#the lore that seems to be established in most pieces is just really comforting

[monkey-d-ezekiel]

One Piece - Chapter 1090 "Admiral Kizaru": Thoughts, Theories and Discussions

The cover of this chapter is very interesting! I don't particularly think much of East Blue villains other than Arlong, but Kuro was always an interesting one for me. His plan was the most befuddled mess I've ever seen, and his ending was... ambiguous? He was also one of the first villains with a leaning towards intelligence and his entire appearance screamed sophistication. So it's interesting to be reminded of this guy on the cover, even if his arc was a massive dud!

As for the actual chapter, it starts off very typically, with Luffy telling the Gorosei that he'll be the King of the Pirates. I love that Luffy never changes. He's always the bull in a china shop, who Robin and Nami have to restrain.

It's interesting how Big News Morgan, Wapol and Vivi are listening in on this conversation. I'm pretty sure that'll play a role further on in the story.

I'm also interested in what Rob Lucci's motives are here, along with Kaku. He seems to be going along with the Straw Hats for now, but he IS informing the Gorosei of everything that's happening. I doubt he's going to defect, honestly. Neither will Kaku. Lucci's goals and values simply don't align with anything the Straw Hats stand for. Though he will have to take a decision, since the WG doesn't really seem to care much about sacrificing his life.

Not to mention, this arc gives HEAVY Sabaody vibes. Admiral Kizaru, the Seraphim and the fast paced lore dumping all seem very much like they've taken their inspiration from the style of storytelling in Sabaody Archipelago. Also, i HATE York. Absolutely hate that bitch. Just thought I'd put that out there

I'm pretty hype for Elbaf! I've been eager to see the Island of the Giants, since it's heavily hinted that it's an important place in the world of One Piece. We've been hearing about it since when, Little Garden? I'm also interested in seeing if Usopp gets a major upgrade in Elbaf, because his connection with the Giants has been established and shown a few times throughout the series.

I gotta say, we're getting to know more about Kizaru chapter by chapter. It goes against his ideals to ignore a man who's sincerely doing his duty? I think Kizaru might be a more morally complex man than he lets on with his "high all the time" facade coupled with sarcasm. I'm interested in seeing how Sentomaru and the Pacifistas vs Kizaru unfolds

Also, I really don't feel comfortable with the Hancock Seraphim. Like I know Oda cleared up the accusations, but still. It doesn't seem right and it feels more like it was a coverup for the sake of publicity rather than the actual intention, you know? So I can't help but be uncomfortable with the way people are behaving around S-Snake, as well as the way she behaves with Luffy. Also, could this Bubble that they've trapped the Seraphim in be the answer to DF users in some way? It seems intriguing, at the very least. I do hope all the other Seraphim have their personalities blossom as well. Can't wait for an awakened Doflamingo Seraphim 💀

Last but not least, we get a Coup de Burst after so many years! I missed the Thousand Sunny specialty and I'm glad to see it return. It's so cute to see Franky explain to Vegapunk that the ship is powered by COLA of all things 😭😭

Overall, a very good chapter, and it has some aspects that I can't discuss without making this too lengthy. So i'll do an in depth analysis of Kizaru in some time, but for now, I'm eager to see if the Straw Hats can escape Egghead Island! I love the idea of revisiting the Sabaody themes and story beats, and especially eager to see Kizaru vs Luffy. Do y'all think Kizaru can take the W against G5 Luffy? I wouldn't underestimate a Navy Admiral, but Luffy is a Yonko for a reason, after all. Who do y'all think has the edge? Will Kizaru perhaps defect just like Aokiji?

#one piece #one piece anime #one piece manga #one piece manga spoilers #op manga #op manga spoilers #one piece 1090 #one piece chapter 1090 #op chapter 1090 #op 1090 #one piece kizaru #admiral kizaru #kizaru borsalino #gear 5 #gear 5th #gear 5 luffy #seraphim #egghead island #vegapunk #dr vegapunk #sentomaru #pacifista #saint saturn #monkey d luffy #straw hat pirates #elbaf #boa hancock #s snake

[tiredassmage]

Oooh 27-30 for the AO3 wrapped if I can be greedy :3

Haha, of course! It seems only fitting, for how much I ramble in your answers anyway. xD

27. What do you listen to while writing?

Sometimes nothing because music can be just as inspiring as distracting. In the reverse though, I tend to write moments or scenes; I seem to have abandoned the planning and patience required for multi-chaptered works when I was younger and had less responsibility, lol. And also before I went through several years of forum-based rping and became very used to collaborative character development and short works.

I otherwise also have a habit of just looping one song for the entirety of a writing period. Ironically, I worked on this Ziost piece for Savosta and Rhystyl with a combination of Disturbia by Rhianna and Pump It by the Black Eyed Peas absolutely stuck in my head. NEITHER of which match the vibes of Ziost or that piece AT ALL, but I could NOT purge those songs and eventually I just caved. And also the doc in my GoogleDocs is literally titled "disturbia looping in my head" because this one was a gut-punch to write and a meme-y title was my coping mechanism, lmao.

My 3 most defined SWTOR characters (Tyr, of course; Savosta, my Chiss SW; and Lensan, my BH) also all have their own playlists, which is another thing I haven't successfully done in EONS, so I will sometimes shuffle their whole playlists while writing for them, or loop specific songs relevant to whatever piece I'm writing. (They also usually accompany me to work or campus because blorbo thoughts are always the answer.)

OH. ALSO. My obsession I need to beam into everyone’s head is the last like 24 hours of my life I have been CONSUMED by The Unforgiven by Metallica as an agent song. I am rotating Tyr so intently in my head. Will I manage to do anything about it? Stay tuned!

28. Favorite work you wrote this year?

inflection point was my first foray into writing and publishing for SWTOR and it remains really close to my heart for... reasons I'm pretty certain I've already mentioned for it earlier in the year, but a quick recap: I do really enjoy how I established Tyr in this one. Most of his minor mannerisms that have become essential to my picture of him made it into this fic and I think this is maybe one of my best representations of his relationship with Theron in one piece. They banter here, but they also are bone-cuttingly honest with one another - something I think is still way more difficult for Tyr than he even realizes. I apparently still can't write in chronological order ever because it's the first piece I published and it's the most recent as far as chronological story events are concerned, but, hey, I wrote it semi-shortly after actually finishing all the story content with him, so... that's my defense, lol.

take me gets an honorable mention as the other one near and dear to my heart as another one of those wrenchingly honest and intimate moments they share. I really like the unscripted aspect of both this one and inflection point. A lot of my other works have been focused around certain game moments and it sometimes feels like a bit of a cheap slip to work that way, but I end up writing them anyway because it's what my characters saw in that moment, even if it's mostly familiar to reference in game - and they're often really important distinguishments to keep track of in my head, at least, and writing them out in full just hits way harder than adding another bullet point to the Lore Doc. xD

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

Okay, I'm gonna be greedy and give you a few, I think. I'll put a cut here for them.

“Do you regret it, Tyr..?” he asked quietly.

The Commander and ex-Cipher was silent for another long moment. “No.” Tyr rolled his jaw before he finally looked back at his lover. “May I speak frankly with you, Major..?”

He’d lowered his voice, reverted once more to the comforting distance of professionalism afforded by their titles. It’d helped Quinn find his footing in the Alliance - something grounding and familiar and unchanging, unlike so much else in the last several years.

“Always, Commander.”

Tyr watched him a second longer, as if to consider whether or not he was truly prepared - or willing - to step off the ledge. “I’d burn the Empire down to the foundations, Quinn. All of it. Not for the Alliance, not for the Republic… Just… me.” He closed his eyes and released a breath measured and slow - not quite a sigh so much as… acceptance. Resignation, maybe.

Okay, so it's primarily the bold section that keeps me up at night, BUT. Uhhh, brief context, this is from a WIP that I... may or may not finish, I have two versions of this actually - one is this one, where I was exploring the idea of Tyr x Theron x Malavai that is... theoretically established after Iokath. In my head. I have barely written anything tangible about it, but I thought about it for like 3 months at one point before I finally got fed up enough with myself to write when the sirens call our names just to justify Tyr recruiting Quinn to the Alliance when he sided with the Republic on Iokath. Because it was one instance where "you should provide context" won out over the gremlin urge to write 3 pretty boys with complex loyalty issues kissing each other about it.

The other version I set him against Vector as his long-time confidant, but I have already derailed SO far, so, ANYWAY.

The reason this one hits me so hard is because Tyr carries this burn inside of him for years before he can do anything tangible about it. The constant mask of survival suffocates this from really bubbling up prior to the threat of the Eternal Empire. He doesn't see a tangible way out of the Empire when he is still Legate and the half-homeless Cipher Nine following the disbandment of Imperial Intelligence. He's drifting. He hates where he is, but he doesn't run. Where would he even go? What would he do?

I've developed bones to pick with myself for leaving him in command of something like the Alliance because it is against his every instinct to be that known, but it is where the game has him currently and it is the foundation upon which he found the personal agency to really let his dissent flourish and I can't really take that from him. To finally have the power to strike back against the people and the entity that spent years rigging him up like a marionette... He wants that, even though he knows - sort of subconsciously - that it's a path of self-destruction. It's my latest obsession with him, tbh. In between research assignments last week, the idea that he doesn't know how self-destructive he really is, but has these kind of ideas running silently through his head anyway hit me like a semi-truck and hasn't let me rest since.

“But you must see… Whatever resistance we hope to achieve, whatever war we hurtle towards… The galaxy needs you, Rhyst. This ship, this alliance are merely tools, but you were my example. My beacon.”

...

“If you cannot forgive me, I will understand,” he said. “But this war - Zakuul, Arcann, the Throne… Whatever lies Valkorian tries to weave for us, you must see it all for the mere crucible that it is! Promise me, Rhystyl! If you will allow me at your side to guard against his influence, I will not leave you. This, I swear to you on my life.”

Also this. Bc ngl, I started writing this whole thing specifically for this line. For this moment. (And also the crucible line came to me one night right before bed as I was playing the mental blorbo movies, as you do, and I just. I Needed It to happen.) Aafafuughghghghghg, this is the peak of the transformation from Savosta being distanced with Rhystyl and with everyone else - his transformation from the weapon he was made into as Baras's apprentice and Emperor's Wrath to actively fighting for himself and what he believes in. When I write one, the other is usually involved, and Rhystyl is sort of positioned to be the "main character" as far as the hero of the galaxy-centric thought might be, but I think what it really is, to me at least, is a series of how Savosta sees him. Ideally, I'll one day have a whole fic series chronicling their journey from tepid allies on Ilum to co-Commanders of the Alliance, but it'll still take me a boatload of time to write that much. So, it's really about Savosta, for me. I started him out to have a really DS Sith (and maybe for the DS 5 chievo, okay, I don't usually play such hardcore dark siders), but then... I got really attached. >.> And I decided I loved him and I was rooting for him to get better and actually break his chains.

He sees someone like Rhystyl - a hero of his people - struggle and still get back up on his feet. Rhyst doesn't always have the answers and, despite their initial misgivings with one another, Rhyst doesn't turn away his partnership, either. He largely accepts that Savosta operates differently, that there's a struggle they share that Savosta isn't ready to confront in himself until several years into the conflict. Rhyst is a mirror, in a way, that Savosta uses to reflect on the differences in their choices and their relationships. Rhyst leans on his connections to bolster his strength where Savosta has always felt incredibly isolated and mistrustful, even with his own crew. He never had that kind of trust with anyone. Rhystyl is really the first person that meets him where he is - and Savosta doesn't think he realizes it. This is the moment he decides he needs to know it. This is the moment he is determined to be there for the man that has unwittingly showed him how he can be better, how he can help himself. He needs to show the same support he feels he's gotten from Rhystyl. And this is the moment they really become inseparable friends.

I'm a little low-key obsessed with a Sith character having the crashing, brutal realization that their power struggles are not, in fact, breaking free of chains, as their code posits, but trading one master for another in an endless struggle for power to oppress the losers, alright?

30. Biggest surprise writing this year?

Honestly? Just having as much fun as I have. Writing as much as I have. Tyr is my absolute blorbo wrapped (I think that's... obvious, lol) and it's honestly just been incredible to be this into an OC again. It feels like it's been too long since I've been so in love and engaged in the development of one of my characters.

I have absolutely enjoyed other OCs I've had in recent years, but I was kinda going off to a friend the other night trying to explain just why SWTOR scratches my itch about story-based gameplay and I boiled it down there to being able to reflect so many of my perceptions about my character in-game. My semi-recent within the last maybe two or three years love for BioWare titles - beginning with Dragon Age: Inquisition, then Mass Effect, and, ofc, now we're on SWTOR - was absolutely in part because of the depth of character interaction. Given a character creator and an engaging dialogue system that affected my relationships with the pixel npc blorbos and I was absolutely hooked.

I really can't explain why he's my obsession that's held on for this long. He's my poor little Rubix Cube, I want to snap him like a glowstick and shake him up and also show him to all my friends. There's also just a charm to SWTOR about being able to explore the aspects of the SW universe that the movies don't focus on - which is how I think I've, ironically, fallen far harder for my Impside characters... against all my expectations and plans. But there's just SO MUCH to explore in them and their complex relationships with their loyalties - often shifting over time, that I just. It ENGAGES ME VERY MUCH. And I love them a lot. Kissing them all on the forehead. Even Len, that absolute jackass.

Anyway, tangent survived successfully if you've made it this far, lol. It's tldr been just. a LOT of fun. I missed it. And it's been liberating to just... actually post it. I'd struggled quite a bit to write and definitely post things within the last several years, even for things I really loved, so to just give myself over to the joy of the process and the indulgence of creating for my own little blorbo has been extremely liberating and enjoyable.

#answered #dot talk #dot's ao3 wrapped

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

I’ve read 30 books this year and 27 of them have been werewolf romances and I have no regrets

#look I don’t really know what it is but werewolf romances are SO comforting to me #the lore that seems to be established in most pieces is just really comforting #like soul mates?? going through trauma and still finding love?? #knowing that person is fully in love with you??? lots of hugs ?? and a bit if angst?? yes please #they are so often the same story over and over again and I love them all regardless lol #me at 15 ah yes my favourite piece of literature is the picture of Dorian grey #me #at like 17 ah yes little life is my favourite piece of literature #me at 21 almost 22 OMIGOSH WEREWOLF ROMANCE HEHEHE

[toallthemonstersiveloved]

Match Made in Tavern - Chapter 1

Ladies and gentlemen, it is finally here! The first chapter of my Goliath fiction. First of all, I just want to say that this is loosely based off a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I played so some of the lore and setting will be referencing that campaign but you don’t need to know anything about the game to understand the story. Also, I didn’t use a beta reader for this so if anyone would like to be my beta reader, please let me know! 

Otherwise please enjoy!

Warnings: Strong Language, implied sex, nsfw in later chapters

2 743 words.

There’s nothing like having to serenade an ancient banshee to terrify one out of their own skin. Lolen was that person currently in the predicament. The act of having to impress a vain, wailing spirit - impressing the cry of death, to put it poetically - was one of the most nerve wracking experiences she has ever faced as an adventuring bard. She was more than happy to have escaped with her life and the lives of her party intact.  

The group was now entering the town and were greeted with the merry atmosphere of a travelling festival. Phandalin could use the cheer, considering the amount of problems the party were hired to address. 

 Lolen was beaming at the thought of ale and some fun of her own. She shuddered at the thought of their most recent escapade and decided that she would need to get considerably drunker to get rid of the memories of the ghostly presence that she needed to persuade. 

 Skai seemed equally as happy about the arrival of the festival and was already running towards the tavern. Lolen picked up the pace and followed hastily after the excited wizard. Upon entry Lolen absorbed the loud voices of the establishment and the music from a bard on the small stage. Skai was already at the bar, greeting the dwarven owner. 

 “What festivities are there to look forward to today?” Skai asked, smiling from ear to ear.  

The barkeep was filling some tankards for someone else at the bar, “I don’t know about outside, miss, but in here we got some wagering going on. Seeing who can out-drink who. Quite the time if you got coin.” 

 Lolen huffed as she listened, hoping her high elf companion wasn’t going to blow all her money on some of the drunken patrons in here. 

 “My friend and I would like to drink against each other.” This is much worse. 

 “Come on, Skai. You know this is a bad idea.” Lolen tried to warn. 

 “Nonsense, this will be fun!” Skai got a mischievous glint in her eyes before adding, “Why? You afraid you’ll lose?”  

That flipped something in Lolen’s mind. “How much are we wagering?”  Skai grinned and placed a gold piece on the bar, the barkeep eyeing it greedily. Lolen gave a curt nod and fished out a gold coin to place on top of Skai’s. The stout man then stuffed the coins in his pocket and began filling up two tankards for the ladies.

  “We have a serious quest tomorrow. You sure you still want to do this?” Lolen asked. She knew Skai would say yes, but at least asking her freed Lolen of any guilt with the hangover sure to make itself home in her friends head.

  “Of course! This is going to be great, and besides I’ll be right as rain in the morning.” Lolen wasn’t sure about that. She took her tankard and went to sit at a table near a small window. The sun was setting, gracing the sky with a golden glow. As Lolen peered out the window, the barkeep stoop atop another table calling for everyone’s attention. 

 “Alright! We’ve got some new players at the table. Who’s gonna bet on these lovely lasses?” he allowed the cheers to engulf the room. He then pointed to Skai. “Who’s gonna place their money on the ethereal beauty?” Skai took a bow as she heard a few of the patrons cheer for her. The dwarf  began collecting the coin that was being passed his way. 

