The Character Corner: Antoine, part 2

 

This is my exact same reaction when I have to do taxes or anything finance related.

INSPIRATION

Way, way, way, way back when I actually kinda engaged with the Sonic fandom, I'd see a few people here and there throw out ideas concerning Antoine, rather than actually write stories featuring him or ones where he could play a major part. One idea I remember seeing was someone who said he could've lost part of his tail in an accident, and that's why he became so anxious. I dunno, that could've made for a good fic, IMHO. But barely anybody writes anything that just centers around him and him alone, or even just giving him a B plot in a bigger story. I've seen readers leave reviews on Antoine-centric fics admitting that they would've liked to have written something about Antoine themselves, but were scared to because of the potential reactions from the rest of the fandom. Don't know how stuff is today, but you can indeed witness a lot of Antoine bashing in fanfic reviews. I have the feeling that's why a lot of Antoine ideas never got the story treatment. Shame on those who bully others into repressing their creativity just because they can't cope with someone liking a character that they don't.

All that said, I don't think some of these people were intimidated by Antoine bashers as much as they either weren't very creative/or just despised the very idea of going against canon. For example, that one weird person who didn't want me to have Antoine and Lupe interacting theorized about Antoine having OCD as well as some other stuff for him, but never did anything with any of it AFAIK. And that kind of thinking confuses me so much. I don't even get the point of why you'd devise so much headcanon for him to begin with, only to not want to use it.

I will say I was influenced by the following people who waved the haters and the source material off and powered on through:  

StarlitSvader: She devised a number of intriguing headcanons for the little guy, including the idea that Antoine's jumpiness is actually caused by his having keener than average hearing, a concept I utilized in Knight Errand. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that she's still actively creating stuff for Antoine!

Omnicenos: Someone who genuinely likes Antoine and doesn't feel like the character must be ground under Sonic and the others' heels and treating this as an acceptable thing. Some of my Antoine headcanons are courtesy of this cool dude. Sonic does crack on Antoine off and on in his story Kitsune, but also has to eat crow himself at several different points and even has something genuinely nice to say about him later on, so things actually with the cast actually feels balanced, something I greatly appreciate. He also seems to have a more down to earth view of the KFFs, as opposed to the "Sonic and Sally are untouchable deities who are always perfect" mindset that so many other fans suffer from. I remember there being a picture of Sonic checking Sally out while her attention was elsewhere on his deviantART account, and some stan commenting Sonic would never do that to Sally because he's so mature and such a gentleman and blah blah blah. Wingedhippocampus' response was that Sonic is a hormonal teenaged boy, which is 100% on the money (heck, I had Antoine checking out Leeta and Lyco in Knight Errand). Lastly, bonus points to WHP for writing the other KFFs in a way that doesn't make me want to throw rocks at them. 

KivatheDCWizard: One of the first people I saw actually doing proper AUs for the western canons. I really like a lot of his ideas for Antoine as a character in his settings.

Also, let me just say that even though I no longer like the Knothole Freedom Fighters like I used to, that doesn't extend to AUs where they're actually fleshed out as characters and given more appealing personalities. The aforementioned writers all succeed in doing that (without trashing Antoine or using him as a tool for angst or ridicule in the process to boot). Spiral Writer is working on her own Sonic reboot that has Bunnie at the helm instead of Sally. It sounds like it's going to be pretty fun and inventive.

FUTURE PLANS

Antoine is a character that I've devised a lot of headcanon for, just because canon didn't bother to fill in the blanks, or I just don't like what they did. Sorry not sorry, but I want to write an actual character, not a walking talking plot device/one of Sonic and Sally's cheerleaders.

This is what we do it with Archie and Archie-adjacent grimdark misery porn lore 'round these here parts:

 

What'd be the point of using Archie's stuff for him anyways? At least my ideas come from a place of actually being invested in the character. IMHO, the Archie writers just threw whatever at him and went "Okay, glad I got that crap outta the way, now back to the important stuff -- more Sonic/Sally relationship melodrama!"

I'm sure certain people who might read this will say I'm just mad jealous of Archie because they're professional writers whose names everybody knows while I'm just some nobody. I wasn't aware that calling out poor writing means you're really just sooper sekritly jelly of the pro writers, but okay. You right. 

Secondly, I wouldn't want to work for a big company like SEGA or Archie, where there are restrictions in place on the types of stories I can tell or what I can and cannot do with the characters in the first place. That's why I'm currently plotting out my own original graphic novel.*

I'm also just really over all the fan works where Antoine ends up either extremely depressed/ physically disfigured/maimed/dying and the whole plot just revolving solely around that. Like he's never shown pushing through adversity and discovering fulfillment or contentment. Can he have a nice ending for once? There is so much of that kind of content out there and it's just... blegh. I guess Antoine fans don't like hopecore.

Most of my ideas deal with Antoine breaking away from the other KFFs and finding friendship and romance elsewhere. And in at least two stories the KFFs don't even exist (either as a group or the individual characters themselves). To me, it just doesn't really make any sense for him to continue hanging around people who often act like the KFFs do towards him. Seriously, the other KFFs are super mean to him in these fics even when he isn't doing anything, is trying his best to achieve something, or has the audacity to show a little concern for someone (typically Sally). IMHO, kinda amazing the fanbase sees nothing wrong with characters who are supposed to be these wonderful, magnanimous heroes acting this way. But I think that says a lot right there. All the fanfics as well as the fans that treat that kind of thing as being just fine come across as pushing a highly toxic, immature mindset. The "friendship" between Antoine and the others also comes across as being pretty forced, in both canon and in fanfics (again, not counting the stories of the previously named authors). What does he have in common with any of them? What does he have in common with Bunnie even? Another Antoine fan (who's actually rational in regards to the source material) told me that it is believable that Antoine and the other KFFs would be linked together based on the shared trauma they experienced as children, but that doesn't equate to them working as friends. I'd much rather Antoine go make more worthwhile relationships elsewhere. There are tons of other characters across the various branches of the franchise, so why not explore his dynamics he could have with somebody else?

One fic will be a collection of one-shots featuring him and Lyco. Another story I have in mind has a heavy emphasis on drama when, after discovering that Bunnie and Sonic have stabbed him in the back by hooking up together behind his back, Antoine decides to leave the KFFs behind for G.U.N, where he meets a certain black and red hedgehog... Oh yes, I'm doing that fic.

