'Great Minds Think Alike' commentary & notes

I almost forgot, but since posting Blitz and Exile's respective character "analyses" it occurred to me that I should probably also repost the notes for the story the both them featured in over here.

REFERENCES:  

- This story heavily references the Road Rovers episode "Take Me To Your Leader", so...

GENERAL: 

- I wrote this story way back in 2014, well before I'd conceived of the STARS-verse, my RR crossover setting. I do consider Great Minds part of STARS. I'm probably going to eventually incorporate it into a one-shot collection I have planned to accompany the longer form stories for this setting, currently titled The STARS-verse: Constellations.

- The title Great Minds Think Alike just magically sprang into my mind one day. It seemed fitting when I saw Blitz and Exile unleashing Muzzle on Zachary Storm's henchmen together, and I'm sure Blitz likes to think he has a great mind. ;-)

- I love the ending with all of the Rovers as regular dogs saving the day, but I feel like more could've been done with this episode. They could've had a situation where some of the other Rovers, not just Blitz and Exile, are at each others' throats or something because of the situation between their masters, then coming together and using teamwork. Or maybe more exploration into Blitz and Exile's relationship. Some nice character development could have come out of that. But nope, instead we get Hunter stopping Storm, as is par for the course in the show. But at least he had the Space Rovers and Colleen's aid, which made things slightly more bearable.

I also didn't like how between Blitz and Exile, Blitz was made out to be the only one who thought his owner was in the right and thus came off looking worse then Exile did.

- In TMTYL, Storm's mind control machine is called the neural brain scrambler. That's a very redundant name, so I just dropped the "brain" part for Great Minds. I also decided to include a mention of Professor Hubert. It was never said how the world leaders were returned to normal after having their personalities altered, or if the effects just naturally wore off. I just chose to say Hubert whipped up some doohickey that restored them to normal. Also, what the heck happened to the neural scrambler? Did the Rovers just leave it on the bottom of the ocean, or did they try to get it, or what? 

Having thought about this, I've decided that for STARS, the neural scrambler will be making another appearance for a later story I have in mind. 

- At first I was going to have Blitz actually talk about how he didn't notice his master's excessively aggressive behavior, but as I thought about it, it seemed more in-character for him not to admit it out of shame. Some characters are open about their feelings, but I feel like a combination of pride plus his whole macho man attitude would keep Blitz from opening up about a lot of things (I go into this more in my analysis for him).

FUN FACTS:

- Something  I've noticed: anyone else find it interesting how aggressive and fearless Blitz is as a regular dog then he is as a Rover? Someone first brought this to my attention when they pointed out how he confronted the junkyard burglar back in the pilot. In TMTYL, he initially seems very willing to fight the "aliens", then, once he was a Cano-Sapien and actually got on their ship, lost his nerve.

New fic!

Just wanted to announce that I posted a new one-shot!

Title: Between A Rock And A Raccoon.
Universe: Steven Universe/Guardians Of The Galaxy (MCU versions).
Rated: G.
Genres: Drama/Friendship/Science-Fiction.
Key character(s): Rocket Raccoon, Amethyst.
Warnings: N/A.
Summary: "They gave me enough smarts to know I'm an experiment, and that's all I am." While visiting Beach City with the other Guardians, a dejected and self-loathing Rocket is approached by someone who understands what he's going through.

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

I also really need to update my FF.net page. Some of the stuff on there is super out of date.

Sled dogs took me down a rabbit hole

Recently and very randomly I've been thinking about the movie Balto at work (when you're not having fun, what else is there to do but replay movies in your head, lol?). Such a good movie -- James Horner's beautiful score, animation, vocal performances, just about everything. 

I was also thinking about the characters, including three certain ones -- Nikki, Kaltag, and Star. They're my favorite characters, although I like everybody mostly (with two certain exceptions). Even though they gave Balto a lot of crap, their saving grace was 1) actually being funny, and 2) having their own thing going on between the three of them. They're like the movie's Greek chorus. Like in the scene where Balto and Steele are fighting, or rather, Steele is just manhandling Balto, I'm not laughing at what Balto's going through as much as I am Nikki and Kaltag's cold commentary on everything (before they realize both Steele's sanity and competence are highly questionable). I'm finding that I tend to be more forgiving of bully/antagonist type characters if they're actually funny and that humor isn't solely based around them making fun of another character (there's at least one other character I feel falls into this category that I'm probably going to be talking about in the future. I have a feeling it's gonna be a somewhat controversial post). The trio's other saving grace was that they put the job ahead of themselves, unlike Steele, and they started really respecting and rooting for Balto after the "fight" scene.

