myself I did. I needed someone to blame, someone to take my anger out on who wouldn’t destroy me if I tried, and they were convenient. I was willing to admit this to myself now, though I’d always known it. Meeting Tyson had made me regret taking my anger out on those Cyclopes. Those gentle, but still somewhat bitter eyes as he asked me if I would kill HIM if Zeus or another god used one of the weapons he made to do something cruel, something Tyson had no knowledge of and couldn’t stop even if he did... it filled me with shame.

I was still talking. At this point I wished he’d just shut up. He reminded me of everything I hate about how I used to act.

“At any rate, now Zeus blames me for everything - Octavian’s schemes, the fall of Delphi-”

“Wait,” Hazel inquired, forming the gesture for ‘time-out’. “The fall of Delphi?”

I groaned. Did we REALLY have to go over this? It had been my reality for the past few months, I didn’t need a recap.

Hazel needed to be informed, however. My former self sated her curiosity. “When the schism began between Greek and Roman, while I struggled with confusion, Gaea took advantage! She raised my old enemy Python, the great serpent, to repossess the Delphic Oracle. That horrible creature is now coiled in the ancient caverns, blocking the magic of prophecy. I am stuck here, so I can’t even fight him.”

I shuddered. I still wasn’t sure how I could defeat Python like this. The thought of facing him again sent my knees knocking, and I had to fight to stay upright. Meg took my hand, wordlessly showing her support. I calmed down. Maybe I was mortal this time, that was true. But this time, I wasn’t alone. We would defeat Python together.

“Bummer,” Leo said. He didn’t look very bummed. I couldn’t really blame him. It was awful that the power of prophecy had gone out, but I knew first-hand how taxing it could be to be the subject of a prophecy.

“Bummer indeed!” My godly version cried. “Zeus was already angry with me for appointing that new girl, Rachel Dare, as my Oracle. Zeus seems to think I hastened the war with Gaea by doing so, since Rachel issued the Prophecy of Seven as soon as I blessed her. But prophecy doesn’t work that way! Father just needed someone to blame. So of course he picked the handsomest, most talented, hopelessly awesome god.”

Anger and resentment nipped at my core. Zeus KNEW Rachel issuing that prophecy hadn’t caused it to arrive sooner. But he needed an excuse, ANY excuse, to blame someone, ANYONE else. Just so long as he wasn’t to blame.

While I was simmering about Zeus’s injustice, Meg burst out laughing again, which quickly extinguished my anger. Artemis faked some gagging noises at the same time. I started chuckling as well. My vanity HAD been pretty hilarious at times. Meg and I were laughing so hard, I nearly missed the next part of the conversation.

“Oh, stop it, sister! You’re in trouble too!”

“Only because I stayed in touch with my Hunters against Zeus’s wishes,” my sister said. “But I can always charm Father into forgiving me. He’s never been able to stay mad at me. it’s you I’m worried about.”

“I’m worried about me too!” my past self agreed. “We have to do something. We can’t kill Octavian. Hmm. Perhaps we should kill these demigods.”

The laughter died in my throat. I must have heard wrong. That couldn’t be right. I may have been an idiot in the past, I may have been negligent, and perhaps even callous, but there was no way I had seriously suggested murdering the heroes of the prophecy - the young demigods who would become my friends - simply because I felt the need to do something. My first instinct while I was panicking couldn’t have been to murder some innocent demigods who were trying to help rectify the situation, just because I couldn’t murder some other person. I HAD to have that wrong. I HAD to.

I felt Meg turn rigid next to me, immediately falling silent. It was the same way she behaved when reminded of The Beast.

Leo dashed my desperate hope, my denial. “Whoa there, Music Man. We’re on your side, remember? Why would you kill us?” A dash of fear colored Leo’s face as he said all this. I felt my stomach twist. He had really thought there was a chance, however small, that I would actually kill him. And the worst part was, I was pretty sure he was right.

“It might make me feel better!” my stupid, STUPID past self proclaimed. “I have to do something!”

Make me feel better... really? Killing children for no reason might make me feel better? My hand clenched, my knuckles turning white. I wished I had something to smash, but everything here was an illusion, simply a memory.

Leo kept things moving along. “Or you could help us. See, we’ve got this plan...” I calmed down slightly, listening to Leo’s plan. It had worked, and I had helped. I had been stupid in the past, but I HAD still helped. That counted for SOMETHING, right?

I may not have been able to vent, but my past self had no such problem. He stood up. “The physician’s cure?” He smashed his ukulele on the ground. “That’s your plan?”

Meg jumped slightly at my former self’s show of violence. Her expression closed off, as if she was trying to shut out the outside world. I wanted to comfort her, to explain, but we needed to get to a lull in the conversation first. I hoped one arrived soon.

Leo held his hands up, attempting to calm down my former self. “Hey, um, usually I’m all for smashing ukuleles, but-”

“I cannot help you!” My godly self cried. “Yes you can,” I muttered quietly to myself. “You’re just afraid too.”

I at least understood why I had been afraid. It’s not JUST that I was afraid of Zeus hurting me. I still remembered what happened the last time the cure was used, how Zeus had struck down my favorite son. I could take Zeus’s wrath. My loved ones couldn’t.

My former self continued his wailing, “If I told you the secret of the physician’s cure, Zeus would never forgive me!”

I blinked. Actually, neither Zeus nor anyone else had seemed to care too much. I guess Leo got one Get-Out-Of-Death-Free card. Too bad he was the only one, and only once. I was certain that if he died again, he would stay dead.

Leo attempted to persuade him. “You’re already in trouble. How could it get worse?”

I gaped a little at that. Had Leo seriously tried that line of reasoning? ‘How could it get worse?’ What had he been thinking?

My past self must’ve agreed with me. He shot Leo a withering glare. “If you knew what my father was capable of, mortal, you would not ask. It would be simpler if I just smote you all. That might please Zeus-”

I just groaned and buried my face in my hands again. As soon as I got back to reality I was gonna bang my head on the nearest wall. We were back to this again? Seriously? Why would murdering these demigods please Zeus? He didn’t generally take kindly to people murdering his-

My blood turned to ice. I had contemplated killing Jason. Even for a moment, I had thought about it, seriously considered going through with it. I don’t think it would have actually come to that, but the fact that it had even been a possibility in my mind...?

Thankfully my sister, my dear, sweet, sensible sister was there. “Brother...” she said warningly, glaring. The two locked eyes, commencing a mental argument. Artemis won, as usual. My past self sighed and kicked the broken remnants of his ukulele across the stage, a display of his childishness.

My sister stood up. “Hazel Lavesque, Frank Zhang, come with me. There are things you should know about the Twelfth Legion. As for you, Leo Valdez, Apollo will hear you out. See if you can strike a deal. My brother always like a good bargain.”

Frank and Hazel glanced back at Leo as they left, looking worried. A weight dropped into my stomach. They thought he was in danger too. In danger from ME.

I stared longingly at my sister as she left. I’d much rather be with her than with my past self. Sadly, I could not venture beyond the constraints of my memory.

A moment later my godly self turned to Leo, his arms folded, eyes glowing. “Well, Leo Valdez? Let us bargain, then. What can you offer that would convince me to to help you rather than kill you?”

Stop saying that, I silently begged. I GET it, I was a childish, murderous asshole. You don’t need to continue auditioning for the role, you already won an award for the part.

Fingers twitching, Leo talked with my former self. “A bargain. Yes. Absolutely.”

I watched as Leo started assembling that beautiful musical instrument of his, his hands working feverishly as he talked. He was barely even LOOKING at what he was doing. All the while, he continued reasoning with my past self. “So the thing is, Zeus is already pretty P.O.’ed at you, right? If you help us defeat Gaea, you could make it up to him.”

Honestly I doubted that even that would have been enough to quell Zeus’s wrath, but it was a far better plan than ‘murder people’. Speaking of which...

My godly self wrinkled his nose. I guess he really preferred the murder plan over the help-save-the-world plan. “I suppose that’s possible. But it would be easier to smite you.”

Leo wasn’t giving up THAT easily. “What kind of ballad would that make? You’re the god of music, right? Would you listen to a song called ‘Apollo Smites a Runty Little Demigod’? I wouldn’t. But ‘Apollo Defeats the Earth Mother and Saves the Freaking Universe’... that sounds like a Billboard chart-topper!”

At that moment, I was thinking of composing a song titled ‘Apollo is a Stupid Vain Idiot’. I’d have plenty of material to draw from for the lyrics.

At least that argument seemed persuasive. When in doubt, flatter. “What do you want exactly? And what do I get out of it?”

A chance to help a demigod survive, I added silently in my head.

Leo launched into his description of his plan for defeating Gaea. Listening to him, I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t realized his true intentions back then. It was obvious he was planning on implementing it himself. I suppose I just didn’t care much about what he was going to do. It didn’t concern ME, after all. I kept my eyes focused on Leo’s hands, at the brilliant device he was constructing. He seemed to be on auto-pilot.

Finally even my former self noticed that Leo was doing more than just keeping his hands busy. Looking at the strings and levers, I could almost hear the *click* as he realized that what Leo had assembled looked an awful lot like a musical instrument... “What is that you have made?”

Leo stared down at his contraption, as if he’d never seen it before. He looked puzzled, almost as if...

And then I got it.

I gaped at Leo in disbelief. Had he seriously...?

Leo seemed to stall a little. “Oh, this...? Um, well, this is quite simply the most amazing instrument ever!”

He had. He seriously had. He’d invented a musical instrument from scratch in the five minutes he was talking to me, in order to use as a bargaining chip to get me to help him with the physician’s cure and not kill him. And he hadn’t even MEANT to do it. I would have to congratulate Leo on pulling off that feat when we got back to reality... and lecture him about how reckless he’d been, going into this without a plan.

Also, I should probably check Leo’s bloodline. I wondered whether he was one of Hermes’ Legacies...

“How does it work?” my past self inquired.

Leo nervously looked down at his invention, inspecting it. Being familiar with Leo’s expressions and mannerisms, I was pretty sure that he didn’t even KNOW how it worked, and simply made a good guess based on how it was constructed.

Wait. If Leo didn’t even know how to play the Valdezinator at first, I doubted he’d put in some secret scales. He’d tricked me! Oh, I was SO getting him back for that.

Leo’s hands flew over the machine, tweaking a lever here, turning a gear there. The most wonderful melody sprang from the machine, a somewhat sad, longing song. Home. The song was about homesickness, I could tell now. But for Leo, there was more to it.

In his expression, I saw the longing of a lover long separated, much like Odysseus’s longing for home.

Odysseus. Ogygia. That song was for Calypso. Yet he had played it for me, to obtain my help. I felt strangely honored that he would share such a private melody with me.

When he had finished, there wasn’t a dry face around. Even Meg was enraptured my the music, tears flowing down her face. I imagine that she knew something about missing home from those long years after she was taken from her childhood home, from her father, and forced to work for Nero.

My godly self was just as transfixed by the instrument as I was. “I must have it. What is it called? What do you want for it?”

Leo hugged the instrument to himself at those words for a few seconds. Then a look of resignation, and a moment later, determination passed over him.

He hadn’t wanted to part with the machine. It must’ve been one of the few things that had reminded him of his girlfriend, but he had done it so that he could get what he needed, and return to her. I decided that when I had obtained the instrument again, I’d let Leo borrow it on occasion. He’d invented it, it was only right.

Leo bluffed for all he was worth... though considering that the instrument lived up to his praise, perhaps it was less a “bluff”, and more just ‘quickly pulling a sales pitch out of nowhere based on things he’s figured out in the last ten seconds and hopes are actually correct.’ “This is the Valdezinator, of course! It works by, um, translating your feeling into music as you manipulate the gears. It’s really meant for me, a child of Hephaestus, to use, though. I don’t know if you could-”

Ah, a CHALLENGE. He knew me well. Seriously, even though he had just met me, he played me like a fiddle.

“I am the god of music! I can certainly master the Valdezinator. I must! It is my duty!”

Oh how I hoped I’d actually be able to do that. I had only just begun unlocking that marvelous instrument’s secrets when Artemis and I had felt our Greek and Roman halves unite and had promptly raced off to help fight the Giants.

“So let’s wheel and deal, Music Man. I give you this; you give me the physician’s cure.”