The Stranger, which is currently being worked on, was inspired by Steven Universe and Chainsaw Man. I don't want to give too much away, but the summary is as follows: "Two unlikely Freedom Fighters suddenly get much, much closer then anyone thought could ever be possible. This has far-reaching consequences for not only them, but those around them as well."

Kindred Spirits is basically a rewrite of the SatAM episode "Ghostbusted", only with a plot that's actually interesting (or at least I think it's interesting). Basically, Antoine and Tails encounter a real ghost who they befriend after some initial misunderstandings between them.

Antoine will also be prominently featured in Sonic And The the Guardians Of Acorn as one of the major characters alongside Sonic and a few other familiar faces. I've also started playing around with a separate crossover idea where a certain DC character gets introduced into Sonic's world. Better believe that Tony's gonna be present in that story.

HEADCANON

You could alternately dub this section "how I personally would improve upon Antoine as a character."

Something that really gets under my skin is when people see someone else writing about a certain character and whining "Why are you writing about them? There's no point!" with the implication being that said character is flat, not interesting, one with a very small role in the source material, etc, ergo, so they don't need to have fanfic written about them. 

I beg to differ. Just about any character out there can carry a story if it's 1) written well, and 2) you get creative with both your plot and the character in question. I've seen people complain about other fans writing fanfics focusing on characters like Krypto the Superdog and Minerva Mink. "Why would anyone want to write about them??" Hmm, maybe because fanfiction doesn't always need to be about the popular characters and ships 24-7, or only focused on the characters that you like? Shockingly enough, the world doesn't revolve around you and your preferences, Karen/Ken. Now, I don't know about the quality of Minerva fics, but I have seen people write actual good stories about Krypto before (the version from the old animated series). There are characters out there that I absolutely hate, but I'm not going to tell people not to write about them or flip out because somebody did write a fic starring them because I'm not a jackass. 

Basically my point is Antoine can carry a story just as easily as Sally or Tails or Sonic can. I just think you have to actually like or at least be interested in his character and want to explore him beyond just the surface-level: "My dad/or mom abused me/Muh trauma/Bunnie I love you."

-- I tend to refer to my Antoine as Tony for shorthand as a way differentiate him from his canon self (BTW, I do this with Esteban too -- he has a different surname in my headcanon then he does in the show).

-- My Antoine is of Mexican and French heritage. Long time ago I saw a post somewhere suggesting that Antoine was a hybrid -- part dog, part coyote (before Archie gave him an official species, people weren't sure what he was supposed to be. I've seen him be called everything from a fox to a shrew). It seems like someone might have said he was part poodle too, I'm sure as an insult. But I like that as a serious idea and have used it ever since. To me, it works to explain away his hair. Also, this is kinda funny, but there was this one adult animated series, House Pets, that I don't care for at all, but I found it funny that it featured a poodle falling in love with a coyote. XD

His mother is Carmen Moreno e Lopez, and his father's named Siarl de Colete. I swapped the ‘rents species around from my old fanon, so now Carmen's a coyote and Siarl is a poodle. That was done because I rarely see male poodle characters anywhere. Also, it technically makes Antoine a dogote (coyote mother, dog father) rather than a coydog, which is the other way around. Carmen and Siarl's characters are still being worked on. 

-- The spelling of Antoine's family name in my fics is "de Colete" instead of "D’Coolette". The former looks more like an actual name. Apparently D’Coolette was a name tossed around for him in the original show bible before the show went with Depardieu. His full name is Antoine Miguel de Colete (because mom figured that if he wasn't going to have a Spanish first name, then he sure as heck was gonna have Spanish somewhere in his name). 

-- I originally made Antoine a coydog because of the short tail he was/is drawn with in canon, but that's before I realized people often docked the tails of poodles. So my Antoine just has a regular long tail now. His appearance is a bit shaggier than in canon as well, especially on his ears, throat, chest, and elbows. His hairstyle is based on Timothee Chalamet’s (and it is his actual hair). It's also less of a bright yellow color like we sometimes see and more golden blonde. His base fur color has varied from canon to canon, but generally I stick with lighter/medium brown shades like caramel and Peru brown for him. Here's a new redesign I did which incorporates black and white into his coat. It makes it more apparent that he is a coyote mix.

- In a few non-Guardian settings, Carmen died when Antoine was small, so he remembers little of the Spanish she spoke. He can understand it to an extent however.

-- His favorite foods are honeycrisp apples and and soupe à l'oignon. There's a Spanish dish that he also really enjoys, but I haven't decided on what it could be yet. I thought it'd be a nice nod to his mother's heritage.

- I deepened Antoine's center. Rather than just wanting to win Sally's hand, what he actually wants is to be a hero that everybody looks up to and loves. Getting Sally (when he starts out crushing on her; in my stories he either gets over her or doesn't even know who she is, so the crush never happens in the first place) would just be an added bonus for him. I do think part of the issue with the character is that he gets reduced to being one of Sally's orbiters, even after getting with Bunnie, and very much comes across as a simp. Then you got Antoine's dad working for Sally's dad as his general. I completely did away with the family connections to the Acorns and just have the de Coletes doing their own separate thing entirely. Doing so I feel potentially helps with worldbuilding, because now you get to explore a new locale on Mobius (the de Coletes' homeland), not just the place where the KFFs live/operate out of. Just having all the Freedom Fighters growing up alongside Sally limits them as characters.

- Antoine is on the autism spectrum. Many people online approach certain characters as being autistic. It's kind of a mixed bag. I both see a lot and hear a lot about these fans' takes on autistic characters, often infantilizing them -- peak irony, considering that some of these fans are more than likely the same sorts of people who consider Abed from the show Community an offensive stereotype when he's probably closer to an actual depiction of an autistic person as opposed to their uwu smol soft bean babbu who stims and watches Bluey is. 