 “Next!” He pointed to Lolen, “Who thinks the soldier looking lass is going to win?” There wasn’t any noise unlike there had been for her companion. Lolen smirked. She expected this and was glad she wouldn’t have to split her winnings. 

 “I’ll bet on her.” 

 Lolen turned to the voice that raised itself above the murmurs of the crowd. He was a goliath. They were rare this far from the mountains and he was the first one she had seen. He locked eyes with her and gave her a curt nod. She did the same in return and turned to face Skai and the barkeep with a sly smile. 

 “Right then.” The barkeep cleared his throat, “Let the drinking begin!”  He jumped off the table as Lolen and Skai took their seats, drinks in hand. They were both smiling. Skai from her overconfidence and Lolen… from the knowledge that the poor woman had never had a drink in her life. 

 And so the drinks poured. Lolen was ahead of Skai by 3 tankards, showing no mercy. There were raucous cheers filling the room as Lolen gulped down the last bit of her drink. Skai was breathlessly drinking whatever she could but her belly was full and she didn’t think she could continue pouring ale down her throat. 

Skai looked over Lolen, flabbergasted that her friend was downing yet another helping of bitter ale. At that Skai slammed her cup against the table. 

 “I give up!”  There were some grumbling from the crowd, disappointed that their wager had not paid off. The atmosphere remained lively and jovial despite the sore loss of the crowd. They all dispersed, Lolen receiving a few pats on the back from other patrons. She looked at the wizard, who was lying face-down on her arms. Lolen stood and bagan rubbing her back in circles, hoping to comfort and help her companion.

  “Are you okay, princess?”

  “I’m not a princess.” Skai mumbled.  

“Okay, come on” Lolen lifted her up and began dragging her toward the staircase of the tavern. Skai was limp in her arms, which left Lolen carrying a lot of her weight. Once they had finally made it up the stairs, Lolen found an empty room and placed her friend on the bed. She took off her boots and placed a chamber pot nearby, in case Skai felt the need to empty her stomach. For now though, she was passed out and snoring quite peacefully.

 Lolen went back to the bar and found the tavern owner. She handed him some coin, “My friend is sleeping in one of the rooms uptairs.”

 “No worries lass.” He said as he pocketed the few coins. He then reached behind the bar and placed a pouch in front of her. “Your winnings.” 

 Lolen nodded in thanks and grabbed the pouch, tying it to a belt under her coat. She then spotted the who had bet on her. He was still drinking alone, indifferent towards the rest of the crowded room. 

 She may have been able to outdrink her dear friend, but that didn’t mean she was left completely unaffected by the alcohol. So she ordered more ale, grasping her cup and walking toward the gray man. He didn’t pay her any mind until she sat down at his table. 

 He eyed the elf suspiciously. Their kinds often did not get along so seeing her sit down with him as casually as she did surprised him. 

“I just wanted to say thank you for betting on me. It would’ve been quite boring if I was the only one to win.” She stated with a friendly smile. 

 “Not a problem miss.” Maybe if he was polite she’d leave. 

“I’m Lolen. No need for any of that ‘miss’ business.” She took a sip of her ale, expecting him to return with his name. He didn’t.

  “And what may I call you, sir?” 

 “Gorg.” 

He answered simply. Still hoping that she would leave and that whole interaction would end soon.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Gorg.” She paused to take a swig of her ale, “So why’d you bet on me and not my friend.” 

 “You look strong and sturdy. You’re friend looked more delicate.” 

 Lolen let out a chuckle, catching the man by surprise. It was simply the truth. 

 “Well, you’re completely right of course. Everyone else saw her sweet face and thought they’d be able to bed her. Turns out the only bed mate she’ll be having tonight is nausea.” She giggled a bit at her own joke.  

Gorg smiled at that, taking note of how this elf was treating him. He hadn’t met many, but the ones that he had met steered clear of him. He knew why his people disliked elves but he wasn’t yet sure of the reasoning for the opposite side of things. He was taking in more of her now, noticing her twirling her white hair around her darker finger. She was wearing studded armor but also some more stylish pieces of clothing. She was a bit odd, which was probably why she was being so impartial toward him.

  “You look different from other elves I’ve seen.” He stated.

  “Yes well in this area, there are a lot of high elves about. I’m a wood elf.” She answered matter of factly.

  The man nodded and Lolen took a moment to examine him a bit more closely. He was quite handsome and he was clearly very strong. The man only had a few pieces of armor covering his torso leaving little to the imagination. He was also covered in skin markings from head to toe that was a darker shade of gray than the rest of his skin. 

 She quickly cleared her throat and her mind, trying to go back to focusing on the conversation. “So what brings you so far from home, Gorg?” 

 He shrugged, “Just looking for some adventure, I guess.”

 “And have you found any?” 

 He crossed his arms on the table.

 “A little bit here and there, but nothing worth tales told by the bards.” 

 “Is that so?” She asked with a smile playing on her lips, “Well, you’re in luck. I just so happen to be a bard myself so I think I’ll be making the decision of whether your tales are worth telling.” 

 He was smiling a bit more, a bit more enthused by their conversation. “Really? You don’t look like a bard.” 

Lolen playfully gasped, “And why not?” 

 “Well, you look more like a fighter or soldier of some kind. You don’t look as dainty as other bards I’ve seen.” 

 “That’s just because I am much more skilled in combat.” She answered, throwing a few punches in the air. “I used to be a soldier after all.”

  “So why’d you become a bard?” He searched her green eyes for the answer.

 “I got tired of it, I guess.” she ran her hand through her hair, “The world of constant fighting is not as fun as it may seem.” 

 “So you moved on from that and decided to go into music instead?” 

 “Is that so hard to believe?” She scoffed. 

“No, just a rather large jump.” He commented.  

“It is.” She stated, taking a large gulp of her drink.

  Lolen was looking at him again. His face seemed kinder and softer then, and she noticed his blue-gray eyes. They looked like rain clouds. She was very comfortable in his company and was beginning to hope she could continue to speak to him for the rest of the evening. Her slightly dazed state may have had something to do with this as she had finished off her ale.

  Lolen had suddenly sat upright with wide, excited eyes. “I just had an amazing idea! You should come with us on our next quest!” 

Gorg was surprised by her invitation, “Why?” 

 “You’re seeking adventure right? My party has been on quite the adventure so far, plus you’ll have your resident bard to sing your praises whenever the opportunity presents itself.” She shimmied her shoulders at that, displaying her pride. 

 Gorg remained silent, furrowing his brows. 

 “Plus,” he heard from the woman, who was now looking into his eyes quite intently, “it would be nice to have you around.”  

He felt something in his chest then. A thump that hit out of it’s regular rhythm. He saw the contrast of her hair against her skin and her genuine smile, taking note of how unique it was. He wasn’t quite sure if he’d define it as beautiful. It was certainly alluring but he’d need time to decide on her beauty. Her offer was equally alluring as she was. He would be able to join an adventuring party and they may even become legend due to her being a bard. He thought of all the possible challenges that lie ahead and how he could improve himself through this experience. He looked into her green eyes, also thinking of how he could impress the lady before him, who was not only a good sport in competition but also friendly and kind.

  “I think it’s a good idea.” He concluded. 

 She beamed at his decisions, possibly a bit too much for a stranger. Lolen couldn’t help but be giddy at having this large and lovely man around all the time. She was sure he’d be a great asset to the team as well as a pleasant change of company. 

 “Wonderful! I will inform my friends in the morning, for now let’s celebrate!” She hopped over to the bar and grabbed two more tankards of ale. Gorg heard her yell, “and keep them coming!” to the barkeep with a bout of laughter at the end before sitting back down.

  She placed his drink in front of him and lifted her cup in a toast. He raised his as well, noticing that she was still smiling.  

“To adventure.” she said and clinked her cup against his, beginning to drink again. He was drinking but not just the ale. He was also swallowing her energy and joy, among other things. 

 The night would certainly be one to remember.    

    Rays of sunlight was cast over Lolen’s face. She squinted at the light, feeling it split her skull. Her tongue was sticking to her palette and her body felt like she was in some kind of massive brawl the night before. She currently had no memories and was too busy trying to fight the sun with her eyelids to care. She rolled over in an attempt to escape the sun.  What kind of Inn keeps stones in the beds? She thought, as her body connected with something hard…and warm. Why were the stones warm? Lolen squinted see what the source of her discomfort was. Her eyes widened as the realization hit her and she bolted to the edge of the bed. 

 Her eyes were roaming across a gray-skinned figure. Armor on the floor. Under the blanket? No clothes. She pulled the blanket over her head and squirmed letting out a frustrated groan. She had slept with Gorg. Of fucking course! She felt the body shift next to her, and peaked her head over the blankets edge.

  “Good morning” He said with a satisfied smile on his drowsy face.  She covered her face again with another groan. At this point she wasn’t even upset that it had happened. Seeing his face again just made her so disappointed that she forgot it.  

#exophilia #exophile #dnd #goliath #goliath dnd #Goliath Barbarian #elf x goliath #Dungeons and Dragons #romance #slow burn #wood elf #wood elf bard #monster lover #monster boyfriend #monster fucker #goliath boyfriend #fantasy

[asocier]

          because i forget my own headcanons and have yet to really flesh out very important details, here is a masterpost of topaxi headcanons and lore pertaining to alison/nathalie, emile, and leah!  

          tl;dr: new locations mentioned in this post include alsace ( alison and emile’s home country before topaxi ), district 104 ( aka the artists’ corner/the arts district; alison and emile’s home district ), hue ( leah’s family’s home country ) and district 249 ( aka international district; leah’s home district ). 

alison/nathalie and emile clair

          previously mentioned in this post ( but never discussed at length ): the clair family do not have roots in topaxi. more specifically, the family do not have roots in the city of topaxi, though their home country of alsace located on the continent of gaea is part of the topaxi empire and has been for some time. as such, the decision to move to the city of topaxi was a rather easy one, the move done out of much convenience considering how fast the family wanted to start over after alison and emile’s father’s disbarment. 

          to elaborate on the disbarment and its effect on the family ( also pulled from that same post from earlier ): 

          the decision to move to topaxi was hastily made in an attempt to start anew after an unfortunate courtroom incident involving emmanuel clair, emile’s father, who made his living as a well-established defense attorney. his reputation in the courtroom ultimately led to him making some enemies, and a well planted piece of forged evidence in a high profile case led to emmanuel’s downfall and subsequent disbarring ( think ace att/orney tbh ).          

          the blow to emmanuel’s reputation drew media attention not only to himself but his family as well, and with two young children, it was decided that moving away from their home and taking up a new life would be the best, even if this new life wasn’t as lavished as before. and so topaxi was chosen to be their new home – and topaxi is mostly what emile and his twin sister alison know.

         to expand on the last sentence: emile and alison moved from alsace to topaxi when they were five years old, meaning they’re still able to remember their early days outside of topaxi in addition to the family’s move and the reason behind it. they were quite aware of the differences between living in alsace and in topaxi as they adjusted to their new life, and the twins’ slight accent in speech drew attention from classmates who were born in topaxi. all in all, however, the twins do see the city of topaxi more of their home than alsace, and they have a significant attachment to the district their family moved to and grew up in.

          district 104, nicknamed el rincón de los artistas, the artists’ corner, or the arts district for short, is well known for its colorful buildings, cobblestone paved streets, street murals, and frequent live performances in the park located at the district’s heart. many of topaxi’s artists, musicians, and writers either have called district 104 home, performed in one of the district’s performance halls, drawing many from all over to visit the city, even if it’s only for a night, or contributed their works to the district’s own museum. during the day, bazaar vendors are often showcasing their handicrafts, and local performers looking for their big break can be seen busking at the train station or outside restaurants. upon first glance, district 104 seems to be thriving, but many areas of the city struggle financially. 

          similar to how some artists successfully secure and hold onto fame while others struggle, the same can be said about the locals of district 104. on paper, district 104 seems to be doing quite well, but the locals know better than to consider the district wealthy. toci elementary school ( escuela primaria toci ), the school emile currently teaches at, is an example of this dearth in financial support that can exist in some parts of 104. this school, located at 7Sc 19 D104, is home to a little more than 100 students and is considered to be the worst school in district 104 on account of how underfunded it is, how “misbehaved” the children are said to be, and how run-down the area seems to look in comparison to the district’s center. 

          this school also happens to be where alison and emile attended as children. the twins often found themselves returning to this school even as they aged to volunteer and play with the children, the twins acting like older sibling figures to many in the area. considering the fact that the clair family was generally well off and lived quite comfortably, they did as much as they could to support their local community, a sentiment emile still holds very close to his heart. while alison ends up leaving her home district for the central district, her impact in the community can be seen via the murals that are painted on the side of the elementary school and on the side of some of the local businesses. she played an active role in encouraging the youths in her neighborhood to express themselves artistically, and many of those who bonded closely with alison have taken interest in studying art when they’re older. 

leah nguyen 

          district 249, nicknamed el crisol del mundo ( the world’s melting pot ) or more succinctly, the international district, is where leah calls home. while topaxi as a whole is known to house people from all over the world, district 249 has taken the idea of a cultural melting pot to a new level to draw in tourists. rumored to have been a district that acted as a refuge for those displaced from their home countries by the many topaxi conquests decades earlier, district 249 today is comprised of many ethnic enclaves that neighbor one another and is considered one of the most culturally diverse districts in topaxi. any tourist who comes to visit can clearly see the variety of sights, sounds, and tastes the district has to offer just by walking down the main road that splits the district in half. 

          originally from hue located on the southeasten part of the houtu continent, leah’s parents found themselves in district 249 after the second most recent topaxi conquest. with much of the continent already under topaxi rule, it was only a matter of time before the topaxi advancement foreces ( taf ) would move into hue next, and despite the country’s effort to defend itself, it was inevitably conquered, sending many to either flee to neighboring nations or to topaxi itself in hopes of finding refuge and better living conditions than their war-torn homeland. 

          many of leah’s family members participated in the war between topaxi and hue, including her father. while her father speaks little of what he experienced during the war, she’s aware of his continued military service even after he had fled hue with her mother, a story many from hue share as they looked to topaxi for new opportunities and better living conditions than their newly war-torn homeland. enticed by the taf’s promises of honor and good pay, former hue natives swallowed their pride and began to fight on the side of the victor in the most recent set of conquests. this is a story many in district 249 share, as well; after having their homeland ransacked and conquered, many find themselves desperate for ways to support their families and turn to enlisting in topaxi’s army, which seems to be always looking for disposable members. unfortunately, ichor poisoning on account of being exposed to high levels of ichor in a short period of time was common for those enlisted in the army, and it wasn’t long before miasmic symptoms hindered many soldiers from living their lives normally after they were discharged.

          growing up in a community so heavily affected by ichor poisoning is actually the driving force behind leah’s decision to attend university and pursue her current research interest. her studies are very interdisciplinary: while she is officially a student of the psychology department, the research she conducts with her supervisor is a collaborative effort between the engineering, psychology, and robotics departments. interested in measuring the public’s perceptions of the newly developing prosthetic technology and capturing the stories and experiences of those who suffer from miasma ( as a result of warfare, ichor mining, or other sources of ichor poisoning ), leah plays a role in the interview and transcription process of the research and works closely with her research team to present this information to the other departments. 

          having grown up in district 249 all her life, leah was exposed to many different cultural influences at an early age, and as such, she picked up on many useful phrases in different languages during her time in the district. she’s only fluent in two languages, but her ability to understand bits and pieces of conversation in other languages seemed to have added to her appeal to both the admissions office and her current research lab at topaxi’s autonomous cultural university, or universidad cultural autonoma de topaxi ( ucat ). being the first in her family to attend college, there are high expectations resting on her shoulders to be successful, and there’s a constant need for leah to better and prove herself as she navigates academia. she currently resides in district 21, the university district, to complete her studies. it’s a bit far from district 249 so she doesn’t return home often, but she writes to her family when she can and visits during long holidays. 

#( private verse ) your name is #topaxi verse #cw: long post #i didn't proofread this dont come at me

[bossuary]

Having just finished Tevinter Nights, I have un fucktonne of questions and theories. But, below are a few of the subjects/problems that I can’t stop thinking about.  I’m curious how other people interpret them, or if I’ve missed some critical details, because it seems like there’s some retconning going on.

so, spoiler warnings apply, since i’m about to discuss the Big Doings below the cut.

The most immediately relevant items come from the final story, right? BUT, because of the nature of the characters, I sort of assumed that much of “The Dread Wolf Take You” is a study in unreliable narrators. Can any of the tales be believed after Charter exposes the Bard? Do we move forward assuming the puzzle pieces we’re trying to fit together are the correct ones, or tread carefully on the word of a known liar?

Nothing about the Assassin’s Tale fits the facts we know: 

Meredith’s corpse didn’t actually stay in the middle of the square in uptown Kirkwall. Her remains were taken away to The Black Emporium. (iirc, Varric mentions this in one of the recent comics)

Pieces of her sword (Certainty) were re-forged for Samson to use in service of Corypheus, a sword which eventually passes to the Inquisition.

A shard of the idol continues to exist outside of Meredith’s remains, or her re-forged blade. Depending on worldstates, the shard is either a weapon rune--forged by Sandal and given to Hawke--or it was given to Varric (who then gave it to Bianca to study, I think). 