“Oh... Well, I don’t actually have the physician’s cure.”

“I thought you were the god of medicine.”

I rolled my eyes. Being the god of something didn’t mean I knew everything about it, or that I was best at every aspect of it. When would mortals learn that? Then again, us gods tended to get pretty upset if they suggested such a thing, so perhaps it wasn’t too surprising that they assumed we had more power and expertise over our domains than we actually did.

My godly self explained, “Yes, but I’m the god of many things! Poetry, music, the Delphic Oracle-” here he let out a large sob. “Sorry. I’m fine, I’m fine. As I was saying, I have many spheres of influence. Then, of course, I have the who ‘sun god’ gig, which I inherited from Helios. The point is, I’m rather like a general practitioner. For the physician’s cure, you need a specialist - the only one who has ever cured death: My son Asclepius, the god of healers.”

Ah, Asclepius. I’d have to see if I could visit him. It’d been awhile. I wondered whether Zeus would allow Asclepius to help me, or if he had forbidden Asclepius as well as Artemis from giving me assistance.

Leo clearly wasn’t going to give up that easily. He played a few more notes, tempting my godly self even more. “That’s a shame, Apollo. I was hoping we could make a deal.”

My former self was putty in Leo’s hands at that point. I was a sucker for musical instruments. “Stop! It’s too beautiful! I’ll give you directions to Asclepius. He’s really very close!”

“How do we know he’ll help us? We’ve only got two days until Gaea wakes.”

“He’ll help! My son is very helpful. Just plead with him in my name.You’ll find him at his old temple in Epidaurus.”

Come to think of it, I’d have to ask Leo how that visit had gone. Asclepius didn’t get a lot of visitors, what with his guards preventing most visitors, so I’d imagine he was pretty pleased to have some new company.

“What’s the catch?”

“Ah... well, nothing. Except, of course, he’s guarded.”

“Guarded by what?”

“I don’t know!”

I didn’t know? Had it really been so long? When was the last time I even tried to check on him? A decade ago? A century? I resolved to visit him as soon as was feasible. I’d been neglecting so many of my family members...

“I only know Zeus is keeping Asclepius under guard so he doesn’t go running around the world resurrecting people. The first time Asclepius raised the dead... well, he caused quite an uproar. It’s a long story. But I’m sure you can convince him to help.”

‘Quite an uproar’. Well that was an understatement. Zeus killed Asclepius, I killed some Cyclopes, Zeus made me mortal, and made Asclepius a god.

“This isn’t sounding like much of a deal.” Well sorry Leo, but I honestly COULDN’T help more than that. Well, except for... “What about the last ingredient- the curse of Delos. What is it?”

My godly self stared entranced at the Valdezinator. Leo started looking concerned. I think he may have thought I would just take the thing... which I wouldn’t have. Stealing instruments from their inventor would only discourage others from innovating in the future. I suppose Leo didn’t know that though. I’d certainly given him no reason to believe that I was fair or reasonable.

“I can give the last ingredient to you. Then you’ll have everything Asclepius needs to brew the potion.”

Leo wheedled some more, playing the instrument a little to make sure I was maximally tempted. “I dunno. Trading this beautiful Valdezinator for some Delos curse-”

It worked.

“It’s not actually a curse! Look...” my past self plucked a flower. “This is the curse of Delos.”

“A cursed daisy?”

Well, in a manner of speaking...

My past self sighed. “That’s just a nickname. When my mother, Leto, was ready to give birth to Artemis and me, Hera was angry, because Zeus had cheated on her again. So she went around to every single landmass on earth. She made the nature spirits in each place promise to turn my mother away so she couldn’t give birth anywhere.”

Honestly, didn’t Hera have anything better to do with her time?

“Sounds like something Hera would do.”

“I know, right? Anyway, Hera exacted promises from every land that was rooted on the earth- but not from Delos, because back then Delos was a floating island. The nature spirits of Delos welcomed my mother. She gave birth to my sister and me, and the island was so happy to be our new sacred home it covered itself in these little yellow flowers. The flowers are a blessing, because we’re awesome. But they also symbolize a curse, because once we were born, Delos got rooted in place and wasn’t able to drift around the sea anymore. That’s why yellow daisies are called the curse of Delos.”

Honestly I’d prefer for them to be called ‘the blessing of Delos’. It sounded better to me. Alas, ‘the curse of Delos’ had stuck somehow.

“So I could have just picked the daisy myself and walked away.”

“No, no! Not for the potion you have in mind. The flower would have to be picked by either my sister or me. So what do you say, demigod? Directions to Asclepius and your last magical ingredient in exchange for that new musical instrument- do we have a deal?”

Leo sounded slightly reluctant, but he want through with it,“You drive a hard bargain, Music Man.”

“Excellent!”

The items exchanged hands. I let out a breath and smiled. I’d helped Leo survive. I may have needed to be bribed, but I had still helped to save my friend.

My godly self experimented with the Valdezinator. It made a strange revving noise. I remembered trying to learn how to play it. I don’t know how Leo picked it up so easily. Even as a god, it took me a while to figure out even the basics of how to play it. “Hmm... perhaps it’ll take some practice, but I’ll get it! Now let us find your friends. The sooner you leave the better!”

The world blurred around Meg and I. I instinctively moved closer to her. Meg stayed stock still, still closed off.

I wanted to ask her what was wrong, but then the world resolved.

We were in the middle of a lush green park, satyrs and nymphs scampering around, having fun. Looking around, I spotted Percy and Grover talking close behind me, Juniper not far from them.

Meg perked up slightly, watching the scene with interest.

The scene didn’t remain that peaceful for long.

The sunlight increased in intensity, becoming brighter and brighter. Steam emitted from the grass, as if it was boiling, though I saw no scorch marks. When the steam cleared, there I was, smiling like I was about to present the most coveted prize in the world.

Grover muttered “Oh no.. This can’t be good.”, looking at me with dread. My face fell. The fact that I could hear that now, in this memory, meant I heard it then too and just chose to ignore it.

I struggled, trying to remember what had happened here. Percy and Grover had helped me retrieve something I was missing, I remembered that much. I remembered them being delighted to help me however, so I was afraid that I might have revised my memories after the fact. They certainly didn’t look pleased at the moment.

“Percy Jackson!” My godly self bellowed. “And, um, your goat friend-”

“His name is Grover,” Percy cut in. “And we’re kind of off-duty, Lord Apollo. It’s Grover’s birthday.”

It had been Grover’s birthday? I didn’t remember that at all. Which meant... I’d ruined Grover’s birthday, hadn’t I. My shoulders slumped. I was amazed Grover wasn’t more irritated with me when Meg summoned him in Indiana, if this was the most significant interaction I’d had with him.

“Happy birthday!” My past self congratulated. “I’m so glad you’re taking the day off. That means you two have time to help me with a little problem!”

Clearly I hadn’t known what ‘day off’ meant- or more accurately, I hadn’t cared.

My past self led Percy and Grover away from the rest of the group. I watched as Juniper clung to Grover, as if afraid she’d never see him again. It reminded me of how Frank and Hazel looked when they had left Leo with me. Was this a common thing? For people to be afraid to leave me alone with the people they cared about, but unable to protest due to my godhood?

After a few minutes of walking, my godly self stopped. “Allow me to introduce, the Chryseae Celedones.” He snapped his fingers. Three golden women materialized. Percy looked wary, stepping back a little.

“Uh...What did you say these were? Krissy Kelly something?”

“Chryseae Celedones,” my former self corrected. “Golden singers. They’re my backup band!”

Grover gaped at the mechanical women, his eyes bulging. “I- I didn’t think they were real!”

Huh/ I’d have to perform with them a little more often, if people didn’t even know they existed. From the looks of it, Grover would probably enjoy the concert.

My past self laughed. “Well, it’s been a few centuries since I brought them out. If they perform too often, you know, their novelty wears off. They used to live at my temple at Delphi. Man, they could rock that place. Now I only use them for special occasions.”

Ah, I remembered those long ago days. I made sure to host a concert with them at least once per a mortal’s lifetime, so that every Pythian Oracle had a chance to hear them. I’d have to break them out of storage so that Rachel could attend a concert with them, once I was back on Olympus of course. Maybe hold a concert at camp? It could be a special one, mainly for the campers. If gods wanted to attend, they’d have to actually come down... which meant that their kids could see them. Hm...

Grover had misunderstood. “You brought them out for my birthday?”

Considering I hadn’t even KNOWN it was his birthday, I’d say no. My godly self quickly disabused Grover of that notion... though he was a bit of a jerk about it. “No, fool! I’ve got a concert tonight on Mount Olympus. Everyone is going to be there! The Nine Muses are opening, I’m performing a mix of old favorites and new material. I mean, it’s not like I need the Celedones. My solo career has been great. But people will expect to hear some of my classic hits with the girls: ‘Daphne on my Mind’, ‘Stairway to Olympus’. ‘Sweet Home Atlantis’. It’s going to be awesome!”

A concert with the Nine Muses... I’d promised Crest he’d get to play with me. I sobbed a little, thinking of him turning to dust in my arms.

Withdrawn as she was, Meg still looked concerned at my distress. She hesitantly placed a hand on my arm, but looked ready to flee at the slightest sign of trouble. I flashed her a grateful smile. She looked away, not meeting my eyes... but she kept her hand where it was.

Percy didn’t look thrilled at the prospect of my concert for some reason. Actually, he just generally seemed to wish I wasn’t there. I couldn’t blame him. I’d already noticed that there were only three Celedones, not four, and I remembered issuing a quest to Percy and Grover. He wanted a day off, and I’d ruined that.

“Great. So what’s the problem?” Percy said resignedly.

My godly self demonstrated the problem “Listen.” He commanded them to sing, just a single note. To me, their music sounded slightly empty. It needed that last singer. But to everyone else...

Percy and Grover stared at the automatons, enthralled. I caught Meg staring at them too, though she looked slightly less bewitched than the other two. Perhaps traveling with me had given her a more discerning ear?

A few moments later the girls slowly died down, releasing the mortals from their stupor. Percy stammered out “That... That was amazing.”

By his standards, sure, but by my godly self’s standards? “Amazing? There are only three of them! Their harmonies are empty. I can’t perform without the full quartet.”

Grover sobbed, “They’re so beautiful. They’re perfect!”

Maybe I should warn Grover away from the concert. I doubted that Juniper would appreciate how much her boyfriend seemed to adore the Celedones.

My past self seemed miffed that the mortals didn’t realize the problem. “They’re not perfect, Mr. Satyr.” I groaned. Seriously, he had a name! If you’re asking them for help, the least you could do is remember who you’re asking! “I need all four or the concert will be ruined. Unfortunately, my fourth Celedon went rogue this morning. I can’t find her anywhere.”

Percy seemed confused. “Uh... how does a backup singer go rogue?”

My godly self commanded the Celedones to sigh a depressing note, bringing the mood down.He explained, “They’re out of warranty. Hephaestus made them back for me in the old days, and they worked fine... until the day after their two-thousandth year warranty expired. Then naturally, WHAM! The fourth one goes haywire and runs off to the big city. Of course I tried to complain to Hephaestus, but he’s all Well, did you have my Protection Plus package? And I’m like, I didn’t want your stupid extended warranty! And he acts as if it’s my fault the Celedon broke, and says if I’d bought the Plus package, I could’ve had a dedicated service hotline, but-”

Ugh, I SWEAR Hephaestus does this kind of thing on purpose. He insists it’s coincidence, but after the fourth time something worked perfectly for thousands of years, then started malfunctioning within the week after the warranty expired, I stopped believing him.

Percy wasn’t interested in hearing the full story. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. So if you know that your Celedon is in the city, why can’t you look for her yourself?”

Because I was lazy and considered my time to be far more valuable than theirs, I silently replied. What my past self actually said however, was, “I don’t have time! I have to practice. Besides, this is what heroes are for.”

The look on Percy’s face as he muttered “Running the gods’ errands,” reminded me of how I had looked when Britomartis had demanded that Calypso and I go and fetch her griffins, and that that took priority over finding Georgina because she was a goddess, so her needs were more important than Jo’s or Emmie’s. When I’d wondered whether heroes were ever annoyed at ungrateful and had to restrain themselves, but I had dismissed the idea, not wanting to admit that it was probably the case. Enough had happened that I refused to delude myself any longer.