Currently, Antoine's one of the only characters I have that I do headcanon as actually being on the spectrum. I was lurking at the forum for the old defunct website Sonic HQ where this person brought up the possibility of Antoine being autistic. For some extra added irony, this person double posted, and their posts had that particular... tone you tend to find from people who are neurodivergent. Nonetheless, I found myself agreeing with what this person had to say.  I'm sure SatAM's writers didn't even intend for this to be a thing because they just wanted Antoine to be made fun of, but to me, some of his quirks could be read as autism. You got the social awkwardness, the overly formal/unusual way of talking, the clumsiness, the tendency to take things literally. I read his dislike of margarine as a food sensitivity. I was hinting that this was the case with him all the way back in Knight Errand, but don't know if people picked up on it or not.

-- I've made Antoine a fencer, so he doesn't have the saber/cutlass that he was shown to use in the comics. It isn't like we were ever told what kind of sword fighting style he even uses, so whatever. He uses a rapier (which I think looks much more elegant and appealing than his Archie cutlass), eventually becoming one heck of a swordsman.

-- I don't mind his being into cooking and cuisine too much. I don't know if I want him to be doing that in Guardians Of Acorn though, since his hyper focus there is monsters and dealing with them. Maybe he could get into baking though, since that utilizes chemistry in a sense.

-- "He's a soldier/knight/royal guard/noble!" Well, he was supposed to be a palace guard in SatAM. Don't think the comics ever actually cared about what he was supposed to be or his role there. I don't know where any of that other stuff comes from either. These days I generally just approach him as a swashbuckler-style character.

-- Shockingly enough, Antoine actually was going to get his own personal enemy in the post New Wave Genesis setting, a badger named Inigo Cortez. Knowing Ian Flynn’s stellar writing ability however, I'm sure Sonic would've also dominated that storyline just like he did the one that was supposed to be about Rotor and his backstory. 

At any rate, I like the idea behind Cortez enough to want to use him in my stories. I think giving Antoine his own personal nemesis/foil could punch him up as a character. I'm considering changing Cortez's first name (I suspect it's meant as a nod to the Princess Bride character, and I'd personally rather not tie such a cool hero to a villain), though I'm still on the fence about that. I had the idea of his family hailing from the same area where Carmen and her family lived/or his family knowing the Lopezes.

- I'm just going to copy and paste something Wingedhippocampus said here: Yes, I KNOW there was a SatAm episode where Antoine claims he can't swim. I call bullsh*t. Canines who've never seen anything deeper than a water dish in their lives can swim if you throw them into water deep enough to facilitate it. I think they were just overplaying the whole useless coward angle is all. 

- This is where I thank Omnicenos again. If I had to associate an element with Antoine, then I'd choose the element of water. This is due to Omnicenos' story Kitsune. To directly quote from it: "Antoine is mercurial, his mind and emotions flow from one thing to another. He will often become whatever a situation requires him to be, in the manner than a stream will allow itself to be split by stones, but always comes back together. Antoine is Water."

- Although one of the reasons why I appreciate Antoine is in part due to his being an ordinary dude who still chooses to fight, I also don't mind tricking him out with a little extra something to make his fighting these robots and wizards and stuff believable. I very much want to avoid the "Rock Lee" problem of a character getting left behind while his teammates get stronger (Sonic and his speed, Sally and whatever superpower/or mystical doohickey a writer decides to give her for that day, Nicole, Tails, Bunnie). Antoine's just not capable of fighting the increasingly more dangerous enemies without serious risk to his life, so I'd much rather power him up somehow than have him be forced to stand on the sidelines playing cheerleader. 

Hilariously enough, of course you have people getting angry when you (and by that I mean me*, or the New Wave Genesis continuity where Antoine could do a spin dash technique with his sword that was like the only cool thing Ian Flynn has ever had him do) give Antoine a special ability of his own, because now he's a Gary Stu or whatever in their minds. You heard it right here, guys -- super hearing is a Gary Stu power! 🤣 

Y'all hate him when he wants to run off and hide. Y'all hate him when he isn't a coward and he gets an ability boost so he can better help the other heroes out. These kinds of people just hate him existing period and will never be happy no matter what's done to improve on him as a character. 

Then you have the Antoine fans who don't want him developing any kind of new useful skill or ability because once again, it all ties into their deep obsession to preserve the comics/SatAM where he's just this flat fodder character. What is with these people? Am I the only person who finds this kind of environment -- one that says you're not allowed to sandbox and play around with new ideas -- extremely rigid and unwelcoming? If people want to stick to canon that badly then fine, but don't force your views onto me or other people and then get pissy when we disagree.

*To date, the only other Antoine fans I know of who've given Antoine some kind of special ability have been StarlitSvader and KivatheDCwizard.

At any rate, the abilities/powers Antoine winds up with will vary depending on the story. We'll get to see a superpowered Antoine in The Stranger, the DC crossover (spoiler alert: he becomes the Mobius equivalent of Steel there), and GoA.

So, what is Antoine's problem aside from the autism? Well, in case you couldn't tell, I hate the "abusive father" trope fans often use to explain away the issues of self-aggrandizing characters like him. I keep on seeing this with these types of characters -- Blitz, Vernon Fenwick, probably some other ones I forgot about right now. I think it's lazy writing for one. It's never fully explored, and you'll be lucky if the story bothers to take it into consideration by having other characters become aware of the issue and try treating the other character with grace, instead of the usual contempt and harsh impatience. 

Anyways, Antoine is insecure and has a poor self image. In that respect, he's actually got a lot in common with the Leonardo we get in Rise Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (a series which I actually quite like). This is an excellent video delving into Leo's hang-ups and which I feel also applies to my interpretation of Antoine.

BTW, Antoine's self-image is going to be delved into a lot in The Stranger.

PERSONAL

"You act like Antoine never did anything wrong!"

Number 1) Oh I'm definitely biased. Like I've said previously, yes, I get being that annoying person who's on a different wavelength than everybody else. To me, all the hatred towards him is overblown to a frankly toxic degree (yes, it is toxic to attack people online for having the audacity to like Antoine and leaving hate comments on fan art/fics). 

Number 2) Like with Blitz and Esteban, Antoine is just silly and annoying at worst. But people act like he's Jeffrey Epstein mixed with Logan Paul or something. It's hella weird. A portion of the hate definitely has roots in Francophobia and homophobia. It may have gotten dialed back in the last couple of years since online fandom spaces have started leaning more left (though I honestly don't know what side the Sonic fandom falls under), but I definitely remember seeing some people call Antoine "fruity" or "feminine". 