In the comics, and in a few of the short stories, the fiasco of Fen’Harel’s agent losing the red lyrium “item” is cleverly handled from a lore-continuity perspective. It’s only ever referred to as a “weapon,” which could mean a lot of things, and allows for greater freedom in describing it in later media. Until the Assassin’s Tale, I firmly believed they were talking about Certainty. Now we’re supposed to believe it’s been the magically re-formed Primeval Idol this whole time, freshly revealed (by the equally untrustworthy Mortalitasi) as a go-go-Gadget ritual blade.

So, are the Tales a cheeky narrative lie, or is it all lore retcon? If it’s a retcon... -What ritual could the blade have originally served? -Might it actually be a key, as lots of people have theorized? -Is there really a potion that can melt lyrium? -Does Solas actually have the idol now, or was his entire story a lie to cover the truth that he still hasn’t found it?

Also, uh. . .Can Solas just. . .kill people while they sleep/dream, even dwarves? I mean, he has demonstrated the ability to create a “dreamlike” state for a dwarf Inquisitor. But, this power seems OP, even for him, and narrative reach. Possibly it’s further evidence that nothing in “The Dread Wolf Take You” can be trusted. 1. If the plans for the Fade are already underway, what does this mean for people like Evangeline, Anders, Grandin, and Sigrid, who’re possessed by spirits/demons? It’s possible they’ll be forcibly separated. Those (like Evangeline) who’re only alive because of their spirit, will likely die. Without Justice, Anders might finally succumb to the taint. 

There are probably thousands of people across Rivain and Seheron, and among the Avvar and the Dalish, who’re contentedly hosting spirits. Would these spirits allow their mortal hosts to be harmed by Solas? Or could there be resistance to his plan from the Fade side of things?

Lots of the stories in Tevinter Nights include the theme of outliers breaking ranks from within a seemingly monolithic society: the Ben Hassrath don’t support the Antaam in their campaign, the Venatori and their supporters operate in defiance of Tevinter, the Crows had one of their Talons disrupt a centuries-old pact.

Going forward in the next game, we might see a spirit faction that, for any number of reasons, acts against The Dread Wolf’s plan to sunder the Veil.

2. Why does everyone in this book describe the red lyrium idol as having only two figures, when every depiction of it that we’ve seen clearly shows three? The crowned figure is (if Solas is to be believed) comforting one person, but no mention of the other poor soul, an even more skeletal figure who seems to be missing their left forearm, and is stuck on the other side of the large ring. No love for that dingus, I guess. Very curious.

And no mention of the serpentine shape that surrounds all three of them.

3. The sea is going to be a big part of the next stage of this story. 

-Mythal’s origin has her emerging from the sea. -In “Luck in the Gardens, the 8 Venatori who were tasked with keeping the “formless” monster in its sealed prison each wore a clay amulet depicting a thin four-winged dragon rising above a sea. -“The Horror of Hormak” describes the viscous gray transformation fluid (and the monsters it creates) as stinking of brine. -The Mortalitasi’s Tale includes a reference to The Dread Wolf screaming about the Sea of Dreams. -The Executors appear to be stepping into the action, finally. They are known as ‘those across the sea.’ -Among the murals discovered during Trespasser, there are some that include imagery of flowing water: The Death of a Titan, and  Lifting the Vallaslin -Before ascending to godhood, Ghilain’nain killed all of her creations. . .except the giant monsters in the deepest waters. Lore says “Pride stopped her hand,” which could mean that she spared them because she was too proud of how perfectly-made they were. Or, that an aspect of Pride (as a demon or spirit), convinced her to let them live.

4. I’ve always thought that the painted murals of Trespasser and those completed at Skyhold are actually of a different sort, in a very specific way. Much of the ornamentation, symbology, and iconography that’s used in the various frescoes in Trespasser. . .isn’t found in Skyhold’s frescoes.   My feeling, based on these differences in style, and the uneven quality of the paintings in the Vir’Dirthara, is that the murals in Trespasser have been painted-over. 

-Thanks to Gatsi, we know that the mosaics we worked so hard to complete for the Inquisition were all re-carved by several hands over the ages, making it difficult to get an accurate interpretation from them.

-During “The Horror of Hormak,” Ramesh and Lesha encounter mosaics depicting elven kings and queens, and their subjects. But the mosaics shift and change the longer they stare at them. The scenes transform from a glittering parade of nobility offering succor to their subjects. . .to a death-march of tyrants forcing magical torments on their slaves. 

-In “Genitivi Dies in the End,” our industrious well-traveled Brother is humbled when he discovers an elven tome that depicts the continent of Thedas in superior and, crushingly, more correct detail to anything he’s ever seen. Which means that either the continent has changed dramatically, or all the maps that exist in modernity are based upon a flawed (altered) source.

There’s an established trope of people from all parts of Thedas altering relics in order to change history’s interpretation of them. So, why would the frescoes/murals be any different? I believe that either Solas, or someone loyal to Solas, altered the murals in order to obscure the truth behind them. 

If we believe Philliam, a Bard! (though, again, an unreliable narrator), the Qunari Rasaan disbelieves all of the names attributed to Solas, either by his enemies or himself. As Philliam posits, to know Solas’ true name would be know the best and worst of him, his flaws and weaknesses, and what he’d “failed to be.”

Essentially, I think we’re being misled at every turn. And this leads me to. . .

5. None of the stories in Tevinter Nights expands on the role of dwarves in past and future conflicts. We get lots of new and juicy stuff on Tevinter, Nevarra, mages, elves, the Crows, the Lords of Fortune, even the Qunari. Noticeably and glaringly absent is any mention of dwarves, titans, and how they fit into the unfolding lore.

One of the largest and most influential groups of dwarves in all of Thedas (The Ambassadoria) lives right in the heart of Minrathous. Above ground. Vulnerable to the invading Qunari and Fen’Harel’s agents.

Dwarves are as tellingly absent in this set of stories as dragons were in all the Evanuris revelations.

The one place where those two things intersect. . .is out in the Hissing Wastes, near the Sunstop mountains (which has always sounded to me like the same naming convention as Skyhold).  

Out there, we come across a dwarven thaig, the only thaig to have been built above ground, that pre-dates the first Blight. It’s called Kal Repartha, which means ‘a place where we may meet in peace.’ Paragon Fairel and his sons appear to have built the thaig as a way to escape some huge conflict in the Deep Roads. 

Statues of Mythal’s dragon form are arranged in places of honor outside Fairel’s tomb. As if in protection. 

Fairel was a rune-smith, one of the greatest who ever lived. Mythal might have worked with Fairel toward some common goal, relying on his skills to make devastating weapons, runic keys for hidden places, or repositories of knowledge best kept secret. She might have protected Fairel as a respected friend and ally.

Reaching a little deeper, Mythal may have helped separate the ancient dwarves from the hivemind control of the titans, freeing them to create their own vibrant society, far from the “witless, soulless” existence they lived as drone-like workers. 

(As an interesting aside, Fairel wrote about dragons, proving that dragons, dwarves, and the Evanuris existed at the same time)

It just seems like the root of this unfolding elven lore is the Titans themselves, the life they created in the dwarves and the tangible world, the innate power of their blood, and the knowledge that was stolen from them. Why don’t dwarves feature more heavily in the anthology?

That’s it. That’s my tinfoil haberdashery at the moment. Thoughts? Corrections?

#dragon age #tevinter nights spoilers #tevinter nights #dragon age meta #DAMN #long post

[nadziejastar]

It's funny that Saix is the one member of the True Organization XIII who isn't a current or former Keyblade Wielder

It’s interesting that you mention that. I really disliked the scene in KH3 where it was just quickly explained that Xehanort gathered them all there because of their ties to the Keyblade War. That felt so lazy and contrived. I think Marluxia, Larxene, Luxord, and Demyx (MLLD) got the same treatment that Lea and Isa did. They originally had a completely different backstory and explanation for being in the New Organization. But due to BBSV2 getting cancelled, their backstories were altered to better fit in with the new plot arc, revolving around Union X lore and characters. Now they’re amnesiac former Keyblade wielders from the distant past. I highly doubt that is going to feel anything but pulled out of the ass, just like Lea and Isa’s plot with Skuld.

I think most, if not all, the organization members had specific backstories in mind even all the way back in 358/2 Days. Luxord’s MG was originally a $10 bill. Maybe it implied that he lost his heart to the darkness due to greed or something. I think Luxord had a sad backstory. Whatever the case, the Mystery Gear had a specific meaning related to the secrets of that character’s past.

“That which we treasure has power over us, Roxas. His heart is captive to it. And that makes it his weakness.”

“Captive…? I don’t get it.” Everything Xaldin said only got harder and harder to follow.

“Nor should you. You have no heart to love with. Let’s not linger here.”

That’s why Saix’s Mystery Gear is Moon Rabbit, even though that weapon seems like the last thing that represents his personality. When you first play Days, it’s supposed to seem absurd. I remember on the forums, people were racking their brains trying to figure out the meaning of such a cutesy ass weapon. It has a smiling bunny and a rocket being launched by a heart. That weapon even has the crescent moon symbol on it. Then when you play BBS, that’s the same symbol on Isa’s jacket.

“Understood, sir,” Saïx replied, and Xemnas disappeared.

“…Well, do your best. The best a kid without a heart can do, anyway,” said Xigbar, and he too disappeared.

Its not hard to see that the idea behind Isa was that he was the polar opposite of Saïx. Isa was always supposed to be a selfless innocent person, unlike his Norted counterpart. That’s why his redemption felt so half assed. He wasn’t supposed to need a redemption. 

And yet, Axel couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his response. “Well, nice to know where I stand.” He said it with a grin, but the hint of a frown tugged at the scar between Saïx’s brows. Apparently, the joke wasn’t very funny. 

“You made it back in one piece, didn’t you?” 

Were you worried I wouldn’t? Axel almost said, but he didn’t want to deal with putting him in an even fouler mood.

It was heavily, heavily implied that Isa cared about Lea a LOT. He lost his heart because he had his weakness (love) exploited. His character was warped beyond recognition to fit into the new plot arc with Skuld as the main focus. But it didn’t fit the established groundwork built up over the course of the games and the novels.

For the record, I think anybody who is a special Nobody has a strong enough heart to have the potential to wield a Keyblade. I think Isa was probably supposed to become a major character after the Xehanort Saga was over and gain a Keyblade (It’d be cute if it was based on the Moon Rabbit). I’d be fine if MLLD eventually used Keybades at some point, as long as it felt natural in the story. I just don’t think that their original backstory was Keyblade wielders.

“Missions… speaking of that, don’t you find what we’re actually doing pretty unclear?” Larxene asked, and then stood next to Marluxia.

“In order to take back our hearts,” said Marluxia, repeating Xemnas’ exact words.

Larxene cast her eyes down for a moment. “But I don’t really want or need a heart. It’s painful with a heart. Right now I’m pretty comfortable,” she muttered.

“Maybe that’s true,” answered Marluxia, and started walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Larxene.

Marluxia’s Mystery Gear is called “Dainty Lilies of the Valley”.

More flower symbolism. IMO, Marluxia always had a tragic backstory. He was a sad character who was trying to find happiness again. Like Isa, he had a redemption planned long in advance.

I can accept that the idea was that he always was trying to save his sister, Strelitzia. There’s enough hints that Marluxia wanted to rescue a woman and had a very painful past. Okay, fine. I just don’t buy that he and the others were always envisioned as Keyblade wielders from the age of fairy tales. Just like I don’t buy that Lea and Isa were envisioned as apprentices who were trying to save a female test subject back when BBS first showed them sneaking into the castle over a decade ago. The implication was that they were the test subjects.

In many ways, KH3′s story was a total mess that seemed thrown together at the last minute to make it lead into KH4. They made it seem like M and L knew all along that Xehanort saw them as nothing but empty husks who were just being used as tools. The whole reason Xemnas kept it a secret from them in the first place was because he knew none of them would never accept being vessels (except Braig). So why is everyone perfectly fine with it in KH3?

In Corona, Marluxia spoke like he actually believed in the organization’s goal. He didn’t speak like he knew he was a tool. His quote about maintaining balance between light and darkness made me think that the original idea was that Xehanort tricked M&L into joining the New Organization. 

Xemnas: However–through weakness of body…weakness of will…or weakness of trust–most of the original members we had chosen for the Organization were inadequate. Thus, naturally, they never had a chance to attain their goal. Yet, even this was to be expected.

They had their own reasons to join of their own free will, even if they weren’t necessarily loyal to Xehanort himself. They really thought they were maintaining balance and furthering their own agenda, just like in the original organization. Same with Luxord, I’m sure.

When they are in the Disney worlds, they maintain their own personality and goals, which is not consistent with the idea of them being “another Xehanort,” “vessels,” or “empty husks”. Both Marluxia and Larxene were concerned with the Princesses of Heart. Luxord didn’t seem like he really wanted to be in the organization, (neither the old or the new one). But he had his reasons for following Xehanort, just like in KH2.

In the old trailers, Marluxia didn’t even have yellow eyes when he was in Corona. My theory is that when they joined the New Organization XIII, they became Nobodies again, but they weren’t really Norted until the very end (it’s a gradual process). They were 100% themselves in the Disney words. Saïx wasn’t in any of the Disney worlds because he actually was an “empty husk” from the very beginning. He always had yellow eyes and he was retrieved while he was unconscious. 

I don’t buy that Marluxia had amnesia in CoM, or that he was always supposed to be from the distant past. He had some other backstory when Re:CoM and KH3′s original story was written. The novels implied that Marluxia and Larxene fully remembered their past, that they were acquaintances, that they were often bored as humans, and that they thought losing their heart wasn’t so bad, since it was less painful that way. That’s not really what I saw in KH3.  

I’m not sure if this was always the case with Demyx (his Mystery Gear is just a broom), but there is definitely more to him than meets the eye. He was chosen to join the New Organization over stronger characters like Xaldin and Lexaeus. Despite him seeming like just an ordinary goofball, there’s something very special about him, and he knows it. He’s hiding something, though I personally doubt that he’s the MoM. IMO, he also joined the True Organization for his own personal agenda.

When Larxene asked if Demyx was sent to any worlds, he complained that he was “benched”. Larxene was confused about that, and Marluxia said that Saïx brought Vexen on board and mentioned his Replica program. Demyx said that the Replica stole his spot. This, to me, if proof that Xion was never intended to come back as her own character. There was literally no room for her in the plot. She took Kairi’s role in the final battle, she took Isa’s moment of glory rescuing Lea from Xemnas, and she took Demyx’s spot in the True Organization. There was just no place for all these clone characters. I like Xion but she should have been “revived” through Kairi. If not for her and Roxas, I’m sure we would have gotten a very cool boss battle with Demyx in KH3.

#anti kh3 #kh demyx #kh marluxia #kh larxene #kh luxord #kh isa

[diminuel]

Supernatural 15x01 rewatch

As a warning to send you on your way; this is a long post and it’s not clearly structured. It’s a reaction and not a proper analysis/ meta. I’d love to hear your thoughts or be pointed towards your own reactions if you’re willing to share~

Okay, here we go! All under the cut!

I am fond of the smooth transition between the “THEN” and “NOW”. The summary of last season was pretty short and I had somehow expected a montage spanning all seasons, but this is better.

First of all I am confronted with the slight vagueness of the issue at hand: the doors to hell have all been opened, so any soul that wants to is free to walk the earth again. So are they ghosts or are they demons? Since they possess bodies demons would be most likely, but then they wouldn’t be cast out of a body by iron alone. Other ghosts we see later on - any ghost that’s not in the cemetary trying to eat Sam and Dean and Cas - don’t seem to need to possess a body. Neither are they in any way restricted to a particular place or object or bound by lore (White Woman, Bloody Mary... they both just kill whoever is available, not who they would usually go for due to the “rules”).

The second remarkable thing is that we get Belphegor in Jack’s place, both masking his loss but also parading it around, depending on which character he has a scene with. Belphegor, while suspicious, is also highly entertaining and even though he has no eyes he is pretty insightful. Jack’s dead and Dean comments it with “he didn’t deserve this”, but that is the height of emotion for Dean regaring Jack’s demise, at least in this episode. Dean wanted Jack to die but ultimately decided against it, but I assume his lack of emotion (or at least the lack of expression of those emotions) are a good indication that Dean’s anger at what Jack has done still overrides his paternal feelings and any sadness that Jack's death might cause him. He wanted him dead, now he’s dead, moving on to bigger issues.

How Dean deals with his own complicated feelings regarding Jack is one thing, but how he deals with Cas’ feelings is quite another. Dean shows no compassion at all for how Cas feels about Belphegor walking around in Jack’s body. But neither does Sam, not really. They instead jump at the chance of having an ally. A demon comes, possesses Jack’s body, gives them a little speech and conveniently has all the right spells just available to himself and Dean & Sam don’t even think about second guessing it? It’s like “I need angel blood :D” and when Cas hesistates Sam urges him to give his blood anyway.

Also, Sam doesn’t have a lot of scenes with the guy, it’s mostly Dean and Cas being shown to have very different reactions and that’s pretty telling too considering Dean and Cas have been established to be Jack’s parents more than Sam has lately. 

While Dean is pretty unperturbed and cracking jokes like calling Belphegor Crowley Jr. (I’d call him Babybel but to each their own), Castiel went from anger at him possessing Jack to a heart-broken admittal that he can’t even look at Belphegor, something that doesn’t even seem to cross Dean’s mind as a possibility? He lets Cas go without berating him for it, so at least it gave him to think a bit and he didn’t default to not letting Cas have emotions about it.

Belphegor has a reaction to the Equalizer, so I assume there might be something coming featuring that kill everything suicide gun. Belphegor probably knows more than he lets on, who knows if he’s even from our version of the Sam and Dean story, but we’ll probably see. The scene showing the gun in Belphegor’s presence was there for a reason and we’re bound to see what it’ll become.