Percy muttered, “Running the gods’ errands,” resignedly.

��Exactly.”

No. That was NOT what heroes were for. I’d SEEN heroes fight for their friends... and die in place of them. Jason. Crest. Heloise. They were heroes. They’d fought until their last breath to protect the people they cared about. To see MYSELF treat heroes as errand boys, as mere servants to cater to the gods’ whims... I had a sudden urge to punch myself in my smiling, oblivious divine face.

Sadly, I could not. Apollo continued on, explaining the quest. “I assume the missing Celedon is roaming the Theater District, looking for a suitable place to audition. Celedons have the usual starlet dreams - being discovered, headlining a Broadway musical, that sort of thing. Most of the time I can keep their ambitions under control. I mean, I can’t have them upstaging me, can I? But I’m sure without me around she thinks she’s the next Katy Perry. You two need to get her before she causes any problems. And hurry! The concert is tonight, and Manhattan is a large island.”

Grover summarized the situation nicely, “So... you want us to find her, while you do sound checks?”

“Think of it as a favor. Not just for me, but for all the mortals in Manhattan.”

Well at least I hadn’t portrayed it as ME doing the favor of ALLOWING them to help me. I’d had THAT much awareness, at least.

Wait... for all the mortals? Why would it be a favor for...?

Oh.

Oh NO.

Grover realized at the same time I did. Had the same reaction too. “Oh. Oh NO...”

Grover looked completely terrified, a feeling that I had become well acquainted with over my past few months as a mortal. Terrified not for himself, but for the innocent humans just going about their day.

Percy still hadn’t caught on. “What? What oh no?”

“Percy, if that Celedon starts singing in public, in the middle of an afternoon rush hour-”

“She’ll cause no end of havoc,” my past self cut in. “She might sing a love song, or a lullaby, or a patriotic war tune, and whatever the mortals hear...”

This had gone beyond me just annoying some heroes and ruining Grover’s birthday. By not trying to get the Celedon back as soon as possible myself, I had endangered countless mortal lives, simply because I wanted to practice for a concert. If anyone had died or had been irreparably been injured because of my negligence, I’d never forgive myself. It would be just another thing to add to my list of mistakes.

At least I’d gone to some capable heroes. I might have ruined Grover’s birthday, but I didn’t have to worry about them having too much trouble. Grover and Percy were both very capable, they could easily handle a rogue singer.

“She has to be stopped. But why us?” Percy questioned.

Because you’re strong and you’re conveniently nearby, I wanted to answer. Instead my past self stated, “I like you!”

Yes, and if you REALLY liked them, you’d go away and retrieve her yourself. Sadly, I could be annoyed at my past self all I wanted. It didn’t change what had happened.

Of course, that wasn’t the ONLY reason I had gone with them...

“You’ve faced the Sirens before. This isn’t too different. Just put some wax in your ears. Plus your friend Grover is a satyr. He has natural resistance to magical music. Plus he can play the lyre.”

Well at least I bothered remembering Grover’s name this time. Hopefully I’d keep up that trend.

Percy seemed perplexed. “What lyre?”

My godly self summoned my personal lyre. I had created it after I gave my old one, the one Hermes had created when he ran off with my cattle, to Orpheus.

At least I was giving them some much-needed equipment to make things easier.

Grover realized the importance of what he held. “Oh! I couldn’t! This is your-”

“Yes. That’s my own personal lyre. Of course, if you damage it, I’ll incinerate you, but I’m sure you’ll be careful! You do know how to play the lyre, don’t you?”

...

really

REALLY?!

I just HAD to make that threat?

I’d hoped that I was only that much of a murderous asshole because I was so stressed, but NO, I just casually made those threats. They didn’t even want any part of this, I’d forced it on them!

Meg let go of my arm, turning to glare at me. I opened my mouth to try to talk to her, but we weren’t quite done with this scene.

Grover plucked a few notes, looking very, very uncertain. “Ummm...”

“Keep practicing. You’ll need the lyre’s magic to capture the Celedon. Have Percy distract her while you play.”

“Distract her,” Percy repeated, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing... or like he didn’t WANT to believe it, but knew he’d heard exactly right.

My godly self naturally either didn’t notice or didn’t care how Percy felt about all this. “Excellent! I’ll meet you at the Empire State Building at sunset. Bring me the Celedon. One way or another, I’ll persuade Hephaestus to fix her. Just don’t be late! I can’t keep my audience waiting. And remember, not a scratch on that lyre.”

My godly self disappeared. The world blurred. When it came back into focus, we were on a stage. My godly self began starting his sound checks. I took the opportunity to finally have a much-needed conversation with Meg. She still stood beside me, refusing to meet my eyes.

“Meg?” I ventured, asking as gently as possible. I didn’t want to scare or upset her more than I already had.

She stayed silent for a minute. Finally she mumbled something.

“What?” I asked, unable to hear her properly.

She mumbled a little more loudly this time. “The Beast.”

Huh? What did Nero have to do with this?

“What about the Beast?” I asked quietly.

She hesitated, picking her words carefully... as if she was afraid of the consequences if she didn’t.

“That... that was your Beast right, threatening our friends? You were holding him back. You stopped him from hurting them, right?”

No.

NO.

NONONONONONONONONONONONONO

My heart shattered.

I was NOT letting Meg go down that train of thought. I would NOT play Nero’s little game of pretend. Maybe she’d hate and fear me. But at least she’d know it was ME that was to blame, NO ONE ELSE.

I sat on the stage, trying to get down to Meg’s height to seem less imposing.

I looked her in the eye. “Meg. That was me. There is no Beast. There was NEVER a Beast. It was JUST. ME. I was being an idiot, a murderous, stupid, selfish idiot. Leo, Grover, Percy? They had done NOTHING wrong. NONE of them deserved my threats, deserved to think I might hurt them. What I said was WRONG, and I’m sorry. I can’t justify those threats. I won’t even try. Just know this; I WON’T do that again. If you ever thought I was going down that path - if you were EVER afraid that I was reverting to being that sort of asshole again, once I was a god - then contact Artemis. If by some miracle I regain my godhood, I’ll make sure you have some way to contact her, something more secure than an Iris message. I want you and the other mortals to feel SAFE around me, to know that I won’t hurt you. If you or any others still can’t trust me, that’s okay. You don’t have to forgive me for how I behaved in the past. Your trust is yours to give, and yours to withhold. You can take as much time as you wish, forever if you want to. I’ll still try to prove myself worthy of it.”

Meg looked back at me, emotions blurring across herself. Finally she scrunched up her face and looked at me, meeting my eyes this time. “You were stupid. But if you’re gonna be better now, then I think I can forgive you. But you need to apologize to everyone, and don’t do it again.”

I let out a sharp laugh as tears of relief sprang from my eyes. “Yes. Yes, I’ll do that. Next time we see Frank, Hazel, Leo, Percy, or Grover, I’ll do that.”

She hesitated for another moment. I waited. I wasn’t going to rush her.

“Would you have gone through with them? With your threats?”

I wanted to say no, of course not, I was just bluffing... but I wasn’t entirely sure. I didn’t think I would...

“No. No, I wouldn’t have,” I said at last. I sounded painfully unsure, even to myself.

Meg bit her lip and looked away again.

The world blurred again. It seemed that this part was on fast forward.

We reappeared at the park. Grover and Percy arrived a couple minutes later, looking bedraggled, but mostly unharmed.

“Excellent!” my godly self cried out, taking the caged Celedon from them. “I’ll get Hephaestus to fix her up, and this time I’m not taking any excuses about expired warranties! My show starts in half an hour!”

“You’re welcome,” Percy muttered. Yep, he definitely felt the same way I had after Britomartis had given me faint praise after retrieving her griffins.

I glanced at the lyre Grover was holding,and his fearful expression. There was a scratch on its side.

Oh no.

As Grover handed the lyre back to him, my godly self caught sight of the scratch. His expression turned angry and closed off. “You scratched it.” Meg went rigid again, breathing short shallow breaths. The air thickened with tension.

Grover whimpered “Lord Apollo-”. I resolved to buy him as many tin cans as he could eat and give him a long, LONG apology for this. Seeing him this scared of me, legitimately afraid that I would incinerate him, made me want to punch myself even more.

Luckily, Percy interfered before my godly self did something he couldn’t take back. “It was the only way to catch the Celedon. Besides, it’ll buff out. Get Hephaestus to do it. He owes you, right?”

A moment later, my past self grunted his agreement, his expression softening again. “I suppose you’re right. Well, good job, you two! As your reward, you’re invited to watch me perform on Mount Olympus!”

Meg’s breathing slowed down to a normal speed and her muscles loosened. I also relaxed a little. I hadn’t gone through with my threat. I hadn’t been that far gone, even then.

Grover and Percy glanced at each other, clearly wanting no part of that. I couldn’t see why. I might think that my past self was an asshole, but that didn’t stop me from being an asshole with superb musical skills.

Percy hurriedly found a way out of the invitation. “We aren’t worthy. We’d love to, really, but you know, we’d probably explode or something if we heard your godly music at full volume.”

All true - except for the ‘not being worthy’ part - but I could tell it was an excuse. My past self wasn’t nearly as perceptive. “You’re right. It might distract from my performance if you exploded. How considerate of you. Well, I’m off, then. Happy birthday Percy!”

Seriously? I BOUGHT that? Also, I STILL believed that it was Percy’s birthday? It’s not like his birthday was hugely significant to the fate of the world, OH WAIT.

Meg snorted out a small laugh. I was glad that at least she could find a little humor in my stupidity. At least I was good for SOMETHING.

I blinked, and we were both back at Camp Jupiter. I collapsed on the floor. That had been emotionally exhausting.

Meg sat a short distance from me, looking at her hands. “Hey,” I muttered quietly to her, still trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. “Let’s get up. I need to start making some apologies.”

She smiled slightly and stood up. Together we walked out of the tent to find our friends.

#trials of apollo #meg mccaffrey #lester papadopoulos #apollo #fanfiction #the trials of apollo #toa #leo valdez #percy jackson #grover underwood #blood of olympus #singer of apollo

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arkus-rhapsode · 5 years

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My Hero Academia Chapter 209 Review

Well now, we’ve entered the home stretch of this arc. Going in to this last fight, I myself have a few jitters. Will this chapter cure that? Lets find out.

So we open on team Bakugou at the end of their matches, finding out it only took five minutes. Wow, we know Vlad is the one announcing so that must just be a real salt in the wound for his class. Though, I think team Tokage is walking away with minimal injury and no robo medics showing them out, so I just that’s a win.

So we get the teacher advice and performance reviews and with what Vlad tells team Tokage, I feel as if I need to address this. So last week, I made my stance clear, I was fine with Bakugou winning. As Vlad is saying here, their strategy failed as it was built around a different Bakugu, and they ended up spreading themselves too thin. Now, I will say though, what the fourth round lacked, is any reflection from 1-b. Oh sure, there was Tokage in the sky panicking, but unlike the other matches, there really was a lack of seeing class 1-b react and try to roll with this, even if it would be futile.

I know, let sleeping dogs lie, but I honestly was getting miffed at the tone of last week being, either “Bakugou is so great, you under estimated him,” or “Bakugou is an ass, and Class 1-b shouldn’t have been hyped at all.” So I’d like to say that I’m taking a middle ground and just saying as a fight it was great for Bakugou in terms of character development, but ultimately as an actual clash, it was sorely one-sided.

Speaking of team Tokage, them at least are pretty good sports over their loss. Kaminari is also on the side to congratulate Bakugou and of course needing to remind the shippers of his and Jirou’s relationship. Also, I’m assuming what Sero is talking about is when he lifted up Bakugou with his tape.

We see All Might congratulate Bakugou and he of course decides to act like a serious tsundere and act like this is nothing. Even though we know how he feels about All Might and thus meaning, he’s likely a little giddy on the inside. Also props to the comedy with Deku, that Bakugou’s anger at this point is just reflex.