I feel a lot of his antagonist moments in the comics (such as his being the prosecutor during Sonic's trial after Sonic was roboticized and attacked the KFFs) come across as just trying to make Antoine look as awful as possible. Then after he "reformed", they had no clue what to even do with him, so he just floundered around being a nothingburger. And people hate him and think he shouldn't exist because of the writers not caring about trying to make him an actual character.

Honestly, I don't get why more people aren't upset by the characterization of the SatAM characters in Archie. 

Bunny: Boring ho. :) How one makes a literal cyborg boring I don't know, but Archie certainly did it.

Sonic: Self-interested manwhore who treats his best friend like his very own personal boot licker and was willing to toss aside their friendship all because he wanted into Fiona Fox's pants. He also slept with his "friend's" girlfriend. This y'all's boy?

Antoine: Exists to have every bad thing imaginable happen to him. Also boring.

Sally: If people thought she was a Mary Sue in the cartoon, then the comic ramps it up to obscene levels.

Rotor: Got his back jacked up. 

But if you want to talk about toxic positivity, then one doesn't need to look any further than the Archie Sonic fandom (unless something bad happened to Sally, then the comics somehow became the literal worst thing ever).

The Sonic series could have easily taken cues from shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Stormhawks, Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command, or Legion Of Superheroes, series where different characters were allowed to take the spotlight and we got to know them better as the series progressed. I suspect that if you (hypothetically) gave the SatAM concept to a different group of writers, like, I dunno, the folks who worked on the Mike Young version of He-Man, we could've seen a more emotional story about a character who desperately wanted to prove himself gradually learn important lessons through trial and error, and actually grow. That show, while not perfect, was still good at exploring the flaws and insecurities of the heroes and developing them. But the writers never cared about other characters. It was just the Sonic and Sally Show. It's why partly I don't care about canon any. And then there are people out there who unironically say Sally didn't get enough attention in SatAM? It's like "What the hell are you even talking about?? Are we watching the same show?" 

Anyways, I can say that my stories don't revolve around acting like Antoine can never do no wrong. He does boneheaded things, looks silly, and makes mistakes. So do the other characters! I was doing that all the way back in Knight Errand. I don't treat him like the infallible God Emperor of the universe who's tears can cure cancer, because that'd be boring. He's just a dude. I appreciate that ordinary-ness. Ironically, I don't feel stans of certain characters are capable of doing that for their favorites. Like I never hear Sally stans actually talking about the her flaws (but according to them, "She's totally not a Mary Sue you guys! Agree with me, or else I'll find out where you live and stab you!"), or Sonic stans doing the same for that character. It's all just usually about how cool and amazing they are. If they are given flaws, then it's stuff like they "care too much" or have sad backstories -- stuff that in no way actually impedes them. 

But someone once told me that a bunch of fans love projecting like an IMAX lol. This person was absolutely 110% correct in that regard (heck, you can say that same about people outside of fandom spaces). 

We all have characters we dislike for one reason or other, and that’s okay -- but you don’t have to take it farther than that. People who spend their time obsessing over hating a certain character, IMHO, have some other kind of issue(s) going on within themselves/or in their lives. It becomes an even bigger problem when they start shifting that hatred over to the fans of said character -- like how dare someone else like the character just because they personally hate them. I'm going to say the same thing I said about Blitz before: the simple solution for fan writers would be just to either write Antoine differently, or don't have him in your story to begin with. Characters are just abstract thoughts that can be interpreted in any number of ways. 

*Yeah, so about that original concept of mine's -- it's still a work in progress. I might talk about it sometime over on Pillowfort, but I'm gonna keep a lot of info close to my chest because there are skeevy people who be out here stealing.

"New Dogs, New Tricks" prologue commentary & notes

REFERENCES: 

N/A

GENERAL:

- It's very important to me to set up and establish the more important fan characters here, instead of just tossing them in and acting like they were always around. Granted, you could find a few stories written by their original creators featuring said characters here and there, but finding bios or intro stories that actually answered the vital questions of who they are and where they come from was hard. Heck, these days, even harder just because so many of the websites that hosted them have been down for years and years by this point. The fics/or the author's site have been lost to the sands of time. That's a major reason why I went "Well, I can just put an AU spin on these characters and go 'this is what they're like in my world.'" Makes things easier.

Now, the old school RR fandom (as in the fans who were around way back in the beginning) was very different from modern fandom in several ways, including the fact that people were completely free to use OCs that didn't belong to them just as long as they credited the creators in the fic itself. Nowadays? People crash out if you use anybody else's character because they believe you're trying to steal them. Yes, I'm speaking from experience. It's why I put the credits in the very first chapter. Granted, I always credit other writers, but this time I just made sure to put it up front in bolded lettering. Now, what thief does that?  

Personally, I have a very strong suspicion that these kinds of people actually want their OCs stolen. 

"Huh?" I hear you say. "Why the heck would anybody want to have their OCs stolen?" Well, here's why I think that:

- What better way to get eyes on them as well as sympathy then by spinning a scary story about a big bad character thief lurking about on deviantART? 

- The accusers not only feel they're morally superior and righteous compared to the "thief", but get to portray themselves as being such in the public eye as well. 

- In the late 90s/early 2000s, the fandom liked to do this thing where they would single out somebody for the smallest, most trivial thing and publicly jump all over them for it. Very much scapegoating/mobbing behavior. I'm quite embarrassed to say that I participated in it. I was dumb and very much swept up in groupthink back then.

As an extension of the above, the fandom in it's current state is inactive and doesn't have anything going on. Rallying together against a perceived outside threat is probably the most excitement these people get out of their lives.

- Believing someone is desperate to steal their characters reinforces in their imaginations their OCs are indeed the best thing since sliced bread. Doesn't matter that said OCs are so banal/or off-putting that I (or a number of other fans still hanging around who aren't in the orbit of those people, apparently) have zero interest in using them. The characters I'm "stealing" have a lot more potential/or actual interesting stuff going on with them.

A friend of mine's pointed out that none of them ever showed an interest in other people's characters, unless they could connect them with their own works. This tracks, because a couple of them don't even like OCs, but make an exception for their friends' character/or characters made by popular fans. Back when I was posting an now deleted old fanfic, one of them expressed relief that said fic centered around the canon characters, because they didn't want to read or learn about my OCs. 

