"New Dogs, New Tricks" Chapter Two commentary & notes

-- I was told Cyan has a hang-up about his superpower and comparing himself to the others, so I thought I'd set that up early on. In fact, I'm setting up several reoccurring elements in this story -- including hinting at which new Rover will be made leader of these guys when they officially become a team eventually, and character relationships.

-- In New Dogs On The Block, most of the recruits were given weapons. For NDNT though, since Eric and co were kind of recruited at the spur of the moment, I felt that going that route wouldn't be realistic. Instead, it's just Blades, Cyan, and Aurora who get their original weapons. I've always thought the weapons EW devised for everyone were pretty dope and creative while feeling like they could genuinely fit into canon (leagues better than that awful sponge gun Colleen had in the show), and I will be debuting the rest of their weapons in their next story. 

Powerplay is a special case. He was the only new Rover who never received a weapon. I came up with the idea of the Hydrant Cannon, because I thought a water cannon-type gun would be a fire weapon for the Rovers. 

-- I never understood why Colleen was named second in command of the Rovers. Field medic and surgeon is fine, but she's never displayed any kind of decent leadership skills in the show. In fact, in a number of ways I would say she's the exact opposite of what a good leader should be. I don't think I'd personally give someone like her that role, but well, I decided to stick with the show's idea this time, because I thought it could be interesting to have other characters question and even criticize this choice, and her growing into the role as she learns what she needs to do in order to be a good leader for others. Or maybe as she matures, she realizes she's not cut out to be a leader, and chooses to give the job to somebody else instead. Both would be solid story arcs for her.

-- The new recruits bungling the first usage of their superpowers was a very new addition to the plot. There's a YouTuber I watch named Pup who covers a lot of different media, like Spider-Man, Batman, and Sonic The Hedgehog. I watched a video he did covering the DC/IDW Sonic crossover, and in it Pup makes an interesting point -- when the Sonic characters temporarily stepped into the roles of the select DC characters, it would've been interesting to see them make mistakes in trying to use these new abilities and things. So I thought that'd be cool touch for NDNT. It isn't like the new Rovers were shown how to use these powers. Screwing up makes characters feel more human, and we the readers can get more invested in the story as they learn how to better control and wield their new abilities. And since this isn't a thirty minute TV show but a full-fledged story, it's something I could easily tackle. Honestly, I also think it's kind of a funny scene.

-- The Vulpomatrons are actually in my own idea. In the old stories Zaygos and his minions originally appeared in, they use Fox Mutants as their troops. But to me this just makes him little better than a Parvo knockoff. I mean, does that mean Zaygos has his own Cano-Mutator? Why? So I did some brainstorming, remembered those classical Greek automatons from myth, like Talos, or Hephaestus' creations, and voila. To me, the Vulpomatrons compliments the ancient science-fantasy feel of Zaygos and co. Their being based on foxes is a nod to the Fox Mutants. I thought they could be a lot smarter, quicker, and faster than the average robot because, well, they're foxes.

I don't know if the etymology of the word Vulpomatron is correct or not. Language is not one of my strong suits. If someone has a better name for them, then I'm all ears.

-- Streetwise being this ultimate Rover fanboy struck me as being kinda amusing. He was described as being very enthusiastic about being a Rover, so why not?

-- Oh boy. Humor and Road Rovers. Time for my unpopular opinion! 

The show ain't very funny. The weird boy stuff isn't funny. Colleen pretending to forget Blitz's name isn't funny. I'm sure people will think I'm saying all this because Blitz is my favorite Rover. If you swapped out Blitz for Hunter during these scenes, the joke still wouldn't make me laugh. I mean, what is the punch line? "Haha, they called him weird! Haha, she called him Blister/Booster/whatever! That sounds like Blitz!" This isn't particularly clever or quippy. 

Blitz getting injured repeatedly is not funny. Now, with something such as The Simpsons, The Three Stooges, or Looney Tunes, physical slapstick can be very entertaining, yes. And yes guys, I'm fully aware that the same company responsible for Looney Tunes is also behind Road Rovers. But since RR is trying to be a touch more serious then those particular series are, the physical slapstick in it doesn't work as well to me.