We get that relationship progression scene with Deku and Bakugou, and don’t get me wrong, from a character stand point this is good, but from an average reader stand point, it feels like I’m watching the scene from the training before the license exam. You know, the one where Bakugou wondered if Deku was still going to try and surpass him. Granted this version is in a different context as we know Bakugou is now the one playing catch up with Midoriya in terms of being a hero. I’m just pointing out that this slow progression relationship definitely feels like it’ll take a while longer.

We actually do get a page that’s mostly blank, and textless to obviously add emphasis of just how important this moment was and is allowing the audience to digest it. Now I’m not posting it mainly cause I don’t wanna take up more space than I need with these reviews. But I wanna definitely that this is very appreciated in terms of pacing, because you have series like One Piece that pack itself with so much content you actually need just to have a chapter long breather rather than just a short single page one. It just really makes me happy to see that MHA is at a point where it can do this well.

We cut to team Monoma who Tokage is apologizing to because with her loss there is no way they can win. To which I’m going to take this moment and say yeah, you can’t. Alright this is just a mini-rant I have, but I really hope this match doesn’t end with team Deku losing and the final score being 2-2. That would be such BS, as what this arc is basically built on is A vs B, someone has to win or else you basically wasted almost 20+ chapters on this arc and it was all pointless. Now some have said that if they tie, class 1-b will still be around and this will clearly show them as a force on their own, as this arc will have gotten their characterization out there so we don’t have to shove it into the moment.

The problem is though, that still doesn’t fix the arc of being pointless. Say what you will about the provisional license exam or the gentle arc, but at the end of the arc, there was a point to each of them that was established and fulfilled. The class got licensees and Eri was free of Overhaul’s influence. That’s what the arcs were about, that’s what we got. But if no one wins and no one loses, then this entire arc was a big waste of time. What is the point of a fight if there is no winner or loser? I think we give shit to the Grand Magic Games in FT a lot, but the point of the arc was to win and get the guild’s popularity back, which it followed through on, and Black Clovers tournament was really a selection for the royal knights, which means that if the main character lost, there was still a pay off to it.

Now, if you go by saying that this arc isn’t about the fight and is more about Deku and Shinsou meeting and discovering what’s up with those visions of All for One’s brother talking to him, then this arc should’ve been altered. Because that would mean that only now are we doing what matters for the arc. There is basically no way to end this ultimately satisfyingly, because if team Deku does win, that ends this arc at 3-1, which makes class 1-a look like a group of jackasses who steam rolled class 1-b. But I’l take that over its a tie, I don’t wanna feel like I just wasted 3 months on this for just this fight.

Anyway, Monoma gives an impassioned speech that really shows a layer of his character that isn’t shown. While he’s often made a joke by his irrational hatred, Monoma is very much a theatrical man. Now I don’t mean that he’s flamboyant like Aoyama, rather he’s just a guy who sees the world a stage and is gonna bask in it. We saw this really early in the sports fest and a little bit with what he chose their culture fest project to be.

We end this monologue with Yanagi basically asking monoma what the point of this is, which means I already like her cause we’re actually getting some more characterization than we did with team Tokage.

We also get Shoda here, putting the pieces of their strategy togethe, telling us that their powers are techincal based. Likely meaning they aren’t directly combat based, but they all have skills that give them a lot of options.

Yanagi also speculates on Midoriya, calling him “hateful,” to which Shoda points out that Yanagi kinda speaks her own langue. Which is a cool trait that at first might seem like overlap with Shiozaki. However, when Shiozaki would act melodramatic it was out of religious vindication, Yanagi just has her own way of talking.

…Wait… What’s that? …Ahh, I’m getting word that a female character actually mentioned Deku’s name, thus she has been admitted into the Dekubowl.

We start more speculation on Midoriya and I think it’s coming from Shoda, showing that he’s clearly the analytical member of the team. Shinsou says that they need to beat down Midoriya first.

Now look, I actually really enjoy this as the way everyone is speaking of Deku and actually take him as a serious threat. Now I now there are some who have said, “team Deku should lose so that he develops from this.” To which I say, fuck off. Deku isn’t like someone like Natsu who basically could bamf his way through everything up to his fight with Gildarts, so when he lost it was a big deal. But Deku, dude loses like crazy and grows form it. Aside from the physical damage, the kid in the first few arcs barely got a win on his own, most of it was done with teamwork, with im learning for now he had to be the strategist. He didn’t finish at the top of the sports festival by Bakugou, he needed help against Stain, the first fight I think he won on his own was against Muscular, and let me remind you that destroyed both of his arms.

So I its only after 200 chapters, Deku is only now actually being treated as I’d expect a shounen protag to be treated, a massive threat. For the longest time his big quality was he had the heart of a hero, but that always ended with a shattered body. So he wasn’t really that powerful. And only now is is signs of progress really starting to affect other characters especially outside of class. So if Deku loses here, I’m gonna think that this wasn’t a big, “learn from loss character development moment,” I’m thinking it be a set back for him. Still team Deku could still lose if Mina, Mineta, or Uraraka get captured and as a whole they fail. Now there is a potential for Deku to fail, but I’ll talk about that in a little bit.

Also Shinsou asks Monoma that if they combine their quirks then they could pin down Deku. Now the images behind Monoma imply that potentially, Monoma would use copy on One for All and will end up destroying his body. Now That seems to be the implication, however there is the possibility that Monoma could also copy Shinsou’s quirk and then surprise everyone by answering him. But come on, we wanna see Monoma with one for all.

The teachers actually comment on Shinsou and wonder if he’ll pull through in this fight like he did the first round.

We cut to team Deku with everyone trying to figure out what their going to do, and unlike team Bakugou, they seems pretty downtrodden and realize that they don’t exactly have the same all-aroundness that team Bakugou had. However, instead of team Bakugou where Bakugou was the center of the team who protected and attacked, Deku is instead opting as a decoy, leet them focus on him, and then pick them off.

We also need to point out, they are laying it on thick with Deku’s quirk having some issues. If what ultimately screws up Deku is his quirk crapping out on him, then that’ll kinda fee like some narrative manipulation, but at the same time, one for all is such a strange quirk in this world, I wouldn’t doubt it could just screw up against Deku’s will. So we might have some flags going up with potential failure.

I love how even Mineta realized that Deku’s had character development up to this point. Anyway the match begins, but this isn’t the end of the chapter, oh no.

All Might needs to be excused after a call from Gran Torino.

We cut to the cell of All for One himself. He reminds us that Giantomachia has appeared. And unlike the league, this guy is loyal directly to him.

Welp, All for One knows about One for All and likely that vestige stuff. I mean,it’s not too much of a surprise at it came from All for One’s brother. Anyway, pants to be darkened.

Post Chapter Follow up: So I’m going to say, there’s nothing wrong with this chapter at all. Its a pretty standard breather chapter, but my greatest fears are more of what is to come than what has been actually in the chapter. Now I can’t condemn a chapter for not doing something that it isn’t time for, but as you can see the anxiousness is cranked up going into this.

On the positives, my personal favorite thing about this chapter is the character interaction in team Monoma. It’s something we sorely lacked from team Tokage, but now it feels like this making up for that. We see More to Monoma as a character individually, as well as Yanagi and Shoda really showing of what they’re like as characters. Nothing from Yui yet, but she could be like Bondo and that’s the point. As for class 1-A, this group of characters are pretty used to bouncing of eachother, so it’s nothing new. That said, I do enjoy the interactions regardless.

The continuing relationship of Bakugou and Deku is great and I’m glad Horikoshi is committed to the long run with this relationship. Also I’m just happy that we got some good pacing built around it without it feeling inconvenient.

Also appearance from All for One, which already makes this even better and furthers the Giantmachia plot,.

Final Verdict: 7/10

Good breather chapter

Awesome character interactions

Foreshadowing of future events are getting set

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arthurrweasley · 6 years

Text

MAEVE MADAM ROSMERTA is AN ORDER MEMBER in the war, even though HER official job is as THE OWNER OF THE THREE BROOMSTICKS. the THIRTY FOUR year old PUREBLOOD is known to be WILD and CHARMING but also HARSH and VOLATILE. some might label them as THE SEA WITCH. fc: katheryn winnick

The sea waves are my evening gown And the sun on my head is my crown You’ll always have a home in my kingdom

ANTHEMS.

QUEENDOM - AURORA // SEASIDE - THE KOOKS // BRIEF AND MOMENTARY - ALEXANDER DUBOVOY // HIGH BY THE BEACH - LANA DEL REY // FALLIN ALL IN YOU - SHAWN MENDES // SHE LOOKS LIKE FUN - ARCTIC MONKEYS // WHITE FLAG (STEVE REECE REMIX) - BISHOP BRIGGS // THE LESS I KNOW THE BETTER - TAME IMPALA.

pinterest board ( x ) full playlist ( x )

AESTHETICS / VIBES.

hair sticky with sea salt, sunkissed skin, the scent of honey and wine, good intentions, soft laughter, leaving people on read, dog eared pages in well read books, spontaneous road trips, broken promises, messy hair, the feeling of sand between your toes, lipstick stains on coffee mugs, a thirst for knowledge, always knowing what to say, classical music, vodka shots at the crack of dawn, seaweed tangled in soft braids, welcoming people with open arms, humming while cooking, rain against bare skin, falling asleep under the stars, taking no fucking bullshit, never completely settling down and always getting even.

BACK TO BASICS.

name: maeve alannah rosmerta. occupation: owner of the three broomsticks / barmaid. nicknames: honestly, most people don’t even know her first name? she’s known as madam rosmerta, or simply rose. the few people that do know her first name might call her mae.

some people are also bound to think that her first name is rosmerta. personally, mae prefers to go by just her last name. it’s enough. she’s practical.

age: 34. date of birth: february 12, 1946. zodiac: aquarius. hometown: kinsale, ireland. current location: her boat or hogsmeade. has a small apartment above the three broomsticks. gender: cis female. pronouns: she/her. orientation: bisexual. spoken languages: english and gaelic fluently. has also picked up some other languages, but is not fluent in those ( spanish, french, danish, welsh ). gets by. moral alignment: neutral good / lawful good. element: water. house: ravenclaw.

BACKGROUND / FAMILY.

Mae was born in Kinsale, Ireland to two pureblood wizards. Her mother ( Cara Boyle ) was the owner of a small bookshop in the coastal town of Kinsale, and her father ( Dahey Rosmerta ) was a sailor. They had a romance that only lasted while Dahey was in town over the summers, and they never married. Yet, their relationship resulted in a daughter, born out of wedlock. Kind of a surprise for the both of them.

Grew up mostly with her father, and only spent the summers with her mum. When with her dad, she lived alongside him and his crew on his boat. During the summers, when stuck in Kinsale, she spent most of her time just being bored out of her damn mind. Kinda longed for the ocean, wanted to get back. Felt like a fish out of water.

Her mother later married a muggle man, and had two more children. Her father never settled down.

HOGWARTS YEARS.

Kind of a hat stall between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw? Ultimately landed in Ravenclaw though.

Was DEFINITIVELY that™ girl who would jump headfirst into the great lake, having absolutely no fear of the repercussions. Probably made friends with whatever lurks down there too.

It’s cold or frozen? Doesn’t care, will still swim. Gained a bit of a reputation as someone with nerves of steel because of it.

Missed life on her father’s boat, but was also really excited to learn stuff? She’s naturally curious, and can’t resist a challenge. Worked incredibly hard while at the school, made some friends... Spent most of her time by the water, studying or reading a book.

At some point, she broke into the Slytherin common rooms, because someone dared her that she couldn’t do it. Also she wanted to see the lake. Doesn’t take a lot to get her to do something.

Was a lot more mellow than her Ravenclaw peers. Didn’t care about what anyone else was doing, and never resorted to backstabbing. Kinda just went with the flow, did her best work, didn’t pay too much attention to what others were doing.

Did however get into trouble a lot, but never for hurting anyone else. Were usually instances of her ACCIDENTALLY finding herself in the forbidden forest at night, or taking a midnight swim, or maybe accidentally breaking into empty classrooms to practice magic when no one was around. Or maybe breaking into the restricted section at the library. Mae tried everything.

Could however sporadically flame up when she felt that it was necessary, which was mostly when someone younger needed to be defended. Mae has pretty strong maternal instincts and can be highly protective. Will fight u.