That snowballed into my going on YouTube and watching couple of videos about the movie. Then I decided to see if I could possibly find any voice acting compilations (something I enjoy doing because it's fun -- I've always been interested in voice actors, and even as a kid would get excited if I recognized voice actors in the shows I watched) for Jack Angel, who voiced Nikki (the gold/cream-colored member of the trio). This led my discovering that he apparently died all the way back in 2021. 😞 This was the only thing my search turned up. It's... not very extensive:

 

There's also a lot of Transformers related stuff for him as well. I'm wondering if it's because many of the series and movies he was in aren't available online/or maybe they're copyrighted by whoever owns the rights and they don't want people posting clips? 

Whatever it is, it sucks. I dunno, feels like a lot of older voice actors from the early nineties and before that time don't get their dues these days. Also, I miss it when animated movies and shows would use professional voice actors alongside celebrity voices (and quite a few shows predominantly used professional VAs). Now just about all you see are celebrity voices. Did we really need Rosie Perez to speak only one or two lines of dialogue for a character that only ever showed up one time in Elena Of Avalor?

Well, here's to you, Mr. Angel. And dear reader(s), if you've never seen Balto before, go watch it.

An actual proper status report for December 2025

Forgot to wish readers Happy Thanksgiving last time, so Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, or whatever it is you may celebrate in November. :)

New Dogs, New Tricks: Almost there! It's maybe like 97% complete, I'm just filling in a few blank spaces here and there, as it were.

My brain also decided "Yeah, you definitely need to start on two new stories." One is yet another crossover one-shot, and the other's a multichapter story.

Also been working on notes for Predatory Drift and a new Character Corner entry.

The Character Corner: Exile's Extras

 

Hey, it's dog eat dog. *is shot*

 

What he said, lol. Also, comparing that hot dog to how food usually gets drawn in anime is like night and day. So unappetizing-looking.

EXTRA HEADCANONS

1.) Forgot to mention that at the start of the the STARS-verse series Exile is twenty-eight years old. So that's why I said before that when it comes to shipping Blitz and Exile I personally don't. A nearly thirty-year old guy does not have anything in common with a nineteen-year old. Blitz like to rib him by calling him "Greis", the German word for "gray", a reference to his age, and otherwise acting like Exile's a grandpa lol. Again, wanna make the teasing between the two of them feel more like two friends bantering, rather than things being more one-sided like they are in canon.

2.) (Note: This is EW's idea) Exile's official role here would be the team mechanic and computer expert primarily. I also seem to recall him being the one who'd pull out a gadget of some kind during missions, but not as much as I remember him messing with computers and vehicles. He's also the third in command, and if either Hunter or Colleen are unavailable, then he steps up as deputy under either one, or leads the group in their stead if neither is around.

3.) I find that I make Exile more mature and more of a peacemaker within my stories. You did see this side to him in the last episode, "A Day In The Life", where he chatted with Hunter and Colleen respectively about their issues at different points. So I think he's a shoe-in for this role. Granted, I do try to highlight all the canon Rovers using their heads during tough situations more so then they did in the cartoon, but Exile's the one who keeps the peace and calms things down, which I think the others need. 

This is in response to fan writers often making the Rovers aggravatingly stupid and goofy in their fanfics. I mean, they were goofy and self-involved in the show quite a bit too, but fanfic ramps that mess up to twelve. They'll have some dark storyline going on, like the villain OC succeeds in getting away with all these elaborate plots and murders like a million nameless cannon fodder Rovers and innocent civilians, all while the canon Rovers (as well as the writer's OCs) sit around doing stuff like cracking on Blitz, going on day trips, or telling unfunny jokes. And I'd be sitting there reading this stuff going "Why are these characters so dim? Is Hunter seriously thinking about having a public wedding ceremony while he and the others know full well that the bad guys are actively gunning for them? Maybe they all do deserve to die."