Okay. There are people some folks in fandoms (in general, not exclusively RR) who are primarily interested in just reading about the canons. Not my thing personally, but I can respect other people having preferences. But that particular person was so rude about it that I was automatically annoyed. It's hypocritical as well, because this same RR fan would also constantly talk about their OC (that I honestly find disturbing)/or their buddies' equally weird OCs, and acted like I was supposed to be super familiar with all these characters. I think the strangest instance was this person offhandedly mentioning some OC named Rammer to me. I searched their art gallery and journal, didn't see anything about this OC, and was like "Who even is that?" Didn't get a reply. I guess they were salty that I had no clue who Rammer was even supposed to be. Darn psychic powers, I guess they were on the fritz that day. 😄

But seriously, fans like that are exactly why I also put that author's note at the beginning of the FF.net New Dogs. 

So these accusations of theft (especially public ones) aren't done with any genuine concern in mind for the person who's supposedly being stolen from. They're done just because these fans enjoy dogpiling other people and bossing them around. 

- So most of the villains we see here in the prologue belong to George Aguirre, with the exception of Dread and Death, who are EW's. He either knew Aguirre or was friends with people who knew him. Aguirre's site was already long gone when I entered the fandom. The the only thing EW and I know about most of these characters was their species, and in the case of one particular OC, his appearance. So we "AU-ified" these guys for usage in our own stories because we think they're interesting. 

"You  should've asked George's permission!" Most of the people who left the fandom do not want to be bothered about it (see: Greywolf Lupous). Once again, believe me when I say I speak from personal experience. I don't know where they are now. I cannot pull an email address out of my butt or from thin air. In fact, I think the people who scream about character theft are fully aware of all this. They just don't care because they treat it as ammo they can use against you. 

"Haha, since you can't contact them, that means you can't ask them, so you shouldn't be using their OCs in the first place!"

"Well, I know a guy who used to hang with that same crew, and he never once told me that they were upset by the idea of their characters being used by other people. I think if it that wasn't the case it would've come up in our conversations, so reverse UNO card."

 - The Court of Twilight is a name I came up with myself for my AU, since I didn't wanna constantly refer to them as "Zaygos and his henchmen". The name's based around the fact that they're all animal species that are active during the evening. For all intents and purposes, they're to the Rovers what Apocalypse is to the X-Men, or the villains from the PreCure franchise are to that series' particular group of heroes. I was also influenced by Darkseid's Elite and Thanos and his Black Order (although personally I think Darkseid's crew was more distinctive and noteworthy in DC's cartoons then the Black Order was in the MCU). 

I'm not sure how much info I should give out about these guys, because I think some stuff should be saved for the sake of future stories, but if you're curious as to my thought process for my reimaginings:

Zaygos Design-wise, the STARS-verse interpretation takes inspiration from King Sombra from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and King Magnifico from Wish. I chose his coloration (which is an actual color variation red foxes can have called "fire and ice") in order to make him stand out instead of being the same old boring red/orange color that fox characters often are. I might give him a mustache too.

Lustfox: He was very much influenced by DC villain Glorious Godfrey. His being a fox really works with this idea, given that a ton of people are obsessed to a wild degree with them.

Kaymat: Neither I nor EW know anything about this character other than her being female. However, whenever she did show up, she was always with Zaygos and co, so it just felt wrong to exclude her. We made her a cat, though mine's is a mix-breed cat and ended up going down a different path than his version did. 

Alornso: My approach to him is "take no prisoners tormented badass".

Vile Darkness: This guy was the toughest to reimagine. EW initially had him as a sorcerer who could create and animate small animals. This can be an interesting and even scary power, but I found that it really didn't work for the character per my setting. I toyed around with making Vile a tall, lanky, stereotypically ghoulish-looking dark sorcerer, then, a metamorph like Mahito from Jujutsu Kaisen. 

His final form came about because I thought to myself "These guys need somebody to craft and forge weapons for them." So no more skinny goth wizard. He can do some other stuff as well, some of which we'll get to see in later chapters. Since he's someone whose duty requires him to be hands-on, I envisioned him as having a rough, unsophisticated way of speaking -- he's basically a country bumpkin.

Death and Dread are basically the same characters that EW always presented them as. I did change up the circumstances of how they and the Court of Twilight connected however, again just to simplify things and avoid plotholes.

The Court of Twilight's wardrobe was designed with their roles and personalities in mind. I will also say that all these guys are a lot more serious in my stories than what they were typically depicted as being. IMO, it makes them feel more threatening.

FUN FACTS:

- Lustfox mistakenly calling Lady Dread "Lady Dream" was originally a typo in the early draft, but then I thought that him messing up her name and not really caring would help to show what type of person he is.

May 2026 progress report

Second chapter of New Dogs went up Monday!

One fic idea of mine's that's risen to the forefront and is currently taking up my attention is a crossover that was mentioned several pages back titled A Horse Of A Different Color, an Elena of Avalor/My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Also, there's a one-shot idea that I'd like to complete at some point in the near future. It's one of the more grim (albeit with a point) plot bunnies I've had, and for that reason I kinda just wanna get it out there before moving on to more hopeful stuff.

In other news, I'm hoping to get started on story notes and finish up Antoine's Character Corner. 

Road Rovers STARS Headcanons

Gonna try to get the next chapter of New Dogs out this week, but in the meantime, here's a little something to tide readers over.

-- My stories include moments of levity and humor, and some will be straight-up action/comedies, but my brand of humor is for the most part is quite different from the show's itself. It’s less goofy, dated, and referential for one, and doesn’t rely so much on dog jokes or Blitz being Colleen’s punching bag as well as the butt of some gigantic cosmic joke in general. Humor does not trump characterization either. If it’s going to bother you not to see the show’s style of humor, then you don’t even need to be reading my stuff. If you can deal with it though, then enjoy.

-- Hunter, Colleen, and Exile (on occasion) are not the only cano-sapiens who can understand Shag and normal dogs. This is something the show did that I’ve always found really inconsistent and confusing. All Cano-Sapiens can do this, and the same goes for any other sapient or mutant.