She played on the Quidditch Team as keeper, but quit after three years on the team because it was taking up too much time, and she would rather focus on her studies ( and swimming ).

Started her own Great Lake Club at the school, which consisted of students that were ‘fans’ of the lake, basically. Club meetings were basically just them either researching the lake, swimming in the lake if the weather permitted ( everyone’s not into winter swimming, apparently :/ ) or just hanging out by the water. Wasn’t the most serious of clubs, but they had fun. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AFTER HOGWARTS.

Mae graduated Hogwarts with top marks, and could probably have gone into any field she may have wanted, but she mostly just wanted to see the world. Wanderlust ingrained in her bones. Craving the sea.

So at the age of eighteen, she bought a shitty boat, and set off to see the world on her terms.

She ended up doing some work in different taverns across Europe, picking up odd jobs as a barmaid whenever she was in a town. Always chatting up customers, laughing with patrons, cracking jokes and making sure that the night never ended.

After a few years at sea, she eventually started to settle down, but never quite committing to anything. Could never bring herself to completely rooting herself to land. If she’s stuck on dry land for too long, she feels like she’s gonna go mad.

Still, at the age of twenty four (1970), Mae used the inheritance from her parents to buy the Three Broomsticks, a decision which she mostly made on a whim. She had been working in odd bars for a few years now, and kinda wanted something to call her own? Start her own legacy. Have some place that she could call home. Somewhere to return to.

Boat was kept ( at this point, she had a nicer one ), and she still spends her off days there, and some nights as well. Sort of like an escape. Definitively shows up to the bar with seaweed stuck in her hair ( so has to shower in her apartment first tbh ).

One of the reasons why she loves having a place that she is now tied to ( aka Hogsmeade ) is that she has been able to acquire and actually keep more personal items. She has quite the impressive library in the inn’s attic, for one. Books were one of the things she could only keep a few of, when she was living out of her boat.

Disappears from the Inn for a few weeks every now and then, but makes sure that someone else is in charge while she is away.

When the war first started, she tried to stay neutral. Had just bought a bar, and didn’t wanna alienate customers. But as time went on and the horrors became worse, morals kicked in, and she joined the Order. Today, she’s a member on the down low, and her affiliation with them is not public knowledge. Most of her tasks within the Order is pure intell gathering ( or spying ), but she also spreads information and acts as a messenger when needed. She just... wants to feel like she’s doing SOMETHING.

Keeps most of what she hears under wraps, but will share anything of interest with the Order. Other than that, her lips are sealed.

Everyone is welcome at the pub, as long as they leave their bullshit at the door. She considers the pub a zone where sides shouldn’t matter ( yet she does... sometimes close the bar down so that the order can meet there if needed ). And is definitively brave enough to throw any death eater out on their ass if they fuck around. In her bar, she’s in charge. Can 100% confirm that Bellatrix has been kicked out a time or two. #nervesofsteel

AS A PERSON.

Loves telling stories and is very good at it too !!! Someone’s bored? Rosmerta will serve them a story of her travels.

KIDS LOVE HER !!! For varying reasons, depending on their age ( smh @ Ron ). But she’s great with kids.

Has a big, soft heart and is kinda known for taking in strays. A kid has been kicked out by their parents? Aight, you can stay at the inn for a while until we find you something more permanent / things calm down.

More of a cool aunt than a mom though?

LOVES COOKING AND BREWING MEAD. Is really good at it too. The menu of the inn has been designed by her, and though she doesn’t spend a lot of time in its kitchen, she does oversee everything that happens in there. The menu itself is pretty simple, Mae believes in quality over quantity. And good fucking mead.

Has a reputation of taking zero bullshit? People don’t get away with SHIT when she’s around. Will personally drag your ass onto the street if you stir up trouble in her bar. Or anywhere else tbh.

Her mannerisms are kinda harsh? She’s generally just little bit rough around the edges. Doesn’t shy away from telling people what she thinks either, but does it in a way so that she almost always gets away with it? The mead might be a contributor, but you know.

TEMPERAMENTAL AS FUCK. Has a good heart, but she’s not... the nicest person out there. Can be petty, overemotional, brooding, melodramatic and short tempered. Her moods are known to change with the weather, and depending on how long she has been away from the sea. Though she loves the pub, she gets a bit stir crazy when she’s there for too long. Usually she’s pretty warm though.

So easily bored? Needs constant change to feel like herself, and to maintain some sort of happiness. That’s one of the things she likes with the bar, there’s always something new going on.

Aaaaand she’s definitively wild. Was way worse when she was younger ( don’t ask me about Mae in her 20s, she was a mess ), but she can’t be tamed. Will always follow her next whim, so eager to see where it takes her next.

Has remained an optimist over the years, which has been hard to do? She really believes that everything will be okay, but she keeps this kind of on the down low.... for some reason....

Never stayed in one place long enough (when younger) to develop an accent, so it’s a bit all over the place. She has a noticeable Irish accent ( from her father ).

Is around alcohol all day, but doesn’t drink at work. Can drink anyone under the table though, and has a scary high tolerance for alcohol ( which she usually jokes stems from her upbringing as a sailor ).

Has a kind of odd sense of humor? Can be a bit dark at times. Usually laughs at her own dumb jokes.

Wants everyone to have a good time when at her pub, and is REALLY trying to be a good hostess at all times?

SO CURIOUS, but also very good at minding her own damn business. Mostly curious about people’s motivations and how things work so like. Doesn’t put her nose where it doesn’t belong. Usually. Also good at keeping secrets.

Always stands her ground and trying to sway her is basically like trying to move a mountain. Good luck with that.

She’s also a highly practical person? Doesn’t complicate things too much, doesn’t try to make anyone jump through hoops. Things just are the way that they are with her and she will usually give it to you straight ( aka no mind games, thank god ). Has zero patience or time for bullshit.

Working in a bar really fits her because she genuinely loves talking to people?

STYLE ( FASHION / APPEARANCE ).

Mae has ocean blue eyes and blonde hair that she usually wears down, or pulled back into a soft braid. Since she still spends a considerable amount of time on her boat, she always smells faintly of the ocean, and her hair is wavy from sea salt. Skin is freckled and sunkissed, and she usually looks a bit glowy.

Wears minimal makeup. Some smudged eyeliner and lipstick, but that’s it. Prefer softer colors when she does.

While at work, she dresses in low cut shirts and loose fitting pants.

Gravitates towards lighter colors and earthy tones. Wears a lot of white, grey, light blue, light brown....

Keeps her nails short.

CHARACTER INFLUENCES.

WILL TURNER - drawn to the ocean, so brave, will dumbly sacrifice themselves for someone they love, similar banter.

ELIAN (TKAK)- will never settle down, feels the most at home on a boat, the same crooked smile. can be harsh, when need be.

SARA LANCE - leadership abilities, witty quips, protective, stands up for the weak, good at putting people in their place. not afraid to throw people out.

CLARA OSWALD - wanderlust in their bones, good with children, a little bossy, very brave, always warm and welcoming, an unquenchable thirst for adventure. just the right amount of flirty.

ALEX PARRISH - good at reading people, bit of an idealist, heart of a hero, a gray world view ( sees the middle ground ).

SHELBY WYATT - the ambition, the curiosity, the charm. those big doe eyes.

BELLE (BATB) - so curious, so inventive, the wanderlust, the kindness.

MEREDITH GREY - the moodiness!!!!!! but also the compassion and the dedication. takes no mcfucking bullshit.

ANGEL (BTVS) - the broodiness smh. both can be so... incredibly broody. also the enigma? doesn’t tell people her first name unless she absolutely has to / accidentally does so.

PHOEBE BUFFAY - bit eccentric, kinda free spirited, so kind, warm, very temperamental.

IZZIE STEVENS - sees the good in people. so protective, will fuck u up.

AUNT MAY - basically just everyone’s cool aunt.

#maraudrshq:intros #me? writing someone whos not a villain and not james potter? who am i #this got long and messy my b!

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milliebeeweasel · 6 years

Text

Draco Veritas: the anticlimactic conclusion to the fanfics that made Cassie Claire famous

This is the worst one. The worst one.

You can read my adventures through Draco Dormiens and Draco Sinister through those links.

And thus begins my spork, as promised.

Before anything else, there’s a small detail I forgot from the end of Draco Sinister: at the big finale party, a ~mysterious benefactor~ gifted Harry a magic red bracelet, called a runic band. That turned out to be kinda plot important, so yeah. Sorry about that.

Draco Veritas, it beginneth thusly.

Harry Potter and da Crew are all back at Hogwarts for their last year, sitting in a potions class that immediately gives me flashbacks to Draco Dormiens, back when I was young and naïve and had no idea what shit I was getting into.

But I actually like this opening! Draco and Harry are abusing this psychic connection they’ve developed since the first fic to cheat through the class. Snape gets annoyed as Draco keeps secretly giving Harry the answers, until naturally Draco gives him a very wrong answer to mess with him, and … IDK it’s funny and in-character, and a sweet callback to the first fic to show character development. It’s good.

Draco has a dream/vision about Voldemort and Lucius Malfoy, who’re nattering about “four worthy McGuffins”. I mean OBJECTS. Four worthy objects. Yeah. (Take a brief moment to celebrate because holy shit, Voldemort is actually IN this fic!)

However, the plot rapidly dissolves as we discover that, despite the heavy Draco/Ginny shipping at the end of Draco Sinister, Draco is now dating Blaise Zabini. Blaise, in this fic, is a redheaded girl and not …

Hindsight is 20/20 when a character’s gender isn’t confirmed until several books in, I guess.

So Harry and Draco are now captains of their respective quidditch teams, and—because for some reason they don’t want anyone to know they’re friends, because god forbid anything possibly ever unite the houses of Slytherin and Gryffindor—they stage regular arguments and fistfights in order to keep up appearances. And by “stage” I mean “actually knock the stuffing out of each other”.

Despite the sweet, fluffy Harry/Hermione ending of Draco Sinister, it turns out Harry and Hermione are now having relationship problems for nonspecific, aggravating reasons, and spend all their time moping or having wild domestics. Draco and Ginny also kinda hate each other, and basically act like bitter exes despite having barely dated, and Harry’s feeling constant, generalised RAEG and … look, if you’re wondering about Voldemort and the four worthy McGuffins, buckle up because we have several hundred pages of this soap opera bullshit before the plot is even remotely addressed.

But don’t worry.

Rhysenn Malfoy is here to make it all worse.

(Screenshot straight off my phone of the fanart included in the fic.)

This Amy Lee looking motherfucker pops up throughout the fic to bother everyone, pass on cryptic messages from Lucius, and grope at Draco. Her “cousin”.

Gross.

Anywhoo, Draco realises Harry is having a bad time, and goes to his staple solution for everything: alcoholism. By which I mean a trip to a wizard strip club called the Sleazy Weasel. This isn’t even close to the weirdest thing to happen in this fic.

Help.

While they’re getting merrily wankered, it turns out Ron has a ~secret girlfriend~, with whom Cassie plays the pronoun game for half the fic so we can’t guess who he’s illicitly fucking in every other POV swap. Make your guesses now. If you get it right I’ll … I dunno, write you a ficlet or something.

Meanwhile, Ginny reads a trashy romance book called Passionate Trousers, the text of which takes up huge chunks of the fic. (Uh, Cassie. I, uh, I don’t think you’re in a position to parody or criticise trashy romance stories. Just saying.) She also starts dating Seamus Finnegan, aka the only decent person in this story, and meanwhile Harry asks Sirius if he can visit James and Lily’s grave but Sirius says it’s too dangerous and Harry storms off in a huff, and …

PLOT? VOLDEMORT?

HELLOOOOO?

Nope, still more soap opera.

A random Slytherin catches Ron doing the sex with his ~mystery girlfriend~, but then passes out and suffers an immediate bout of amnesia, so that comes to nothing. Rhysenn keeps pointlessly bothering Draco, and reveals that, on top of being goffick and beautiful, she’s also immortal.

You could say … My Immortal.

Harry and Hermione’s domestics get to such a ridiculous point I start to long for Order of the Phoenix Capslock Harry, as Hermione screams at him in the Great Hall for not paying attention to her, and Ginny falls off her broom and hurts herself—

And finally, a tiny wee bit of plot shows up, when someone shoots Draco Malfoy with an arrow, throwing him off the Astronomy Tower.