"LOL random!" humor, i.e.: the Russian name song, is unfunny. Same for jokes that are just "Oh, you know this popular thing? Well, let's have our protagonists reference it!" Oh, Colleen referencing the Spice Girls and Bob Dole as she fights? So hilarious!!1! That totally won't date the show badly at all!

This is how the joke police-type fans come off to me:

 And my reaction to these people as well as the "jokes":

If fans believe this is the height of comedy, then that's fine. Humor is subjective, after all. But it sucks for somebody like me because the fanbase will get upset at you for not wanting to repeat these exact same six jokes nine million times in your story, complaining that you're being too serious and forgetting that RR is a comedy, how dare you! 

No, I enjoy actual funny humor that doesn't bring the dang plot to a screeching halt or screw up character development. I can name funny action/adventure shows, cartoons included, where this is successfully done -- Jackie Chan Adventures, pre-time skip One Piece, The Middleman, Rise Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ("Ewwww, you're not a real TMNT fan!" Oh do shut up), Powerpuff Girls. Not every single joke in those shows landed either, but they definitely pull it off better and succeed in actually being funnier than RR.

But of course you'll have a popular fan just completely eschew the running gags all together and the joke police are mysteriously quiet. This crowd is super self-entitled while clearly having a different set of standards for popular fans versus unpopular ones

People have the Rovers do these same tired jokes in their fics over and over and over again. Back when I actually read RR fanfiction, it got to the point where, if my brain recognized that a scene was about to trot out one of the running gags, I'd just skim over that part. If watching this played out mess in the show was bad, then reading them in prose form is just as awkward, and about as funny as a children's cancer hospice, especially when the author would repeat it multiple times. I also knew somebody who told me that the fics and such that desperately try to be humorous are even worse in quality than the ones that don't. I guess wanting to focus on worldbuilding and developing these flat, plain white rice-ass characters is much less important than a mind-numbing running gag, because I've never see the joke police bring up the possibility of expanding on either the cast or their world. I mean, could be interesting to have uplifted animals think about or discuss how mankind and animals interact since the characters are, y'know, dogs. 

... Nah, just throw another "Blitz fall down, go boom joke" joke in there instead! I mean, RR fans who actually are interested in storytelling? That's for stuck up robot people who can't feel any emotions!

Just because you only want to see lulz and Hunter and Colleen swapping spit doesn't mean you can go around pushing your stance onto other people. Another person and I were discussing this very same topic recently. She described RR's jokes as noise. I think that's a very accurate description. I also think the humor detracted from character development and the plots. The funniest stuff to me is the dry humor of the Master, and the "blink and you'll miss it" jokes. Shag seeing Colleen in her night clothes and his reaction -- it makes me smile. Shag blowing up the billboard advertising Cats was funny. Hunter saying "This is why they don't give dogs guns" or whatever after Shag caused a lot of property damage -- that stuff was actually funny!

So excuse me for daring to try writing a different type of humor that isn't just a copypasta of the show's. I use the interplay between the characters as the basis for jokes, but not ones at their expense, or, if it is, it's not continuously putting them down.

-- Eric opening the door only to find the Decepticons from Transformers Animated (and more specifically, the episode "Transform And Roll Out!") was inspired by that one scene in the Shazam movie where the kids find all those doors that lead to weird alternate worlds. Also, Transformers Animated is one of my favorite Transformers media. I'd call it a pretty good cartoon overall.

(No, that's not the stealth crossover mentioned in the A03 tags.)

-- I felt that Aurora's past time of watching horror movies could be turned into an interesting character trait where she often references them, especially in weird situation like this. I've never actually seen Chopping Mall myself, so I've no clue if it's any good or not.

"Between A Rock And A Raccoon" commentary & notes

REFERENCES: 

-- The title is a play on the saying "between a rock and a hard place".