Belphegor commenting on how gorgeous Dean is (and then later on how much he admires him as an artist) is just so funny to me. Kind of uncomfortable of course because it sounds like Belphegor is flirting and the dude is possessing Dean’s kid *lol* Generally, Belphegor is our big question mark of the episode. Is he who he claims to be? What is his goal exactly? Helping the Winchesters to put things back into hell seems far-fetched but not exactly impossible. 

But, I must now comment on one of the high lights of the episode for me. Dean, Cas and Belphegor are in the impala alone. Belphegor witnesses Cas share that he cannot even look at Belphegor. I’m pretty sure Jack made the demon news too, but Belphegor still asks about his meatsuit, which then reveals an interesting, juicy bit that warms every Destiel shipper’s heart. Dean says that Jack was “our” kid. Now, imagine you’re Belphegor and you get that piece of information after having just witnessed a tense moment between Dean and Cas. Who is “our”? Considering that Belphegor knows that Sam and Dean are brothers and he has seen how Cas acts around him, he inevitably must interpret “he was our kid” to mean Dean and Castiel’s. Especially since everyone in hell seems to know that Dean and Cas are “attached”. I’m just waiting for Belphegor to comment on Dean and Cas’ failing marriage.

But hey, back to the plot! I wonder what the Equalizer wound does. In all honesty we don’t even know for sure what the Equalizer does, because it certainly wasn’t the only thing that could kill Jack. Maybe its goal was to purge Jack out of the story since he, in theory, could be a thread to the whole cardhouse structure of the multiverse that is Chuck’s AO3 profile of not beta read variations of the same story (like Metatron said, Chuck posted the first draft). When Jack was born he created rifts into different worlds - the abandoned drafts existing parallel to their own - and he had impacted other worlds, killed players from different universes (well, not that this was the first time this happened, Meta Misha anyone? Poor guy) and could destroy it all. Chuck doesn’t mind losing one story. There are countless more, but having Jack mess up all of them, especially the ones Chuck likes to observe? That would suck. So if that was something the Equalizer was meant to prevent, balacing all the other universes out there, then maybe Sam now accidentally became a portal/ door to other worlds. The fact that we saw a different Sam, heard a different Dean seems to imply this. 

Well, that’s just speculation because it could also be that Sam, having accidentally forged a connection with Chuck due to their common wound, could simply see things - the future, different versions that Chuck is currently invested in. In any case, I’m very excited about that, seeing different versions of Team Free Will is my jam.

And while I’m speaking of things that are my jam? I must mention Cas’ flat “You shot me”. So good. I always wonder why that doesn’t happen more often in close ghost combat when shotguns are involved. Luckily Cas can’t get hurt *lol* 

But... why can a ghost hurt a demon and why can a ghost get a hold of Cas? These ghosts generally do weird things but I assume that might be because they’ve been to hell for a while and are on their way to become demons? But that brings us back to the question I asked initially and I guess we’ll see more of that in the next episode.

And now, the other DeanCas scene. It doesn’t exactly qualify as a conversation but it’s there and it’s still meaningful. Why did Dean get out of the car, why did he approach Cas, why did he ask? The way he cuts any conversation short beyond the quick affirmation that Cas isn’t hurt, Dean shows that he doesn’t want to talk, doesn’t want to hear anything from Cas. Belphegor picks up on the rejection it is meant to be. It is kinda awkard, it is kind of cruel. Dean knows how Cas is struggling with the situation, at least when it gets to Belphegor but Dean is clever enough to know how much Cas is hurting because of Jack’s death. But Dean allows no grief, no expression of it, which I think is cruel... And it’s not necessary. Even if Dean is angry at Cas still (obviously) that doesn’t mean that he gets to decide to not let Cas be sad about the death of their child. (But Dean has done that before, when Charlie died and Sam apologized to her while they gave her a hunter’s funeral, Dean decided that Sam didn’t get to say anything, because he was at fault. It makes Dean seem so self-righteous, deciding who can or cannot be sad and in what shape they are allowed to express their grief.) Cas has shown in S14 and now again that he wants to talk, he wants to tackle the issue as a family. He never rejected Dean’s sadness, anger and grief - it was Sam that held him back, it was Dean who decided to cry alone in the woods even though Cas would have been there for him.

And Cas isn’t even angry at Dean, which is something that I expected. I wonder if that will continue this way; with Cas having plenty of reasons to be upset with Dean, but only ever taking the rejection Dean heaps on him, accepting that Dean doesn’t grant him the right to voice his own grief, without ever speaking up about it. Just... it’s unfair?

By the way, Sam continues to remove himself from the entire issue. He has very little to offer in terms of reactions to Jack’s death, he has nothing to offer in terms of comfort for Cas, presents no grief for either Cas or Dean to comment on and in turn get to show glimpses of their own struggling. And he too takes no responsibility at the current moment for the situation, no apology offered to Cas regarding his involvement in the “kill Jack” mission... Which is disappointing as well but not super unexpected either. Maybe it’ll come later, but as with Dean, Cas doesn’t seem to hold any anger so far.

I did like the ending. From what some interviews stated I had expected Sam and Dean to struggle with having God as the one who wrote their entire lives a lot more. But they’re doing fine so far...

All in all, a good episode. Throwing Belphegor into the mix created some very interesting situations and having him there means that he - as an outsider - gets to poke at things that interests us too, like the focus on the Dean - Cas drama. He comments on it for us, gets Cas to speak up in ways he probably wouldn’t if there was only Jack’s corpse around. So I’m pleased. :D

#Supernatural #spoilers #spn spoilers #15x01 spoilers

[omnifiglot]

Many conflicting feelings

Just got back from TRoS.

Spoilers, of course.

Many many feelings.

I doubt my opinion will fit neatly into any one category of those who are for vs those who are against, etc.

The pacing left much to be desired. The film would have benefited from being at least another hour long.

This was not a character piece like The Last Jedi. This was definitely a plot plot plot piece. There is a lot of plot in this film. This film is crammed with plot.

I can accept the ending if and only if it is officially established that Palpatine was Anakin’s father (in some way). This was written into an earlier draft of Revenge of the Sith and heavily heavily implied during the Darth Vader comic series. In this way, Rey as Skywalker is of the same bloodline as Luke and Leia, sort of, and can more directly carry on their legacy, sort of. Further, we’ve established that force ghosts can interact with the physical world, so there definitely needs to be some luminous being/crude matter dating going on post credits. We need force ghost space babies.

Re: this not being a character piece, I can at least understand where the writers were coming from in some cases, though the metralhadora pacing is not helping. Finn’s story arc, arguably, was finished in The Last Jedi, in that his transformation was completed, though I don’t know what making him force sensitive really accomplished. Rey’s lineage severely undercut what I thought was a perfect message in The Last Jedi about greatness coming from anywhere, but it’s possible that this was JJ’s plan for her from the beginning and it was just the rotten luck of him being given the reigns to finish it. TFA novelization sure sounded like that was the direction it was going—this was actually my original Rey theory back in 2016. But I’m still not fond of the development in light of TLJ. It smacks a lot of the retcon of Luke being Vader’s son. Rose was probably the worst-served in TRoS, though if I’m giving JJ the benefit of the doubt, I could rationalize that it’s because her character in TLJ was actually a static character who served, alongside DJ, as the shoulder angel and devil who furthered Finn’s transformation. She didn’t really have a character arc in that film, but that was no reason not to give her one in this one. This was foreshadowed in the most recent canon novels, so I was kind of expecting it.

I confess that when Ben finally becomes one with the force, I had to suppress a laugh, but not because I’m a horrible person or anything, at least I hope. But because after so many fake out deaths between him and Rey, it was starting to feel like a Whack-a-Mole game. Will they stay down this time?? That really is the key decision I don’t know if I can stomach. Possibility that, since he faded together with Leia, that Leia was force projecting Ben’s illusion to comfort Rey? You know ... comfort ... her ... by dying ... maybe he’s still at the bottom of the chasm and at the end, he’s like, “Hey, guys? Anyone?” And we just didn’t see it because we didn’t stay through the credits.

The plot itself, well, I felt a lot like I was reading some deep Sith lore from SWTOR rather than the conclusion of the Skywalker saga. To be fair, I love SWTOR, but I never had any ambitions of seeing it in a theater. I enjoyed the Indiana Jones vibe of the first half, and noted that it paralleled in many ways The Last Crusade specifically. I enjoyed the cult-like element of the Final Order. I kind of enjoy the thought that Palpatine has a Snoke factory just churning out Snoke clones. And while it does seem to contradict some canon, I appreciate that they wanted to honor Carrie Fisher, who had, as I understand it, really wanted Leia to have become a Jedi. She wanted to have a lightsaber. So I had a little bit of heart melting at that. Though I’d have preferred it if hers had been purple, which she had wanted.

Satisfying conclusion, though? For me, not so much. If Ben had made it to the end, sure, I’d be a lot happier with it. If we had seen Rey starting a new Jedi temple at the old Skywalker homestead, maybe a bit, because it would have ended on a hopeful note. But like ... what was resolved? The Galaxy is still a mess, the Skywalkers are gone (see possible caveat up top), the First Order wasn’t even destroyed (just the Final Order ships and seemingly all their high command), and the Resistance is led by Generals Finn and Poe, not providing a new government alternative to the First Order. If we had seen a Jedi temple being erected on Tatooine, that would have at least been something.

So mixed feelings all around. On the plus side, I’m reminded of the old Expanded Universe. Well, that’s kind of the era we’re in right now: no canon future for the saga, as far as we know, and so it’s back to novels and comics and video games, which holds so many fond memories for me ... we’ll hopefully get to explore the post TRoS world there. And if we don’t, well, the old EU was created by the fans, for the fans. Nothing’s to stop us ...

Gives me some good future direction for my current AU Star Wars fanfic where Luke and Leia’s places were swapped in ANH.

#tros #tros spoilers #reylo #star wars #spoilers

[burnouts3s3]

Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid, a review

(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.) Just the facts 'Cause you're in a Hurry! Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): 50 USD Digital Copy (MSRP): 17.99 USD How much I paid: 50 USD. Animation Studio: ARMS Licensed and Localized by: Funimation Entertainment Audio: Japanese Audio with Subtitles and English Dub available.   English Cast: Kayla Hardwick as Mamori, Morgan Garrett as Mirei, Brittney Karbowski as Meifon, Janelle Lutz as Akira Hiragi, Monica Rial as Charlotte Scharsen, Roseanne Palmer as Kasumi Shigure, Tia Ballard as Rain Hasumi, Jamie Marchi as Lady J and Cynthia Cranz as Torino. Number of Episodes: 12 Episodes Length per Episode: 25 Minutes on average. 21 Without Intro and Ending song. Number of Discs: 4 Discs in Total. 2 DVD Discs and 2 Blu-ray discs. Episodes per Disc: Episodes 1-7 on the 1st DVD disc. Episodees 8-12 on the 2nd DVD disc. Episodes 1-9 on the first Blu-ray disc with Episodes 10-12 on the second Blu-ray disc along with the special features. Does this come a digital voucher to redeem?: No. This only has the Physical DVD and Blu-ray discs. Also on: Amazon Video, Funimation Now, Funimation’s streaming service that requires a subscription. Bonus Features: Textless Openings, Textless Ending and Trailers for other Funimation Licensed Shows. Episode 3 Commentary. Notable Localization Changes: Meifon, the smuggler character who wears a pink cowboy hat, is given a southern accent by her voice performer, Brittney Kowbalski.   My Personal Biases: I never really invested in the Valkyrie Drive franchise before and never played any of the games the anime is adapting. Sorry. My Verdict: Trashy, lurid, gaudy and with enough fanservice to make even the most perverted of us blush, Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid is sure to give its intending audience the happy ending they want. It’s too bad that in 12 short episodes, there’s just not enough there, emotionally or lore wise, to get invested in unless you’ve already have backhand knowledge of the games. Wait for a sale. A/N: Okay, since I don’t want the moderators to flag this post, I’m going to have to put an explicit warning here. So while I won’t post any nudity, I will have to Age restrict this post just so I don’t get any flak. Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid. a review 

Girls from all over the world have been infected with a mysterious virus known as the A Virus (Armed Virus). These girls are divided into two classes; Extars, who can transform into weapons when sexually aroused, and Liberators, who have the power to wield an Extar's weapon form, known as Liberator Arms, through a process known as Drive. These girls are brought to separate islands to spend their days completely isolated from the rest of the world until the islands' Observers, authorized by the government Organisation AAA, ostensibly deem them ready to rejoin society again. Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid follows an Extar named Mamori Tokonome who forms a partnership with the Liberator Mirei Shikishima on the island called Mermaid.(For our friends not fluent in Japanese, Tokonome shares a very similar writing as the word ‘Virgin’ in Japanese, which Togonome is.). Mamori and Mirei are caught between a conflict between the Wärter, the island’s government that lives the castle, Veste, and those fleeing it. With Governor Akira (a supposed male Liberator that’s actually female) trying to be fair, Charlotte getting delusions of grandeur and wanting to rule with an iron fist and Kasumi attempting to be fair to the girls, the Wärter is in constant conflict. Those attempting to flee join up with Ms. Torumi, a kind soul who offers shelter for girls looking for freedom. Meanwhile, a sneaky smuggler by the name of Meifon is trying to earn a profit from the war. Along the way, Mamori and Mirei meet other Liberators and Extars, such as the team Lady J and Lady Rain in which one transforms into a ridable motorcycle. Other liberators, such as Charlotte, have their own harem of Extars and arouse multiple ones to form a multi-part weapon. Let’s get this out of the way. Yes, it IS in fact Soul Eater but with Lesbians. And the show isn’t afraid of being explicit about it. We are talking full-on nudity with lots of exposed breasts flopping around, bouncing and lots and lots of shots of nipples erecting… and hardening… Christ, this makes fanservice driven series like Kannazuki no Miko or Strawberry Panic look like the chaste Maria-Sama ga Miteru. On the technical side, everything is very well done. The animation for both the action and fanservice scenes is well animated, the music flows scene to scene (even if I couldn’t really remember any pieces that stood out) and the voice acting for both the Original Japanese and English dub is well-done. So, if you’re looking for lots and lots of scenes of girls kissing each other, breasts flopping around with the viscosity of jello and scenes of action with naked girls, have I got a show for you. Story wise, I found the series rather lacking. Seasonal shows really need to be careful with their pacing. With a limited 12 episode run, VD:M is already bursting at the seams with an overly long 4 episode prologue establishing the characters, the setting, the divide between the girls going along with Charlotte and Akira’s lawful order, Kasumi’s wavering allegiance and Torumi’s group of rebels and Meifon’s smuggling between the 2 sides. There’s a sense of urgency that the peace can’t last and conflict is unavoidable. But, not so urgent that we couldn’t have two light-hearted episodes involving one girl becoming Kaiju sized and another episode with a beauty contest in a cultural festival.

Boy, this season of Attack on Titan got WEIRD. When the main big bad does rear her head near the final 4 episodes, the show does a good ‘enough’ job establishing the backstory between her and Mirei, but you get the sense that maybe, had the show paced itself better, it would mean more. Yes, the final battle with all the girls joining together at the end is impressive to look at, but emotionally, I just wasn’t feeling it. If the show were as committed to giving me emotional turning points as it was fan service, I would’ve been more impressed. The characters are also rather lacking (writing wise). While Mirei is certainly admirable and one of the most likable of the cast, Mamori doesn’t really change much (character wise). Granted, the show pays lipservice (no pun intended) to the idea that the more courageous Mamori is, the more powerful the weapon she becomes, but there’s never that moment where Mamori ‘saves’ Mirei or gives her the comfort Mirei needs like the way Himeko comforted Chikane at the end. They instead fuse to one super being. It feels like at one point Mamori was supposed to have the final turning point and be the one to rescue Mirei, but Mamori just ends up being captured and put into the damsel role again. I also liked Kasumi and her dubious allegiance with the rebels as well as Meifon, getting into all sorts of trouble for some cash. I’m told by fans of the franchise that in peripheral media, some of the other couples get more character development. For example, the team of Lady Rain and Lady J were actually on opposite sides of a war but intentionally got themselves captured just to be together or that Governor Akira actually has a female lover back on the mainland and longs to be with her. Again, I am not here to judge what’s in an appendix. What’s in the show is in the show and it’s clear the TV producers weren’t interested in those stories to begin with, so why should I?   Funimation Entertainment did the localization for the show. And for the most part, the dub script stays as close as it does to the original Japanese version. Granted, Funimation has always played it loose with dubbing scripts and this is no exception. The English script contains lots of innuendos and sex jokes to make the English viewers chuckle (i.e. “I caught and she pitched.” “Let’s go digging for treasure” “I’m gonna let it all hang out!”) Karbowski adopts a southern accent for Meifon so thick, I thought I was listening to Nico Robin from the 4Kids dub of One Piece. (I’m aware that localizers tend to translate those with Kansai dialect and give them a Southern accent and Karbowski seems to be doing this accent winking to the audience and having fun with it). Special credit should go to Janelle Lutz as Akira Hiragi, managing to perform dual roles as both masculine and feminine variations of the character. The rest of the cast does a good job voicing their perspective roles. Monica Rial does with she can with Charlotte and Cynthia Cranz as Torumi seems to especially fit the role of a motherly caretaker for lost girls. (Yes, I find the fact that one of the characters is voiced by the same performer as Chi-chi and Botan very disconcerting). THE ORIGINAL JAPANESE AUDIO WITH SUBTITLES IS AVAILABLE FOR THOSE WHO PREFER IT. The package includes the OVAs (Original Video Animation) which are short videos of each of the girls revealing motivation and backstory as well as a lot of nudity with nipples becoming more and more erect. Lots of them. What’s weird is that the OVAs are also dubbed with the cast members. Funimation didn’t even dub the OVA for Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. CAVEAT: It’s very strange that the series suddenly wants to take a more dramatic turn with emphasis on character development and history, but still plays out in a very fanservice driven anime. In some ways, I was enjoying the show more when it wasn’t really about anything and just amped the fanservice up to 11. With the exception of a few characters, I wasn’t invested in the goings on and 12 episodes is too short for me to have nostalgic feelings for Mermaid Island. For 50 USD, Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid is a bit on the steep end. While the animation, music, fight scenes and… PLOT are all well done, emotionally, it doesn’t have much to offer. Then again, I don’t expect emotional substance out of show where half the teenagers become sexually aroused and transform into weapons. Those looking for a happy ending (in both senses of the term) will enjoy this. Verdict: Wait for a sale or rental.  