You’d think this would kick-start the plot in earnest but … no. Draco’s up and about in time for the Yule Ball (which is now apparently a yearly occurrence, and not just an event for the Triwizard Tournament), and apparently he’s feeling perky enough to be a cheating whorebiscuit and snog Ginny in the rose garden. Not a euphemism. Honest.

Meanwhile, the golden trio go to the pub and have a snowball fight and general, wholesome fun, and Hermione makes them promise to always be friends, which is fanfic code for “we’re about to be totally fucked”.

250 pages in, and we have barely scraped the edge of an inciting incident.

By this point in Draco Dormiens, Draco and Harry had swapped bodies and were wreaking havoc. In Draco Sinister, Salazar Slytherin had kidnapped and date rape drugged Hermione.

This is supposed to be the grand finale. The epic third episode in this trilogy.

And it’s just … relationship drama. It’s slow and it’s boring.

So Harry and Draco sneak off to visit James and Lily’s grave, a scene which sounds good but is actually dull and stupid and utterly pointless. In Deathly Hallows, Harry seeing his parents’ grave at Godric’s Hollow breaks my heart, and guarantees a little tear every time.

‘And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.’

In Cassie’s version?

She literally says he “feels nothing”.

Yeah, Cassie. I’m sure Harry would suffer all this melodramatic angst over his love life, and not feel a single scrap of pain or loss or regret at seeing the graves of his parents. His parents, whom he wanted to know so badly in Philosopher’s Stone, he saw them in the Mirror of Erised—the “deepest and most desperate desire of [his] heart”.

And of fucking course, Rhysenn Malfoy then shows up and proceeds to molest Harry a few feet from James and Lily’s grave. And since Harry goes to putty in her presence, and immediately throws up after Draco chases her off, you can probably guess what Rhysenn is long before Cassie deigns to explain.

She’s a succubus.

Yeah, gasp, ahh, whatever.

Dear Cassie,

GIVE ME SOME FUCKING PLOT.

Where are the stakes? The carefully interwoven mysteries? What is the goal of this fic? I thought you were good at plot, Cassie! I praised you for it! Where did it go? Where is Voldemort? Is he knitting socks to go with Nagini’s jumper from Draco Sinister? She doesn’t need socks, Cassie! She’s a snake!

(Just let me stare at this adorable tiny snek until I’ve calmed down.)

Phew.

OK. Draco realises his wound from the arrow is now glowing, and his blood’s turned silver. That’s … healthy. And left unaddressed for another fifty pages.

Hermione realises the plot probably should’ve kicked in by now, so she researches the four worthy McGuffins from Draco’s dream. It turns out, in the time they’ve been pissing about doing nothing, Voldy’s got his act together and already collected the Mirror, the Scabbard, and the … something else? IDK the third item wasn’t important. The important thing was there was one item left: the Cup. So Harry P and da Crew decide they need to get it before Voldemort does, by stealing it from the wizarding museum where it’s on display at Stonehenge.

Several pages of build-up are wasted on planning this heist, but I’m so glad plot’s arrived I’m willing to be forgiving. At the museum, Draco causes a distraction by kissing Ginny, prompting Seamus to punch him in the face. While their fistfight ensues, the golden trio replace the McGuffin Cup with a fake.

And it all goes down flawlessly.

Because god forbid we might get some external conflict.

When they get back to Hogwarts, Hermione hides the McGuffin Cup. Meanwhile, Draco becomes seriously poorly from a combination of whatever that weirdass arrow’s done to him, and the thorough shit-kicking my boy Seamus gave him.

Harry shows Ron the Christmas present he’s got for Hermione: a ring. Ron freaks out because you CAN’T give your girlfriend a ring, she’ll assume you’re PROPOSING and that’s CRAZY. (And here I sit, wearing the two rings my boyfriend gave me on separate occasions, howling with laughter.)

Anyway, Ron’s epic bitchfit comes to a dramatic end when he reveals the identity of his ~secret girlfriend~.

Hermione.

(Those of you raising your hands for your ficlet right now … just hold on a second. You’ll see.)

Because Hermione is completely dumbfounded by this reveal. She insists it’s not true, while Ron gets angrier and more distraught. Harry finally uses the veritas spell to make Ron tell the truth, and Ron confirms that yeah, he’s for defo been fucking Hermione on the sly. Hermione screams that it isn’t true and Harry storms out in a rage.

If you, like me, are currently shrieking, “POLYJUICE POTIONS EXIST YOU FUCKING MORONS!” … I am sorry. I am sorry for all of us.

Hermione goes to Draco in tears, and Draco once again falls back on his reliable solution of alcoholism. They get drunk and snuggle up in bed together because, uh, that’s … not cheating?

Ron meets up with his ~mysterious girlfriend~ again, and strangely, she has no clue about all the domestics that just occurred. At this point, Ron finally twigs that this isn’t fucking Hermione. Draco and the real Hermione also burst in, but because everyone in this fic is an idiot, the imposter gets away. Following this is even more relationship drama, as Harry and Hermione break up and everyone now hates Ron for backstabbing them in spirit, if not technically in reality.

Hermione and Ron toddle off to their separate homes for Christmas, and Draco, apparently the only one with two brain cells left to rub together, works out who the fake Hermione is:

Pansy Parkinson.

So, if you guessed “Pansy Parkinson, with the Hermione Polyjuice potion, in the Astronomy Tower”, you may now request your fanfic. Please be patient, as I have to pause every time I remember this detail, and nearly crack a rib laughing.

Meanwhile, Ginny tells Seamus about the events of Draco Sinister and he is … one hundred percent accepting and supportive, and gives Ginny a magic bracelet for Christmas, and invites her to visit him in Ireland.

I maintain Seamus is the only decent person in this fic.

The only one.

Harry and Draco get up to shenanigans at Christmas at Malfoy Manor, in which for once Harry is the one getting plastered and not Draco, and … I swear, this fic feels like it’s aiming towards a Harry/Draco ship 90% of the time. Harry spends so much time waxing lyrical about Draco’s beauty, his elegance, his perfect perfection, and it’s weird, because when Sirius and Narcissa get married they’re basically going to be stepbrothers so—

CASSIE. PUT YOUR INCEST KINK AWAY.

I’M NOT JOKING, CASSIE. PUT IT AWAY. I’VE READ MORTAL INSTRUMENTS, I KNOW THERE’S WEIRD INCEST SHIT IN THAT, TOO. AND I KNOW IT’S NAMED AFTER THAT ONE ACTUAL RON/GINNY INCEST FIC YOU WROTE. AND ALL THIS RHYSENN/DRACO AND DRACO/HARRY—

PUT THE KINK AWAY.

PUT IT AWAY.

SHAME ON YOU.

Sirius and Narcissa throw a wedding rehearsal dinner, and it turns out both the entire Weasley family AND the entire Parkinson family are invited, so Draco decides to be a vindictive little shit and announce to everyone that HEY, PANSY AND RON HAVE BEING DOING THE NASTY.

Charming.

AND THEN.

PLOT ARRIVES.

By which I mean Lucius Malfoy and all his cronies crash the party, kidnap Harry, Ron and Draco, and magically boot everyone else out of the manor. And just a sec, I might need to go lie down and weep after slogging through that entire crappy first half of the fic.

So Lucius locks Harry and Draco up on some balcony, and demands they give him the McGuffin Cup. He even offers to trade it for an antidote to that poisoned arrow currently fucking Draco up in all kinds of ways. Unfortunately, Hazzer and Drazzer don’t have a clue where Hermione hid the Cup. So Draco basically yells, “I don’t want your stinking antidote, and fuck you anyway,” and smashes the antidote to pieces.

He’s a … smart boy.

Meanwhile, Ginny uses her time turner from Draco Sinister to do some convoluted time travel, including going to Malfoy Manor in the past and meeting baby wee twelve year old Draco. She also takes Tom Riddle’s diary from Lucius’s desk (which has a fat hole in it from where Harry stabbed it with the basilisk fang) for … some reason? She also nicks another book of dark magic, because in for a penny I guess. Then she finally travels into the present, where she rescues Harry and Draco. They’re chased out of the manor by hellhounds, and Harry uses that plot-important runic band to scare them off, and there are actual stakes and there’s pacing and I’m practically sobbing with relief at this point.

However.

If you’re wondering where Ron is …

Ron gets to play chess.

With Voldemort.

For basically the whole of the rest of the fic.

See, apparently the reason Ron is so good at chess is because he’s a seer, so he unconsciously reads the future and predicts his opponent’s move. And Voldemort needs like, a really, really powerful seer for this ritual he wants to do. So he takes Ron to a secret castle in deepest darkest Eastern Europe, and essentially forces him to grind his seer ability up to level 100 as fast as humanly possible.

So the whole crew, except Ron, head back to Hogwarts, where Dumbledore tells Snape to make a fresh antidote for Draco. Which Draco SHOULD HAVE DONE as soon as he realised he was POISONED. I don’t care how “independent” you are, if you are seventeen and you suspect you might be dying of a fucking glowing wound inflicted by a wierdass arrow from nowhere, you get help.

Meanwhile, in Voldemort’s secret castle, Ron is tortured in the most horrific manner imaginable.

He is made to listen to Rhysenn’s backstory.

Allow me to sum it up for you:

RHYSENN: “Dad’s a Malfoy. Mam’s a succubus. Bit of a shock for him when he found out. Also now I’m doomed to servitude in the Malfoy family forever.”

See? That doesn’t need to take twenty flipping pages.

The fic goes back to Draco lounging dramatically in bed contemplating death, interspersed with other characters waxing lyrical about how beautiful Draco looks even when he’s dying and—

On Christmas day, Harry gives Draco the Marauder’s Map, and Draco gives Harry a copy of the Malfoy Family Code of Conduct—a running joke throughout the Draco Trilogy stolen directly from Red Dwarf’s Space Corps Directives. (The joke was better in Red Dwarf.)

Hermione does more book-reading (specifically, that dark magic book Ginny nicked), and realises why they haven’t seen Ron in effing forever. Voldemort’s going to drain Ron’s blood for his evil plan.

After everyone falls apart with even more friendship drama, Seamus decides he’s too good for these assholes and breaks up with Ginny, who immediately fucks off back in time. Gotta love that coping method. “Yeah well screw you, time travel!”

So Ginny goes back to when Tom Riddle was still at Hogwarts. Tom turns out to be an unapologetic sadist (no surprises there) and follows up breaking Ginny’s wrist with … weird, rapey advances.

Then, in the ONE AND ONLY Moment I Unironically Enjoyed in this whole shitfest of a fic, Ginny spits in Tom’s face and gut-punches him. Satisfied with her fistfight, Ginny lets Dumbledore take her away and returns to the present.

However, this begins a reoccurring trend in this fic: everyone being an absolute fucking shitweasel to Ginny Weasley.

Dumbledore proceeds to tear Ginny a new one for her time travel shenanigans and for daring to try and change the past. Ginny points out she wasn’t going to change the past—she only wanted to take one of Tom’s hairs so she could make an epicyclical charm and use that to kill Voldemort in the present. Dumbledore then rips her another new one because apparently an epicyclical charm requires a soul to work, and Voldemort doesn’t have one of those. Also, Ginny accidentally left that dark magic book in the past, giving Tom the whole idea to do this ridiculous blood ritual in the first place.

So to punish Ginny for this mistake, which was technically preordained and had to happen somehow since time travel in Harry Potter is a closed loop, Dumbledore tells Tom Riddle in the past Ginny’s full name, so Tom can go gunning for her in Chamber of Secrets. Because of course eleven year old Ginny totally deserved to be punished for shit she hadn’t even done yet.

Ginny runs up to her room and smashes everything in sight, and then collapses sobbing on the floor. In the process, however, she manages to cut herself, and her blood and tears get on Tom Riddle’s diary.

I’m sure that won’t come to anything.

Meanwhile, Snape orders Harry to leave Draco once he gets his antidote, because he thinks their psychic connection is super unhealthy for poor woobie Draco. Harry reluctantly agrees, and shortly overhears Snape telling Dumbledore he’s got an antidote. Then, because no one ever sticks around to eavesdrop on an entire conversation, Harry legs it before Snape points out the “antidote” is only temporary and just gives Draco a few more weeks to live rather than curing him completely.