GENERAL:

-- I started watching Steven Universe before seeing the first Guardians Of The Galaxy movie. Now, either I was watching Amethyst saying "I didn't ask to be made!" or Rocket's angst-fueled rant in the middle of the movie, was reminded of the other character (I can't remember which) having a very similar moment, and more or less reacting like this:

Admittedly I've not seen the last Guardians movie, and that's honestly because I have MCU fatigue. IMHO the internet abuses the heck out of slang terms like "x fatigue", but in this case I will use it because that's how I feel towards the MCU -- general indifference mixed with weariness, especially when I heard about the fates of Lila and the rest of Rocket's fellow experiments. One of several things about the MCU I've gotten real annoyed with is them killing off the heroes' loved ones near constantly in every other movie (while keeping less interesting, insipid/or insufferable characters around). They kill off their villains way too quickly too.

-- A friend actually got me into Steven Universe! I did not start off with the first episode however, which I'm sure Connie would disapprove of LOL. I stuck with the series, even though the episode I came in on was kind of boring (it was the one where Onion had gotten hold of some Gem artifact and was using it to multiply things). I find many of my viewpoints on the show differs from a lot of other people's. I don't mind the townies any, because I feel that having a supporting cast is handy for fleshing out a fictional world, among other things. I like the Diamonds, especially Yellow, though Blue is right behind her. Why yes, I do support Nazism/genocide/racism! How did you ever guess that? /s 

🙄😄

-- This idea had been floating around in my brain for the longest time, and I'm so happy to be able to finally write it out. Having characters that share common ground come together and talk as equals is something I find really satisfying, and I wish more people would write stuff like that. Especially if one character has figured out how to handle a problem or a situation and can advise the other one.

-- I think I've only ever seen like two or three SU/GotG crossovers out there. None of them featured Rocket and Amethyst interacting in any capacity. Such a missed opportunity for some good character development/interaction. Unfortunately, missed opportunities like that are pretty commonplace for fandoms in general.

-- I do believe Amethyst would find Drax hilarious.

-- I couldn't resist having Rocket snap at Amethyst “And don't you even think about trying to sing at me!” XD Personally, I'm very impressed that SU has a number of songs that I actually really enjoy and still listen to to this day because they're bangers. Not every show (or even movie for that matter) has songwriting on that level. At the Elena Of Avalor subreddit I once admitted to finding the songs in that particular show super bland and something to skip through. Yes, even Esteban's song in that one episode. And Victor and Carla's one-time attempts at rapping was so cringey that even my TV screen wanted to look away in embarrassment. Another poster there was very shocked by my admission. I wanted to reply "Gee, I'm sorry I don't like modern-day basic bubblegum pop and whatever the heck that was that Victor and Carla were trying to do", but my response to her was polite. I think the vast majority of songs in the Disney shows that have come out in recent years are aggressively mediocre, if not outright underwhelming. I would honestly prefer if they cut the songs out all together, because all they do is just eat into time that could be spent on furthering character development/or the plot.

So yeah, again, real impressed over here that SU's music is so good.

-- I don't particularly like raccoons, as in the real animals, but Rocket's a pretty interesting guy. I like both his voice actors, Bradley Cooper and Trevor Devall in several of the cartoons respectively. They suit him. When he actually looks like an actual raccoon and not some kind of demonic terrier, that's pretty cool too lol. In the future I may do a Character Corner feature for Rocket, as he will be appearing in a couple of STARS-verse stories coming down the pipeline. Amethyst? Well, while I really started liking her after she underwent her character development, I probably won't be doing one for her unless I do some SU stories. Which I have considered, but taking into account everything else on my plate, unless I have a really, really good idea for a fic, probably won't be happening.

FUN FACTS:  

-- Rocket denigrates my favorite Crystal Gem. 😯

Something about A03 I just learned

So you know how you put in all the tags for your story, and there's the relationship field? Well, that can be used to describe any kind of relationship in the fic, not just romantic pairings (which is what I'd always assumed). Here's how you're supposed to distinguish between non-romantic relationships and romantic ones:

[Character Name] & [Character Name] = Rivals, enemies, friends, family, etc. 