-- The first season of Road Rovers STARS (the canon episodes) begins in 1996 (the same year the show originally aired). The stories pick up from there. The way the passage of time in the show was handled, particularly in “Still A Few Bugs In The System”, was weird. Like, that episode actually spanned several years? I’d have to look around to see exactly how long, but when I saw that I thought to myself “Well, I'm ignoring that.”

Actually, the passage of time in many fanfics makes no sense either. Sometimes things apparently happen over the course of several years, but again, nobody ever ages and the characters literally appear to be frozen in time. I'm going to have a timeline that makes actual logical sense.

-- When it comes to criminals, the Rovers are more like real-life police officers and less like Batman. If a villain is threatening to seriously harm or kill someone and cannot be talked down, then the Rovers are permitted to use lethal force to stop them if necessary. Also, EW bought up the idea of the Rovers specifically being ordered to kill on their missions instead of merely arresting criminals in some stories (something that a ton of fanfics skirt around). 

Also, a villain(s) who goes to prison will stay there for a decent length of time. In other words, it’s not going to be like all the jails we see in comic books where criminals are just continually escaping. If a villain does manage to frequently evade the good guys' clutches, then they will do so in a logical, plausible manner.

-- Since they were so poorly handled in the show, the canon Rovers will be getting some much-needed attention and development in STARS, thanks in part to EW. I feel fans get so impressed with their OFCs that the canon characters get turned into side characters. Hunter will not be the center of the universe here though like he is everywhere else.

-- The Rovers’ owners will also get focus here. The bond between human and animals is a special one, and something I feel deserves more attention then what it receives in the fandom.

-- The STARS-verse borrows characters and concepts from certain other authors, namely Evil Writer and George Aguirre (as far as several of the historical elements go), but many of the original fan characters not made by me/Lilikoi/Fox the Writer have been adjusted to varying degrees in order to fit into STARS better. The same goes for some of the aforementioned story concepts. Also, don’t expect to see many if indeed any popular fanon concepts here.

-- I wasn’t going to even touch on this, but because I’ve noticed so many contemporary Rover fans doing this I feel the need to comment. These fans make the Rovers more like real-life dogs given sentience who often still retain/or want to retain the mentalities and lifestyles of regular dogs (IE: giving their children away to human owners to be raised as pets and only visiting them occasionally, as opposed to wanting to raise them themselves).

I go the Disney route and have sapients being sentient even as regular animals (which is what the show itself even seemed to be heavily implying). They just can’t communicate with humans. I think there’s so much to be explored with sapients that fans don’t seem to care about. It just seems so lazy to go, “Yeah, they still live and act like dogs, only they can talk now! Well that’s all, byyyye!” Would the Rovers not realize that they have the power to do things now that they couldn’t as regular old dogs? You don’t have to obey the alpha dog. You can run the pack more democratically now. You don’t have to basically let your children be ripped away from you to be raised by total strangers of a different species anymore. And so on and so forth.

-- In a reverse of the previous rule, sapients are not reskinned humans either.

-- Something else nu!fanbase does that really singes my biscuits: how Parvo’s Mutants are handled. You get people who want them to have expanded roles and be comic relief, or treat them as being interchangeable with sapiens. But the show always presented them as non-speaking grunts and monstrous, corrupted beasts (granted, they did get nerfed over the course of the series). They also look distinctly different from sapients and have never displayed superpowers in the show. I don’t mind having them being capable of speaking, albeit not nearly as well or as clearly as sapients do, but I don’t need them holding long, complex conversations or doing pratfalls. 

A bunch of fans also have the Rovers killing them, which to me is morally wrong because they are killing innocent cats and dogs that were corrupted by Parvo against their will.

The Mutants in STARS are more primitive and aggressive than either sapients, TMNT-style mutants, and mutates are. They have little interest in the opposite sex or the like. They can be cured and changed back into normal animals with the Transdogmafier, as was shown in canon on several occasions (as hard as the fandom tries to ignore this). Parvo goes on to use other animal species as Mutants, including Furo-Mutants (ferrets), Shark Mutants, Urso-Mutants (bears), and Chiro-Mutants (bats). Other villains will end up employing Melo-Mutants (badgers) and Cheetah Mutants for specific schemes.

ETA: I think this was Usami's headcanon, but I like the idea of the Cano-Mutator being the evil opposite of the Transdogmafier, bringing out the worst traits of animals.

-- Here, there's more of a focus on the Rovers' personal lives and interests beyond them just fighting crime, the lulz, and shipping melodrama. They can't fight Parvo forever. I notice 97% of fanfics make it seem like they just sit around waiting for villains to attack. And if fans ever do decide to have them do something other then go on adventures, it'll be about them starting families (especially Hunter and Colleen, because they're the Anointed Ones). Nothing else.

-- Everyone and their grandma can't just break into RRMC like it's nothing. This is a common trope in fanfics that drives me nuts! In STARS, no villain knows where RMMC is. Not saying that'll always be the case, but as of now nobody knows. And even if someone were to discover its location, there are actual security systems that will alert the Rovers and at the same time stop the intruder. Not a glass door with a bell on it that rings whenever people walk in and out.

The STARS-verse -- inception and the Stations of Canon

Still working on the second half of the latest Character Corner, but I do have this ready to go to accompany my fic New Dogs, New Tricks. This'll be the first of several posts that will establish some worldbuilding and ground rules for my Road Rovers series, Road Rover STARS.

A long, long, long time ago, my RR stories were meant to mostly run concurrently alongside the Road Rovers: Quick Strike, or QS-verse series of fics, written by That One Evil Writer. His fics would've also been canon to my fic-verse, along with my own personal (old cringe) ideas and characters. Gradually however, seeing television series and movies, as well as reading various books in addition to a lot of great fanfiction, and higher quality reboots (both fan-made and official ones) made me start to wonder "What if?..."

.. Hunter had his own set of character flaws to overcome? Not external, out of his control "weaknesses" that exist purely to make people go "Aww poor baby", but real flaws that could make people come into conflict with him, or even not like him? As someone who does not like the character (lol), I felt going this route will ground the character and make him genuinely sympathetic, because I will be getting into his mindset and exploring why he behaves the way he does. 

... The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Mighty Ducks met the Rovers? I feel the non-human superheroes should hang out a lot.