So Harry leaves goodbye notes for Draco and Hermione, and fucks off to finally go and fight Voldemort.

You know, that thing this whole fic was supposed to be about.

Later, Ginny’s sulking in the Gryffindor Common Room when Seamus finds Tom Riddle’s diary—and is instantly possessed by the ghost of Tom Riddle.

“The ghost that Harry killed with the basilisk fang?” I hear you say?

Yes, that ghost.

“But—”

No, no. But nothing. Cassie has finally realised this fic is boring as shit, and chosen to introduce Tom-Possessed-Seamus in a desperate attempt to add some external conflict. I am not going to bitch about things making sense as long as something is finally happening.

So Tom finds the letters Harry wrote for Draco and Hermione, and decides to fuck with everyone in the vicinity by burning Hermione’s and magically rewording Draco’s to be full of backhanded compliments. He then nances down to the Common Room and finds Ginny. She works out pretty sharpish that this new, creepy “Seamus” is actually Tom screwing with her, and for a few paragraphs, this fic reads like M rated torture porn waiting to happen. Then Ginny sticks her arm in the fireplace, causing her charm bracelet to go haywire and explode all over the place.

This would be cool, except:

There was absolutely no indication before now that bracelet + fire = explosions

Why didn’t Ginny just toss the bracelet in, rather than setting her own hand on fire?

So Tom flees and Ginny passes out. Meanwhile, Draco takes his kinda-antidote, which actually gets him out of bed. This is surprising, considering the fic claims it contains both belladonna and nightshade, each of which are poisonous.

Cassie … what the fuck.

Anyway, Draco and Hermione find unconscious, lightly charred Ginny and rush her to Madame Pomfrey, and then discover Harry’s remaining letter. This naturally results in a slew of drama I can’t be bothered to recount, but suffice to say Draco is pissed. They decide to hunt Harry down, presumably so they can kick the shit out of him in person.

When Ginny recovers, she explains the new Tom Riddle plot thread, and follows it up with, “Fuck this shit, I’m out.”

Yeah, she literally just … goes home. This actually didn’t annoy me, because it seemed like the only sensible decision anyone in this entire fic had made so far. “There are dark wizards fucking everywhere and every time I try to do anything helpful I screw it up and get yelled at. Yeah, fuck you guys, I’m going home.”

Meanwhile, Tom sets up in Diagon Alley, where he reads up on his future self’s adventures and decides “Screw that guy, I can do better.” He runs into Harry and, rather than killing him on the spot, he directs him to a nearby friendly Death Eater establishment.

So Harry flees the Death Eaters, and winds up bumping into Draco Malfoy down a quiet alley. And um. This happens.

Well, no, OK, it’s not really Draco Malfoy.

It’s a polyjuice prostitute.

A prostitute who takes polyjuice potion … in order to look like Draco. For customers.

I’ll uh … I’ll just let that sink in.

Anyway, the polyjuice prostitute takes him to safety. By which I mean a brothel. A polyjuice brothel. O-of course?

Meanwhile, back at the Burrow, Ginny gets a visit from Ben Gryffindor and Gareth Slytherin—the respective sons of Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin she met when she time travelled in Draco Sinister. It turns out Gareth has a bracelet that looks suspiciously similar to Harry’s runic band, and apparently it repels demons. However, Gareth can never take it off until the day he dies.

So Ben and Gareth give some vague, unhelpful advice, and the plot grinds to a halt as we cut to several tedious pages of Hermione reading Teen Witch Weekly, followed by Draco having EMOTIONS.

And the emotions of these characters. The melodrama. They randomly fly off the handle over the smallest, most meaningless little things. Like, Harry could be stuck on his homework and mutter, “Ugh, I don’t understand,” and Hermione would leap up and scream, “NO, YOU NEVER DO!” and run from the room weeping.

One exchange is literally:

DRACO: You look cold. Shall we go back?

HERMIONE: No … we can never go back …

HE MEANS “GO BACK INDOORS” YOU MELODRAMATIC LUNATIC.

And SO MUCH drama is built on this pointless little exchanges. It’s infuriating—the characters just can’t seem to ever have a normal conversation. I know teenagers can be emotional, but they’re not like this. Jesus.

Meanwhile, Blaise Zabini—oh yeah, she’s in this fic—figures out that Pansy Parkinson is the one who shot Draco with the poisoned arrow, on Lucius Malfoy’s orders. Pansy confirms that there was only one vial of antidote, and Draco’s pretty much doomed at this point. Man, isn’t Pansy just a giant pain in the ass in this fic?

Anyway, back at the Polyjuice brothel, while Harry hides out, Tom walks in with Ginny’s hair. And if you can guess where this is going … I’m sorry.

So while Tom tortures, murders and rapes a polyjuice prostitute pretending to be Ginny (yes, in that order), Hermione and Draco break into the brothel looking for Harry. This involves Hermione dressing up all slutty, because undercover. Of course.

Naturally, they find the dead fake Ginny, but Tom escapes, and Draco theorises that Tom is in love with Ginny and … isn’t coping well. I guess murder is a pretty serious case of not coping.

Draco then finds Harry, and they bicker briefly before Harry runs away again. Because no one in this fic can sit down and discuss their problems like rational adults. Draco and Hermione go back to their hotel room and get down to their own unhealthy coping, which means copious snogging. I guess cheating is at least a healthier outlet than murder.

So Tom finds Lucius, who is like “Yeah I’ll totally help you kill your older, uglier self, no problem bud,” and they merrily get down to hunting all the Death Eaters who betrayed older Voldemort. Tactically, you’d think it would be smart to recruit them, but no. Tom just murders them in revenge. Or … pre-venge?

Meanwhile, Harry manages to stumble through the floo network to Victor Krum’s house, where Fleur Delacour also lives because apparently that ship is a thing now. Harry then travels to Prague, and Hermione and Draco show up to Victor’s house too late, and Draco collapses because oh yeah, he’s meant to be dying, isn’t he?

So Fleur tucks Draco up in bed, and … unbuttons his shirt … while whispering to him … while he’s unconscious …

Damn it, Cassie, why you gotta put me through this?

Well, it turns out she’s not JUST sexually harassing Draco. She also gives him some of her Magid powers so he can continue with Mission Kick the Shit out of Harry in Person. (Yeah, I also completely forgot Magids were a thing until now.)

Over in Prague, Harry’s caught out after dark by vampires, but luckily Draco and Hermione show up in time to scare them off … by using two swords to make the shadow of a cross. The shadow. Of a cross.

Draco then knocks Harry the fuck out before he can escape again, takes him inside and ties him to the bed. Luckily, Cassie puts her incest kink away before Harry wakes up, and they all take turns talking about their feelings for several pages and ultimately resolve nothing.

Meanwhile, Ginny discovers that Tom is gunning for Pansy Parkinson’s family, and decides, ugh, fuck it, fine, she’ll join in on this shitshow. By the time she arrives, Tom’s already murderkilled the whole Parkinson family, and is busy torturing Blaise Zabini. Tom drops Blaise in favour of torturing Ginny, but then realises he can’t. Every wound he inflicts on Ginny also appears on him, because something, something blood magic connecting them. This is actually kind of a cool concept, and I’d love to see where it could go in the hands of a skilled writer

Ginny, however, decides bugger all this for a lark and tosses herself down the stairs.

I mean. That’s one way to kill Tom.

Meanwhile, Death Eaters show up and attack Harry, Draco and Hermione. Harry kills a Death Eater and has a minor existential crisis over it, which apparently distracts him enough to let the Death Eaters capture Hermione.

The Death Eaters drop Hermione off with Ron in Voldemort’s Evil Castle of Doom, where Hermione and Ron immediately start formulating a plan … oh wait no, they just bicker pointlessly. It turns out Ron’s got pretty sweet digs in this castle for a prisoner, so Hermione gets to take a bath, and then Ron makes out with Rhysenn pretending to be Hermione and … ugh, this is all just so unbelievably stupid I want to die.

So Draco and Harry finish their own pointless bickering and fly after Hermione on thestrals. Where did these thestrals come from? No idea, but Cassie wants thestrals, so here they are.

Meanwhile, back at Voldemort’s castle, Rhysenn calls out Hermione for being an indecisive slutmuffin because come the fuck ON, woman you gotta pick Harry or Draco at some point, and I thought we’d been THROUGH this already. This rant is all the more bizarre coming from a succubus, of all things.

And then Voldemort shows up and shoots a cruciatus curse at Hermione, because I guess today is just Beat Up Hermione Day.

Harry and Draco stop off in a vague European village for a light lunch of crusty bread and cheese and brandy (because Draco’s alcoholism continues), and I laugh because Cassie seems to think Europe hasn’t invented fucking sandwiches.

We get a few paragraphs of Lucius Malfoy poncing around doing nothing, before Tom bursts through his window clutching a half-dead Ginny and screaming at him to heal her. Instead, Lucius locks them both in a magic marble tomb and buggers off to tell grown-up Voldemort about this whole debacle.

By the way, POV swaps at this point are so swift I am lumping two or three chunks together in a somewhat helpless attempt to make everything flow better than Cassie did. I’m also hacking away huge chunks of pointless, meandering text. You’re welcome.

So we hop back to Harry and Draco walking up to Voldemort’s castle. Draco at this point is going blind because, oh yeah, he’s totally dying isn’t he? And they finally, FINALLY address Harry’s letter. The one that pissed off Draco so much. The one that Tom Riddle tampered with.

And.

AND.

*Deep breath*

Christ doing handstands on a unicycle at the fucking circus, Draco’s whole problem with this stupid goddamn letter is so obnoxious and pathetic I want to scream. Chapter upon chapter of drama over some vague fucking backhanded comments that just aren’t that fucking upsetting, OH MY GODDDD.

Draco realises Harry doesn’t know he’s still dying, but chooses not to tell him because???

Thankfully for my blood pressure, a plot hole … um … black hole opens up in the ground and swallows them up, which is pretty fucking satisfying at this point, let me tell you.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the cruciatus curse (or “excruciating bane” as Cassie calls it, because she has access to a thesaurus and zero common sense) totally didn’t work on Hermione! The McGuffin Cup apparently protects its holder from curses. How neat.

So the baddies guess the flask on Hermione’s belt is defo the Cup, and take it off her, and I am SO convinced they are right and the obvious decoy is not, in fact, an obvious decoy.

At this point, Lucius shows up and tells Voldemort all about wee babby Tom, and then teleports Tom and Ginny over so Voldemort can meet himself in person.

That was a weird sentence.

Ginny has spent the interim since she tried to off herself having fever dreams about Passionate Trousers, that crappy romance book she was reading before. This, apparently, is her equivalent to the river of the dead that Draco saw in Draco Sinister when he almost died. Yeah … Draco gets a spooky river of ghosts, and Ginny gets a thematically inappropriate bodice-ripper.

Lame.

But whatever, she wakes up in time to meet Old Voldy … and promptly faints again.

Our heroine!

At this point, Harry and Draco are traipsing through an underground tunnel when they run into those weakass vampires again. Draco’s like, “You really don’t wanna bite us, bro,” but a vampire bites him anyway, and then instantly dies from all the poison in Draco’s blood. The weakass vampires all run screaming, and Harry FINALLY realises Draco isn’t actually cured.

With tears of exhaustion, I reach the penultimate chapter, and pray to the powers that be for a finale that was worth slogging through all this crap for. But really, deep down, I know I’m just tumbling further and further into the sunk cost fallacy with every page I read.

So Ginny wakes up in a big fancy bedroom, where Tom tells her that he’s working with Old Voldy now, and I gigglesnort because all I can think of is Nega Scott the end of Scott Pilgrim vs the World. “He’s not that bad when you get to know him. We actually have a lot in common.”

On the bright side, Ginny get to be Tom’s special prized concubine forever while the rest of the world burns. Yay? Tom leaves and Hermione appears, and continues the tradition of bullying the shit out of Ginny. She victim-blames the hell out of her, because it is just so GROSS that Tom is obsessed with her and that’s all totally Ginny’s fault, and never mind the fact that Hermione was in exactly this position with Salazar Slytherin in Draco Sinister.