#valkyrie drive mermaid #valkyrie drive #mamori #mirei #extar #liberator #funimation #morgan garrett #monical rial

[jennikkugoesoff]

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

[sordm5]

Fallout: New Vegas Character Sheet / OC Questionnaire, 5k+ words

This is the part where I pray for consistency with my previous character essays...

The majority of these answers are from a character building perspective. Other perspectives are kept in parentheses. 

Mason Shepherd McCoy

which faction did they side with (NCR, legion, yes-man, or house)?

Unwittingly, he sided with the NCR. But he abandoned the cause shortly before the lead up to the Second Battle for Hoover Dam.

preferred armor?

He favors dusters, but beneath that, he usually dresses in raggedly layers. Cycling between two pairs of majorly distressed and ripped jeans, and collected vintage scarves he finds from abandoned buildings.

(In game, light armor. Specifically the courier fatigues from the Courier’s Cache mod, modded with the standalone Lonesome Road courier duster.  

Screenshots: front / back)

melee, guns, energy weapons, or unarmed?

Most skilled with a ranged bolt or lever action rifle.

After a compromising incident while he lived in Zion, Joshua attempts to teach him unarmed combat. But because Mase is a difficult, stubborn student, the lessons don’t continue on for long, and Joshua’s patience is tested to its limit.

highest skills? secondary skills? lowest skills?

His skill in everything aside from guns and repair are fairly mediocre, but his worst skills are definitely survival and unarmed. It’s pretty transparent that Mase’s priorities are focused on catering to his preference for gunplay.

(It’s hard to avoid having every skill high when level ups are forced on you, so I'm going to ignore in-game stats in favor of character development. Speech is the most notable skill I prefer to max out, but I don’t know if it’s exactly character-fitting for Mase considering he’s not actually a talkative person.)

SPECIAL stats?

3, 9, 6, 4, 7, 8, 3

what are their perks?

Confirmed Bachelor, babey. And Hand Loader. That one’s important.

(I'm not sure if this is asking me to list all perks my character has, but for the sake of not doing that – as it would be lengthy and tedious – I’ll leave it at these two.)

favorite companions? least favorite companions?

Mase adores Arcade more than he cares to admit. However, that adoration doesn’t overpower his own cowardice. He carries the weight of endlessly wondering what fate befell Arcade after Mase left the Mojave. He likes to...imagine he’s happy with the Followers, tending to new researches that could maybe benefit the public. The mental image distracts him from his guilt, at least.

The only other companion Mase was close with was ED-E. He doesn’t actively hate or dislike anyone, though.

any romantic partners? how do these relationships begin and end? are they healthy?

Yeah...Mase kinda...tries to pursue a relationship with Joshua, but it’s majorly onesided, and overwhelmingly unhealthy. Even Mase is aware of the unhealthy aspect, despite his feelings.

-

I’ve thought a lot about how to avoid making this sort of scenario lore-breaking. I can’t realistically picture, given what we see and know of him in-game, that Joshua would ever reciprocate any sort of romantic feelings anyone might have for him.

This might be my own interpretation, but I think by the time the courier meets Joshua, he’s resigned to live his life thinking he can find redemption through his faith. And I think he’s convinced himself to be wholly devoted to it. He even twists the biblical quotes he uses as excuses for his own internal anger. He needs to think that the things he does are justified by God.

Beyond the religious dedication, Joshua tells us that he feels indebted to his family, and the tribes of Zion, for welcoming him back like he had never done anything to shame them. After questioning him about his past, and the defeat he suffered, he ends with, "I will never be able to repay the debt I owe to them, but I must try." The way this is all presented leads me to believe there isn't much room in Joshua's life for anything else.

Also, on another note, one quote by Mr. Sawyer, who wrote the entirety of Joshua Graham’s character, stuck with me:

It's not as simple as being "set on fire". After suffering a terrible failure, he was humiliated by his superior and the people he commanded. He was cast out and left for dead. His entire reason for living was gone. When your entire way of life is completely destroyed, it has a profound impact on how you view yourself and your place in the world. [...]

Read the entire quote here.

There was also a quote, if I am indeed recalling correctly, by Josh Sawyer that expanded upon Joshua’s dialogue in-game that spoke about the love he received upon his return to New Canaan – about how he was in disbelief over it, how he thought he didn’t deserve it. But I can’t find that quote again, so don’t take my word for it.

I know that the developer’s input isn’t the “word of God”, and that Sawyer has said that he strongly dislikes when authors discourage fan interpretations and have an almost authoritarian hold over their stories. However, I still find it useful to reference dev commentary when expanding upon my own ideas.

Returning to the original point, as much as I’d really just like to say ‘they both lived happily ever after’ about my courier and Joshua, it’s not something I can picture happening. Joshua isn’t an ordinary man, and domesticity wasn’t ever an option for him.

-

There are some deeply self-indulgent scenarios I’ve written about for Mase and Joshua, and even in the more intimate pieces it always takes Joshua years to think it’s okay to even let Mase sleep next to him. So, I don’t imagine within the first year of staying in Zion anything even vaguely resembling intimacy would develop between them. Mase would have to come back to Zion after returning from the east coast and put a lot of work, time, and dedication into getting Joshua to open up on that level.

But, because I don’t feel fully confident in discussing my thoughts of how things change within the game post-canon-storyline (both base game and Honest Hearts/all DLC alike), these ideas and scenarios remain strictly self-indulgent. One detail I am comfortable saying that happens post-NV is that Mason does eventually come back to Nevada and end up settling there.

Since this is already a sort of a self-indulgent post about my oc, I will share some jumbled-context thoughts I’ve had. But keep in mind, if I were to keep this confined to my comfort on respecting the canon storyline and not exploiting it for my own purposes, this would have ended with Joshua never reciprocating, Mase leaving the west coast and returning at some indeterminate point, years later. 

With that being said...

Mase and Joshua argue about the feelings between them a lot. With Joshua it’s always “You understand my position, we’ve spoken about it countless times. You’ve said you understood, yet you continue to persist.” / “I know. And, I’m...sorry. I just can’t help but feel like I’m a nuisance to you. That the way I feel disgusts you-” / “You know that isn’t true-” / “You always push me away-” / “I’ve told you why-” etc, etc.

The closer they get, the more doubt Joshua begins to show, the more he pushes Mase away, and the more Mase wants reassurance that Joshua still finds him important, in some way. Joshua does value Mase’s companionship, but what Mase gives is unabashed love, and there’s a huge discrepancy in outward reciprocation. Mase tries his best to adapt and subdue how he feels – to try to understand and match the level at which Joshua keeps him. But it’s hard. A lot of “you don’t care about me like how I care about you” feelings.

Joshua insists the discrepancy isn’t true, and it’s only perceived that way by Mason. He loathes when he’s forced to remind Mason of his situation – of the path he’s chosen to take in his life, his dedication to it, after what happened to him at the Grand Canyon. How large the amount of atonement he owes. How, even if he wanted to break away from this path, there are still things he would never be able to do for Mason.

Of course, Mase tries to keep all of this in mind. But with the lack of communication, and the constant distance from Joshua, it’s hard to know if the boundaries are because of Joshua’s self restraint, or if Mase is truly no longer wanted. He’s just...very troubled and brokenhearted by it all, and the situation isn’t easy.

There’s also the awkward re-acquainting with each other after the years they spend apart. Which is disheartening to Mase because, before, he’d felt Zion was akin to a home due to the time spent there, and, when he comes back, it feels foreign – like there’s no place for him anymore. Everything looks and seems different. It takes a long while to get over that feeling.

Joshua looks different after all that time, as well. He never takes to fully discarding his bandages – it’s too personal for him – and his scarring doesn’t ever necessarily fade, but they do heal, lessen in severity, and subsequently cause him less pain. Because of this, he’s more comfortable exposing his forearms without bandaging, and the areas around his nose, mouth, and jaw. 

It takes Mase a moment to process this upon first seeing him again. In the past, he’d only ever seen Joshua without his bandages but one time, and it was because he’d been gravely injured and in recovery. He thinks it’s a good look for Joshua, though. And, more importantly, he’s overjoyed that he isn’t in as much pain.

Mase also continues travelling even after his return to the west. Especially between his home in northern Nevada and Zion. So it’s not as though he spends his every day with Joshua, although...he does try to persuade Joshua to visit his house and stay for awhile. Which he does eventually succeed at, after some complications on tribal responsibilities.

-

...tfw you set out to write about your own character and end up devoting the most time writing about Joshua Graham. To be fair, I have another huge character post about Mase that establishes way more about him, and I’ve been meaning to write about the dynamics with Joshua for awhile now.

yes, i’ve thought a lot about this. damn.

anyway...

doesn’t it suck when your first love after you get retrograde amnesia is a revenge obsessed warlord with misplaced dedication to a faith that he manipulates to lie to himself that his revenge obsessions are justifiable :(  real sad boi hours

gender / sexuality / ethnicity / species / etc.?

Boy/gay/???

He doesn’t know much about his ancestry, or the roots of his past in general. Doesn’t want to know. He’s pretty sure he’s human, though...maybe. But he’s also considered the possibility of being an alien misplaced on earth. Maybe...

He’s also not particularly attached to his biological sex. He is genetically male, and does predominantly identify as male, but it’s not something he feels is important or necessary to his identity as a whole. On a basic level, this applies to, say, clothing. If he found a dress appealing, he’d wear it without thinking much about what gender a dress was intended for. If that makes sense.

This sentiment is also applicable to sexuality. He doesn’t really label himself in any specific way. He just knows that the majority of people he’s found even somewhat attractive or appealing happen to be men.

where were they born/raised? when/why did they leave?

He doesn’t know.

when, why and how did they become a courier? how long did they remain a courier before benny shot them?

Again: part of a past that he doesn’t remember. Brings him anxiety over the thought of finding an answer to who he was before.

how did the bullet affect them?

Retrograde amnesia. His memories never returned. After awaking at Doc Mitchell’s, it was difficult for him to acquaint himself with who he was. He didn’t recognize his voice, his age, his appearance. Nothing felt familiar. His speaking patterns even sounded foreign to his own ears.

Other than that, recurring migraines that plagued him for weeks after his awakening.

how did they deal with benny?

He spared him. Read more here. 

what’s their reputation with the ncr / the legion?

Liked/Neutral

Mase aided the NCR whenever necessary, especially during the beginning of his travels in the Mojave. He refused to agitate the Legion. He never realized he was weaving himself into becoming a mercenary of war for the NCR, and, had he realized they were going to proposition him for such a task, he never would have helped to begin with.

In retrospect, after abandoning the Mojave, his regrets in assisting the NCR don’t add up to much. After consideration, he realized he would prefer an NCR victory as opposed to a Legion one. He’s aware there might have been a better alternative, had he stayed, had he put himself at the forefront of the decision making. But, he simply isn’t that kind of man.

what’s their reputation with goodsprings / novac / primm? (i know primm reputation was cut from the game but like let’s pretend for a minute sdkfjd)

His reputation with Primm would be the worst of all three, entirely due to his uncaring mistakes in handling finding new authority for the town. The NCR wasn’t the worst of the outcomes, but it still wasn’t favorable with the existing community, and Mase only realizes that after it’s far too late.

Goodsprings and Novac act as the friendliest respites Mase knows, and he is mostly in good standing with both towns’ residents. He assisted Goodsprings during the trouble with the Powder Gangers, and, similarly, assisted Novac’s trouble with feral ghouls.

what is their motive for taking vegas?

He doesn’t. Ideally, freedom for Vegas and Freeside would be what Mase would want, but he’s too prone to fleeing from pressure and stress. He doesn’t want the responsibility of an entire populace on his shoulders, and when presented with fight or flight in regards to the war for the Mojave, Mase chooses flight.

what do they look like? how tall are they? are they attractive? any piercings, tattoos, scars?

Just under 6′. Tanned, freckled complexion. Hair naturally dirty blond/light brown-ish, but frequently bleached lighter. Crooked, gapped teeth. He has multiple scars over his entire body, but half he can’t even remember the causes of. The most prominent ones being the bullet wound in his hairline, and the surgery scars from the Think Tank.

how old are they? do they know their birthday? if so, what’s their sign?

22 around the time of the events of Goodsprings. His birthday is November 22nd, information courtesy of his Mojave Express ID card, and not of his own memory. I suppose that makes him a sagittarius.

The only fitting quote I could find from a sagittarius horoscope was: “You are very critical of those around and of yourself and sometimes will prefer to isolate yourself.”

do they speak any languages other than english?

He doesn’t. He tries to learn the language of the Dead Horses and the Sorrows, but only retains basic phrases.

can they read, write, do math, sing? did they ever receive an education?

He is educated, but only utilizes his intelligence in areas that are practical to him. Like the kilometer calculations while adjusting his rifle scope. Other than that, he frequently writes in a journal that he received from the Mojave Express. Its primary function was to track deliveries, but he re-purposed it for personal use.

Mase is also somewhat of a collector, and, in his home, he has a guitar with rusted metal strings and a piano with many keys that don’t work (don’t ask about the complications of transporting the thing from an abandoned pre-war home to his own safehouse.) He aspires to fix them both and learn how to play them, and maybe write his own music, but he doesn’t often get time to do so.

what were their parents like? are they still on good terms with their parents?

Doesn’t know who his parents are. Doesn’t want to know.

what’s their d&d alignment? 

Starting off as neutral good, but quickly becoming chaotic neutral the longer his travels across the Mojave go.

how’s their karma?

Canonically neutral.

how do they feel about killing people? do they try to avoid it?

He doesn’t actively seek confrontation – he’s no murderer – but he doesn’t have any moral objections to killing if there’s a good purpose for it. Killing the “bad guys”, etc. He’s not a coward either, and he’s confident in his gunplay abilities.

do they take chems? if yes, when and which ones?

Other than admittedly using med-x a couple times in attempts to treat his insomnia, he tries not to dabble in drug use outside of meds for intended purposes. His preferred poison is alcohol.

do they gamble? where? is their luck good?

He doesn’t partake. The atmosphere of the casinos on The Strip gives him a deep sense of discomfort. A piece of the world, frozen in time, sheltered away from the destruction of the wastes that lay just outside the doors. Men in suits, focused on their greed, their only concern how much nicotine they can inhale.

In his tattered duster and ripped blue jeans, face smudged with dust and dirt, Mase feels horribly wrong amid all the leisure and recreation. It’s stifling.

where do they usually sleep? do they have more than one home location? do they live with any other people?

Throughout his campaign in the Mojave, Mase doesn’t ever keep a main base of operations. From his room at Novac, to the Lucky 38, to Zion, to anywhere he’s welcomed to rest his head for the night. He keeps his belongings down to what he can carry, or things he’s isn’t afraid of losing if left behind.

After his return to Nevada from his journey out east, Mase settles in an abandoned, lone ranch somewhere in the mid-north part of the state. It’s there, in his late-20s, that Mase truly finds himself able to call a location a home. He begins to collect more, and his safehouse soon turns into an unorganized, messy museum of sorts.

what are their favorite weapons? where did they get these weapons?

He’s partial to his rifles, both bolt and lever action alike. Namely, the Medicine Stick and Paciencia, courtesy of the Gun Runners. He takes to further customizing both rifles (and altering the customizations already applied).

do they flirt a lot? is it well-received?

Mase and Arcade have a platonically flirtatious relationship. Neither of them desire to take it further than that and are comfortable in their friendship. However...there are nights Mase remembers fondly: bedrolls haphazardly thrown onto the floor of whatever safe place they could find to rest in their travels, Arcade somehow ends up in Mase’s arms in the early hours of dawn, his head tucked into the crook of Mase’s neck, Mase’s fingers carding through Arcade’s hair as the haze of sleep slowly fades.

Though Mase later ends up developing feelings for Joshua while in Zion, he doesn’t dare anything close to flirting. He regards their relationship as too important for empty flirtatious comments, while also knowing it wouldn’t be received well anyway. Between them, it’s more of mutual respect and trust.  

At some point during Mase’s year stay in Zion, Joshua does clue in to the way Mase treats him, and what that alludes to. They speak about it, if very sparingly, and it can be summarized by Joshua vaguely referencing whatever is between them by saying: if Mase is waiting for something from Joshua, he’s waiting in vain.

do they goof around a lot? do other people find it funny or do they just entertain themselves?

Mase has short-lived moments of hyperactivity, but is usually more stoic in nature. He recalls his time spent with Arcade as having some of the more expressive moments in his life. So it’s to be said that he has the ability to be a more humorous or entertaining person as long as he’s comfortable around the company he’s with.

what do their companions think of them? are they close? have they done any companion quests?