... What if some characters found different partners than they did in the QS-verse?

What if, what if, what if?

Watching new and old shows makes me wanna emulate the things I like about them for RR. I take a lot of inspiration from series with ensemble casts (Northern Exposure and Band Of Brothers -- there's definitely a number of other shows I could add to this list that I've missed out on and do plan to watch) assorted animated series (Steven Universe, Transformers Animated, One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba, My Adventures With Superman, and The Owl House are some primary examples). Another influence was fanfiction for the series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. People have done every kind of alternate universe story for that fandom under the sun and then some. It was definitely a big source of inspiration for revamping my cast and setting.

STARS wound up developing into its own unique thing separate from what anybody else is (or was) doing for their stories, though I do take certain influences and headcanons from a select few other fan writers. Of course if the original creator is still around I ask their permission. Regardless, any creator whose OCs appear are always receive credit in my author's notes. The deviantART portion of the fandom seems to get its rocks off on the idea of people going around stealing characters. That's not what's going on here, and if you believe it is, you're always welcome to actually come and ask me.

I love lore. 

 

No, not that Lore. Story lore.

I have a simple rule of thumb for this setting: KISS. What is KISS?

Keep

It

Simple 

Stupid/Sweetie 

Streamline everything. I don't want any kind of convoluted, sprawling, overly complex backstories or plotlines (the hero was separated from their mother who was captured by the villains and cloned, and the evil clone traveled back in time to assume the real mother's place, while the real mom lost her memory and became a new villainess named La Strega!) or anything of the sort. This is also why I'm mostly keeping clear of time travel. I don't want any soap opera style stories or melodramatics either. I know people and their emotions can be really messy, but this is not Days Of Our Lives.

I also went and chucked a lot of the more clunkier, awkward concepts I devised previously.

Make it fun and engaging. It should be like sitting down to watch a compelling series, or following a series of books or an old-fashioned serial you really like, so you tune itn every week just so you can see what happens next.

While the original thirteen episode run is canon, there are minor details here and there that have been changed to varying degrees to suit my own personal tastes; I.E.: Prince Charles and Princess Diana becoming werewolves. That doesn't occur in STARS because I straight up think not only was it really dumb and pointless, but also dates the show really badly. Colleen's master is the actual guy who served as England's Prime Minister in the mid-90s, not the pseudo-Queen Elizabeth the show uses. 

I only include characters that I actually want to write in some capacity. So if you don't see your favorite fan character, or one you might've made, then that's why. Some characters I feel are just better off being written by their creators. I'm not the creator, so I can only do so much guesswork about how a creator might approach their OC. A bunch of characters from the prelim versions of this setting, a number of my own included, were eventually dropped because I think they would have stretched plausibility way too much/or I wasn't sure how I could even properly fit them in (or, in the case of my personal OCS, were just lame, derivative characters). Some are just -- sorry to say -- either too underdeveloped to use or their presence became unnecessary. The only thing I know about them was a name and sometimes a species, if the latter even.

Something I'm very eager to try out is utilizing story elements that I wish other RR stories had but usually lack, like having a middle ground between the characters being animals, but uplifted animals that have expanded minds. Just about every story I see it's either one extreme -- they're humanoid dogs, but the writers treat them as being regular dogs mentally who still want to keep acting like and living like regular dogs... even though the author also wants human-style weddings for their OCs or Hunter and Colleen at the same time. If Hunter and Colleen are perfectly fine with stuff like allowing their children to be given away to humans to live with them, instead of just raising them themselves (because they're sentient now, so they totally have that option available to them), then why the heck would they even care about having a wedding in the first place then? Or courtship for that matter? Wouldn't Hunter just start humping Colleen right there on the spot? I'm sorry to be crass about this, but people are so inconsistent about this kind of thing. And in regards to giving away their offspring, wasn't the very last episode of the show all about Hunter trying to reunite with his mom because he desperately missed her??? Do people even pay attention to canon?

The other extreme is the Rovers being written like they're humans in animal costume. You could just take off the dog mask and it'd be just some boring rando looking back at you.

I want a linear timeline that flows chronologically and normally. There are so many stories out there where the Rovers seem to go on thousands and thousands of missions every day, yet the canon Rovers act the exact same way they do in the show, no one ever develops or changes physically or mentally, and no one seems to age. If the canon Rovers are still acting the exact same they do in canon after 80,000+ life and death missions, or getting attacked/mutated/brainwashed/cloned/RRMC being invaded and blown up/etc, then, uh... I call bs. I want characters to have reactions to and be affected by the things that happen to them, not just glossing over it just so they can move on to the next adventure/or shipping.

A major problem with a lot of old school fanfiction is that concepts and characters were never explained from story to story unless you'd been there from the beginning or spoke behind the scenes with the fan writers. Sometimes the opening stories weren't available to read either. Plus, even way back when I know I didn't wanna include everything that happened in the QS-verse as part of my setting. Recently, while talking with a friend of mine, I asked myself this question: if you're borrowing a concept or an idea from somebody else for an AU setting, then why copy it to the exact tee? Why not take it and put your own unique twist on it? I want to really push the AU aspects in order to truly differentiate STARS from RR: QS. As part of this, some characters are basically rebooted versions of themselves (think like how Mr. Freeze was presented in the original 1960s Batman series and how he was updated for Batman: The Animated Series) in order to fit in better with this brand new setting and because I don't know everything about them. Some of the other canons I've incorporated have likewise been tweaked. In the case of DC and Marvel, I'm just mashing together select elements from the various media we've gotten over the years. 

Now, on to that "Stations of Canon" thing I mentioned in the title of this entry. Some stories, ideas, and events that occur in STARS are my personal takes on things other writers have either written about or were planning to write. They will play out in a completely different way here though, just because they'll be filtered through this new setting as well as my own thoughts as a writer. Since I have a different take on the canon Rovers and co as opposed to other fan interpretations (to say nothing of other characters in STARS, such as say Batman or Demona), there's no way that an event should go down in the exact same way. Likewise, the presence of new OCS and other canons existing together in this shared universe would also affect a number of situations.