[Character Name]/[Character Name] = romance 

I've gone in and fixed this on my stories. Personally, I just tag the relationships that are actually important to the story, because there is an issue of people tagging every single ship there is, including background ones. This means that if you want to read something featuring a particular couple and try searching, in some cases you get back a bunch of results where said couple just gets a mention or the like. It's pretty annoying.

What happened to the latest chapters of New Dogs on Fanfiction.net and a few other things

-- I've been trying to update New Dogs on Fanfiction.net, but the struggle is real. My Microsoft Office license expired around a month or so ago, but since I've switched to using Google Docs to write my stuff it doesn't really matter. Plus Google Docs is actually free. Back when I did have Microsoft Office, it was just simply a matter of changing the .docx file into a .doc document under the "save as" field and then uploading it to the site, but the system's so finicky that updating multichapter fics there is a chore now. I keep getting error messages even though I've tried uploading new chapters as a rich text file or copy and pasting it. C&P did work, but then when I moved on to the next step, the new document wasn't there. But I was able to post Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions just fine.

I still have lots of praise for FF.net and think it's a viable source for reading and posting fanfic, but they make it hard because the site has gotten so janky at this point. I mean, on my end the sixth chapter of New Dogs doesn't even come up. I just get an error message. I saw a lot of people saying to just keep hitting enter until FF.net finally accepts your story, but I can't continuously do that because of issues with my hands.

-- So now that Hell Is Paved is done, the next one-shot will be much lighter in tone. I honestly don't know when I'm gonna get around to writing up the notes for Hell Is Paved. I know I do have a lot to say on the topic of xenofiction and how the subject of predator/prey dynamics has been handled in a number of animal-centric worlds.

-- Currently working on The Stranger and A Horse Of A Different Color.

-- This is kinda off topic, but the one bad thing about choosing not to engage in fan communities means you have no way of knowing if somebody out there might've saved some fan art or a fanfic that you really love but got taken down, because you have no clue who's safe to approach and who isn't. At this point, any cool fic or art I see gets saved to a flash drive/cloud/etc.

STARS-verse Dreamcast

Always fun to imagine who could voice the characters in your works, and that's what this post is for. I should note certain voice actors are different from the ones Evil Writer selected for his Quick Strike-verse, and that this is just how these characters would sound per my setting. I ended up hitting upon the idea of having different VAs for STARS, especially since some of the characters have gotten touched up for my AU.

Hoping to be able to do one of these for almost every story I have featuring OCs, or fics where a character doesn't have a voice actor for whatever reasons.

I'll update this list every time I post a story with new characters.

Lord Death: Oded Fehr
Roles: Ardeth Bay (the 1999 The Mummy), Ras Al Ghul (Young Justice).

I think he's done more voicework at this point than live action roles? My selecting him was a nod to the character's Middle Eastern roots in the QS series. I feel he could successfully portray a sinister, domineering, cold sorcerer. 

Lady Dread: Bebe Neuwirth 
Roles: Lilith (Frasier, Cheers, Wings), Mirage (Aladdin), Belladonna (All Dogs Go To Heaven: The Series).

Randomly remembering Mirage one day was what nailed Neuwirth as Dread's VA. Dread isn't as over the top the way Mirage is all the time, but I think Neuwirth could easily dial it back some as needed. She sounds playfully sinister and elegant, all the while relishing the idea of mowing down the good guys or any innocent people who get in her way for for kicks (yes, she will be a reoccurring villain). 

Zaygos: Robert Englund 
Roles: Scarecrow (Injustice 2), Freddy Krueger (og A Nightmare On Elm Street series).

If you're a horror fan, then you already know who this guy is. One October I was watching the (really fascinating) documentary Never Sleep Again, which is about the Elm Street movies. I thought "Y'know, t'd be a nice little nod and a wink if the OC bad guys in STARS had VAs who were known for being horror villains." The perfect Zaygos voice would be a mixture of Anti-Pops from Regular Show and the Khan in The Master of Orion.