He doesn’t stay with anyone long enough to become truly close to them, aside from Arcade.

ED-E is Mase’s first real travelling companion. After repairing the eyebot, Mase decides to keep it and regards it as little more than an extra weapon. The longer the road takes them, the more Mase finds himself talking into the open air about a myriad of things. Sometimes it’s a mess of world salad and scattered thoughts – the product of distant feelings of deja vu and the many migraines the bullet wound had caused.

The more this happens, the more Mase starts feelings like ED-E is listening to him. Maybe the beeps that he gives aren’t indicators that he’s listening and are just coincidence, but all the same, Mase starts to see a personality in ED-E, and starts to think of him as less of a weapon and more as a friend.

On a fittingly drunken night at the NCR Mojave Outpost, Mase crosses paths with Cass. He enjoys her attitude and her humor, and more than delights in sharing a bottle of whiskey or two- or three, or four. Beyond that first night of drinking challenges and hazy blackouts, and a few following encounters, Cass and Mase don’t stay as travelling companions. Fast friends over a bottle of brew, but nothing more.

Later, but still early in his travels, Mase finds himself with his hands full in Novac. It’s here he helps Boone uncover the truth about the person who disposed of his wife. He agrees to arrange the revenge without hesitation. There’s not even a droplet of blood on the red beret atop Mase’s head; he doesn’t flinch when Boone takes the shot.

Unfortunately, Boone’s animosity and hostility towards the Legion prevents them from travelling together. Mase understands, and it’s left at that.

As for Arcade, well...some of Mase’s largest regrets concern Arcade; how he feels he must have let him down after he’d left. He’d known of Arcade’s ideals, about his feelings towards what he’d wanted for the the people of Freeside, and Vegas as a whole. The wayward feelings of hope Arcade found in him. The rare moments of open vulnerability in the secrets Arcade shared of his past. Just how many things were shared between them, and how Mase let it go to waste for nothing – for his own cowardice.

For as much as having someone close to him by his side gave Mase strength, it also added to the weight of expectation from the pressure he already felt. Arcade wasn’t enough to change that. Nothing was.

do they draw, paint, play any instruments?

His main creative outlet is his journal. Writing and doodling little sketches. He doesn’t consider it a “real” art form, though.

how do they deal with injuries? do they use stimpaks, healing powder, med-x? does a companion help them? can they bear a lot of pain, or do they need to attend to injuries immediately? when they do have to see a doctor, do they have a preferred doctor, or do they just see anyone?

Mase has a high threshold for pain. The first time he’d been seriously injured (from memory) was during the shootout in Goodsprings. A bullet had pierced his upper left arm, thankfully missing any arteries, and became deeply lodged without breaking through the other side of the impact site. He remembered noticing he’d been struck was delayed, his arm had felt hot, wet, and uncomfortable, but almost indistinguishable through the adrenaline.

Once he noticed the red stains from the hole in his jacket, he stared wide-eyed and pale at the blood flowing from the open wound, the pain spiking like a blistering heat. He didn’t know what to do with himself; didn’t groan, didn’t cry, just stood with a lost look. He was in good company, though, and Doc Mitchell was there to care for the wounded.

Subsequent injuries have been reacted to with similar disconnect. He understands the importance of tending to wounds through the lecturing on infection from the Doc, and because of this tries to treat injuries as urgently as possible. However, if he can help it, he’d rather take a stimpak and slap a bandage over the wound and call it done. Fortunately, Arcade doesn’t let him get away with that one very often once they start travelling together.

have they ever been irradiated? how did they deal with it? did it have lasting effects?

In contrast to the high pain tolerance, Mase cannot handle radiation. In slight doses, it’s manageable, but when his Pipboy near deafens him with its Geiger clicking, like clockwork, the nausea immediately sets in. It debilitates him, and the contamination to his body never settles until he flushes it.

He recalls an instance of trying to bear with the radiation, barely dragging himself up the road from Novac, forcing himself to try to tough it out. He realized he’d made a mistake when he started profusely vomiting, and immediately checked his Pipboy for the nearest medical help.

Trudging up the slopes to Camp Forlorn Hope, Mase manages to make his way to the medical tent, limbs shaking and fatigued. Of course, Dr. Richards insists on helping him, having already been acquainted with the doctor from previously assisting with missing medical supplies. Mase had been hoping on a return of kindness when he’d chosen Forlorn Hope, while also not averse to being sweet-talked.

It seemed simple enough, let Dr. Richards hook an IV to his upper forearm, relax, and let the Radaway do its job. But...Mase had been shaking and hyperventilating from the nausea, and right as Dr. Richards offered him a reassuring “It’s going to be all right, buttercup”, Mase lurched and vomited on the doctor’s shoes.

Needless to say, one of his top most embarrassing moments.

in conversation, are they kind? gentle? sarcastic? rude? do they speak warmly and openly with people, or are they more guarded? do they talk a lot?

Generally very soft spoken, with little to say, especially in regards to strangers or people he’s just met. A monotone speaking pattern, with tendencies to a blunt manner of speaking his mind.

However this changes the closer he is to someone. He becomes more adaptive to the other person’s speaking patterns, becoming more or less talkative depending on the personality of his partner.

do they like long journeys through the mojave, or do they prefer to travel more quickly? do they prefer using roads or travelling through the deep desert?

It depends. He’ll have bouts of wanting to travel long, deserted stretches of land, leaving time to himself and his thoughts. No companions. And other times he’ll prefer to stay to more populated areas, not wanting to be alone, and dreading the idea of being left with no one but his own thoughts to keep him company.

name a random fact about your courier.

He has hang-ups about his name. For the first few months of his “new” life, he didn’t have a name, and was simply called “Courier” – which doesn’t entirely die out, even after he discovers his real name. The title “Courier” is something he more familiarly associates with his being/existence/person.

A continuous problem that his amnesia left him with was the inability to grasp or understand who he was. As time goes on and Mase becomes more self aware, this effect does diminish, but the conflicting feelings he has about his name remain. Sometimes he feels like his name is an important identity – one that he’s afraid of losing again, and sometimes he wants absolutely nothing to do with it.

When he leaves the Mojave, he throws his first name away completely, and takes to only telling people his middle name. Arcade had called him “Mase” consistently, with fondness; Joshua had only ever called him “Mason”, never the shorthand version. Somehow, that felt important. He didn’t want these memories to resurface – he didn’t want to remember what he’d left behind, or feel that pain – so he abandoned the name completely.

do they watch movie holotapes? what are their favorites? least favorites?

(Say The Man With No Name trilogy exists in the Fallout universe. That would undoubtedly be Mase’s favorite.

I admit I haven’t thought much about this sort of thing. The main kind of entertainment I imagine Mase consuming is mostly the radio. In-game, we have Radio New Vegas and Mojave Music as far as music/entertainment goes, but I like to think there would be other stations where the main focus is storytelling. Reruns from pre-war times, and newer stations featuring people recounting tales from the wasteland.)

what do they do with the lucky 38? do they like being there? do they leave their companions there? if they’re a yes-man courier, do they open it back up as a casino?

Much like how Mase feels towards the rest of The Strip, the Lucky 38 is a stifling, unwelcoming environment. He takes advantage of the shelter and amenities given, but he knows he’s being watched – being kept close like a useful tool, exactly how most factions and people in power treated him. He doesn’t make a habit of using the Lucky 38...but, he does like the convenience of running water.

what do they do after hoover dam?

Wanders out east towards Ronto. It’s possibly the most aimless 4 years of his life. He has no purpose, he falls onto self-destructive behavior, and loses what little sense of self he was able to garner from his time in Nevada and Utah. Ultimately, after confronting many internal fears and doubts, with not a slight bit of soul-searching, Mase makes the decision to go back home to Nevada.

how do they die? how is their death received, by the mojave and by their companions?

... (I haven’t gotten that far. I’ve only just barely decided Mase settles in Nevada, which is dependent on an NCR Hoover Dam victory. Which is extremely important to how things change in west coast territories. And thinking of Mase’s future involves thinking of the future of Nevada and the west as a whole. I don’t know if I’m capable of handling the weight of the aftermath of the NV storyline with my meager ideas.

I do imagine Mase would die from a shot to the head, though. Seems fitting.)

what are their vices? are they an alcoholic, a thief, a hoarder?

Mase has always had a proclivity for alcohol – these habits severely abate during his time in Zion, and then rise to a destructive level of full alcoholism during his time out east.

Hoarding has a negative connotation to it, right? Generally collecting garbage, and other trash? Mase collects items he finds to be interesting in his home in Nevada, but it’s not rubbish. It’s more of a collection similar to the likes of a museum.

can they cook, and if so, what do they cook? what are their favorite & least favorite foods?

Despite having less-than-useful survival skills, Mase is very interested in cooking recipes. The easiest and most satisfying one to follow is the desert salad, with more difficult recipes being mushroom cloud and wasteland omelette. He’s only had the opportunity to cook the latter two once each (thanks Quarry Junction and Bloodborne cave), and he savored every moment of both meals.

Another favorite would be iguana bits – a food he’s tried to replicate, but can’t quite pin the recipe for down. Besides that, he admittedly has a palette for pre-war sweets. Fancy Lads have a specifically...gone off...flavor about them, but he enjoys them all the same.

did they kill caesar? vulpes inculta? what about prominent ncr figures, like kimball and colonel hsu?

He doesn’t kill any prominent figures. Perhaps if he had been a different person, he would have been openly hostile toward the Legion – he disagrees with their values, and despises their leader – but this was not the life he felt he could lead. He already had enough paranoia about the prospect of having enemies coming back to kill him from the life he couldn’t remember, let alone adding to that by agitating any specific faction or group.

/

I deleted some questions I felt were already answered well enough in previous posts about Mason. Namely: this one.

I also just deleted things I didn’t feel like answering because it was too much effort.

The companions question is unfinished because I felt like that bit was getting really unorganized and chunky to read. So, some companions are omitted. May go back to this and edit it / add more to it.

#oc shepherd #fallout new vegas #i know no one aside from me will care about this #since it's not art and nor is it easy writing to consume #but that's ok because i love writing #and more importantly #i love writing character building for my oc

[prixmiumcontent]

Doctor Who - “The Unquiet Dead” - S01E03

A Meta Post/Review

Revised 01 December 2019.

Summary

In Cardiff, an undertaker and his servant deal with the fact that their deceased clients keep coming back to life and even kill the living. The Doctor tries to show Rose the TARDIS’s backwards-in-time feature by taking her somewhere more tourist-friendly, but the TARDIS knows best and brings them into the center of the drama. The Doctor, Rose, and reluctant ally Charles Dickens try to help Gwyneth, the undertaker’s servant, make sense of the “sight” which she has possessed all her life and what it might have to do with the ghostly, gaseous creatures who have haunted the funeral parlor and the surrounding areas.

Content Below

Analysis

Arbitrary Ratings

Content Warnings for Parents and Kids (Depending on Your Age)

Analysis

The Thesis Statement

Having shown Rose (and the audience) aliens and monsters and the possible future, the third episode of Doctor Who takes Rose to the past. The first three episodes of New Who are very clearly formulaic to a point that they might be viewed as something of a three-part pilot for a new audience. It is very clearly outlined in order to show the audience something of the breadth that the show can and will offer. There are aspects of the first two episodes that I personally find just a little bit difficult to watch now. They have obvious budget constraints, strange costume and effect choices at times, and several early installment hiccups that would be ironed out even by the end of Series 1.

If and when I am introducing New Who to a friend/new viewer, I always ask them to be ready to bear with me through Episode 5 and discount how silly and terrible aspects of Episodes 4 and 5′s villains are, too. However, I think that this episode is really one of the first that has aged pretty well in spite of any of its early installment difficulties. Now on to the episode itself.

Christmas in Cardiff

The cold open of this episode is more charming to me now than it was when I first watched it. Perhaps it is simply having more context for what a difficult place the United Kingdom was during the 19th Century. It is a place that seems riddled with ghost stories and scary tales in great part because of how difficult living was in the region when the Industrial Revolution had utterly changed the world, entrenching its own ills and advancements without any hope of going back.

One of my favorite things to do when I don’t feel like looking at a screen is to listen to podcasts, and I often favor true crime and mythology. I can’t tell you how often the two intersect in Victorian Britain, so I feel that this setting is a really good choice for Doctor Who to establish its time traveling element backward in time.

The opening scene with Mr. Sneed, a funeral parlor owner, comforting one of his clients upon the death of his grandmother is also something that is uniquely personal to me. Before becoming a teacher, I worked at a cemetery for a while. Anyway, one of the things that stands out to me as possibly unique is how obvious they make it that the reanimated Mrs. Redpath snapped her grandson’s neck. For some reason, this seems much more realistically deadly than some of the deaths that have followed in the show even though the series has a consistently high body count.

While I tend to balk at the idea that Doctor Who in its current incarnation has ever been a children’s program primarily, I appreciate the fact that upon Gwyneth’s introduction the different social norms - the class difference between her and her employer and the way in which he patronizes her in a sexist way in particular - are made clear in a way that seems like it would be easily accessible to younger audience members without a sophisticated understanding of the history of any of those things. It is unsettling without being cartoonish and absurd beyond what it should be.

The special effects in this episode with the Gelth and reanimated corpses themselves may not in any way compare to what Doctor Who has been able to accomplish and expect since, but I think what those visuals lack the set and set pieces and audio make up for. I find the old woman’s scream layered in with the childish cry of the Gelth voice inside her absolutely unnerving.

Again I would muse that Doctor Who isn’t something that I really expect many small children to be interested in on their own except for moments at a time. However as a family program I think that it often has pretty sophisticated storytelling that holds up to deeper analysis. Later in the episode, a person who is viewing the story in a wholly moment-by-moment way may easily sympathize with the Gelth and wonder if the Doctor’s curious, guilt-ridden compassion for them is correct. However, if one simply pays attention to the opening scene before the Doctor and Rose ever arrive (with the TARDIS tugging them in the direction they should go, after all), one can see that there is nothing benevolent, lost, or curious about the entity reanimating Mrs. Redpath’s corpse.

While she goes through the motions that Mrs. Redpath had intended to take before her death - attending the Dickens performance - it would seem that this is either simply a faulty connection between the Gelth and its human vehicle or something of a test run with the Gelth interfacing with the human brain it now controls like a user interface. What is most haunting about this whole thing is that there isn’t any sense that this woman is getting to fulfill a wish in any meaningful way from beyond the grave. Rather, something has coopted her unfulfilled plans after having mercilessly murdered her grandson. There isn’t any symbiosis between anything that remains of Mrs. Redpath in her body after her soul has gone. This is something that a keen viewer (or simply one who has seen it far too many times like myself) might pick up on, but it shows that there are layers to the narrative that are accessible to any age or caliber of viewer with reason.

The Greater Good

As an aside, since I imagine if you’re reading this post you are familiar with or curious about the episode, I want to give a little layman’s refresher on what “bodysnatching” is, given that Mr. Sneed tells Gwyneth that his is what they are about to do. Stripped down, this episode is literally about the ethics and morality of bodysnatching in a modernized and scifi-ized context. I recently heard a refresher in a podcast (Lore if you’re wondering), so I’ll pass it on to you: Bodysnatching was a practice that took place during the early days of medical research and large-scale medical schools. The term “operating theater” is sometimes used into the present day, but if there is an observation room it tends to be sealed behind a window in order to keep the operating room sterile. However, in an age before sterilization was fully understood or practical to do, one way in which medical students would learn about surgery and, more often, the inner workings of the human body would be to watch a more experienced physician perform surgeries or dissections of corpses in a room that literally looked like an amphitheater with a small stage.

One has to remember that prior to imaging technology that we have today, the only way to understand what was going on inside the body was to literally see the inside of a body. Therefore, corpses were in high demand in the training of young medical students. However, laws concerning the remains of law-abiding, typically Christian citizens after death prevented teaching doctors from getting access to the number of corpses they needed. This is where bodysnatching came in.

Bodysnatchers were not necessarily conventional grave robbers. In fact, some would even return clothes and the material riches buried with the deceased to the coffin in order to avoid prosecution as best they could. Their profit was made primarily or entirely through the shady deals that hospitals and medical schools made with them out of desperation, as the only legally available bodies were those who were the unclaimed who had died in workhouses and the bodies of executed murderers. Eventually, some alterations to the law which allowed for the donation of bodies made the need for this practice disappear, but there was a time when medical doctors had to make the choice between what they viewed as the most productive and helpful of two evils.

I think that the clear connection between that and the plot of this episode is as plain as day upon informed viewing.

Except for you.

Before the Doctor and Rose become aware of what is happening outside the TARDIS, we witness a bonding moment between the two of them. Rose is still wearing the same clothes from when she ran away with the Doctor, and one gets the impression that they have been having some issues with the TARDIS since they got back inside after getting chips at the end of the last episode. They haven't gone anywhere else. The Doctor is trying to wrangle the TARDIS into cooperating with backwards time-travel, but for some reason, she is not cooperating as well as she did with going into the future. One might assume that perhaps it is because she knows where they need to go even if they don’t yet.

The Doctor intends to take Rose to Naples, Christmas Eve, 1860. At first, he believes that he has succeeded. The Doctor is clearly in impress-Rose-and-convince-her-to-stay mode, full tilt. She has forestalled any decision about going home, and so he is allowing himself to hope that she will stay.