I don't want to undermine either the Master or the canon Rovers. A lot of stuff does that, in some case unintentionally. He had the intelligence and skill to build a Transdogmafier, except no, not really, someone else did and he just took their idea. Oh look, all these other groups and random people out on the street now have Transdogmafier technology too!... somehow. Hey, he's getting in the way of the fan writer's precious donut steel, so we need somebody to swoop from the shadows, blackmail him, and basically take over the Road Rovers! And so on and so forth. The Rover should not feel like walk on cameos within their own setting. So many times it feels like they're made stupid and weak just to make the OC or whatever look better by comparison. Also, if you read my Character Corner entries on Blitz and Exile, then you know that I plan on having all the canon Rovers level up in some form or fashion so they're not left in the dust by more powerful characters.

As I said, some of the romantic couplings between the various characters are going to be different from what you've seen done before. Unless I really like a particular coupling, I don't see a point in copying what another writer does or has done before, especially when I don't even have all the details of how the relationship is supposed to play out for their setting. Plus, as I've said elsewhere, I enjoy playing around with new possibilities and character dynamics. I find those elements very interesting to explore. Romance is not going to trump and dominate everything else either. 

I want to tell stories that, to borrow a phrase I've seen elsewhere and which I think perfectly describes what I envision -- scratches that itch in my brain in a very satisfying way.

So that's it, that's all I got to say. Hope you enjoy the stories.

Latest RR story *finally* ready for public viewing!

The prologue for New Dogs, New Tricks is up on Fanfiction.net and A03! I did say that it was gonna be little bit longer before it got posted because it needed to be proofed a second time. But later I was just sitting there thinking to myself "Man, I'm ready to just move on from NDNT and focus on something new." That's not to say that I hate the story or anything -- had a lot of fun writing for these characters -- but I really wanna move on other ideas now. Fic's mostly done anyway.

Also, as somebody who prefers FF.net to A03, it's pretty sad seeing how the site seems just barely held together with string and chewing gum these days. Seems like the spammers and other issues ran a lot of people off. 

My *new* art account and the actual reason why I left Buzzly.

If you wanna see:

-- fan and original characters 

-- fan art, including concept art for my AUs

-- writing prompts and sneak peaks of future fanfic ideas

Then just click here!

Looking back at when I first brought up my dissatisfaction with Buzzly here, I didn't really say why, apart from the people there being very unfriendly. I'm going to try my best not to get overly political about this, but nowadays, with the way creative communities tend to be, that's kind of hard to do. That's the reason why I was so reluctant to say anything initially. 

In terms of atmosphere, Buzzly feels less like an art site and more like Reddit or Tumblr Jr. In other words, there's a lot of weird people who hold extremist views there. I'm not coming at this from an angle of "Well they're bad because they don't believe what my party believes!" I don't like extremists of any stripe period. 

The worst person I know of is an individual whose said stuff like not liking furries is transphobic (???) and thought Zootopia 2 should revolve around the topic of police brutality. Since when did furries become exclusively trans? And is this person saying you have to be a trans person in order to be a furry? Worst of all was the time when someone posted about the death of FurAffinity founder Dragoneer. Someone in the comments asked (and this is paraphrased on my part) "Wasn't Dragoneer into explicit material involving children?" Well, same individual who wanted a family movie to tackle police brutality went off on the person who asked that.

I looked into the matter myself. I didn't see anything pointing to the guy being into cp, but he did have a history of defending not just kid diddlers, but zoophiles as well (before someone goes "What's your source for that? 'Trust me bro?'", there's a certain website I checked because they're very good at documenting stuff there. I'm not going to name it here however because it's very infamous). 

Yo, why are you so hot about someone asking the right questions about this Dragoneer guy? Yes, I believe people should be fully judged by the company they keep. You don't like it? Quit hanging around shady people then.

That's one of the reasons why I feel like furries have a real problem with empathy. They want empathy and understanding for themselves of course, but extending that to other people? Unless they're fellow furries, fat chance of that happening. This is a repeated pattern I've seen with the majority of the ones I've encountered before. I've said before here that I have issues with furries. At this point I'm just gonna come on out and say that I honestly don't care for them. Are there nice, chill furries out there? Yes, I've encountered a few here and there before. But the fandom overall has some major issues going on that most seem unwilling to talk about. They try to act friendly and caring at times, but generally are very self-involved, rude, manipulative, sexist, and have this constant victimhood mindset. You can see this very same subject being discussed here. Keep an eye out for the gentleman who shares an incredibly messed-up story about a young family member of his who became involved with furry fandom. 

Another common thread I've noticed is that if you have something to say about furries that isn't purely cooing praise, you are automatically dismissed out of hand as being a liar. And if somebody in the furry fandom commits a crime (which often includes crimes against children/or animals), these same kinds of people will say stuff like "Oh no, this is gonna make the fandom look bad!"/"Hey, don't judge all furries because of this person!"

...

I think a normal human response to hearing about sexual crimes against kids/or animals or what have you would be something like "Hey, that's terrible. I'm sorry [the victims] had to go through something like that." Or "People shouldn't treat animals that way. These people do not represent the fandom in any way, shape, or form." 

No. Instead it's the poor pitiful furries out there who deserve our sympathy, attention, and understanding. Not the victims of their crimes. 

Absolutely sociopathic behavior.

But that's all the Dragoneer defender (we'll just call them DD because why not?) does, run around Buzzly acting like a redditor. Someone posted a picture of a forest once, and DD left a comment under it trashing (American, presumably) right-wingers. I don't consider most of my views conservative, but it's like "What does any of that have to even do with anything? You didn't say a single word about the picture. Why can't you just appreciate someone's artwork instead of hijacking it with your political views?" These types of people have zero concept of "time and place". DD once bragged about staying indoors all the time and not having any IRL friends. Very obviously cope. It just reminded me of the Wojak meme where the person is wearing the smug face mask while you can see tears streaming down their cheeks. 

But that's what Buzzly turned out to be all about. There are other people on that site who are like that as well, but DD was the absolute worst. If I did happen to see people interacting with each other, 80% of it was devoted to whining about A.I. The rest was western politics. I understand the problems and controversies revolving around A.I., but there's actual art created by human hands there that nobody there really seems very interested in. They just wanted to be buttmad about everything. The handful of chill people there aren't enough to save the site in my eyes.

TL;DR: was on art site where nobody actually cared about art. Wild stuff.