The jury's still out on Kaymat, Vile, and Lustfox, though I have a couple of potential choices for Lustfox. 

Tyron: Liam Neeson 
Roles: Oskar Schindler (Schindler's List), Qui-Gon Jin (the Star Wars prequels). 

What else can you say about Liam Neeson? He was a shoe-in for Tyron all way back in the day thanks to the movie Rob Roy. The man's voice just exudes regal gravitas.

Aurora: Drew Barrymore 
Roles: Danielle (Ever After), Josie Geller (Never Been Kissed).

Another voice actor carried over from the QS-verse verse. Sweet, but not a pushover, with down to earth, and -- call me stereotypical for saying this -- girl next door energy. 

Cyan: Rob Paulsen 
Roles: Holy crap, just go and watch a cartoon, especially one from the late 80s-'90s.

I've already discussed this dude here before and why I like him so much. I think he's talented and versatile enough to devise a voice that could fit Cyan in this "What if my fanfics were an actual animated series" scenario.

Streetwise: Daveed Diggs 
Roles: Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson (Hamilton), Andre Layton (Snowpiercer).

Diggs ultimately won out because his portrayal of Lafayette has such a cheeky, energetic vibe I thought fit Streetwise perfectly. He also succeeds in not sounding like an American putting on a corny French accent.

Dama: She's been more of a tricky character to cast, but a friend of mine ultimately landed upon these four actresses. Either Laura Fraser, Karen Gillan, Sharon Rooney, or Amy Manson

Laura Fraser 
Roles: Kate (A Knight's Tale), Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul).

Karen Gillan
Roles: Amy Pond (Doctor Who), Kaylie Russell (Oculus).

Sharon Rooney
Roles: Rae Earl (My Mad Fat Diary) Lawyer Barbie (Barbie).

Amy Manson
Roles: Merida (Once Upon A Time), Maladie (The Nevers).

Looking over the profile EW wrote for Dama as well as reading the fics she's appeared in, I landed on her characterization here as someone who's inwardly torn about her heritage at times, but also fearless and ready to face down trouble with a can-do attitude and cleverness. So a voice actress would have to successfully embody those qualities. The only one I'm actually familiar with is Frazier and Gillan.

I don't have anyone for either Eric or Blades yet. For the latter, I'd prefer a authentic Japanese actress. I've had a couple of ideas for Eric, but am still in the process of sussing them out. Originally Tom Hanks was going to be Powerplay, but now I'm considering a younger voice actor who's a native Canadian. I have no shortages of choices there to choose from.

Oh, FYI, Professor Hubert's og voice actor, David Doyle, passed all the way back in 1997, so EW brought up the idea of recasting Hubie in the QS-verse. My own personal choice for STARS? Jeffrey Combs. I really like the idea of someone who played an amoral scientist in the movie Reanimator voicing another scientist character that's more upright.

The context behind this scene is super unhinged (an understatement), but that's still like the standout line for me in that movie.

New fic!

Title: Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions
Universe: Watership Down/Oren's Forge fusion/crossover.
Rated: T.
Genres: Drama/Tragedy.
Key character(s): Hemlock, General Woundwort.
Warnings: Alternate universe, canon mixing, crossover, violence.
Summary: Individuals can justify their acts of brutality and cruelty to themselves all they want, but ultimately they who live by the sword shall perish by it.

A03 link: Right here
Fanfiction.net link: Right here 

"New Dogs, New Tricks" Chapter One commentary & notes

REFERENCES: 

 

-- Forgot to mention this in the last post, but the fic title is a reference of sorts to the title of Eric and co's debut story in the Quick Strike-verse, New Dogs On The Block. I wanted a twist on it as a nod to that particular story. In the Friendship Is Magic fandom, a lot of people were doing AUs that shifted the roles of that series' characters around, with some plots being rewrites of canon episodes, so a number of rewrites have titles which reference the original episode. I thought that'd be fun to do here. New Dogs, New Tricks is also of course a nod to the saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." Though I do wonder if it seem like I'm implying that the canon Rovers don't have any new tricks of their own, as it were. Which is not my intention -- in fact, one certain character will finally get his chance to shine in NDNT.