We have not yet had any complex analysis of why he wants this, but we do know that Nine tried traveling on his own and came back for Rose in particular. While I am not an Old Who expert by any means, we all know that he has had a history of traveling with companions. Generally, the Doctor in New Who is reluctant to take on new companions, but he has a moment which proves him wrong about a particular person. In the case of Nine, though, we don't so much have a moment as a process with his wanting Rose to stay with him, longer and longer each time.

For her part, Rose shows that she has the time travel bug badly when she responds to the idea of visiting a Christmas that has passed long ago. She holds reverence for the fact that something comes and goes and is over forever for everyone except the Doctor. She wants to be a part of this life, no matter what it might cost her, in this moment. After this and her commentary about learning about the expansion of the sun on television in the previous episode, it is once again clear that for whatever she lacks in certification and credentials, Rose is a brilliant person with a thirst for knowledge. She wants to see living history. She wants to experience the world around her.

In Doctor Who Confidential, I recall RTD mentioning that the Doctor and Rose were written to be soulmates of a sort from the beginning, and I think that this more than anything is what he probably meant. It isn’t just about personality quirks, but it is about that itch that Rose has to run away from her ordinary, expected lifestyle to touch the pulse of history unfolding and mattering around her that makes her “like the Doctor” and a match for him in that regard.

Healthy Skepticism

When the Doctor and Rose go for a walk in Cardiff and hear the screams coming from Charles Dickens’s performance as the reanimated Mrs. Redpath makes herself known, the Doctor and Rose go about investigating the problem in distinct ways. The Doctor does have a concern for the safety of others, but he goes directly to the highest vantage point and tries to identify the source and to ask the person who appears to have the most authority. Meanwhile, Rose notices the old woman and the undertaker and his servant and goes after them. She is concerned about the welfare of someone she has picked out of the crowd as needing help. Both of these are important roles, but the fact that Rose does this when she is traveling with the Doctor points out again how he needs someone like her to live up to his calling and reputation.

I had never really considered how both of Rose’s first outings involve her getting trapped in a room in some way. I can’t decide if this is an homage to the old show, a cautionary tale, or simply meant to show that there is a learning curve for traveling with the Doctor. It seems a bit odd that it happens in two episodes in a row, but when Rose awakens in the funeral parlor with Mr. Redpath coming back to life as well, she goes back to her customary cautious skepticism. She tries to go for the most ordinary, rational conclusion first, but she much more quickly accepts that she is dealing with zombies than she did with the shop window dummies in the first episode.

I cannot attest to how well Charles Dickens is portrayed in this episode as I don’t know as much about him as some other historical events and figures. However, I must say that the depiction is sympathetic and interesting. I really enjoy his presence in the episode, and the Doctor’s fawning over him is a cute bit of characterization that shows the Doctor’s ability to compartmentalize even when he does care about the present danger.

It is also nice to have a historical figure so known for pointing out social ills and being a skeptic of spiritualist frauds in a story that points out something that seems like it points to something of that nature going on. I appreciate that the story acknowledges the more rational sides of what could be even when it is presenting something that is more fantastical.

The debates that take place in this episode between the Doctor and Dickens and the Doctor and Rose, on a meta-level, primarily have to do with establishing a balance between skepticism and belief and between standard morality and the willingness to push those boundaries. Each person in either argument can be seen to have a point, and one of the things I admire the most about Doctor Who is the way in which it allows people of all different backgrounds to carry some of their own presuppositions and worldviews with them while challenging others. While the series itself tends to err on the side of science and rationality and in not allowing faith or religious belief to be an “opiate” that allows people to ignore present dangers and concerns, it does not take on such a cynical point of view that the most cynical and skeptical person in the room is always right.

In this case, the Doctor seems very resistant to the idea of an afterlife as Gwyneth perceives it, even though he has no problem with the fact that the Gelth need corporeal bodies in spite of existing outside them. While he knows that there are multiple universes and dimensions, he is dismissive of the idea that Gwyneth’s parents sent these “angels” to look after her. And this gives way to the Doctor cynically using what he believes to be Gwyneth's (primitive?) beliefs to further an agena. While he can be a tolerant and open-minded person, in this case Nine isn't having any of that.

The Doctor uses Gwyneth’s beliefs to manipulate her. He conveniently ignores those aspects of the narrative she presents about the Gelth and her understanding of them that he knows are objectively false but which further his purpose of giving these “pitiable” creatures the opportunity to live.

To be fair, one of the reasons he is so insistent about doing this is because they inform the Doctor that they lost their corporeal forms during the Time War. He feels personally responsible for what they have lost. He sees a resource in the empty human bodies of the dead, and he comes to a compromise in his mind. He plans to allow them to go through with their plan of using the reanimated dead and then to take them to a place where such an advanced race might be able to build new and proper bodies for themselves. Therefore, he allows Gwyneth to believe that she is helping “angels” that her parents sent from the afterlife to comfort her.

The Gelth themselves also use emotional manipulation in order to convince the Doctor and Gwyneth that they are pitiable creatures. They utilize children’s voices and a visage that looks very much like the shape of a human child when they manifest into a gaseous form. This comes in spite of the fact that we have already seen that they will kill before they will verbally communicate with humans. They have ingratiated themselves with Gwyneth and have comforted her. They have learned about her life and needs because they need her in order to establish a physical link within the rift that has opened up between their part of the universe and Cardiff. In spite of the fact that longterm exposure to the spacetime rift has allowed Gwyneth to develop an apparently-supernatural insight into the minds of others around her, among other things, she has had no ability to discern the true, more violent intentions of the Gelth.

Rose takes a different angle, but she is equally as skeptical about Gwyneth’s qualifications to make her own decisions about this circumstance. Rather than allowing Gwyneth to “believe what she needs to” in order to get the job done, Rose wants to protect her from her naivete that is based on the cultural differences between a woman of Rose’s time and one of Gwyneth’s. While this point of view may be more immediately sympathetic to me, it is also making the point that not meeting a person where they are and acknowledging the insight they do have, in spite of any blindspots or ignorance, is also dangerous.

Last but not least, we have Dickens who is skeptical about the very existence of something other-worldly influencing the physical and real world he knows. This is in spite of a few references to the fact that he perhaps holds to some religious and/or metaphysical beliefs. He resists the rampant abuses of the spiritualism fad of the time while also allowing himself to be convinced through empirical evidence. Charles is the character in the story who gains the moth “faith” in something that he cannot understand or make sense of completely, and he comes out of it with a renewed sense of vigor in his person and life in spite of the fact that he is nearing its end.

Gaslighting (not really I'm just making a joke)

Now, back to the way the Doctor manipulated Gwyneth and its consequences. Because the Doctor missed every possible sign that the Gelth were up to no good in a much more deliberate, calculating way than the Nestene Consciousness was, the Gelth manage to begin pouring themselves through the portal Gwyneth has become for them. The Doctor and Rose have to lock themselves in a sort of cage? I don't know what that is for in a funeral parlor. Maybe it is a closet, but it has a weird, barred door. They are left alone, and if not for external help, the Doctor and Rose would have both been overtaken by the Gelth. Rose is again faced with the possibility of her imminent death, and again she says that she is glad she met the Doctor rather than allowing herself to dissolve into regret. She doesn't want to die, but she seems to be continually convincing herself that even dying like this is better than not having done it at all.

I lived and breathed Doctor/Rose from the first few weeks I was into Doctor Who. Ever since I felt like I had a footing in the canon, though, I have always found that fellow-shippers always seemed to view the Doctor and Rose's relationship through rose-colored glasses (pun intended or no). I think that one of the most interesting parts of it is how it experiences very heartfelt, sweet growth through frankly insane, impulsive actions. It isn't an especially normal love story by a long shot, and I don't really understand the compulsion to act like it is, but I digress.

Luckily, Dickens decides to come back after having run away in terror. He figures out that the creatures are made of gas and that they can essentially pull them out using the gas system in the funeral parlor. Planet, Doctor, and Rose saved again. Then, the Doctor is faced with figuring out how to clean up the mess he has made through listening to his survivor's guilt instead of common sense and assuming that he knew better about intergalactic politics than everyone else in the room - regardless of the context and stakes. He tries to insist that Gwyneth send the Gelth back, and when she does not immediately comply, he again calls upon her beliefs in a way that he clearly does not himself espouse. He tells her that if her parents could look down and see her that they would help her and want her to do it. He knows that she has realized that the Gelth have manipulated and lied to her, but he still goes about trying to manipulate her. Poor Gwyneth simply could not catch a break from anyone.

The Gelth pulled this trick on all of them when they simply remained silent to demands for promises of safety, to the Doctor’s plan for helping the “few” of them, and so on. This lack of good faith conversation is shown on “both sides” - when it is intended to shelter and protect someone and when it is deliberately malicious. In both cases, it still causes some harm.

When Dickens returns and the Doctor once again tries to manipulate Gwyneth in order to save her and to, by extension, save everyone, it is still clear that the Doctor isn’t the one who is in control. Rose tries to insist that she stay behind because she has come to care about Gwyneth, but the Doctor successfully pleads that both the humans go without him. He even uses the phrase “I won’t leave her while she’s still in danger,” which one might argue is yet another emotionally manipulative phrase, but I tend to think that it is a very raw, true statement about how the Doctor must view life and death in some of the circumstances he finds himself in.

More things in Heaven and Earth

The Doctor is shocked when he works out that Gwyneth has been physically dead the entire time she had been interfacing with the Gelth. They killed her, and yet she maintained control of her mind. While she was literally their bridge, she manages to hold them and push them out. I wonder how much of that ws intentional or a matter of narrative convenience. In any case, it shows that the Doctor is also wrong about the existence of a person’s intentionality and personhood “after death,” at least in this one particular case. When he rejoins Dickens and Rose outside and recounts this to them, Dickens is the one who reminds him to have an open mind even when the truth seems regressive or irrational, showing that he has learned his lesson. The Doctor needs to learn his own lessons too, sometimes.

While this isn’t a Christmas special as such, it also introduces the fact that there is a certain special, forgiving nature to the Christmas season even in this universe and regardless of why. I think that this episode is affirming regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of easy-faith or easy-skepticism. It shows that the best way to approach something is through honest searching. That is why Gwyneth is a tragic hero in this episode. No matter what anyone else around her was doing, she was approaching her attempts to understand from an authentic place. She listened without a lot of presuppositions, and that was her strength. In the end, it cost her her life but let her keep her soul.

Arbitrary Ratings

Story - ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Characterization - ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Aesthetic - ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Overall - ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Considerations for Watching with Parents or Kids (Depending on Your or Their Ages)

This episode is actually pretty family-friendly except that it includes a lot of death. Lots and lots of death and dealing with corpses. If you feel your parent or child can handle that, then you’re probably safe.

Support

If you enjoyed this post and are over 20 years of age, please consider donating to my ko-fi to help an under-employed teacher pay her bills and for small millennial pleasures like avocados. You can find a link above. Other ways to support and encourage my writing are to comment/reply/engage and to reblog!

#doctor who #doctor who meta #rose tyler #the doctor #ninth doctor #nine #gwyneth #mr. sneed #doctor who series 1 #prixmiumtext #prixmiumtextdw #review #long post

[thedeadflag]

Hey, I'm creating a campaign for a couple of friends, and it's my first time DMing, so I was wondering if you have any tips for me :))) P.S.: I loved this chapter of your fic so much, I really missed your writing :)))

Yay! That sounds like a lot of fun, I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun :D

I’ll leave some links below to some great videos/articles with advice (because there’s honestly so much to say that I could go on for ages and ages), but for now…

* Two-Way Communication is Critical

This is arguably the second most important piece of advice, and one that ties into almost every piece of advice I could theoretically offer. Pen and paper roleplaying (whether there’s actual paper or not, of course) is a form of interactive storytelling with player created narratives. It’s not a top-down hierarchy where a DM designs and plots out everything, and the players follow along all wide-eyed and obedient with no agency of their own.

You are all playing a game together, even if your roles are different. Collaboration is key. That requires communication both ways.

This is especially vital when creating a new campaign, regardless of scale, because it’s immensely important to start with the right foundation. What kind of game do your players want to play? What are they looking for in the game, what do they want to get out of it, what interests them about roleplaying, what are their expectations? 

From there, you can establish a basic idea of what sort of campaign to set up, what dynamic(s) to focus on, etc., because if you’re designing a campaign purely around what you want, your players might not be able to get on the same page. At the same time, you need to make sure you’ve got what you want in there as well, because you need to have fun as well.

After that, it’s best to approach players about character creation. One major newbie GM/DM mistake is letting players completely create characters in a vacuum. This is less than ideal because without a setting/context, (A) players tend to shift focus and invest in what they can get details on, generally the mechanical aspects of the game. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but you don’t want players branching off in wildly different directions and investing in those possibilities heavily mechanically to where you can’t really find a workable middle ground. Think a character who is out to be the biggest min-max munchkin wizard or cleric, contrasting with a character who is designed to be useless in combat but excellent socially and in skills, contrasting with a character who is built virtually entirely around being one cog in a phalanx wall who is also a vampire that cannot travel during daylight, contrasting with a character who has a lot of skills and feats invested in their profession as a farmer.  Lots of directions there, and not necessarily one way to get everyone what they want.

So it’s best to head them off at the pass, introduce them to the working concept of the campaigns as you’re developing it. Brainstorm collectively as a group what kind of place you all would like to have in that world, what kind of adventure seems like it could be fun, and from there, come up with an opening scene for the players to build their characters into. Again, collaboration is great, bounce ideas back and forth with them, have them bounce ideas off each other, find a way for character creation to mesh with all of your goals as a group and then you won’t get caught so easily in the traps of players getting invested in being the single star in their own show rather than an ensemble cast. Get them excited to buy into the group dynamic and the adventure ahead of them.

And when you get into having sessions, talk to players between breaks, after sessions, keep tabs. Ask them what they liked and didn’t, ask them how they felt about the session, what’s exciting to them. Understand that character behaviour and decisions are manifestations of play intrigue and excitement, so use that line of communication to your advantage

Use that feedback and shape your campaign to it. One example of my own I sometimes bring up was a World of Darkness campaign I ran set in the late 1800s. My best friend grew heavily suspicious of an NPC in town that honestly was pretty unimportant and largely a placeholder. After two and a half sessions of him keying in on the NPC and his character investigating him and all sorts of sneaky shenanigans, I decided to flesh the NPC out and work him into the narrative more. I didn’t make him the big bad villain my best friend predicted he was, but I made him worthy of my best friend’s suspicions and paranoia if with a twist or two my best friend didn’t expect.  While we never got to fully get through that narrative arc due to schedules conflicting too much to keep on with that campaign, it was an enjoyable narrative turn that rewarded his efforts in-character and his excitement outside of character.

If you have a player that’s excited and invested, play on that. Make the most of that. There’s nothing better as a DM than winding down a session and players spending the next while geeking out about how much fun they’re having and where they think things are heading. An open ear and open lines of communication are more more important than any notion of sticking to a set plan.

Related video (x)

* Do Your Research, But Don’t Buy In Too hard

Not much to say here. Research what you need, but don’t over-prepare. THis is the DM’s version of “Kill your darlings” more or less, because you’re going to have to toss away cool ideas that your players just aren’t biting on. That’s okay. Don’t spend tens of hours writing all this intricate backstory for items, or NPCs, because chances are it’s not going to be as great for the players as it was for you during brainstorming that. Give yourself the tools to create your world, get the basics, have a key pieces that can be malleable and dynamic in their ability to adjust to player actions/decisions, let your player’s characters be the center of your story, and build your world around them as they go. I mean, fi you want to go all out on worldbuilding and lore, then go for it, but just understand that all fo that needs to be supplementary to the campaign. It’s used to set the stage, not steer the ship, that’s the job for the characters

It’s the same for creating characters. Have a backstory, but don’t have 6 pages of backstory. It’s not necessary, it can hamper the ability for their character to grow and experience meaningful development/experiences in your campaign, and that can hinder the group dynamic and the immersion of the group and individual player into the game.

One note-taking bit that some DMs do is create session recaps, or something similar (see here for example/breakdown, maybe watch the full video for some great advice at encouraging roleplaying and engagement, and the importance of notetaking). In one of my old ones, I photoshopped an old newspaper with a variety of stories, some involving their escapades, some involving clues about important NPCs, some providing hooks for upcoming possible narrative plots. That worked well in the campaign I ran around a single city area, but that sort of thing can help increase excitement and indulge your urges for creation without railroading players. Sometimes I’ll start a session asking players to recap collectively what they’ve done recently before providing my recap from the perspective of the world they impacted. That can help with investment, getting them to see how their characters are perceived, the impact and consequences of their decisions, etc. The latter of which is something I write up directly after each session while things are fresh in my mind. All the major involved/affected NPCs have a perspective developed on what happened, and I use that and player commentary/character behaviour to help guide the campaign forward. Cause and effect is a simple and helpful way to think about ongoing conflict in campaigns.

And a recap can help with bookkeeping, so players aren’t constantly interrupting asking if they received X item last session, who X NPC is, etc.

In which case note-taking is important (x)(x). Having a strong platform for notetaking is important too if you’re going digital. Google Docs, Scrivener, notebook.ai, liquid story binder, etc. There’s a boatload of great tools out there, so find one that works well for you whether in-session or post/pre-session

Related video on research: (x at 6:48, but the whole video is excellent)

and the most important advice of all

Have Fun

Seriously. Pen and Paper roleplaying is meant to be fun. If you’re not having fun, change things up in the direction of what IS fun, screwing the consequences and previously well crafted plans. 

As said here, Fun > Story > Rules. 