So Hermione finishes yelling, “How dare you seduce Tom Riddle, Ginny!” and proceeds to tell Ginny her plan for defeating Voldemort, which involves … Ginny continuing to seduce Tom Riddle.

UGH.

So Hermione finally fucks off, and pretends Rhysenn has killed her. Because reasons.

Outside, Harry and Draco finally reach Voldemort’s castle. Harry tries to gently Wingardium Leviosa Draco over the battlements, and ends up tossing him through a window. Harry is then chased by a bunch of Voldemort’s guards, but his runic band lights up and murders the shit out of all of them … and then crumbles into dust. Not sure why it chose this specific moment to die, but I guess Cassie got tired of Harry carrying around a get out of jail free card.

It turns out Draco coincidently burst through Ginny’s window. AND AGAIN, the instant he sees her he’s like, “Oh fuck off, what’re YOU doing here?”

Like. BITCH.

Ginny only fucked up in this fic because everyone was such an unapologetic shitweasel to her. And then she tried to fix her mistake, even to the point of attempting suicide. Jesus Christ, what do you all want from Ginny?

CAMPAIGN BE NICER TO GINNY 2K18.

I didn’t take very good notes over the next part, mostly because I was skimming but also possibly because my hand was occupied with the glass of rosé I sorely needed to get through his hellfic unscathed. But basically everyone winds up having a big battle; Draco, who couldn’t stand unaided one page ago, is suddenly able to charge into a sword fight no problem; Hermione’s “play dead” plan lasts exactly 0.1 seconds and amounts to nothing; and everything utterly fails and Voldemort captures them all anyway.

So Voldemort kills them all and gets on with his spell, right?

Nope.

He keeps them alive.

Why?

Because Cassie Claire is too cowardly to kill a protagonist and too lazy to invent a decent explanation for how they survive, that’s why.

So Voldemort chains them all up around a whacking great pentagram with the four worthy McGuffins, and I roll my eyes because we’re back at the end of Draco Sinister. Draco and Tom have an argument about Greek mythology which is supposed to show how smart and cultured Draco is, but actually just shows that Cassie’s only research into Greek mythology was watching Clash of the Titans because she thinks the Kraken is a Greek monster … and I slam my head against a wall because JUST LET THIS BE OVER ALREADY.

So Voldemort cuts Ron open to get at that delicious seer blood, and the ritual kicks off with Cassie stealing the “close your eyes!” gimmick from Indiana Jones.

Guess what happens next?

It’s OK, I’ll give you a second.

That’s right! The McGuffin Cup wasn’t really the McGuffin Cup! Hermione pulled the old switcheroo, and it totally wasn’t obvious even slightly at all.

So Voldypoldy gets trapped in the pentagram, screaming his guts out, and Tom does a runner. Draco goes racing after him, because Ginny decides not to tell him that killing Tom will also kill her. This lack of communication would piss me off, but after how fucking horrible everyone’s been to Ginny I’m not surprised she’s suicidal. And frankly, I am also ready for death.

Meanwhile, Harry dives into the pentagram to fight Voldemort, while Ron and Hermione fight Lucius. The pentagram cooks Wormtail alive for some reason, and Voldemort tries to stab Harry but—

The Malfoy Family Code of Conduct in Harry’s pocket stops the dagger.

Seriously. We are pulling a “Bible stopped the bullet” here.

Voldemort then remembers he’s a fucking wizard, and throws a killing curse at Harry. The curse bounces off the McGuffin Mirror, one of those other worthy objects we all forgot about, and kills Voldemort instead. And then Harry cuts Voldemort’s head off for good measure. Because everyone loves unnecessary violence.

Meanwhile, Draco gets thiiiiis close to killing Tom, before Tom points out Ginny will also die. So naturally, after knocking Tom out and tying him up, Draco realises what a douchecanoe he’s been to Ginny and apologises—HAHAHAHA no, he just berates her some more.

Ron and Hermione apprehend Lucius, and all is looking good. Voldemort’s dead, the others baddies are dead or captive … surely there’s not much left, right? I check the page counter at the top of my screen.

260 A4 pages left.

So it turns out the whole reason Lucius was such an unapologetic dicknozzle this whole time was because he sold his ability to love to Voldemort. For like, power? Or something? And now Voldemort’s dead, Lucius suddenly loves Draco, and realises he poisoned him, and has Some Regrets. Unfortunately, Draco doesn’t give a fuck, and in some of the most awkward, out of character dialogue in the fic, he tells Harry to just kill him if he wants.

TEENAGERS DON’T TALK LIKE THIS.

However, Harry decides not to kill Lucius, instead interrogating him for information about Draco’s antidote. Turns out they’re missing one ingredient: argent dragon’s blood. Too bad argent dragons are extinct. This might’ve been a clever twist, if argent dragons had ever been mentioned before this moment.

Harry then leaves Lucius alone with Ron, who proceeds to prophesise the fall of the Malfoy name and the loss of everything Lucius holds dear. And because Ron is a seer and couldn’t possibly be making shit up, Lucius freaks out and kills himself.

For complicated, nonsensical reasons, Rhysenn now becomes Draco’s servant. Draco’s like “Bugger it all, I’ll free you if you kiss Tom Riddle’s soul out of Seamus’s body,” because apparently succubi work just like dementors. So Rhysenn does that, and then leaps out the window, presumably yelling, “DOBBY IS FREEEEE!”

Draco makes some long, sad speeches about how very hard he is dying, and then does what he’s been threatening to this whole fic, and stops breathing.

Well. I wish.

The final chapter begins with a funeral, but as anyone with half a brain can guess, it’s not Draco’s funeral. It’s Pansy Parkinson’s. Draco is actually in a coma. And despite the fact Pansy poisoned Draco and tricked Ron into shagging her and basically ruined everyone’s lives, they all show up to her funeral. Possibly just to ensure this bitch is deep in the cold, cold ground.

Well, except for Harry, that is. Harry has apparently sat motionless at Draco’s bedside for three straight days. This I do not buy. A man does not go three days without needing to get up to piss.

Meanwhile, Ginny is busy looking after poor, shell-shocked Seamus Finnegan, who claims to remember nothing about being possessed, but who wakes up from nightmares screaming for people to run, or begging someone to stop. You know, totally normal, not at all PTSD stuff. And naturally, Ginny is patient and understanding, because this isn’t something you just “get over”, and she treats Seamus with the same kindness he always showed her—

HA, NO. Ginny resents Seamus for making her look after him, and acts like an absolute martyr for showing a single ounce of human decency.

God damn it, Ginny. I defended you.

Anyway, apparently it took three effing days for anyone to have the bright idea that Harry should try and contact Draco through telepathy. This essentially amounts to psychic Harry dramatically begging Draco to “Hold on!” while psychic Draco acts surprisingly millennial and yells back, “LET ME DIE, I’M FUCKIN’ TIRED.”

Meanwhile, Ginny realises Harry’s runic band had argent dragon blood it in. A shame, since the damn thing poofed into a million pieces, but luckily she knows someone else who’s got one. So she does a few time travel trips, and winds up arriving at the moment Gareth dies so she can take the runic band from him.

Snape manages to get the argent dragon blood out of the runic band, but then points out it needs to brew for 1,000 years. So they make two vials, and Ginny does more time travelling. One vial goes to the Malfoy family (that’s the one Lucius will eventually have), and one vial is hidden in the Hogwarts library.

Ginny also passes Gareth’s now-empty runic band to Rhysenn in the past, so Rhysenn can be the ~mysterious benefactor~ who gives the band to Harry at the end of Draco Sinister. If all this sounds like a really confusing episode of Doctor Who … yeah, I’m sorry. I can only guess that Cassie realised the time travel shenanigans worked well in Draco Sinister, and so she decided to cram WAY MORE time travel into Draco Veritas.

So Ginny gets to the present, but it turns out time travelling that much is kinda bad for you so she starts coughing up blood and passes out. (Side note: I love fanfic, where coughing up blood is a symptom of basically any generic illness, as opposed to reality where it means “punctured lung”.)

So they manage to tip the antidote down Draco’s throat, and he wakes up fine and dandy, but now Ginny’s dying instead. There’s some drawn-out angst, until Seamus marches in, grabs the time turner from Ginny’s neck and smashes it, which somehow magically makes her well again.

So uh … the end?

No, no, no.

Time for an epic Cassie Claire epilogue with pages and pages of pointless friendship drama and romance angst. Because we haven’t had enough of that already!

Ginny hangs about with Seamus, bitching at him for being miserable (yeah Seamus, how dare you be traumatised by Tom Riddle possessing you and using you to rape, torture and murder and bunch of people!), and eventually she asks Hermione for a love potion so she can try to actually enjoy the rest of her miserable life with Seamus. Hermione reluctantly gives her a potion, but then Ginny spends the next several pages mooning about wondering if she should take the bloody thing.

Meanwhile, Cassie pulls “Dumbledore the master manipulator” out of her arse and claims Dumbledore had Snape deliberately mess with Harry and Draco’s polyjuice potion way back at the beginning of Draco Dormiens, with the intention of them swapping bodies and gaining these psychic powers and—

THIS MAKES NO SENSE.

If Snape and Dumbledore knew about the bodyswap thing back in Draco Dormiens, why would they allow Lucius to take Harry back to Malfoy Manor, thinking he was Draco? Why wouldn’t Snape be keeping an eye on Draco all the time at Hogwarts? Surely, if the whole plan was to ensure they were best buddies in time to kill Voldemort, the safest and most responsible way to do that was with them both at Hogwarts, where Snape and Dumbledore could watch over them.

AAUUUGHHHH.

Well, whatever. Snape and Dumbledore say they have an antidote for Harry and Draco’s psychic connection, so they can separate and go back to being their own individuals again. This means Harry and Draco spend the next several pages angsting over their imminent separation.

Draco takes Harry to the bottomless pit from Draco Dormiens, and chucks his two epicyclical charms down it. I guess this is meant to be symbolic, but since the epicyclical charms did fuck all in this fic … meh. Then again, when you consider that Cassie’s username used to be “Epicyclical”, this scene has some frankly hilarious connotations.

So Seamus once again decides he’s too good for these assholes and fucks off, leaving Ginny and Draco to finally fucking get together again. Harry proposes to Hermione, and astoundingly, she shows half an ounce of common sense and tells him they’re too young for that bullshit. Also Ron and Blaise are a thing now. Apparently.

Ginny tosses the love potion away, and then finds out it was never a real love potion anyway. Harry and Draco refuse to take their antidotes, instead choosing to go on an EPIC PSYCHIC ROADTRIP.

And this monstrosity of a fic finally fucking ends when Harry and Draco stop off at Hogwarts so Draco can look in the Mirror of Erised, because Cassie is sodding obsessed with mirrors. He sees himself exactly as he already is.

So, overall thoughts?

It was shite. Godawful. This was a behemoth-sized fanfic of absolutely nothing sodding happening. Draco Veritas commits the worst sin any writing can commit. It’s BORING. Friendship drama can be fine and enjoyable, but not in a fic that’s meant to be an epic whirlwind fantasy adventure. By this point, I would expect the characters to have their shit together, but instead they’re bickering and falling out and weeping more than ever.

The first half is definitely the worst—so bad I almost gave up several times. In the second half, Cassie seems to realise the characters should be doing something by now, so she starts throwing in heists and kidnaps and Tom Riddles for conflict. But it’s all just swallowed up in more pointless, meandering drama. If anyone else reading this has waded through Draco Veritas, you’ll know what I mean when I say I’ve cut out over half the shit that happens in this fic to try and boil it down to an actual plot. Writing out this spork was like doing a fucking archaeological dig. “I know the good shit’s down here somewhere, but there’s about six meters of mud to shovel out before we can see it.”

I can’t believe Cassie Claire became a BNF on the back of this. I can’t believe she got a publishing deal and was a roaring success on the back of this. Accusations of plagiarism aside, the whole fic is just plain bad.

And honestly, as much fun as I had laughing at the Draco Trilogy, I’m glad I never have to read any of Cassie’s writing again.

Well … until I dig out that Ron/Ginny fanfic, anyway.

#draco veritas #draco trilogy #cassie claire #spork #harry potter

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