GENERAL:

-- I do feel like the Master creating the Transdogmafier would have a domino effect on the setting. I have yet to see any fanfics touch on that. It's just like one day the Road Rovers are there, then the next, there are more animal people who've seemingly come out of nowhere walking around and humans don't react to them, like they're something that's always been around like birds and vehicles. It's like the author started out at point A and then skipped straight ahead to point C. Missed opportunity for worldbuilding there.

 -- I chose to make Professor Hubert a bloodhound/basset hound mix. The Master proclaims he has the best sense of smell in the world. Well, in the dog world that title belongs to the bloodhound. I mean, they're kinda famous for it. People back in the old days of fandom called him a bloodhound. But Hubert's markings don't look very bloodhound-like. They are however more similar to a basset hound's. Bassets are regarded as being right behind the bloodhound in terms of their noses. So I was like "Heck, smush 'em both together. Mix-breeds are cool."

- First draft I had Hubert listening to the Beastie Boys on a Walkman. Regarding Project Circe that he mentions to the Master -- if you know your Greek myth and you look at this chapter, you can probably put two and two together about what kind of project Hubert was working on for Shepherd.

-- The Master being psychic is an idea I got from a fan writer named Chris Chestnut. I think it's an good solid explanation for why he can do the weird stuff he can do.

 

-- Yep, no Hunter or Shag in this story! This is a writing trick I picked up from another writer who goes by Dimensional Gatekeeper on FF.net -- shuffling characters around in order to spotlight other characters, as well as breaking up one large group of characters into several smaller ones. It's a way of seeing how they might behave without the entire team present, or with different characters in the mix. Plus, writing an eleven person team all hanging out together for an extended amount of time can get tricky. Some characters' voices can also end up getting drowned out, or the writer runs the risk of everyone all sounding the same. So it's also a good way of making sure every character gets some attention.

So Colleen might be absent for the next story, or it could be Muzzle/or Blitz (I mean, Muzzle didn't always go with them all the time in the show either).

-- My issue with many Road Rover OCs isn't necessarily the fact that people feel the need to create them, but how they aggressively dominate everything and aren't handled particularly well. Some feel like they would fit better in an original world of the author's own personal vision rather than the actual show itself. The canonical characters get no attention or development, and that's if they're even in the same story as the OC (although the OCs usually don't really evolve as characters any either). Or one particular canon Rover gets glazed and the rest treated like the Three Stooges as well as not being as special and morally upstanding as the writer's favorite Rover is. The Rovers' focus shifts from saving the world to helping out the super special OC with their own personal issues. Granted, that tends to revolve around a villain OC that's connected to the OC, but everything still ends up getting tied back to the OC. 

Now, I do find the concept of fan-made Rovers extremely appealing, firstly because the show's setting feels kind of empty, and secondly, I think the Master would want to create more Rovers to help out. Not a literal army -- that line from the Master about not wanting to create his own army was a very deliberate choice on my part, as I've seen a bunch of fics where that was indeed the case, and it just begs the question of how is RRMC able to support all these Rovers living there. And why hasn't crime just been wiped out by the Rover army? I also think having a ton of characters ends up taking away from the special-ness, as it were, of the ones we're supposed to be following in the fics.

At any rate, why not have other characters around for the canon Rovers to bounce off of and interact with? OCs equal new character interactions and relationships. Hunter and co can make new friends, new enemies, or new love interests. Or maybe some of them are neutral towards one another. That's what I'm interested in. Plus, with characters like Hunter and Colleen, I think they need pushback from other people who might *gasp* not look at them like they hung the moon, or even just disagree with them sometimes (FYI, I feel the same way about character dynamics in Sonic The Hedgehog and Elena Of Avalor. Bring in new/or different characters around the main group who can then look in and observe the inner circle). I mean, Blitz is the only one ever shown to be critical of Hunter in any way, and is often shown as being in the wrong the overwhelming majority of the time. I don't think that's realistic. Granted, we're not going to see much in the way of criticism towards Hunter or Colleen from this particular batch of new heroes just because they don't start out as having that kind of personality, but I've got some OCs of my own who will handily take care of that in the next story. :-) 

Also, the new Rovers in NDNT come from countries that it makes perfect sense to have Rover representation for. France is one of the nuclear powers, while mid '90s Japan and Canada were both global powerhouses. It's also brilliant to have this lineup of presidential pets be interspersed with dogs who already have homes with regular citizens.