Past that, getting your feet wet in one-shots is probably a good way to understand how to do things and give yourself and your players a trial run before kicking off a larger campaign. That way, you can work out some kinks, develop chemistry and learn to read the players, get comfortable with improv, etc.

Those are some basics to really work on accepting and exhibiting, and it will take time so be patient with yourself and your players. 

Also, check these videos for some help because they are very good and informative, and provide a lot of A+ quality information on how to run a great campaign and get started

I know that’s a lot of videos, but they all have value. Some address the same things as other videos, but sometimes slightly different perspectives on the same points can help really fill out an understanding of certain topics, issues, concepts, etc. And a lot of those videos linked have other videos on their channels that are really informative and useful, too

Anywho, feel free to hit me up with questions if you’re struggling with anything, I’d be happy to help however I can!

#d&d #pen and paper #roleplaying #dnd #DM tips #dungeon master tips #long post #artyshort

[aion-rsa]

Returnal’s Horror Combines the Best of Alien and Hereditary

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When describing Returnal to anyone that’s maybe interested in the game, I’ve been relying on that classic “comparison” technique. For instance, I might say that Returnal is like “Risk of Rain meets Metroid,” or that its gameplay reminds me of a “Bullet hell shooter crossed with a roguelike.”

Most people know that those kinds of comparisons are rarely accurate. However, they offer a simple way of describing something new by comparing it to things that are already known and more established. More often than not, the best way to get someone to try something different is to base your description of it on something familiar.

Yet, the one comparison I haven’t been able to shake whenever I think of Returnal is also the one that I don’t make lightly or just throw out there to get people interested in the game. No, it’s a more complicated comparison that highlights one of Returnal‘s most brilliant qualities, even if it’s not necessarily one of the game’s biggest selling points from a back-of-the-box perspective.

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See, Returnal isn’t just a roguelike with Metroidvania elements or a bullet hell game converted into a third-person shooter. It’s also a shockingly effective horror game that combines the best qualities of two of the greatest horror movies ever made: Alien and Hereditary.

Returnal‘s Alien comparisons are easy enough to understand even from the outset. The game’s opening throws you into the thick of a hostile alien world with an overwhelming atmosphere that is clearly designed to provoke that same feeling of isolation we saw in the 1979 movie. Even that film’s famous tagline (“In space, no one can hear you scream”) is based on the idea of facing something unspeakable without anyone being there to respond to even the most primordial cry for help.

Returnal‘s protagonist, Selene, may be better trained and better equipped for such a scenario than the crew of the Nostromo were (Dead Space does a “better” job of reviving Alien‘s blue-collar sci-fi themes), but there’s still this lingering sense that you are fundamentally unprepared for whatever it is that you’ve just stumbled upon.

It’s when you start to explore Returnal‘s world that the Alien comparisons really establish themselves, though. Remember the scene in Alien when the crew discovers that giant skeletal figure sitting near what initially appears to be some kind of weapon? Long before we started calling it the “Space Jockey” and long before it became the centerpiece of a deep piece of franchise lore, that figure was largely meant to make you say “WTF?” as you wondered just what the crew and we as the audience had just walked into. This isn’t just a story about a killer alien; it’s a trip into a much larger world that none of the travelers understand.

Returnal effectively utilizes a similar trick. Through the use of Dark Souls‘ style storytelling in which much of the lore and explanations are hidden in descriptions, logs, and environmental clues, Returnal effectively keeps us at a distance at all times whenever you just want a basic understanding of what’s happening. Besides, most players will be more concerned moment to moment with surviving another onslaught from hostile forces than they will be with uncovering the history and nature of those forces or why you are all caught in a time loop together.

This is where you really see how Returnal‘s designers and writers clearly understand what really made the horror in Alien so effective. If Alien and Returnal were all about you vs. hostile creatures, you might eventually become comfortable with your situation. Sometimes, having an obvious enemy to distract you can make things clearer even if only for a little while. Instead, both stories use that hostile force as the piece of a much larger puzzle that you know exists but just can’t clearly see in any way that allows you to understand and make peace with it.

Returnal and Alien make it clear that you didn’t just run into a bad neighborhood in space; you’ve found yourself in the middle of something that you may never truly understand and simply don’t belong in. In both cases, the worst moments come when the adrenaline stops and you realize that you’re more alone than you ever imagined was possible.

That’s where Returnal pulls off its greatest trick. Rather than allow you to find comfort in whatever knowledge you may gain from analyzing your thoughts and making some sense of your situation, it corrupts those thoughts by sending the message that the only thing worse than being alone on a planet of hostile creatures is being alone with yourself. That’s when the horrors of Hereditary enter the picture.

Among other things, Hereditary was the horror movie of the “23andMe” generation. At a time when we’re more aware than ever of how our genetics can quietly shape our fate, Hereditary highlighted the horror of feeling like you can’t escape the circumstances that led you to wherever you are in life no matter how hard you believe you are trying. There’s nothing scarier than feeling helpless, and Hereditary emphasized the idea that the most powerful force we’re helpless against is often internal rather than external.

Returnal plays with a similar idea through its brilliant house sequences. Early in the game, you encounter a fairly traditional-looking house that certainly doesn’t seem like it belongs on an alien planet. Without diving too deeply into spoilers, this house certainly doesn’t belong on this world as its foundations are firmly set in the mind of our protagonist.

The scenes in this house briefly convert Returnal from a third-person action game to a first-person horror game just as it changes our perspective on who Selene is, what this planet is, and why we are all really in this incredible situation. We may think that Selene’s greatest challenge is escaping the time loop seemingly triggered by the external forces that inhabit the planet she crashed on, but the scenes in this house argue that even if Selene escapes the planet, there’s another loop that overwhelms her own life that she may never be able to escape in such a heroic way.

Just as Hereditary was built on the concept that some of the horrors that affect our lives the most are planted in us at a time when we’re most helpless (childhood) and complimented that idea with a more fantastical demonic story that played with similar themes as well as our expectations of them, Returnal suggests that the concept of a time loop isn’t quite as alien it seems. Who among us hasn’t felt trapped in the feeling that we’ve lost control of our lives but haven’t been able to explain the feeling in such a way that offers a form of release and relief?

The theory that the events of Hereditary and Returnal are somehow in the protagonist’s head is less interesting than the realization that what we’re seeing is the embodiment of this lingering, formless fear that has lived inside of them. They’ve wanted that feeling to be out of them, and it’s only when it’s manifested itself in such a way that they can truly appreciate the horror of this indescribable terror that’s burrowed into their souls.

By combining the best of Alien and Hereditary, Returnal puts us in a place where external terrors isolate us by weighing us down with the inescapable feeling that we do not belong here. That isolation forces us to turn inward for a place to breathe, but it’s there that a reexamination of ourselves reveals that the worst place we can imagine (a place where you are truly alone and doomed to repeat your mistakes) may indeed be exactly where we belong because its the world we’ve made for ourselves or were perhaps somehow destined to always arrive at.

You could perhaps start to understand Returnal‘s blend of horrors by being familiar with the significance of the materials it draws from, but it’s a game you must experience for yourself to truly appreciate.

The post Returnal’s Horror Combines the Best of Alien and Hereditary appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[vitanteactawrites]

Sometimes Two Isn’t Enough, Part IV

Fandom: Supernatural / AU

Characters: Reader, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel 

Pairing: Dean x Reader x Sam

Word Count: 2,281

Part: Four [part one, two, three]

Warnings: None!

Author’s note: Sorry it took so long guys, but here it is! We’ve finally started to dig in a little deeper and discover who the reader is, so enjoy! On a side note, I’m on vacation for a week but plan on taking a good old notebook and pen with me to try and get some stuff done. Next weeks chapter will be a little late, but expect a hunt and more information on who the reader is.

Despite the fact that the gentle lull of the Impala’s engine had put you to sleep, when it cut, you hardly stirred. Which was why your brows furrowed in sleep muddled confusion as fingers dusted hair from your eyes. With a soft grumble, your hand moved to bat away whatever had disturbed you, the other tugging Dean’s borrowed jacket closer to your shoulders. And while your sleep addled brain could hear the deep chuckle, your body still insisted on curling deeper into the soft leather of the back seat, chin nuzzling into the jacket within your grasp.

But the hair in your face was pushed back once more, this time accompanied by a gruff whisper of your name. Upon the realization that someone was going to insist on waking you regardless of any effort you put forth in attempt to avert it, you sleepily opened and squinted your eyes at the figure before you. Only once Dean was firmly in focus did your lips curl slightly.

“Sorry - are we stopping again for the night?”

You could tell that it was late afternoon by the light seeping through the windows of the vehicle, and despite the fact that there were potentially hours’ worth of open road ahead of you, you’d been quick to learn that the Winchesters had been taking you into consideration. You knew little about the past, which made driving for a long distance seem uncomfortable. More than once the three of you had stopped around dinner and stayed put, effectively making your trip to safety a little longer, but also much more comfortable.

“We’re here.”

The two words were enough for any lingering exhaustion to be wiped away and replaced with interest. Scooting across the seat, you carefully exited the Impala, offering Dean his jacket back in the process. You felt… nervous. This was, as Dean had once put it, their home. Or as Sam had put it, home base. Putting two and two together hadn’t been hard. One of them was your soulmate, which meant that this - at least for the time being - would be your home as well. Lacking any real memory, this place was your first home, which made it that much more important and special.

“Where’s Sam?”

“Inside. He figured it shouldn’t take two of us to wake you, so he brought everything in.”

Though your gaze had drifted to look at Dean as he spoke, it didn’t take long for you to offer a soft hum of acceptance at his words, eyes turning to the outside of the bunker. And it wasn’t just the exterior building you took in, but the surrounding woods, the roadway, everything.

You aren’t sure how long you lose yourself in your thoughts, but it’s a gentle brush of knuckles against the back of your hand that has you thrown back into focus. The surprised look you throw Dean is enough to put you both on edge, as he’s quick to withdraw his hand and awkwardly run it up the back of his neck instead.

“We - we better not keep Sam waiting. He might think something got us and send out the search party.”

It’s a poor attempt at a joke, one you mentally kick yourself for immediately, but it propels you toward the first doorway in your sight.

The moment you step into the bunker, your feet draw to an immediate halt - causing Dean to nearly barrel right into you. The scuffling of feet as Dean braces his hand against the rail and carefully steady’s you both is enough to draw Sam’s attention from below. It’s likely the look of complete awe on your features that has the grin of pride and the bubble of laughter escaping his throat.

“I had the same expression when I first saw this place too. Don’t worry, you get used to it.”

He was right, you would get used to it eventually, because this place was going to be your home, which was perhaps the reason you’d stopped and just…  stared. They’d built it up to be something because they had memories in this place - they’d established themselves there, and every time they’d spoken of it on the drive, you’d been under the assumption that you’d come to love it because they did. You’d assumed there would be touches of them, but that it would need some of you too - and you were right, it would - but it still seemed perfect.

You weren’t sure when Sam had moved to stand at the bottom of the steps, looking up at you with a small sense of pride shining in his eyes, and that beautiful grin on his face, but once again it was enough to propel you forward.

“I - I know you stumbled upon this place yourselves and have since discovered more about it as time passes but I - may I have a tour?”

It seemed to be the perfect question to ask, because within moments Dean shucked the jacket you’d returned to the back of a chair and the two brothers sprung into action. The three of you moved through each room at the pace you set, and while they provided as much information as they could about each room - whether it be the initial intended purpose of the room, their use of it, or their experience with cases or memories involved in the space, some question always pushed past your lips. Your interest in their home seemed enough for one brother to begin a story or thought, and the other to pick up on it. It was an action you’d believed others might have perceived as rude -- as if they were interrupting one another, but the exchange of looks, of small shrugs and grins was enough to tell you that, while not completely normal, it was something they would accept.

Once you’d returned to the main living space, the walls lined with books and the floor littered with an array of tables and chairs, Dean gave you once last long look before muttering something about cleaning his gun and unpacking. You watched him leave before turning to look at Sam expectantly. Dean had been reluctant, which meant they’d made some sort of deal about spending time with you.

“So these are the books you’ve been telling me all about? The ones filled with lore, and theories… history?” You asked, eyebrow arching slightly.

“Uh- aha ya.” Running a hand over the back of his neck, Sam’s gaze was quick to move from you to the shelves surrounding you.

“I’m not sure I remember, let alone know how to read,” you mutter, brow furrowing slightly in silent question as to whether or not that’s something you should really be ashamed of, “but could you show me some of the books maybe?”

Sometime during your question, your eyes had moved from Sam out of nervousness, instead taking in the lengthy shelves and surrounding area, so when an answer wasn’t offered forth immediately, you nearly cringed. Swallowing the lump of discomfort that was forming in your throat, you dared to look at him. There was a conflicting look on his face, as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to phrase it. Sam was quick to snap out of it, his head dipping into a succession of nods.

“Yeah - yeah uh I’ll show you some of my favorites.” There is a quick flash of a smile, but the hesitation in his eyes was still prevalent. “And if for some reason you can’t read… then I’ll teach you. Just - just like I’m sure Dean would - will - teach you about hunting or cars or whatever else you want to learn.”

Your lips quirked - only slightly - into the smallest of smiles. “Thanks Sam. I’d really appreciate that.”

Time passed after that, but you found it hard to distinguish whether it was flying or creeping by. You were relieved to note that most words on the pages of the books Sam showed you, as well as a select few you pulled out yourself, held real meaning. There were a few you asked for clarification on, some Sam pointed out as being newer, or slang, others even he was uncertain on. At some point during your trek around the large room, Dean had reemerged. Seated within one of the more comfortable of the chairs with his feet propped up and a beer in his hand, he busied himself with looking for cases on the computer. But it wasn’t long before you caught him watch you pursue the endless number of books, his lips quirking into a smile that seemed the vanish the second he caught either you or Sam watching him.

“What’s the most unique book you have?” The question is perhaps the first words that have truly broken the silence within the bunker in the last hour, but they seem much needed. Particularly because of the silent conversation Sam and Dean appear to be having via looks and facial expressions can either be a good, or terribly bad thing.

“Oh. Well, the Men of Letters have a few odd books - but most of them we’ve managed to translate. Kevin,  or Castiel can handle most anything we throw at them, but there’s one that neither can crack. Castiel claims it’s older than most Angels.”

You glanced between the two brothers, eyebrow arching slightly.

“And you have this thing here? Can I see it?”

A few minutes later, you were seated at one of the tables, a stone tablet in your hands, and a few thin pieces of parchment beside it.

“We assume someone transferred it from stone to paper a few hundred years ago, but outside of a folder and box with a bunch of question marks, there isn’t much too it.” Sam informed, seating himself opposite you.

You gave him a mildly impressed look before your eyes dropped to the tablet in front of you. Within seconds your brows were crinkling together, a frown tugging at your lips.

“What do you mean Castiel couldn’t read this?” With a glance at the Winchesters, you returned to the papers.

Deans attention waned from the laptop in his lap to looking at you fully, eyebrows arched and beer long forgotten.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, it isn’t that hard to read. It’s about the Daughter of God. It’s pretty vague, but the writer keeps calling this Daughter of God her mother.” You muttered, glancing up.

Before either Winchester can open their mouth to say anything, there is a faint flutter of wings before a man appears at the top of the stairs.

This time, you were certain time slowed. All senses but sight dulled - the sound of the brothers greeting or your chair knocking back as it hit the floor were both vague and distant. The man at the stairs appeared directly in front of you, his seemingly stoic face crinkled in confusion.

“Stay back, Angel.”

The threat ripped from your throat in a near growl, one that seemed to shock the entire room back into motion.

“Y/N. Y/N!” The hands pressing against your arms and then moving to cup your face are what drew you back completely into focus. With reluctance, your eyes ripped from the unidentified man to Dean’s, whose expression was no longer masked but shined bright with worry.

“That’s Castiel, okay? He’s a friend.”

The words ought to have reassured you, but instead your eyes flickered back to look at Castiel, the frown returning to your face.

“Y/N here uh - she can read that tablet.” Sam interjected, clearing his throat awkwardly as a hand motioned over toward the table.

“She is not human.”

Scoffing softly, you gave your head a shake, trying to get around Dean to no avail. “Someone has brilliant observation skills; shall we test out your theory?”

Deans face appeared in front of your almost immediately, his hands leaving your face to grip your arms and direct you back a few steps.

“Y/N. What is with the hostility?”

“You keep telling me that Lucifer - the man who apparently held me against my will and used me against you, the man who I apparently hate to the point of wanting to destroy him - is or was also an Angel at some point or another. You may trust him, but I don’t.”

It was enough for his grip to loosen around you. With a few steps, you were back to where you’d been standing before, eyes narrowing onto the trench coated man as Sam explained who you were, and what you’d found.

“That would explain it. Your presence releases an aura of power, like the essence of God after he leaves a place.” Castiel muttered, gaze turning from the tablet to look at you.

“The Daughter of God is as close to an urban legend as the Angels have. Did the tablet mention who might have transcribed it?”

“Emma.” The reply is as brief as you can make it, and from the tense set of Castiel’s shoulders, you realize he is just as unsettled by your presence as you are his.

“Very well, I’ll return to Heaven and begin the search immediately.”

Without waiting for confirmation, there is a flapping of wings and he is gone. A look is exchanged between yourself and the Winchesters before you sigh and give your head a shake.

“That’s Cas for you.” Sam muttered.

“Come on, I’ll make us some dinner.” Dean replied, turning on his heel to disappear into the kitchen. With one last exchanged look between you and Sam, you offered a shrug and followed Dean.

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