 

-- This is my thought process -- a dog born on the streets, or one that constantly lived outside would not have any frame of reference for what a werewolf even is. Aurora knows about them (or at least werewolves in fiction) because she has a home and her master watches horror movies, so it's something she's picked up via osmosis.

-- Here's a basic rundown on those other RR teams I referred to as already existing here:

 

The Wild Kats: These guys were created by Greywolf Lupous. Dusty, who's a mixed-breed cat, is their leader. The rest of the team consists of Sugar, the siamese/burmese mix who's basically their Colleen, Trouble, the half manx half Maine Coon witch's cat, and Moffet the tech genius. There was a fifth character, Dinamite, Sugar's brother, but I ultimately chose not to use him because he's pretty flat and doesn't bring anything new or unique to the table. The Kats were first formed as a team when the Master called on them to rescue the canon Rovers, who'd been captured by Parvo. 

The Maddog Bounty Hunters: What it says on the tin. They belong to Greg Willis. Outlaw the mutt is their leader. We also have Beowulf the Great Dane, Silver the coyote, and Sapphire the Siberian husky. As mentioned in NDNT, their tech expert is human named Wesley Hawk. I think these guys are pretty unique (something that's I personally feel is lacking in most modern day OCs) and have some pretty creative backstories. There's more details I've left out but will cover when the Maddogs actually pop up in person. Also, props to Willis for how he handled the cano-mutants by remembering that they're actual threats that were only made that way thanks to General Parvo.

The Freelance Rovers: Yet more creations of George Aguirre. They're an international team of Rovers that were said to have several bases across the globe in George's fanfics, but I'm thinking that in STARS they'll just have one in Europe somewhere and a backup base elsewhere in case the first one gets discovered by villains or something. The few stories I've found starring them have not really been forthcoming with info about them or what exactly their specialty if any is. Their leader is a greyhound named Blades Broadsword. I'm not going to use every Freelancer there was, because with a number of them the only info I have is a name, maybe their breed, and nothing else. I do have a few ideas for the FRs, though this is mostly in the capacity of them being background characters. Same verse as before -- I'll talk more about my approach to them when they actually start appearing in the flesh then.

-- There are two variants of the akita, the American version and the Japanese. Obviously Blades is the Japanese subtype. They tend not to like other dogs or strangers very much.

-- Writing the scene where the new guys get to show off their respective personalities was very fun. Comparing the Master to musician Edgar Winter was just simply too good a joke/reference to pass up, and the surfer dog from Cali was the perfect guy to make the observation. In fact, I'd like to start a trend of other characters comparing the Master to famous guys, fictional characters included, with long white hair.

FUN FACTS:

 

-- If you're curious as to the thought process behind the new guys' powers, here they are as shared with me by EW: 

Eric: EW just thought that flight would be a cool power to have.

Powerplay: His breed; labs are famous as being water-loving dogs.

Tyron: A character from the series Big Bad Beetleborgs. 

Streetwise: The Super Punch was inspired by another OC who had a "super howl" as their power (though I don't know if that power was based more in soundwaves or if it was a shockwave). EW's twist on the idea is basically a joke based on Streetwise's breed.

Dama: Not really sure, actually. Apparently illusion casting was Aurora's original power before she got  invisibility.

Aurora: The Invisible Woman (Marvel Comics).

Cyan: Cypher (Marvel Comics).

Blades: A character from an obscure cartoon called Skeleton Warriors.